The Demon's Apprentice (21 page)

Jimmy Two-Tone, one of my father’s men, had taught me how to case a house a couple of years ago, and I silently thanked him for it. I’d hoped never to use those skills again, but tonight, they would come in handy. I crept up to the dirt-smeared window and looked inside from just below one corner. Most of the time, people really only looked at the center of windows, so they were a lot less likely to catch sight of my face if I was down and to one side.

Inside, the room looked like a war had been waged between country sensibilities and heavy metal chaos. Liquor and beer bottles littered the floors, tables, and any other flat surface, including the window sills, while pinups of scantily clad (or completely
un
-clad) women were tacked anywhere that could be reached without a ladder. Old scoutmasters in black and white photos looked out from behind the T&A posters, and I got the feeling that they really didn’t approve of what they saw. At the far right side of my field of vision was a big screen TV, with almost any device you could stretch a wire from attached to it like cybernetic children to a digital mother. Beside it, a sleek CD player perched between a pair of large speakers, all mounted on an old-style entertainment center, with a green television screen in the middle of its dusty wooden case. Aside from the double door, off to my right, I saw two more doors: one on the far right wall, which was closed, and another heavy door that was ajar. Beyond it was a dark room, but I couldn't make out anything through it.

Three guys were in the middle of the room facing away from me, the center one holding a long black case covered with red symbols. Four more faced them, all eyes on the case. Another sat on a wooden couch that was covered in a cracked green vinyl, his right arm in a makeshift sling. Even he was eyeballing the case. All of them were in black leather, like they had been when we saw them last time, except the guy on the couch, who had his jacket beside him. A white bandage across his shoulder was all that he had on his upper body aside from the sling, and it was marred by a red stain near its center. He held a bottle of what looked like Johnny Walker in his good hand. I recognized him as the guy whose bell I’d rung that afternoon during my disastrous football tryout.

“Gimme some of that,” the guy holding the case demanded, and I recognized Brad's voice. “I'm gonna need it.” The guy across from him handed him the bottle, and he took a deep pull from it. I caught a familiar flash of red in my peripheral vision and switched my gaze back toward the couch as Alexis moved in from my left and bent over the wounded jock. I barely tore my eyes from the way the leather stretched tight across her ass in time to catch her pulling the bloody bandage from his shoulder. Beneath it was an almost unremarkable, slightly puckered hole that was distinctive of a gunshot wound. I blinked, wondering how they could have ended up catching bullets so early on a Friday night. A chill ran through me as I remembered at least one shot being fired today, back at the school. My mind rebelled at the thought, even as I put the pieces together.

If Duncan and his buddies were werewolves, they’d be a lot stronger than normal humans. They would heal from injuries much faster, and most minor cuts and bruises would be gone almost instantly. Another realization slammed into my head: one I didn’t want to think about. The claw sliver and hair were probably from a Were. Duncan or one of his friends had probably killed Mr. Chomsky. The big question now was, which one?

The door on the right side of the room opened, and all eyes went to the tall man who stepped into the room through it. He was dressed in black leather, had greasy, dark hair, and his face resembled a thundercloud that was about to unleash a storm. As one, each of the kids in the room fell to one knee, even Alexis and the wounded pack member.

“My Lord,” Brad said, as he extended the box toward the man. “We got it, sir. We got the case.”

The man took the box from Brad and tucked it under one arm. He looked relieved for a moment, then backhanded Brad clear across the room, bowling over the two guys behind him. “It’s about god-damned time!” he bellowed, and everyone in the room cowered in fear. “You were supposed to have this for me days ago! I just got off the phone with the buyer, and I damn near had to give it away! Do you know how much your fuck-ups cost me?”

Brad clambered back to his knees then laid himself flat on the floor as the older man walked up to him. He picked Brad up by the scruff of the neck and shook him as he yelled in his face. “I got a reputation to keep, and if you keep fucking up this bad, no one will say the name of Dominic King with the respect I deserve! You sure as HELL don’t want to pay the price for that, boy!”

“No, sir,” Brad stammered. “We did our best, sir! The place was protected! You never told us it had magic spells protecting it!”

King flung him back down to the floor and put a foot on his swollen right hand. “Too fucking bad! I gave you a job to do, and I do NOT accept excuses! I told our buyer we’d have it by Monday, and it took you almost a whole week to come up with the goods. You’re lucky I was able to get them to take it after that.” As he spoke, Dominic ground his boot into the back of Brad’s injured hand. I could hear the whimper coming from Brad, even through the window.

“We got it, though. No one else could have!” Brad protested.

“Don't give me that 'we' bullshit!” King bent down as he bellowed at Brad. “
You
didn't get it. You had to have your bitch get you in!” he pointed at Alexis. “If you can't do a man's job without getting a woman to do the real work, I got no use for you!”

“I’m sorry, sir!” he yelped. “It’ll never happen again!”

“It better not,” Dominic growled. Up close, I could see that his beard covered a face that was ravaged by a hard life. His eyes were black little beads behind puffy lids, and his face was lined and pitted. When he spoke, I could see yellowed and broken teeth, and the gray in his wiry beard was threatening to win in its battle with the black. What could work a werewolf over so badly that he wasn’t able to heal from it?

“This just ain’t been your week, boy,” he said with a final twist of his heel into Brad’s hand. “You screw up a simple snatch, get your ass handed to you by some punk who stumbles onto you making a buy, then you get one of your buddies shot trying to take him out, and you want to blame your mistakes on me. Get outta my sight. Hell, go party a little, celebrate fixing your screw-up. Me and Shade, we’re gonna have a party of our own.”

Brad pulled his hand back as Dominic went over to Alexis and wrapped one arm around her waist. Brad managed to get to his knees, with his injured arm cradled against his chest.

Dominic smiled as he pulled Alexis to him and groped inside her jacket. Her hands came up and pressed against his chest, trying to keep herself away.

“Please, sir, no,” I could hear her protest. For a moment, she held herself, arms rigid against King's chest, his face darkening with the effort. She looked to Brad, and I could see her eyes pleading for help. Brad’s brows furrowed as he turned his face away from her, and I saw her arms slowly start to bend as her face fell.

It took everything I had to keep from going through the window at King as he tried to force himself on her. I watched anger creep across his face as she resisted, and he looked to Brad, then back to Alexis. As he drew in a ragged breath, I could feel some dark power gathering around him, and when he let it out, the word that followed was laced with a dank, corrupt magick that made me feel dirty all the way down to my boots. From me, that was saying something. I couldn’t understand it, and I didn’t want to.

“Obey!” he snarled.

Silence followed for a moment after he uttered it. As one, everyone in the room ducked their heads and went submissive. Alexis laid her head on his shoulder and molded her body against his. She murmured something into his chest, and the boys said in unison, “Yes, Master.”

Even I felt the force of that slimy will trying to push my spirit back into itself and force me to submit to Dominic King. It wasn’t in my nature to submit to him, and somehow, the magick felt…off. Like it was a command spoken in a language I didn’t quite understand. This was a dark sorcery like nothing I had ever wielded, an evil power and a slithering, oily distortion of what it was made for. This magick was originally supposed to do something beautiful, but King had subverted it to mind control and to feed his own lust.

“That’s better,” he sneered. “There’s not a one of you can take me, so don’t even think of trying to challenge me. You do as I say, and you don’t ask questions. That is the Law of the Wolf. The strong rule, the weak obey, or suffer.” He pulled Alexis to him and covered her mouth with his. I shuddered as she went limp in his arms. She turned away when he let her go, her face pinched in revulsion and pain that I could almost feel in my own chest. He dragged her toward the door in the back of the room, and I could see Brad’s head turning to follow them as they made their way through the rest of the pack of teenaged werewolves.

While they were down and focused on Alexis and King, I started moving along the side of the building toward the back. I crept as quietly past the door as I could and hoped no one opened it before I got past it, then headed for the corner of the lodge. I crept around the side and peered into the first window I came to as the wind moaned through the trees and along the sides of the building. Here, the lodge provided me with some shelter from the wind, and the tall trees that grew along the south side shielded me from most of the light, so I was essentially invisible in the darkness. I got to the window in time to see Alexis picking herself up off the bed, and Dominic starting to undo his belt.

“You know the drill, bitch. Strip,” he commanded her. She sat up on her knees on the bed and pulled her black t-shirt off, revealing a satiny white bra and a perfect back. Smooth white skin that flowed into seductive, but somehow still wholesome, curves dipped into the black leather pants she had on. Her arms came up behind her back to unhook the clasp, and her hands went to opposite shoulders, trying to keep herself covered for as long as possible. Dominic smiled as the bra fell away completely, and I found myself shaking with suppressed anger.

I had to do the smart thing and get the hell out of there. I was outnumbered ten to one by werewolves, one of them a potent sorcerer. If I got caught peeping, Alexis would never forgive me, and that was more upsetting than the thought of facing nine other pissed-off lycanthropes. Still, I didn’t move, trembling with stifled anger as she got up off the bed and slipped out of her leather pants. As the top of her pants slid down, I got a peek at what most of the guys in my class would have traded limbs and other body parts to see. Alexis wore matching white bikini panties that covered just enough to be modest, but left enough bare skin that she didn’t look like she’d borrowed her grandmother’s underwear. There was some sort of pattern, but I couldn’t make it out, and I was trying not to look all that hard. I tried not to let my eyes stay for too long on any one part. She was revealing the long, trim legs that I had seen earlier that day, but seeing them like this was much different. Once her pants were down, she kicked them to the side and straightened with her arms crossed over her breasts again.

Dominic stepped up to her and grabbed the panties by the waistband, ripping them away with a quick motion, then he shoved her back onto the bed. He opened his pants and fell on top of her, struggling for a moment to get things started. As he worked his hand in between their bodies, Alexis turned her head to one side, and I could see her eyes squeezed shut. Her body convulsed once in an unheard sob, and I saw the first tears slide down the side of her face, leaving glistening trails on her cheek.

My anger turned into barely controlled rage. It might as well have been me on that bed, for all I was concerned. No one was helping her, not her boyfriend or her classmates, and her parents didn’t even know. The man on top of her was using her for his own ends, and she was just a kid. Just like me.

Some part of my head tried to tell me not to do something stupid. The hairy monkey brain was alternating between wanting to beat the ugly bastard paw the hot babe on the bed and wanting to grab her for its own. There was a white-hot fury burning in my head that suddenly became a cold, calculating wrath. All that Alexis knew was that she was alone. She didn’t have any hope of rescue, no glimmering light at the end of the tunnel. All she could do was endure the pain and humiliation and try not to cry too loudly later on. She had no knight in shining armor to come to her rescue, no dashing prince to sweep her off her feet to a fairy tale ending. She only had one person who could help her.

She had me.

Not much in the shining armor department, and nowhere near being a prince, charming or otherwise. I should have done the smart thing. I should have left.

I did the right thing, instead.

Hairy monkey brain shut down, rational thinking mind shut up, and the pure, cold intelligence that had planned Dulka’s defeat kicked into gear. I stood up and whispered dark, angry words into the night.

“
Ignus Infernum
!” I hissed, and called up pure Hellfire. It slid up my legs and over my body until it settled on my arms and hands. There’s no way to miss being lit up by it, but King managed. Alexis, however, opened her red-rimmed eyes and looked directly at me. Maybe it was her gasp that caught Dominic’s attention, maybe it was the sickly black light that was flickering across the ceiling and walls, but whichever it was, it made him turn to face me. He rose up to look at me, and that put him right where I wanted him. Off of Alexis.