Raw Power: An Urban Fantasy Novel (Demon-Hearted Book 1) (11 page)

Just moments ago, I'd been thinking about those witches and burning for a fight.

Now I had one on my hands.

 
Wishes do come true,
I thought as I sauntered casually from the bar and started for the main entrance. What few people were in the restaurant looked on nervously. They were probably sure that this gang of thugs would wipe the floor with me, carve me up like a Thanksgiving turkey. I chuckled at the thought.
Well, let's see what this demon can really do.

FIFTEEN

We were hardly into the alleyway behind the restaurant when the big guy rushed at me.

The knife was out of his waistband in a flash, and his hulking frame bounded towards me with a clumsiness that was almost endearing. He loosed a growl, looked positively distressed over the shit I'd said about his grandma. Poor guy. He never stood a chance.

 
Under ordinary circumstances, I would have been a little nervous about tackling a guy as big as this one head-on. I'm no small-fry, but this dude was big, and in a fight, size
does
matter. A little bit, at least. This fella had a good deal more weight to throw around, longer reach, more muscle.

 
What he didn't have, though, was a
demon
inside of him.

I let him get pretty damn close to me with that knife before I reached out and took hold of the offending wrist. With a quick jerk I had him on his knees, the arm bent back in the most uncomfortable configuration possible. The knife fell to the concrete and his buddies all startled for the sound of its clattering. They were gathered around the entrance to the alley, as if to keep me from escaping.

If they'd had half a brain between the three of them, they'd have taken off right then and there.

The demon was almost fully in control here. I was hazily aware of what was happening, had about the same level of input that a ringside spectator might have at a professional wrestling match. If I shouted at the guys to throw a folding chair, then maybe they'd listen in such a scenario. It was the same thing with this demon; I could make a suggestion, and the demon could choose whether or not to take me up on it.

In this case, the demon complied.

 
Break his arm,
I thought. It seemed like the best way to incapacitate him, and nothing short of a busted limb was going to keep him from taking another shot with that knife.

Well, with what I can only call elegance, the demon in me gave the hefty guy's arm a little twist and, wouldn't you know, it broke loudly at the elbow. The demon knew just how to move the limb to make it give way, and the joint could be heard to pop as he turned it in his grasp. Er, my grasp. Whatever. You get what I mean.

I'd just broken this guy's arm.

With one hand.

I was barely touching him, really.

Now, if you've never seen a big man like this one cry, then I highly recommend it. He was on his knees, looking up at me with fear in his eyes and doing this obnoxious, open-mouthed crying I'd only ever seen from kids throwing fits at the grocery store. He writhed a little bit, tried to pull his busted arm from my grasp, but couldn't do it. The demon in me was too strong, would let go of him for nothing.

“W-what are you?” he managed to gasp between sobs.

I didn't dignify that with an answer.

Instead, I continued twisting, till pieces of bone shot out of his skin and a bit of blood was ejected from the wound as if through a spray bottle. He yelped, quivered in my grasp, and then I let him go.

 
He didn't dare attack me after that. As best he could, he rose to his feet and started stumbling the opposite way, hoping to escape. I wasn't going to let him do so easily, however. The fight so far had been an unfulfilling test of my new strength. I needed to see what I was
really
capable of.

Thankfully, one of the big guy's friends was on his way. He'd fished a length of pipe out of the gutter and was rushing at me now, a mane of unwashed hair flapping in the breeze behind him and a high-pitched shout on his lips. Guy looked like a dirty hippy, something straight out of a Grateful Dead concert. He was my height, but thin as a rail, and I noticed as he rushed me that he was missing several teeth.

For fun, I let this one hit me with his pipe.

I didn't block it, didn't make any effort to dodge. I just stood there and took it like a man, right to the side of the head. The demon in me seemed to think it was a good idea.

And, you know, it didn't kill me.

But it'd been a stupid fucking idea.

Tip: Even if you're possessed by a powerful demon, getting smacked upside the head with a length of steel pipe by a grown man hurts like hell.

Ordinarily a hit like that one would have been sufficient to dash my brains against the ground, but not this time. This time, I staggered back a few paces, then righted myself with a grin. The dirty hippy glanced back at his friends, who were running off without him now, and then nervously weighed the possibility of taking another swing. You could tell by the way he hesitated, by the way his bushy eyebrows trembled in apprehension, that he wanted to run. His was the face of someone who'd just encountered something profoundly powerful, something beyond his feeble understanding. Still, to his credit, he wound up like Mark McGuire and let her rip.

This time, I didn't stand idly by and allow myself to get hit.

I grasped the edge of the pipe and tore it from his grip before lunging at him and slamming him into the wall. Dust was ejected from the space between the bricks, and he looked stunned for the impact, his eyes going momentarily blank. Tossing him to the ground, I went in for a stomp, but missed.

In the interim, the crafty hippy had gone for a hail mary.

He took hold of his buddy's knife and, without warning, plunged it straight into my gut.

The demon was unseated and, for a minute there, it was just plain, old, frightened Lucian standing in the alley with a knife sticking out of his belly. “Oh, fuck,” I muttered.

A pipe to the head hadn't done me in, but a knife to the guts was a whole new level of injury.

The hippy seemed not a little horrified with himself and fell back, doing the crab-walk till he'd built a bit of distance with me. He seemed to want to speak, but his face was pale and he couldn't find the words.

My stomach burned. Slowly taking hold of the knife handle, I peered narrowly at my gut. It was probably gushing with blood right now. The sight of the blade digging into my entrails was probably going to make me lose it. I was terrified, shaking.

What I saw next, well, there was no explanation for it.

The knife, blade, handle and all, was melting.

Yes, you read that right.

 
Melting.

Like a clock in a Dali painting.

 
A wave of heat struck my face as I looked down, and I noticed the weapon becoming bent and distorted. The metal bubbled and began to fall away into a puddle of silvery liquid at my feet. When it'd completely melted, no wound remained. My abdomen looked as pristine as ever. My shirt was a little torn where the knife had gone in, but that was it. I patted my belly incredulously, but failed to find a cut of any kind. It didn't even
hurt.

“Well, look at that,” I said to the guy, laughing heartily. I couldn't believe it.

He wasn't quite so happy for me, though. He backed himself against the wall and looked up at me as though he were faced with Satan himself.

It was time to wrap this up. I was pleased with my powers, with the new strength I'd gained since the transplant. Blows to the head, simple knives; I seemed impervious to them while the demon was inside me. I instantly began to wonder how I might use these new talents to become the life of every party.

 
I could be like Houdini, except totally hardcore.

But first, there was the dirty hippy. He needed dispatched. The demon in me had made up its mind on the best course of action. What with my being forced into the background, I wasn't really in a position to argue with it.

 
We're gonna eviscerate this guy. Paint the alley with his blood,
came the demon's suggestion, as if it were the most commonplace, well-adjusted act in history.

Kneeling down, I took hold of the guy's stomach. My fingers pressed into his shirt, into the soft flesh beneath. Tearing it all away and baring his intestines would be a simple thing; when they were out, I'd skip rope with them, gnaw on them like a dog.

 
Wait a minute,
I thought inwardly.
Maybe that's going too far. I mean, murdering the guy? Thats pretty fucked up, man. Unnecessary, no?

Didn't matter. The demon seemed pretty sold on this plan.

Just as I was about to gouge this guy's guts out, there came a gunshot.

In the next moment, I was doubled over, clutching at my upper arm and thrashing against the concrete. The pain that wreaked my body then was unlike anything I'd ever felt. It radiated from my arm, into my chest, and then into my legs, all while inflicting an intense burning.

I'd been shot.

Bullets, apparently, could still do me in.

I howled, and the sounds issuing from my throat were not altogether my own. I cursed in languages I didn't speak, and then slumped against the wall, sweating, panting and murmuring.

The hippy was running as fast as his feet could take him for the entrance to the alley, and three people were fast approaching in his place.

Kubo, Joe and Isabella.

Kubo had a gun in his hand. Quickly returning it to his shoulder holster, he knelt down beside me and punched me in the side of the head. “You imbecile,” he said through grit teeth. “The hell you doing out here, getting into fights with people? You're drawing unnecessary attention to yourself. I didn't call you here for this shit. We have a job to do. If I hadn't come out here early, then you might've fucked everything up.”

The bullet in my arm was still aching, and a fresh jolt of pain shot through my body. Wincing, I struggled to draw breath and looked up at him tearfully. “C-chief, I'm sorry... I'm sorry... it... it hurts so damn bad, chief.”

“Shut up,” he said. “It's not like it's going to kill you.” With a knife in hand, Kubo steadied my upper body and dug right in. With some careful carving, every bit of which I felt in full, he dug the bullet out. It fell to the ground, the blood on it quickly evaporating. Once it was out, the pain immediately stopped and the wound began to heal before my eyes. We're talking incredibly fast, like something out of a movie. I flexed my arm in disbelief, poking and prodding the spot where, just moments ago, I'd had a gunshot wound.

Kubo stood up, putting his knife away and looking down at me with disgust.

 
I rose, steadying myself against the wall. “Why... why did that hurt so much? I got stabbed earlier and it didn't feel
anything
like that.”

He arched a brow, patting the gun resting just beneath his jacket. “The bullets are silver, and they're blessed. That's a mighty bad combo for people like you.”

Joe snickered, tugging on the collar of his jacket and looking to the entrance of the alley. “Maybe you should hit him again, chief. Make him hurt real bad for making such a show, eh?”

Isabella was sauntering around the alley, talking to herself. She was in another world completely, probably hadn't seen anything that'd gone down in the alley. She ran her hands against the brick walls, her eyes wide and glassy, and fidgeted with the hem of her burlap-colored outfit.

“The more you insist on misbehaving, the shorter your leash,” said Kubo, starting through the alley. He led the three of us out, to the black SUV, which was parked at the curb. When we were all seated, he didn't waste a second, speeding away from the restaurant in a flash. Some minutes down the road, he flipped open his phone. “I've received word from one of our field agents that the coven has been spotted in a nearby neighborhood. They're targeting a particular infant, by the looks of it. I have the address. We're going there straightaway, just ahead of them.”

I'd been preoccupied with other thoughts up to that point. I'd very nearly murdered a guy. Savagely. In horror-movie fashion. I felt numb all over, and trembled in disbelief as the hippy's frightened visage turned up again and again in my memory. I'm a lot of things, but I'm not a murderer.

At least, I used to be able to say that.

Now, with this demon inside of me, I couldn't be so sure.

 
I was disturbed by the complete nonchalance with which I'd assaulted those guys, the pleasure I'd felt at breaking their bodies. It just wasn't like me to get off on that, at least, not to
this
degree. I'd been in the business of roughing people up for a while now, and fights did bring a certain adrenaline rush. But this was something else. This was
bloodlust
. I felt ashamed and wished I could somehow apologize for what I'd done to those two. Having a demon inside of me was no excuse for walking around like a sociopath. I wasn't sure if it was possible, but I wanted to try and get a tighter grasp on this presence within me, lest it take over completely and do some really unsavory shit.

Shaking my head, I struggled to get back into the game.

“I see,” I replied. “We're going to intercept the witches and kill 'em before they can get there?”

“No,” said Kubo flatly. “We're going to kidnap the kid before they can.”

SIXTEEN

I've done a lot of things in my life I'm not proud of. Beaten a lot of people up for money. Peed in my fair share of swimming pools.

Preparing to kidnap a baby was near the top of the list.

 
“What do you mean?” I asked, hoping for some kind of clarification. Somehow, Kubo's suggestion that
we
were going there to kidnap the kid
first
didn't sit well with me. What, were we going to take care of the kid till this whole witch thing blew over? Had I been brought on as a demonic daycare worker?

“I mean what I said,” he replied. He'd taken us into a quiet neighborhood. Well-manicured lawns were lit up by the streetlights which now flickered on in the dusk. He slowed down, scrutinized the houses one-by-one, and then after briefly consulting his phone, pulled to a stop. “This must be the place.” Kubo turned to Isabella and gave her a little nod.