Desperate Measures,
Part 2:
Summoning
Thought for the day: Knowledge is power. Conceal it well.
A Cinema in St. Petersburg, Russia
The cinema was fairly quite tonight, several of the newest blockbusters were screening while some of the smaller screening rooms were following the manager's idea to show old classic horror movies.
In one of these particular smaller screening rooms an old "Hammer" horror film about vampires was being showcased.
It is this room that interests us.
There were fourteen people and a steward, watching Christopher Lee, dressed as Count Dracula, battle it out with Peter Cushing playing his archenemy, Abraham Van Helsing.
It was at the dramatic climax of the film where Cushing and Lee were having their final showdown. Fighting wildly in the main hall, before Cushing jumped on the dining table, ran across it and leapt onto the curtains, tearing them down and pouring sunlight into the room.
As Christopher Lee began screaming and disintegrating due to the sunlight, the room was filled with riotous laughter.
The audience politely waited for several seconds for it to subside, but when it didn't the steward, a tall, plump boy in his teens with wiry brown hair walked up to the row where it came from.
"Excuse me sir?"
The man he was addressing looked up at him with ancient, cloud-grey eyes.
"Yes?"
The boy flinched from the man's stare before replying with weak force.
"No talking or laughing during the show."
"Really?" asked the man. "And.just who is it my young, little, plump friend.that is going to enforce this rule?"
"I.I.I am," replied the boy nervously. The stare this gentleman was giving him was unnerving.
It made him feel almost as if he was a piece of food or something being assessed by a chef.
The gentleman smiled pleasantly, his eyes roving up and down the steward in an almost hungry manner. "Just you?"
"Well.yes," said the boy, "it's sort of a slow night so most of the others got the night off."
"This is your first time working here isn't it?" asked the man curiously.
"Well.yes."
"Well I guess I better not make any trouble for you then," said the man as he rose. "You best escort me to the door to make sure I don't sneak into any films on the way out."
"Okay," said the boy steward, clearly relieved. "Follow me please."
The man rose, towering over the young steward, who led him out into the hall and then out through the ornate double doors that served as the entrance.
"Did you know, my young friend, that before the Revolutions this place was an Imperial owned grand hotel?"
"Uhh.no, I didn't."
"Those were the days," said the man, his voice taking on a hint of nostalgia as he followed the boy out. "The days of the Tsars." He grinned he looked around the deserted hall. "So, where is everyone?"
"This is the last showing tonight," replied the boy.
"So no one else is around in this part of the cinema?"
"No.why?"
The man didn't answer in the way the boy steward expected. Instead of a friendly verbal response he grabbed hold of the boy, wrapping one powerful arm around his waist, pinning in his arms to his side, while at the same time bringing out a cloth, moist with chloroform, from his heavy, fur-lined brown greatcoat and covered the boy's nose and mouth with it.
The young steward started struggling, trying to yell for help but his assailant held him fast with inhuman strength, a hellish grin forming across his face as he lent his head forward to whisper into the boy's ear.
"You know why I was laughing in there?"
The boy continued to struggle weakly, his strength deserting him as the chloroform started taking effect.
"I was laughing in there, because, my little friend, Hollywood really screws up what it takes to kill my kind." He grinned, licking a pair of canine teeth that grew in his elastic-like mouth as he continued. "We are, in fact, a lot harder to kill than with a bit of odd sunlight."
He looked at the side of the boy's head, noting that he had stopped struggling and was now quite limp in his hands. He pocketed the cloth and hefted the heavy boy over his shoulder with ease, before walking to the rear of the near deserted cinema to a fire exit who's alarm he had disabled before going in for a show. When outside in the snow covered side exit, he walked over to a nearby van, painted matt green, opened the rear door and flung the unconscious boy inside before getting in himself.
Once inside he produced a small two-sided knife from his coat and cut the boy's hand. He then held it up to his lips and licked some of the blood flowing from the wound, smacking his lips like a connoisseur would test fine wine.
"Excellent."
He then opened the boy's white shirt and red waistcoat, examining his plump, pale torso carefully with his hands before removing his trousers and looking at his lower regions.
An evil smile formed across his lips.
"It looks to me," he said slowly to the naked, unconscious boy lying prone before him. "That you shall be satisfying me in more than one way my little friend."
That said, Gregor Zaitsev bound and gagged his latest victim, before getting in the front of his van to drive to where the second weapon of Lucifer was stored.
A realm of thought and pain
Screams echoed through the darkened halls as Malibu's entire body became enveloped in electricity. The burning, mind-numbing pain was all he knew for several minutes before it was cut off suddenly.
He slumped back onto the table he had been strapped to, his breathing heavy and laboured.
Brooklyn had grown weary of the graveyard he had been torturing him in, and so had moved location to some torture chamber, whether this was a real place or one Brooklyn dreamed up the clone wasn't sure.
A crimson hand gently lifted his head up, going under his beak and running taloned fingers up and down it in an almost affectionate manner.
"How ya holding up Mal?" asked Brooklyn in an almost cheery voice. "Ready to tell me what I want to know?"
Mal open his eyes slowly, barely into slits.
He was strapped to an operating table, with a fulcrum underneath that allowed the table to be swivelled into vertical or horizontal positions, his hands clamped to his sides. His right shoulder was bleeding profusely from the deep gashes Brooklyn had sliced into it while the ones across his belly and right cheek had slowed their bleeding slightly. Most of his body was covered in bruises from when Brooklyn had taken an iron rod and brass knuckles to him, which had also resulted in at least three cracked, if not broken ribs.
Brooklyn had been complaining bitterly of how the clone's armoured body glove was absorbing just too much damage and had removed it with a snap of his fingers, along with the grey T-shirt he had been wearing underneath, leaving him with just a pair of grey cotton shorts.
He had lost so much blood that he could barely move. He'd blacked out twice already from blood loss and damage but Brooklyn revived him shocks and smelling salts.
"Are you ready to talk now?" Brooklyn repeated.
"N.never," whispered the clone weakly.
"Oh come on!" yelled Brooklyn. "If you don't answer my questions right this minute then I'm gonna make you wish you were never created in a test tube." He stalked over to a stand and pulled a curled up whip from a hanger on the steel burgundy wall before turning back to face his clone. "Let's go over his again shall we? How much does Demona know about our mutual situation?"
Mal closed his eyes and braced himself for the pain to come.
"HOW MUCH DOES SHE KNOW?"
"I don't know what you're talking about."
Brooklyn roared before took a firm grip of the whip's handle as he brought it up and snapped it down quickly. Mal groaned through his teeth when the end of the whip hit him in the face, above his left eye ridge, creating a stinging pain as a fresh cut opened there and began to bleed over his eye.
"I have a source that tells me that Demona and the whole clan, minus the old twit and Broadway's hoar are now with you," stated Brooklyn as he glared at Mal in total disgust. "There is also a woman who seems to have a great like of firearms with black hair with you now. Who is she?"
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Fine. Don't say I didn't warn you," muttered Brooklyn. He left the room quickly, leaving the clone to his own thoughts.
He returned a moment later with a heavy stainless steel bucket, carrying it with a wet cloth wrapped around his hand, grinning horribly. He set it down in front of Malibu so he could see inside.
"Oh my God."
The bucket was filled almost to the brim with burning hot coals. He could feel the blistering heat from where he was strapped. Some of them almost white hot.
"Now," said Brooklyn as he picked up a pair of iron tongs. "I'm fairly certain I don't have to tell you what's going to happen if you fob me off anymore."
"Don't do this Brooklyn," pleaded Mal. "We're friends for Christ's sake!"
"No. We're not."
"Yes we are!" yelled Malibu. "We've known each other-"
"Know?" yelled the crimson gargoyle, cutting his clone off. "What the fuck do you know about me? Huh? Nothing! The only crap that you know about me is the shit I told you about!" He picked up one of the hotter looking coals with the tongs and pressed it against one of the gashes he had made on Mal's belly.
Malibu actually stared at the flesh around his gut blister and sizzle for a full second before the pain overwhelmed him.
He threw his head back and screamed. The pain was mind numbing.
"THAT'S IT!" roared Brooklyn. "SCREAM ALLL YOU WANT! NOBODY CAN HEAR YOU!" He started laughing over his friend's screams as he slowly dragged the hot coal up along the cut, cauterising the wound and stopping the flow of blood while his friend screamed until he was hoarse.
He pulled the coal away and Malibu slumped on the table. The agony he felt around his stomach was indescribable while his lungs felt like they were going to collapse. His breathing was shallow, his eyes barely opened to slits.
Brooklyn's smiled increased when he saw the tears.
"Are you crying bro?" he asked, voice laced with sadist amusement as he lifted Mal's head up to examine his face. He slapped him hard across the face when Mal didn't answer. "ARE YOU CRYING?" When he still didn't answer Brooklyn picked up a fresh coal in the tong and pressed it against another of the wounds on the clone's stomach.
Mal screamed hoarsely, tears streaming down his face from the agony as Brooklyn grabbed him by the hair and started slamming the back of his head into the steel table with one hand while pressing the white hot coal on the tongs hard against his belly.
"THAT'S IT! THAT'S IT! CRY YOU WEAK LITTLE FUCKER! NO ONE CAN HEAR YOU!" laughed Brooklyn. "JEZEBEL AND FANG AIN'T GONNA SAVE YOUR SORRY ASS SO GO AHEAD AND CRY!"
Mal's chest heaved as more tears streamed down his face while his lungs burned and threatened to give out on him.
Brooklyn gave him a look of complete disgust and threw the tongs away. "You weak, pitiful fuck. You're a disgrace to our kind. You're a disgrace to my blood. You taint the Prince's Earth just by breathing." He walked up to a lever built into the side of the table and pulled it. The table Malibu was strapped to began to shift into a horizontal position. When it was fixed like this Brooklyn glanced over at the bucket of hot coals. It began to levitate in the air, moving forward as it rose until it landed again in the gap between Malibu's bare legs.
The clone didn't register the pain caused by the blistering heat between his ankles simply because his stomach, chest and the back of his head were complaining much more loudly for him to notice it.
"Are you holding out cause you think somebody's gonna come and save you?" asked Brooklyn. "Is that it?" He laughed. "No one knows what happening Mal. I assure you." He bent down until his face was several inches from the tear- streaked face of his former friend. "They can't even see what's happening to you."
"What.what are you.talking about?" asked the clone, his voice weak, barely audible. "Someone's bound to notice what's happening to me."
"No they won't. And I'll tell you why."
Inside Demona's big armoured van
Fang finished his cigarette and tossed it out the open window in the front compartment of the huge, heavily armoured RV. He and Faith had talked for a little while before she had drifted off in her chair behind Jezebel, who was keeping her eyes firmly on the road ahead, driving as fast as she could to Demona's residence in the South of Germany.
His sensitive nose registered a strange smell coming from the back of the vehicle where the stairs were and where Malibu was sleeping on the couch.
He turned his head to look into the back, yawning as he did so. The scent was quite exotic, but not unpleasant, it was strong and sharp though, very strong in fact.
He glanced over at his best friend and smiled.
Mal had stopped stirring and was sleeping peacefully the couch now, with Faith's leather jacket over him as a blanket. There was even a tiny smile lingering on his face.
-Thank heaven he's feeling better.- Thought Fang silently to himself. -He really didn't need to see all that crap in Sudeny.-
His thoughts drifted back to the odd smell of spices.
-What the Hell is that?-
He looked around the room from where he sat for a moment, thinking. He'd smelt it before somewhere, some time ago, but he couldn't remember for the life of him where and when that was.
-Maybe it's a bottle of perfume or something that Faith brought. For formal occasions or something.-
Apparently she had to do a lot of undercover work at times, infiltrating the homes of the rich and corrupt, usually as a party guest or as "hired furniture".
He considered waking his ex-fiancée to ask her if that smell was coming from a cracked bottle of perfume she brought or something but decided against it when he looked back in her direction. Her chest was rising slowly as she sat with her head resting against the tall back of her chair. She looked very peaceful and serene in her sleep.
But she could be violently cranky when somebody was stupid enough to disturb her in her sleep.
Fang cast a glance back at Mal's peaceful, sleeping form.
-Maybe I should wake him now?-
He shook his head at the thought and smiled. -Nah.he needs his rest. We'll be at this place of Demona's in half an hour or so anyway. I'll wake him then.-
He turned around in his chair and rested his head against it, trying to get some sleep.
Derek's older sister, Elisa Maza, a detective working in New York, had been contacted to get certain "documents" that Brooklyn may have used to make notes while translating the Malus Codicium and bring them to Demona's estate in Germany. They had yet to hear from her yet so Fang assumed she was still poking her nose around the estate Macbeth had left him, Malibu and Brooklyn after his death.
-That bitch better not be looking through my stuff,- he thought bitterly. He'd met Detective Maza on a number of occasions. He really didn't like her at all. She'd even arrested him once, although he doubted she'd remember it. He was on his way to meet with a client of his hateful, cheap, overweight; loudmouthed, evil; son-of-a-bitch boss and she'd given him a parking ticket. She was still a rookie and he was a human then and he'd been daft enough then to tell her exactly where she could shove her ticket and before he knew it he was spending the night as a guest of the city.
"Damn Mazas," he grumbled under his breath, crossing his arms and trying to get comfortable in one of the four swivel chairs in the front. "They're all a bunch of hardasses."
As he finally drifted off into sleep, the daemon Thzul'gzhu'vsra'kotllz watched him.
~That was close.~
It chuckled to itself at the stupidity of munades such as the cougar creature.
~Fools like that really have no idea just what they are dealing with.~
It monitored the illusion it had created around the pale green gargoyle that looked uncannily like the Anointed.
~Must be the Master's brother or something.~
When it became obvious that this fool wasn't going to co-operate with the Master's wishes he had instructed the daemon to create a visual and aural illusion around the stupid gargoyle so nobody would notice that he was slowly being tortured to death for information.
The only sign that anything might be going on was the trademark smell of anything related to the daemon, but from what Thzul'gzhu'vsra'kotllz had just witnessed with the cougar creature, some of them had obviously no idea just what the Master was capable of, or even had any sort of knowledge of Daemonology.
It turned its attention back to the little interrogation process, its many mouths grinning at the suffering the Master was rendering on the green gargoyle.
Back in the mind of the Tainted
"So," began Brooklyn, his tone changing to something a little more friendly. "It should be obvious to you now that you'll be broken sooner or later so you might as well come out and answer my questions."
Mal looked away the red gargoyle's cocky stare, trying compose himself while mentally chastising himself for momentarily losing control.
Brooklyn knew now he could break him. He'd shown him weakness.
Maybe he could use that to his advantage.
"Fuck you.Brook," he whispered into his interrogator's ear.
Brooklyn took a step back from his clone, looking quite unimpressed. "Fine."
He walked over to the bucket of hot coals sitting on the foot of the table, raising his hands before him as he did so. The bucket levitated in the air, before altering its position slightly until it hovered over the clone's right foot.
"This is your last chance forgery," said Brooklyn coldly, not even looking in his friend's direction. "Tell me about Demona, tell me about that woman in black."
It began to tilt mid-air as Malibu stared at it in horror.
It tilted until a coal fell, hitting the steel table, missing his leg by barely an inch, before bouncing off the steel table.
"Okay! Okay!" yelled Mal desperately. "She's an Inquisitor!"
"Ah, finally," said Brooklyn, who smiled as the bucket assumed a vertical position yet again. "Do tell."
"Her name's Faith Thompson," said the clone quickly. "She used to go out with Fang!"
"Interesting, but a little off topic. What about the Inquisition huh? Has she been in contact with them recently?"
"Yes," lied Mal, "she called them as soon as we left Sudeny."
Brooklyn frowned. "What did she tell them?"
"Everything."
"Define, 'Everything."
"She told them about the book, the carnage in the town, what you look like, as both a human and a gargoyle, the works."
This seemed to alarm the crimson gargoyle considerably; he turned his back on his captive and began to pace along the chamber for several minutes, his face a mask of concentration as he took this information in.
"Hmm.and Demona?"
"Demona?"
"Yes! Demona! The bitch that ruined my life!"
"What about her?"
Mal screamed as a single piece of hot coal flew from the bucket and pressed itself, hard against his thigh. Brooklyn waited patiently until he was sure that the clone could actually hear his flesh sizzle, smell the stench of his own burning flesh, and long enough that it would leave a permanent scar, stone sleep or not, before the coal removed itself and clattered along the floor.
"How much does she know?" he asked, after Mal had stopped screaming.
The pale green gargoyle slumped against the table, his breath quick as he gritted his teeth against the pain.
He had to make this believable.
"She.she knows," he moaned.
"Yeah, she knows lots of things Mal, but what I want to know is if she know anything of our mutual situation."
"Jezebel told her everything."
Brooklyn nodded, his face impassive. He tapped his claws on the steel table for a brief period before he looked down at his clone and smiled, quite an unnerving sight.
"You're a terrible liar my friend."
He raised his hand in a careless gesture and the levitating bucket tipped.
Beyond time and Space
"Oh my God," muttered Macbeth, as he and Death watched Malibu's reaction to the bucket of hot coals.
He turned his face away from the image that the Ultimate Reality had conjured for them to watch the progress of Jezebel and the other's progress.
But the sounds of the torture, the crackling of fire and the sizzling of flesh.
The screams.
They all hounded after him, clawing at his sanity.
I HAVE BEEN INFORMED, stated Death. THAT YOU HAVE BEEN GIVEN THE OPTION OF INTERVENEING.
The ancient king looked up at Death, his eyes suddenly hopeful, and quite desperate.
"Now! Let me go now!" he screamed. "Let me help him!"
The tall, blacked robed figure of the Grim Reaper looked, at Macbeth solemnly, the twin blue fireballs that rested in the sockets of his skull, which acted at his eyes, boring into him.
YOU CAN ONLY INTERVENE ONCE, he said. ARE YOU SURE NOW IS THE BEST TIME?
Macbeth's jaw dropped as he stared at the black figure. "What the Hell do you mean is this the best time?" he screamed, while pointing at the hovering image of Malibu, his left leg being burned beyond repair. The clone screamed hoarsely as he writhed on the table, before he mercifully blacked out.
Brooklyn was staring balefully at him before he swivelled the table back into its original vertical position, the burning coals clattering to the floor as he muttered something incomprehensible.
Death watched the image, his polished white skull unreadable.
HOW DO YOU WISH TO INTERVENE?
"What?"
IF YOU TRY AND STOP BROOKLYN THERE THEN HE WILL TEAR YOU APART, said Death.
"Then how can I intervene to stop this?" asked Macbeth desperately. It looked like Brooklyn was preparing something else for the clone.
Death seemed to think for a moment. THERE IS ANOTHER WHO SLEEPS IN DEMONA'S RV.
"The Inquisitor," muttered Macbeth in realisation.
YES, said Death quickly. YOU CAN CONTACT HER. THE DAEMON CREATING THE ILLUSION AROUND MALIBU IS THE KEY. WITHOUT IT'S POWER BROOKLYN COULD NOT ATTEMPT ANYTHING LIKE THIS. TELL HER TO BREAK THE LINK, IT WILL DRIVE BROOKLYN OUT AND GIVE HIM A SEVERE MIGRAIN IN THE PROCESS.
"Will save it save Malibu?"
IT SHOULD, IF YOU MOVE QUICKLY, explained Death, turning to fully face the King.
NOW, LOOK INTO MY EYES AND SEE.
Macbeth did so, looking deep into the blue suns of Death's skull. They had pupils he realised, tiny centres of black in the burning blue chaos.
Eyes in the storm.
He looked into the darkness of these eyes, and found himself looking into infinity.
He could see stars, nebula, the galaxy, speeding past his gaze at such speed they were but blurs, but he saw past them, to something else, to the dreams of the woman who could save Malibu's life.
HE MUST SURVIVE, he heard Death saying to him. HE IS THE ONLY HOPE BROOKLYN HAS FOR SALVATION.
Macbeth heard him, aware of a sudden feeling of movement all around him. The feeling grew more and more intense, no longer was he watching the universe and all creation speed past him, he was moving now as well.
"I failed too many over the years," he whispered to himself. "I won't fail now."
*****
Faith stirred, restlessly in her sleep. She rarely ever dreamed, but she did now.
She was walking through an intensely beautiful garden, her nose assaulted with the scents of a thousand different flowers as the sun shown down from a cloudless, cobalt blue sky.
She could see a clump of weeping willows near a stream twenty or so yards off. The sound of water flowing rapidly over uneven stones, splashing occasionally, was always a comforting sound to her. She breathed in a deep sigh of contentment.
All it lacked was Peter, or Fang, as he liked to call himself now.
She was still angry with him, but it subsided a little with every passing moment they were near each other.
He hadn't been the only one to think about what they each had, and lost through a moment of terror on Peter's part.
Rather loud shouting suddenly interrupted her line of thought.
"INQUISITOR THOMPSON!"
She turned her head in the direction of the wild shouting, and saw a man dressed in black running towards her quickly.
He looked to be in his mid fifties, with grey hair cut short with a connecting beard and moustache, he had black body armour on over a black jumper, heavy black combat boots and black cargo pants, while a black leather greatcoat with a red silk interior flapped around over this as he rushed quickly towards her.
"Inquisitor Thompson!" yelled the man. His voice had an authorative air with a light Scottish accent. "You must wake up at once!"
Faith watched the man carefully as he approached.
"Who the Hell are you?" she asked venomously. "I don't dream that often. And I'm enjoying this one, so why the Hell should I wake up?"
"My name is Macbeth," said the man quickly, and he explained everything that was happening while she slept.
"Oh God," said Faith, shocked. "How do I stop this?"
"Sever the link the daemon has with Brooklyn. If you drive it off Malibu then it will cut off Brooklyn's hold over him.and hopefully incapacitate him in the process." Explained Macbeth. "Jezebel and Demona should be able to do that easily."
"I understand," replied Faith. "But, how do I wake up?"
"Simple," replied Macbeth, grabbing her arm, pinching her with his fingers. "Good luck. And give Jezebel and the lads my regards."
*****
Fang had fallen asleep for about twenty seconds before he woke again. His wings were making his seat just too difficult to sit in comfortably, never mind get some shuteye.
He looked over at Faith again, noticing her legs for the first time.
Really noticing her legs.
They were quite long, even in the unflattering black armoured body glove she was wearing he could see just how magnificently well built they were. Excellent calves, strong knees, powerful hips.
His animal instincts getting the better of him momentarily, he started picturing just what he could do with those legs. He lent closer to smell her perfume, hoping Jezebel wouldn't turn her head around from her watching the road and see him standing slightly, leaning towards the gorgeous woman sitting behind her.
His sensitive nose, ignoring the smell of spices in the rear, sniffed several times in her direction.
He raised his eyebrows in surprise.
She wasn't wearing perfume. In fact, he couldn't even smell any hair conditioner. He leant a little closer; his face barely inches from hers now.
He sniffed again, and was rewarded with a whiff of carbolic soap, nothing overtly fancy, just simple, plain, carbolic soap. Her skin, on closer inspection, looked very well scrubbed, clean, and slightly rough.
An image of her flashed in his head, briefly, for only an instant.
It was of her in the bath.
It wasn't actually an erotic image, he couldn't see anything significant.
The image basically consisted of her, scrubbing herself roughly with a scrubbing brush. That was it, nothing else. She had her knees against her chest while she scrubbed her shins quickly and efficiently while the harsh smell of carbolic soap hung in the air.
Despite the lack of anything he would usually drool over, Fang was suddenly desperately wishing he had somewhere private to go for a few minutes.
Unfortunately for him his desires were killed when Faith woke, sat up straight, head butting him in the process, and screamed "STOP THIS THING RIGHT NOW!" at the top of her voice.
*****
As Jezebel slammed on the brakes, a confused look on her face, Faith rose and rushed to the back, not even noticing the bruise on her head or her dazed and moaning ex-fiancée sprawling on the floor, or even the sound of startled yelping and crashes upstairs.
No sooner was she out of the driver's compartment than she smelled it.
Spices, exotic, pleasant and very strong.
"Daemon evil," she muttered to herself, enraged. "DEMONA! JEZEBEL!"
Jezebel was beside her an instant later, the RV had almost lost control but she skidded it into a side lane of the motorway they were travelling on.
She sniffed the air curiously as she stepped over Fang, who was now swearing very imaginatively.
"What's that smell?" she asked Faith.
"The smell of the Daemon!" yelled Demona, Brooklyn's staff in hand as she descended the stairs and stopped dead in her tracks when she smelt the air on the ground floor of her RV. The others appeared after her a few seconds later.
"What the heck's all the yelling about?" asked Lex, rubbing his head angrily.
"Malibu's under attack!" yelled Faith, ripping a vile of holy water from a pocket in her body glove, flipping the cap and tossing the contents over the sleeping clone.
The others collectively gasped when the image of the clone sleeping peacefully vanished, replaced with him writhing in agony, his face bleeding, pinned down by a nightmare given physical form.
It hissed in agony from the water, before it glared at the group through many, many eyes.
"MAL!" roared Fang desperately. "GET THE HELL AWAY FROM HIM YOU BASTARD!" He was on his feet in an instant, and tried to run to his friend but Faith grabbed him roughly to force him back.
"Peter you can't help him!" she yelled in his ear as he struggled to get free of her.
"Let me go! Mal!"
"You can't help him dammit!" she screamed. "Let Jezebel and Demona handle this! You'll only get in the way!"
Fang looked from her to Malibu, he looked terrified.
"He'll be okay," she whispered soothingly as Demona and started yelling something in Latin, the metal staff in her hand glowing flame red, like her hair.
The daemon hissed dangerously at her before Jezebel sent a small spray of amber coloured ball lightning at it.
It writhed from the blast, but held the clone down firmly.
~Master!~ it yelled. ~We are discovered!~
Demona pointed the raven end of the staff at the daemon, screaming the last command word as she did so. The glowing red light concentrated around the ornate metal raven, its wings outstretched, sitting on top of the magnificent weapon.
The air filled the smell of o-zone as a streak of red light came from the staff, as it buckled in Demona's hands, striking the daemon in the head.
The daemon thrashed around on the couch, swearing in its unholy language at them as Demona struck it again.
Jezebel shut her eyes and began to chant something under her breath.
Faith drew her long sword, it's blade etched from end to end in holy sigils as she began to recite a prayer of banishment. The daemon hissed at her as she approached it, her sword in a two handed grip.
She swung in an upward arc, her recitation becoming a scream as her blade, blessed six hundred and sixty six times, by a Bishop by the name of Alessandro Sanchez a few years ago, at the daemon.
The daemon hissed in terror and vanished before the blade could touch it.
*****
Brooklyn smiled as Malibu stirred and woke from unconsciousness. The clone was dazed, and looked like he was going to throw up.
His leg had been ruined from the knee down, a lot of the skin had been burned off, and puss and other bodily fluids was running over the flesh, some actually dripping from the foot onto the floor, forming a small, clear yellow puddle.
He pulled the coals away before any nerve endings could be fried beyond repair, simply because all he had to do now was apply a lot of salt, maybe a few weak acids or strong alkalises, and the clone would be telling him anything he wanted.
~Master! We are discovered!~
The voice seemed to echo around the room, coming from all around them.
"Damn," muttered Brooklyn before he turned his attention back to the clone. He shrugged and drew one of his Desert Eagle .50 calibre pistols from their shoulder holsters and smiled apologetically at his clone. "Sorry Mal. This was fun and all but I'm afraid I have to cut our little conversation short."
He raised the high calibre pistol and pointed it at the clone's face, aiming for between his eyes. "Goodbye Mal."
A hand grabbed him from behind and spun him around roughly before he could pull the trigger. Brooklyn got the breath knocked out of him, as the barrel of pump action shotgun was jammed hard against his flat belly.
He looked up at the newcomer in shock.
"Jezebel?"
The witch said nothing, she just pulled the trigger.
Brooklyn's stomach collapsed on itself as the buckshot round exploded from the barrel, barely an instant later there was an explosion of blood, chunks of flesh, bone fragments, and bits of black leather and cloth coming out from his back.
The gargoyle's eyes rolled in their sockets before he collapsed, vanishing before his corpse even hit the ground.
The witch quickly ran over to the bound clone, dropping her shotgun as she did so.
She lifted his head up gently and looked into his tired grey eyes.
"Jezebel?" asked Mal, his voice barely audible.
She nodded before she looked at the state he was in. "My God."
She looked into his eyes again. "Wake up Mal, you must wake up."
The clone's head drooped, he felt so tired.
Jezebel didn't ask him again.
"Forgive me," she muttered before she slapped him across the face. "NOW WAKE UP!"
*****
Demona grabbed her stomach and screamed before she crumpled to the floor. Fang, not noticing this, pushed through the others in the RV roughly, yelling his best friend's name as he knelt beside him.
"Mal? Mal? Say something!"
The clone stirred on the couch, his head was bleeding from several places as Fang gently lifted his head up.
He opened his eyes and smiled weakly. "What took so long?" He moaned in agony. "Oh God my foot."
Fang looked in the direction of his friend's bare feet.
"Jesus Christ."
"Get that body glove off," yelled Jezebel. "He's bleeding from about a dozen places. I'll get us to Demona's estate as fast as I can. We can tend to his wounds there."
With that she vanished back into the driver's compartment and slammed her foot back on the accelerator. The RV lurched as it began to move and pick up speed.
It was only then Fang noticed Demona was lying on the ground, clutching her stomach, with Goliath, Broadway and Lexington beside her, seeing if she was okay.
"What happened?" asked Broadway worriedly.
"I.I don't know," confessed Demona as she lent on Goliath as she stood. "I don't understand it. I shouldn't have felt anything."
She trailed off as she looked at Fang, who quickly avoided her gaze.
Her face hardened. "The witch didn't tell me something." She said while Lex and Broadway came over to help Faith take Malibu's body glove off.
There were several shocked gasps and a fair bit of swearing as they say the damage done and Demona decided to drop it for now when she saw the look on Fang's face at how badly hurt his friend was.
The hotel in Waldenburg, Poland
"That.damned.bitch."
Blood soaked the carpet as Brooklyn crawled along the floor, his clothes totally drenched in his own blood. He coughed violently as he stopped and rolled on his back.
The room was spinning quite quickly.
~Master? Are you all right?~
Brooklyn actually laughed at that, a rather sick, gurgling sound rather than an actual laugh came from his lips though.
"What a fucking question!"
He moaned in pain in-between coughs. "Why the fuck does she always aim for the stomach? Doesn't she realise just how much that fucking hurts?"
~I dare say that's why she aims there.~ said Thzul'gzhu'vsra'kotllz.
Brooklyn coughed some more before he moaned even louder.
"Great! Just fucking great!"
~What is it Master?~
"I've got a fucking migraine coming," roared Brooklyn.
~It could be worse Master, she could have shot you in the head.~
"Shut up!"
Two and a half hours later, Demona's estate in Southern Germany
Fang sat near Malibu's bed and took a heavy sigh. His shoulders were drooped, arms resting on his thighs while his wings folded around him in a loose cloak. He had removed his black armoured body glove and had dawned a pair of sand coloured cargo pants and a black T-shirt that had been washed so many times that it had faded to an extremely dark shade of grey. He had passed the hour and a half since Demona and Jezebel had patched his friend up by sitting by his bedside, his eyes either looking at the clone's sleeping form or at the floor.
His weary emerald eyes rose from the floor to take another glance at his best friend.
Mal was sleeping in one of the guestrooms in Demona's mansion, in a rather elegant four-poster, the heavy linen blankets pulled up to his throat and tucked in. His chest rose and fell steadily now where it had previously risen and fallen erratically.
He had blacked out from blood loss in the RV after they had taken off his body glove, his T-shirt and shorts moist and red from the heavy gash in his belly. He had to be stripped and have the blood washed off him when they got him inside. His wounds had been bandaged, including the burns all along his right leg from the knee down.
He rubbed the bandage on his left arm. They both had the same blood type and it was the very least he could do.
Demona had assured him repeatedly that the burns on his leg and foot would heal after a week if he was allowed to use stone sleep and he didn't put any weight on it until then. The gashes on his shoulder and face would also heal. Stone sleep usually dealt with flesh wounds. However.
His three broken ribs would take about a week or more. And even though the cuts on his cheek would heal, they were quite deep, and that meant that there would be scars. The same went for the one gash on his stomach that Brooklyn hadn't cauterised. The other two, the ones that Brooklyn had burned would heal in two or three days, like his foot, and the scars they left would be very unpleasant to look at.
Fang put his palm gently on Mal's forehead, checking his temperature for the sixth time in the past ten minutes to make sure he wasn't developing a fever.
It was all right; Demona had assured him. Mal would heal eventually and the best thing he could do for him was to be there when he woke up.
But it wasn't all right. It could never be all right.
Brooklyn had tortured him. He had tortured him a few feet from where he was sitting and he didn't even know it was happening.
He had failed to protect Malibu in quite spectacular fashion. It made him sick to think about it, but his thoughts kept going back to what had happened.
He had been staring at Faith's legs. He had smelled that damn smell of daemons at least ten minutes before anybody else, and he had done nothing. He was too busy thinking with his dick to even consider it odd.
There was a mirror on the opposite side of the room from where he sat, a full length, brass framed 18th century mirror. He couldn't even bare to look at himself in it.
He stared at the floor again, at the finely woven, dark green rug under his Chippendale chair.
He felt movement under his left palm and realised that he still had his hand on Mal's forehead. A weak yawn followed.
"Fang?"
Fang looked up into Mal's face, a heavy, thick plaster covering his right cheek completely while several lighter cuts had simple, thin plasters across them. His grey eyes were bloodshot and looked very tired. He smiled weakly at the mutate.
"Hi," he whispered, his voice barely audible even to Fang's keen ears. He looked so pale.
"Hey," he managed to reply eventually. "How ya feeling buddy?"
"I.I'd be lying if I told you I've felt worse." Mal's smile strengthened a little. "You?"
-He's asking me how I feel? Christ.- "Oh me? Uhh.I'm great." -I just wanna kill myself for letting that bastard do this to you.-
Malibu looked at him a little uncertainly. "You sure?"
Fang nodded, taking his hand off his friend's forehead. "I was.I was just checking your temperature."
"How long have I been out of it?" yawned Mal.
"Just a couple of hours," answered Fang, trying to avoid looking into Malibu's eyes again. "You lost an awful lot of blood. Jezzy thinks you shouldn't try moving until you get your strength back up."
He was suddenly aware Mal was looking at the bandage on his arm.
"How'd this happen?" asked the clone rather quickly, moving his right arm out from under his blankets to check Fang's arm, but stopping halfway when the gash on his right shoulder stung him quite sharply. He gritted his teeth but a pitiful snarl escaped his lips none the less.
"Easy kid." Fang gently took his friend's arm and put it back under the blankets. "Nothing major, we just have the same blood type."
"You.you gave me blood?"
"Sure."
"Thank you."
Fang smiled weakly at Malibu, feeling unusually awkward. "Hell.no big deal kid.I mean you'd do the same for me. No big deal."
"Still.thanks."
An awkward silence prevailed in the room. Fang started his vigil on the floor again, while Malibu looked at him in silence.
-He's blaming himself,- thought Mal sadly. -He's wondering why I'm not angry with him.-
Fang could handle anger from people. Talon, Faith, Sevarius, Demona, his father. Apart from Faith he knew about all of them.
Fang's grandfather and grandmother had been refugees, former serfs from the Ukraine, fleeing the civil war that had ravaged the former Russian Empire after the October Revolution. They'd made over the border into Romania and on to a ship heading to America. They'd settled down in New Jersey, adopted new names and converted to Catholicism from their Eastern Orthodox religion so they'd fit in better. They were illegal immigrants.
Fang's father had been born into wedlock in 1938, killing his mother. He was his grandfather's only son. His grandfather never remarried.
His father had been nineteen when he met his future wife. They had dated for nearly two years and then they'd wed. Fang had never known his grandfather, he only ever knew him from pictures in old family albums and stories his dad had told him when he was sober. His mum and dad had moved away to a town twenty miles outside of Pittsburgh. Neither had attended college. Fang, or Peter as he was baptised, had been born in 1966, on the same day as his father had.
Things had been fine until Fang was five. His father was laid off from whatever job he had (Fang had an annoying habit not telling the whole story he had noted), steel probably, and hit the bottle. His mother had also been working part time then, leaving him with her sister, who had lived a few miles from them. She now began to take extra part time jobs, hoping his dad got himself together soon so that she could spend more time looking after their child.
He hadn't.
Fang was seven when he first saw his father beat his mother, but it was probably not the first time. She'd put sugar in his tea by accident and his father had beaten her black and blue across the face with his belt. She'd sent him away to her sister's that night. But she'd stayed where she was.
As he grew older he'd started to stay in his aunt's a lot more. His mother was trying to shield from his father's fall into alcohol and violence. But he had to come home sometimes. She was beaten, time and time again, as her husband got drunk from money he took off her. He never touched Fang though, which caused even more resentment in him.
When he was thirteen, his father had come back in a particularly nasty drunken stupor. He found his mother and proceeded to beat her with his belt. Fang had taken a poker for the fire and broke his father's jaw with it.
Then something happened that had stunned him.
When he went to help his mother up, she hit him. Hit him so hard that he was knocked to the ground. She then fell on her husband and hugged him, crying her eyes out. She had never, ever raised her hand to him before that. He sat staring at her, sitting on the floor, his mouth open, tears dripping down his reddened cheeks, as he realised the awful truth that his mother would never escape from the violence, and he had just made things an awful lot worse for her.
By the time the paramedics left the social workers were just arriving. He was moved around for a year and a half in the state before somebody was willing to take someone in who had started lashing out at anyone around him, screaming all sorts of terrible threats at his foster parents, breaking furniture, and beating the living daylights out of anybody who crossed his path in school.
Of all the peoples in the world, it was a pair of German immigrants who took in the grandson of a Ukrainian refugee. Dr. Frederick and Mina Khines.
They calmed him down in time for college.
-That's where Faith came into it I guess,- thought Mal. He looked at Fang again, remembering their conversations over the past few years, coming to a small epiphany as he did so. -That's why were so close,- he realised. -We're not just best friends.we're each other's councillors too.-
Straining a little, he slid his right arm out of the covers again, not really feeling much pain now, just a little stiffness, and placed his hand on Fang's left shoulder, squeezing it weakly.
Fang didn't look up from the ground, he looked miserable now, but he put his own right hand over Mal's, squeezing back before he eventually spoke.
"I'm sorry I didn't help you kid. I'm sorry I let this happen to you."
"It's okay, it's not your fault, you couldn't have known."
Fang still didn't look up at him, but Mal could feel him shaking. He closed his eyes tightly for a few minutes, his teeth gritted slightly and breathing deeply through his nose. When he opened his eyes again he had stopped shaking. He looked up into Malibu's face and smiled at him, squeezing his hand tightly.
"It won't happen again kid, ever. If anything ever happened to you.I'd.I'd never forgive myself."
Mal smiled back at him. "Thanks."
He raised his eyebrows suddenly. "Hasn't Elisa called yet?" He paused as he moved his legs under the sheets. "And where the Hell are my clothes?"
*****
Jezebel walked along the main hall of Demona's lavish mansion, wiping her fingers along furniture and tables, rather taken aback by the lack of efficiency of the staff.
She strode across the black and white checker tiled floor, where a grand pair of staircases with decorated rosewood railings would take her up to the first floor of the four-floor building.
The detective was quite late and hadn't called. She was beginning to wonder if she should have just taken a plane herself back to the estate and searched Brooklyn's study on her lonesome.
"Probably doesn't know what she's looking for," she muttered to herself.
There was a sudden crack of thunder outside followed immediately by a flash of lightning. It had started raining quite heavily again.
Jezebel started for the stairs to check to see if Malibu was awake and might be a little hungry or might want some of his clothes but stopped herself as her foot came onto the first step.
What if this detective Maza had found any notes Brooklyn may have made and then been waylaid somewhere between here and New York?
She thought back to the daemon that had almost murdered one of her cares under her very nose.
Was that the first time Brooklyn had used that little bastard? Or perhaps something just like it?
She began to hate herself for not just disposing of that damned book.
What if Detective Maza really was in trouble?
As she thought about this, there was another loud crash that echoed throughout the hall. It took her a second to realise it was one of the knockers on the huge oak double doors and not the storm.
One of Demona's servants, a tall, thin woman with neat brown hair that was probably dyed in her early sixties whom Jezebel had heard Demona address as "Frau Gauss", came out of a side door and headed to the main doors. She had a very severe looking face that seemed to suggest to Jezebel that she had been a teacher at one stage in her life. She wore one of those black and white numbers that are universally associated with maids.
Jezebel didn't like her, which was why she headed to the door as well; intent on meeting whoever it was with a smile instead of a look of distaste that she had given her when she had first entered.
She wondered fleetingly if she had ever been part of the Hitler Youth as a young girl and just where the devil Demona had met her as she out paced the maid and beat her to the door.
She opened it quickly, relishing in the upper class sneer that the good maid was probably giving her behind her back until she got a good look at who was standing outside in the rain.
"Oh my God."
*****
Demona walked around the circular room two storeys below ground level that she had occasionally used for the practice of magic and the finer points of combat with various weapons, frowning.
It would have to do.
She had an altar of granite in the very centre of the room, which itself was quite large with a very high ceiling.
Upon the altar lay.
She looked away from what lay on the altar. "It's necessary," she repeated to herself. "Necessary."
"Is it?" asked a voice from the other side of the room.
She looked around to see Goliath standing at the open double doors, frowning, his arms crossed. "Is it Demona?" He advanced on her slowly.
"I've told you before Goliath. This is the only option I have left."
"Are you positive?"
"Completely. I have tried absolutely everything else possible to track him. It's failed, all of it."
"And what makes you so certain this will work? You've never done it before."
"I'm the only person here that has had any experience with that damned book. I remember some of what I read, but not enough to try this without having any chance of success."
"And what if it goes wrong?" grumbled the lavender giant.
"That's why I'm here," said Faith as she entered the room.
Both gargoyles looked her over.
She was in her armoured body glove, her black hair sitting loosely around her shoulders. She wasn't wearing any of her guns or close combat weapons, nor her leather jacket.
Instead she was cradling a silver and black flamethrower in her hands. The tanks on her back were strapped firmly in place, while a large crucifix was shoved in her belt.
"Where did you get that?" rumbled Goliath as Faith strode calmly towards them. Faith smiled at him.
"I found it in one of Demona's rooms."
Goliath looked back at Demona, his mouth dropping slightly to ask her just what she thought she needed a flamethrower for, but the azure gargess was now looking away from him into one of the midnight blue walls, looking quite awkward and biting her lip.
"Don't worry Goliath," said Faith calmly. "If Demona screws this up then you'll be thankful I've got this." She patted it. "Fire cleanses all. After all."
Goliath looked between the both before turning his attention back to Faith. "Who were those gargoyles we found in Sudeny?"
Faith's smile dropped. "I was waiting for that," she said sadly. "The Inquisition has been using gargoyles as allies since the late 17th century."
"Yes. Before that you hunted us," said Demona coldly, not even looking at her.
Faith glared at Demona's back hatefully. "You are who I think you are, aren't you?"
Demona turned to face her, arms crossed over her chest, her face unreadable. "And who would that be?"
"Caeruleus Diabolus."
Goliath frowned, while Demona smiled at Faith in an almost nostalgic way.
"The Blue Devil." Finished Demona. "Yes human, that's who I used to be those in your order. To the Hunters I am called "The Demon"; different opponents always gave me different names. But the fate they faced when they fought me was always the same."
"You're responsible for the deaths of quite a few of our operatives over the centuries."
"Then why are you working with me and not trying to blow my head off?"
"I really don't want to. But I have no choice in this matter. You've seen what happened when we tried to take Brooklyn or whoever it is with him on."
"So you also think this is the only way?" asked Goliath.
Faith sighed. "I'm sorry to say I agree with Demona. I can't think of any other way of finding out where he is going." She rubbed her chin with a gloved hand. "And this won't be the first time one of our order has had involvement with Daemonology. There are actually those in our order who use Daemonic Power to fight the Darkness."
"And what becomes of them?" asked Goliath.
"Well.some have actually been fairly successful."
"Some?"
"Well.it's incredibly dangerous you see.the unlucky ones are usually driven insane and have to be put out of their misery, by other Inquisitors usually."
Goliath looked at Faith worriedly. "They're driven mad?"
"Well.the ones that don't die hideous deaths or have their souls destroyed when they try to create a daemonhost or miscast some complicated spell."
Goliath looked quickly back in Demona's direction. "And when were you planning to tell us this?"
"Goliath, I hadn't intended to have you present when I try and summon and bind a daemon," explained Demona quickly. "Only myself, Faith, Jezebel and Fang will be in here."
"Why you four?"
"Because," butted in Faith. "Physical weapons are about as useful against an incorporeal daemon as spitting is for knocking down very thick walls. If you were to put your hand in it then it would be burnt to a cinder by the energy."
Demona stepped in at this point. "The four of us can combat it if it gets loose during the ceremony. Jezebel and I can use sorcery, Fang can use his electrical blasts, and while Faith can use the flamethrower and any other tricks she may know."
Faith smiled at the lavender giant while looking him over in his loincloth. "Don't take this the wrong way nature boy, but the rest of you will just get in our way."
Goliath was about give off to the woman, when there was a polite cough coming from the doorway. The trio turned to see Jezebel standing before them, looking rather unsettled.
"Detective Maza is here. In the study." She looked at Goliath. "I'm afraid something happened when she was going through our estate."
Goliath's eye ridges rose while worry spread across his face. "What?"
"She was attacked and.maybe you better see for yourself."
*****
Elisa sipped the cup of tea Frau Gauss had offered her, the cup shaking slightly both from the cold outside, and from her previous experience.
"Elisa?"
The detective looked up into Broadway's worried face and smiled weakly at him. "Yeah Broadway?"
"What happened? Are you."
"I'm fine Broadway, really," said Elisa slowly. "I'm just tired. I've been travelling most of the day."
Broadway nodded in understanding, taking a seat opposite the couch Elisa was sitting on, trying not to look at her, while trying to make it look like he wasn't deliberately avoiding looking at her.
Elisa appreciated the effort and smiled slightly.
There was fast, hard steps echoing on the tiled floor outside.
"ELISA! ELISA!"
The doors flew open as Goliath rushed into the room, almost splintering the doors in his haste. "ELISA!"
He stopped dead in his tracks when he saw his love. "Oh my God." His face sank as he slowly walked over to her. "What.what happened to you?"
Elisa placed the cup of tea on the table next to the couch, stood up and hugged Goliath. "It's nothing. I'm okay big guy, I'll be okay."
The huge lavender gargoyle traced his hand along her scarred face. "How did this happen?"
Elisa looked up into his dark eyes, and explained everything.
A few hours ago, Manhattan
The first crow that smashed through the glass was nearly decapitated when Owen shot it in the head at point blank range.
"Get out of the car!"
Swearing a blue streak, Talon kicked the door on his side, knocking it completely off its hinges and sending it skidding along the ground as crows mobbed him.
"Fuck!"
He started batting them away with his arms and wings, his fists glowing brightly with electrical energy, detonating any bird that touched them.
As Elisa tried her door, her head spinning, she felt the notes Owen had collected and put in a file shoved roughly against her chest.
"Get those to the Demona!" yelled Owen quickly, shoving her out of her door and following her closely. "Use the sewers! Make your way to the airport as fast as you can!"
The was the sound of metal being torn as Claw removed his door and leapt out of Elisa's ruined car. The crackling of electricity quickly followed this sound before the smell of charred flesh and burnt feathers filled the air.
Tucking the file tightly under her arm, Elisa quickly started scanning the road for an entrance to the sewers, drawing her Beretta as she did so.
A crow came at her, cawing wildly, its beady eyes a bright shade of red.
She fired her pistol, the 9mm round smashing through its rib cage and exploding out its back. It crashed to the ground a few inches from her feet.
Another came at her, and another, she shot them all down before got close. She looked up into the sky in a brief reprieve. The black flock of birds dominated the night sky.
Nearly a hundred dived at her.
She started running, pulling her red leather bomber jacket over her head, trying to cover her face as she desperately searched for a manhole.
She stumbled as the first slammed into her back, her left leg gave out from under her as a crow actually rammed itself against the back of her knee.
"Shit!" she screamed before falling flat on her face, the file going flying out of her grip and sliding along the tarmac a few feet away.
She could actually feel the shadow come over her as the birds dived upon her, pinning her down by simple weight of numbers. They scrambled all over her as she started thrashing wildly around, kicking and slapping them away from her.
Her gun had flown out of her hand too. "Fuck!"
They tore at her, over the almost deafening thunder of hundreds of wings flapping wildly all around her she though she could hear Derek screaming her name.
She batted another away from her; only to have it replaced a second later, hissing menacingly through its pointed, black beak. She brought her fist down on it as hard as she could, cracking its skull against the hard road as she began to crawl towards the file.
She gritted her teeth as she felt them pecking at her legs, swearing rather imaginatively when she felt stings of pain as the crows' beaks began to penetrate her blue jeans.
One came at her, diving from the air as if it were a released bomb, its beak driving into the back of her right shoulder, penetrating both her jacket and her thin black T-shirt.
Elisa screamed, more in rage than pain. She reached over her head, grabbed the bird, wrenched it out of her bleeding wound, too rushed with adrenaline now to noticed the pain, and began smashing it, head first against the ground.
Several came at her face; one actually dug its razor like claws into her face, drawing blood.
She screamed again, even harder when the daemonic bird flew back, opening the new cuts across Elisa's attractive, brown face. She could feel the blood flowing down her cheeks. She could taste it in her mouth.
"Damn it!"
She batted them away as one got caught in her raven black hair. Screeching, it started to peck her at the back of her neck.
She covered her bleeding face with her arms, shaking as she crawled over to the file as quickly as she could, covering it protectively with her body as she tried to look through her crossed arms, desperately trying to find a manhole cover, or failing that, her gun.
She heard several thumps, just before a shower of burnt feathers fell around her. A moment later, she felt a large, powerful arm, rap around her waist, pulling her up quickly, she could see huge, tattered bat like wings rap around her protectively.
It was Claw.
He smiled at her reassuringly, stumbling forward quickly as the crows tried to swamp him. His wings were speckled with holes along the membranes; some of the tears were several inches in length. He was bleeding from several large cuts across his chest and face.
"Are you okay?" she asked the tiger mutate. He nodded a positive, his reassuring smile etched with pain.
Elisa looked through one of the larger gaps in Claw's wings and saw Owen, standing defiantly amongst the chaos, his normally composed face fixed in grim determination. He had several mild cuts across the right side of his face but other than that he appeared to be totally untouched.
She could hear Derek yelling something, swears mostly, but she couldn't pinpoint him at that exact moment.
The birds had stopped attacking her and Claw. They'd all started circling Owen.
~You aren't who you appear are you?~
It was that daemon thingy, even though she could hear it was obvious that it was addressing Mr. Burnett.
Owen looked up into the sky, his face unchanging as he raised his hands.
"I believe daemon, that you constitute a threat to both the clan and Alexander," he said, the slightest hint of anger in his usual monotone. He suddenly became distorted in a haze of blinding light. When it vanished, in his place stood a small, elf-like man dressed in fantastically coloured clothing, with long, silvery hair and sparkling vermilion eyes.
~A Fey,~ muttered the daemon indignantly.
"Oh not just any Fey beakface!" Yelled Puck, his usually mirthful voice now laced with ice. A powerful white aura began to surround him as held his open palmed hands in front of him. Elisa could feel the daemon bracing itself as the smell of spices became apparent in the air again.
"Elisa! Claw!"
The pair looked over to where Talon was standing, nearly a dozen meters away, he was cut and bleeding in various places while his wings were torn in places like Claw's from where crows had tried to get at his face. He was by an open manhole, the circular cover of it in his hands. "Let's get the Hell outta here!"
"Go on!" Yelled Puck, looking upward into the thickest part of the flock. "I'll handle this."
Elisa tried to protest but Claw, seeing the wisdom in not sticking around, ignored her protests as he sped across the road to Talon, keeping Elisa firmly under his arm.
Elisa heard Puck scream something in a language she didn't know before the ground began shake slightly. She heard the daemon roar in her mind, taking the Fey's challenge. There was a distinct change in the atmosphere, it felt colder, she could hear the crackling of electricity as both her hair and Claw's began to stand on end as a growing blue light picked up their shadows on the ground. She breathed out through her mouth, it was smokey.
She squirmed in Claw's rock hard grip, trying to catch a glimpse of what was happening behind her.
They were only a couple of meters from the manhole when she turned to look at her younger brother.
Talon's mouth was slack jawed, his eyes bulging out like dinner plates.
"Holy Crap."
Elisa tried to yell a question at him, namely, what the Hell was going on behind them, when Claw abruptly stopped, hugged her his chest, and dived into the hole, feet first.
There was a loud splash as Claw landed quite hard on his feet and scanned the surrounding area. The sewer tunnel they were in was quite dark, preventing the tiger mutate from seeing more than a few meters. The walls were lined with a thick coat of grime, there were thin concrete walkways on either side of the small stream of dark green tinted sludge the flowed at shin depth, which Claw was immersed in. There was the unpleasant odour of rotting food and excrement in the air.
A moment later Talon landed beside them. He looked very flustered. He grabbed Claw rather ungraciously by his free arm and started dragging them down the direction that was in the opposite direction of Puck's duel with the daemon.
"Derek what's going on up there?" asked Elisa. She was still being held by Claw but didn't really mind at this point. Claw was a much faster runner than she was and didn't seem slowed down by her weight under his arm.
"Something big!" replied her brother, not even turning to look at her as he raced down the tunnel on the walkway just ahead of them.
He seemed spooked. She wondered what he had seen.
The sound of the explosion hit them before the shockwave did. It was deafening even to Elisa's less sensitive human ears. They all screamed at the pain in their heads as they slowed down, blood pouring from their ears and noses.
The shockwave knocked them off their feet. Talon actually fell into the stream of sludge while Claw fell forward, wrapping his wings around himself to protect both him and Elisa. The ground shook violently for a moment, causing bits of the ceiling above them to crack and fall on them. A small tidal wave of sewage water hit them a second later, drenching them all and nearly lifting them off the ground before rushing on.
Talon coughed and spat out a mouthful of sewer water, swearing as he rose unsteadily to his feet. Claw uncapped his wings around himself and Elisa, his hands on his head while he gritted his teeth, groaning slightly. Elisa sat up, her head spinning as she rose to her feet with Claw's assistance.
She noticed the look Claw was giving her. She ran her hands over her face; feeling sharps stings whenever her hands made contact with the cuts the crow had given her. Some were quite deep.
"Shit."
"Do you hear anything?" asked Talon.
Elisa and Claw listened intently for what may be happening on the ground. It had gone completely silent.
"Should we go up and see if Puck's okay?" she asked. She didn't really care much for either Owen or Puck, but she never would wish death on either of them.
Talon shook his head quickly. "No, no. We get you to the Xanatos' plane first. Puck can take care of himself just fine." Even when he was saying this he didn't seem totally convinced.
But he was right. If they delayed, then they ran the risk of being attacked again, perhaps by something bigger and nastier than that crow thing.
Talon led them down the tunnels. All were silent as they went.
Back to Present, Demona's South German Estate
"So that's what happened," said Elisa tiredly. "Derek led us to the airport through the sewers. I got on Xanatos' personal jet, and just arrived at the airport in Munich about half an hour ago."
Goliath looked tenderly on his beloved, his dark eyes looking deeply into her chocolate brown. His eyes lowered slightly to look at the fresh scars on her face. His eyes flared slightly.
"I'll kill him," he whispered, so low his voice was almost inaudible. "I'll kill him for this."
His voice was just loud enough for Jezebel to hear though. "You most certainly will not." She said coldly.
"Of course I will! Look what he's done to Elisa!"
"He did worse to Malibu!" yelled Jezebel as Faith and Demona came into the room. "But I know Mal will be still trying to save him!"
"He's too dangerous to let live!" roared Goliath fiercely, his eyes blazing.
The old lady didn't flinch. Instead she glared right back at the huge gargoyle, a faint amber glow in her eyes. "I contacted you on the understanding that you'd help us save him," she said, her voice reaching sub-zero levels. "My orders were to protect him, Fang and Mal."
"And you've done a great job too," remarked Broadway dryly.
Jezebel turned her stare to him and he shut up quickly.
She turned her attention to Demona. "And you're opinion on the matter?"
Demona looked between Elisa, Goliath and Macbeth's old servant.
"I.I'm not sure," she said evenly. She looked at Goliath, "I suppose you're right. He's out of control. It's a miracle that Elisa and Malibu survived."
"What are you saying Demona?" asked Jezebel.
"We have to stop Brooklyn. Even if we have to kill him."
Jezebel's eyes darted to look at Faith, her eyes pleading. "And your humble opinion Inquisitor?"
Faith sighed, looking at the floor as she spoke. "I'm afraid I agree with nature boy." Jezebel looked at the floor herself before Faith continued. "But.if it's at all possible to reach him then I think we should try for that option first.only kill him as a last resort."
Jezebel gave her a smile of thanks before looking at Elisa, Broadway, and Lexington, who had just, came into the room. "And you three?"
"I'm with Faith," said Lex immediately.
"Same here," said Broadway a moment later. "We have to at least try."
Elisa shook her head, refusing to say anything. Instead she just handed over the bad smelling file to Demona, and requested the use of some of her old clothes and a bathroom.
Demona's estate, three hours after sunrise
Fang walked quietly through the huge gardens, his tail dragging behind him.
The sky had cleared, now there was barely a cloud in the cobalt sky, with the sun beating gently on his face as his bare, furry feet trudged through the damp grass. He could smell the dampness. It was quite refreshing. His ears picked up the sound of birds chirping in a small forest of elms, ash and oak that lay to his left, about three hundred yards away.
There was a stream to his right, with an oriental rock garden along the side, leading up to a small wooden, Japanese style, bridge that crossed over the fast flowing stream. A small patch of weeping willows was on the other side of the stream whose source he couldn't figure out. He made out the silhouettes of several rabbits underneath the shade of the trees.
His stomach growled at him as he watched them. He'd forgotten the last time he'd eaten something. He shook his head though. He was definitely not that hungry.
"Malibu would enjoy this," came a familiar voice from behind.
Fang smiled, but didn't turn his head around. "Shouldn't you be helping Demona Jezzy?"
He sensed her frown and his smiled increased a little.
"I think she knows what she's doing," replied the witch calmly as she walked up beside the cougar mutate. "How is Mal?"
"He's not too bad, considering what happened and all I guess." He closed his eyes. "Thanks for fixing him up. I only know the extreme basics in that department."
"I'd do the same for you.though chances are I might just wrap the bandages just a little tighter."
That earned a small chuckle from Fang. "Mal told me something interesting," he said. "Apparently that daemon Brook summoned turned on him."
"Really?"
"Yep. Apparently he sent him back to Hell for that. I was thinking Demona might find that useful to know."
Jezebel nodded slowly, her mind lingering on something else. "Do you think we should tell her?"
Clearly Fang was thinking the same thing. "No. Not yet.it drove Brook mad.God knows what it would do to that bitch." He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "If we really have to tell her.then I think it might be wiser doing it after she'd done this thing. We can't have head lingering when she has to concentrate on something like this."
"She's suspicious already."
"I know, I know," replied Fang sadly. "But we don't need her thinking about that sort of thing, especially if we really can't reach Brook and the only way to save him is to kill him."
They remained silent for quite a while. Staring out ahead of them. The only audible sounds were those of the stream and the birds chirping, which was then shattered when Fang's stomach growled very aggressively when he saw a dear coming out of the forest to have a sip at the stream.
"She's got a heck of a garden," he said quickly, looking a little sheepish.
"Yes.I think it's beside a national park or something like that. Have you had breakfast yet?"
"Uh.no.I just came outta Mal's room about a half hour ago. He was asleep when the sun rose. I just wanted to make sure Brooklyn didn't try that stunt again so I stayed with him."
"That was kind of you. I'll make you some breakfast," said Jezebel as she turned to head back to Demona's imposing gothic mansion. "The two of us will be quite busy tonight if this goes wrong."
Fang said nothing, but continued to stare out at the landscape, a frown on his face.
*****
Dominique Destine sat at the rosewood desk in her study, the notes Elisa had nearly died to bring her spread out before her.
Elisa was in bed in one of the guest rooms, Goliath sitting at her side as a solemn statue.
Lexington, Bronx and Broadway were somewhere in the house, she just didn't know where at the moment. Faith had left to try and get to the nearest Catholic Church possible to have her flamethrower sanctified and be back in time for the ceremony.
She didn't really feel like wearing a business suit today. She did not need to feel uptight today of all days. Instead she wore a pair of black pants and a heavy, woollen jumper the colour of fuchsia with a white T-shirt underneath. She had a pair of small, black shoes on her feet.
They still didn't know what happened to Puck. The news was saying there had been some sort of bombing in a street in Manhattan, that had killed eighteen homeless people, as well as a truck driver and several other people in the nearby area. The President was on the warpath because of it apparently. Saying he'd hunt down the terrorists responsible.
Dominique smiled sadly and shook her head as she remembered the news report. There was a better chance of Hell freezing over first than the President finding those responsible.
She picked up one of the papers and began to examine it closely. As she began to read, it all came back to her, all the times she'd sat in the dark of the night, the Malus Codicium pressed tightly against her chest, its sweet voice talking to her in the darkness, promising her power, vengance and her clan back. She had been chosen and her alone for the task; they had been waiting uncounted millennia for her.
She shook her head quickly. That wasn't her anymore. They'd been lying to her the whole time. Now Brooklyn was being led to believe that only he had been chosen. That damned book had driven him insane as she had once been. But she could stop him, as Macbeth had stopped her once.
She began to make a list of what she would need.
Demona's estate, Midnight
Faith entered the circular room underneath Demona's German home, prepping her flamethrower and whispering a prayer of fortitude as she did so. Fang, Demona and Jezebel were all there waiting for her.
"You're late," said Demona, clearly irritated. She was dressed in her heavily armoured black body glove; the file of notes under one arm and Brooklyn's old staff in her hand.
She noticed Fang snickering behind Demona and gave him the finger. Jezebel smiled and shut the doors, being sure to lock them and chant a quick spell to make sure they stayed that way.
The quartet approached the altar together to observe what Demona had done.
A pudgy naked man in his late forties lay on the table, dead. His unruly blond hair slowly beginning to turn grey as his maroon coloured eyes stared blankly up at the ceiling, already glazed over. Across his body were chains with talismans attached to them, Daemonic runes engraved upon them.
They had taken one of the bodies they had found in Sudeny, choosing this one as it had only a bullet hole in the forehead, and had yet to be ravaged by the carrion birds and animals that had wandered into the dead town to feast.
Demona had already painted the daemonic runes upon the corpse's belly; chest and forehead in blood that she gotten by the jar full in the town. Several such jars sat on the altar by the side of the corpse.
"Are you all ready?" asked Demona.
The others nodded an affirmative and she began, taking the cap off one of the glass jars and dipping her hand into the thick, cold red liquid inside, taking her arm out then and rubbing her palm along the shaft of the staff, muttering words to herself in a language none of the others knew.
Demona repeated the process until the staff was covered from top to bottom in blood. She then began to chant in the daemon's tongue, sliding slowly to her knees as she did so. The other spaced themselves away from her, ready should this go wrong.
Demona focused only on her words, and the name of the daemon Jezebel had told her.
"Iieo'detl'bhadhr'hoo. I call you. Come through Abaddon's gate."
Her eyes began to glow a fiery red as her body started trembling.
"Iieo'detl'bhadhr'hoo. I call you. Bypass Cerberus on your way."
The others began to tense, ready should the daemon prove too much for Demona to handle.
"Iieo'detl'bhadhr'hoo. I call you. Come from Lucifer's side."
Far away, in a place and realm of existence that's very existence itself was denied by many, something stirred in its bonds.
"Iieo'detl'bhadhr'hoo. I call you. Arise from the throne room of Perdition."
Fang's fists crackled with blue electrical energy while Faith let the barrel of her flamethrower. Both praying silently as they did so. Jezebel stood closest to Demona, ready to intervene should the worst come to the worst.
"Iieo'detl'bhadhr'hoo. I call you. Past the Hell Fire and Sulphur Lakes."
Demona's whole body was shaking violently. The power needed to do this was so much and so very hard to control. It had been a lot easier for Brooklyn from what Fang and Malibu had described. He had the book. He had more time to prepare himself for the trauma.
"Iieo'detl'bhadhr'hoo. It is your new master who speaks."
It awoke, its bonds shattered, she set it free.
The sheer force of will, which the daemon hit Demona with as it came into the world, staggered her. She actually gasped. She struggled for control, trying to recite the commands of binding.
But the daemon was so strong.
As a strand of bright, blinding white light began to leak from the beaked mouth of the raven atop of Brooklyn's staff, the runes covering it began to glow through the blood.
Demona felt its will, so strong, and fuelled by uncounted millennia of hate pushing her aside. She tried to fight it, tried every fibre in her being, but the daemon was so damn strong.
She tried to scream the words, but they caught in her mouth. Her grip on the staff before her loosened. An immense explosion of white light burst forth from the staff head. The daemon was free.
Demona felt its power, its true, tainted power as it leered at her from above.
~Just my luck. Another fucking gargoyle.~
She blacked out.
*****
Fang yelled a battle cry as he let loose with a blast of electricity at the incorporeal daemon as it descended on Demona.
He rushed forward, continuing his assault.
-Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck!-
The daemon roared in pain and flew back away from the group as they advanced on it. Jezebel ran over to Demona, kneeling down quickly and grabbing her by the shoulders, shaking her roughly and yelling quite a few graphic swearwords as she did so.
Fang leapt over the altar, his fist blazing in electrical fire as the daemon fell back to the curved wall.
It hissed at him and fired off a bolt of daemonic power. He leapt aside, the force of the blast sending a shower of tiles into the air, while propelling him across the ground and against the wall with great force. He fell to his knees, and then onto his side, moaning weakly but not loosing consciousness. He was sure he cracked a rib or two; he could taste blood in his mouth.
His gaze fell to the other side of the room, where the daemon was, it hovered several meters off the air, its tainted purity lighting up the whole room. He could see it smile triumphantly at him.
~Have we met?~ it asked him casually, as it built up another attack to finish him. ~Just I never forget a face. And you've got one only a drugged up Zoologist could possibly love.~
It roared in agony as flame engulfed it before it could kill him.
"STAY THE FUCK AWAY FROM HIM!" screamed Faith, her flamethrower raining a steady stream of flame on the daemon as she actually ran at it while parts of the room started to burn from her righteous weapon.
The daemon howled and flew out of the stream of flame and fired at her. Faith dived under it, swearing wildly before she was lifted into the air by the force of the blast.
She hit the wall with her back, upside down. There was a very discouraging crack before she bounced off the wall and landed flat on her face. She got up almost immediately, blood seeping from her busted lip, a bruise forming over her right eye.
She roared at the daemon, lifted the flamethrower at it, pulled the trigger.
.and swore at the top of her voice when nothing actually came out of the barrel.
"FUCK!"
She leapt aside as Sin fired at her again; causing another muffled explosion, a rain of debris and the creation of yet another crater on the expensively tile floor.
She rolled to her feet and bolted, checking her weapon as she did so. The barrel and fuel feeder were damaged from crashing into the wall.
"FUCK!"
She began leaping from side to side, dodging various attacks from Sin as she fumbled with the straps holding the fuel tank to her back. "Trust the fucking rich to spend money on the cheap fucking crap!"
Jezebel was suddenly standing, Brooklyn's staff in her hands, the raven end aimed at the daemon.
"FULMINOUS VINITE!"
The staff erupted in amber flame, before a blast of lightning flew from the head, narrowly missing the daemon and blowing a huge chunk off the wall, while the ground shook ever so slightly. Jezebel was actually lifted off her feet by the force of her attack and went skidding across the floor to near where Fang was lying half conscious.
She looked at the staff in shock for a moment before her eyes lit up and a nasty grin crossed her face. She braced herself against the wall and unleashed another blast at the daemon, which dodged it again, while the air was filled with bits of flying brick.
"You'll bring the house down Jezzy," coughed Fang weakly as he tried to sit up. "Be careful."
Jezebel nodded, keeping her eyes on the daemon. It had stopped chasing Faith and was now staring at her venomously.
~I remember you,~ it said coldly. ~You're that old bitch that shocked me.~ It smiled. ~I'm going to enjoy this.~
Jezebel smiled at the daemon, taunting it. "Fuck. You."
The daemon roared in rage at her and hurled an especially large energy blast.
Jezebel clasped the staff firmly in her hands before her. "Deflectere!"
A shield of amber light formed between her, Fang and the daemon's attack. The blast bounced roughly off the shield and hit the ceiling. The was a deafening explosion before large chunks of brick and masonry rained down on the group, which was then followed by some wrecked furniture and a burning PC, which fell down the hole made in the ceiling and exploded on the ground.
Jezebel looked up at the hole. "Whoops."
"I knew you were fucking going senile!" coughed Fang behind her as he managed to stand at last, his back leaning against the wall, his legs unsteady, his head spinning.
They heard the daemon cackle madly at them.
~Is that the best you've got?~ it laughed.
"DAEMON!"
Sin turned its attention to Faith, just in time to see the tanks of her flamethrower flying towards it. Faith dived behind the altar beside Demona while Jezebel quickly called up her shield again as the tanks came into contact with the incorporeal form of the daemon and detonated.
The explosion was deafening, the entire room shook violently for several seconds as flame spread across the floor, walls and even ceiling. The heat caused was intense.
Jezebel's shield died down and she looked at the carnage around her. Most of the floor was on fire and the smoke made it difficult to see anything. She could hear Fang coughing uncontrollably behind her and risked a glance to look.
He had fallen on his side and was doubled over again, coughing badly, she could see blood coming out of his ears and nose and assumed the same could be said of her at that moment. She slipped her wool long coat off, kneeling beside him as she did so. She pressed it hard against his mouth.
"Breath into this!" she yelled quickly, tearing a section off for herself and looking warily around for the daemon. Fang nodded weakly and covered his mouth with her red wool coat, his breathing becoming slightly more normal after several deep breaths.
The old lady quickly stood and looked around. "Demona! Faith!"
"Here!" coughed Faith, standing unsteadily; shoving the naked, burning corpse she had pulled from the altar to shield both herself and Demona. She looked around, swaying slightly. "Where's the daemon?"
"Are you insane!" coughed Fang behind Jezebel, still lying on his side.
"Shut up you walking rug!" screamed Faith, swinging her arms wildly, her hair was singed in places and was actually smoking. "Where the Hell's the daemon gone?"
Jezebel could barely hear her over the flames. She stretched out her free hand and a path opened up from her to Faith and Demona. "I think we stunned it. We must be quick!" she said advancing through the gap in the flames, leaving Fang on the ground and running over to the pair beside the altar. She looked at the heavily burned rear end of the corpse. "Will that actually hold it?"
"Don't worry," said Faith confidently, she kicked it quite hard and it rolled over on its back, revealing the pale front of the corpse, whose open eyes seemed to be staring at them in an irritated fashion. "I remembered we needed the runes on it."
There was unearthly roar from somewhere in the room as the ground began to shake.
Faith and Jezebel looked up at the ceiling as it began to crack. "Oh shit."
Jezebel was on her knees in an instant, grabbing Demona by her shoulders and shaking her very roughly. "WAKE UP!"
"Allow me," said Faith, lifting her foot and driving it down into Demona's stomach. "Wake up cheapskate!"
Demona doubled up as Faith knocked the wind out of her, her eyes looking as if they would bulge out of their sockets as she began to cough and moan in agony.
Jezebel smiled and made a mental note to buy Faith lunch for that.
"What happened?" coughed Demona, her arms wrapped protectively over her stomach as she looked from the old lady to the Inquisitor.
"Why the Hell do they always ask that?" said Faith. She looked down at Demona. "You screwed up. Big time,"
Demona was on her feet in an instant, grabbing the staff off Jezebel roughly and looking wildly around her. "The daemon! Where is it?"
As if to answer her there was an unearthly snarl several meters behind the trio, on the other side of the altar. They turned quickly to see the daemon, the malevolent light it produced had dimmed considerably and they could make out its nightmarish true form. It was shaking as it hung several feet above the ground, its glowing eyes the colour of blood and screaming bloody murder.
~I am going to kill each of you, very, very slowly.~
It roared and hurled a daemonic blast at them. They all leapt in different directions as the blast hit the altar, blowing it up and sending fist sized chunks of rock flying in all directions.
Faith swore viciously as a chunk hit her on the back of her right shoulder and fell to the ground, gritting her teeth and shutting her eyes tightly against the pain. Jezebel skidded across the ground, along the path the she had made in the fire until she almost crashed into Fang. She got up, her face bleeding, bruised and slightly burned. Demona was hurled up into the air and crash-landed on top of the corpse she had intended to trap the daemon in, still holding onto the staff and tasting blood in her mouth, dismally noting that she'd bitten her tongue.
She got on her knees and looked around as Jezebel chanted at the top of her voice as she held her hands open before her in the daemon's direction. The flames below it rose and circled the hovering daemon, before rising up above it and closing in all around it in a column of fire.
As the daemon roared in agony Demona saw her chance. Pressing her left hand on the chest of the corpse, she pointed the staff at it with her right, feeling it amplify her powers to an extraordinary degree as she began to chant the incantation quickly. Her eyes glowed the colour of fire.
The column of fire died out suddenly as the daemon within roared, it tainted light becoming almost blinding. ~I'LL KILL ALL OF YOU!~
"In servitutem abduco, I bind thee fast and forever into this host!"
The daemon halted suddenly, screaming wildly as it was dragged into the chest of the chained corpse.
Demona slumped forward on the body, dropping her staff and taking huge gasps of air as she tried to calm herself. She heard coughing and looked over to see Jezebel.
The old witch was on her knees, shoulders drooped, her frilled white blouse blackened from the flames and speckled with blood. Fang was lying behind her, unconscious from the looks of it. She coughed again and Demona only then noticed all the smoke in the air. The old lady looked up at her, her kind, wrinkled face bruised and cut in several places. She smiled at her. "Lets never do that again okay?"
Demona chuckled and smiled at her. She looked down into the dead eyes of the daemonhost.
"Well?" she snapped impatiently.
~What is it you want.Master?~ Demona noted how its psychic voice had become a lot more passive, but she could still feel the hate lingering there.
"Do you have a name other than your true one?"
~Yes Master.my last Master addressed me as Sin.~
"That'll do," muttered Demona. She leaned closer until her face was a few inches from the host's. "Do you know where Brooklyn is going?"
~Yes Master.~
"Will you tell me?"
The daemonhost smiled at her, quite an unnerving sight. ~Why do you wish to know?~
"I'm going to stop him."
Its smile grew. ~In that case Master, I'll gladly show you.~
Dresden, Germany
Furcifer leant against the wall, his arms crossed before him, frowning.
"I understand. Now get out of my face."
In a corner of the alley he stood in, a shadow faded out of existence.
Furcifer stopped leaning against the wall and walked slowly down the alley into the crowd, arms behind his back. He stopped when he was close to several shops and observed people entering and exiting them by the dozen and his face contorted in disgust.
He changed direction and started for the city's main bus station, intent on getting a ticket for the first bus to St. Petersburg.
To be continued.
Thought for the day: Knowledge is power. Conceal it well.
A Cinema in St. Petersburg, Russia
The cinema was fairly quite tonight, several of the newest blockbusters were screening while some of the smaller screening rooms were following the manager's idea to show old classic horror movies.
In one of these particular smaller screening rooms an old "Hammer" horror film about vampires was being showcased.
It is this room that interests us.
There were fourteen people and a steward, watching Christopher Lee, dressed as Count Dracula, battle it out with Peter Cushing playing his archenemy, Abraham Van Helsing.
It was at the dramatic climax of the film where Cushing and Lee were having their final showdown. Fighting wildly in the main hall, before Cushing jumped on the dining table, ran across it and leapt onto the curtains, tearing them down and pouring sunlight into the room.
As Christopher Lee began screaming and disintegrating due to the sunlight, the room was filled with riotous laughter.
The audience politely waited for several seconds for it to subside, but when it didn't the steward, a tall, plump boy in his teens with wiry brown hair walked up to the row where it came from.
"Excuse me sir?"
The man he was addressing looked up at him with ancient, cloud-grey eyes.
"Yes?"
The boy flinched from the man's stare before replying with weak force.
"No talking or laughing during the show."
"Really?" asked the man. "And.just who is it my young, little, plump friend.that is going to enforce this rule?"
"I.I.I am," replied the boy nervously. The stare this gentleman was giving him was unnerving.
It made him feel almost as if he was a piece of food or something being assessed by a chef.
The gentleman smiled pleasantly, his eyes roving up and down the steward in an almost hungry manner. "Just you?"
"Well.yes," said the boy, "it's sort of a slow night so most of the others got the night off."
"This is your first time working here isn't it?" asked the man curiously.
"Well.yes."
"Well I guess I better not make any trouble for you then," said the man as he rose. "You best escort me to the door to make sure I don't sneak into any films on the way out."
"Okay," said the boy steward, clearly relieved. "Follow me please."
The man rose, towering over the young steward, who led him out into the hall and then out through the ornate double doors that served as the entrance.
"Did you know, my young friend, that before the Revolutions this place was an Imperial owned grand hotel?"
"Uhh.no, I didn't."
"Those were the days," said the man, his voice taking on a hint of nostalgia as he followed the boy out. "The days of the Tsars." He grinned he looked around the deserted hall. "So, where is everyone?"
"This is the last showing tonight," replied the boy.
"So no one else is around in this part of the cinema?"
"No.why?"
The man didn't answer in the way the boy steward expected. Instead of a friendly verbal response he grabbed hold of the boy, wrapping one powerful arm around his waist, pinning in his arms to his side, while at the same time bringing out a cloth, moist with chloroform, from his heavy, fur-lined brown greatcoat and covered the boy's nose and mouth with it.
The young steward started struggling, trying to yell for help but his assailant held him fast with inhuman strength, a hellish grin forming across his face as he lent his head forward to whisper into the boy's ear.
"You know why I was laughing in there?"
The boy continued to struggle weakly, his strength deserting him as the chloroform started taking effect.
"I was laughing in there, because, my little friend, Hollywood really screws up what it takes to kill my kind." He grinned, licking a pair of canine teeth that grew in his elastic-like mouth as he continued. "We are, in fact, a lot harder to kill than with a bit of odd sunlight."
He looked at the side of the boy's head, noting that he had stopped struggling and was now quite limp in his hands. He pocketed the cloth and hefted the heavy boy over his shoulder with ease, before walking to the rear of the near deserted cinema to a fire exit who's alarm he had disabled before going in for a show. When outside in the snow covered side exit, he walked over to a nearby van, painted matt green, opened the rear door and flung the unconscious boy inside before getting in himself.
Once inside he produced a small two-sided knife from his coat and cut the boy's hand. He then held it up to his lips and licked some of the blood flowing from the wound, smacking his lips like a connoisseur would test fine wine.
"Excellent."
He then opened the boy's white shirt and red waistcoat, examining his plump, pale torso carefully with his hands before removing his trousers and looking at his lower regions.
An evil smile formed across his lips.
"It looks to me," he said slowly to the naked, unconscious boy lying prone before him. "That you shall be satisfying me in more than one way my little friend."
That said, Gregor Zaitsev bound and gagged his latest victim, before getting in the front of his van to drive to where the second weapon of Lucifer was stored.
A realm of thought and pain
Screams echoed through the darkened halls as Malibu's entire body became enveloped in electricity. The burning, mind-numbing pain was all he knew for several minutes before it was cut off suddenly.
He slumped back onto the table he had been strapped to, his breathing heavy and laboured.
Brooklyn had grown weary of the graveyard he had been torturing him in, and so had moved location to some torture chamber, whether this was a real place or one Brooklyn dreamed up the clone wasn't sure.
A crimson hand gently lifted his head up, going under his beak and running taloned fingers up and down it in an almost affectionate manner.
"How ya holding up Mal?" asked Brooklyn in an almost cheery voice. "Ready to tell me what I want to know?"
Mal open his eyes slowly, barely into slits.
He was strapped to an operating table, with a fulcrum underneath that allowed the table to be swivelled into vertical or horizontal positions, his hands clamped to his sides. His right shoulder was bleeding profusely from the deep gashes Brooklyn had sliced into it while the ones across his belly and right cheek had slowed their bleeding slightly. Most of his body was covered in bruises from when Brooklyn had taken an iron rod and brass knuckles to him, which had also resulted in at least three cracked, if not broken ribs.
Brooklyn had been complaining bitterly of how the clone's armoured body glove was absorbing just too much damage and had removed it with a snap of his fingers, along with the grey T-shirt he had been wearing underneath, leaving him with just a pair of grey cotton shorts.
He had lost so much blood that he could barely move. He'd blacked out twice already from blood loss and damage but Brooklyn revived him shocks and smelling salts.
"Are you ready to talk now?" Brooklyn repeated.
"N.never," whispered the clone weakly.
"Oh come on!" yelled Brooklyn. "If you don't answer my questions right this minute then I'm gonna make you wish you were never created in a test tube." He stalked over to a stand and pulled a curled up whip from a hanger on the steel burgundy wall before turning back to face his clone. "Let's go over his again shall we? How much does Demona know about our mutual situation?"
Mal closed his eyes and braced himself for the pain to come.
"HOW MUCH DOES SHE KNOW?"
"I don't know what you're talking about."
Brooklyn roared before took a firm grip of the whip's handle as he brought it up and snapped it down quickly. Mal groaned through his teeth when the end of the whip hit him in the face, above his left eye ridge, creating a stinging pain as a fresh cut opened there and began to bleed over his eye.
"I have a source that tells me that Demona and the whole clan, minus the old twit and Broadway's hoar are now with you," stated Brooklyn as he glared at Mal in total disgust. "There is also a woman who seems to have a great like of firearms with black hair with you now. Who is she?"
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Fine. Don't say I didn't warn you," muttered Brooklyn. He left the room quickly, leaving the clone to his own thoughts.
He returned a moment later with a heavy stainless steel bucket, carrying it with a wet cloth wrapped around his hand, grinning horribly. He set it down in front of Malibu so he could see inside.
"Oh my God."
The bucket was filled almost to the brim with burning hot coals. He could feel the blistering heat from where he was strapped. Some of them almost white hot.
"Now," said Brooklyn as he picked up a pair of iron tongs. "I'm fairly certain I don't have to tell you what's going to happen if you fob me off anymore."
"Don't do this Brooklyn," pleaded Mal. "We're friends for Christ's sake!"
"No. We're not."
"Yes we are!" yelled Malibu. "We've known each other-"
"Know?" yelled the crimson gargoyle, cutting his clone off. "What the fuck do you know about me? Huh? Nothing! The only crap that you know about me is the shit I told you about!" He picked up one of the hotter looking coals with the tongs and pressed it against one of the gashes he had made on Mal's belly.
Malibu actually stared at the flesh around his gut blister and sizzle for a full second before the pain overwhelmed him.
He threw his head back and screamed. The pain was mind numbing.
"THAT'S IT!" roared Brooklyn. "SCREAM ALLL YOU WANT! NOBODY CAN HEAR YOU!" He started laughing over his friend's screams as he slowly dragged the hot coal up along the cut, cauterising the wound and stopping the flow of blood while his friend screamed until he was hoarse.
He pulled the coal away and Malibu slumped on the table. The agony he felt around his stomach was indescribable while his lungs felt like they were going to collapse. His breathing was shallow, his eyes barely opened to slits.
Brooklyn's smiled increased when he saw the tears.
"Are you crying bro?" he asked, voice laced with sadist amusement as he lifted Mal's head up to examine his face. He slapped him hard across the face when Mal didn't answer. "ARE YOU CRYING?" When he still didn't answer Brooklyn picked up a fresh coal in the tong and pressed it against another of the wounds on the clone's stomach.
Mal screamed hoarsely, tears streaming down his face from the agony as Brooklyn grabbed him by the hair and started slamming the back of his head into the steel table with one hand while pressing the white hot coal on the tongs hard against his belly.
"THAT'S IT! THAT'S IT! CRY YOU WEAK LITTLE FUCKER! NO ONE CAN HEAR YOU!" laughed Brooklyn. "JEZEBEL AND FANG AIN'T GONNA SAVE YOUR SORRY ASS SO GO AHEAD AND CRY!"
Mal's chest heaved as more tears streamed down his face while his lungs burned and threatened to give out on him.
Brooklyn gave him a look of complete disgust and threw the tongs away. "You weak, pitiful fuck. You're a disgrace to our kind. You're a disgrace to my blood. You taint the Prince's Earth just by breathing." He walked up to a lever built into the side of the table and pulled it. The table Malibu was strapped to began to shift into a horizontal position. When it was fixed like this Brooklyn glanced over at the bucket of hot coals. It began to levitate in the air, moving forward as it rose until it landed again in the gap between Malibu's bare legs.
The clone didn't register the pain caused by the blistering heat between his ankles simply because his stomach, chest and the back of his head were complaining much more loudly for him to notice it.
"Are you holding out cause you think somebody's gonna come and save you?" asked Brooklyn. "Is that it?" He laughed. "No one knows what happening Mal. I assure you." He bent down until his face was several inches from the tear- streaked face of his former friend. "They can't even see what's happening to you."
"What.what are you.talking about?" asked the clone, his voice weak, barely audible. "Someone's bound to notice what's happening to me."
"No they won't. And I'll tell you why."
Inside Demona's big armoured van
Fang finished his cigarette and tossed it out the open window in the front compartment of the huge, heavily armoured RV. He and Faith had talked for a little while before she had drifted off in her chair behind Jezebel, who was keeping her eyes firmly on the road ahead, driving as fast as she could to Demona's residence in the South of Germany.
His sensitive nose registered a strange smell coming from the back of the vehicle where the stairs were and where Malibu was sleeping on the couch.
He turned his head to look into the back, yawning as he did so. The scent was quite exotic, but not unpleasant, it was strong and sharp though, very strong in fact.
He glanced over at his best friend and smiled.
Mal had stopped stirring and was sleeping peacefully the couch now, with Faith's leather jacket over him as a blanket. There was even a tiny smile lingering on his face.
-Thank heaven he's feeling better.- Thought Fang silently to himself. -He really didn't need to see all that crap in Sudeny.-
His thoughts drifted back to the odd smell of spices.
-What the Hell is that?-
He looked around the room from where he sat for a moment, thinking. He'd smelt it before somewhere, some time ago, but he couldn't remember for the life of him where and when that was.
-Maybe it's a bottle of perfume or something that Faith brought. For formal occasions or something.-
Apparently she had to do a lot of undercover work at times, infiltrating the homes of the rich and corrupt, usually as a party guest or as "hired furniture".
He considered waking his ex-fiancée to ask her if that smell was coming from a cracked bottle of perfume she brought or something but decided against it when he looked back in her direction. Her chest was rising slowly as she sat with her head resting against the tall back of her chair. She looked very peaceful and serene in her sleep.
But she could be violently cranky when somebody was stupid enough to disturb her in her sleep.
Fang cast a glance back at Mal's peaceful, sleeping form.
-Maybe I should wake him now?-
He shook his head at the thought and smiled. -Nah.he needs his rest. We'll be at this place of Demona's in half an hour or so anyway. I'll wake him then.-
He turned around in his chair and rested his head against it, trying to get some sleep.
Derek's older sister, Elisa Maza, a detective working in New York, had been contacted to get certain "documents" that Brooklyn may have used to make notes while translating the Malus Codicium and bring them to Demona's estate in Germany. They had yet to hear from her yet so Fang assumed she was still poking her nose around the estate Macbeth had left him, Malibu and Brooklyn after his death.
-That bitch better not be looking through my stuff,- he thought bitterly. He'd met Detective Maza on a number of occasions. He really didn't like her at all. She'd even arrested him once, although he doubted she'd remember it. He was on his way to meet with a client of his hateful, cheap, overweight; loudmouthed, evil; son-of-a-bitch boss and she'd given him a parking ticket. She was still a rookie and he was a human then and he'd been daft enough then to tell her exactly where she could shove her ticket and before he knew it he was spending the night as a guest of the city.
"Damn Mazas," he grumbled under his breath, crossing his arms and trying to get comfortable in one of the four swivel chairs in the front. "They're all a bunch of hardasses."
As he finally drifted off into sleep, the daemon Thzul'gzhu'vsra'kotllz watched him.
~That was close.~
It chuckled to itself at the stupidity of munades such as the cougar creature.
~Fools like that really have no idea just what they are dealing with.~
It monitored the illusion it had created around the pale green gargoyle that looked uncannily like the Anointed.
~Must be the Master's brother or something.~
When it became obvious that this fool wasn't going to co-operate with the Master's wishes he had instructed the daemon to create a visual and aural illusion around the stupid gargoyle so nobody would notice that he was slowly being tortured to death for information.
The only sign that anything might be going on was the trademark smell of anything related to the daemon, but from what Thzul'gzhu'vsra'kotllz had just witnessed with the cougar creature, some of them had obviously no idea just what the Master was capable of, or even had any sort of knowledge of Daemonology.
It turned its attention back to the little interrogation process, its many mouths grinning at the suffering the Master was rendering on the green gargoyle.
Back in the mind of the Tainted
"So," began Brooklyn, his tone changing to something a little more friendly. "It should be obvious to you now that you'll be broken sooner or later so you might as well come out and answer my questions."
Mal looked away the red gargoyle's cocky stare, trying compose himself while mentally chastising himself for momentarily losing control.
Brooklyn knew now he could break him. He'd shown him weakness.
Maybe he could use that to his advantage.
"Fuck you.Brook," he whispered into his interrogator's ear.
Brooklyn took a step back from his clone, looking quite unimpressed. "Fine."
He walked over to the bucket of hot coals sitting on the foot of the table, raising his hands before him as he did so. The bucket levitated in the air, before altering its position slightly until it hovered over the clone's right foot.
"This is your last chance forgery," said Brooklyn coldly, not even looking in his friend's direction. "Tell me about Demona, tell me about that woman in black."
It began to tilt mid-air as Malibu stared at it in horror.
It tilted until a coal fell, hitting the steel table, missing his leg by barely an inch, before bouncing off the steel table.
"Okay! Okay!" yelled Mal desperately. "She's an Inquisitor!"
"Ah, finally," said Brooklyn, who smiled as the bucket assumed a vertical position yet again. "Do tell."
"Her name's Faith Thompson," said the clone quickly. "She used to go out with Fang!"
"Interesting, but a little off topic. What about the Inquisition huh? Has she been in contact with them recently?"
"Yes," lied Mal, "she called them as soon as we left Sudeny."
Brooklyn frowned. "What did she tell them?"
"Everything."
"Define, 'Everything."
"She told them about the book, the carnage in the town, what you look like, as both a human and a gargoyle, the works."
This seemed to alarm the crimson gargoyle considerably; he turned his back on his captive and began to pace along the chamber for several minutes, his face a mask of concentration as he took this information in.
"Hmm.and Demona?"
"Demona?"
"Yes! Demona! The bitch that ruined my life!"
"What about her?"
Mal screamed as a single piece of hot coal flew from the bucket and pressed itself, hard against his thigh. Brooklyn waited patiently until he was sure that the clone could actually hear his flesh sizzle, smell the stench of his own burning flesh, and long enough that it would leave a permanent scar, stone sleep or not, before the coal removed itself and clattered along the floor.
"How much does she know?" he asked, after Mal had stopped screaming.
The pale green gargoyle slumped against the table, his breath quick as he gritted his teeth against the pain.
He had to make this believable.
"She.she knows," he moaned.
"Yeah, she knows lots of things Mal, but what I want to know is if she know anything of our mutual situation."
"Jezebel told her everything."
Brooklyn nodded, his face impassive. He tapped his claws on the steel table for a brief period before he looked down at his clone and smiled, quite an unnerving sight.
"You're a terrible liar my friend."
He raised his hand in a careless gesture and the levitating bucket tipped.
Beyond time and Space
"Oh my God," muttered Macbeth, as he and Death watched Malibu's reaction to the bucket of hot coals.
He turned his face away from the image that the Ultimate Reality had conjured for them to watch the progress of Jezebel and the other's progress.
But the sounds of the torture, the crackling of fire and the sizzling of flesh.
The screams.
They all hounded after him, clawing at his sanity.
I HAVE BEEN INFORMED, stated Death. THAT YOU HAVE BEEN GIVEN THE OPTION OF INTERVENEING.
The ancient king looked up at Death, his eyes suddenly hopeful, and quite desperate.
"Now! Let me go now!" he screamed. "Let me help him!"
The tall, blacked robed figure of the Grim Reaper looked, at Macbeth solemnly, the twin blue fireballs that rested in the sockets of his skull, which acted at his eyes, boring into him.
YOU CAN ONLY INTERVENE ONCE, he said. ARE YOU SURE NOW IS THE BEST TIME?
Macbeth's jaw dropped as he stared at the black figure. "What the Hell do you mean is this the best time?" he screamed, while pointing at the hovering image of Malibu, his left leg being burned beyond repair. The clone screamed hoarsely as he writhed on the table, before he mercifully blacked out.
Brooklyn was staring balefully at him before he swivelled the table back into its original vertical position, the burning coals clattering to the floor as he muttered something incomprehensible.
Death watched the image, his polished white skull unreadable.
HOW DO YOU WISH TO INTERVENE?
"What?"
IF YOU TRY AND STOP BROOKLYN THERE THEN HE WILL TEAR YOU APART, said Death.
"Then how can I intervene to stop this?" asked Macbeth desperately. It looked like Brooklyn was preparing something else for the clone.
Death seemed to think for a moment. THERE IS ANOTHER WHO SLEEPS IN DEMONA'S RV.
"The Inquisitor," muttered Macbeth in realisation.
YES, said Death quickly. YOU CAN CONTACT HER. THE DAEMON CREATING THE ILLUSION AROUND MALIBU IS THE KEY. WITHOUT IT'S POWER BROOKLYN COULD NOT ATTEMPT ANYTHING LIKE THIS. TELL HER TO BREAK THE LINK, IT WILL DRIVE BROOKLYN OUT AND GIVE HIM A SEVERE MIGRAIN IN THE PROCESS.
"Will save it save Malibu?"
IT SHOULD, IF YOU MOVE QUICKLY, explained Death, turning to fully face the King.
NOW, LOOK INTO MY EYES AND SEE.
Macbeth did so, looking deep into the blue suns of Death's skull. They had pupils he realised, tiny centres of black in the burning blue chaos.
Eyes in the storm.
He looked into the darkness of these eyes, and found himself looking into infinity.
He could see stars, nebula, the galaxy, speeding past his gaze at such speed they were but blurs, but he saw past them, to something else, to the dreams of the woman who could save Malibu's life.
HE MUST SURVIVE, he heard Death saying to him. HE IS THE ONLY HOPE BROOKLYN HAS FOR SALVATION.
Macbeth heard him, aware of a sudden feeling of movement all around him. The feeling grew more and more intense, no longer was he watching the universe and all creation speed past him, he was moving now as well.
"I failed too many over the years," he whispered to himself. "I won't fail now."
*****
Faith stirred, restlessly in her sleep. She rarely ever dreamed, but she did now.
She was walking through an intensely beautiful garden, her nose assaulted with the scents of a thousand different flowers as the sun shown down from a cloudless, cobalt blue sky.
She could see a clump of weeping willows near a stream twenty or so yards off. The sound of water flowing rapidly over uneven stones, splashing occasionally, was always a comforting sound to her. She breathed in a deep sigh of contentment.
All it lacked was Peter, or Fang, as he liked to call himself now.
She was still angry with him, but it subsided a little with every passing moment they were near each other.
He hadn't been the only one to think about what they each had, and lost through a moment of terror on Peter's part.
Rather loud shouting suddenly interrupted her line of thought.
"INQUISITOR THOMPSON!"
She turned her head in the direction of the wild shouting, and saw a man dressed in black running towards her quickly.
He looked to be in his mid fifties, with grey hair cut short with a connecting beard and moustache, he had black body armour on over a black jumper, heavy black combat boots and black cargo pants, while a black leather greatcoat with a red silk interior flapped around over this as he rushed quickly towards her.
"Inquisitor Thompson!" yelled the man. His voice had an authorative air with a light Scottish accent. "You must wake up at once!"
Faith watched the man carefully as he approached.
"Who the Hell are you?" she asked venomously. "I don't dream that often. And I'm enjoying this one, so why the Hell should I wake up?"
"My name is Macbeth," said the man quickly, and he explained everything that was happening while she slept.
"Oh God," said Faith, shocked. "How do I stop this?"
"Sever the link the daemon has with Brooklyn. If you drive it off Malibu then it will cut off Brooklyn's hold over him.and hopefully incapacitate him in the process." Explained Macbeth. "Jezebel and Demona should be able to do that easily."
"I understand," replied Faith. "But, how do I wake up?"
"Simple," replied Macbeth, grabbing her arm, pinching her with his fingers. "Good luck. And give Jezebel and the lads my regards."
*****
Fang had fallen asleep for about twenty seconds before he woke again. His wings were making his seat just too difficult to sit in comfortably, never mind get some shuteye.
He looked over at Faith again, noticing her legs for the first time.
Really noticing her legs.
They were quite long, even in the unflattering black armoured body glove she was wearing he could see just how magnificently well built they were. Excellent calves, strong knees, powerful hips.
His animal instincts getting the better of him momentarily, he started picturing just what he could do with those legs. He lent closer to smell her perfume, hoping Jezebel wouldn't turn her head around from her watching the road and see him standing slightly, leaning towards the gorgeous woman sitting behind her.
His sensitive nose, ignoring the smell of spices in the rear, sniffed several times in her direction.
He raised his eyebrows in surprise.
She wasn't wearing perfume. In fact, he couldn't even smell any hair conditioner. He leant a little closer; his face barely inches from hers now.
He sniffed again, and was rewarded with a whiff of carbolic soap, nothing overtly fancy, just simple, plain, carbolic soap. Her skin, on closer inspection, looked very well scrubbed, clean, and slightly rough.
An image of her flashed in his head, briefly, for only an instant.
It was of her in the bath.
It wasn't actually an erotic image, he couldn't see anything significant.
The image basically consisted of her, scrubbing herself roughly with a scrubbing brush. That was it, nothing else. She had her knees against her chest while she scrubbed her shins quickly and efficiently while the harsh smell of carbolic soap hung in the air.
Despite the lack of anything he would usually drool over, Fang was suddenly desperately wishing he had somewhere private to go for a few minutes.
Unfortunately for him his desires were killed when Faith woke, sat up straight, head butting him in the process, and screamed "STOP THIS THING RIGHT NOW!" at the top of her voice.
*****
As Jezebel slammed on the brakes, a confused look on her face, Faith rose and rushed to the back, not even noticing the bruise on her head or her dazed and moaning ex-fiancée sprawling on the floor, or even the sound of startled yelping and crashes upstairs.
No sooner was she out of the driver's compartment than she smelled it.
Spices, exotic, pleasant and very strong.
"Daemon evil," she muttered to herself, enraged. "DEMONA! JEZEBEL!"
Jezebel was beside her an instant later, the RV had almost lost control but she skidded it into a side lane of the motorway they were travelling on.
She sniffed the air curiously as she stepped over Fang, who was now swearing very imaginatively.
"What's that smell?" she asked Faith.
"The smell of the Daemon!" yelled Demona, Brooklyn's staff in hand as she descended the stairs and stopped dead in her tracks when she smelt the air on the ground floor of her RV. The others appeared after her a few seconds later.
"What the heck's all the yelling about?" asked Lex, rubbing his head angrily.
"Malibu's under attack!" yelled Faith, ripping a vile of holy water from a pocket in her body glove, flipping the cap and tossing the contents over the sleeping clone.
The others collectively gasped when the image of the clone sleeping peacefully vanished, replaced with him writhing in agony, his face bleeding, pinned down by a nightmare given physical form.
It hissed in agony from the water, before it glared at the group through many, many eyes.
"MAL!" roared Fang desperately. "GET THE HELL AWAY FROM HIM YOU BASTARD!" He was on his feet in an instant, and tried to run to his friend but Faith grabbed him roughly to force him back.
"Peter you can't help him!" she yelled in his ear as he struggled to get free of her.
"Let me go! Mal!"
"You can't help him dammit!" she screamed. "Let Jezebel and Demona handle this! You'll only get in the way!"
Fang looked from her to Malibu, he looked terrified.
"He'll be okay," she whispered soothingly as Demona and started yelling something in Latin, the metal staff in her hand glowing flame red, like her hair.
The daemon hissed dangerously at her before Jezebel sent a small spray of amber coloured ball lightning at it.
It writhed from the blast, but held the clone down firmly.
~Master!~ it yelled. ~We are discovered!~
Demona pointed the raven end of the staff at the daemon, screaming the last command word as she did so. The glowing red light concentrated around the ornate metal raven, its wings outstretched, sitting on top of the magnificent weapon.
The air filled the smell of o-zone as a streak of red light came from the staff, as it buckled in Demona's hands, striking the daemon in the head.
The daemon thrashed around on the couch, swearing in its unholy language at them as Demona struck it again.
Jezebel shut her eyes and began to chant something under her breath.
Faith drew her long sword, it's blade etched from end to end in holy sigils as she began to recite a prayer of banishment. The daemon hissed at her as she approached it, her sword in a two handed grip.
She swung in an upward arc, her recitation becoming a scream as her blade, blessed six hundred and sixty six times, by a Bishop by the name of Alessandro Sanchez a few years ago, at the daemon.
The daemon hissed in terror and vanished before the blade could touch it.
*****
Brooklyn smiled as Malibu stirred and woke from unconsciousness. The clone was dazed, and looked like he was going to throw up.
His leg had been ruined from the knee down, a lot of the skin had been burned off, and puss and other bodily fluids was running over the flesh, some actually dripping from the foot onto the floor, forming a small, clear yellow puddle.
He pulled the coals away before any nerve endings could be fried beyond repair, simply because all he had to do now was apply a lot of salt, maybe a few weak acids or strong alkalises, and the clone would be telling him anything he wanted.
~Master! We are discovered!~
The voice seemed to echo around the room, coming from all around them.
"Damn," muttered Brooklyn before he turned his attention back to the clone. He shrugged and drew one of his Desert Eagle .50 calibre pistols from their shoulder holsters and smiled apologetically at his clone. "Sorry Mal. This was fun and all but I'm afraid I have to cut our little conversation short."
He raised the high calibre pistol and pointed it at the clone's face, aiming for between his eyes. "Goodbye Mal."
A hand grabbed him from behind and spun him around roughly before he could pull the trigger. Brooklyn got the breath knocked out of him, as the barrel of pump action shotgun was jammed hard against his flat belly.
He looked up at the newcomer in shock.
"Jezebel?"
The witch said nothing, she just pulled the trigger.
Brooklyn's stomach collapsed on itself as the buckshot round exploded from the barrel, barely an instant later there was an explosion of blood, chunks of flesh, bone fragments, and bits of black leather and cloth coming out from his back.
The gargoyle's eyes rolled in their sockets before he collapsed, vanishing before his corpse even hit the ground.
The witch quickly ran over to the bound clone, dropping her shotgun as she did so.
She lifted his head up gently and looked into his tired grey eyes.
"Jezebel?" asked Mal, his voice barely audible.
She nodded before she looked at the state he was in. "My God."
She looked into his eyes again. "Wake up Mal, you must wake up."
The clone's head drooped, he felt so tired.
Jezebel didn't ask him again.
"Forgive me," she muttered before she slapped him across the face. "NOW WAKE UP!"
*****
Demona grabbed her stomach and screamed before she crumpled to the floor. Fang, not noticing this, pushed through the others in the RV roughly, yelling his best friend's name as he knelt beside him.
"Mal? Mal? Say something!"
The clone stirred on the couch, his head was bleeding from several places as Fang gently lifted his head up.
He opened his eyes and smiled weakly. "What took so long?" He moaned in agony. "Oh God my foot."
Fang looked in the direction of his friend's bare feet.
"Jesus Christ."
"Get that body glove off," yelled Jezebel. "He's bleeding from about a dozen places. I'll get us to Demona's estate as fast as I can. We can tend to his wounds there."
With that she vanished back into the driver's compartment and slammed her foot back on the accelerator. The RV lurched as it began to move and pick up speed.
It was only then Fang noticed Demona was lying on the ground, clutching her stomach, with Goliath, Broadway and Lexington beside her, seeing if she was okay.
"What happened?" asked Broadway worriedly.
"I.I don't know," confessed Demona as she lent on Goliath as she stood. "I don't understand it. I shouldn't have felt anything."
She trailed off as she looked at Fang, who quickly avoided her gaze.
Her face hardened. "The witch didn't tell me something." She said while Lex and Broadway came over to help Faith take Malibu's body glove off.
There were several shocked gasps and a fair bit of swearing as they say the damage done and Demona decided to drop it for now when she saw the look on Fang's face at how badly hurt his friend was.
The hotel in Waldenburg, Poland
"That.damned.bitch."
Blood soaked the carpet as Brooklyn crawled along the floor, his clothes totally drenched in his own blood. He coughed violently as he stopped and rolled on his back.
The room was spinning quite quickly.
~Master? Are you all right?~
Brooklyn actually laughed at that, a rather sick, gurgling sound rather than an actual laugh came from his lips though.
"What a fucking question!"
He moaned in pain in-between coughs. "Why the fuck does she always aim for the stomach? Doesn't she realise just how much that fucking hurts?"
~I dare say that's why she aims there.~ said Thzul'gzhu'vsra'kotllz.
Brooklyn coughed some more before he moaned even louder.
"Great! Just fucking great!"
~What is it Master?~
"I've got a fucking migraine coming," roared Brooklyn.
~It could be worse Master, she could have shot you in the head.~
"Shut up!"
Two and a half hours later, Demona's estate in Southern Germany
Fang sat near Malibu's bed and took a heavy sigh. His shoulders were drooped, arms resting on his thighs while his wings folded around him in a loose cloak. He had removed his black armoured body glove and had dawned a pair of sand coloured cargo pants and a black T-shirt that had been washed so many times that it had faded to an extremely dark shade of grey. He had passed the hour and a half since Demona and Jezebel had patched his friend up by sitting by his bedside, his eyes either looking at the clone's sleeping form or at the floor.
His weary emerald eyes rose from the floor to take another glance at his best friend.
Mal was sleeping in one of the guestrooms in Demona's mansion, in a rather elegant four-poster, the heavy linen blankets pulled up to his throat and tucked in. His chest rose and fell steadily now where it had previously risen and fallen erratically.
He had blacked out from blood loss in the RV after they had taken off his body glove, his T-shirt and shorts moist and red from the heavy gash in his belly. He had to be stripped and have the blood washed off him when they got him inside. His wounds had been bandaged, including the burns all along his right leg from the knee down.
He rubbed the bandage on his left arm. They both had the same blood type and it was the very least he could do.
Demona had assured him repeatedly that the burns on his leg and foot would heal after a week if he was allowed to use stone sleep and he didn't put any weight on it until then. The gashes on his shoulder and face would also heal. Stone sleep usually dealt with flesh wounds. However.
His three broken ribs would take about a week or more. And even though the cuts on his cheek would heal, they were quite deep, and that meant that there would be scars. The same went for the one gash on his stomach that Brooklyn hadn't cauterised. The other two, the ones that Brooklyn had burned would heal in two or three days, like his foot, and the scars they left would be very unpleasant to look at.
Fang put his palm gently on Mal's forehead, checking his temperature for the sixth time in the past ten minutes to make sure he wasn't developing a fever.
It was all right; Demona had assured him. Mal would heal eventually and the best thing he could do for him was to be there when he woke up.
But it wasn't all right. It could never be all right.
Brooklyn had tortured him. He had tortured him a few feet from where he was sitting and he didn't even know it was happening.
He had failed to protect Malibu in quite spectacular fashion. It made him sick to think about it, but his thoughts kept going back to what had happened.
He had been staring at Faith's legs. He had smelled that damn smell of daemons at least ten minutes before anybody else, and he had done nothing. He was too busy thinking with his dick to even consider it odd.
There was a mirror on the opposite side of the room from where he sat, a full length, brass framed 18th century mirror. He couldn't even bare to look at himself in it.
He stared at the floor again, at the finely woven, dark green rug under his Chippendale chair.
He felt movement under his left palm and realised that he still had his hand on Mal's forehead. A weak yawn followed.
"Fang?"
Fang looked up into Mal's face, a heavy, thick plaster covering his right cheek completely while several lighter cuts had simple, thin plasters across them. His grey eyes were bloodshot and looked very tired. He smiled weakly at the mutate.
"Hi," he whispered, his voice barely audible even to Fang's keen ears. He looked so pale.
"Hey," he managed to reply eventually. "How ya feeling buddy?"
"I.I'd be lying if I told you I've felt worse." Mal's smile strengthened a little. "You?"
-He's asking me how I feel? Christ.- "Oh me? Uhh.I'm great." -I just wanna kill myself for letting that bastard do this to you.-
Malibu looked at him a little uncertainly. "You sure?"
Fang nodded, taking his hand off his friend's forehead. "I was.I was just checking your temperature."
"How long have I been out of it?" yawned Mal.
"Just a couple of hours," answered Fang, trying to avoid looking into Malibu's eyes again. "You lost an awful lot of blood. Jezzy thinks you shouldn't try moving until you get your strength back up."
He was suddenly aware Mal was looking at the bandage on his arm.
"How'd this happen?" asked the clone rather quickly, moving his right arm out from under his blankets to check Fang's arm, but stopping halfway when the gash on his right shoulder stung him quite sharply. He gritted his teeth but a pitiful snarl escaped his lips none the less.
"Easy kid." Fang gently took his friend's arm and put it back under the blankets. "Nothing major, we just have the same blood type."
"You.you gave me blood?"
"Sure."
"Thank you."
Fang smiled weakly at Malibu, feeling unusually awkward. "Hell.no big deal kid.I mean you'd do the same for me. No big deal."
"Still.thanks."
An awkward silence prevailed in the room. Fang started his vigil on the floor again, while Malibu looked at him in silence.
-He's blaming himself,- thought Mal sadly. -He's wondering why I'm not angry with him.-
Fang could handle anger from people. Talon, Faith, Sevarius, Demona, his father. Apart from Faith he knew about all of them.
Fang's grandfather and grandmother had been refugees, former serfs from the Ukraine, fleeing the civil war that had ravaged the former Russian Empire after the October Revolution. They'd made over the border into Romania and on to a ship heading to America. They'd settled down in New Jersey, adopted new names and converted to Catholicism from their Eastern Orthodox religion so they'd fit in better. They were illegal immigrants.
Fang's father had been born into wedlock in 1938, killing his mother. He was his grandfather's only son. His grandfather never remarried.
His father had been nineteen when he met his future wife. They had dated for nearly two years and then they'd wed. Fang had never known his grandfather, he only ever knew him from pictures in old family albums and stories his dad had told him when he was sober. His mum and dad had moved away to a town twenty miles outside of Pittsburgh. Neither had attended college. Fang, or Peter as he was baptised, had been born in 1966, on the same day as his father had.
Things had been fine until Fang was five. His father was laid off from whatever job he had (Fang had an annoying habit not telling the whole story he had noted), steel probably, and hit the bottle. His mother had also been working part time then, leaving him with her sister, who had lived a few miles from them. She now began to take extra part time jobs, hoping his dad got himself together soon so that she could spend more time looking after their child.
He hadn't.
Fang was seven when he first saw his father beat his mother, but it was probably not the first time. She'd put sugar in his tea by accident and his father had beaten her black and blue across the face with his belt. She'd sent him away to her sister's that night. But she'd stayed where she was.
As he grew older he'd started to stay in his aunt's a lot more. His mother was trying to shield from his father's fall into alcohol and violence. But he had to come home sometimes. She was beaten, time and time again, as her husband got drunk from money he took off her. He never touched Fang though, which caused even more resentment in him.
When he was thirteen, his father had come back in a particularly nasty drunken stupor. He found his mother and proceeded to beat her with his belt. Fang had taken a poker for the fire and broke his father's jaw with it.
Then something happened that had stunned him.
When he went to help his mother up, she hit him. Hit him so hard that he was knocked to the ground. She then fell on her husband and hugged him, crying her eyes out. She had never, ever raised her hand to him before that. He sat staring at her, sitting on the floor, his mouth open, tears dripping down his reddened cheeks, as he realised the awful truth that his mother would never escape from the violence, and he had just made things an awful lot worse for her.
By the time the paramedics left the social workers were just arriving. He was moved around for a year and a half in the state before somebody was willing to take someone in who had started lashing out at anyone around him, screaming all sorts of terrible threats at his foster parents, breaking furniture, and beating the living daylights out of anybody who crossed his path in school.
Of all the peoples in the world, it was a pair of German immigrants who took in the grandson of a Ukrainian refugee. Dr. Frederick and Mina Khines.
They calmed him down in time for college.
-That's where Faith came into it I guess,- thought Mal. He looked at Fang again, remembering their conversations over the past few years, coming to a small epiphany as he did so. -That's why were so close,- he realised. -We're not just best friends.we're each other's councillors too.-
Straining a little, he slid his right arm out of the covers again, not really feeling much pain now, just a little stiffness, and placed his hand on Fang's left shoulder, squeezing it weakly.
Fang didn't look up from the ground, he looked miserable now, but he put his own right hand over Mal's, squeezing back before he eventually spoke.
"I'm sorry I didn't help you kid. I'm sorry I let this happen to you."
"It's okay, it's not your fault, you couldn't have known."
Fang still didn't look up at him, but Mal could feel him shaking. He closed his eyes tightly for a few minutes, his teeth gritted slightly and breathing deeply through his nose. When he opened his eyes again he had stopped shaking. He looked up into Malibu's face and smiled at him, squeezing his hand tightly.
"It won't happen again kid, ever. If anything ever happened to you.I'd.I'd never forgive myself."
Mal smiled back at him. "Thanks."
He raised his eyebrows suddenly. "Hasn't Elisa called yet?" He paused as he moved his legs under the sheets. "And where the Hell are my clothes?"
*****
Jezebel walked along the main hall of Demona's lavish mansion, wiping her fingers along furniture and tables, rather taken aback by the lack of efficiency of the staff.
She strode across the black and white checker tiled floor, where a grand pair of staircases with decorated rosewood railings would take her up to the first floor of the four-floor building.
The detective was quite late and hadn't called. She was beginning to wonder if she should have just taken a plane herself back to the estate and searched Brooklyn's study on her lonesome.
"Probably doesn't know what she's looking for," she muttered to herself.
There was a sudden crack of thunder outside followed immediately by a flash of lightning. It had started raining quite heavily again.
Jezebel started for the stairs to check to see if Malibu was awake and might be a little hungry or might want some of his clothes but stopped herself as her foot came onto the first step.
What if this detective Maza had found any notes Brooklyn may have made and then been waylaid somewhere between here and New York?
She thought back to the daemon that had almost murdered one of her cares under her very nose.
Was that the first time Brooklyn had used that little bastard? Or perhaps something just like it?
She began to hate herself for not just disposing of that damned book.
What if Detective Maza really was in trouble?
As she thought about this, there was another loud crash that echoed throughout the hall. It took her a second to realise it was one of the knockers on the huge oak double doors and not the storm.
One of Demona's servants, a tall, thin woman with neat brown hair that was probably dyed in her early sixties whom Jezebel had heard Demona address as "Frau Gauss", came out of a side door and headed to the main doors. She had a very severe looking face that seemed to suggest to Jezebel that she had been a teacher at one stage in her life. She wore one of those black and white numbers that are universally associated with maids.
Jezebel didn't like her, which was why she headed to the door as well; intent on meeting whoever it was with a smile instead of a look of distaste that she had given her when she had first entered.
She wondered fleetingly if she had ever been part of the Hitler Youth as a young girl and just where the devil Demona had met her as she out paced the maid and beat her to the door.
She opened it quickly, relishing in the upper class sneer that the good maid was probably giving her behind her back until she got a good look at who was standing outside in the rain.
"Oh my God."
*****
Demona walked around the circular room two storeys below ground level that she had occasionally used for the practice of magic and the finer points of combat with various weapons, frowning.
It would have to do.
She had an altar of granite in the very centre of the room, which itself was quite large with a very high ceiling.
Upon the altar lay.
She looked away from what lay on the altar. "It's necessary," she repeated to herself. "Necessary."
"Is it?" asked a voice from the other side of the room.
She looked around to see Goliath standing at the open double doors, frowning, his arms crossed. "Is it Demona?" He advanced on her slowly.
"I've told you before Goliath. This is the only option I have left."
"Are you positive?"
"Completely. I have tried absolutely everything else possible to track him. It's failed, all of it."
"And what makes you so certain this will work? You've never done it before."
"I'm the only person here that has had any experience with that damned book. I remember some of what I read, but not enough to try this without having any chance of success."
"And what if it goes wrong?" grumbled the lavender giant.
"That's why I'm here," said Faith as she entered the room.
Both gargoyles looked her over.
She was in her armoured body glove, her black hair sitting loosely around her shoulders. She wasn't wearing any of her guns or close combat weapons, nor her leather jacket.
Instead she was cradling a silver and black flamethrower in her hands. The tanks on her back were strapped firmly in place, while a large crucifix was shoved in her belt.
"Where did you get that?" rumbled Goliath as Faith strode calmly towards them. Faith smiled at him.
"I found it in one of Demona's rooms."
Goliath looked back at Demona, his mouth dropping slightly to ask her just what she thought she needed a flamethrower for, but the azure gargess was now looking away from him into one of the midnight blue walls, looking quite awkward and biting her lip.
"Don't worry Goliath," said Faith calmly. "If Demona screws this up then you'll be thankful I've got this." She patted it. "Fire cleanses all. After all."
Goliath looked between the both before turning his attention back to Faith. "Who were those gargoyles we found in Sudeny?"
Faith's smile dropped. "I was waiting for that," she said sadly. "The Inquisition has been using gargoyles as allies since the late 17th century."
"Yes. Before that you hunted us," said Demona coldly, not even looking at her.
Faith glared at Demona's back hatefully. "You are who I think you are, aren't you?"
Demona turned to face her, arms crossed over her chest, her face unreadable. "And who would that be?"
"Caeruleus Diabolus."
Goliath frowned, while Demona smiled at Faith in an almost nostalgic way.
"The Blue Devil." Finished Demona. "Yes human, that's who I used to be those in your order. To the Hunters I am called "The Demon"; different opponents always gave me different names. But the fate they faced when they fought me was always the same."
"You're responsible for the deaths of quite a few of our operatives over the centuries."
"Then why are you working with me and not trying to blow my head off?"
"I really don't want to. But I have no choice in this matter. You've seen what happened when we tried to take Brooklyn or whoever it is with him on."
"So you also think this is the only way?" asked Goliath.
Faith sighed. "I'm sorry to say I agree with Demona. I can't think of any other way of finding out where he is going." She rubbed her chin with a gloved hand. "And this won't be the first time one of our order has had involvement with Daemonology. There are actually those in our order who use Daemonic Power to fight the Darkness."
"And what becomes of them?" asked Goliath.
"Well.some have actually been fairly successful."
"Some?"
"Well.it's incredibly dangerous you see.the unlucky ones are usually driven insane and have to be put out of their misery, by other Inquisitors usually."
Goliath looked at Faith worriedly. "They're driven mad?"
"Well.the ones that don't die hideous deaths or have their souls destroyed when they try to create a daemonhost or miscast some complicated spell."
Goliath looked quickly back in Demona's direction. "And when were you planning to tell us this?"
"Goliath, I hadn't intended to have you present when I try and summon and bind a daemon," explained Demona quickly. "Only myself, Faith, Jezebel and Fang will be in here."
"Why you four?"
"Because," butted in Faith. "Physical weapons are about as useful against an incorporeal daemon as spitting is for knocking down very thick walls. If you were to put your hand in it then it would be burnt to a cinder by the energy."
Demona stepped in at this point. "The four of us can combat it if it gets loose during the ceremony. Jezebel and I can use sorcery, Fang can use his electrical blasts, and while Faith can use the flamethrower and any other tricks she may know."
Faith smiled at the lavender giant while looking him over in his loincloth. "Don't take this the wrong way nature boy, but the rest of you will just get in our way."
Goliath was about give off to the woman, when there was a polite cough coming from the doorway. The trio turned to see Jezebel standing before them, looking rather unsettled.
"Detective Maza is here. In the study." She looked at Goliath. "I'm afraid something happened when she was going through our estate."
Goliath's eye ridges rose while worry spread across his face. "What?"
"She was attacked and.maybe you better see for yourself."
*****
Elisa sipped the cup of tea Frau Gauss had offered her, the cup shaking slightly both from the cold outside, and from her previous experience.
"Elisa?"
The detective looked up into Broadway's worried face and smiled weakly at him. "Yeah Broadway?"
"What happened? Are you."
"I'm fine Broadway, really," said Elisa slowly. "I'm just tired. I've been travelling most of the day."
Broadway nodded in understanding, taking a seat opposite the couch Elisa was sitting on, trying not to look at her, while trying to make it look like he wasn't deliberately avoiding looking at her.
Elisa appreciated the effort and smiled slightly.
There was fast, hard steps echoing on the tiled floor outside.
"ELISA! ELISA!"
The doors flew open as Goliath rushed into the room, almost splintering the doors in his haste. "ELISA!"
He stopped dead in his tracks when he saw his love. "Oh my God." His face sank as he slowly walked over to her. "What.what happened to you?"
Elisa placed the cup of tea on the table next to the couch, stood up and hugged Goliath. "It's nothing. I'm okay big guy, I'll be okay."
The huge lavender gargoyle traced his hand along her scarred face. "How did this happen?"
Elisa looked up into his dark eyes, and explained everything.
A few hours ago, Manhattan
The first crow that smashed through the glass was nearly decapitated when Owen shot it in the head at point blank range.
"Get out of the car!"
Swearing a blue streak, Talon kicked the door on his side, knocking it completely off its hinges and sending it skidding along the ground as crows mobbed him.
"Fuck!"
He started batting them away with his arms and wings, his fists glowing brightly with electrical energy, detonating any bird that touched them.
As Elisa tried her door, her head spinning, she felt the notes Owen had collected and put in a file shoved roughly against her chest.
"Get those to the Demona!" yelled Owen quickly, shoving her out of her door and following her closely. "Use the sewers! Make your way to the airport as fast as you can!"
The was the sound of metal being torn as Claw removed his door and leapt out of Elisa's ruined car. The crackling of electricity quickly followed this sound before the smell of charred flesh and burnt feathers filled the air.
Tucking the file tightly under her arm, Elisa quickly started scanning the road for an entrance to the sewers, drawing her Beretta as she did so.
A crow came at her, cawing wildly, its beady eyes a bright shade of red.
She fired her pistol, the 9mm round smashing through its rib cage and exploding out its back. It crashed to the ground a few inches from her feet.
Another came at her, and another, she shot them all down before got close. She looked up into the sky in a brief reprieve. The black flock of birds dominated the night sky.
Nearly a hundred dived at her.
She started running, pulling her red leather bomber jacket over her head, trying to cover her face as she desperately searched for a manhole.
She stumbled as the first slammed into her back, her left leg gave out from under her as a crow actually rammed itself against the back of her knee.
"Shit!" she screamed before falling flat on her face, the file going flying out of her grip and sliding along the tarmac a few feet away.
She could actually feel the shadow come over her as the birds dived upon her, pinning her down by simple weight of numbers. They scrambled all over her as she started thrashing wildly around, kicking and slapping them away from her.
Her gun had flown out of her hand too. "Fuck!"
They tore at her, over the almost deafening thunder of hundreds of wings flapping wildly all around her she though she could hear Derek screaming her name.
She batted another away from her; only to have it replaced a second later, hissing menacingly through its pointed, black beak. She brought her fist down on it as hard as she could, cracking its skull against the hard road as she began to crawl towards the file.
She gritted her teeth as she felt them pecking at her legs, swearing rather imaginatively when she felt stings of pain as the crows' beaks began to penetrate her blue jeans.
One came at her, diving from the air as if it were a released bomb, its beak driving into the back of her right shoulder, penetrating both her jacket and her thin black T-shirt.
Elisa screamed, more in rage than pain. She reached over her head, grabbed the bird, wrenched it out of her bleeding wound, too rushed with adrenaline now to noticed the pain, and began smashing it, head first against the ground.
Several came at her face; one actually dug its razor like claws into her face, drawing blood.
She screamed again, even harder when the daemonic bird flew back, opening the new cuts across Elisa's attractive, brown face. She could feel the blood flowing down her cheeks. She could taste it in her mouth.
"Damn it!"
She batted them away as one got caught in her raven black hair. Screeching, it started to peck her at the back of her neck.
She covered her bleeding face with her arms, shaking as she crawled over to the file as quickly as she could, covering it protectively with her body as she tried to look through her crossed arms, desperately trying to find a manhole cover, or failing that, her gun.
She heard several thumps, just before a shower of burnt feathers fell around her. A moment later, she felt a large, powerful arm, rap around her waist, pulling her up quickly, she could see huge, tattered bat like wings rap around her protectively.
It was Claw.
He smiled at her reassuringly, stumbling forward quickly as the crows tried to swamp him. His wings were speckled with holes along the membranes; some of the tears were several inches in length. He was bleeding from several large cuts across his chest and face.
"Are you okay?" she asked the tiger mutate. He nodded a positive, his reassuring smile etched with pain.
Elisa looked through one of the larger gaps in Claw's wings and saw Owen, standing defiantly amongst the chaos, his normally composed face fixed in grim determination. He had several mild cuts across the right side of his face but other than that he appeared to be totally untouched.
She could hear Derek yelling something, swears mostly, but she couldn't pinpoint him at that exact moment.
The birds had stopped attacking her and Claw. They'd all started circling Owen.
~You aren't who you appear are you?~
It was that daemon thingy, even though she could hear it was obvious that it was addressing Mr. Burnett.
Owen looked up into the sky, his face unchanging as he raised his hands.
"I believe daemon, that you constitute a threat to both the clan and Alexander," he said, the slightest hint of anger in his usual monotone. He suddenly became distorted in a haze of blinding light. When it vanished, in his place stood a small, elf-like man dressed in fantastically coloured clothing, with long, silvery hair and sparkling vermilion eyes.
~A Fey,~ muttered the daemon indignantly.
"Oh not just any Fey beakface!" Yelled Puck, his usually mirthful voice now laced with ice. A powerful white aura began to surround him as held his open palmed hands in front of him. Elisa could feel the daemon bracing itself as the smell of spices became apparent in the air again.
"Elisa! Claw!"
The pair looked over to where Talon was standing, nearly a dozen meters away, he was cut and bleeding in various places while his wings were torn in places like Claw's from where crows had tried to get at his face. He was by an open manhole, the circular cover of it in his hands. "Let's get the Hell outta here!"
"Go on!" Yelled Puck, looking upward into the thickest part of the flock. "I'll handle this."
Elisa tried to protest but Claw, seeing the wisdom in not sticking around, ignored her protests as he sped across the road to Talon, keeping Elisa firmly under his arm.
Elisa heard Puck scream something in a language she didn't know before the ground began shake slightly. She heard the daemon roar in her mind, taking the Fey's challenge. There was a distinct change in the atmosphere, it felt colder, she could hear the crackling of electricity as both her hair and Claw's began to stand on end as a growing blue light picked up their shadows on the ground. She breathed out through her mouth, it was smokey.
She squirmed in Claw's rock hard grip, trying to catch a glimpse of what was happening behind her.
They were only a couple of meters from the manhole when she turned to look at her younger brother.
Talon's mouth was slack jawed, his eyes bulging out like dinner plates.
"Holy Crap."
Elisa tried to yell a question at him, namely, what the Hell was going on behind them, when Claw abruptly stopped, hugged her his chest, and dived into the hole, feet first.
There was a loud splash as Claw landed quite hard on his feet and scanned the surrounding area. The sewer tunnel they were in was quite dark, preventing the tiger mutate from seeing more than a few meters. The walls were lined with a thick coat of grime, there were thin concrete walkways on either side of the small stream of dark green tinted sludge the flowed at shin depth, which Claw was immersed in. There was the unpleasant odour of rotting food and excrement in the air.
A moment later Talon landed beside them. He looked very flustered. He grabbed Claw rather ungraciously by his free arm and started dragging them down the direction that was in the opposite direction of Puck's duel with the daemon.
"Derek what's going on up there?" asked Elisa. She was still being held by Claw but didn't really mind at this point. Claw was a much faster runner than she was and didn't seem slowed down by her weight under his arm.
"Something big!" replied her brother, not even turning to look at her as he raced down the tunnel on the walkway just ahead of them.
He seemed spooked. She wondered what he had seen.
The sound of the explosion hit them before the shockwave did. It was deafening even to Elisa's less sensitive human ears. They all screamed at the pain in their heads as they slowed down, blood pouring from their ears and noses.
The shockwave knocked them off their feet. Talon actually fell into the stream of sludge while Claw fell forward, wrapping his wings around himself to protect both him and Elisa. The ground shook violently for a moment, causing bits of the ceiling above them to crack and fall on them. A small tidal wave of sewage water hit them a second later, drenching them all and nearly lifting them off the ground before rushing on.
Talon coughed and spat out a mouthful of sewer water, swearing as he rose unsteadily to his feet. Claw uncapped his wings around himself and Elisa, his hands on his head while he gritted his teeth, groaning slightly. Elisa sat up, her head spinning as she rose to her feet with Claw's assistance.
She noticed the look Claw was giving her. She ran her hands over her face; feeling sharps stings whenever her hands made contact with the cuts the crow had given her. Some were quite deep.
"Shit."
"Do you hear anything?" asked Talon.
Elisa and Claw listened intently for what may be happening on the ground. It had gone completely silent.
"Should we go up and see if Puck's okay?" she asked. She didn't really care much for either Owen or Puck, but she never would wish death on either of them.
Talon shook his head quickly. "No, no. We get you to the Xanatos' plane first. Puck can take care of himself just fine." Even when he was saying this he didn't seem totally convinced.
But he was right. If they delayed, then they ran the risk of being attacked again, perhaps by something bigger and nastier than that crow thing.
Talon led them down the tunnels. All were silent as they went.
Back to Present, Demona's South German Estate
"So that's what happened," said Elisa tiredly. "Derek led us to the airport through the sewers. I got on Xanatos' personal jet, and just arrived at the airport in Munich about half an hour ago."
Goliath looked tenderly on his beloved, his dark eyes looking deeply into her chocolate brown. His eyes lowered slightly to look at the fresh scars on her face. His eyes flared slightly.
"I'll kill him," he whispered, so low his voice was almost inaudible. "I'll kill him for this."
His voice was just loud enough for Jezebel to hear though. "You most certainly will not." She said coldly.
"Of course I will! Look what he's done to Elisa!"
"He did worse to Malibu!" yelled Jezebel as Faith and Demona came into the room. "But I know Mal will be still trying to save him!"
"He's too dangerous to let live!" roared Goliath fiercely, his eyes blazing.
The old lady didn't flinch. Instead she glared right back at the huge gargoyle, a faint amber glow in her eyes. "I contacted you on the understanding that you'd help us save him," she said, her voice reaching sub-zero levels. "My orders were to protect him, Fang and Mal."
"And you've done a great job too," remarked Broadway dryly.
Jezebel turned her stare to him and he shut up quickly.
She turned her attention to Demona. "And you're opinion on the matter?"
Demona looked between Elisa, Goliath and Macbeth's old servant.
"I.I'm not sure," she said evenly. She looked at Goliath, "I suppose you're right. He's out of control. It's a miracle that Elisa and Malibu survived."
"What are you saying Demona?" asked Jezebel.
"We have to stop Brooklyn. Even if we have to kill him."
Jezebel's eyes darted to look at Faith, her eyes pleading. "And your humble opinion Inquisitor?"
Faith sighed, looking at the floor as she spoke. "I'm afraid I agree with nature boy." Jezebel looked at the floor herself before Faith continued. "But.if it's at all possible to reach him then I think we should try for that option first.only kill him as a last resort."
Jezebel gave her a smile of thanks before looking at Elisa, Broadway, and Lexington, who had just, came into the room. "And you three?"
"I'm with Faith," said Lex immediately.
"Same here," said Broadway a moment later. "We have to at least try."
Elisa shook her head, refusing to say anything. Instead she just handed over the bad smelling file to Demona, and requested the use of some of her old clothes and a bathroom.
Demona's estate, three hours after sunrise
Fang walked quietly through the huge gardens, his tail dragging behind him.
The sky had cleared, now there was barely a cloud in the cobalt sky, with the sun beating gently on his face as his bare, furry feet trudged through the damp grass. He could smell the dampness. It was quite refreshing. His ears picked up the sound of birds chirping in a small forest of elms, ash and oak that lay to his left, about three hundred yards away.
There was a stream to his right, with an oriental rock garden along the side, leading up to a small wooden, Japanese style, bridge that crossed over the fast flowing stream. A small patch of weeping willows was on the other side of the stream whose source he couldn't figure out. He made out the silhouettes of several rabbits underneath the shade of the trees.
His stomach growled at him as he watched them. He'd forgotten the last time he'd eaten something. He shook his head though. He was definitely not that hungry.
"Malibu would enjoy this," came a familiar voice from behind.
Fang smiled, but didn't turn his head around. "Shouldn't you be helping Demona Jezzy?"
He sensed her frown and his smiled increased a little.
"I think she knows what she's doing," replied the witch calmly as she walked up beside the cougar mutate. "How is Mal?"
"He's not too bad, considering what happened and all I guess." He closed his eyes. "Thanks for fixing him up. I only know the extreme basics in that department."
"I'd do the same for you.though chances are I might just wrap the bandages just a little tighter."
That earned a small chuckle from Fang. "Mal told me something interesting," he said. "Apparently that daemon Brook summoned turned on him."
"Really?"
"Yep. Apparently he sent him back to Hell for that. I was thinking Demona might find that useful to know."
Jezebel nodded slowly, her mind lingering on something else. "Do you think we should tell her?"
Clearly Fang was thinking the same thing. "No. Not yet.it drove Brook mad.God knows what it would do to that bitch." He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "If we really have to tell her.then I think it might be wiser doing it after she'd done this thing. We can't have head lingering when she has to concentrate on something like this."
"She's suspicious already."
"I know, I know," replied Fang sadly. "But we don't need her thinking about that sort of thing, especially if we really can't reach Brook and the only way to save him is to kill him."
They remained silent for quite a while. Staring out ahead of them. The only audible sounds were those of the stream and the birds chirping, which was then shattered when Fang's stomach growled very aggressively when he saw a dear coming out of the forest to have a sip at the stream.
"She's got a heck of a garden," he said quickly, looking a little sheepish.
"Yes.I think it's beside a national park or something like that. Have you had breakfast yet?"
"Uh.no.I just came outta Mal's room about a half hour ago. He was asleep when the sun rose. I just wanted to make sure Brooklyn didn't try that stunt again so I stayed with him."
"That was kind of you. I'll make you some breakfast," said Jezebel as she turned to head back to Demona's imposing gothic mansion. "The two of us will be quite busy tonight if this goes wrong."
Fang said nothing, but continued to stare out at the landscape, a frown on his face.
*****
Dominique Destine sat at the rosewood desk in her study, the notes Elisa had nearly died to bring her spread out before her.
Elisa was in bed in one of the guest rooms, Goliath sitting at her side as a solemn statue.
Lexington, Bronx and Broadway were somewhere in the house, she just didn't know where at the moment. Faith had left to try and get to the nearest Catholic Church possible to have her flamethrower sanctified and be back in time for the ceremony.
She didn't really feel like wearing a business suit today. She did not need to feel uptight today of all days. Instead she wore a pair of black pants and a heavy, woollen jumper the colour of fuchsia with a white T-shirt underneath. She had a pair of small, black shoes on her feet.
They still didn't know what happened to Puck. The news was saying there had been some sort of bombing in a street in Manhattan, that had killed eighteen homeless people, as well as a truck driver and several other people in the nearby area. The President was on the warpath because of it apparently. Saying he'd hunt down the terrorists responsible.
Dominique smiled sadly and shook her head as she remembered the news report. There was a better chance of Hell freezing over first than the President finding those responsible.
She picked up one of the papers and began to examine it closely. As she began to read, it all came back to her, all the times she'd sat in the dark of the night, the Malus Codicium pressed tightly against her chest, its sweet voice talking to her in the darkness, promising her power, vengance and her clan back. She had been chosen and her alone for the task; they had been waiting uncounted millennia for her.
She shook her head quickly. That wasn't her anymore. They'd been lying to her the whole time. Now Brooklyn was being led to believe that only he had been chosen. That damned book had driven him insane as she had once been. But she could stop him, as Macbeth had stopped her once.
She began to make a list of what she would need.
Demona's estate, Midnight
Faith entered the circular room underneath Demona's German home, prepping her flamethrower and whispering a prayer of fortitude as she did so. Fang, Demona and Jezebel were all there waiting for her.
"You're late," said Demona, clearly irritated. She was dressed in her heavily armoured black body glove; the file of notes under one arm and Brooklyn's old staff in her hand.
She noticed Fang snickering behind Demona and gave him the finger. Jezebel smiled and shut the doors, being sure to lock them and chant a quick spell to make sure they stayed that way.
The quartet approached the altar together to observe what Demona had done.
A pudgy naked man in his late forties lay on the table, dead. His unruly blond hair slowly beginning to turn grey as his maroon coloured eyes stared blankly up at the ceiling, already glazed over. Across his body were chains with talismans attached to them, Daemonic runes engraved upon them.
They had taken one of the bodies they had found in Sudeny, choosing this one as it had only a bullet hole in the forehead, and had yet to be ravaged by the carrion birds and animals that had wandered into the dead town to feast.
Demona had already painted the daemonic runes upon the corpse's belly; chest and forehead in blood that she gotten by the jar full in the town. Several such jars sat on the altar by the side of the corpse.
"Are you all ready?" asked Demona.
The others nodded an affirmative and she began, taking the cap off one of the glass jars and dipping her hand into the thick, cold red liquid inside, taking her arm out then and rubbing her palm along the shaft of the staff, muttering words to herself in a language none of the others knew.
Demona repeated the process until the staff was covered from top to bottom in blood. She then began to chant in the daemon's tongue, sliding slowly to her knees as she did so. The other spaced themselves away from her, ready should this go wrong.
Demona focused only on her words, and the name of the daemon Jezebel had told her.
"Iieo'detl'bhadhr'hoo. I call you. Come through Abaddon's gate."
Her eyes began to glow a fiery red as her body started trembling.
"Iieo'detl'bhadhr'hoo. I call you. Bypass Cerberus on your way."
The others began to tense, ready should the daemon prove too much for Demona to handle.
"Iieo'detl'bhadhr'hoo. I call you. Come from Lucifer's side."
Far away, in a place and realm of existence that's very existence itself was denied by many, something stirred in its bonds.
"Iieo'detl'bhadhr'hoo. I call you. Arise from the throne room of Perdition."
Fang's fists crackled with blue electrical energy while Faith let the barrel of her flamethrower. Both praying silently as they did so. Jezebel stood closest to Demona, ready to intervene should the worst come to the worst.
"Iieo'detl'bhadhr'hoo. I call you. Past the Hell Fire and Sulphur Lakes."
Demona's whole body was shaking violently. The power needed to do this was so much and so very hard to control. It had been a lot easier for Brooklyn from what Fang and Malibu had described. He had the book. He had more time to prepare himself for the trauma.
"Iieo'detl'bhadhr'hoo. It is your new master who speaks."
It awoke, its bonds shattered, she set it free.
The sheer force of will, which the daemon hit Demona with as it came into the world, staggered her. She actually gasped. She struggled for control, trying to recite the commands of binding.
But the daemon was so strong.
As a strand of bright, blinding white light began to leak from the beaked mouth of the raven atop of Brooklyn's staff, the runes covering it began to glow through the blood.
Demona felt its will, so strong, and fuelled by uncounted millennia of hate pushing her aside. She tried to fight it, tried every fibre in her being, but the daemon was so damn strong.
She tried to scream the words, but they caught in her mouth. Her grip on the staff before her loosened. An immense explosion of white light burst forth from the staff head. The daemon was free.
Demona felt its power, its true, tainted power as it leered at her from above.
~Just my luck. Another fucking gargoyle.~
She blacked out.
*****
Fang yelled a battle cry as he let loose with a blast of electricity at the incorporeal daemon as it descended on Demona.
He rushed forward, continuing his assault.
-Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck!-
The daemon roared in pain and flew back away from the group as they advanced on it. Jezebel ran over to Demona, kneeling down quickly and grabbing her by the shoulders, shaking her roughly and yelling quite a few graphic swearwords as she did so.
Fang leapt over the altar, his fist blazing in electrical fire as the daemon fell back to the curved wall.
It hissed at him and fired off a bolt of daemonic power. He leapt aside, the force of the blast sending a shower of tiles into the air, while propelling him across the ground and against the wall with great force. He fell to his knees, and then onto his side, moaning weakly but not loosing consciousness. He was sure he cracked a rib or two; he could taste blood in his mouth.
His gaze fell to the other side of the room, where the daemon was, it hovered several meters off the air, its tainted purity lighting up the whole room. He could see it smile triumphantly at him.
~Have we met?~ it asked him casually, as it built up another attack to finish him. ~Just I never forget a face. And you've got one only a drugged up Zoologist could possibly love.~
It roared in agony as flame engulfed it before it could kill him.
"STAY THE FUCK AWAY FROM HIM!" screamed Faith, her flamethrower raining a steady stream of flame on the daemon as she actually ran at it while parts of the room started to burn from her righteous weapon.
The daemon howled and flew out of the stream of flame and fired at her. Faith dived under it, swearing wildly before she was lifted into the air by the force of the blast.
She hit the wall with her back, upside down. There was a very discouraging crack before she bounced off the wall and landed flat on her face. She got up almost immediately, blood seeping from her busted lip, a bruise forming over her right eye.
She roared at the daemon, lifted the flamethrower at it, pulled the trigger.
.and swore at the top of her voice when nothing actually came out of the barrel.
"FUCK!"
She leapt aside as Sin fired at her again; causing another muffled explosion, a rain of debris and the creation of yet another crater on the expensively tile floor.
She rolled to her feet and bolted, checking her weapon as she did so. The barrel and fuel feeder were damaged from crashing into the wall.
"FUCK!"
She began leaping from side to side, dodging various attacks from Sin as she fumbled with the straps holding the fuel tank to her back. "Trust the fucking rich to spend money on the cheap fucking crap!"
Jezebel was suddenly standing, Brooklyn's staff in her hands, the raven end aimed at the daemon.
"FULMINOUS VINITE!"
The staff erupted in amber flame, before a blast of lightning flew from the head, narrowly missing the daemon and blowing a huge chunk off the wall, while the ground shook ever so slightly. Jezebel was actually lifted off her feet by the force of her attack and went skidding across the floor to near where Fang was lying half conscious.
She looked at the staff in shock for a moment before her eyes lit up and a nasty grin crossed her face. She braced herself against the wall and unleashed another blast at the daemon, which dodged it again, while the air was filled with bits of flying brick.
"You'll bring the house down Jezzy," coughed Fang weakly as he tried to sit up. "Be careful."
Jezebel nodded, keeping her eyes on the daemon. It had stopped chasing Faith and was now staring at her venomously.
~I remember you,~ it said coldly. ~You're that old bitch that shocked me.~ It smiled. ~I'm going to enjoy this.~
Jezebel smiled at the daemon, taunting it. "Fuck. You."
The daemon roared in rage at her and hurled an especially large energy blast.
Jezebel clasped the staff firmly in her hands before her. "Deflectere!"
A shield of amber light formed between her, Fang and the daemon's attack. The blast bounced roughly off the shield and hit the ceiling. The was a deafening explosion before large chunks of brick and masonry rained down on the group, which was then followed by some wrecked furniture and a burning PC, which fell down the hole made in the ceiling and exploded on the ground.
Jezebel looked up at the hole. "Whoops."
"I knew you were fucking going senile!" coughed Fang behind her as he managed to stand at last, his back leaning against the wall, his legs unsteady, his head spinning.
They heard the daemon cackle madly at them.
~Is that the best you've got?~ it laughed.
"DAEMON!"
Sin turned its attention to Faith, just in time to see the tanks of her flamethrower flying towards it. Faith dived behind the altar beside Demona while Jezebel quickly called up her shield again as the tanks came into contact with the incorporeal form of the daemon and detonated.
The explosion was deafening, the entire room shook violently for several seconds as flame spread across the floor, walls and even ceiling. The heat caused was intense.
Jezebel's shield died down and she looked at the carnage around her. Most of the floor was on fire and the smoke made it difficult to see anything. She could hear Fang coughing uncontrollably behind her and risked a glance to look.
He had fallen on his side and was doubled over again, coughing badly, she could see blood coming out of his ears and nose and assumed the same could be said of her at that moment. She slipped her wool long coat off, kneeling beside him as she did so. She pressed it hard against his mouth.
"Breath into this!" she yelled quickly, tearing a section off for herself and looking warily around for the daemon. Fang nodded weakly and covered his mouth with her red wool coat, his breathing becoming slightly more normal after several deep breaths.
The old lady quickly stood and looked around. "Demona! Faith!"
"Here!" coughed Faith, standing unsteadily; shoving the naked, burning corpse she had pulled from the altar to shield both herself and Demona. She looked around, swaying slightly. "Where's the daemon?"
"Are you insane!" coughed Fang behind Jezebel, still lying on his side.
"Shut up you walking rug!" screamed Faith, swinging her arms wildly, her hair was singed in places and was actually smoking. "Where the Hell's the daemon gone?"
Jezebel could barely hear her over the flames. She stretched out her free hand and a path opened up from her to Faith and Demona. "I think we stunned it. We must be quick!" she said advancing through the gap in the flames, leaving Fang on the ground and running over to the pair beside the altar. She looked at the heavily burned rear end of the corpse. "Will that actually hold it?"
"Don't worry," said Faith confidently, she kicked it quite hard and it rolled over on its back, revealing the pale front of the corpse, whose open eyes seemed to be staring at them in an irritated fashion. "I remembered we needed the runes on it."
There was unearthly roar from somewhere in the room as the ground began to shake.
Faith and Jezebel looked up at the ceiling as it began to crack. "Oh shit."
Jezebel was on her knees in an instant, grabbing Demona by her shoulders and shaking her very roughly. "WAKE UP!"
"Allow me," said Faith, lifting her foot and driving it down into Demona's stomach. "Wake up cheapskate!"
Demona doubled up as Faith knocked the wind out of her, her eyes looking as if they would bulge out of their sockets as she began to cough and moan in agony.
Jezebel smiled and made a mental note to buy Faith lunch for that.
"What happened?" coughed Demona, her arms wrapped protectively over her stomach as she looked from the old lady to the Inquisitor.
"Why the Hell do they always ask that?" said Faith. She looked down at Demona. "You screwed up. Big time,"
Demona was on her feet in an instant, grabbing the staff off Jezebel roughly and looking wildly around her. "The daemon! Where is it?"
As if to answer her there was an unearthly snarl several meters behind the trio, on the other side of the altar. They turned quickly to see the daemon, the malevolent light it produced had dimmed considerably and they could make out its nightmarish true form. It was shaking as it hung several feet above the ground, its glowing eyes the colour of blood and screaming bloody murder.
~I am going to kill each of you, very, very slowly.~
It roared and hurled a daemonic blast at them. They all leapt in different directions as the blast hit the altar, blowing it up and sending fist sized chunks of rock flying in all directions.
Faith swore viciously as a chunk hit her on the back of her right shoulder and fell to the ground, gritting her teeth and shutting her eyes tightly against the pain. Jezebel skidded across the ground, along the path the she had made in the fire until she almost crashed into Fang. She got up, her face bleeding, bruised and slightly burned. Demona was hurled up into the air and crash-landed on top of the corpse she had intended to trap the daemon in, still holding onto the staff and tasting blood in her mouth, dismally noting that she'd bitten her tongue.
She got on her knees and looked around as Jezebel chanted at the top of her voice as she held her hands open before her in the daemon's direction. The flames below it rose and circled the hovering daemon, before rising up above it and closing in all around it in a column of fire.
As the daemon roared in agony Demona saw her chance. Pressing her left hand on the chest of the corpse, she pointed the staff at it with her right, feeling it amplify her powers to an extraordinary degree as she began to chant the incantation quickly. Her eyes glowed the colour of fire.
The column of fire died out suddenly as the daemon within roared, it tainted light becoming almost blinding. ~I'LL KILL ALL OF YOU!~
"In servitutem abduco, I bind thee fast and forever into this host!"
The daemon halted suddenly, screaming wildly as it was dragged into the chest of the chained corpse.
Demona slumped forward on the body, dropping her staff and taking huge gasps of air as she tried to calm herself. She heard coughing and looked over to see Jezebel.
The old witch was on her knees, shoulders drooped, her frilled white blouse blackened from the flames and speckled with blood. Fang was lying behind her, unconscious from the looks of it. She coughed again and Demona only then noticed all the smoke in the air. The old lady looked up at her, her kind, wrinkled face bruised and cut in several places. She smiled at her. "Lets never do that again okay?"
Demona chuckled and smiled at her. She looked down into the dead eyes of the daemonhost.
"Well?" she snapped impatiently.
~What is it you want.Master?~ Demona noted how its psychic voice had become a lot more passive, but she could still feel the hate lingering there.
"Do you have a name other than your true one?"
~Yes Master.my last Master addressed me as Sin.~
"That'll do," muttered Demona. She leaned closer until her face was a few inches from the host's. "Do you know where Brooklyn is going?"
~Yes Master.~
"Will you tell me?"
The daemonhost smiled at her, quite an unnerving sight. ~Why do you wish to know?~
"I'm going to stop him."
Its smile grew. ~In that case Master, I'll gladly show you.~
Dresden, Germany
Furcifer leant against the wall, his arms crossed before him, frowning.
"I understand. Now get out of my face."
In a corner of the alley he stood in, a shadow faded out of existence.
Furcifer stopped leaning against the wall and walked slowly down the alley into the crowd, arms behind his back. He stopped when he was close to several shops and observed people entering and exiting them by the dozen and his face contorted in disgust.
He changed direction and started for the city's main bus station, intent on getting a ticket for the first bus to St. Petersburg.
To be continued.