Demon Lord 4: White Jade Reaper (26 page)

Too bad I’m not charging for this show.

We should
, my dragon said.  
Have your girlfriend pass the hat.  All forms of jewels are accepted.

I squatted low and sprang into the air, my wings beating heavily as I fought for altitude.  It was at times like this I was grateful for more than human strength.  I left the parking lot far below.  The lot dwindled as did the buildings.  I soared into the dark sky, tasting the winds, reveling in sheer speed. 

Here I was, on the way to playing hero, and all I could think of was a quick descent through a fast food drive-thru.  Oddly enough, even some of the humans down below on the sidewalks were starting to look tasty.

Cut it out
, I told my inner dragon.

But who’s going to miss a pedestrian or two?

TWENTY-SIX

“Dragons are very pragmatic creatures.  If they

can’t eat it, own it, or fuck it, they leave it alone.”

                                    —Caine Deathwalker

Vamps aren’t very good at blending into crowds.  It goes against every poser instinct in their body.  Plus, there is often leakage of their psychic mind-rolling power that draws sluts to them like flies to poisoned sugar.  Just a cursory glance—as I plunged down out of a hunter’s moon—spotted a dozen of them drifting along the storefronts among the human population.  What surprised me more was the lack of damage to the street outside the gallery where I’d left soldier of fortune guys and their vehicles breathing their last.  Santa Fe didn’t have the seriously heavy network of “cleaner” services I had in L.A., back home.

Of course, with Raspy’s ability to bend reality to his will, I supposed he could handle his own clean-ups quite well.

I pulled my dive to a less steep angle, aiming for a window on the second floor.  I had a general rule: when doing something dangerous, try to at least have the virtue of unconventionality.  Since I’d likely find surprises inside, it wouldn’t hurt to be a surprise as well.

I wrapped my wings around myself at the last second, letting inertia explode me through the glass and the wooden frame of the window.

Watch the wings!
  My inner dragon was back to yelling at me.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. 
I opened up and back winged furiously.  This didn’t stop me from running across a bed and mashing myself against someone’s armoire.  I fell heavily to the floor. 

Ummmph!  More pain.  Lovely.  I hope no one heard that.  Who am I kidding?  The vampires outside are heading this way along with half the vamp soldiers in the building.  The rest will be holed up with Raspy, keeping the vampire princess safe from the vendetta she’s instigated.  I really hope I’m wrong and Vlad is off somewhere having his coffin waxed and polished.

I stood and folded my wings to my back so I could move about easier in confined spaces.  As long as I was at the armoire, I opened the damaged door and peered inside.  A male was staying here, someone with a bigger build.  That was fine.  I borrowed a leather jacket to cover my naked torso.  The coat went over the wings.  I may look like a hunchback, but a stylish one.

I brought on more pain by flushing my
Demon Wings
tattoo with raw magic.  Paying for activating the stealth spell sent slivers of phantom glass around my body, edges digging in.  The sensation faded, leaving no extra damage.  The spell was just in time—the door was kicked in and a passel of vamp soldiers almost broke the frame crowding in, muscles tense, fangs bared. 

My spell didn’t make me invisible and didn’t deprive me of scent and sound as I moved.  The vamps should have been able to hear my heartbeat.  In fact, they did.  My magic just tickled their brains so their minds ignored sensory input.   Their heads swiveled.  They scanned the room, paying special attention the broken window and the claw rips I’d put in the bedspread.

Once the vamps were deeper in the room and clear of the door, I simply walked out into a hallway.  I passed the doors lining the hall, leaving them alone, and headed for where I saw the upper landing of a staircase. The floor was hardwood and fairly new.  It didn’t squeak as I walked, not that it would have mattered.  I went down the steps and came to another hallway.  My nose led me into the restaurant kitchen.  The workers were still in place, carrying on like nothing unusual was going on.  Wearing white aprons, they tended skillets, and dishes pulled from the large ovens.

A wave of intense hunger hit.  My stomach roared a demand for food.  My mouth watered as I was hit with the hot, fragrant aromas circulating in the air.  I went to the pass where dishes were put on trays so waiters could haul them to customers.  I helped myself to a plate of
ruletiki v bekone
, pan-fried bell peppers, wrapped in bacon, stuffed with a garlic and cheese paste.  The customers waiting for that was going to be disappointed.  I carried the plate as I went in search of a door to the wine cellar.  I found the door and went in, stomping down the stairs.  The basement was air-conditioned, the concrete walls hidden by wooden shelves.  The surrounding liquor was cheap. 

A far wall held a steel door almost as strong as a bank vault.  Two vamp soldiers guarded it.  I wondered who’d take over guard duty when dawn hit.  Not my problem.  I was here to break in.  The high security door probably protected the expensive private stock of wines; the lambs’ blood these blood-suckers preferred, and their coffins.  

As I marched over to them, the guards muttered to each other.  “I coulda sworn I heard someone on the stairs.  Must just be jumpy.”

“Better switch to decaf, dude.”

“Hah, funny.”

I saw a short-handled crowbar on an opened crate of wine bottles.  Perfect.  Once I picked up the bar, it vanished into the protective magic of nothingness around me.  Had they been watching at that precise moment, they would have seen the crowbar pop into the air and fade away, a game for poltergeists, except most ghosts don’t hang out with vampires.  Sloppy vampires who can’t control themselves are a reason for the growth of the ghost population.  Too bad I wasn’t a ghost who could walk through walls.  It would save me some trouble.

I walked up to the vamps and used my dragon-born strength to slap one, and then the other.  The first one was caught flat-footed.  He went down hard.  The second vampire moved so that I made a glancing impact.  He staggered, slowed down just long enough for another swing to drop him beside his buddy.  I noticed they were both wearing headsets for communications.  I liberated one of them, snuggling it in place over an ear.  Chances were good that Raspy was listening in. 

I tapped the micro mic stem in front of my lips.  “Can you hear me now?”

There was a long pause.  I heard his voice in my ear.  “Whoever’s playing games out there, knock it off.”

I said, “Hey, Raspy, you got my people in there with you?”

“Caine?  Why are you outside my vault?”

“Answer the question.”

“Yes.  I have your girls and the shadow-man in here.   Unless you want something to happen to them, you will—”

“Idiot.  I assume that vault is air-tight so no one can use ventilation ducts to get in, right?”

“Of, course.”

“Did it not occur to you that, unlike vampires, Grace and Madison need air to breathe?  You keep them in there, they’ll die.  If they die, you will have unending hell on your hands.  Is that what you want?”

“It did not occur to me—”

“Send them out.  I told you that my contract with Dracula has been completed.  I’m not here to hurt anyone.  I don’t do that … for free.”  I let go of my demon wings spell, letting the tattoo go dormant to conserve my strength. 

“Fine.”  The air in front of the vault became a distorted lens, bending light so that the steel door seemed to twist like something from an acid trip.  A black fog hung at the center of the distortion.  It stretched and flowed, then spilled out of the lens, taking on human form.  Forms.  It was Onyx, Madison and Grace. 

Madison drew in great gulps of cold air.  “Man, it was getting stuffy in there.  Too many vamps, not enough room.”

Grace stepped closer to me, her stare raking me over, lingering on my claw-like feet.  “Hi.  I guess you’re pretty mad we got involved in all this.”

“No.  Teenagers are idiots.  I expect idiots to act as idiots.”

“That’s a little harsh,” Onyx said.  “We were just trying to help Dominika.”

“Nice tats,” Madison said. “Nice jacket, too.  What happened to your shirt?”

Onyx gave me a closer look.  “That jacket hangs funny.  Is something wrong with your back?”

Grace sniffed the air in a very canine fashion.  “I smell blood.  Are you all right?”

“I’ll go into it later.  Right now, Onyx, I want you and Madison to go back to the motel room.  Get some rest.  We’re going on a clandestine mission just before dawn.”

“What about me?” Grace asked.

I watched her antennae bob from her forehead a moment before answering.  “You and I are going into that vault.  We’re going to grab Dom, and haul her out.  Then we’re going to clear things up with Dracula. A wonderful time will be had by all.”

“Vault door’s pretty impenetrable,” Madison said.

“There are many ways to skin a bat,” I told her.  “Grace, you’ll take me in through the ghost realm.  Once inside the vault, we’ll pull Dom into the ghost realm with us and beat a hasty retreat to the roof.”

Onyx and Madison were still standing there, listening. 

I let my voice boom at them.  “Go!”

Madison jumped in place.  Onyx had no reaction other than to lift an eyebrow in a practiced gesture of surprise.  Madison ran for the cellar steps.  Onyx flowed along with her, guarding her escape from the vamp lair. 

Reluctantly, I removed my borrowed jacket and lay it on a crate of wine.  I unfolded my wings, fanning them.  Grace shed the hunter green and pink windbreaker she was wearing.  This freed her wings.  On the mortal side of things, they wouldn’t support her in the air, but once we
crossed over
to the ghost realm, with its lighter gravitational force, things would be different—for both of us.  I moved us so we faced the steel vault together and held out my hand to Grace.  She took it in a touching display of faith I thought dangerously naïve.  

“Do it!”

She didn’t say a word, but an electric tingle shivered my skin.  It felt like a field of force was pulled over me, like I was dropping in an elevator.  I lost some of the tug of gravity.  My stomach floated inside me.  There was enough light in the basement to see colors, but they shifted into gray tones.  It was like stepping into an old TV episode that had been filmed before color film took over.  The only difference was that I could see auras now: an orange haze shimmering around Grace, and a golden dazzle around myself.  The vamps had only a tiny flicker of red energy, so pale it almost wasn’t there.  This was the stolen life force they acquired from consuming blood.

“Follow me,” I said.

I shoved against the floor where my bleeding aura braced me so I could jump.  I sailed into the steel door, and through it.  A black mist covered my eyes, and then I was inside.  A moment later, Grace followed me in.  Her tiny little moth wings poked out the back of two slits cut in her tee shirt.  The wings fluttered, providing a decent lift in the reduced gravity.  I found that an occasional, lazy beat of my dragon wings kept me hovering toward the ceiling.

The space was lined with bricks.  Though huge, it was made small by numerous coffins on slabs, enough for an army.  The coffins were empty.  The vamps looked ashen, and were all over the place in little huddles, most of them with expression that said they were bored out of their minds.  All of them heavily armed with automatic weapons.  The space near the door was clear.  There were no air vents.  Wires strung under a concrete ceiling periodically dangled light bulbs.  The light should have been yellow-white.  Seen from the ghost realm, the glow was dove gray.

Raspy and Dom were a couple yards away, peering into each other’s faces, their lips moving in argument.  But there were no sounds.  No words.  That surprised me.  “Why can’t I hear them,” I wondered.

“They’re not in all of dimensions that we are,” Grace said.  “You get used to it.”

“But because we’re both here, we can see and hear each other.  I see.”

That left just one vital question. 
Is the awesome mind of Rasputin going to be able to sense our presence, and stop us?

He broke off from his confrontation and stared our way.  His

unfocused gaze slid through our bodies.  Troubled, his forehead crinkled and a little twitch started in his right cheek.

I held my breath. 

After a long moment, he shook his head as if to dislodge worry, and returned his attention to Dom.  The argument recommenced at once, as agitated as before judging from their wild-eyed expressions.

“Grace, get behind Dom.”  I concentrated and one of my Berretta Storm semi-automatics appeared in my right hand, haloed by my golden aura so that it remained in the ghost realm with me.   I was pretty sure that I could drain the slugs of my life force as I fired so that I could hit things in the real world without going back just yet.  Of course, I still needed to put that to the test.  In a worse-case scenario, a slug could carry just enough energy to move intangibly through my first target, losing that charge, only to rematerialize in the human realm, hitting an unintended, second target. Fortunately, that second target would be a vampire as well, so I wasn’t overly concerned.

But, man, multi-dimensional physics are a pain.

A hard stare assured me I had Grace’s full attention.  “I’m going to distract Raspy and slow him down a little with a couple slugs.  When I do, you’ll need to be fast.  Pull Dom into the ghost realm with us.  Try not to let any other vamp come along for the ride.”

She nodded enthusiastically.  “Gotcha.”

I flew over to where Raspy was between me and Dom, and I unloaded half a clip into him.