Dragonsword Page 18

  “Show me,” she said.

  He catapulted into the vision, feeling out of control for the first time in months at it, and found himself face to face with Brandt. He jerked back and away, feeling caged by the headrest behind his head, but his vision expanded and his perspective backed away, giving him more room. Brandt was in a room with a handful of other demons. It was dim, and most of the demons were scattered around the room, drinking. Brandt was crouched over in a chair, elbows on his knees, talking to a solidly-built black man in hellspeak. Sam caught words he understood, but not many. Mostly the language still sounded like a series of hisses, barks, and growls to him.

  He started to back out of the room to try to find it, and he felt Samantha push him back forward.

  “Just say there,” she said. “We’ll come to you.”

  He heard her give directions to Jason, and his body shifted with the inertia of the car.

  Brandt snarled at the other demon, his pale skin stretching over an almost skeletal face, and thin lips distorting in anger. Sam had watched enough demons to know that anger was a normal expression for most of them, but there was something profound to watching Brandt.

  They’d hunted him for months, without a lead. He’d held Jason, bringing the occasional ultimatum to Sam about the conditions of his brother’s release, and Sam had never been able to track him.

  And here he was.

  His ears stuck out from his head like they were propped like that, and his hair was slicked across his forehead with oil. He wore a dark purple pinstripe suit and his fingers played across his face as he thought. The other demon watched him, silent. A few quiet conversations went on in hellspeak in the corners of the room, but everyone was waiting for Brandt to make a move. Sam wondered if he knew, yet, that Jason was free. Wondered if he knew that they were coming for him. Knew that his shield had been compromised, and Sam was staring him in the face.

  Sam was angry.

  Samantha was angrier.

  Jason hadn’t been aware of enough of his capture to be that bothered by it, it seemed, but Sam and Samantha were building a consensus that they were out for blood, this time.

  Never again.

  He felt the deep well of violence that Samantha tried to hide from herself, under the lightness that was her at her best, under the pragmatism that was her as a Shaman, under the mechanical discipline that guided her in combat. There was a screaming pit of violence. He’d felt it a couple of times, once after he’d died and once after Caroline died. Both times she had plunged into it headfirst, losing the other, domesticated identities and becoming an agent of wrath and terror. The simple acts of speaking to him or Jason, or get in or out of a car, or walk down a street without a weapon in her hand, these were challenge for her, like that.

  This was different.

  She wasn’t hiding or reacting, nor was she letting it overcome her. Now, she was drawing it into herself, into the pragmatism, into the discipline. Only the light fled. She was preparing for something awful, and she wouldn’t let him close enough to know what it was.

  “How many?” she asked.

  “Seven,” Sam said. He looked around the room, trying to draw the little pieces of information out of what he saw that would tell him what manner of demons they were.

  “Subordinate,” he said. “Brandt is in charge.”

  He felt her encouragement, and he looked harder.

  “Two blood demons.”

  They had marks on their arms that he recognized from a nest they had cleared out in New York. Scars that they had taken deep enough hellside that they crossed with them. He knew the name of the sect in English, but he couldn’t pronounce it in hellspeak.

  “He isn’t that strong,” Samantha said. “Has he got muscle?”

  Sam focused in on the demon sitting across from Brandt.

  “Maybe.”

  He looked harder, coming in close enough that he would have been considered impolite in person, looking at the demon’s skin, his clothes, his features.

  “He’s wearing an earring,” he said. Samantha gave another turn direction to Jason.

  “What about it?” she asked Sam, driving him toward details.

  “It’s gold.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Would a demon wear a fake gold earring as a fashion statement?” Sam asked. It was an honest question.

  “A few,” she said. “But not many. You’re probably right.”

  If it was gold, the demon would be in persistent, excruciating pain, having the gold lodged in his body. It was a sign of power and masochism.

  “Tell me what he looks like,” Samantha said.

  “Black, shaved head, no facial hair,” Sam said. “No marks I can see. Gray wifebeater, black cargo pants, combat boots. Black eyes.” He looked harder. “The irises might be too big.”

  “That’s a fashion statement,” Samantha said. “Ears pointed at all?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s the main target,” she said. “Tell me about the rest of them.”

  He went around the room, describing one demon at a time in detail as she continued to work closer and closer to the building. Sam felt her getting closer, even as she sat directly behind him. It was as if there were two copies of him, and both of them knew where she was.

  Jason stopped the car.

  “Okay,” Samantha said. “Give me the route to the door.”

  Sam backed through the door and expanded his awareness, finding the shape of the building, and then refocusing to draw a path through it to the best entrance he could find.

  “They’re in the basement?” she asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “And no scouts?”

  “I don’t see any.” He put his hand up to hers and pulled them away. The greater portion of the building became fuzzy, with a core that he could no longer see at all. “Yeah, if they were scouting, I’d be able to see them now. He’s got everyone inside whatever it is that’s blocking me.”

  “Makes sense,” Samantha said. “Let’s go.”

  He opened his eyes and took a half a second to transition back into his own vision. Jason looked at him.

  “You okay?”

  “Just another day at the office.” Sam rubbed his eyes, mostly to get the oily feel off of them, and found Jason still watching him. “Honestly, no big deal. She got stuff on my face.”

  “Spit, mostly,” she said. “Well, and then some other stuff.”

  “Awesome,” Jason said. “How do we get in?”

  Samantha led the way to the door Sam had found and tried it. It was a solid metal door in a brick wall, and this side didn’t have a handle on it. She tried a few things, but couldn’t get it open. Jason wasn’t any more successful.

  She looked up.

  The building was only one story tall. Sam moved to stand against the brick and put his hand out for her to step into it. One foot in his hand, one foot on his shoulder, one foot in his other hand over his head, and she was up onto the roof and gone.

  “Damn,” Jason said.

  “Shut up,” Sam said.

  “No, that was awesome,” Jason said. “I just never knew you wanted to be a male cheerleader.”

  “Shut up,” Sam said again.

  “I mean, I completely support it, if that’s what you want to do. I just wish I’d known. We’d have gotten you into gymnastics classes earlier.”

  “Shut up.”

  They stood for a minute.

  “She is coming to open the door, isn’t she?” Jason asked. Sam was tracking her through the building, pushing or pulling as she came to a hallway or a doorway to get her back to the outside. A minute later, she shoved the door open.

  “Come on,” she said. They followed the path Sam had chosen to the basement stairs.

  “Big black guy with an earring,” Samantha said to Jason. “He’s yours. The rest, we’ll get. Don’t touch Brandt.”

  “Got it,” Jason said. Sam nodded. She took a bag of powder out of her pocket and Sam t
ook the vial of mixed liquid he used to mark the door and they nodded again.

  He marked the door as she opened it and they slid down the stairs. She trailed powder along behind them, and Sam could feel it opening up the psychic fog like the powder was drawing clear air in with them. Sam marked more doors as they went and she scattered powder in a wider range as they got close. One more corner and Sam could hear hellspeak ahead of them. He drew Wrath and the handgun Samantha had once carried that shot steel bullets. Too many targets; he’d do better shooting at this range. Samantha took a handful of powder and closed her fist around it, blowing into her fist and then throwing the powder ahead of them, and the oppressive cover lifted. Sam jumped into vision, watching ahead of them as they came down the hallway.

  The demons didn’t know they were there until they heard Jason draw Anadidd’na.

  It was a glorious noise.

  <><><>

  Sam pulled his awareness forward, hanging back as Samantha and Jason charged the room, highlighting the demons waiting for them. Jason was on his own, but Sam nudged Samantha’s shoulders down and right, closer to the door frame, as she cleared, staying away from the knife one of the demons threw at her. Jason took a fraction of a second to identify his target and engage; Samantha found a spot behind him to cover him as the demons started their uncoordinated offense. The first ten to fifteen seconds were chaotic as the demons attempted to glitch and found that they couldn’t.

  This was the window Sam and Samantha counted on. She tore through them, a spinning, slashing dervish leaving piles of ash in her wake. Sam stayed outside, guiding her from target to target until they got their act together and came at her at once. It had taken him a long time to figure out how to walk while he had all of his focus in another room, but it felt native by now. He slid sideways into the room, taking one of the demons by surprise with Wrath and shooting another. The bullets weren’t powerful enough to kill a demon of this caliber, but it got his attention, and Samantha put Lahn through him. The last demon fled out of the room on foot, and Samantha tugged Sam back when he made to give chase.

  Jason and the demon with the earring were engaged, but Jason was easily a match for him.

  “Can you hit the earring?” Samantha asked. Sam had to listen to it at speed in vision to decipher the noises. He shook his head and handed her the gun as she put her hand out for it. In the same motion she pointed the gun and shot. The demon ashed, head down, in a cascade, and Jason stepped away, shaking some of the ash from Samantha’s demons off of him.

  “Gold stud to brain,” Samantha said, handing the gun back to Sam. “Checkmate.”

  She turned to Brandt, who hadn’t stood.

  “Sam, go get my backpack.”

  <><><>

  Jason sheathed Anadidd’na as Sam left.

  “I killed you,” he said to Brandt. The demon wrinkled his nose and gave Jason a tiny smirk.

  “Not much good killing a demon when there’s a hellsgate just right, oh, where you’re standing,” he said. The spidery fingers played across his chin. “There’s tea on, if anyone wants any. I can see this isn’t going to be very pleasant.”

  Samantha went to the small stove in the corner and poured hot water into four absurd little china teacups, bringing back three of them. Brandt accepted one with a small cheerless smile, reaching his lips out to sip at it delicately. Jason took another, not thrilled, but willing to follow Samantha’s lead. She seemed to have no hesitation, whereas he didn’t know what to do with the demon, other than ash him again.

  “Is it closed, by the way? One hears all these rumors, and it’s so hard to tell what’s true.”

  “You won’t get back to this side that way,” Samantha said, sitting down in the chair across from him. “I wouldn’t have hunted you before I was at least that sure.”

  The flesh under his eyes tightened, maybe a glare, maybe a smile, and his eyes turned back to Jason.

  “You make good use of that blade,” he said, the same muscle twitching again. “I underestimated it.”

  “Her,” Jason corrected, snagging another chair with his foot and sitting down on it backwards. Brandt gave him a patronizing smile and noisily sipped his tea.

  “You humans and your sentimental affectations,” he said. “It’s a piece of metal. A sharp one, with a lot of magic in it. But it’s just a piece of metal.”

  Jason shrugged. Brandt turned back to Samantha, crossing his legs and resting both elbows on one knee.

  “So, tell me. What is it you’re here after?”

  She shook her head, raising her cup to her lips and putting it back down in its saucer, then licking her lips.

  “I’m not going to tell you that until you’ve begged me to tell you the questions.”

  Brandt sat back in his chair, his foot tapping the air.

  “But I want to know them now,” he said. She shook her head, face placid.

  “You haven’t earned them yet.”

  There was a tug of war going on between the two of them in their eyes, and Brandt appeared to be confident that he would win.

  “I spent a little time on the other side,” he said, “when this one killed me. Just catching up, you know.” A smile spread across his face, stacking wrinkles in the loose flesh around his wide mouth. “They say you’ve been quite a problem.”

  “I do my best,” Samantha said.

  “Demons going missing, sects in disorder. You made a pact with Hsheank.”

  “I’ve heard the same,” Samantha said. Jason recognized the name, but didn’t have a lot more context than that. Brandt smiled.

  “We would have fun, the two of us,” he said. She shook her head.

  “You would be dead weight,” she answered. “I have friends I would have fun with, and you’re not in their league.”

  Brandt squinted at her.

  “The notorious New York set. We’ll do something about them, someday.”

  “Among others,” Samantha said.

  “Mha’shing?”

  Swordmaker.

  Samantha drank her tea noncommittally.

  “He’s got no vision,” Brandt said. “You’d have much more fun with me.”

  “You’ve got no spine,” Samantha said. “I don’t like jellyfish.” She tipped her head. “Except as part of spells. Then they’re useful.”

  “She asked about him,” Brandt said. Samantha raised an eyebrow at him. Brandt’s mouth worked like he’d played a trump card.

  “Carly.”

  “So?”

  “She’s been in his head, darling,” Brandt said. “She knows.”

  “She knew what he knew at the time, which wasn’t much,” Samantha said. “I feed him a steady diet of disinformation.”

  “He can tell when you lie,” Brandt said.

  “Sure. So could she, but I popped her anyway, didn’t I?”

  Brandt grinned now.

  “She’s still sore about that.”

  “You let her know, when you get back across, that I’m game for a rematch, face to face, any time.”

  “I’ll do that,” Brandt said, settling. He looked over his shoulder. “How long are we going to wait for this courier to get back?”

  Samantha set her teacup on the floor and stood. Sam came into view a few seconds later. She took her backpack from him and looked over at Jason.

  “Get out.”

  Brandt chortled.

  “Isn’t that dramatic?”

  Jason stood.

  “I don’t like it,” he said.

  “I don’t care,” she answered. “Get out.”

  She looked at Sam, who looked as hesitant as Jason felt to leave her alone with the demon. He believed she could handle herself, mostly, but if something went wrong, he wanted to be here to step in.

  “Now, Sam,” she said. Sam looked at Jason and shrugged. Jason looked at Samantha again; her face was stony. He wanted to argue with her, but not in front of Brandt, and not now. He waited another moment to see if anything occurred to him, but that face
was too set. He nodded to her.

  “We’ll be nearby if you need us,” he said.

  “I won’t,” she answered.

  He followed Sam back upstairs. He heard the door slam behind them, and he stopped Sam.

  “We aren’t far enough away yet,” Sam said.

  “What?”

  “I can’t stop here,” Sam said. “We have to keep going.”

  “Until when?” Jason asked.

  “Until she says we’re far enough away.”

  “Seriously?” Jason asked. Sam shook his head.

  “I don’t know what’s going on, but it’s bad,” he said.

  “Should we stop her?” Jason asked. Sam looked torn.

  “I don’t know.”

  “What do you think she’s going to do?” Jason asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  They reached the far wall of the building and Sam leaned against it. Jason looked hard at his brother.

  “You have an idea,” he said. “What do you think she’s going to do?”

  “She’s going to torture him,” Sam said. It didn’t sound like a guess.

  “What for?”

  Sam gave him a sarcastic look.

  “Information. She’s a Shaman. She’ll have lots of questions, and she’s going to try to make him answer them.”

  “Is that so bad?” Jason asked.

  “He’s from Hell,” Sam said. “What do you think she’s going to have to do to him?”

  Jason paused.

  “I should be doing it,” he said. Sam nodded. It surprised Jason a little how easily Sam agreed to that, but when he thought about it, it made sense. Sam was going to be aware of exactly how much it was going to cost Samantha do to what she was about to do. He took a step back the way they had come.

  “So why are we standing here?” he asked.

  “She doesn’t think you can do it,” Sam said. Jason glowered at him.

  “For someone who doesn’t know anything, you make awfully detailed guesses.”

  “There’s a lot of stuff I know that I don’t realize I know until I think about it,” Sam said. “Look, it’s complicated. I just know her.”

  “What do you want to do?” Jason asked, going to lean against the wall next to Sam. Sam looked back the way they came with anguish, listening to something Jason would never understand, then dropped his head.