Rising Darkness (A Rylee Adamson Novel, Book 9) (2 page)

CHAPTER 2

Rylee

“
T
here, I feel
Alex and Pamela there.” I pointed to the hulking gray hospital that rose up through the smog and the night sky. “Can you land?”

Blaz
grunted.
No, I will hover over the hospital roof and you three can hop off. I won’t be far. We need to go after the Destroyer soon. We have less than a week, remember that, Rylee. Not a lot of time to stop Orion before the veil opens and the demons pour
through.

He dipped low, diving through the smog, and then in a sudden rush of wind, back-winged, hovering over the hospital roof. Twenty feet up, the roof looked a hell of a lot farther away. Sure, twenty feet wasn’t too bad. No problem.

Right.

My two companions leapt from Blaz’s back, landing lightly on the roof, and I followed. Months of an extreme workout regime had brought my body into shape like never before. I had always been lean and muscular, but never like this. Never to the point of feeling as though there was not an ounce of spare fat on me, like my body was a well-oiled machine.

I glanced at my two companions, one on four legs, one on two. “Peta,” I called softly to the snow leopard, her coloring making her look like a ghost. She turned her head so I could see her green eyes, even in the heavy smog. “You better do your shrinking act.”

She bobbed her head, and a shudder rippled through her body. I blinked and before me stood a gray and white house cat, a tiny white tip on the end of her tail. Peta, only ten pounds now instead of four hundred, ran toward me, leapt, and I caught her. She worked her way up to my shoulders and draped herself across them.

My two-legged companion put his hands on his hips, a frown marring his handsome features. “Tracker, are you sure this is necessary? You have a week to wrap this up before the demons swarm. Your sentimentality is going to get us all killed.” His blue eyes flared in the darkness.

I looked at him, giving his frown right back. “You got a better idea, vampire? We need help to find the Destroyer, even I admit that.”

Faris
startled. “You’re asking for back up?”

Me, wanting back up? Not wanting to dive into danger alone?

Maybe I was growing up. Finally.

Blaz’s mirth floated through me
. Doubtful.

Faris shook his head, blond hair falling over his eyes. He wore his typical black-on-black shirt and jeans. And with a brand new shiny arm, he was as dashing as ever. But for the first time since I’d met him, he carried a weapon. A curved cutlass that hung from his hip—very pirate like and it suited him. We’d come to an understanding while
I’d been away to have the baby
. Liam had helped him in the arm department, and that meant we were all playing nice. For now. Sorta.

So for the moment, we were on good terms. Or at least, about as good as we’d ever been.

“What are you staring at?” The throat of his shirt blew open with a sharp gust of wind, baring the pale flesh at his chest.

I shook my head. “Nothing. Just wondering when you’re going to turn on me this time.”

He put a hand to his chest. “Ah, you wound me terribly.” And then he rolled his eyes. Wounded, my ass.

A soft giggle rose behind us, startling us both.

I spun, pulling a blade as I did, dropping into a crouch. Peta let out a low growl, her tiny claws digging into my shirt.

Three young children stood across from us, perhaps two or three years old at the most. I swallowed the bile rising in my throat. If they were here on the rooftop, it wouldn’t be because their parents had lost track of them, or they’d just wandered off.

I could feel the demon power running through them, twisting around them like a snake wrapping them in its coils.

“Tracker, you should have stayed hidden.” The one in the middle spoke with a voice that rolled out deep and sonorous. The depth of it so totally wrong coming from a child’s mouth.

“Can’t,” I said, swirling my blade through the air. “You demons have taken far too much, and I am about to kick your tiny asses into next week.”

Faris grunted. “I may be an asshole, but I don’t think I can kill a child.”

Neither could I. But the demon didn’t need to know that. I glared at Farris. “Shut. Up.”

His eyes widened and then narrowed. “Don’t start with me, Tracker.”

I moved, not toward the demons, but toward Faris. “You do as I say on this side of the world, vampire. That’s the fucking deal. I lead, you follow. Capiche?”

From the corner of my eye, I could still see the children, and Faris was eyeing them the same way. “In three.”

He snorted, but his eyelids flicked to half-mast in agreement.

The three mini-demons shared a glance, one to the other and back again. “She isn’t carrying the fated one. We can kill her. The master will be pleased.”

The three of them joined hands, and a flash of light spilled from where they touched. Their bodies melted into each other leaving a form that was anything but childlike, its bulk heaving and lurching awkwardly as it tried to get its balance. The demon swelled and grew until it towered over us, its body sprouting mandibles and long pincers, three sets of them.

“One.” I glared at Faris and his lips twitched. Peta leapt from my shoulders.

He followed me, his hand going to his cutlass. “Two.”

“Three.” I twisted, pulling my crossbow from my back and set a bolt into the channel in a single fluid motion. I breathed out and squeezed the handle, the bolt flying true, pinning the demon in the middle head knocking it farther off balance. Faris ran in, dropping to his knees to slide under a flailing pincer as the demon arched backward, a high-pitched scream reminiscent of a rabbit being slaughtered cracked through the air as it stumbled, trying to gain its balance once more.

Faris slammed his sword’s handle into the head on the right side, bone crunching under the power behind his blow. The demon let out a whimper and fell over completely, hitting the roof hard, sending out a spray of gravel from under its collapsed body.

I had to get close enough to put a hand on the thing without getting a pincer through the gut. I dropped my crossbow.

“Here we go.” Two of the pincers swept over my head as I ran in close. The heart was the best place to put my hands—that was what
Erik
had shown me. I leapt up slicing my blade through a pincer coming from the left and ended up landing astride the wasp waist that held the demon together. I reached up and put a hand over the barrel chest, the black exoskeleton cool under my touch.

“Be free,” I whispered and the demon roared and shook under my hand. I couldn’t let go, the connection to the beast drove deep as I tapped into all the love in my life and used that as the strength to send the demon back. Or at least, release the children.

Because that was the truth of things at the moment. With the veil closed, there could be no demons coming through, which was fucking awesome. But the closure went both ways. We couldn’t send the demons back anymore, either. We could only release their hosts and hope it took the demons a long time to find new ones. Which wasn’t all that difficult with the state of the world.

A cloud of spinning vapors, black, gray, and flashing silver spun up around us, like the buzzing of a thousand insects, sliding through my hair, whispering in my ear.

“You are not safe, Tracker. You are going to die. We will feast on you and your family. Orion will win. He will fuck your child and bring forth his bloodline through her.”

I closed my eyes and focused on the brightness in me, the strength of heart I’d gained. Losing Liam had been the worst thing I’d ever experience, worse than being accused of killing my little sister, worse than losing Giselle. And yet, without losing him, I never would have found my own strength.

I breathed in and out, thinking about the love in my life, about Liam and our daughter. Her shining eyes, and room-lighting, toothless smile. About Milly’s child Zane and his sweet laughter, about Erik, Alex, Pamela, Blaz. The more names I added to my list, the more the warmth spread.

A hand shook my shoulder. “The demon is gone.”

I opened my eyes to see Faris staring at me with more than a little concern on his face. “You were totally out of it. Another demon could have shown up and if I weren’t here to protect you, you could have been killed.”

“Faris, the day you truly protect me will be the day hell freezes the fuck over.” I swung my crossbow onto my back, as Faris glared at me. I glared right back. “What? It’s the truth and you damn well know it.”

“Things change, Rylee. You of all people should know that.”

Nope, not going there. I tightened the strap holding my crossbow to my back. “Time to go. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

But we couldn’t leave just yet. No, we still had a responsibility to those we’d taken down. Still laying on the rooftop were the three children the demon had possessed. Their tiny hands intertwined. I swallowed hard and made myself walk to them. Three brunette babies, were they triplets maybe? Looking at them laying side by side I thought that might be the case. Of course, I was avoiding thinking about what I was looking at in truth.

Children, dead by my hand, though there was not a single injury on them that I could see. My whole adult life had been spent rescuing children, bringing them home to their families. And now I had resorted to killing them—it didn’t matter that the cause justified it,
I
could never justify it. My heart clenched and I fought the tears that threatened. I crouched beside them and put a hand on the chest of the little boy closest to me. His lungs barely lifted under my hand. How the hell had they survived?

“They’re alive, Faris, help me.” I scooped the boy up and Faris lifted the other two.

“You seem surprised.”

Erik’s lessons over the last six months flowed through my brain. “It depends on how deeply the demons have their grip on their host, and how strong the host is. Demons are tricky bastards and they seem to know how hard it is on me to see the small ones succumb to them.”

“Speaking of demons, you remember what Erik said? Not to Track them anymore?” Faris said softly, and I nodded.

I remembered. The last trial run I’d gone on with Erik, honing my demon destroying abilities had nearly ended in disaster. I’d Tracked demons as a whole, searching them so I could work on pushing them out of their host bodies. And what we’d gotten was a swarm. But it had been while I was still Tracking them that they’d latched onto me and I hadn’t been able to shake them. They could sense me through my Tracking threads, and I could hear their thoughts.

Killherkillherkillherkillherkillherkillherkillher.

Yeah, not pleasant. I’d been able to shake them, but I could no longer Track them as a whole. Even worse, the demons had somehow zoned in on me when Tracking anyone. So even Tracking Pamela and Alex could and probably would bring Orion’s minions to me. Fucking little creep-show bastards. They picked up on me too fast. More would be coming our way. From experience, I was betting I had maybe half an hour at best before we got hit with another demon.

I had more problems then I cared to think about, but I made myself list them as we packed up the kids.

Find the Destroyer.

Find a way to keep the demons from tracking me.

Save the world from the pox.

Kill Orion.

And those were just the top four on the bucket list. Never mind all the little things popping up. Like Faris suddenly making himself my personal guardian.

Yeah, I wasn’t trusting that, either.

We carried the three kids into the hospital, Peta leading the way, the white tip of her tail twitching the farther in we got. The children’s ward, for all that was holy in my life, I couldn’t have imagined what I was looking at and the horror of it. Babies and toddlers, covered in oozing pus, their skin broken and their eyes staring blankly as their mouths moved in silent cries.

The old anger I’d nursed for years surged and I tamped it down. As bad as this was, there was only one way to stop it. I had to finish this calling. I had to finish and fulfill the prophecies.

The nurses barely looked up as we stepped into the ward, their eyes dull with fatigue and hopelessness. Their uniforms were clean, but hung off their frames, as if they had accidentally taken clothes two sizes too big.

“Where can we put them?” Faris asked the first nurse who passed our way.

“Anywhere you can find room.”

“Not much of a children’s unit,” Faris said, contempt riddling his words.

I had to agree. I wouldn’t put my kid here, especially if she were sick. Soiled blankets littered the floor, the smell of shit and piss thick in the air, and the room was smoking hot. Why didn’t they open a window at least?

The nurses’ backs snapped straight as a unit, all four turning to face us. But only one spoke. She turned on her heel, her voice hard, and her eyes like flint. “You watch them die for months and then you tell me how much of a children’s unit it feels like.” Her unspoken words hung in the air: morgue, this was a morgue and the bodies just didn’t know they were dead yet.