A Despair of Demons (Travelers, Book 1) (24 page)

“Sir,” Trent said after he sucked in fresh air, “Before we departed I
thought I saw—”

“Demons?”

Trent frowned. “How did you know?”

Connor pointed behind him, and Trent turned to see three demons standing
across the lab table from them.

They pulled their guns and opened fire as the demons leapt onto the
countertop and launched themselves forward.

*
         
*
         
*

Liv dived to the left as Jordan dived to the right, both of them drawing
their guns as they moved. The demons leapt into the space they had just
vacated, and Liv spun as she fell so that she could shoot. Her four shots took
the nearest demon in the throat, nearly decapitating it. The other took several
shots in the chest from Jordan and dissolved out of existence.

To Liv’s surprise, the demon she’d hit fell to the ground. It lay still, but
the wounds in its neck were already starting to heal. As she watched, its
fingers started to twitch and its claws clicked on the floor. She shuddered as
she scooted closer, praying that it wouldn’t suddenly regain the ability to
move and slice her head off with one of those claws.

She pulled out her belt knife and sliced through its neck first. The body
fell still as the head rolled sideways, eyes staring lifelessly. She pushed it
away from her and swallowed her gorge as it wobbled across the floor. Her eyes
fell on Jordan across the mutilated body.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Yeah, you?”

“Yeah.” His gaze dropped to the demon on the floor. “What did you do?”

She thought for a moment. “I must have severed its spinal column with a
lucky shot. And apparently, decapitation is deadly.”

“How did we not know that sooner?”

“We know now.” Liv surveyed the headless corpse and grimaced. “Let the
others know how to kill them.”

Jordan clicked his radio twice.

Gin’s voice came through. “Go ahead.”

“We’ve discovered that decapitation works wonders for our cause.”

Gin sounded delighted. “Fabulous! Thanks for the tip. Also, we request radio
silence. We’re going into the lobby.”

“Roger.”

Jordan clicked his radio off and gunfire sounded from the hall. Liv whipped
her eyes to his. “Connor and Trent.”

They leapt to their feet, Liv holding her gun in one hand and her knife in
the other, and Jordan with both guns drawn. They ran down the hall toward the
shots, to a lab on the other side of the building. Liv glanced through the
door’s window.

Connor and Trent stood back to back, holding off three demons circling them.

Jordan picked the lock in record time, then stood, ready to throw the door
open.

The scent warned Liv before any sound registered, and her eyes whipped to
the hall behind her. Two demons stood there, one of whom, based on the healing
wounds in its chest, was the one who had just Traveled away from Jordan’s
bullets in the other lab. The other was scarred by wildfyre burns.

“Oh, shit,” Jordan said as he saw Liv’s eyes widen and turned to look as
well.

“Take off their heads!” Liv shouted through the lab door.

Gin crouched opposite Ben in one of the recessed elevator doors in the
hallway leading to the lobby. The stairwell door they’d just come through was
just behind her, and on each side of the hall were three recessed elevator
doors. She peered around the shallow cover and into the lobby.

Three demons clustered around the security monitors at the front desk, two
milled near the front door, and three lounged on couches across the lobby.

She glanced at Ben across the hall, crouching in the elevator alcove that
mirrored hers, and caught his eye. His expression mirrored her thoughts. This
wasn’t going to be easy.

Between the two of them, she and Ben had only four wildfyre grenades left,
and the demons weren’t going to just sit and wait for her to throw the fyre at
them. All of them were twitchy; they obviously knew the team was in the
building. They’d Travel in a blink.

One crossed in front of the windows, and Gin saw that its skin was burned,
giving it a partially melted look. This must be Jumps Out Windows While On
Fyre. One of the couch loungers shifted, and she saw the other two were also
burned, though not as badly. It looked like somebody else had made use of their
fyre. Gin smiled grimly.

Vigilant demons were bad, but far worse was the fact that they were bathed
in red and blue strobing lights. The street outside was lit up like a carnival
midway, and Gin counted no less than fifteen cop cars and seven TV newsvans
parked outside.

Shit, Shit, SHIT,
Gin mouthed. Ben
silently agreed, but then sent her a what-the-hell grin. She couldn’t help but
return it—he was right: this was fun.

She faded back, Ben following. They stayed to the shadows until they reached
the stairwell and slipped inside, careful to be silent. Side by side, they
climbed up to the first floor.

“Shit!” Gin said as soon as they were through the door.

“Yeah, that pretty much sums it up. Maybe we can lure them up here, or at
least to the hallway where nobody will see.”

“Maybe one or two. But all of them? I don’t think we can take down eight,
even with Liv’s tip about beheading them.”

Ben sighed. “We’d better see if the others can lend a hand. Man, this is
going to be a long night.”

“Tell me about it.” Gin clicked her radio twice. Liv and Jordan didn’t
answer. “I wonder what’s up?”

“Maybe we should go see.”

“We don’t even know what floor they’re on.”

“So what do we do?”

She glanced up worriedly. “Wait.”

*
         
*
         
*

Liv opened fire on the nearest demon, aiming for the neck. Jordan did the
same. His target bubbled and swayed on its feet, and he holstered his left-hand
gun and pulled his knife, slicing across the demon’s neck. The weapon got hung
up on the spine, and he was forced to abandon it as Liv’s demon leapt toward
him.

“No!” Liv shouted, shooting it in the right eye. Not where she should have
been aiming, but at least the damn thing slowed down.

Jordan pulled his other gun again and aimed for the demon’s neck. He put a
cluster of shots right through its Adam’s apple, but apparently missed the
spine. However, Liv was able to slip around to its side while it was stalking
Jordan. She put her gun to the back of its neck and pulled the trigger. The demon
dropped as if pole-axed, and Liv took its head off with her knife.

“I think you have to pulverize the bone before you can use a knife,” she
said as she wiped the blade on the demon’s arm. “The bones of their spine are
way too thick otherwise.”

Jordan ripped his knife free from the first demon, still swaying in place.
“I’ll keep that in mind.”

He shot the demon point blank in the back of the neck as Liv had, then
sliced through the remainder of its neck.

They turned as one and raced through the lab door to help Connor and Trent.
One demon was already down and headless, and the others were wounded.

Liv’s radio clicked twice, but she was in no position to answer it.
Hopefully, it meant that Gin and Ben had finished with the lobby, and they
could start looking for stolen data, find the missing employees, and get the
hell out of Dodge.

Liv and Jordan each took a demon, aiming for the spine at the back of the
neck. Liv’s shots missed the mark, but Jordan’s demon fell to the ground.

Trent sliced off its head while Connor focused fire on the other one. It,
too, fell to the ground. As Jordan reached for its throat with his knife, it
reached up and clamped a hand around his neck instead.

His gun clattered to the floor, and he whipped both hands up to the
unbreakable hold around his neck. He sank his knife into the demon’s arm as its
claws sank into the soft flesh above his collarbone. Blood streamed from its
arm but its grip didn’t falter, and Jordan’s blood trickled down to soak his
shirt collar black. Jordan tried to force his knife through the demon’s arm and
sever its tendons, but his grip slipped in blood.

Liv, Connor, and Trent couldn’t risk shooting the thing in case they hit
Jordan—he was practically on top of it, sunfishing to try and break its
grip—and its other arm was still free to defend itself against their
comparatively puny knives.

They shared a glance as Jordan’s legs kicked ineffectually.

Connor indicated that he would go in first, but the demon rose to its feet
and he fell back. Now Jordan’s feet kicked a foot off the ground. He released
his knife to bring both hands to his throat. The demon’s grip on his neck
tightened, releasing a fresh flow of blood. It held him in front of it like a
shield.

Liv’s heart was in her throat but her head was amazingly clear. She shouted,
“Jordan, stay still, and stay here!”

He couldn’t acknowledge that he understood. She’d just have to trust him.
His feet stopped kicking, but now he hung like something already dead. She
squashed that thought immediately.

Connor’s eyes widened as he saw what she planned, and he shouted, “Liv, no!”

“Do you see another option?” That talon couldn’t be half an inch from his
carotid.

“No.”

Liv lobbed the wildfyre grenade at the demon’s feet, the only place not
shielded by Jordan’s body. The grenade hit with the
whumpf
of a gas stove burner lighting, and the fyre exploded up the
demon’s body, so fast it looked like time-lapse photography.

Liv stood just out of the demon’s reach to grab Jordan the instant it let
him go. The widlfyre had now completely engulfed the demon’s body, crawling
slowly up the arm holding Jordan. The demon screamed in its pig-squeal voice,
but it didn’t let go and it didn’t Travel away: Jordan was anchoring himself
here so it couldn’t leave without dropping him.

Jordan’s skill distantly impressed her amidst her terror and her involuntary
pinpoint focus on his bleeding neck. She wasn’t sure how much longer he’d be
conscious; his face was now a horrible shade of purple.

Suddenly Jordan gave a tremendous heave like a fish on a hook. He got his
legs up between him and the demon and kicked off of the demon’s body with all
his strength. It was enough to pull out of the demon’s grip, but he put his
feet in the wildfyre to do it.

His shoes and pants went up in a blaze as he dropped to the ground on his
back. He just lay there, ignoring his merrily burning clothes. Liv leapt toward
him and was on her knees with his head cradled in her lap before she realized
she had moved.

“Jordan, come with me now! Do you hear me?”

He didn’t answer but she felt him becoming less there, preparing to Travel.

She dissolved into the whirlwind with him, and they reappeared instantly in
a warehouse room in Hell.

Jordan lay still in her arms, and the wildfyre was gone.

Frantically, she felt his neck and found a pulse. She laid her head on his,
pulled him close, and tried to stop the trembling of every part of her. For a
moment, a world, a future, without Jordan opened up in front of her. Jordan had
almost died, and she wasn’t sure what she would have done if he had.

Taking a deep breath, she kept her hand on his neck, holding the bleeding
wound, and tried to see how badly his legs were burned. His arms came around
her and held her where she was.

She lifted her hand to look at his neck, at the two deep punctures just
lateral to his jugular. They had torn some when he pulled away from the demon,
and were still bleeding freely. She dipped her hand into a pocket, pulled out
some bandage material and pushed it against his neck. He hissed in pain.

“Sorry. Are you okay?”

He didn’t answer so she pulled him up, holding his upper body against her so
she could see his face. “You okay?” she repeated.

He nodded, eyes still closed, and then forced them open. He winced when he
saw her expression, and she tried to erase the naked fear from her face.

“You smell really good,” he rasped in a broken whisper, and pulled her close
again.

She laughed—a crazy jagged laugh, but still a laugh. “God, you scared
me.” She squeezed him tighter.

He laughed too, but without sound. “You scared me too.”

“How?”

He lifted his head to look her in the eye. “You threw wildfyre at me.”

She grinned. “It worked, didn’t it?”

He grinned back. Then he kissed her.

She brought her free hand up behind his head, pulling him toward her so she
could deepen the kiss, breathe him in and prove he was alive. When she finally
pulled away, she kept her hand on his cheek and stared into his stormy eyes.

His expression was dazed, and his voice had upgraded from a rasp to a
whisper. “Wow! I did not expect that.”

She smiled. “Sorry I didn’t meet your expectations.”

He shook his head. “Far exceeded. Very, very good.”

“Ready to go back?” she asked. He shook his head and pulled her close again,
breathing deep.

“You’re insane. There’s no possible way I could smell good now, unless you
like burning demon and sweat.”

He pulled his feet closer to curl around her and she could finally inspect
his legs. The bottoms of his pants had burned off, and the smell of singed
polyester was overpowering, but his skin looked fine. He was lucky wildfyre
burned so completely or it might have melted the fabric to his skin.

“How do your feet feel?” she asked as she eyed the scorched leather of his
boots.

“Fine.” His voice was starting to take on sound.

“’Kay.” She pushed him back. “I need to get a bandage on this. Stay still.”
She placed the bandage and wound gauze around his neck. “Too tight?”

His eyes met hers. “No, it’s good.”

“Can you stand?”

“I’m fine.”

She gave him a hand and helped him to his feet. He seemed all right.

A distant sound made her jerk her head to the right. They were near a stack
of fallen boxes, and nothing was moving, but the hairs on the back of her neck
stood up. It felt like someone was watching.

“We need to get back,” he rasped.

“Not here. The lab will be burning by now.”

They trotted down a few aisles between stacks of boxes until they reached an
exterior wall. Liv looked around and said, “This should be safe.”

“Unless we end up in an elevator shaft.”

“Well, make sure you’re ready to come right back. We’d only fall a floor.”

Another noise sounded from her left, and Liv whipped her head that way as
she recognized the approach of footsteps. She pulled her sidearm as Jordan did
the same. Connor appeared around a stack of boxes.

“There you are!”

He reached to his radio and said, “Trent, I found them. Uh, northwest
corner, north-northwest wall.”

“You okay?” Connor asked as he turned to Jordan.

“Fine. Thankfully, Liv’s got good aim.”

“We needed to get out of the range of the fyre,” Liv said to explain why
they hadn’t immediately returned.

“Yeah, wildfyre is, apparently, wild,” Jordan said.

“Don’t tell me. But we have no other distance weapons against demons. A
little fyre is nothing compared to a bloody death by demon claws.”

“Hear hear.” Jordan touched his bandaged neck. “So what now?”

“Turns out Ben and Gin have a little demon problem in the lobby. We’ll get
back over there and pitch in.”

Trent trotted around the corner, breaking into a smile when he saw Jordan.

“Home World,” Connor commanded.

Blessedly, they didn’t end up in an elevator shaft, although the elevator
doors were nearby. They were at the end of the hallway with a window at their
backs. Smoke was just starting to drift into the air.

“Y’all shut the lab door?” Liv asked.

Connor nodded.

“Wonder how long that’ll last.”

Jordan said, “Let’s get done quick and get out before the building comes
down on our heads.”

Liv pulled out her radio, clicked twice.

Ben answered, “Go ahead.”

“Ben?”

“Liv, thank God you’re okay. Is Jordan all right?”

“Yeah, he’s fine. Connor and Trent are also here. Where are you?”

“We’re on level one, heading down to the lobby. We need to take care of the
demons and get those missing people found.”

“Roger, we’re on our way.”

Ben’s voice broke in. “Uh, little problem. I don’t think guns are going to
be an option.”

“What? Why?”

“Well, we’ve got some friends outside.”

She took the few steps to the window and saw the media circus far below. She
counted at least twenty cop cars and about ten newsvans.

Ben continued, “We could really use a distraction. Why don’t you call one of
the elevators and send it down to the lobby? Then book it down the stairs to
help us when they come to check it out.”

“Hell no.” Liv wasn’t going to let Ben sacrifice them to the demons. They
couldn’t light them on fyre in the lobby. But gunfire would alert the cops and
they’d be lucky to avoid being shot on sight when SWAT poured in.