Demon Lord 3: Blue Star Priestess (12 page)

TWELVE

“
It’s better to give than to receive; 

that’s why I carry so much ammo.”

                                      —Caine Deathwalker

I love old cemeteries.  L.A. has quite a few.  The Angelus-Rosemont Cemetery was nice, designed for the living as much as the dead.  There were civic and Hollywood figures, as well as Civil War soldiers buried here.  Two pyramid crypts were a popular attraction.  Shrubs and trees made a garden of the place.  The scent of cut grass lingered in the air, and a wide variety of flowers added their own perfume.   At night, ghosts will come out and talk to you, or simply stare from a distance, envious of your life.  Once, I’d even played fetch with a black ghost hound.  I hadn’t asked him where he’d dug up the leg bone.  Too bad I was here on business. 

Strolling past the double row of palm trees,
I reached a perfectly circular traffic ring.  Within this circle, there was a second road, a smaller perfect circle.  Those who’d built the roads probably never knew the reservoir effect of such a pattern in a cemetery.  This northern section of the cemetery had occult energies to burn.  I figured that was why the area had been targeted.  Someone wanted to seal off that power, capping the well. 

I was still waiting on a report from Zero-T with the details of the attack.  He’d wandered off, but I had a clue where he might be: somewhere ahead,
magic was throwing out a tingly vibe.  I let the sensation guide me.  The tombstones and memorials I passed grew larger and more elaborate.  There were carved angels with inflexible robes and frozen wings, nice to look at.  Sometimes, it seemed like their eyes followed me.  The graves were uncluttered.  I thought humans had lost something important when they stopped decorating the dead.  The look of the area changed as I came to a small cluster of obelisks.  Scary.  Humans make those things with no idea how powerful that shape can be.

The nearness of active magic
in the air made me stop by a modest crypt.  To the left lay a patch of grass with one large, flat tombstone in the center.  I knew this place, a ghoul rendezvous point.  Occasionally, it happens that I become encumbered with bodies I don’t want traced back to me.   The ghouls are always happy to have lunch delivered, the gamier the better.  They come up from their subterranean warrens and take corpses away, never again to see the light of day.  We all feed on death, the ghouls just do it a bit more directly.

Zero
-T came out from the behind the crypt.  The main cemetery building squatted off in the near distance behind him, making him a moving shadow edged with light.  He stopped a few feet away.  “Ready?”

“For what
exactly?” I asked.

He grinned. “Urine-fest.
Arcane Janitorial Services are doing a sacrifice over by that pyramid-looking crypt to get the cemetery back in order.  I’ve been helping with the desecration.  Invading bastards actually dragged some priests in here and made them consecrate the property, cutting the ghouls off from their food supply.  That’s why they’ve been bitchin’ up a storm.”

“If I’d known all that, I’d have filled up on beer.”

We tramp toward the center of the cemetery where the witches and wizards chanted. Zero-T stopped every couple of graves to whip out his trouser snake and piss freely.  I helped out a time or two then stopped.  Being a demon, his piss was better for defilement than mine and his bladder could generate it on demand.  On the last grave, he wrote his name.

We finished up
in sight of the magic users, the same group that had cleaned up outside

Gloria’s place
.  I recognized their leader, Josie.  She wore out-on-a-job black pants and a semi-loose blouse, short jacket, and a wizard’s pointed hat adorned with silver stars.  She carried a peeled willow wand, directing the others. 

I felt a stirring of curiosity from the dark clouds of my soul.  A slithering sound, coils brushing, hung in the back of my mind as my dragon side roused
enough to become a meddling bastard.  It felt like cold steel punching through my body, ripping a lung, and punching out my chest as my
Dragon Sight and Dragon Vision
tattoos kicked in.

I growled at my other self. 
Leave my tats alone.

But I want to see what
’s going on.

See, we did. 
Cords of magic appeared like lines of magnetic force.  Color-coded energies fogged the clean-up crew, reflecting their orientations of magic.  Most were soft pastels, but one had trafficked with old-school demons.  The new girl wore a tattered haze: the dark brown of old, dried blood turning black and cracking edges. There was a duffle bag behind her, big enough for a man if her were scrunched in tight. As I watched, something inside the bag struggled against the fabric, moaning softly.  There was a weak aura around the bag, a sour, pissy color.

What the hell is in there? 

“Zero-T, let’s go closer.” I grabbed him by the back of his coat and pulled.

He hoped a step and dug in his heels. 
“Wait, let me zip up, damn it.  I’m getting it all over my pants.” 
Zzzzzzziit. 
“That’s better.”

The
team saw us coming, but stayed focused.  A lapse of attention using magic can shatter an entire spell, and one built by a group has enough stored energy to make crispy-critters out of a lot of people.  Zero-T and I stayed out of their way, keeping silent.  Five of them formed a circle.  Counting the two surrounding roads, that made three rings in all.   The new black witch in the center scattered pungent herbs.  The wind caught some of it, irritating my nose.  I fought off the urge to sneeze.  At the black witch’s feet was a cage with a pair of black-feathered chickens inside.

I felt my inner dragon eyeing the chickens.  He said,
I want those
.

I shook my head;
No, they’re for sacrifice.

Hungry.

I knew that.  I was hungry too. 
We’ll stop on the way back and get you some chicken nuggets.

What’s a chicken nugget?

God only knows
.

The energies raised by the circled group flowed into an angel monument as they anchored the spell.  Josie’s team relaxed, shoulders slumping, hands falling lax at their sides.  Their part done, they abandoned the ring, putting distance between them and the black witch.  She still had work to do. 
Josie came over.  I nodded toward the black witch.  “Who’s that and who is she sacrificing to?”

Josie said,
“Thank you for coming, Caine.  With all the attacks, I’m glad to have a pair of blood-thirsty demons at my side.”

Zero-T grinned at the compliment.

I didn’t, nor did I correct her mistaken impression on what I was.  It was natural for people to think the heir of a demon clan was also a demon.  If she ever turned on me, and tried a summoning circle to contain me, well, let’s just say she’d have a surprise coming.  Thinking of that, I did smile.

Josie turned so she too could watch the black witch work.  S
he looked to be in her late twenties, but with a witch, who the hell knows?  She could have been three hundred, and have a dick.

Josie said, “That’s Sunny—ironic, right?  She’s sacrificing to
Darwin the God of Evolution.”

“Makes as much sense as any other religion,” I
said.

Sunny
wore a ceremonial dagger—silver with garnets like blood tears on the handle—in the black sash that cinched her sunflower-yellow robe.  The robe didn’t quite cover the blue-jean pants legs that poked out of the bottom.  She took off her pointy hat and set it aside.  It was jet black with a red fish design on it.  The fish had feet.  Sunny shook out her blonde hair, and looked out to see what was going on in the area. 

H
er big, blue eyes caught on me, widening.  She mouthed the words: “Oh, shit.”  Her pale skin paled even more.   Reflexively, her hand slid over to touch the dagger.

“It’s okay
, Sunny. Caine’s here to protect us in the unlikely event the enemy doubles back.”

“I’ll protect you, too,” Zero-T called out.  “Feel free to run into my arms at any time.”

I looked at him.  “Dude, really?  You want to date a black witch?”

Her face reddened at the comment.  Hastily, she knelt by the caged chickens, fumbling with the latch.

Josie said, “Caine, she’s not as bad as most black witches.  If her family hadn’t raised her in their version of the magic arts, she’d probably have opened a bakery.”

Yeah, I could see her in an apron, holding a tray of pumpkin-shaped Halloween cookies with sugar sprinkles.  Of course, I’d make her choke down one of her own cookies before I’d try one.  She was all too adept at extracting that rather clueless chicken, holding it by the neck, and locking the cage back up so the other bird didn’t escape.  She stood, drawing the knife with her free hand.

All embarrassment was gone.  Her face had been wiped clean of emotions, as if another personality had taken over.  She lifted her face to the sky, murmuring words that sounded like they should hurt her throat. Black witches use the life and blood of victims to pay for their magic.  White witches use their own lifeforce, or that of another freely given.  The end result is that black magic tends to be stronger.  It’s why so many white witches go over to the darkside.

My heightened smell finally pierced the cloying herbs Sunny used, dragging my attention away.  The dragon in me stirred as we smelled a person we both claimed as ours.  I moved
without hesitation, pulling away from the group.  Having an extra piece on the board is not always a good thing when planning a protection detail.

“Where are you going?” Zero-T asked.

“You handle this,” I said.  “I’ve got to check something out.”

I crossed a long swath of graves
to a small crypt that, despite its age, looked well kept.  On general principle, I pulled a gun since the ones I now smelled clearly were not supposed to be here, in this city, or on this world.  The door to the crypt was open.  A small figure moved within its shadows.  I was attacked in a furious rush as a small body leaped and pounced on me, thin white arms wrapping around my neck, choking me like a doomed chicken.

A shrill voice screamed, “Onii-san!”

I managed not to fire my gun accidentally, coughing out a question.  “Julia, what the fuck are you doing here?”

Red
came out behind her at a more sedate pace.  He glared at me.  “Watch the language.  There’s a child present—besides you.”

I held a finger up behind Julia’s back where she couldn’t see it, the middle finger of course, shifting to nonverbal communication. 

Red laughed, stopping a few feet away.

I eased Julia to the ground, put my gun away, and p
atted her head.  In one hand, she clutched the stuffed green dragon I’d given her last summer, hugging it to her ribs.  As I looked her over, my vision returned to normal—for me—my
Dragon Sight
lapsing.  I was no longer seeing magical tags and colors.  Instead, my eyes were seared by Julia’s outfit.  She wore a pink and purple leopard print tee shirt with a skull-and-crossbones on it except the skull had been replaced with the head of a white cat wearing sunglasses.  Her denim jeans were a cyan blue, her socks an icy pink, and she wore neon-lime sneakers with watermelon-pink laces.

I decided not to razz Red about her clothes; chances were she’d dressed herself and would take any criticism personally.

He captured my attention by pointing at the crypt wall, at a simple copper plaque with dragon-scale edges.  The name on the plaque was Eleanor Redcliff.  I didn’t need the hint to know what Julia was doing here.  Red had said they’d be closing up shop and making a trip here so Julia could visit her dead mother.  I hadn’t known they’d be coming to this particular graveyard.  That might not be good; being close to me, she might draw enemy attention.

Julia looked up at me with half a smile, with signs of recent tears on her face.  This had to be hard on her, but it was good she was learning early that life’s a bitch and never fair.  Illusions can get in the way of survival.  I’d murdered mine decades ago. 

Julia took a bucket from Red-Fang and went to the plaque.  She began to clean it with a fresh rag as Red stepped closer, lowing his voice, as if Julia didn’t have the same heightened hearing from her dragon blood that we did.  “This is my immediate family’s crypt.  No one needs to know that I’ve interred a human here.  Others—higher in my family line—might not understand.  They’ve been led to believe that I’ve upgraded, buying better accommodations elsewhere.  I may be head of my clan, but I still have to deal with the elders.”

I glared at Red.  “Yeah, it’s such an awful thing to be part human.  So embarrassing.  Oh, the shame.  Why take the chance?”

Red answered me as if I were serious.  “Julia is family.  We did this for her.”