Pale Demon (23 page)

I jumped when Jenks landed on my shoulder. Beside me was Trent, and I grabbed his arm and started dragging him to the kitchen. There had to be a back door. Vivian and Pierce could take care of themselves. My phone was ringing again, and I ignored it.

“Nice going, Trent,” I said as I yanked us to a halt to avoid a panicked waitress, her eyes black in fear. “I had this under control until you called in Ku’Sox.”

“Yeah, you stupid cookie maker,” Jenks snarled, resting on my shoulder. “Quit trying to help, okay?”

“I didn’t call him. He just showed up,” Trent said indignantly, and I would have laughed but it sounded too familiar. “Why don’t you just hit him with some magic?” he said, and I stopped in the hallway, just outside the kitchen doors. People were screaming, trying to get out, but no one was coming this way.

“What, and end up dead?” I said, not having a problem admitting that there were people stronger than me. “Ku’Sox almost killed Al,” I said, my pointing arm dropping when I realized Ku’Sox was eying the frantic people as if mentally culling the herd. “I can’t beat that! You freed a serial killer!”

Trent flinched, but I think it was from the explosion behind me more than from what I’d said. I spun to the wave of heat at my back, and by the familiar green tint to the fading aura, I’d guess that Ku’Sox had deflected one of Pierce’s curses. A table was burning with a green flame, and the fire licking the nets was beginning to crawl along the ceiling. A drop of it fell to the floor, and I felt myself pale when someone collapsed with an ugly scream, writhing in pain and clutching his leg. In three seconds, the man was engulfed, creating a second panic as people trampled one another to get away.

Okay. Safety note. Don’t step in the green fire.

“Pierce!” I shouted. The choking air smelling like burned limes. “You’re hurting people!”

His long coat furling, he spun to me. My face went cold. There was no remorse in him, no softness. Only the demands of the fight. “He needs to die in flame!” Pierce shouted angrily. “Demons die in flame!”

True, but so do people.

I strengthened my hold on the ley line when Ku’Sox started for Ivy, but the shrill sound of the man burning pulled Ku’Sox’s attention like a siren’s song. He shifted his focus and started for the screaming man instead, flinging people aside if they didn’t move fast enough. Standing before the writhing man, Ku’Sox hesitated for a blissful second, soaking in the sound of the alarm and the fleeing people as the man gurgled his last. The demon’s eyes widened in anticipation, and he flushed before plunging his hands into the slumped, still-burning form. Ku’Sox shuddered in pleasure, his expression one of gleeful enthusiasm. Pulling back, his two-handed grip was holding something hazed with a soft glow. Holding it over his head, Ku’Sox squeezed his hands and a black, viscous substance oozed from his fingers to fall into his mouth. His soul? Was it the man’s soul, burnt and burning?

“Holy crap,” I whispered, scared to death. I looked across the restaurant to Pierce, seeing that he was as horrified as I was. Beside him, Vivian shook, utterly terrified—she had nothing to stop a soul-eating demon. I hadn’t even known you could pull someone’s soul out like that.

Both Vivian and I jumped when a rifle shot exploded through the sound of alarms and terrified people.

Only the ringing door alarm broke the sudden silence as everyone turned to the front where a huge bear of a man, a Were by the look of it, stood in a sifting of ceiling dust. There was a rifle as big as he was in his thick hands. “All right!” he said, and I nudged Trent to get the hell out of here. “The cops are coming. You just clear out, and we’ll have no more trouble!”

It was a nice thought, but he clearly didn’t know this wasn’t your average brawl, supernatural or not. “Get the car!” I all but hissed at Trent, and finally the man started to drift back toward the kitchen. Under the ringing alarm, I could hear a woman crying. Ivy stood slowly, able to focus again apparently. She had a hand to the back of her head, and I hoped she was okay. I didn’t dare move yet. Ku’Sox seemed to have forgotten me, and I was too chicken to remind him; maybe we could all just slink out of here real quiet like…

“Stay with Trent, Jenks,” I said, unable to look away from Ku’Sox, and the pixy dropped to hover in front of me.

“Don’t make me leave,” he said, his fear obvious.

“What is that marvelous creation!” Ku’Sox exclaimed, looking across the restaurant at the rifle, and when he moved, people started for the door again. At least the alarm to the back door had gone quiet, and it was only people screaming this time.

My gaze flicked to Jenks, and I felt a stab of shared fear. “I don’t trust Trent. We need the car. Do this for me.” My palms were sweaty, and I wiped them on my jeans. “You’ve got my back, Jenks,” I said as he hesitated in frustration. “Make sure Trent brings the car. I’m counting on you.”

“Damn it back to the Turn,” Jenks swore, looking both pissed and scared as he darted through the swinging kitchen doors to follow Trent. A silver sparkle dripped from his path, and I prayed Trent wouldn’t cross us. Jenks would kill him.

Shaking, I turned back to the restaurant. Maybe I could salvage something.

“I don’t want no trouble,” the Were manager said as he cocked the rifle again.

Maybe not.

My shoulders slumped and I held my middle as I exchanged a look with Ivy across the tables, knowing what was going to happen next. We could do nothing but watch as Ku’Sox strode forward, his hand outstretched. The Were shook his head in warning, grimaced, lowered the weapon, pointed, and pulled the trigger. I jerked as the bullet exploded the wall behind the demon, people screaming as the splinters of wood and plaster went everywhere.

The manager’s mouth opened, and Ku’Sox yanked the gun from him, not angry at all, but curious. “Please make it fast, God,” I whispered. I couldn’t stop this.
I couldn’t stop it!

“It works like this?” Ku’Sox said, turning the gun around and blowing a hole in the man’s chest.

I couldn’t tell if the noise or the color came first: the blood and tiny bits of bone coating the register in a speckled red wash of thunderous noise. People screamed, and the Were looked down at the hole in his chest in shock. Red bubbles frothed from his lips as he tried to speak. Then he dropped to his knees and fell forward into a puddle of his own broken insides.

It was ugly, and I leaned against the wall as the rising fear hit me along with the stench of gunpowder and hot metal. I wished this had never happened, that I’d never agreed to help Trent, that I’d never,
ever
gone to the library two years ago looking for a way to do whatever it was I’d been hoping to do.

I didn’t even remember anymore. Whatever it was, it had been a mistake.

Shutting my eyes wasn’t making it go away, though, and I opened them to find Pierce standing resolutely on a table, his moving fingers wreathed in blackness as his whispered Latin buzzed through my brain, an echo of his rising curse. I turned to the exits, seeing that everyone had gotten out but the few collapsed in fear. “Vivian!” I shouted, seeing her not panicking, but not knowing what to do, either. “Get them out of here!”

Thank God Jenks is gone. I don’t want him to see what I do next.

“What a waste,” Ku’Sox said as he looked at the rifle in his hands, then tossed it from him to clatter across a table. “It killed you far too quickly.” Scanning the nearby tables, he found a woman in white, sobbing, curled into a ball and spending her five minutes in hell.

“You’re still alive, though,” he said, and the woman shrieked as he plucked her from under the table. “I’ll eat you instead,” he said, and the woman came to life as he held her up, ignoring her clawing hands as he pulled her closer, his jaw opening to fix on her throat.

It was like a demented kiss, and the woman had one breath to scream—a terrifying shriek of pain and fear—of shock at what was happening. And then he pulled her from him with a sudden jerk, his face bloody and a two- pound gap of flesh in the woman’s neck. She still struggled though her head flopped at an impossible angle, bits of bloody froth spraying from her torn throat as she tried to scream, her lungs still working though her voice box was now inside Ku’Sox.

I wanted to turn away, but I couldn’t. I wanted to run, to leave it for someone else to deal with, but I couldn’t. It was me or no one.

“Oh my God,” Vivian said, and I jumped when I realized she was next to me, clutching my arm. I swallowed my bile down before I emptied my stomach. “This is why I know how to do black magic,” I whispered.

Vivian looked at me as Ku’Sox finally ate enough of the woman to kill her. Vivian’s eyes were wide, her mind not yet having found a way to believe what her eyes were telling her.

“Even dead vamps remember pity,” Ivy said, coming up on my other side.

“He-he…,” Vivian stammered, white faced and unable to say it.

“You think I know black magic for kicks?” I said harshly. “I’m trying to survive.” I shoved the sight of a demon in a silver suit biting a woman’s throat out to the back of my brain to wake me in a cold sweat later.
What can I do?
I thought as I found Pierce throwing up behind a table. Burn him? Like the curse I almost did in the garden? Could Pierce, Vivian, and I kill a demon together? My heart pounded, and I took a step forward, feeling Ivy’s hand take my bicep. I doubted we could kill him, but it was all I had. Killing Ku’Sox wasn’t murder, it was survival. And if it made me a black witch, then so be it.

My memory flicked back to Pierce crouched over Al and ready to end the demon’s life for his freedom. Maybe there was no difference between us after all, and the reason I was mad at Pierce was because I was seeing reflections of myself in him, and I didn’t like it.

Ku’Sox looked to the ceiling as a cascade of red-tinted ever-after washed over him, rebounding at the outermost point of his aura and soaking back into him. Tucking the dead woman under his arm, he headed for the door. I could hear sirens out there, and my heart hammered. Black craft or not, I couldn’t let him leave.

“Are we letting him go?” Pierce shouted, angry as he wiped his mouth and came out from behind the table.

I glanced at Ivy to tell her we weren’t, then Vivian, who still didn’t understand the reality of demons. “Yep,” I lied, leaning back and crossing my arms over my chest and rocking back on one foot. “This is not my problem.”

“What?” Vivian said, and I lifted a shoulder and let it fall. “You can’t let him walk out of here! He just killed two people!” she raged, her anger at her own naivete, her fear, and her disbelief finding an easy scapegoat in me.

I should have told her that this was all Trent’s fault, but I held my tongue as Ivy slinked away to take up a defensive position. “What do you want me to do, Ms. Coven Member? You’re telling me to do black magic? Huh? ’Cause that’s the only thing that he’s going to notice!”

She licked her lips, clearly at war with herself. Ku’Sox, though, was almost to the door.

“He’ll notice this,” Pierce said, and then, pulling on the line so heavily even Ku’Sox felt it, he threw a spell. Vivian gasped as it flew the distance, burning the very air as it passed. Ku’Sox spun, bouncing it back at us with a quickly instigated bubble.

“Down!” I shouted, and I dropped to the floor. The curse hit the stage, and the amp exploded, sending sparkles of ozone over us. “Damn it, Pierce! Watch what you’re doing!”

“Mmmm,” Ku’Sox said as he started back in our direction. “Curious accent to your spell work. Not at all like hers. Who taught you?”

“We can’t stop him!” Vivian exclaimed.

“Duh,” I said, trying to decide if Vivian was scared enough yet. If I could convince her that someone needed to know black magic, they might let me keep my mind when they shoved me back in Alcatraz. Sort of a plan B in case demons came visiting again.

Pierce jumped onto a table, shouting Latin, and seeing that he had Ku’Sox’s attention, I pulled Ivy and Vivian to me. “I have an idea,” I said, silently thanking God that Pierce was here—even if he was a black witch. I needed him. Al was right.

Vivian hesitated, but it was Ivy who said, “Like the fairies?”

I nodded, even as my heart seemed to clench. I was going to burn Ku’Sox—and I wasn’t going to stop the curse. “Vivian, we need your help.” Her face became more frightened, and I looked at Pierce, winding up and throwing another curse at Ku’Sox. Okay, the man not only knew what he was doing, but he looked good doing it.

Pierce followed the first charm with a second, scoring on the demon when Ku’Sox didn’t see the one hidden behind it. A black sticky something coated Ku’Sox, and the demon dropped the dead woman to claw his way out of the green aura covering him.

“A casting,” I said, watching Pierce flick his hair back as he caught his breath. “We have to do a casting. I doubt it will kill him, but he might go somewhere else to lick his wounds. Pierce?”

His gaze never leaving the demon, Pierce raised his hand in acknowledgment.

My heart gave a hard pound. Ivy. She’d be safe, but she’d have to stay with me.

“That’s—” Vivian began to say, starting to look aghast again, and I wondered what it was going to take to convince her.

“Casting isn’t illegal,” I interrupted her. “Just the curse. And I’ll twist it, not you.”

“Down!” Pierce yelled, and I dropped, yanking Vivian with me and snapping a protection circle over us. A red-tinted ball of death exploded behind us, and the smoke alarm started going off. Outside, I could hear sirens. “We need a decision here!” Ivy said, looking shaken.

“I can’t do a black curse!” Vivian babbled, the last of the professional young woman dropping away as she pushed her hair out of her eyes. “I’m coven!”

“Bloody hell paste!” Ku’Sox was shouting, still not altogether out of Pierce’s last spell.

“All you need to do is hold the inner protection circle against all creation,” Pierce said, his blue eyes sharp with an old anger at the reluctance of uptight women. “You don’t need to sully yourself—we’ll do that.”