Demon Lord 4: White Jade Reaper (34 page)

“Fine.”  She called over to Tukka.  “C’mon, you prehistoric ground sloth.  We got work to do.”

Tukka snapped his head up, yawned ferociously, and bared all his sharp pointy teeth.  He lumbered up on all four feet and stomped over, lavender eyes taking in Rasputin’s presence.

The Russian vampire stared back.  “What is that?”

“Our secret weapon,” I said.  “Meet Tukka.”

THIRTY-FOUR

“It makes me happy when I can

throw myself heedless into danger.”

                                     —Caine Deathwalker

The parking lot was full.  The students were in place behind the curtain, on stage.  The seats were filled to capacity.  Law enforcement were moving in, taking up support positions.  Virgil was in the lobby of the foyer arguing with the local SWAT boys.  They were pointing at Cassie, Grace, me, Rasputin, and of course Tukka.  They thought he was some experimental robot dog.  None of us corrected that impression.  The problem was, the SWAT teams wanted to go in first with their fiber optics, armor, shields, and combat razzle-dazzle, but there was not yet an enemy manifesting, and when it did, bullets and flash bangs weren’t going to do squat.

We all expected heavy casualties.  There was a reason Paul Hastings was conveniently missing from his own event.  The man was no fool.  A serial killer, yeah, but he knew enough not to put his own head on the chopping block.  I expected him to raid the eighteen-wheelers while we were all distracted.  Once he’d forged his little super-phantom monster, he’d need the flute to control it. 

It was why I’d found Onyx and dragged him away from the girl’s dorm to go and steal the flute for me first.  It wasn’t that I didn’t trust Virgil to keep the relic safe … well, actually, that was it
exactly
.  I didn’t trust him.  Plus, as a part dragon, I had a firm conviction that supernatural things belong in the safekeeping of supernatural hands—namely mine. 

Hastings would use those screamer children ghosts of his.  I

expect Onyx to eat them all with plenty of room for Hastings.  I made it clear that Hastings was mine, and not to be damaged too badly.

I saw Dog lurking over behind some fake plants.  He was giving me hound-dog eyes.  I guess I was the only one he knew now that Ghost Girl was gone. 
Ah, hell!
  I wiggled my fingers at him, encouraging him to come over.  He gave a little yip and pranced over, clearly jittery of the living all around.  It was funny how no one paid him any mind.  They thought they ought to be seeing a dog, not a phantom, so that’s what their minds decided that they saw. 

“Where’s Onyx?” Cassie asked.  “I thought he was going in with us.”

I caressed his smudgy shadow head and gave it a final pat, and lied.  “Onyx is right here.  Let’s get on with it.  The curtain will be going up any second.”

Grace looked at Dog, then back at me.  “He looks a little different.”

“He and Tukka have been bonding.”

Tukka swung his massive face my way, studied Dog and I for a moment, but let my statement stand.  I’d had a feeling he wouldn’t say anything.  For some reason, animals really like me, and no matter how smart Tukka is, he’s still more animal then anything else.

The SWAT guys were being obstinate.  Finally, Virgil pulled rank with his federal clout.  The SWAT boys were told to play nice or go home.  They gave in—grumbling not so much under their breaths—and took the jobs assigned to them.  If this wasn’t a complete disaster, they wanted their little piece of glory.

I got assigned to Tukka to take me over.  I didn’t think Dog would have a problem following us to the ghost realm.   Grace definitely didn’t need help.  Rasputin’s technique was still rough, so Cassie was going to boost him across and leave him to work out his own strategies.  It would be nice if we had a real plan.  I’d asked Cassie about it.  She’d just said to hit it with everything I had, and to dig deeper for more.  Grace had dealt with this kind of thing before.  Her advice hadn’t been much better: “Keep

moving and try not to die.”

Words to live by, I suppose
.

Janet had told us not to expect a strong manifestation from the entity until the crowd started getting worked up, generating emotional energy it could fed upon.  With a spooky, protoplasmic light-show sucking on their souls, the audience was likely to stampede.  That would make it harder managing them.  Not that that would be my problem.  From the ghost realm, I could immaterially wade through the crowd to go anywhere. 

I heard clapping through the closed doors.  The curtain had gone up.  Orchestral strains of music came to us, muted.  A fanfare of trumpets, the pounding of kettle drums, the shrill voices of piccolos. 

“Hey, Caine!”  Hearing Madison’s voice, I turned.  “I’m going in with you guys.”  She was in black, slayer leathers, a sheathed broadsword strapped to her back, a machine pistol slung at her side, and she wore a bandolier with lops for rows of glass vials.

“Holy water?” I asked.

“Yup.”  She carried a wooden chair with the legs removed, replaced with a cushion glued to the underside.  There were straps and buckles: a makeshift saddle.  She used a sexy voice.  “You want a ride, baby?”

“I am not wearing that,” I said.  My treacherous cock engorged at the mental vision I had of her naked flesh, her tits bouncing as she slid on my pole, riding off to Orgasm Land.

“Silly, it’s not for you.  I need a bigger animal with lots of stamina.  I’m very demanding, you know.”

I looked at Dog. 

His ears perked up.

Madison looked at Dog.  “Onyx?  What happened to him?  Never mind.  Not him either.  This is for Tukka.”

He’d been half-paying attention to the conversation.  At that statement, his massive jaw dropped like a cinder block.  His lavender eyes bugged with indignation.  “Tukka, not horse.  Tukka have dignity.  Not some dumb animal!”

Madison pouted.  “Pretty please?  I can’t stay in the ghost

realm without you.”

Tukka pointedly looked away.  “No means no.”

Madison pulled around and opened a fanny pouch that probably held extra ammo.  She reached in and withdrew multiple objects wrapped together in cling wrap.  “Not even for three, solid chocolate bunnies?”

Tukka’s head whipped back toward her at such speed, I was surprised not to be flattened by a sonic boom.  “Choc’lat’ bunniess!”

“Yeah, I wasn’t going to ask you to work for free, but if no is no, I guess you don’t want these.”

“Madison!  Don’t you dare!”  Grace’s face was twisted by fury, her eyes baleful to behold.  “Chocolate is bad for fu dogs.  He’s trying to kick the habit, and that’s not helping.”

Madison glared back.  “He can kick it later.  I want in on this fight.”

“Tukka’s choice, really,” I said.  “He’s a grown … dog.”

Tukka slavered on the carpet.  “Tukka do it!”

Madison unwrapped the chocolate and tossed the bundle.  Tukka pounced like a starving lion, his jaws chomping shut on the offering.  He chewed slowly, trying to make the treat last.  As his eyes rolled to the back of his head, he rumbled with satisfaction, sort of like a vacuum cleaner.  Madison made quick work of settling the saddle in place and cinching it down.  She arranged the chair so what should have been the back now faced forward.  That made sense; it gave her something to hold on to since her “saddle” lacked a horn.

“How are you going to handle that broadsword with one hand?” I asked.

She swung into the saddle and I don’t think Tukka even noticed.  I did notice how nicely her breasts jiggled.  She stared down at me, “I’ll figure something out.  Say, what are you stuffing your pants with?”  I saw she was staring at my crotch.

“That’s all me, Sweetheart, a benefit of my dragon DNA.  Perhaps later you might like a closer inspection?”  

“I might at that.”

I raised both eyebrows.

The music hit us with greater force and clarity.  An usher—in his red monkey suit with its brass buttons—came out of nearby doors.  The kid shushed us.  Realizing just what he was shushing, he fell silent, gob-smacked by our little group.  I reached into the ether and summoned one of my Beretta Storms.  “We’re a new addition to the program.  Get out of the way.”

Seeing the gun pointed at his face, he did, thoughtfully holding the doors open as we went in to take a look.  We took up position at the back of the theater, under the second story balcony.  Few people noticed us, or maybe they were just afraid to.  The crowd was respectfully quiet, but not perfectly so.  The students up on stage were ranged in folding chairs with all manner of instruments.  Poised above a xylophone, one girl held a pair of mallets in each hands.  There was a string section, flutes, a viola, cello, everything but a kazoo. 

They were winding up a spirited version of the Star Wars theme, when I noticed a flicker of sickly green light in the air above the audience. 

“Cross over,” Cassie said.

She and Raspy vanished.  Grace popped out next.  I took hold of Tukka’s side.  An electric tingle flushed across me.  Gravity dialed itself down as my aura emerged, gold liquid fire that danced over my skin.  This was also the raw magic I carried that activated my tattoos.  They were all warmed up and ready to activate with a thought.  The audience members had auras to, overlaying clothing that had gone into graytones.  Next to me, I could see Tukka and Madison, Grace and Cassie, and Rasputin, each of them color coded in accordance with the nature of their power. 

I looked down at Dog.  He was staring through my legs like I was gone. He reached out to paw me and his foreleg went through me.  He shook his canine head and tried again.  This time I felt the touch.  He didn’t look any different except for the very slight sheen of violet sliding across his coat now. 

“Welcome to the party,” I said.

He yipped agreement.

Dog and I moved out to the aisle and went forward so that

we were out from under the overhang.  I looked up into an aura borealis of sorts where a tangled skein of light stretched over the audience like the mother of all cat’s cradles. Pulsing nebulas slid along intestinal paths, turning corners, changing direction without rhyme and reason.  As I watched tentacles like spun, colored sugar wagged down toward the audience.

Dog whined, pressing against my leg.

“What?” I said.  “You think I want to be here either?”

Cassie and Rasputin came around me on one side.  Grace appeared on the other side.  They craned their heads like I had, a grimness in their squinting expressions. 

Grace said, “It’s gotten bigger since a few days ago.”

“A lot of energy here for it.  That’s why it’s been haunting this place.”  Cassie looked at us.  “And we’re not even seeing most of its substance yet.  It will need to fully ectoplasmate before it can take enough energy to kill.   Long before then though, it will have enough telekinetic force to toss us all around and smear us into the walls and floor.  

“I’m certainly looking forward to that.”  Dog nudged me, leaning into my leg as if trying to convince me to leave here. 

There was a strobe of lightning, violet-white, a jag that zipped from one nebula to another as if trying to sew them together.  I kept thinking of this as an alien form of life, but it was dead, operating by undead physics. 
An alien form of death?

Dog whined, shivering, too stupid to abandon loyalty to me.

Tukka sailed over our heads and landed father down the aisle.  I guess we’d been blocking him.  He landed and turned, looking up as did his rider.  “Holy crap!” Madison said.  “I should have brought a rocket launcher.”

“Physical attacks need to be augmented with magic or energy,” Cassie said.

“What about a purely magical attack?” Grace said.  “With the taste it’s getting, I don’t think it will just break off and run.”

Another strobe of violet lightning danced from foggy node to node. 

And Dog ran back up the aisle, exploding through the door to the lobby. 

Probably the last time I’ll see him.

The wagging tentacles were sparkly, clutching at nothing, coiling.  No, not at nothing.  There were star-points of aura that had been teased off the audience.  Larger globs of human aura were detaching and getting sucked up at a slower pace.  It was strangely like being inside a nightmare snow globe after someone shook it.

“If only these people could see what we see,” Grace said, “they’d get the heebie-jeebies and run outta here.  That would save a lot of the people who are going to die.”

True, but it will also start the usual mindless panic.  People will stampede and trample each other.  Of course, that’s going to happen anyway.  It’s just a matter of when.

“This is what you want, dear lady?” Rasputin was leaning into Cassie, eyes for no one else since she’d brought him over.  He’d fallen hard for the kitsune assassin.  “I can do this.”

Wait!  What?

“What are you waiting for?  Get to work.”

He ignored me, waiting on our commander to give the order.

Cassie looked at him, for once not like a bug she’d found crawling on her arm.  I didn’t think she was very fond of vampires.  She gave him a grim nod, and a curt, “Do it.”

“Yes Ma’am.”  He grinned and jumped big like Tukka had in the lesser gravity this side of the veil.  A series of wild leaps soon got him to the stage.  His last jump landed him there at the edge.  He turned around to face the audience.  When his coal red aura gutter out, I knew he’d transitioned back to the human side of things.  His sudden appearance must have looked like pure magic to the audience.  I could see many of them clapping, but I couldn’t hear the sounds.  Rasputin lifted his hands for silence.  I watched many of the musicians break off in their playing, then all of them.  A teacher I didn’t know—who’d been acting as conductor—marched over and tried to tell Rasputin where to go.