Demon Moon (43 page)

Good God. “Have you hacked into a spy satellite?”

Her voice trembled with laughter.
“No. That'd take a lot more skill than I have, and a much better system. This is from a KRON WeatherCam.”

“A decade suddenly seems a bit generous, Savitri.”

“Well, I've isolated the feed and taken the camera offline—but, yeah, there's too many ways people might see something they shouldn't.”

He shook his head in disbelief, but only said, “I've arrived. Are Dalkiel and Osterberg on the roof still?” No reason to be quiet; the demon must know they'd come.

“Yeah. You'll wait for the others? It's the only way I can see where you are, if you're with them.”

“I'll wait.” His position near the entrance was relatively safe; he focused his senses upward to guard against attack from the roof, and caught the faint threads of two familiar psychic scents. “Paul and Varney are here. Alive.” For now, at least. There was no mistaking the bitter trace of fear—and pain—they hadn't managed to block.

“I'll let Fia know.”

Three figures dipped between the shadows across the street. “No need, sweet. She's here, too.”

“How will they get in?”

Savi's fingers didn't stop moving over the keyboard as she glanced over at Arwen. The vampire had apparently conquered her fear of Sir Pup; despite the sharp-toothed grin he trained on her from his left head, she'd sidled close enough to the hellhound to angle her neck for a view of Savi's monitor.

Sir Pup watched, too, from his middle head; his third, he'd turned to keep an eye on the security team behind them.

“He'll probably just smile at the guy,” Savi said, and pushed away from the desk with a kick of her foot. Her chair rolled back, and she grabbed a phone from the adjacent table. A twist and another kick, and she was at her computer again, trailing the phone cords behind her.

She plonked the phone onto the desk, took a deep breath. This wasn't going to be easy.

Engaging the speakerphone, she dialed Hugh's home number.

On her monitor, three small blobs crossed the street and congregated near the front of the building. The silence from Colin's radio and the absence of background noise told her he'd turned off his microphone while talking with the others. Savi silenced hers, as well, but kept the earpiece on.

“What?”

Oh, crap. “Hey, Lilith,” she said cheerfully. “Can I talk to Hugh?”

Arwen's purple eyes grew large in her thin face; she must recognize both names from Hugh's book. Hadn't the vampires known who was in charge of SI? Or perhaps just hadn't expected to have direct contact with them.

There was a pause, in which Savi had the small hope the phone was being transferred.

“No,” Lilith said. “You sound like you're smiling. What's wrong?”

She
was
smiling. She'd overcompensated. Dropping the pretense, Savi said, “Not wrong, yet. Dalkiel had a vampire killed, and put her head on Colin's car. We're pretty certain he's holding Paul and Varney. Colin, Fia, and two others from the community have gone after him.”

“Do they have a location?”

“Yes. They're set to go in now.”

“Tell him to stand down. I've got ten Guardians at SI; Hugh's on the other line with them. What's the location?”

Savi swallowed past the tightness in her throat. “I'll give it to you when Colin asks them to help. We just need them ready to come in, when…
if
he wants it.”

The brief silence might have as well been filled with Lilith's angry cursing. “Savi, this isn't your fucking game. Colin isn't as strong or as fast—”

“I know that.” Her fingers clenched on her lap, and she stared at the demon's dark form on the screen. “It's not a game. That's why he
has
to go in. He has backup. They've got venom-laced bullets; those will slow Dalkiel down.”

“Untrained backup. They'll be completely unprepared. Goddammit! Did he turn off his phone?”

“Darkwolf was Special Forces,” Arwen said softly. “And Gina was LAPD.”

Savi shot her a grateful glance before returning her attention to the monitor. “Send a couple of Guardians downtown, Lilith, or here to Polidori's. But let him go in first. Let
them
go in first. If they can make a statement now, it'll make all the difference.”

“Colin doesn't have to defeat a demon to cement his leadership,” Lilith growled.

“It's not about his leadership. It doesn't even matter that it's
him
. If we call the Guardians at the first sign of demon-trouble every single time, the community here will look weak. And the next demon will take advantage of it. And the next. Caelum isn't strong enough to stop them every time.”

“And this is what he told you to tell me? That he intends to martyr himself for the cause? Fucking coward.”

“You know Colin doesn't risk his life like that,” Savi said. “Dalkiel only threatened us yesterday; he's not done playing with us. If Colin thought he'd be in real danger, he'd have called you in. And he didn't tell me this. He didn't have to.”

“You've known about vampires for eight months and you think you're qualified to make that decision? That you know anything about demons and how they think?
What's…his…location
?”

Savi closed her eyes. Each sharply bitten word made her feel like a recalcitrant—and stupid—child.

Lilith could make a rock doubt itself, but her words weren't necessarily true. She'd simply say anything to get her way, particularly when someone she loved was in danger.

But Savi knew her argument had gotten through—Lilith had struck at a personal level.

Luckily, Savi knew Lilith's soft spot: Hugh. “Not eight months, Lilith. I grew up with Hugh. Even when he isn't aware of it, he's teaching and lecturing, about fighting and manipulation and making things permanent. Not just winning a short-term battle, but making certain the effects last. I learned very well; I just didn't listen until now. And I've
known
for a long time—I saw Hugh with his wings when he saved me. I remember him flying with me to the hospital. I just thought I was crazy.”

Stop, Savi
. She shouldn't have given Lilith that last bit. Weakness against weakness only dragged it out. But it was too late.

“Crazy? I suppose it didn't help when the fugues began. Those were because you'd seen Hugh?” Lilith's voice changed; the anger underlying it dropped to amused disdain. This was her strength, bolstered by two thousand years of practice: finding the deepest hurt and fear within a person and digging into it. Savi wouldn't stand a chance. “And I thought they'd started because you saw your family murdered in front of you. Are you so eager to see Colin—”

Savi cut off the speaker and hung up before Lilith could finish. Colin had been right: sometimes, fleeing was the best option.

Sir Pup whined softly, and she patted his head. Arwen stared at the phone, then looked at Savi.

“Did you win?”

Savi shook her head. “I don't know.” Lilith might be angry, but she'd do as Savi had asked. The Guardians would be in place to offer quick assistance.

Then she'd probably come down to Polidori's and kick Savi's ass, and start in on Colin when he got back.

The light from the monitor wall cast a blue tinge over Arwen's pale face. “You guys really are trying to do what's best for us. Not just working for the Guardians, I mean.”

“Well, it's not all about you,” Savi said, and watched as the building door in Nob Hill opened, seemingly by itself. “We're trying to save ourselves, too.”

A dazzling smile through the front glass got Colin inside; the doorman slumped over a second after buzzing him through.

Disappointed he'd not needed to drink from the poor bugger to put him to sleep, Colin held the door open, let the others through. He took his weapons and shoulder rig back from Fia, checked the pistols, and disengaged the safeties before sliding them back into their holsters.

Darkwolf did the same with his guns. His efficiency suggested he'd have no trouble using them. “How long is he going to stay like that?”

Colin had no idea; it was magic, not science. “Long enough,” he said.

“Better no one else sees us, though,” Fia said, glancing at the corner of the ceiling, where a camera recorded the lobby traffic. “Stairs or elevator?”

“Stairs.” Too easy to be trapped in a lift.

“You'll want to take the north stairs up to the roof,”
Savi said, and Colin quickly moved in that direction.
“His condo is on the tenth level, three floors below.”

Was her voice shaky? “All right, sweet. I'm silencing the radio until we reach the roof. Are you secure?”

She didn't hesitate.
“Yes.”

He scanned the space beyond the stair door before shouldering through. A soda machine hummed softly in the corner. The stairwell was sparse, utilitarian; no carpet muffled their footsteps.

Though impossible to see upward beyond the current flight of stairs, the psychic scents of several vampires—unfamiliar, arrogant—reached through the distance, despite their attempts to block his probe.

He signed the information to Fia, then pointed to the ceiling and held up four fingers to relay the same to Gina and Darkwolf. They wouldn't be able to conceal their approach from the waiting vampires, but Colin preferred that the idiots thought themselves with the advantage of surprise.

“I don't sense anyone,” he said aloud, then took the stairs, his blades ready at his sides. He paused just below the final flight, turned and gestured to Darkwolf's and Gina's guns, then shook his head. It wouldn't do to alert the building residents with gunfire at this stage. “Wait here,” he mouthed silently.

He took a glance at heightened speed around the stairwell wall. Apparently, Dalkiel had thought the same; each of the four vampires held a gun with a silencer, swords sheathed at their hips. One female, three males. They stood shoulder to shoulder, their guns leveled at chest height toward the landing below.

A clever tactical decision—so long as the enemy didn't get too close. Either Dalkiel didn't care to protect these vampires, or he'd no idea of Colin's swiftness.

Colin hoped it was both.

He stepped onto the landing. A near-simultaneous click and fire from the four vampires, but he was already ducking below the bullets' paths, clearing the stairs with ease. He sliced through the legs of the middle two, rose up between them and took their heads before they could scream. The third's gun clattered to the floor, her finger still clenching around the trigger. His blade was through her neck before she knew her hand was gone.

He finished off the last as the vampire turned toward him, desperately trying to pull his sword from its sheath.

Blood spread and trickled down the stairs. Colin wiped his face and neck to remove the worst of the spray. What a sodding mess.

“Come on up,” he said quietly, and frowned when he saw the horrified expressions on their faces. They'd been softened by their natures; blood wasn't always appealing, even to the hungriest of vampires. It was best they learned now.

Sorry
, Fia signed weakly.
We know them
.

Colin forced away his pity; he couldn't allow his regret for their pain to get in the way of protecting them. If he hesitated in the future, wondering whose partner he might be cutting down, it endangered them all.

What had they thought fighting Dalkiel would entail—killing faceless strangers? A demon would always use friends and acquaintances against his opponents; it made the despair slice more deeply.

Colin cast a measuring glance at the solid metal fire door; he couldn't hear anything from outside. It was possible Dalkiel hadn't yet realized his defensive line had fallen. “Savi, love, we're at the terrace. Give me a picture outside,” he murmured. Though Dalkiel must know they were coming, he might not realize they had the advantage of her eyes.

“Oh, thank god. That was a lot faster than I expected; I thought he'd have someone guarding the stairs or something.”
She didn't try to disguise the relief in her voice. He looked down at a vampire's head, at the blood soaking his sleeves, and didn't tell her she'd been correct.
“You're going to come out in the middle of the north wall. I've got a blind spot just to the left of the stair housing. The right side is clear. About ten feet in front of the door is an artificial pond. Just beyond that is a gazebo; that's where Dalkiel and Osterberg are. They went into it about a minute ago, just after you turned off your radio.”