rylee adamson 10 - blood of the lost (7 page)

I sheathed my swords and grabbed my crossbow, slinging it forward as Pestilence continued to laugh. Jamming a bolt in the channel, I sighted the bow and pulled the trigger.

The bolt flew true, driving through the demon’s neck. He stumbled back, the air around him stilling as he fell from the sky like a rock.

Blaz let out a roar that reverberated in my chest.

“Follow him. He’s not dead yet,” I yelled.

Pestilence’s monkeys scattered, running while their master was no longer controlling them. Fuck, they were infected with the pox. “Blaz, drop me and go after them.”

Rylee, this world—

“Won’t be worth fighting for if they get away and re-infect everyone.” For all we knew, Pestilence had a
new
disease residing in his pets. Fucker.

Blaz dropped to the tarmac and I slid from his back. He launched into the sky a heartbeat later. I trusted him to get the job done, to track and wipe them out.

Besides, he couldn’t help me with this last bit. Pestilence would only die when I laid my hands on him and drove the demon to the seventh level of the Veil: the deepest level, home to Orion and his demon horde. Or at least, it was until they’d all broken free.

Standing in the parking lot, Pestilence tugged at his cufflinks (apparently even demons had nervous ticks), the wound in his throat already gone and the crossbow bolt on the ground at his feet. “It’s a shame, you know, you could have been at the top of the food chain with us. But instead, here you are in the dirt with the rest of the worms.” His eyes fluttered to half-mast and a smile slid over his face. “You don’t really think you can send me back, do you?”

I slid out of my crossbow and laid it on the ground, then pulled both my swords. “I’m counting on it, actually.”

He chuckled. “Ah, the optimism of the walking dead; it knows no bounds.”

The wind around me swirled, and I went to a knee, driving one of my swords into the asphalt. If the wind picked up enough, I would need something to hang onto without Blaz around to catch me. “If I’m already dead, Pestilence, then I have nothing to lose, do I?”

His eyes narrowed and his mouth thinned as he stalked toward me. But his body didn’t shift as I thought it would.

“What, no monster under your skin?”

“I don’t need to be a monster to kill you, Tracker. Do you know what my abilities entail? I’m guessing not since you are standing there like you aren’t afraid of me.” He circled and I moved with him.

“Enlighten me then. Tell me what you know, oh-demon-of-wisdom.” I kept moving with him, my sword I’d driven into the tarmac between us at all times.

“Yes, I think I will
enlighten
you.”

I wanted to laugh at him. The classic bad guy monologue? He had to be kidding. Pride had to be on his list of vices.

“The four horsemen are so much more than just War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death. Each has abilities. Many of mine are tied to the element of air. I could suck the wind out of your lungs with a snap of my fingers, if I so chose.”

I swallowed hard. “And you don’t because I’m such a conversationalist, right?”

“No, I like to feel my victims die, to watch the light go out of their eyes as their hearts struggle to beat one more time. I like to have my hands on them.”

I wrinkled my nose. “Rather perverted, don’t you think?”

He grinned widely at me. “It’s the only way I can catch their souls and eat them.”

Oh. Fucking. Hell.

“Yes, I see by your face you finally understand what I am. Why were Pestilence and I attached to one another? A slow death peels the soul from the body and makes it harder to resist me.” He snaked out a hand as if to grab me, and I swung my remaining sword as I stepped back.

It sliced off the tip of his middle finger. He snatched his hand back and shook it as if he’d burned it and not had a piece of it removed. “You are going to be so sweet to drink, Tracker. The Blood of the Lost, a vintage I haven’t tasted in many, many years. Not since your mother, I believe.”

A razor’s edge chill slid down my back and I didn’t even think about anything past what I wanted to do to him. Chop him into tiny fucking pieces and have Blaz roast him to a crisp before throwing what was left to the fishes. I leapt forward, swinging with what I knew would look like wild fury. My sword slashed through the air and I missed him over and over again.

On purpose.

Erik’s words when I’d trained with him echoed in my head as if he stood at my shoulder and guided me through the exercise.

“Don’t let them see how fast you really are; don’t let them see the control you have, the ability you have to read them and the situation. Let them think you’re out of control. Let them think you are going to be easy. Because they will be anything but, and you need to be ready for the fight of your life.”

Pestilence laughed at me, and beckoned me forward. “How in the seventh Veil Orion rose to power is beyond me, if he thinks you’re so terrifying.” He held his right hand out and a sword appeared in it. Made of a bright white material, it caught the sun and reflected a shimmer of rainbows around us.

I forced myself to pant, sucking air hard, even going so far as to stumble and go to one knee.

If I could get him to come at me, to drive me backward, I’d have him.

Of course, that was when the cavalry arrived and whatever plans I had went to shit.

Alex, in his mixed up werewolf form, ran across the lot from the left, Peta loping beside him albeit a bit wobbly. Lark was behind them and all three were covered in open wounds, pustules that oozed thick green mucus.

“Get away from her,” Lark barked out, coughing on the last word.

Pestilence turned to them. “Not dead yet? Let me help you with that, you meddling Elemental. I’ve had enough of you.”

He took a step, but the earth below him softened, sucking him into a hole all the way to his neck. Rage lit his features, twisting the handsome face into the monster I knew he was; his mouth opened past the point any human jaw should and three tongues, each one the length of a car, snaked out of him.

“Good job, Lark. Good fucking job.” I sidestepped the first tongue, but only just. Saliva flicked out across me, burning through my shirt and pants.

“Shut up, you ungrateful Tracker. If you’d followed the plan, we’d have him by now.” Lark dropped to her knees and drove her hands into the pavement, pulling it up and throwing it behind her in chunks. Peta let out a snarl, pressing herself to Lark’s leg and Alex ran to my side.

“I’m with you, Rylee.”

I dropped a hand to his head for the briefest of seconds before I had to leap out of the way of the second tongue as it whipped toward us. “If I’d followed the plan, you’d probably be dead along with Eve and Marco.”

“Please. You think I can’t take care of a demon?”

“I know you can’t,” I snapped back. I ran toward my sword driven into the ground and went to one knee behind it. Pestilence flicked a tongue at me.

“Alex, stay down,” I said as I clung to the handle of my sword. This was going to hurt, no way around it. I took a breath a split second before the thick meaty tongue wrapped around my sword and me. The saliva burned through my clothes and within seconds my skin blistered.

Pestilence pulled me slowly toward him and his gaping mouth. Shivering with pain, I struggled to hold it together. “You’re a fucking pussy, pesty boy. Orion sent you because you are the weakest of his generals.”

With a roar, he yanked me toward him with a speed I never could have mustered on my own. My body screamed at me to do something to stop the burning, anything to ease the acid eating through me. As Pestilence held me directly over his mouth, Lark yelled at me.

“Tell me you know what you’re doing.”

“I know”—I yanked my sword upward, slicing through Pestilence’s tongue—“what I’m fucking doing.” The tongue flew away from me and I dropped, landing with a foot on either side of the demon’s head.

I held my sword over my head, poised to drive it straight through him when I saw the laughter in his eyes. “You will never win, Tracker. Even if I die now, you will die later. And I will be free again.”

With everything I had, I tapped into all the good in my life, the love I had for my daughter and Liam, for Alex and Pamela, Eve, and maybe even Faris. The emotions flowed through me, calming the rage. In my hands, my sword began to glow, as if lit from within. I didn’t think about this new development, couldn’t; there was no time.

“Demon, go back to your home.”

I drove the sword into his open mouth, only stopping when the hilt was buried in his throat. He convulsed around my blade, his three tongues dancing wildly in the air, like demented cheerleaders for a dying monster.

With a quick twist of the handle, I sliced through him and then pulled my sword out. A waft of rotting meat and sulfur spewed from his mouth, as if a septic main had broken inside him. The green mucus I’d seen on Lark, Peta, and Alex were next, then blood—red and black—flowed like a river around us. I looked down at my arms and legs.

The acid burns were gone, though my clothes were eaten to shit. Alex trotted toward me, the pustules gone and the mucus left on his skin already dried. Lark strode toward me, as though she wasn’t covered in left over pox. “Rylee, are you incapable of following anyone else? Should I give up now?”

I glared at her. “Maybe you should remember who broke you out of the fucking oubliette.”

Her eyes narrowed and she stepped close to me, using her height to her advantage. Peta shrunk back to her housecat form and leapt onto Lark’s shoulders, her green eyes worried.

“Maybe you should remember we’re trying to keep you alive,” Lark snapped and Peta shook her head.

Well, now was as good a time as any to have this out with her. “Oh, I’m sorry. Did you become a demon slayer in the last ten minutes?”

She shook her head ever so slightly. “We were going to hold him down so you could finish him off, remember?”

“And where were you?”

Her shoulders tightened. “Sick, but we were still fighting for you. Pamela healed Alex and me enough to get our asses here. For you.”

“Stop trying to guilt trip me, Lark.”

She grabbed my arms, surprising me. With a hard shake, she snapped my head back and forth, and Peta mewed as though that would stop her master. “You little idiot, everything we are doing is to get you to the end in one piece. I don’t want this world run by Orion any more than you do, so why won’t you damn well let me help?”

I rubbed the back of my neck, feeling the strain of muscles there too. That damn bump from earlier was bigger and I picked at it. A flash of heat shot through me and I snapped my hand away.

A wild rush of anger slid over me as I yanked my two swords out, pointing both at her. “Because you don’t know shit, Lark! Who the fuck do you think you are anyway?”

Her eyes widened and she slowly raised her spear as I circled around her. “Rylee, what are you doing? We’re on the same damn side.”

Swiveling my swords, I loosened my wrists. “Are we? You jumped, distracted me from killing the demon. I don’t think we are on the same fucking side.” Were we? No, Lark was trying to stop me. Hurt me.

Control me.

Her eyes narrowed. “This doesn’t sound like you.”

I swung a sword as Alex slid between us, his hands up and his big eyes begging. “Rylee, stop. This is wrong.”

With only a hairsbreadth of room, I missed him. But he stayed there on the ground in front of me, unblinking. Trusting I wouldn’t hurt him.

The back of my neck tingled and itched, and I put a hand to it, dropping my sword. It hit the ground with a clatter that seemed to break the tension. Alex shimmied forward, and put his face close to mine. “You okay, boss?”

A lump in my throat seemed to freeze my ability to talk, so I just nodded.

“Maybe we should all get inside then,” he said, putting a hand to my elbow as if I were a feeble old woman. I jerked away from him.

“Don’t” was all I said. They stared at me, their eyes ranging from pity to fear. Neither of those emotions were ones I wanted to deal with; especially not in other people.

Lark turned away first. “Let’s get new clothes and get a move on.”

I watched her as she strode away, her leather vest and pants eaten through from the flinging acid. Peta dropped from her shoulder and trotted ahead of her, the white tip of her gray tail flicking back and forth rapidly. The shift in Lark’s attitude happened so swiftly I struggled to follow.

I had a feeling perhaps Peta influenced it. The cat did seem to know when she was needed.

And it had to be obvious even to the cat that Lark had been egging me on.

Right?

A hair-raising screech turned me around. Eve and Marco were slowly getting up. Whatever Pestilence had done to them had faded. Beside me, Alex shifted—albeit slowly—into his human form. The gangly teenager was buck-naked but didn’t seem overly bothered by it.

Pamela on the other hand as she walked toward us turned bright red and spun around. “Come on, Lark is right. We need to get clothes.”

I snatched up my sword, sheathed both. Limping a little, my right hip sore from something or other during the fight with Pestilence, I headed toward the box store.

“Think they have Twinkies in there? I’m starving.” Alex rubbed his hands together and gave me a sideways wink.

“Twinkies, but no rabbits.”

He grimaced and shook his head. “I think I’m done with rabbits for a while.”

We caught up to Pamela and I slung an arm around her shoulders guiding her so she was on the side opposite of Alex.

He reached around me and tugged her hair. “What’s the matter, Pamie?”

“Shut up, Alex.” She bit out, her face going even redder, if that were possible. Another time, I would have smiled and laughed. But not now.

From the corner of my eye, I watched him watching her. If it weren’t for Frank’s death, I knew what would happen.

Alex loved me like an older sister and best friend.

Pamela on the other hand . . . he watched her like a wolf hungry for a meal. Which was not totally surprising. “Pam, go ahead of us. Alex and I need to have a chat.”