Roaring Blood (Demon-Hearted Book 2) (3 page)

“Why don't you have a seat?” she offered, motioning to the chair.

“Don't mind if I do.” I walked over and dropped into the wooden seat, finding it a little uncomfortable. The lights were pretty low in here; with the blinds drawn and only a weak light coming in from over the kitchen sink, we were pretty well enveloped in shadow. She paced into the kitchen and rifled through one of the drawers before returning.

“Close your eyes,” she said with a smile.

I was only too willing to obey.

With my eyes shut, I felt something soft and lacy brush against my cheek. This laciness trended south, to my arms, before it settled on my wrists. She was tying me to the chair, fastening a length of soft fabric around my wrists.
Pretty kinky
, I thought. When she'd done up both arms, she took a few steps back from the chair and appraised her work with a fiendish smile.

She pulled a candle from her pocket and deftly lit a match, striking it against her heel. “We're all ready,” she said. “You can open your eyes.”

I eyed the candle with curiosity.
What's that for? Is she into wax play? Well... whatever. She can have her fun. When that's done, we'll do this thing demon-style...

Next, Kanta took a string of chunky, wooden beads from her pocket. She held them out in front of her and took on a dire cast in the flickering candlelight. I heard the door to the apartment open, and someone entered into view behind her. He was a tall guy, with blondish hair and a respectable beard. Dressed in an olive green jacket, he looked kind of dirty, as though he lived out of a car.

Strapped to his back was a sword.

A sword whose hilt was a long, thick bone.

“Whoa, that's an awesome sword,” I said. And I meant it. “But, uh... who're you?”

They both looked at me, then to each other.

That was when it occurred to me that this was apparently some big joke that they were both in on.

Either that or we were about to have a threesome.

Knowing my luck, my bet was on the former, though.

“K-kanta? Do you know this guy?” I chanced.

The dude with the sword on his back cracked a grin. “All set, yeah? I haven't watched you do one of these for quite a while.”

I blanched. “I'm, uh... I'm not really into having voyeurs sit in on--” I started, before Kanta cut me off sharply.

“Shut your mouth,” she spat. What struck me more than the ferocity of her reply, though, was the fact that the cute Indian accent was completely gone from her voice. She'd dropped it all at once, a practiced ruse. “What?” she continued, laughing at my bewilderment. “Did you think you were about to get lucky, demon? I don't usually go for that generic seductress approach, but with you it was just too easy.”

“Well, yeah,” I replied before fully thinking things through. Then, furrowing my brow, I leaned forward in the chair. “But... what's all this
demon
talk about?”

You probably saw this coming a long way before I did, but it was pretty clear at this point that I'd walked headlong into a trap. What's that? You think it was an
obvious
trap? Easy for you to say. You're sitting down reading this after the fact, guided by reason, rather than libido. So I fell for it. Sue me. Anyhow, I figured I didn't have anything to lose by trying to lie. This chick had somehow figured out I was a demon, and that wasn't really something I wanted to spread around, you know?

“I could sense the diabolical aura on you from a mile away,” she said, thumbing the beads and pacing before me. “Good thing you're a
stupid
demon, led by human impulse. If you hadn't been so blindsided by lust I might've had trouble luring you here.”

Truthfully, I felt hurt. Up until a few minutes ago, I'd thought things were going well. I sighed. “Where did we go wrong? I thought we had a connection...”

She arched a raven brow. “A connection? With a douche like
you
?” She chuckled incredulously. “I think not, demon scum. Oh, and by the way? Milkthorn tea isn't even a thing.”

Damn it. She'd seen through my bullshit.

Clearing her throat, Kanta raised the wooden beads over her head. “We will now begin the rites of exorcism.”

My eyes shot open wide and my arms quaked against the wooden chair. “Wait,
what?
You're going to do a-an exorcism?”

The tall guy just kept on grinning. The longer he stood there, awaiting the spectacle, the more I wanted to knock every one of his teeth out. “Prepare yourself, demon.”

Oh, shit
. I leaned against the back of the chair and pleaded feebly. My murmured pleas were drowned out by Kanta's low chanting. She was speaking in a foreign tongue, Hindi, probably, and the sound of the beads clacking against one another filled the air like so many distant drums.
Now you've done it. You're so fucked
, I thought.

THREE

I felt like a prisoner being publicly executed. The two of them watched me writhe and yelp as the ritual wore on with satisfaction in their eyes. I mean, these people hardly knew me, but were content to subject me to the torture that was exorcism.

Bear in mind, no one had ever really primed me on what I could expect from an exorcism. In the movies it's all a very dramatic affair. Lots of pain and yelling and speaking in tongues. Turns out the real thing isn't so different. When she started chanting, Gadreel went into full-blown panic mode, my heart thumping in my chest, faster and faster, till I felt dizzy. My skin grew hot and poured fresh sweat, and not simply because of the summer heat. Her chants rose in volume, went higher and higher, and though I struggled against my restraints, they proved surprisingly powerful. Probably charmed in some way. I wanted to stand up, to run away or clobber her till she shut that mouth of hers, but I didn't have the strength. Every word carved away a little bit of my power till I was left with nothing.

My stomach tossed and turned, my guts feeling like they might shoot out of my throat at any moment and shower the empty apartment in red, vodka-infused ICEE. She moved the beads in hypnotic semi-circles, and in my blurred vision they almost appeared to glow in the candlelight. My soul, my essence was being actively drawn out of my body. It was the weirdest, most painful thing I'd ever felt. Getting slugged by werewolves or shot by blessed bullets couldn't compete with the kind of pain she was dealing. Even getting killed by witches hadn't caused this sort of pain. Every atom in my body was being attacked at once, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. I was a sitting duck, completely incapacitated.

Finally, Kanta finished, draping the beads around her neck and uttering one final, forceful chant. Her voice scarcely reached my ears; I was too out of it to hear her. Barely alive, really.

“Return to the hellfire,” she commanded.

When she was finished, I was out of breath, unable to speak. Apparently, though, Gadreel had something to say. He wasn't going anywhere, and told her so with a smirk. “That...” I panted, “was quite... the ritual...” Gulping in more air, the demon continued speaking through me. “It's a good thing that my soul is permanently leashed to this body. Otherwise that might've actually worked.” Deep, disembodied laughter filled the room.

She'd tortured Gadreel something fierce, but she couldn't get rid of him. An exorcism, apparently, wasn't enough. Good to know.

Kanta and her sword-wielding buddy didn't seem to believe, and took a few steps back. She clutched the beads around her neck and uttered a curse in some language I couldn't understand. “No, there's no way. You're a demon... I... I've never met a demon with resistance to exorcism. That's impossible!”

Gadreel had had enough of fun and games. His control over my body increased, allowing him to stand me up. Jerking from side to side, I raised the chair behind me and then allowed both of my shoulders to dislocate with a sickening pop. The chair sailed down before me in the next instant, and once the joints were sound again, I slammed the thing against the floor, where it broke apart into jagged pieces.

“Well, a shame we had to meet under these circumstances,” uttered Gadreel, using my eyes to appraise the two of them with an icy glare. “Perhaps you should have stuck to the original script. You'd have had a lot more fun.”

The tall guy whipped the sword off of his back and urged Kanta to take cover. “Get out of here, I'll handle this,” he said, holding the mighty blade at waist-height and sizing me up. The yellowish bone in his grip was nearly as long as the blade itself. A badass weapon, but not the most efficient one, by the looks of it. Stepping forth, he loosed a jab with the thing, which I easily evaded.

While the swordsman tried his skill, I made sure not to take my eyes off of Kanta. She was my real target; this guy was merely a distraction. For the pain she'd caused me I intended to make her suffer. In my rage state I intermittently picked up on Gadreel's thoughts; scenes of Kanta in the hellfire, of her soul being devoured, of her body being jabbed with molten-hot spears, again and again by plague demons, for eternity. With a toothy grin, I winked at her. “Watch this.”

The swordsman reared back and swung his blade as though intending to hit a home run.

I dodged. The top of the blade passed over the crown of my head. I might've lost a few hairs in the deal, but it didn't matter. With a playful jab, I struck the guy square in the navel. The blow sent him reeling. The sword was out of his hands, clattering to the floor, and he sailed into the nearest wall with a gasp. “That was just a love-tap,” I said, standing upright. “But it may have burst your diaphragm. What shall I break next?”

It took only a moment of gloating for Kanta to wage a counterattack. While I focused on her downed buddy, she picked up his badass sword and quickly thrust it upward, where it met my shoulder and parted my flesh with a sizzle.

Silver
.

I recoiled with a hiss while she helped the panting swordsman to his feet. A second slash, this one directed at my leg, carved deep into my thigh. I stumbled, palming at the gash, and fell down as the two of them fled. They darted through the door, thundered down the stairs, and were gone by the time I'd healed up enough to give chase.

Frothing with rage, I spit on the floor. A spot of carpet in the corner was eaten away as the acid went to work. I didn't feel good about letting my quarry get away. Right about then I should've been bathing in their blood.

Pacing around the empty room till my wounds had fully healed, I quickly marched downstairs, back to Ken's place. I wasn't sure how much time had passed or what state I might find Joe in, but I poked my head in the door and singled him out in the living room, where he still sat between a pair of drunk guys singing along to a song on the stereo. He seemed to sense my gaze, because he stood up at once and began sauntering to the door, abandoning his half-full beer bottle on the nearest table.

I waved to Ken. “Great party, man. Let's do it again sometime.”

Ken was pretty buzzed and raised his cup to me in reply. From somewhere in the room I heard someone ask, “Hey, where did Kanta go?”

Where indeed?
I wanted to say. Joe followed me outside and the two of us cut through the parking lot in silence. He could tell from the sour look on my face that things hadn't gone well for me.

“So,” he said after a time, hands buried in the pockets of his jacket, “how'd it go? You get lucky like you wanted?”

I bit my lip before responding. “Not quite.”

Joe nodded. “Well, it ain't all bad, you know? I learned something valuable tonight.”

“What's that?” I asked.

“That your friends throw shit parties and I probably shouldn't tag along again,” he said with a smirk.

FOUR

I spent the night, as well as most of the afternoon, in bed. When I awoke I made a quick trip to the grocery store, where I procured some dietary staples like bacon, Maraschino cherries and Funyuns. While there, I also picked up a beautiful German chocolate cake from the bakery section.

It was while I sat in my living room, trying to decide whether to eat the entire cake in a single go, that my black work-issue phone began to ring. Cursing, I rose from the sofa and took hold of the buzzing clamshell, flipping it open to find an incoming call from none other than Chief Kubo. “Yeah?” I answered, licking a bit of chocolate ganache from my finger.

It'd been a little while since I'd seen or heard from Kubo. After the werewolf job had been completed he'd disappeared into the shadows of the Veiled Order's HQ like he always did, promising that he'd get ahold of me when the time came for another job. Trouble was, I didn't exactly feel like working. Kubo's timing was shit.

“Lucy, I'm going to need you to get to HQ, stat. We're about to have a meeting with Amundsen. A
mandatory
meeting. Get here as soon as you can.” Kubo was always a stern guy, and his manner seldom betrayed anything of pleasantry or amusement. He was as kind and understanding as an enraged drill sergeant. But this time, I found a certain gravity superadded to his tone. He wasn't giving me a hard time like he usually did, and something about the way he uttered that word, “mandatory”, made it clear we weren't meeting to plan the company Christmas Party.

I feigned annoyance, scooping another fingerful of frosting into my mouth. “Damn, chief. Sure you can't just sum it up in an email?”

Kubo wasn't in a mood to play along. “Get here. Fast,” he said. And then he cut the line.

I shut the flip-phone and stashed it away in my pocket, looking down at the cake on the table mournfully. “What's the big rush?” I wondered aloud, stepping into my shoes and seeking out my keys. A short drive in the Corvette sounded mighty agreeable. It was after sunset, and if I stuck to the side roads I could speed there like a bullet train without garnering too much attention.

Amundsen was going to be there, too. Since signing on with the Veiled Order, I'd seen less and less of him. This whole Demon-Heart thing had been set into motion thanks to him; if he hadn't sent me out to an abandoned house to retrieve a little curio then I would never have been killed by witches. I'd learned a little more about him in the past few weeks; mainly that he served two functions in the organization. First off, he handled all kinds of administrative work at HQ, toiling on behalf of the senior leadership... whoever
they
were. Second, he was the guy in charge of the small army the Veiled Order had under its control. In Detroit alone, there were at least one or two hundred guys directly under the Order's employ, and he was the one who ordered them around. If Kubo and I needed a helicopter to scope out a location ahead of time, or wanted an armed escort, Amundsen was the guy who set it up. What were we doing in a meeting with him, though?