Chapter Twenty
Angie
Finally, after an eon of pain, the color of the magics arcing from the collection chamber into my staff altered.
Leviathan ripped and tore. The brilliance of the blackness that coated my blood gauntlet hedge was less intense, graying here and there, the greens and oranges less lurid.
The pain of the leviathan that had molded the hedge into my null cloak eased.
The cold was no longer the cold of the darkness of space, but simply the cold of glaciers a million years in the making.
My bones ached. My skin was inflamed and frostbitten at the same time.
The vision of the demon’s energies sputtered.
Paused.
The darkness and the garish colors were sucked into the staff and behind us, into the containment vessel. Ripping Leviathan into two parts. I had never heard of such a possibility.
At last, the giant of a demon was gone. The ley line energies cut off.
My head was buried against my brother’s shoulder.
EJ gagged. The muscles in his arms softened and relaxed slowly, as if they had been locked into place.
He groaned quietly. I slumped on the ice in the street.
The staff dropped down, my hands still around it, but my grip lax.
My stomach burned with acid and, like EJ, I retched.
The motion threw me forward, onto my elbows in the snow.
I released the staff and vomited. When my belly was empty, I raised my head, so tired I wasn’t sure I could sit up again.
After what seemed like hours but was probably only seconds, EJ pulled me upright.
He was still sitting beside me. “Ange?” he asked.
I shook my head. I fought a stutter, my voice graveled and rough when I spoke. “Th-this was wrong. This was sssstupid. There was no reason for this attack, or the one before, the air drones. We’re missing…Oh. Walt—”
“Walter.” So fast he might have been a vampire, my brother pulled strength from somewhere and whirled from sitting to his feet, in a single heartbeat. He raced to the apartment building, shouting orders into his headset.
“Remind me. What does Walter have to do with demons?” I asked. But he was gone. I felt as if I should know the answer, but my brain was fried.
The comms to my family coven were still open. I tapped and managed a soft, “Thank you. Your ley line saved our butts.” Before any of them could reply, I cut the communication. However, the connection to EJ was less easy to stop. What had my little brother done?
I settled slowly, as the last of my energy drained from me. I lay back on the frozen street. My staff to the side. My breath was rough. Coarse. My throat pained as if I had been screaming. Maybe I had.
Snow fell onto me, melting onto my scalp, my face. The null cloak sent pain deep into my core as it continued to cancel my own magic. I needed to roll away from the staff. Get out of the null cloak.
I shivered. Footsteps crunched across the ice coating the street. I knew the cadence. Villetti.
His arms came around me and lifted me to a sitting position. He held me, his body so much warmer than my own frozen one. He felt like a furnace. He laid his cheek against mine. His scent filled my nostrils, that subtle scent of tiramisu.
The staff rolled away and bounced on the ice.
I was sitting in the street, in the refrozen slush and brine. Soaked. Lee on one knee beside me.
I breathed out against him, a sound that was mostly weeping.
Softly, he said, “I would like to lift you and carry you, cara, like in the romance films, across the ice, but I fear I would slip, and fall, and you would land on me, and I would be gravely injured, and then be unable to make gentle, passionate love to you.”
At the image he painted, I laughed brokenly, a weak and feeble attempt. “Are you calling me fat?”
“Never, tesoro. You are perfection.” He propped the staff in the crook of my elbow, tightened his arms around me, braced his feet against slipping, and stood, lifting me to my feet. He held me upright until strength returned to my legs.
Tesoro. Treasure…
I said, “We need to watch the videos again, the ones of the queen’s reception. We missed something. But first, we have to check on Walter and EJ.”
We crossed the ice and began the long slog through the snow, approaching Peg at the containment vessel.
I studied the older vet, his weight on his bionic leg.
He wasn’t possessed. Good. I tapped my ear-patch to allow comms on the general channel and ask for an update.
But instead of the wrap-up of battle, I heard screaming and weapons fire.
The fight wasn’t over.
EJ
Racing from his sister, EJ reached for Delta Mode again. Too soon. Burnout imminent. He backed into Theta and left Delta in standby, folded and static.
He slid across the ice, into a drift of snow as tall as his shoulders. He demanded into comms, “Who’s watching Walter?”
“Boots,” Grizz said sharply.
“Get her some backup. Palillos on the way.”
“You’re not shooting Boots,” Grizz said, her voice low, unyielding as stone. He heard the sound of running feet, Grizz trying to beat him to Walter.
EJ didn’t reply, skirting Peg, listening for broken music. There was nothing. Just a human male with augmented cyborg limbs. Peg was not possessed. EJ passed Villetti on the way in, the man running almost as fast as he was in the dense, icy snow. Villetti was okay too. No demons.
“Location?” he demanded of Grizz.
Over comms, he heard the clash of steel and three gunshots.
“Walter’s apartment. Get your ass up here,” Grizz shouted.
The hallway was empty. Elevator on the seventh floor. He stopped, breathing deeply. Drew on his own magic. Pulled it to him, singing, ringing, like gonging taffy, sweet and rich but stretched so thin. So tired. His magic was as drained as his soul.
He wrapped what was left of it around him like a tattered cloak, encasing Delta Mode in it. Folded, waiting.
All his amulets were drained and empty. His own magic was all but gone.
Desperate, EJ unfolded Delta Mode partway.
There was little left of the brain wave patterns but what was still there, he settled within his mind, knowing he was too tired to use it properly and was possibly damaging himself.
Delta brain waves were alluring, promising the gift forever, until it killed the user, like a horse being run to death.
And then sleep, forever sleep, the sleep of death.
In the war, he’d seen a witch use Delta Mode until she died, simply fell over in the midst of battle.
He stood upright. Pulling open the stairway door, EJ ran up, taking the stairs two at a time, breathing more heavily than usual. As he ran, his legs grew stronger, his treads firmer. By the third floor, he was taking the stairs three at a time. This was…
The coven. A ley line he hadn’t known about. Raw power just beneath this building. Angie and his tie to her. Was she feeding him the power from the ley line? Or was he still tied to it? Or…was he stealing his sister’s life force?
He stopped the flow of power. Exhaustion weighed him down, but he’d gained enough energy to feel stronger.
Delta Mode pulled it in and unfolded a bit more.
The holes in the brain wave patterns filled in with neural activity instead of emptiness.
EJ drew a weapon and racked back the slide.
Demon round. One. Only one left. One chance to stop a demon that had gotten by them.
He readied another weapon in his offhand.
Mag full. Useless against a possessed vampire.
He burst into the fifth-floor hallway.
Before he even thought, he fired three shots with his offhand weapon. Only after he released the trigger did he consciously know, stranger. Encom. Enemy combatant. Human.
EJ leaped over the dead body and rammed a shoulder at Walter’s apartment door. It wasn’t latched. It banged open.
The music of demons and vampires clashed.
He saw everything at once.
Two upright unknown humanoids. Backs to the door. One turning to him.
Walter. Lying on the floor, a stake in his belly.
Facing the doorway, Boots and Grizz stood over Walter. Straddling him. Legs to either side of his body.
Their vampire was vamped out. His hands were moving in spastic jerks as he tried to grab the stake in his belly.
Shouldn’t be happening. Shouldn’t be able to move. Should be more than undead, paralyzed, unconscious.
Their two guards had weapons out. Firing. At the doorway. At the enemy. And at him.
EJ dropped, threw his body into a horizontal fall, directly at the unknown people, their backs to the door.
Leveling out in midair, a foot from the floor.
Bowled into them at their knees. Took them down.
As they fell, he somersaulted and rammed a fresh stake into Walter’s belly.
Hard. It disappeared into his flesh. Walter stopped moving. Undead.
No sound of demons.
EJ bounced over Walter. The guards danced back, out of his way. He landed on the floor between Walter and the guards.
Still rolling, he faced the doorway. Aimed. Fired three and three. Both vampires vanished. Probably popped away. But he hadn’t reactivated his AE headset. The concussive waves deafened him.
He landed. Stopped rolling. Found himself face up looking down the barrels of two weapons and feeling the prick of two blades, belly and throat, both stabs quickly halted. He didn’t think they had drawn blood. He’d know later.
EJ dropped his weapons and held his open palms at them. “Heeeeey, badass warrior queens. How are you?”
The two scowled at him, holstered and sheathed their weapons. Grizz tapped her comms and said, “Two wounded vamps in the building. Clear it. Check cams for exits.”
“Roger that,” was repeated by three voices.
“The only warrior queens I know are the Dark Queen and Deon,” Grizz said, referring to the queen’s chef. She strong-armed EJ upright. “And they’re badass enough for both of us.”
Boots said, “Get your ass shot, by us, and the queen will have our heads. How ’bout yelling ‘Friendly’ next time.”