Lena stood in a cloud of coal dust and a pile of body parts, waiting. She sensed more evil in the place, but no more bodies to carry it. Her wings faded of their own accord. She tucked her swords back into invisibility and headed for the only human with a soul in the building. She assumed it was the werewolf.
She hopped easily over the jumble of mess in the studio and moved into a carpeted hallway toward what appeared to be the business offices of the television station. She walked carefully, expectantly, knowing the peace wouldn't last.
Suddenly she felt a whoosh, then a whirlwind of air along with the sound of myriad small explosions. Lena turned to see a mass of studio lights dangling still-sparking wire, video cameras, cords, cables and motherboards spinning in a growing vortex, reaching its gaping mouth to draw her in. Glass splintered and flew, cables whipped and left scars on the walls, and an increasing cacophony of destruction warned her just how quickly the demon-driven whirlwind from hell was moving.
"Aw, shit! It's the Tasmanian Devil on crack!"
Lena sprinted down the hall ahead of the tornado's pull, preferring not battle demon-driven hardware. Possessed humans, possessed possessions, what's next, possessed pets? Fucking Caedis! I need a minute here!
Lena grabbed the doorknob of a sturdy-looking door, only to find it locked. What's more, yellow eyes glared at her from the door itself. "Fuck me, another cursed door!" She whacked the door with her hand, breaking the lock and curse, flung herself into the room and slammed the door shut. Leaning on it with both hands, she quickly sealed the door with a bubble of non-time, preventing any physical thing from moving it. As she listened to metal, plastic and glass slamming into the other side of the door it occurred to her that she could finally catch her breath.
Lena turned around and stood in eternity for a moment, noticing the three sleeping figures on the floor of what was apparently a conference room. The werewolf curse rested lightly, just a shadow of the wolf, on the young man who still had his soul. The ghost, curiously enough, was sleeping as if she were still human. Perhaps she didn't know any better, didn't realize yet how little she was affected by outside influences, and had been tricked into submission.
Lena remembered the old lesson, taught by her mother long ago. Believe something will happen and it will. Mother knew that good and evil began as ideas and gained strength as they gained hold in the mind. This young ghost had allowed herself to believe that Caedis Cruciatus could control her, so it had happened. Man, is she gonna be pissed off when she finds out.
Reluctantly Lena forced herself to look at the vampire, feeling her stomach heave again as she did. The curse that owned him, bloated and awash in the blood of its victims, was thrown like a wet veil over his body, intrinsically connected to the dried blood on his clothes and skin. She knew the curse was lurking in every dead cell of the obscenity that Yorke had become, waiting to be released from Caedis Cruciatus' enthrallment.
Still she found herself searching out the man beneath the veil, until her disgust and rage and grief nearly overwhelmed her. She would rather face the big 'D' devil than spend a minute in the same room with that creature. How he could have chosen that over her…
Closing her eyes, she uttered what was technically a prayer.
"I see your hand in this, and I don't appreciate it. This sucks big hairy balls. I hate it and I hate you. Feel free to call me up for punishment." She paused, then opened her eyes to find herself still facing the vampire, along with the werewolf and ghost. "Shit. I guess this IS my punishment."
Just as Lena stepped forward away from the door and into time, the three sleepers awoke in unison, gasping. The werewolf, dressed in thrift shop jacket and cargo shorts, jumped up and slapped a hand on the scars on his head. "It's here. The wolf's here. This must be real."
The ghost, a natural beauty with long lines and short hair, cursed with a Scottish accent. "Shite! I still dinnae have sex!"
The vampire spoke as he rose gracefully from the floor. "We can rectify that, if you wish." He flicked his eyebrows and gave the ghost a lopsided smile that carried all the allure of Lucifer at his finest. Yorke was still a gorgeous man, damn him.
"Never!" the ghost snapped.
"Hello, who's this?" Yorke noticed Lena and turned to regard her cautiously. "May we help you?"
Lena felt the blood burn in her face as she ground back the curses she wanted to fling at the arrogant bastard. "Actually, I'm here to help you. How'd you wake up on your own, did you figure it out? No matter, it saves us a step and a lot of explaining. You've been in a group dream, right?"
"How'd you know that?" the werewolf asked, raising his voice a notch. "And what's that racket in the hallway?"
"Would you believe a giant Tasmanian devil made of demon-controlled electronics?"
"Yeah, I would. They after you?"
"Fraid so." Lena held out her hand to the werewolf. "Lena, demon hunter."
"Tom. Werewolf. This here's Alex, she's a ghost. And that's Hal, a vampire," he said as he shook Lena's hand.
"I know what you are, glad to have names, though," she said briskly. "So, I'm expecting Caedis Cruciatus any time now. Can you tell me why it kept you three prisoners?"
"Who?" asked Alex. "You mean the Devil? We're here because we tried to kill him."
"Caedis Cruciatus is the name of the demon you two unleashed," Lena said, pointing at Tom and Yorke. "It's just pretending to be a big 'D' Devil."
"And doing a good job of it," Yorke said smoothly, looking Lena over carefully. "Caedis Cruciatus hmm? Latin name, female for blood, male for pain. Nicely descriptive, very PC. Do demons all have Latin names?"
"Depends. According to the Catholic Church, everything has a Latin name and nothing else will do. For all I know, the dickhead calls itself Fred or Bertha. Either way, it's coming. I sent out a great big Batsignal."
"Batsignal?" Yorke looked puzzled.
"Inside joke. You'll see when it gets here," Lena turned her attention to Tom and Alex. "Do you still want to kill it? There's a blood ritual, right?"
"Yeah, but we all die when we do it," Tom replied. "so Hal took a pass."
"You all die? That's bullshit. Who told you that?" Lena asked.
"In the original ritual, all parties died except the 'demon' as you say. It was trapped in a human body." Yorke answered.
"You were there? How did you survive?"
"My blood wasn't part of the ritual," he replied. "Another vampire was involved."
"Yeah, but the Devil, or whatever, told us that we would all die together if we did it," said Alex.
Lena couldn't resist an eye roll at that one. "You know that demons are liars and tricksters, right? And don't get me started on vampires!" She raised her voiced to match the increasingly frantic sounds of demon-possessed debris slamming against the other side of the door. "You won't die. If done properly, a blood ritual sends the demon back to the pit while everyone else lives happily ever after, so to speak. As long as the parties who agree to participate use their own blood…"
Lena turned as she realized that the noises were no longer coming from the door, but from the wall, which she had not sealed. Shit, somebody's getting smart. She watched as plasterboard heaved and rippled, then blew inward, followed by a spinning flood of metal, glass, and wire. Tom leaped behind the conference table and flipped it on its side. Yorke helped once he realized the plan. Alex did a ghost sweep and shoved the table against the far wall before joining the other two behind it. "C'mon!" she yelled at Lena.
Lena wasn't about to run again. She'd had time to assess the threat and decide how to handle it. She stood her ground, grey satin-steel wings unfurled, swords whirling as she minced everything within reach. She felt herself getting whipped by cables, gouged by metal edges, cut by glass. Her adrenalin pumping, she laughed and cursed and goaded her enemies. "God I've missed this! Retirement my ass! C'mon you feeble fuckers! Bring it!"
Hal, hiding behind the table with Tom and Alex, finally recognized Lena for what she was: Seraphin Nepos, a descendant of the Nephilim of old, great monsters who were born when angels took humans for mates. The original Nephilim were destroyed long ago, but the blood line remained, gradually weakening with the millennia but still occasionally producing a creature with a hint of the original Nephilim power. Seraphin Nepos, he thought. The antithesis and sworn enemy of all cursed beings, especially those who chose to be cursed. Bugger. Hal tucked himself into a corner, wracking his brain for a way to keep himself from becoming proper dead in the near future. His enemies, including Tom and Alex if he wasn't careful, seemed to be forming a queue. And the Seraphin was bleeding, he noticed. Hal had to get out of there.
Alex and Tom, meanwhile, peeked over the table in awe. "Is she crazy, d'ya think?" Alex asked.
"Nah, she's dead clever," Tom replied. "She's drawing their attention, keepin' 'em away from us. She's brave, ain't she?"
"She said the demon Cady-Crudy-something was coming back. We should get ready for the ritual. Tom, your blood belt is gone." Alex looked around for the ammunition belt full of blood vials that Tom had brought with him, but it was gone, probably taken by whoever moved them into this room.
"Hal and me will give fresh blood," Tom said. "Probably better that way. Can you find a cup or somethin' to hold it in? And maybe a knife? Can you rent-a-ghost still?"
Alex disappeared from behind the table and reappeared a few seconds later carrying a coffee cup with the slogan 'I'm a bitch. Deal with it.' She handed it to Tom. "Now a knife."
"Never mind the knife," Tom spied a glass shard stuck into the wall behind them, dislodged it carefully and wiped it on his shorts. He turned to the vampire. "Okay Hal, let's get ready."
"I politely decline to participate." Hal checked around the end of the table to see the chaos diminishing as Lena dealt with the tail end of the vortex while balancing on piles of coal dust and electronic rubble. He slipped between the table legs and edged toward a window that had been shattered by flying plasterboard.
"Hal! Get back here!" Tom yelled, as Alex prepared to rent-a-ghost after him.
Lena turned at Tom's voice and, realizing that the vampire was trying to escape, clapped her hands together, melding her two swords into one. She raised her left arm over her head and began twirling what became a bola as it took shape. She threw it at the vampire, and the weighted cord wrapped neatly around him and dropped him in his tracks. Alex rent-a-ghosted the trussed up Yorke, black-eyed and hissing, back to Tom, who promptly knocked him unconscious with a heavy, ball-and-claw chair leg.
With a WHOOMP the roof peeled off the television station, ceiling tiles flew, and Caedis Cruciatus dropped into the room, its great leathery wings scattering debris everywhere. The demon's human host was barely visible through the transmogrification that was occurring with its growing strength. Huge, twisted, dirty crimson and oozing blood as if stuffed with it, Caedis leered at Lena and lunged, dug its talons into her chest and threw her through the wall into the next office. The beast roared with foul joy, blood and pus spewing from between its fangs, as it strode toward its stunned victim, tearing through remnants of plasterboard and metal to reach her.
Behind the table Tom sliced Hal's arm and his own, holding the cup so that their blood mingled. Alex, afraid for Lena's survival, grabbed the cup and leaped to her feet.
"Hey blood boy! Watch this!" As the demon spun, tail whipping, Alex drained the cup and flung it to the floor. Screeching in fury, Caedis Cruciatus spun back around and leaped at Lena, desperate to kill its nemesis before its strength waned.
Lena flipped onto her feet, swords ready and a grin on her face. She had tricked the demon into dropping its guard.
"Gotcha!" She sidestepped and decapitated the demon, watching it resume human form as it fell and rolled. Quickly she quartered both the body and head of what now looked like a well-dressed pensioner and watched as the demon within was dispersed into brick-red dust the color of dried blood. The pieces of human body dissolved in a putrid soup—the pensioner had apparently been kept alive only by the demon's energy.
Lena saw the cloud of evil that had followed Caedis congeal into streams and flow back through the open roof, yellow and red eyes glinting. Caedis' minions were on the run, weak and leaderless. Rats leaving a sinking ship. Easy pickings. Lena was eager for the hunt; her killer instinct was raging; her injuries were already healed.
As she clambered back through the wall she had been thrown through just moments before, Lena felt the building shudder and began to shift and buckle. Well shit-a-brick. It figures. She saw Tom and Alex celebrating their victory with a combination of hugging, hollering, and hopping, but as walls began to collapse around them, escape replaced victory in their thoughts.
"Go!" Tom shoved Alex away from him. The ghost grabbed the unconscious vampire once again and vanished. Lena flew to the werewolf as he fought his way toward the window that Yorke had planned to use. She grabbed him by his coat collar and got them both out, scraping her wings slightly as the wall fell after them.
After setting Tom down next to Alex and her 'baggage' near the edge of the street, Lena shook herself all over, dust and detritus flying from her. Folding her wings into invisibility, she settled momentarily into normal human mode. "Check your coat for blood. Mine is poisonous to you," she told Tom.
"Why?" Tom peeled off his coat, looking for flecks of Lena's blood.
Lena shrugged. "Just who I am. It isn't you personally, it's the werewolf curse. Poisonous to vampires too." She pointed at Yorke. "What will you do with him?"
"We'll take him home, try another detox, maybe get it right this time," Tom said.
Alex looked at the werewolf for a moment then nodded. "One more chance, then. I'll give it a go." She turned to Lena. "Thanks for everything. We couldnae have done it without you. I'm still not sure what you did…"
Lena shrugged off the compliment and the question. She was already moving. "I'll explain later when I get my bola. Where do you live?"
"Barry Island. An old B&B called Honolulu Heights. Where you goin?" Tom called after her as she lifted off the ground. He got no reply as she disappeared, except a fading chorus. "We all live in a yellow submarine…"