Blood Debts (The Temple Chronicles Book 2) (22 page)

And the party of one became two.

Chapter 16

A
fter several minutes of small talk, Othello reached into her bag and handed me my stuff from lockup. I eagerly turned on my cell phone and began shifting through the rest of my belongings as I waited for the phone to power up. Othello turned to watch the streets for signs of pursuit, but so far so good. I looked out my side of the car curiously, wondering where Othello’s safe house was as the number of graffiti scarred ancient buildings began to increase. We were miles from the police station by now and I felt my tension slowly evaporating with each passing block. The lights grew fewer and farther between as we headed through a more desolate section of the city. The air was cold, and the darkness of night reigned supreme, but at least we were police free. I turned back to my goodies, pocketing some of them until only the most relevant items still sat in my hands. There was the Demon-sensing stone Hope had given me, my wallet with a little bit of cash in it — which would come in handy now that my accounts were frozen — and a few other magical knick-knacks. I texted Indie the moment the phone turned on.
Sorry about the confusion earlier with the FBI. Available to talk whenever you are. I didn’t want to wake you up in case you were sleeping. Miss you!

As I set my phone down, the Demon-sensing stone began to vibrate intensely in my lap. I picked it up and stared at it for a few seconds, confused. I hadn’t said anything to it, and I couldn’t hear the creepy voices speaking to me.

I could feel Othello’s tension rising as she watched me out of the corner of her eye. “Why is it doing th-”

An incredible force suddenly slammed into the side of the limo, knocking us into a nearby building with a squeal of tires and crunching metal. The side of my head rebounded off the door, making my injured nose flare with heat, and my skull ring like a Looney Tunes character. Broken safety glass showered the inside of the car and brick dust clouded the windshield, eliminating our chances of seeing outside the car to discern what had caused the wreck. I grasped the door handle to try and get us out, but it was pointless. I was wedged up against the wall of the building. Before I could speak, more glass exploded into the driver’s seat as a giant claw entered the car, latched onto the driver’s skull, and simply… extracted it like a berry from a bush. Blood splattered the interior, the glass divider between us, and the driver’s crumpled body before a wet
thunk
landed on the hood.

As the dust began to settle, I realized that it was the driver’s head; eyes wide open in shock, staring at us in confusion. I didn’t even know his name.

Othello began to scream, lunging towards me as another clawed fist shattered the back window and latched onto her leg. I grabbed onto her hands and we were both promptly jerked from the car, my side slicing over the remaining broken safety glass as my torso was forced through the small opening. Othello’s continued scream filled the night, but so did a malevolent, ancient laughter. Still attached to each other like the children’s toy,
Barrel of Monkeys
, we were then unceremoniously tossed into the brick building. My head cracked against the brick hard enough for stars to explode across my vision.

Lucky for Othello, I had hit the wall first, so my body significantly cushioned her impact against the ancient brick, which didn’t feel great for me in general, but especially didn’t feel great over my freshly scraped sides. We hit the ground heavily, my head ringing from the two impacts in less than a minute. I felt like Humpty Dumpty. I heard Othello groan as I gently assessed my injuries. She wasn’t cut out for this, and she had put herself directly into the game against forces she could not even fathom, let alone survive.

I stumbled to my feet, realizing that I was still clutching the artifact in my fist. My phone lay in the center of the street by the smoking limo.

Directly in front of a towering Demon.

He was at least nine feet tall and covered in knotted dreadlocks with broken teeth and bones woven throughout his coarse body hair like a sinisterly decorated Christmas tree. “They have people who do corn-rows in hell?” I mumbled under my breath.

The Demon snarled back at me from beneath his lion-like mane of hair around his gi-normous head, brushing the bones on his fur with a purring noise. I noticed now that there were so many bones that they might even work as an armor of sorts. Giant scarred fists flexed at his side as he let out another leonine roar, drool dripping off his fangs as he flexed his entire body, bulging with energy-filled muscle. A lot of it. “It speaks.” The Demon growled.

“And
it
is about to whoop the living fuck out of you, Thundercat.” I took a step forward and felt a warning wave of heat strike me like an oven door had just opened. The Demon’s eyes flared like the burning embers at the center of a fire, halting my advance. There was no way in hell I was putting up with this right now. There was also no way we were surviving if I didn’t dig deep into my magical reserves. I could sense the energy pouring out of this monster like a furnace. There was no running. Only fighting. I was fine with that. I was done pussyfooting around, even if it would drain a big chunk of my power. I held up my fist, and the offensive heat diverged around me. I held my fist out as I began to stride forward again.

My phone began to ring. It was pretty close to his foot. “Hold on, pal. I need to take this real quick.” I began jogging towards the Demon, holding up a finger for patience.

The Demon stared at me in disbelief, and then lifted a giant clawed foot, ready to bring it smashing down onto my phone. “You won’t be conversing with your metal Familiar.”

My metal Familiar? Did he not know what a phone was? Rather than pondering that too long, I suddenly unleashed a hissing whip of purple darkness, the power the result of my energy manipulating experiments I had been tinkering on for months. It consisted of the coldest substance I had ever heard of, and once it grabbed onto something, it didn’t let go until I commanded it, literally causing the worse freezer-burn ever. I lassoed the Demon’s foot, the power of the substance burning straight to the bone in a second and a half, causing the stench of burnt hair to fill the street. The Demon roared in true pain. Then I swung the whip wide, hurtling the Demon straight into a lamppost across the street.

It bent into a ninety-degree angle.

The Demon crumpled to the street. I didn’t even wait to see if he got up. That
had
to hurt him. At least a little bit. I needed to answer my phone or Indie was going to kill me.

I snatched it up quickly, answering the face-time call through the cracked screen. Indie’s face filled the screen and I smiled at her. “Indie!” I shouted in relief. “Listen. I’m kind of tied up at the mom-”

“You don’t listen well, wizard.” A fist grabbed me around the neck, lifting me high into the air and holding me there as I futilely kicked my feet. The air was slowly being choked from me and I couldn’t even speak. The Demon plucked the phone from my fist cautiously, briefly staring at the cracked screen with slight anxiety, as if wary of the floating face cursing him. Then he pointed it away from his face in apparent fear.

Indie’s shriek filled the deserted street. “Nate? What
was
that? What’s going on? Are you okay? I got your text.
Nate
? Say something. Stop breathing into the phone like a creep.” She sounded exhausted, and frustrated, like she had been up all night crying.

“I am a Greater Demon. On the pathway to becoming a true Knight of Hell after this brief sojourn. And I am about to skin your lover. Your assistance will not save him, Familiar.” The lion Demon growled back at the phone aggressively, still apparently fearful of facing the screen despite his brave threat. He was on track to become a true Knight of Hell? What did that even mean? Was he, like, a recruit for Sir Lucifer’s Knights of the Crooked Table or something? A sword-bearer for the Prince of Darkness? I mentally upgraded him from Thundercat to Hell’s version of Lancelot. Sir Dreadsalot. Then he shattered the phone on the ground, stomped on it several times for good measure, and hooted in triumph. As I dangled there helplessly, my vision dwindling to a single point, I realized that this Demon honestly thought he had vanquished a great foe — my phone. He looked back up at me as if surprised to still see me dangling, choking to death in his fist. Then he tossed me over the limo, back into the brick building where I struck a bit harder than the first time, and then I landed on top of Othello in a heap of elbows and knees. It seemed to wake her up because she swung an elbow and clocked me in the ridge above my eye in self-defense. I gasped in pain as my nose flared with sudden heat. I blinked several times through the pounding headache. My breath came in through raw gasps. It felt like I had torn some important muscle or ligament in my throat, my breath making slight whistling noises. I could feel the bloody scratches from his claws on my neck burning slightly, frighteningly close to my femoral artery, or was it carotid artery? Regardless, it was one of my body’s important blood tubes, and the wounds weren’t deep.

I climbed to my feet and stumbled around the limo, noticing that the Demon eyed me more warily than before, the skin of his leg still smoking from my first attack. “Now I’m going to have to kick your ass, because she is going to kick mine for that.”

“I destroyed your metal Familiar. It is no more.” He pointed at the shattered device, shaking with a proud chuckle.

I blinked at him. Was he really that ignorant to the ways of the world? That was both a good thing and a bad thing. If he was really that ignorant, it meant that he hadn’t spent much time on earth, which meant that he hadn’t possessed anyone yet or else he would have had their knowledge at his disposal. Which meant that maybe he wasn’t exaggerating when he said he was a Greater Demon. Which meant that he was
really
dangerous, and
really
old.

God damn it. I didn’t even know if I had the juice to take on a run-of-the-mill possession, let alone a literal Demon that had been summoned here.

Then I blinked as that dawned on me. The
only
way a real Demon was here on earth in the flesh was if someone had
summoned
him. That meant someone else was calling the shots. Someone I didn’t know about. Before I could say anything brilliant, the Demon spoke, taking an aggressive step forward.

“You killed one of my daughters this night. I shall have my retribution by flossing my teeth with your flesh and adding your bones to my armor.”

“Well that’s uber-gross. But that’s not how this is going to play out, Sir Dreadsalot.”

The Demon chuckled. “You think you can defeat me? A Greater Demon?”

“We’ll get to that in a minute. First of all, I have a question. Being a Greater Demon, how is it possible for you to be here? Is it because Eae interacted with me at the bar last night? I don’t think even the baddest of wizards could summon a Greater Demon. Not without a whole bunch of people, and even then there are rules. Certain times of the year, rituals, relics, certain number of people, and tons of other particular things that I really don’t believe could have occurred.”

The Demon blinked. “You know more than you should about the rules of Heaven and Hell. How?” He asked me, genuinely appearing threatened by my knowledge. Shit. I had apparently figured something out that I wasn’t supposed to know.

“Your daughter told me.” I answered.

His muscles bunched together, increasing his size. “She wouldn’t.”

I shrugged. “How else would I know? It’s not like I summon many Demons. You should know the truth of that.”

The Demon’s eyes appraised me, and suddenly looked slightly afraid beneath all that life-threatening muscle, teeth and claws. I was pretty sure that I had just become a liability.

“Enough. I do not suffer liars. You attacked my son, and killed my daughter. For that you shall die. You will give me the Key, and then I will let you and your plaything die.”

“You see, Sir Dreadsalot, I don’t think your boss would like that. You know, the wizard who summoned you.” I clarified, unsure if he would think I was talking of God or Lucifer or something. I really needed to brush up on my hierarchy of Angelic and Demonic beings. I honestly didn’t know who worked for whom, and in what order, or if maybe some of them were free agents. “He wants the Key, which means that you have to
get
the Key. I can honestly tell you that killing me would get you nothing, and I know a bit about what powers a summoner would hold over a Demon they call to earth if said Demon fails. They take a bit of your power for themselves. I don’t think you want that, do you?”

The Demon scowled back.

“Now, if you want me to help you, I need to know the who, what, and why of your situation. This is the third time I’ve been attacked by your kind about this Key, so it’s obvious your boss wants it and made it his condition to allow you to run free. I’ve been attacked by my own kind for this Key, and even the Angels have threatened me about it. I want-”