Demon Song

4

The fly worked just as well as it had in my office.

Unfortunately.

The camera revealed sights that sickened me. Sedated humans crammed into cages lining the dungeonlike basement of the “treatment center.” Cages. They seemed to be about the size for a Great Dane, made from steel bars as thick around as my wrist. There was no furniture, no toilet facilities. Just row upon row of cages filled with naked, comatose people curled into fetal positions. Even a Super Max prison had more amenities than this. “This is disgusting. We have to get them out of there.”

Edgar lowered the night-vision goggles he was using. “You can’t be serious.” His whisper sounded equally amazed and horrified.

“Keep your mind on the mission, Graves.” Jones’s voice was an annoyed hiss in my ear. “I wouldn’t have brought you if I’d thought this sort of thing would bother you.”

“Well, it does,” I snapped back quietly. “I wouldn’t put a dog in a cage where it couldn’t even sit up straight. What kind of life is that?”

He responded by pulling the fly’s case out of my hand. “Give me that joystick.” He started to move the fly and pushed my hand away when I tried to get it back.

“Damn it, Jones.”

Jones stared at me, his eyes blazing with internal fire. “Look at the screen, Graves.”

He was hovering the fly inside one of the cages. I didn’t want to look. It made my stomach hurt to think of that person’s life, or lack thereof. Jones made a disgusted sound, then repeated, tensely, “Look at the screen. Really look. No sores, no fleas, no dirt on this guy’s skin. He’s had a shower or bath sometime today. His underwear and shirt are snow-white. They look better than the ones in my dresser.”

Okay. Now I was forcing myself to look and Jones was right. There was no urine or feces, and if the guy had been caged for very long, there would be. “Oh. But…”

“Now look at the electrodes on his forehead,” Jones continued. “They’re inducing dreams. See the smile? Part of the treatment here is to provide normalcy, to keep the person remembering interactions that aren’t tainted with violence. Yes, he’s in a cage. Get over it. These are superhuman creatures who are very likely insane. If they had enough room to move, they could bend the bars or they’d dislocate something trying.”

Oh. Now I felt like a fool. I was probably blushing, given how hot my face felt, but at least in the dark nobody could see. Except for the vampire, of course. Oh, and the mage with the fire in his eyes. Damn.

“I’ve been inside, Graves. Many times. Don’t get me wrong; there are parts of the facility you don’t ever want to see. There are places that would make you lose your lunch. But this batch has a good set of keepers.”

“Why can’t the whole facility be like this?” Yes, now I was championing what I’d just complained about. Some people are never happy.

Jones shook his head. “You are a piece of work, Graves.”

I was getting itchy from sand seeping into my clothes. “We need to find Kevin. This is taking too long. When are we going in?”

It was Edgar who responded. “When we’re ready. When we’re sure where we’re going. There is no hiding once we’re inside, Celia. The barrier will start to scream the minute we penetrate it, and then it’s only a matter of time before they find us. This isn’t a sneak in and sneak out mission. Only brute force will get us in and out again safely. People are probably going to die, and we’ll be the ones killing them.”

Whoa. That wasn’t what I’d signed up for. “I’m already on a short leash, guys. One more trip to court and I’m this place’s newest inmate. You guys might be able to crawl back under your respective rocks once he’s out, but I need to work in this town again. Why can’t we sneak in and out?”

That set them both back on their heels. “Look,” I continued. “We have our fly. We can use it to figure out a way in. Can’t Edgar bespell a guard so we can take his uniform?”

Jones now looked amused. “So with twenty-first-century technology and supernatural abilities, you want to stage a World War Two movie breakout?”

I shrugged as best I could; my shoulders were cramping inside the pipe. “If it works, why not?”

“Are you willing to use your siren abilities as well? Kevin told me you were horrified by what you did to Eirene’s followers.”

That stopped me cold, because Kevin was right. In the struggle to keep myself and Emma alive and keep the greater demon from being loosed, I’d mentally fought a siren queen for mental control of her men. Eventually, there was nothing left of their minds to follow either of us. It had eliminated them from the battle, but I’d sworn I’d never again manipulate a person. I swallowed hard and tried to think what others would do in my place. Bile rose into my throat and I forced it back down. “Can you manage it without me?”

“Sneak in, without using violence, and remove someone without alerting trained magical guards?” He let out a snort that might have been loud enough to hear if there was anyone close. “Not bloody likely.”

So I could have a violent, bloody confrontation where I would probably have to kill someone or a quiet, sneaky rescue where I’d probably have to manipulate people into doing what I wanted and risk them becoming brain-dead. Great. Just great.

Maybe there was a third option. The fly was working fine, but it was slow. We were losing too much time while it searched. I concentrated, then whispered into the darkness, “Vicki? Ivy? Are you guys out there?”

The air cooled noticeably enough for even Jones to look around. “What the hell?”

I pulled a penlight from inside my vest and held it where nobody outside our little group would see it if it lit up. “Vicki, is that you?”

The bulb flicked on once. One blink meant yes. Two meant no. It was a crude method of communicating, but it worked. Ghosts stay on this plane of existence when they have unfinished business, finding their murderer or revealing information to a loved one. I wasn’t sure exactly why Vicki had stayed behind, but so far she had been acting as a sort of resource when I needed eyes on the ground. Vicki wasn’t the only ghost in my life; there was also Ivy, my little sister who’d died violently when we were children.

“Can you find Kevin inside here?”

One blink. Vicki had known Kevin as long as I had. Plus, she’d told me once, she’d seen him in animal form. That would be helpful if he wasn’t human at the moment.

Jones sounded both confused and annoyed when he whispered, “What the hell are you doing, Graves? Who are you talking to?”

“Vicki Cooper. Remember her? My clairvoyant friend from Birchwoods?”

“Yeah. She’s dead.”

“Mostly, yes. Say hi, Vicki.”

Edgar made an odd sound and handed me the night-vision contraption. There was an amused expression on his face. Strange to see a vampire with a smile. “Here, take a look.”

As the goggles spun my way, I had to smile. I turned them around so Jones could see the lens, where, in tiny little print, a reversed Hi! :) appeared in frost.

I raised my brows and probably had a triumphant expression on my face. “Now it’s time to play the game my way. Vick, can you find the fly attached to this joystick and take it to wherever Kevin is? Maybe flick a light in the room or something if it’s on an outside wall?”

One blink of the flashlight.

“Is Ivy here, too?”

Two rapid blinks. I don’t know why that worried me, but it caused me to ask a stupid question about a ghost. “Is she okay?”

A series of rapid flashes didn’t make any sense to me. Maybe I needed to learn Morse code. It might be that Vicki didn’t understand the question or it was too complicated to answer. “Never mind. Not important right now. We’ll talk tomorrow. For now, find Kevin. ’Kay?”

One blink. And then the temperature returned to normal.

Jones was shaking his head silently, disbelief plain on his face. It made me shrug and comment, “Hey, you’re a mage, he’s a vampire, and I’m vampire-siren-human. Why not ask a ghost to help free a werewolf?”

“Freaking unbelievable.”

Jones, Edgar, and I huddled around the tiny screen. At first there was no change. The fly hovered in the air, waiting for instructions. Then a wind caught it and began to propel it down the hallway. The night erupted with howls from inmates who could either see or sense Vicki’s presence. Guards, alerted, could find no cause. No sensors were tripped, no lights glared red, and a fly floating on a breeze was ignored.

Sights moved past too quickly to identify, though I glimpsed a couple of stairways and various doors that might or might not lead to the outside. But I knew the fly was storing the images for later viewing. I wasn’t sure how big the hard drive was, but I was betting there was at least a gig or two of memory.

Finally the fly came to rest in a room and we got our first look at Kevin. He was stripped naked and chained to a table. He wasn’t dead—his chest was moving—but his limp position and slack face told me he was unconscious. “Did he have those bruises and cuts when you went in?”

Jones shook his head grimly. “Those are all postcapture. Normally, they’d have healed by now.” Normally, werewolves heal quickly, almost as fast as vampires. Something was keeping Kevin from healing himself.

The light began to flick on and off in the room and we all raised our eyes to the wall in front of us to see a corresponding flicker on the third floor, at the far end of the building. “Edgar, can you carry a person in flight?”

He gave me a small smirk. “I think there was a children’s movie once that said it best. With the extra weight, I can’t fly. But I can fall with style.”

I couldn’t help but chuckle. I’d seen the same movie. “Jones, can we do any magic once we’re inside the barrier? Will my boomers or charms work in there?”

He thought for a long moment, tapping his index finger on the side of the fly remote. “The barrier’s goal is to prevent any magical tampering with the security of the facility—any magic that’s categorized as an attempt to effect an escape, for example. But there may be a chance to enhance the security system to our benefit.”

Ahhh. “So if we made the barrier stronger in certain places—”

He completed the sentence with a smile. “Like in front of a breach to the wall for example … then yes, it might divert power from the rest of the barrier.”

Suddenly the fly’s control screen flashed red. Apparently the fly had a feature Creede hadn’t mentioned. The word “Demon” was blinking in red at the bottom of the screen. A demonic presence had walked into the room. She had taken the form of a doctor’s aide or nurse if the uniform was any indication and was carrying a skill saw. If I could pick the least likely place for a construction saw to exist, it would be an infirmary. She stared at the unconscious werewolf with undisguised glee and then plugged the saw into an outlet.

Fuck a duck. Our deadline had just moved up.

Jones apparently agreed. “We’re going in. Now.”

Edgar was already moving toward the hole under the wall and I followed with as much mobility as my trapped-for-too-long legs would muster. Thankfully, Vicki isn’t just any random ghost. The lights went out in Kevin’s room as we raced the length of the building, which was a good block long. Edgar had just started to float up the three floors to the darkened window when a metal chair crashed against the bars, shattering the glass and showering it down on me and Jones.

Of course that set off the alarms, but it was too late to stop the party. I was still carrying the fly remote and glanced down to see Vicki create a wind that whipped the cord out of the wall and repeatedly slammed the plug against the nurse’s face. When I moved the fly so I could see Kevin, the nurse noticed it.

She plucked it out of the air and stared into the two fly eyes, which put her whole face on one side of the screen. While there was no sound pickup on the device—which I’d suggest to Creede as an improvement—there was no mistaking what she said: “Hello, Celia.”

I dropped the remote as I felt a stabbing sensation in my chest. Not long ago, I’d had an exorcism done to sever my ties to a particular demon. It had left scars on my chest that looked like claw rips. At first I’d thought the scars were burning, but the feeling went deeper … like something had grabbed my heart and squeezed. Not good.

I’d known there was the possibility that the same greater demon might be behind this, but running into him so soon after my death and resurrection by doctors and priests was terrifying.

Part of me wanted to freeze and scream, but training and common sense overrode the impulse. Guards were running in our direction. By sheer instinct I pulled a boomer from a vest pocket and tossed it while I scooped up the remote. The boomer went off with an effect that was closer to a party popper than the deafening, blinding incapacitation that I’d become accustomed to. Damn. But it wasn’t the only thing in my arsenal. I tossed a mudder. Full of concentrated water, it created a three-foot-square patch of thick mud. The guards stumbled and fell to their knees, the ground literally stolen out from under them.

As Edgar began to pry the bars away from the concrete window frame, Jones pulled the pin on a military grenade and threw it at the wall, simultaneously casting a spell that silenced the explosion.

The barrier reacted to the explosion by sealing the breach, taking power from everwhere else in the system. I could feel the pressure against my body lighten and I could move almost normally.

My next boomer worked perfectly and the guards were down for the momentary count. I looked at the screen to see the possessed nurse flying around the room. Let’s hear it for ghostly tornadoes. I needed to wake Kevin and get him ready to go. Because none of us were going to be able to carry him once he was on the ground—we were all going to be watching our collective backs.

“Cover me, Jones!” I called, but because of the silence spell no sound came out of my mouth. So I tried the siren trick I’d learned on short notice while on the Isle of Serenity. I stared at the back of his head as he pushed air around, making it impossible for the guards to get off a shot at any of us. Jones, I thought. He flinched and turned his head slightly. I’m going to try to contact Kevin. Keep them off me. I won’t be able to see them coming when I’m concentrating.

He didn’t respond either verbally or in my mind, but he shifted position so he was directly between me and the guards.

It was very odd to have people moving and fighting in utter silence. Even the tornado upstairs was soundless. Unfortunately, that meant I couldn’t contact Vicki. Because while she was doing a great job keeping guards out of the room, she was likewise preventing Edgar from getting in. Frustrated, he was now on the ground, helping Jones keep the guards off me.

I concentrated on Kevin. Beaten, battered, and unable to protect himself. Yes, he was an ass, and yes, I was furious at him. But that didn’t mean I’d let some demon hag cut off his limbs. Kevin. C’mon, buddy. Hear me. Wake up.

There was a smooth, blank wall of quiet inside his head. This wasn’t just from being knocked unconscious. This took drugs and lots of them. Kevin. Wake up. Amy needs you.

Thankfully a werewolf metabolism is an amazing thing. The more I called his name, the thinner the wall in his head got. I don’t know how I could feel it, but I could.

Kev—ahhh! It was the scream that finally woke him. I tend to react unfavorably to bullet wounds. My whole body spun around when the bullet entered my shoulder and I found myself on the ground staring up at a lot more people than had been there when I’d started to contact Kevin. The pain was intense and caused a reaction I should have expected. The vamp inside totally came out and I leapt on my nearest enemy before I could stop myself.

But that tiny bit of me that was still human refused to slam fangs into the man’s neck, despite the scent of blood that filled the air.… Instead, I grabbed the rifle and ripped it from his hands and used it like a club across his jaw. He went down like a rock and lay still. The glowing red eyes I’d glimpsed before he fell told me that the nurse wasn’t the only possessed person here. I slid my blackened knife from its sheath and laid the flat of the blade on the man’s chest. Even unconscious, he screamed—silently. Hopefully I had just sent the demon back to hell where it belonged.

Sound returned just then and my ears were assaulted by screams, shouts, sirens, and gunfire. Louder than all that was a howl of pure rage and pain from above. As I put the knife back in the sheath, I looked up to see Kevin at the window, his hair whipping from Vicki’s storm. The guards looked up also and aimed their weapons in his direction.

No. They would not shoot him. That I could prevent. I leapt into the nearest guard just in time. The guard’s shot went into the cinder block a foot away from Kevin.

We went down in a tangle of limbs that made my shoulder erupt into intense pain. I struggled to keep from screaming a second time. Edgar jumped on the guard directly to my left before he could pull the trigger. He perched on the man like a spider, holding down each limb, hissing, fangs bared. I turned away just as Edgar’s head thrust downward and the man screamed.

A different movement caught my eye. Kevin had decided not to stick around long enough for anyone to get off another shot. He’d jumped from the window. A human might break his legs, hitting the ground from three stories up. But Kevin just landed in a crouch, his face contorted into a snarl of fury.

A hand grabbed my wrist and pulled. It was my bad arm, so I hissed in pain and reacted, my fist sizzling toward whoever was attached to the hand. Jones is nimble; I’ll give him that. He shifted his head so that my fist sailed past his ear.

“Time to go.” He raised his other hand and his eyes blazed with power.

Air pressed against my head until I thought it would explode, and then the world dissolved to white.