Dark Urban Rising Box Set

16. Demon Blood

16Demon Blood“Billy? Are you there?” There was a picture of sorts, but no sound. Tazia rebooted the tablet and clicked connect again. It was all she could do not to throw it against the wall.

Detroit tended to be a dead zone for internet and cell phone service was sporadic at best, but Billy had managed to hook her up with one of the government satellites that still passed overhead keeping watch on the demon activities below. Even from that, though, there wasn’t a consistent signal.

After a pause, she heard a voice full of static and an outline of what looked like a face on the video screen. “Billy?”

Another pause, and then suddenly the screen cleared, and she was looking at a face-full of metal ornamentation. Joshua grinned. “Hi, Taz!”

“Hey Josh, how did you get in there?” She settled back against the headboard of her bed.

The one-room apartment she’d squatted was in an unoccupied building. Amazingly, there was still running water and electricity from a generator that she fed with siphoned gas from the abandoned cars that littered the streets. That was about all that recommended it. There were also lizards and cockroaches in abundance, and a few shadow demons scurried around the ground floor. They kept themselves to themselves, quickly merging into the darkness before she could acknowledge their presence with a well-targeted boot to the ass.

“I’m still in the Mac, the one Tech-Head uses to talk to you so I jumped in. He’s sorta busy at the moment.” Joshua manipulated the code to look slightly embarrassed.

“Oh right, I get it. Which one is it today?”

“Who knows? They all look the same, right? The dude’s insatiable. What did you need him for? Trouble?”

“Couple of things. Wondered if he’d found Hux yet, and I’m in desperate need of shotguns. Had to promise some to Conn O'Cuinn to get a way in. Now he wants a sample and I’ve got nothing. Do you know if Billy’s picked up on any leads?”

“Is the Soldier as cute as he looked?”

“Not bad, I guess.” She remembered the heat of Conn's hand on her arm. Hell, she wouldn’t say no.

“Hey, awesome. You go girl!” Joshua grinned.

Tazia dragged herself back to reality. “Josh, what about Hux?” She was pretty concerned about Soren. There was something brewing with him and not having a handle on it made her nervous.

“Nothing on the Hux front, as far as I know, but Billy did intercept a call some demon piece-of-s**t made just outside of Detroit yesterday. Sounded like a delivery. Hang on, he made a transcript. I’ll see if I can find it and show you.”

There was a bit of a wait while Joshua found the relevant file and then downloaded it to Tazia. She scrolled through absorbing the relevant detail and thanked him before signing off.

The demons who were trading the guns were mixed-breed gang members, highly violent and unpredictable. Still, easy would be boring, right?

The gun pointed at Tazia’s head was exactly the type she was after. That her concern was more with the weapon than the notion she was facing imminent death, bothered her little. She’d been here far too many times before. She’d always talked herself out of trouble when her life or livelihood was on the line.

Currently, she reckoned her odds were about eighty-twenty—not in her favor. She needed to talk fast. “I’d be far more useful to you alive, you know. Got some good connections. Can pass a lot of business your way.”

“What makes you think we need any business, honey bunch?” The deep breathy voice in her ear belonged to the head of the gang. He stank. A mixture of stale blood and beer hung on his breath while his body odor reeked of a damp mildewed blanket. Tazia moved her head away for a little breathing room.

These demons were mixed breeds. Sneaky as all hell. Since the Risings started, there were families of them everywhere, real mutts. Roamers who enjoyed violence and vandalism for the sake of it. They drove from town to town, chose their targets, then obliterated them, torturing and killing the residents and destroying any property they could get their hands on. Only if it had resale value did they keep it and find a buyer, the proceeds generally going on beer, drugs, and the sort of women who insisted on payment.

The demon ran a cold leathery hand over Tazia’s cheek, down onto the throbbing vein in her neck, and across the top of her cleavage. “Maybe you would be good alive, sweetie pie.” He chuckled with a sound that hit the same note as his Harley’s engine sucking up the miles on an open road.

Tazia wondered why the mean ones always used endearments related to dessert. There was nothing scary about pie.

She echoed him. “What’s your name, sweetie?”

“Jarob, darling. You may have heard of me. Got a bit of a reputation with the women around here.”

I bet! She was still crouched on the ground positioned just above the deserted roadhouse she’d tracked them to, a few miles outside of Detroit. She’d been there for three hours. It was supposed to have been just a research trip, so she’d kept well back hunkered down behind some thick spiky bushes to keep watch. Her mistake had been to take her phone and ear buds along. By the time he found her, screeching metal was pouring into her ears.

Now, she felt stupid. If Soren could see her, he’d be shaking his head in disbelief.

She’d counted only three demons by the time Jarob came up behind her, and she wasn’t sure how many others were around. An old rusted pickup had arrived just a few minutes earlier with wooden boxes in the back, covered with a tarpaulin. The guns?

“Do you like money, Jarob?” She turned her head slightly to the side and looked up so that she could make eye contact. The barrel of the gun was huge in her face. She ignored it, looked him directly in the eyes, and wildly batted her eyelashes feeling more than a little like Jessica Rabbit.

“I like money well enough, sweetie. Why? You gonna pay me not to make you scream?” He laughed again, the sweetly tuned engine now interrupted by a rattling spark plug as mucous caught in his throat.

“I know a guy who’ll pay very well for that load of guns you just picked up.” She gestured toward the truck with her head and watched carefully to see his reaction. If she’d guessed wrong, and they weren’t the guns Billy had heard about, she’d see it in his eyes. “He’ll pay better than any of the contacts you usually use.”

As she spoke, she stood up slowly and turned her body to face him, putting her hands on her hips and thrusting them forward, a little awkward, but he couldn’t miss them.

He straightened himself and took a small step back, soaking in her energy as well as the flirty overtones. The shotgun had dropped to her chest. “What’s his name?”

Tazia smiled, confident she had guessed right about the guns. She shook her head slightly. “Oh no, he’s my contact, not yours. I set up the deal. Then we both walk away from this happy.”

Jarob was still looking at her like she was a lollipop and he was getting ready to take a big lick though his interest in the deal seemed to be deflecting his attention from the tightness in his trousers. “Numbers?”

“All you have plus more if you can get them. Ongoing arrangement. Interested?”

“You part of the deal?”

Tazia gave him her best lascivious grin despite her urge to throw up at the thought of what was going through his mind. “When the business is done, we can talk about that, honey.”

He grinned back, oddly confident. Did he really think he was such a catch? She took in the leathery pock-marked skin and the pronounced set of stained pointed teeth. He was a bone cruncher. You really need an ego adjustment, baby-cakes.

“Sounds like we could deal—for the right price,” he said.

“Well, I can’t put a price on anything till I’ve seen the quality, can I?” Tazia rubbed the dust from her hands.

He took a step back and gestured with a flick of the shotgun for her to begin walking down the hill and over to the truck. For the first time, she noticed the smell of rotting meat. It flowed to her in waves and caught thick in her throat.

Turning in the direction of the smell, she spied a man’s body discarded on the far side of the roadhouse. Two vultures were fighting over a dismembered arm, each pulling from a different end, black wings flapping in the effort to gain ground on the other. She looked away, not sure whether she had more sympathy for the rotting corpse or the hungry birds.

A couple of gang members lolled on the old wrecked porch attached to the bar. They were drinking beer and smoking fat cigars; the acrid smell scented the air and burned her eyes. They had no visible weapons. The other one was sitting on his Harley, also drinking, with his shotgun arranged in a holster slung low on the side of the bike. There was no movement from inside. So, four in all. She’d counted correctly.

Jarob pulled back the tarpaulin and motioned her to open a box in the truck while he continued to keep the shotgun on her. Tazia picked up a crowbar from the truck bed and popped off the top of the first box. There were ten guns inside, all similar to the one Jarob carried. Some had been well used, the wooden stocks were worn smooth and a buildup of gun oil smeared the length of the barrels, while others looked newer.

She nodded at him approvingly, then hopped up on the truck bed and tried another box, going for one stuck right at the back—she’d been fooled by dummy merchandise before. It also had ten guns. All looked in a decent state. She grabbed one, then jumped down again beside him.

“Have you got ammunition for this? I need to check it out. My buyer is quite specific.” Tazia was keeping it very formal to cover up for her earlier amateurish behavior. Although a knife was strapped to her leg, she wanted a shotgun in her hands to take out Jarob. With one of these she’d have just two shots. She’d have to make them count.

Jarob shrugged. “Whatever you need, honey bunch.” He took the gun from her and ordered the guy on the bike to load it. The demon looked like he was going to argue until Jarob aimed his weapon toward him to reinforce the point. With a brief glare at his boss, he took two cartridges from the satchel on his bike and handed the loaded gun to Tazia.

When she started to walk away with it, he followed her. There were now three demons without weapons at immediate hand, just one with a gun. Tazia thought her odds were getting better, maybe even fifty-fifty in favor of her survival. Now, that was a number she could work with.

She strode to a piece of open ground ensuring she kept the truck between herself and Jarob. She shot a sweet smile at the demon who’d given her the gun. “Hey, honey, would you set up your can over there for me?” She indicated a piece of land about twenty feet in front of her. That would give her enough time.

As the demon walked, Tazia casually c****d the gun and tapped her foot lightly on the ground, grinning at the demons now gathering around to watch. When the demon placed the beer can on the ground and began to move back, she brought up the shotgun and fired.

Her aim was perfect—if shooting this type of demon in the heart was a good idea. It wasn’t. The shot blasted the demon onto the ground, debilitating him for a moment or two, but somehow the shot was deflected. He was nowhere near dead. He sat up, looked at his chest, and roared. s**t!

Before blood started to flow, metal gleamed under his skin: an internal breastplate. She’d mis-classified the demons. It’s the stomach!

Keeping her focus, she turned toward the truck with the intention of firing on Jarob. He was gone, so instead, she aimed at the demon closest to her, just ten feet away. This time, the shot hit him square in his fat beer belly. It did some damage. Blood and guts sprayed, just reaching her boots, and the demon dropped to his knees, glaring at her. He didn’t die and slowly started to climb to his feet again. Fucksakes!

With her gun now empty and useless, she threw it aside and grabbed her large hunting knife. The head, then!

Before she could bring the knife up ready, she heard the scrape of feet on dirt. She twisted around in time to find Jarob bearing down on her from the left, the barrel of his automatic aimed straight at her. How come he gets the good guns?

She swallowed. There was no love left in his eyes, just pinpricks of fire sparking within pitch black irises. He’d circled the building and came up on her blind side. At the same time, the remaining uninjured demon had jumped off the porch and was reaching for the holster on his bike.

Jarob started to pull the trigger. With nowhere to run and nothing to put in between her and him, Tazia braced for the shot even as she was considering jumping at him to knock him down. Can I make i—

A shot rang out, but it didn’t come from Jarob’s gun. It came from behind her, from high on the hill where she’d been earlier. It was a rifle shot. And it was a killer.

Jarob dropped to his knees clutching his gun with whitened knuckles, his finger failing at the last moment. Smoke rose from a wound in his left eye. The red in the other faded as it glazed over and he toppled forward. Of course, their kill spot is the eyes! Sneaky motherfuckers!

Tazia dropped her knife, leaped forward, and ripped Jarob’s gun out from underneath him. She turned and fired twice at the two demons still capable of shooting as they started to take aim. They both toppled to the ground, smoke coursing from the wounds in their heads.

The final demon made his move, holding in place the innards hanging from the hole she'd made earlier. He came at her from the side in a tackle which took her feet out from under her. Her gun went flying, and he had no weapon but brute force.

He pushed her over onto her back, rolling her straight to the place she’d earlier thrown her knife.

She flailed with her right arm, grabbed it, and brought it around in an arc to stab upward into his left eye. Blood and fluid dripped onto her face as she battled to push deeper. It trickled into her mouth. She gagged, but kept pushing until she could lever him up and away from her. He shrieked close to her right ear, like a cougar in the throes of an agonizing mating cry—which would have been funny if it wasn’t so bloody loud!

Momentarily deafened, Tazia gathered all her strength and levered the demon onto his back. She straddled him, liquid guts seeping into her jeans, and rammed the knife further into the socket of his eye,

He gurgled as blood flooded his throat.

Still she pushed. Forcing the heel of the blade down until it cut through the bridge of his nose and on into his right eye. Blood seeped onto her hands burning into her skin while stinking gunge soaked her inner thighs.

Flailing, the demon punched on both sides of her ribcage, but he was getting weaker. Then with a final exhale of foul breath that spluttered acid blood onto Tazia’s face, he was still.

She straightened slowly, then pushed herself to her feet. Pain shot up each side of her chest. She touched her ribs gingerly: the one on the right was cracked while the left side was just bruised. Healing would be quick. Shame she couldn’t say the same for the jeans. Not only had they absorbed the foul contents of the demon’s stomach and bowels, but also were now drilled with tiny holes from his blood.

Soundly cursing Tazia wiped her face as best she could, pushed off her boots, and stripped off the stinking jeans, dumping them in the back of the truck bed. While she replaced her footwear, she scanned the arid hillside above the roadhouse. There was no sign of anyone.

The keys to the truck, still laden with its cargo of guns and ammunition, were stuck in the ignition and she turned the engine over. It hesitated once, then sprang into life.

As the old vehicle heaved itself over the gravel, a cloud of dust suddenly rose in the distance. Someone was leaving at top speed. Who the hell had helped her?