Green Flame Assassin (Demon Lord series, book 2) (45 page)

Too stupid to live.
 

In my hand, the normal blue steel was awake, its demon aura a murky red glow. 
The blade whispered in my thoughts, urging me to use it in an orgy of excess, flooding the world with blood.  The blade was as much an opponent as the dhampyr.  It would do its best to drain my will, to make me an extension of it instead of the other way around.  Therefore, I limited my exposure to emergency situations.   

I grinned at them as they ran out of ammo and scrambled desperately to reload.  One of them came from the back of the crowd, pushing forward.  He had a pump-action shotgun in both hands, swinging the muzzle up to unload on me. 

I willed my shield down, firing with one hand, swirling in to catch the shotgun barrel with the tip of my sword.  I angled the barrel to the side and let the shotgun belch death into the face of another dhampyr.  The face vanished in a crimson froth.  The body hit the floor, joining the others I’d shot.  The explosive rounds I used effectively scrambled enough gray matter so the dhampyr couldn’t regenerate the damage.  They stayed down.

The sword in my right hand keened, voicing its hunger.  I loped off the head of the dhampyr with the shotgun.  As his corpse fell backwards, glimmering gossamer strands of silver-blue energy spun out of his chest, gathering around my sword blade like spun sugar.  I shot the last of the dhampyr in the room, as my demon blade thrummed in pleasure, swallowing the dhampyr soul.  Its appetite whetted, the blade shrieked for more.

“Greedy bastard,” I said, “just be patient.”

The upstairs was quiet.  Too quiet with Josh up there.  Well, he was former PRT.  He’d just have to deal with things until we were done down here.  I still had the adjoining kitchen and garage to check out. 

From the sounds of the fighting in the living room, guns had been exhausted.  Furniture was being broken along with bodies.  I heard male cursing and a shrill scream of female fury.  Vivian was holding her own. 

So far, so good.

Stepping on and over bodies, I approached the kitchen door.  By the floor, a glint caught my eyes.  Having been blown off someone’s head, a slightly pointy dhampyr ear lay on the floor.  The glint was caused by a diamond stud erring on the lobe.  The stone was two carats, in a four prong, red-gold setting.  Some buried part of me stirred awake and made a casual evaluation.  Eleven thousand, four hundred dollars, give or take a few bucks.  I hunched down and picked up the ear, tear off the earring, putting it in a pocket. 

Waste not want not.

Boom … boom … boom.
  The door above my head exploded from the inside as shotgun slugs ventilated it.  I stayed low, looking up.  The shots had been tightly grouped, making a hole roughly a foot wide.  Wood chips lay across my back and in my hair.  I waited very quietly, listening for footsteps to approach.  Soon, someone was going to stick their face in that hole to see if they got me.

Sensing my intention to feed it, my demon sword was silent with anticipation, not wanting to scare off our prey.

I heard a gruff whisper from the kitchen, “Well?  Did you get him?”

“How the hell do I know?”

“Look through the hole, stupid!”

Yeah.
  I smiled. 
Look through the hole.

THIRTY-TWO

“There’s tragic, hella bad, God-

awful, and then there’s me.”

                               
               —Caine Deathwalker

A man’s face peered out of the hole in the door.  Not an ugly face, at first, but it got that way fast thanks to the demon blade I drove upward.  The sword tip entered the fleshy underside of his jaw, cut into his mouth, stilling his tongue, and burned its way through his brain, emerging from the inside of his skull to give him a point on his head.  Not quite convinced of its death, the dhampyr’s body tried to jerk clear of the hole, but the sword didn’t allow escape.  It blazed bright red, slurping up the silvery-blue soul that had come loose from dying flesh. 

The sword thrummed with glee, temporarily sated as I jerked it down, letting the corpse collapse back into the kitchen.

“Mother of God!” someone said.

I slipped to the side, flicking the sword out of my hand, letting it vanish back into the ether on its way home.

More holes filled the door top to bottom.  These were much smaller, making the wood look like alpine Swiss cheese.  Slugs passed me.  One passed so close to my cheek; I felt the superheated air of its wake.  As a lull arrived, I detaching a couple flash-bangs from my vest, pulled the pins, and chucked the grenades through the big hole.  Someone screamed a warning. 

Bampfff—bampfff!

After the grenade detonations, I shouldered through the kitchen door, staying low to the checkered tiles so the dhampyr soldiers—firing blind—would miss.  And there were dhampyr firing blind, rubbing their smarting eyes, stumbling into each other. 

“What the hell!” one said.

“Who’s touching me?” another said.

I popped up next them, using my death-is-near voice, “I am,
fuck-face.”

I leaped away and gratified to see the two dhampyr throttling each other with fervent strength.  Other soldiers wheeled their way and unloaded weapons.  A few of the blind shots came my way but my protective shield firmed up and deflected them as needed.  Not wanting to be left out, I spun with both PX 4s in hand and fired, passing out headshots all around.  In moments, I was the only one alive in the kitchen. 

I returned to the dining room, and then the bottom of the stairs.  I didn’t have to go looking for Vivian.   She came toward me, face swelling with what promised to be a helluva bruise—though with her healing power, the bruise wouldn’t be there long.  Her lip was split, her knuckles skinned, her clothing half torn and drenched in blood.  One tit bounced free, a bloody scratch near the nipple. 

I stared, enflamed with the desire to lick the cut and make it better.

She saw my stare.  Her pale faced flushed with rosy warmth.  She scowled.  “Oh, grow up!  What is it with men and tits?”

“If you have to ask,” I said, “you’ll never understand.”

I turned to face the upper landing as a dhampyr soldier fell into view there.  He lay still, his face clawed and torn away.  A deep base growl vibrated the air.  I called up the stairs, “Josh, it’s us.  We’re coming up.”

“Better hurry,” Vivian said, “otherwise, I don’t think there will much left to do.ify"

I ran up the stairs with Vivian beside me.  “This whole thing has been way too easy.”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“We’ve only seen soldiers.” 

I leaped over the corpse on the landing and headed into the upper hallway.  There was no sign of the liger, though there were pieces of dead dhampyr soldiers everywhere.  One body looked decapitated though it wasn’t.  The head had been rammed entirely through a wall.  Further on, I passed a whole dhampyr who was folded back on himself as if someone had broken his spine across a knee.   A faint groan welled from his parted lips.

Not quite dead. 
I fixed that by firing an explosive round between his eyes and another into his heart.

On a hunch, I headed for the boardroom.  “With their numbers dwindling, the higher-ups should have put in an appearance to help out, or we should have seen them running away.”

Vivian grunted agreement as we slowed to enter the meeting room.  The liger was there, looking pissed.  He had massive paws on the chests of two of the dhampyr.  One of them was a lady in a fine lacy black gown, a blonde with a nice rack.  It would be a pity if we had to kill her.  The other dhampyr was young man in his late teens.  He wore tan slacks and a black tee.  His hair was slicked back with gel and he had pissed his pants.  The liger’s lips wrinkled back from fangs.  He looked like he was about to bite the kid’s head off.

I had the feeling that the kid was a new recruit to the dhampyr family.  He hadn’t acquired the usual muscle-bound look of the rest of the soldiers, and was more likely a plaything for some of the dhampyr women.

“Please,” he whimpered, “I don’t know anything.  I can’t help you.”

Vivian walked up beside the liger and leaned over the kid.  She grabbed his tee shirt with one hand, turning her face to Josh.  “I got him.”

The liger grunted and let go, turning his low rumble up to high, devoting his full attention to the woman.  She just held very still, trying not to breathe hard, making a point not to give Josh eye-contact.  Her body language was totally submissive, but I thought it a role she was playing.  Brielle would not have left her here, in charge of the dhampyr forces, if she were not a lot more than she seemed—or maybe an enemy she was getting out from underfoot.  If that were true, we might be able to turn her to our side.

Vivian pulled Boy-toy up off the table.  His eyes kept sliding to her torn shirt and the unfettered boob.  Vivian’s face swam in close to his, her eyes ablaze with reddish-pink fire.  She used a sultry tone to ask him a question, “If you can’t help us, why should we keep you alive?”

He looked away, struggling to find an answer. 

“Look at me,” Vivian said.

His face came back to hers, but his gaze dropped—to her bare tit.

She used superhuman speed to bitch slap him a dozen times. 

This gave him an immense erection. 

“He’s been well trained,” I walked past them.  “He likes it when you hurt him.  Pain isn’t going to work.”  I rounded the liger and sat on the edge of the table.  I studied the woman.

Her stare sought me out.  “You’re the Red Moon Demon.”

“Yeah.”

“Call off your beast.  I’ll tell you what I can.”

“That’s nice of you,” I holstered my guns and drew my Seal knife, using it to reflect light into her eyes in a hypnotic pattern.  “But I kinda wanted to torture you first.  It’s a good way to make sure the information I get is accurate.”