Devil Inside (39 page)

“Go for that alley if you can.  If you can get them to chase you into there that would be ideal.  Especially when you feed.  You won’t have to worry as much about being seen.”

Harley could feel her Nocte rise up in anticipation of action.  The burning in her stomach grew hotter and she flexed her fists ready to go.  “I’m ready,” she growled.

Cassandra hesitated a moment.  Harley glanced at her and she could see that the other Nocte was as eager as she was.  Cassandra’s breathing was faster and she looked coiled and ready to strike with an unnatural stillness.  She griped Harley’s arm to hold her attention.  “Harley, if you get into trouble—you are on your own.  I’m not going to stop and rescue you.”

Harley scowled at her.  “What if you get into trouble?”  She pulled her arm from Cassandra vise-like grip and they both stepped away from the doorway.  Cassandra’s statement was harsh, but she found she appreciated the woman’s honesty and she knew that she wouldn’t have said it if she didn’t think Harley could handle herself.  As they made their way towards the Ignis, Harley reached under her jacket and unlatched her knife.  It fit into the holster snug enough she didn’t have to worry about it falling out and she didn’t want to have to fumble with it when the fight began.  She flexed her shoulders and rolled her neck, her Nocte was practically singing with excitement and Harley could feel her pulse and breathing speed up.  The Burners were on the same side of the street as they were, but they had to cross a perpendicular street to reach the corner where the Ignis stood.

When Cassandra and Harley reached the corner of the block the three Ignis finally noticed them.  They watched the two women cross the road.   The Ignis reacted as many human thugs would when encountering women on a dark street corner.  Their grins grew wider as they nudged each other and their eyes glowed even brighter.

“Hey ladies,” the one in the blue hat leered as Harley and Cassandra stepped onto the curb in front of the Ignis.  As one, the three creatures stepped in front of the women to block their path.  Harley’s entire body hummed with energy as she and Cassandra came to a smooth, slow stop.

“Where are you ladies off to this evening,” Blue Hat asked.  Harley could smell his breath and it reeked of  something that smelled like burnt meat.  The smell brought back a flood of memories from the night Jamie died.  The old pain and despair threatened to tear through her as she remembered her friend dying in front of her.  With a deep breath she forced the pain aside and embraced her anger instead.  Harley also smelled the Burner’s sweat, and as she did she knew without a doubt that this Ignis was particularly nasty.  She hadn’t known that she would be able to tell this much about an Ignis just from being near it.  She didn’t think it was just his smell.  The impression of this Burner seemed to be connected to the “alert” that hummed through her head.  In microseconds Harley knew many things about this creature.  She knew that, even though he wasn’t an old Ignis, he was strong and she was sure that this Ignis liked to mess with mostly women.  Harley would bet money that this man wasn’t just a rapist, but probably a pimp as well.  She raised her head and looked into his cold gray eyes.  She could feel her eyes burn with heat as they blacked out and her Nocte rose to the surface.  She could practically hear the women that he had hurt screaming for help and it rippled across her shoulders and down her spine as her Nocte growled excitedly.

When his eyes met Harley’s Blue Hat dropped his grin quickly.  As his grin faded, Harley’s grew.  As the Ignis realized that the women weren’t just women—victims—they tensed preparing for a fight.  They took several steps back to give themselves room to maneuver and they snarled as their eyes flashed in the glow from the streetlight.

Harley and Cassandra both reached for their weapons and braced themselves.  Harley held her knife in her right hand poised for action.  Harley and Cassandra waited for the Ignis to make their move.  Finally, Blue Hat lunged at Harley and he was followed by the shorter of the two hooded Ignis.  Harley saw Blue Hat’s hand swipe at her and she dodged the knife she hadn’t even seen him draw.  She countered with her own and was rewarded a yelped when she gashed his bicep.  Shorty swung his fist her but she managed to catch it and use his momentum to jerk him forward bring her knee up into his elbow.  She felt downright giddy when she heard his elbow crack and bend in an unnatural angle.  Shorty fell to his knees with a small cry.

Harley made the decision to kill Shorty quickly as she wanted to take her time with Blue Hat.  He was the one she wanted to quench the fire in her stomach.  Before Blue Hat had a chance to rebound from the wound in his arm, Harley finished off Shorty by, remorselessly, driving her blade into his heart.  He went silent immediately and she yanked her knife from his chest.  Before she could dodge it, Blue Hat lashed out with his own weapon.  The blade cut a vicious fissure across Harley’s cheek.  She spun away with a hiss and kicked him squarely in the stomach.

Blue Hat slammed into the wall behind him and Harley darted around Cassandra and the taller one as they stumbled between Blue Hat and herself.  Cassandra was doing fine and holding her own so Harley returned her attention to the Ignis that she fought.  Blue Hat, using the distraction of the fight between them, turned and began to run.  Harley growled at his cowardice and quickly gave chase.  Blue Hat was fast—she had to give him that.  In less than five strides he had put the width of one building between them.   She transferred her knife to her left hand and without stopping running she undid the buckle on the chain the wrapped around her waist.  She unwound it, raised it over her head and spun it like a lasso.

Focusing on the feet of the Ignis running from her, Harley let go of the chain and held her breath.  She had managed to put the right amount of force behind the release and Harley could hear the metal slide against itself as it wrapped around the ankles of Blue Hat.  With a satisfying crunch he crashed to the sidewalk and his hat flew off.  He immediately flipped to his back and as Harley came to a stop over him he slashed at her again.  She managed to avoid the attacked and twisted away from him.  Harley caught his wrist on the return swing and he struggled to break her grip while at the same time clawing at her with his free hand.  Harley dodged his clawing hand and pinched at the nerves behind his thumb and he was forced to drop the knife.  Blue Hat was finally beginning to panic and he rolled away from her.  Even though he managed to break her grip he didn’t get far as she dropped all of her weight onto his back, driving her knee into his spine which popped loudly as he howled.

Harley laughed as she leaned over and spoke softly into his ear.  “You’re gonna taste so good.”  Harley giggled as he began to struggle harder, trying to throw her off his back.  But she drove the handle of her knife into his temple as hard as she could.  It didn’t knock him out but it did daze him.  Climbing off his back she quickly glanced back in the direction they came from.  If anyone had noticed the struggle they didn’t care enough to pay attention.  The people in front of the restaurant probably couldn’t hear them anyway since pounding dance music spilled outside the bar.  She didn’t see Cassandra or the tall Ignis, but she had to assume that they were fine.  She worked quickly before Blue Hat could clear the cobwebs away.  She grabbed his hands and pulled him into the alley closest to them.  She was still surprised sometimes by her strength.  As a human, Harley wouldn’t have been able to drag the dead weight of even a smaller man but she barely struggled with the Burner.

Harley’s breath came out in short gasps—not because of the exertion of dragging the Ignis—but in anticipation.  She could feel her fangs slid free and she flexed her jaw, still not having gotten used to the sharp teeth.  A voice in the back of her shouted to be heard. 
What are you doing?
It seemed to ask.  The parts of Harley that were still human wondered how she was doing this with no squeamishness at all.  The new, animal-like, part of her ignored the rational voice.  This binge was stronger than any of those she had experienced at the Den.  Giddy excitement rippled through her.

When she had the Ignis fully hidden in the alley she again climbed onto his back.  Blue Hat must have regained enough clarity to realize what happening and he tried to crawl away, his fingers clawing at the dirty pavement.  Harley grabbed a handful of his short brown hair and pulled his head back at a sharp angel, exposing his neck.  Feeling very vampire-like Harley sank her fangs into his jugular vein.  She didn’t even pause to think about what she was about to do.  She didn’t have time to feel the surreal quality of exactly what was taking place.  She only felt the painful hunger and the certainty of that this would cure it.

As Harley’s fangs broke into the Ignis’ bloodstream Blue Hat stopped struggling.  Just as with the Burner that Levi bit, he seemed paralyzed by Harley’s bite and he lay motionless beneath her.  Strange mewling sounds escaped his slack jaw Harley moaned as the hot blood exploded into her mouth.  It was like nothing she had ever felt before.  She felt it more than she tasted it and it was hard to even believe it was blood that she was drinking.  It was indescribably better than the packaged blood that Nya had given her before.  The bags of blood had always been cold and tasted stale; she just hadn’t realized it before.  Fresh Ignis blood was hot and it tasted like fire against her tongue.  Her soul, her brain and her heart exploded in blinding ecstasy and she couldn’t hear anything beyond the beating of the Ignis’ heart and her vision blurred beyond her unfocused eyes.  As fast as she swallowed she still couldn’t stop some of the blood from leaking around her mouth.  She could smell it as it dripped on the ground beneath them.  She realized that her moaning had synced with the beating of Blue Hat’s heart and she could feel her nails embed themselves in his scalp and shoulder as she clutched his neck to her mouth.

All too soon the blood ran cold as the life force of the Ignis trickled and died.  This is what Nya had meant, she realized.  It wasn’t that the blood itself grew cold—it was the force behind the blood weakening and as a result the fire in Harley’s mouth began to die.  As she tasted the cold metal of the blood, Harley knew that the Ignis was gone.  The spell was broken and Harley pulled away from the dead man with a gasp.  Still reeling from the ecstasy of the bite she stumbled away from him only coming to a stop as she slumped against the wall of the building behind her.  The heat of the hunger that had been burning in her belly spread through her limbs.  It was like stepping into a hot tub after walking a mile in the snow.  The heat burned with an almost blissful pain and she sighed as she let her knees bend and she slid to the ground.   Her vision swam and she closed her eyes and let the waves of energy and pleasure wash over her.  She could feel the strength of the Ignis ripple through her muscles.  She was sure that she had seen Cassandra standing at the corner of the building as she closed her eyes but she ignored her and continued to enjoy the rush that burned through her body.

Slowly, the feeling subsided.  It felt like it took hours but Harley was pretty sure that it probably only minutes.  She slowly opened her eyes and rubbed her hands over her numb face.

“Well—that was quite dramatic,” Cassandra spoke softly somewhere to Harley’s left.

Harley let her head tilt and saw the other Nocte leaning against the building a few feet away.  Cassandra’s eyes had returned to normal and she was wiping her mouth with her tee-shirt.  Harley smiled lazily at her.

“Is it always like this?” she asked smiling goofily up at the other woman.

Cassandra raised an eyebrow.  “Everyone reacts differently to their first feeding.  But I don’t think I’ve seen quiet that intense of a reaction.”

Harley regained even more of her senses and looked away from Cassandra.  “Of course not,” she sighed.

“Hey, don’t complain.  It’s better to be MORE of a Nocte than LESS of one—wouldn’t you agree.”

Harley thought about how to answer that for a moment.  “We’ll see, I guess.”  She looked at Blue Hat’s body lying at her feet.  She could see his skin wrinkling and drying as she watched.

“You should probably move away from that,” Cassandra advised.  Just as Harley managed to drag herself to her feet the Burner’s body erupted into small, smoldering flames.  Before Harley’s eyes the Ignis turned to ash in a matter of minutes as it burned.  She stepped away so as to avoid the dry, gray ash as it blew in the wind.

“So, what now,” she asked Cassandra as she watched the body disappear before her.  She didn’t feel any regret or remorse—just a calm sense of peace.  The creature at her feet hadn’t been human, and beyond that—he hurt humans for fun.

Cassandra watched her for a moment.  “We keep hunting,” she said finally.

So they did.  They didn’t talk much as they wandered through the city.  Cassandra seemed distracted but they both were calm and unhurried now that they had fed.  They came across one other Ignis that night and Cassandra had let Harley take her down.  The fight had been a hard one and Harley came away with more than a few bruises and scrapes.  As she thrust the knife into the Burner’s chest and pulled it back out with a splatter of blood, Cassandra raised her eyebrows at her.

“You aren’t feeding again?” she asked Harley with mild, wary surprise.

Harley wrinkled her brow in confusion.  “No?  I’m full.  I feel good—I don’t really need to feed again so why would I?”  Truth be told, she didn’t want to lose her cool again in front of Cassandra.  Her confusion grew when Cassandra visibly relaxed.  She hadn’t even realized Cassandra had been tense until she saw her shoulders and jaw soften.

Cassandra shrugged.  “I just figured you would want more,” she said before turning away.