Demon Squad 7: Exit Wounds (3 page)

BOOK: Demon Squad 7: Exit Wounds
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Katon, still smoldering, gave a curt nod of agreement. Rahim was more cordial, but he, too, confirmed my greatest fear, that the secret I’d been struggling with was a secret to no one but me and my naïve little cousin, but even she knew now. That was yet another trial waiting for me if we managed to get out of here. I slumped a little thinking about it, and Karra wrapped an arm around my waist, keeping me steady. I glanced to the others behind the enforcer and wizard.

Veronica definitely knew as she’d been the one to give Karra up to Gorath via Baalth—the same act that led to me killing the demon lieutenant once I found out he helped kidnap Karra. She looked away sheepishly, not willing to meet my eyes, but that was to be expected. She knew exactly what
she
was; always had.

A succubus, daughter of Lilith, her world revolved around power and betrayal, the two so closely related in her mind as to be inseparable. Information was a weapon to her, coin of the realm. It was hard to stay pissed at her because of it. The shit was ingrained. She’d sell herself out for the right price.

As for Chatterbox, he knew only what Karra allowed him to, so his blank stare was pretty much par for the course. Rala’s matching blank stare, however, was simply because she didn’t give a damn who had squirted me out. None of that mattered to her. The Devil was just one more dictator screwing up the world she lived in, big emphasis on
dick
.

“I’m sorry,” I told them all, wishing I were capable of expressing the feelings leashed inside my mind.

“That doesn’t change anything, Frank.” Katon wasn’t gonna let it go, and as much as it rankled to hear the disgust in his voice, I understood where he was coming from.

“You’re absolutely right,” I answered. “I betrayed you, betrayed DRAC, exactly like you always thought I would.” Resolve stiffened my spine, and I peeled myself from Karra’s protective embrace, taking a casual step toward the enforcer. “Maybe all of you knew I was the spawn of Satan and knew what to expect, but I sure didn’t. I killed the man I believed to be my father years ago; killed him with my bare hands, ripping the life from him only to learn he wasn’t the man who murdered my mother. My own
father
did.” My knuckles popped as I clenched my fists. Karra set a restraining hand on my shoulder, but I’d come too far to stop now.

“I’d only just found out that the man I’d grown up admiring, the man who’d taken me in and gave me a home, treated me like family without reservation, was every bit the liar the world was led to believe.” The confession was acid on my tongue. “He stole my mother and used me to exact revenge against his brother simply so I would feel obligated to him, indebted. And I fucking bought into it. That was where I came from, Katon.”

The enforcer shook his head, but I cut him off before he could say anything.

“Oh, don’t worry, I’m not making excuses. This isn’t a pity poor little Frank speech. I don’t give a fuck about your pity or anyone else’s, for that matter,” I said. “When I felt I lost Karra, nothing else meant anything, no matter how much it should have. I felt betrayed by DRAC, by you and Rahim, specifically.”

“You could have—”

“Could have what, Katon? Could have told you how important it was that I find her, how desperately I needed to know where she’d been taken?” I asked while closing the short distance between us until our noses almost touched. “I did, if you remember, but you were so caught up in your distrust of me that none of that mattered. It was just Longinus’ daughter and pathetic ol’ me involved, so how important could it have been, right?”

The enforcer bared his teeth, but his fury didn’t quite reach his eyes. There was something cooler, more calculating hidden beneath his glare, but I ignored it and went on. He was gonna have to deal with it.

“Had it been Scarlett who was taken, you would have torn Heaven and Hell asunder looking for her, looking for a way to bring her home no matter who got in the way.”

Katon’s curled lip eased shut at hearing my cousin’s name. I’d struck a nerve.

“But because it was the daughter of the
bad guy
carted off to another world you felt compelled to stand on your principles, whatever the fuck those are these days. What good could possibly come of my bringing Karra home, right? That had to be what you were thinking. You knew damn well Longinus would go after her whether you provided me with information or not. Nothing was gonna stop him, and that was a bonus in the whole thing, right? Two birds down without having to even toss a stone.”

I saw the barest twitch of Katon’s lip as he processed my words, but it was Rahim who broke the standoff.

“You’re right, Frank,” he said, finally a hint of color in his voice. “We let you down.”

I spun on him. “You’re damn right you did. I—”

He waved me to silence, and despite my rage and disappointment, the authority I’d always granted him took hold. My tongue stilled.

“There were no grand plans or schemes involved, no malice or ill will intended. We simply overstepped our bounds in our need for control and even more unfortunately, underestimated how important Karra was to you.”

“How the hell could you have possibly done that when I…?”

“Because you’re a fucking drama queen, Frank,” Katon shouted. “We saw what your marriage to Veronica did to you,” he cast a sideways glance at the ex, who conveniently looked the other way, “and we lived through the fallout. ‘Twas a bitter season of whine we were made to live through. You’ve never been sane
or
reasonable when it comes to women, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

“We felt you might go off and do something stupid, for which the consequences would be too great for you—and for the rest of the world—to deal with.” Rahim spread his arms, gesturing to our current location, the sight of his waggling stump souring my stomach. As much as if I’d cut it off myself, I was to blame.

Worse still, he had me there. I’d done exactly that, but in my defense, they’d pushed me into it. Had they been upfront with me and told me what they thought…

Yeah, who am I kidding? It wouldn’t have changed shit. Even if Azrael hadn’t been mashing buttons in my brainpan, I would have done the same thing. They knew me better than I did.

“We only wanted to give you a little time to cool off, Frank, to think things through while we pressed Mihheer for information,” the enforcer said, his expression less feral than it had been a few moments before, but to say he was friendly would be a stretch.

“And that was wrong of us,” Rahim finished. “And for that, I apologize: to both of you.” He glanced toward Karra and gave a curt bow. He let out a slow, uneasy sigh. “We had no idea how much you meant to Frank, or your circumstances,” he pointed to her belly, “and believed we were doing right by him, however cruelly it might have appeared. I hope you understand.”

Karra gave a conciliatory nod. “I’ve spent my life as the outcast, the daughter of Longinus, the Anti-Christ, who was unwelcome even in Hell. I get it, for what my opinion’s worth.” Though quicker to forgive than I would be, her tone still quavered with the loss of her father, the wound still fresh. Nothing Rahim or Katon did precipitated that unfortunate situation, but it was hard for me to separate the two events. Had we gone after Karra as a team, I might not have had to kill Longinus.

Rahim gave a sympathetic nod. “I’m grateful we—”

Katon hissed, a guillotine shush that severed Rahim’s word mid-statement. The enforcer’s blade was in his hand.

“What the hell is your problem, man?” Hostility still thick in the air, I snarled at Katon for his rudeness, but his eyes were elsewhere.

His problem turned out to be the army of midget monkey motherfuckers who spilled into our little hideaway like ants over a pair of sugared tits. Steel rang out as Karra drew her sword, but the enforcer met the advance head on before anyone else could react. Rala shrieked a duet with Chatterbox and barreled deeper into the crevice while the rest of us turned to face the weird creatures.

Two and half, maybe three feet tall at most, the things were like furry linebackers on the Arnold Schwarzenegger diet of old. Muscles were piled on top of muscles layered with bristly orange-brown hair. Bright gold eyes, narrowed into slits, glared as they stormed Katon. Stuttered grunts, growls, and chittered squeaks stung my ears, and a wall of yellowed fangs gnashed in anticipation.

The first of the bunch was met with Katon’s fist. There was the sharp
crack
of its snout being folded into its face, which was immediately drowned out by its agonized yowl. Katon silenced it with a vicious slash, knocking it into its companions as the rest of us formed a ragged, defensive line alongside the enforcer.

“Keep them off the girl,” Katon called out to Rahim, clearly not worried about hurting the wizard’s feelings in his effort to protect the one person capable of reading the portal book that landed us in Oz.

I had no doubt Rahim was still dangerous, but without his magic or lycanthropy
and
unarmed—however unfortunate that particular phrasing—he would be more effective as backup, not that I was in much better shape. Katon had taken into account his friend’s circumstances but not mine. I guess that was to be expected, but maybe he knew something I didn’t. Once more, Rahim didn’t seem to mind as he dropped back beside the alien.

Beside me, Karra cleaved aside a trio of monkey paws as they reached for her, stubby little fingers filling the air. I took advantage of her swipe and blasted one of the critters in the face when it stared wide-eyed at its wounded hand. It crumpled unconscious with blood and gore splattered across its cheek from the ruin of my own hand. I heard my knuckles
creak
at the impact, followed by a short, quick pain that ran down my wrist, but I’d done a hell of a lot more damage to the monkey thing than I had myself. Hobbs hadn’t been a total wuss, which was a plus, but he hadn’t been a beast either. I felt slow and sluggish, every move hampered by the charred and brittle shell I was wearing, but I had to make do. Everyone else was.

Across the way, Veronica launched a merciless barrage of strikes, her hands a blur in front of her. What she lacked in power, she made up for in precision. Monkey eyes squinted, follow up punches to the throat turned the group into a choir, the Hairball Symphony resounding in the cramped quarters.

“Frank!”

I heard Karra’s warning just before I felt jagged teeth sink into my forearm. There was a dull, resonating
thump
as the creature’s mouth closed, and I didn’t have to see the knots welling alongside its jawline to know it had locked onto the bone. I cursed and stumbled backward as the other monkeys pushed for the hole. Another seized on my thigh, but Karra killed it before it even noticed it was dead. Her blade flashed past me, silver on the way down, crimson on the way out. The mini-monkey’s eyes burst wide and rolled back, gold obscuring the tiny dots of black that had swum inside just seconds before.

Karra stabbed the one locked on my arm. It bit down harder as the blade slid into its temple, and I heard a cruel
snap
just before she withdrew the sword from its sagging head. I had an instant to wonder what the sound was when pain steamrolled its way up my captured limb and into my shoulder, stinging my eyes. Just my luck, it had been my arm breaking and not the bastard’s not-so-midget teeth.

I hissed and dropped to my knees, tugging at the dead monkey head with my free hand, ripping it loose of my arm with a shout. Karra cleared some space between me and the simian onslaught, forcing the rest to slow or be cut down. Katon and Veronica closed ranks right then to maintain the integrity of our makeshift barrier. I clenched my teeth and let Karra help me to my feet, her eyes never leaving the enemy. She growled at them, brandishing her steel. A reedy, short
squee
, from the forest above, seemed to reinforce her sentiment.

“What the fuck was that?” I asked, and no one seemed in a rush to answer, but there concerned faces all around.

The monkeys’ momentum stalled at the sound, and I could almost see the morale break across their faces, torn between us and whatever had made the noise up top. Whatever it was, they didn’t seem pleased to hear it. Their guttural grunts and barks metamorphosed into excited hoots, and then the ranks broke, a scattering of marbles from a spilled bag. They scrambled over one another, showing us their puckered little monkey asses while they made for the exit. A few seconds later they were gone with only the serenade of their fleeing voices echoing in the distance.

Katon scrambled across the bodies and peered over the crevice edge, surveying the trees.

“You see anything?”

He dropped down after a long moment of intense silence, waving the all clear.

I slumped to the ground as soon as he did. Last thing we needed was something else crawling up our butts. “That was some serious—”

“Whatever you do, Frank,” Katon interrupted, “do
not
make a monkey business joke.” He waggled a finger at me.

“Are barrels off limits? What about Yahoos?”

He growled.

“Monnnkkkkeeeeyyy peeeeeee, monnnnkkkeeeeyyy doooooo doooo.”

Katon’s glare went full darkness, and I pointed at Chatterbox. “How come he gets to make jokes and I don’t?”

The enforcer shook his head and marched off, dragging broken monkey bits behind him.

“He’s going to kill you one day,” Veronica said as she stepped past me, going to help Katon.

“Probably.” After giving Karra a once over to make sure she was okay, I looked back to Rala, Rahim still hovering at her side. “You all right, short stuff?” She was a good kid, and I really didn’t want to hurt her any more than I already had.

She nodded, following my example by popping a squat. “I’m okay.” She glanced at Chatterbox to see how he was, and he did his best to nod. It was a sad attempt, but comforting in its simplicity. After she propped him in her lap so he could see what all was going on without blowing out an eyeball, she glanced back over to me. “You don’t look so hot.”

I bit back on my Michael Jackson comment and just nodded instead. If I looked anything like I felt, I could understand her concern. My arm burned as if I’d fisted the sun. Pain ran the length of it, and dead skin or no, every nerve screamed.

BOOK: Demon Squad 7: Exit Wounds
8.92Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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