Child, page 18
part #6 of Sam and Sam Series
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Lange turned up about an hour later, armed and dressed for demons. Samantha had forgotten that she was back in New York, back with demons who expected something of demon slayers. He looked startled to find her in jeans.
“Sorry,” she said. “Let me go get changed.”
“Where’s the Neanderthal?”
“Around,” Samantha said. She glared at him meaningfully for just a second, then grabbed her duffel bag and went to the bathroom to dig her demon fighting clothes out. Leather pants, knee-high black boots with solid heels, mesh shirt. She put on the dark purple lipstick and gray eyeshadow, then pulled her hair up, meeting her own eyes in the mirror for a moment. She was a different creature, like this. Fierce. Fearless. Angry. This was who Carter had taught her to be. She strapped Lahn to her back and went back out into the living room where Lange and Abby were standing over the map. He straightened and took her in quickly.
“You ready?”
Samantha glanced at Abby.
“They have runaways in there, if they’re still alive,” Abby said. “Go now. Come back if you can.”
Samantha hugged Abby quickly then followed Lange out of the apartment.
“So how is married life?” he asked.
“Good,” she answered. “How is New York?”
“Better,” he grinned. “So how did you find this thing?”
“Bell,” she answered. He nodded.
“Repeat customer. Thought they’d have known better, by now.”
“You know demons.”
He laughed darkly at that.
“How is Argo?” she asked.
“Like I know,” Lange told her. “How’s Carter?”
“He’s probably Carter,” she said.
“You know, I never figured you’d get out for good. Always thought something would drag you back in.”
“Almost did,” she said.
“Ha. I knew you were bluffing. You’d never go for Carter’s spot. You hate all of us too much.”
“Who would you rather be in charge?” she asked. He looked thoughtful at this, then shrugged.
“Me.”
“I’d challenge you hellside and leave you there.”
“Would not.”
“Maybe not leave you there, but I’d beat you. Bad.”
“Only if you wanted to win,” he said. “So seriously, where is he?”
“Who?”
Lange looked at her impatiently.
“I know those two don’t let you out alone any more.”
“You ever think maybe it was me keeping them safe?”
“I know it, but I’d bet you half a million dollars they don’t.”
She smiled, her crooked demon-hunter smile. Saucy, wry, looking through her eyelashes at him.
“So where is he?” Lange pushed again.
Lange knew her well enough to tell when she was dodging.
He also knew her well enough to know when to quit pushing.
“You ask me that again, you’ll find a knife between your ribs.”
This would be that time.
“Things not so wonderful in never-never land huh? Thinking about coming back to the land of the grownups?”
He seemed content to leave it at that, and they walked for a time in silence.
New York was a city that didn’t often have abandoned streets. Taxis would whiz by at all hours of the day and night, when they weren’t stopped for traffic, and the sidewalks were a zoo of scaffolding and professionals and artists and partiers, pretty much all the time. Different districts had different mixes, but not usually different numbers.
Except here.
As they got close, the psychic barrier was accompanied with a sense of unease that kept people inside and away. You didn’t cut through here to get to the subway, and you got out as fast as you could to grab a taxi. The people here were the ones who didn’t have the willpower to get out at dusk, and Samantha and Lange stood out with their snug clothes and intentional pace.
Abby had gotten them close; now Samantha was just following the bell, ever forward.
“How close?” Lange asked after a while.
“Now is probably good,” she answered. He gave her a sharp nod and peeled off down the next alley. It was one of those dark alleys that you tended to avoid in New York, but Lange was the thing you didn’t want to meet there. Samantha kept to the main street, under one streetlamp after the next, drawn forward by a demon she had already beaten once.
There was no question this felt familiar.
She’d done it for about two and a half years after she’d died. She had been happy, for that time. Purposeful, powerful, freed from the need to please Carter at every turn. She was stronger, now, but not by enough that it changed a lot about the feel of it. A human with a gun could pull the trigger and end her in a moment, and so could a demon, at that, but give her another instant of awareness, just one, and she was exceedingly hard to kill. Plenty of them had tried. It wasn’t that she was impervious: if it weren’t for the nature of the training she’d had with Carter her body would have been riddled with scars. She’d certainly taken her share of injuries. It was the nature of high-level combatants that they would tend to do massive damage to each other. It was that she was dangerous enough that, if she had that moment of awareness before it happened, attacking her wouldn’t be worth it to most anyone.
Men who loved the darkness, most of whom would have whistled or cat-called or even tried to step in front of her in daylight, blended into shadow as she walked past. There was no social contract, here, that said that she would get flustered and try to escape when they gave her unwanted attention. It was different, here, in the dark.
She’d never loved it, here, but she did like it. This was what she was good at, what she had been trained for.
She followed the bell.
By the time she got to the building, a brick walk-up that was one hard winter away from falling down all by itself, she had two men following her. By the way they moved, she was pretty sure they were both demons. She stood in front of the building, looking at concrete stairs that were more like ramps at the far sides, but mostly listening to what was going on around her. There were voices inside the building, quiet, but present. Could be demons, could be humans, innocent or otherwise. The demons behind her had quit moving and they didn’t actually have to breathe if they didn’t choose to, so she’d lost track of them. She might have heard Lange somewhere behind the building, but she couldn’t be sure. She trusted him to mirror her well enough that he’d end up at the right place and be there when she needed him to, but even if he didn’t, she had planned on coming here on her own, anyway.
The bell was subterranean, either the downstairs floor or the sewer. From the stench rolling up the stairs at her, the building would be nicer, but not by a lot.
She looked down the street, missing Sam and his ability to buy her those few moments of awareness before something happened, then trotted down the stairs, drawing Lahn. The door at the bottom of the stairs had the glass panel broken out of it and stood slightly ajar. She pushed it open with her foot, staying outside and watching the top of the stairs and the dark room inside the building at the same time. Nothing moved.
And then there was a whimper.
And the sound of a match striking and flaming into life.
A squinting, angry face peered at her from the back of the room.
“Paisley,” Samantha said.
“Come in,” the demon answered her, scratching his stubbly chin with a knife and then putting it to the throat of the wretched girl sitting on her knees on the floor in front of him. “Close the door behind you, yes you will? Bad people about.”
The girl whimpered again. Samantha stepped into the room, catching a shadow as it crossed the top of the stairs but unable to get more than that. She pushed the door against its frame, but the bolt was long missing and the frame had splintered and rotted from someone kicking it in years ago. Samantha looked around the room quickly as Paisley lit an oil lamp and set it on the wood table in front of him.
“You weren’t supposed to come here, no you weren’t.”
“I told you when I killed you,” Samantha said. “I warned you that I would find you and kill you again if you ever came back.”
“But you’re busssy, yes you are. I paid good money to know it, too.”
Samantha grinned, sideways, feline.
“Paisley. You know you come first.”
He pushed the point of the knife into the girl’s chin with enough force that it punctured. She jerked her head back with a cry.
“I’m working here, you should know, yes you do.”
Samantha looked around the room, letting her body show ease. She leaned against the wall.
“Oh, I can see that. And I can also see that you’ve had help. You don’t do this much damage in a couple of days all by yourself.”
Bodies. She’d seen worse before, demons at play rather than at work, but it still made her sick. Mostly teenagers in heavy, threadbare canvas jackets, their bodies had been discarded once they weren’t useful any more. For some of the more bottom-feeding demons, that was at the point where they became almost unrecognizable. Anything that even looked human still had some life energy in it for them to suck at.
“You know I don’t put up with chop shops,” she said.
“I just work here,” Paisley said.
“Who sponsored you across?” Samantha asked.
“I did it myself, yes I did.” He sucked on his lower lip for a moment as Samantha continued to ease across the room toward him. “You weren’t supposed to come here, and I’m supposed to work, there it is. You sit. He’ll be with you shortly.”
He hauled the girl to her feet and tried to tip her onto the table. She cried, but was long past the point of screaming, she was so worn and tired.
“No, Paisley,” Samantha said. It was the sound of a gentle reprimand, like the one given to an old dog who is caught trying to sneak food off the table. Paisley knew the real threat under it and he hesitated. The girl crumpled to the floor, hands curled in front of her face as she cried. He faced Samantha with a snarl.
“You come to my work and you tell me no, that you do. No. I tell you no. That’s what it is. You shouldn’t have come, but you did, and you are.”
Samantha sighed. There had to be more to it than this, or else he would have just glitched out. Chop shops like this, especially one right under Carter’s nose, were incredibly dangerous. Carter was wont to go on killing sprees at random within the demon community for even tolerating such things, and the margin on them was so low that it tended to make them unprofitable. And if there was anything demons knew how to do, it was be profitable.
There had to be more to it than this.
Maybe Lange had locked him in. Lange certainly had the skillset for it.
“You should let her go,” Samantha said. “You don’t want me to get angry at you.”
“No, no one wants that,” a voice said behind her. Samantha let her head roll to the side as she spun.
“Ozy.”
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“You weren’t supposed to turn up, Sam,” he said, going to sit at the little desk where, moments before, Paisley had threatened to carve up the girl. Samantha watched him with incredulity.
“I’d say I should have guessed, but I honestly thought you were smarter than this.”
He shrugged.
“I own fast food restaurants. How shocked can you be?”
“You know I have to end you, now. No real options.”
He smiled, his forehead creasing as his eyebrows sunk together.
“Sam, Sam, Sam. We’ve been watching you.”
Mmm. That explained at least a little bit. Ozy was one of the few demons she knew who could afford a porter.
She slashed Lahn through the air again, reminding him not to underestimate her.
“You weren’t supposed to come because that hulking brute you call a husband is currently incapacitated. You should have stayed with him.”
She blinked at him, letting her head slide to the side as she took a careful step forward.
“You know me better than that Ozy. Paisley knew I’d tagged him, and you know I’d never let someone come back without punishment. It’s like these pits. You just can’t let something like this exist. You let one go, people start getting ideas.”
“See, I told Paisley, here, that that’s what you’d say. We had a bet on it.”
“Charming,” Samantha said, taking another step. Ozy stood and started to pull off his gloves.
“Yes. And since I won, I’m the one who gets to kill you, and Paisley has to settle for your boyfriend.”
Samantha blinked, trying not to show surprise. Ozy grinned, then set his gloves down on the table and waved someone in through the door. Lange stumbled, nearly falling to his knees, as a large demon in a black leather jacket pushed him into the room.
“You know, I thought you would do a better job taking care of yourself than this,” Samantha said. Lange’s jaw worked, but he didn’t say anything.
“You’ll have to forgive him,” Ozy said. “There’s a witch here in town that makes the best muting potions I’ve ever seen. Mix it a little stronger in vinegar and it would melt his lips together.”
Samantha looked from Lange to Ozy, paddling as fast as she could.
“He’s too pretty for melted lips, don’t you think?”
Ozy slapped the table as his grin spread wider.
“That’s the girl I missed. Didn’t I tell you Braid? She’s funny.”
The heavyset black man went to stand by the door, not really acknowledging Ozy.
“Are you going to end her now, yes you should,” Paisley said. Samantha glared at him.
“I killed you too fast last time.”
“Shut up while the grown ups talk,” Ozy said.
Paisley wrinkled his nose up into a snarl, then grabbed the girl from the floor.
“No, Paisley,” Samantha said again, not taking her eyes off of Ozy.
Ozymandias indeed.
“Not sure what you think your play is, here,” she said. He pursed his lips and scratched his chin.
“I have a good clientele, here,” he started, leaning his hips back against the table. “Demons you’d never even guess had this kind of a fetish, actually. Make good money. If you and tall-dark-and-handsome here vanish, sure, Carter is going to turn the city over looking for you. His frantic little psychic may even know to point him over here. But it’s not exactly like we walked here, if you know what I mean. I know you’ve got a sniffer on the payroll at this point. But I can cover a track. I’m good at it. They aren’t going to catch me. They aren’t going to catch Paisley. And, honestly. Honestly, Sam. I was hoping you would come. We have a score to settle, you and I.”
Samantha glanced at Lange, raising an eyebrow, then shook her head and squared her body to face Ozy.
“Your staggering ego is, as always, staggering.”
He grinned.
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The first few feints were a formality. He glitched behind her and put a dagger across where her throat had been, but it had hardly come as a surprise. It was a common opening move. She spun away, dropping a knee as she went, and drew the dagger out of her boot. She hadn’t brought the right one, but pointy was pointy and if it went into his chest, it was going to upset him. Lahn was up in front of her, finishing an arc that had included a good section of Ozy’s waist. He put his hand to the wound and spoke a few words that, for almost any other demon, would have been futile against Lahn’s angelic power, but he had enough power - and enough knowledge to prepare - that he was able to close the flesh. She at least left a great big gap in his black dress shirt.
Lange was in motion, too, going after the big black man with a fury of attacks that Samantha didn’t have to be completely aware of to respect. She’d trained with Lange routinely before she’d left the first time, and they had been, at that point, pretty evenly matched. He used a matched pair of Saracen blades that had about a millennium of history on them. Troublingly, the black man seemed to be having no trouble defending himself.
Samantha took a step toward Ozy and he vanished. She spun, her grip on time tightening as she waited for Ozy to come back into view. To be safe, she took a knee again, dropping her head most of the way to her shin and sweeping her leg out behind her, in order to be somewhere different than where she had been. Ozy had a larger knife, now, and he stabbed it toward the floor, trying to impale her, but Lahn caught him below the knee, digging in to bone before she stopped. He vanished again.
Lange went flying past.
This bothered her.
As she completed her sweep and rolled across her hips to find a new space on the floor, she took a small mesh bag out of a pocket inside her waistband and threw it on the floor in front of her. The ingredients inside of it mixed as they were supposed to and there was a small pop. She regained her feet, finding Ozy a few feet to her right, and she slashed across her body, keeping the dagger in close against her. Ozy vanished again.
This also bothered her.
He shouldn’t have been able to glitch, with the spell from the mesh bag active.
She wished Sam had been there to fight for her while she tried to figure out how Ozy had gotten around the restrictions the mixture had been supposed to put on demonic motion, but instead she looked for him again.
He wasn’t the best fighter she had gone against. Even he knew that, with his puffed-up view of himself. But he was powerful, and he was wealthy, and you could get a long way on just that. With more time and more resources, she could have ground him into pulp quite easily, but that was what you got when you weren’t sure who you were up against. You came prepared for the broadest selection of demons you could, and you did what you had to, to win.
Lange went stumbling across in front of her again and the black demon appeared behind him. Lange was well-enough trained to roll over his shoulders and land on his feet with his swords up and around him to defend himself, but that was all that saved him from a two-handed crushing blow from the big demon.
Both of them could still glitch. She must have gotten the mix wrong, somehow.
