Gorgon Read online

  “I’d think that’d make you more likely to keep him out there.”

  Jason laughed.

  “Yeah, but he’s the kind of kid who wanders of and gets lost and you never know when you’ll see him again. Sam’d kill me.”

  “Yeah, she’d kill you if you lost her angel,” Kara said. “I can see that.”

  “She’d at least give me a decent thrashing.”

  “Can she still do that?” Kara asked. Jason thought back to when Samantha had really had an advantage over him, when she could bend time and he couldn’t. She’d normally held herself back and just pushed him as hard as he could go, but there had been a few times… He shook his head.

  “Dunno.”

  Kara grinned at him.

  “I’d love to see it.”

  “Let’s go find this vamp,” Jason said. “Knock him off and then get on with our vacation.”

  “You think it’s going to be that easy?” Kara asked.

  “Between me and the kid? Yeah, sure.”

  Kara shook her head.

  “Wanna make it interesting?”

  “What do you have in mind?” Jason asked. She narrowed her eyes.

  “Let’s go old school,” she said after a minute. “You want company tonight?”

  Jason grinned.

  “Done.”

  She nodded.

  “Done.”

  They headed back toward the Cruiser, and Jason leaned over to Kara.

  “Probably shouldn’t mention it to the kid.”

  She laughed.

  “Can’t imagine what goes on inside his head.”

  “Doesn’t approve of the two of us as it is,” Jason said.

  “Key,” Kara said, putting her hand out. Jason gave her one of the pair. “I’m going to get dressed.”

  He looked her up and down then nodded.

  “I’m just going to keep the kid company,” Jason said. “Just you wait until you see what he can do.”

  Kara popped an eyebrow at him with a sideways grin, and he only narrowly managed to resist kissing her.

  “Down, boy,” she said, putting a fingertip out toward his mouth. He dodged away, sucking on his lip, and she laughed, sliding in alongside him as they walked, edging his arm out of the way with her shoulder.

  He put his arm around her waist, enjoying the warmth of her against him as they made their way back down to the Cruiser.

  Life was good.

  <><><>

  The club was a touchy one to get into. Jason didn’t know how Kirk had done it, but he’d gotten them not only directions, but a password as well.

  Through the convenience store run by the bent Asian man, past the restrooms and the stock room, to a sliding door with a bored-looking young man in eyeliner using way too much hair product.

  “What’s up, man?” Jason asked. The kid looked up from his cellphone and took in the three of them skeptically. He spent rather longer looking at Kara than was necessary, in her leather vest and short skirt.

  That’s right kid, Jason thought, take it in. I’m the one who gets to take it off.

  Well, he would be after Kelly won the bet for him tonight.

  “Dunno you,” the kid said.

  “You know everyone who comes in here?” Jason asked. The kid shrugged, returning to his phone with twitchy thumbs.

  Kara cleared her throat, stepping forward and bending at the waist to speak directly into the kid’s ear. It was just a password, but Jason knew just how persuasive those lips could be at that distance. The kid froze and Jason tried not to grin. Kara winked at him and went to go lean against the wall across from the kid.

  “Why?” the kid finally asked, grimacing.

  “Why not?” Kara answered.

  “You don’t belong down there,” the kid finally said, returning once again to his phone. Jason was getting bored, now. There was nothing about the kid that resembled a bouncer. He wasn’t going to prevent Jason entry to the club, even if he suddenly developed the motivation to try.

  “Thanks, man,” Jason said, pulling the sliding door aside and letting Kelly past him. Kara followed, leaving the door open in a sort of pointed petulance. Her heels clicked on the stairs behind him.

  “Will you be able to pick him out?” Jason asked. Kelly looked back up at him, then jerked back forward.

  “Yes,” the angel said. Jason glanced casually over his shoulder, finding Kara’s knees at eye level, and smiled. You could tell a lot about a person, particularly a guy, by how he reacted to Kara.

  “Now there’s a labor-saving feature you failed to mention,” Kara said.

  “Right?” Jason asked.

  “Where will we go to kill him?” Kelly asked.

  “One thing at a time,” Jason answered. “And you might not want to mention it out loud, once we get down there.”

  “You know he’ll know I’m an angel,” Kelly said.

  Again, Jason felt a bit dumb for not seeing that one coming.

  “One thing at a time,” he said again. “He can’t glitch out of a room full of people.”

  “Can’t he?” Kara asked. “They already think he’s a vampire.”

  “Not helping,” Jason said. “Can you follow him if he glitches?”

  “Depends,” Kelly said. “If he goes very far, probably not.”

  “Maryann could do it, couldn’t she?” Jason asked.

  The angel stopped on the stairs and turned his head partway, then continued on. Jason tried not to laugh.

  “What is it with you two?” he asked.

  “What?” Kelly answered.

  “I mean, you’re around demons all the time, now. Why does she get under your skin so bad?”

  “I may be around demons more than I would like, but I don’t have to approve of them.”

  “No one said you did,” Jason said. “But she’s like, this big, and maybe ninety pounds soaking wet. Why pick out her, in particular?”

  “He’s got a crush?” Kara asked.

  “That’s what I think,” Jason answered. Kelly spun on the stairs, looking up at the two of them with unmasked rage.

  “She is of the enemy,” he said. “And Anadidd’na Anu’dd binds her casually, takes her as a servant. She does not deserve the honor.”

  Jason stopped, looking at the kid as he verged on buzzing with anger.

  “And you do?” he asked, just enough incredulity to push the kid over the edge, if he was going to go.

  “You cannot bind angels,” he said. “We are not made for mankind.”

  Jason looked over his shoulder.

  “Mean anything to you?” he asked.

  “Nope,” Kara answered.

  “I would never consent to it,” Kelly said. “I am a higher being, not to be a servant to men.”

  “So that’s a no on the crush,” Jason said. “Got it.”

  Kelly turned, drawing his angel blade from nowhere, as was his habit, and Jason rushed down a couple of stairs.

  “Whoa, whoa,” he said, grabbing Kelly’s shoulders. “Not yet, kid. Not here. There are people here.”

  “Humans aren’t my concern,” Kelly said. Jason stood next to him on the stair, looking once down at the door an arm’s length away.

  “Humans are always your concern,” Jason said. “We’re the only ones that matter.”

  Kelly looked at him, stunned, then nodded.

  “You’re right,” he said, then shook his head as if to clear it. “No, you’re right. I can’t believe I said that.”

  “It’s Jason,” Kara said, brushing past them. “He drives everyone to distraction at some point.”

  Music thumped at them as she opened the door, lights strobing, the noise of people shouting to each other to be heard. Jason held out an arm to Kelly.

  “Do your thing, kid.”

  <><><>

  Kelly struggled to get his emotions under control.

  It was strange, having such amplified reactions to the world, here. It didn’t happen like this, on the paradise plane. They trie
d to talk you through it, explain what would happen, what conflict was like, what people were like, what demons were like.

  Lying.

  Manipulating.

  Things that had dark motives, selfishness to them. For most of the angels in existence, they would forever be foreign, just a rumor about that other place that existed. Angels mostly existed to serve, and while there was a poignant, continuous awareness that the earth plane was happening, the reality was simply unimaginable.

  Angels didn’t think like that.

  They didn’t act like that.

  And yet, Kelly now knew fury.

  He’d known fury the first time he’d seen a demon. His awareness didn’t stretch back far enough to remember the rebellion. He’d never met one of the dark ones before, and his reaction had been pure, instinctive.

  Rage.

  An untempered desire to destroy, to push that corruption as far away from himself and all things light as he could possibly do it.

  And from there it just got weirder.

  Humans tolerated it. Some of them embraced the darkness that demons represented.

  Enjoyed it.

  And then there was the complexity of gray. He’d tried to be prepared for natural magic. He’d known it existed, knew it had interactions with light magic, knew that it stood somewhere in between light and dark magic without actually being darker than light magic. But gray.

  He’d known freewill would stun him. And it had. Without really thinking about it, he’d thought that there would be spots of dark in a world mostly composed of light. And he would fight the dark, preserve the light. Mahkail had tried to warn him, but there was simply no way to prepare for a world that was universally, unequivocally gray. Even Samantha, the woman whose life he had been sent to protect, was gray. There were only speckles of darkness in the ocean of gray, and even the demons had found their way into that homogeny.

  It was shocking.

  He didn’t know what to do with it, and it made him angry or upset from time to time, and the absurd emotions tended to get in the way of sound decisions, particularly when he was looking at a fight in the near future.

  The room was packed, and it was noisy. There was more magic here than he might have expected, but he was beginning to recognize that humans generated a low-level background noise of magic when they got together in large groups, especially when there was music or, strangely, sports involved. It was a sort of webbing that tied them to each other, and that made seeing and understanding the room more difficult.

  Not that he could have possibly missed the black hole sitting in the corner. He lifted his arm to point, not even needing to look. He felt the corner react to him, standing, stretching, sending out power waves. Kelly answered them, aware that the demon was more powerful than he was, but not concerned by that.

  It took a lot to kill an angel, and not very much at all to kill a demon. They were built disproportionately because demons relied on magic that formed on the dark side of free will, whereas angels had direct access to the original magic behind the creation.

  He had a sword at his back, and the power of the creator at his core, and those two things were plenty to destroy any demon who wasn’t extraordinarily prepared for fighting an angel.

  He’d thought that at the beginning, too, but he was pretty sure it was true, now. The first few times he’d lost, it had been because a demon had taken him by surprise, and that wasn’t going to happen again.

  “Which one?” Jason asked, yelling from a few inches away.

  Kelly looked, flabbergasted that Jason couldn’t simply see it.

  “The pale one,” Kelly said.

  Jason gave him a look, one that said that that had been a dumb thing to say, and Kelly forced his attention wider.

  Oh.

  Well, yeah, there was that.

  “The hot one,” Kara said, breaking away to head toward him.

  “Wait,” Kelly said. Jason laughed.

  “She can handle herself, kid.”

  The dark pulled in on itself as Kara got closer, and the demon, tall, narrow, with emphatically refined features, put an arm out toward her. Kelly took a step forward, and the demon shot him a look, warning him.

  “He’s going to kill her,” Kelly said.

  “He isn’t,” Jason answered. “He’s a vampire.”

  “He’s a demon,” Kelly said desperately. “Make her come back.”

  “No one makes Kara do anything she doesn’t want to,” Jason said, moving forward. “Come sit down.”

  Kelly hung back as Jason went to go sit at the table where Kara had settled in with the demon.

  This was wrong.

  It was all wrong.

  He was supposed to come into the place where the demon made his lair, casting him out and sending him back to the hell plane where the infernal creature belonged.

  He was not, not supposed to sit at a table and watch as the three of them drank amber liquid.

  Finally, unable to find an alternative, he did just that.

  “Interesting choice of company,” the demon said as Kelly sat down.

  “He’s cool,” Jason said.

  “No he isn’t,” the demon said. “They never are. You do know, don’t you?”

  “That he’s a great big nerd and no fun at all?” Jason asked. “Sure.”

  The demon laughed.

  “He doesn’t approve of me.”

  “We don’t, either,” Kara said.

  “Oh, come on,” the demon said. “That’s not fair. I deserve a better shot than that.”

  “You are a child of the darkness, and an agent of death,” Kelly said. “I will send you to hell.”

  “You been?” the demon asked. “Seriously. Have you ever seen the place? Or have you just heard about it in stories, like all the rest of them?”

  “Only one may go,” Kelly said. “The gates are locked.”

  “Gates,” the demon said with a laugh. “You are fresh off the turnip truck, aren’t you?”

  “He’s getting better,” Jason said. Kelly looked at him, exasperated and hurt, and Jason laughed. “What? You are.”

  “You aren’t going to pull out your pretty little sword and dispatch me here and now, so you may as well relax,” the demon said, turning to take Kara in. “You brought such lovely company.”

  “I will not dine with my enemy,” Kelly said.

  “Suit yourself,” the demon answered. “I’m Heath.”

  “Kara,” Kara said. “Jason. Kelly.”

  “Kelly’s a girl’s name,” Heath said.

  “I know,” Jason said. “I keep telling him that.

  “Come on, it’s his name,” Kara said. “Teasing him about it isn’t going to change it.”

  “Doesn’t make it a boy’s name,” Heath said, sipping his drink. “You want another one?”

  “Done,” Jason said, getting up. Heath put his arm across Kara’s shoulders, and Kelly pulled away, feeling more like a puddle of light than a beacon. Kara sidled in closer.

  “He’s the enemy,” Kelly said.

  “Keep your friends close,” Kara said with a shrug, downing her own drink and holding it up over her head for Jason to see.

  “What does that mean?” Kelly asked.

  “And your enemies closer,” Heath said. Kelly frowned.

  “Why would you want your enemies close?” he asked. The closest he ever wanted a demon was exactly the length of his arm plus his sword minus three inches or so.

  “So you can see what they’re doing,” Kara said, looking up into Heath’s eyes.

  “But you’re with Jason,” Kelly said.

  “Is that so?” Heath asked, as if it were only him and Kara in the booth.

  “More or less,” Kara said. “We’re pretty flexible.”

  “You look it,” Heath said. Kara grinned.

  “You have no idea.”

  “Are you talking about sex again?” Kelly asked, disgusted. Kara grinned at him, eyes telling a story Kelly didn’t know.

>   “You’re missing out on so much, kid.”

  Heath nodded.

  Kelly felt angry.

  “I will send you back to the lake of fire where you will writhe in agony for eternity,” he said.

  Heath looked at him passively.

  “Maybe so,” he said, then winked at Kara. “Probably, actually. It’s one of those gravity things. Eventually it happens to everyone.” He looked back at Kelly. “But I’m willing to bet it isn’t today.”

  Kelly was about to draw his sword again, when Jason grabbed his wrist.

  “I said not here,” he said. “No one here knows this is going on, but us. We’re going to keep it that way.”

  “Why?” Kelly demanded. “They should know about the nature of the universe.”

  Jason sighed.

  “I don’t want to fight with you, kid. You take all the fun out of stuff.” He sighed again, then handed off a couple of drinks to Heath and Kara, then frowned back down at Kelly. “Sam would say something about the difference between faith and knowledge.”

  Ah.

  Kelly couldn’t argue with that.

  Much as he wanted to, offering proof to humans was ultimately to their detriment. It was one of the trickeries of freewill, and while Kelly struggled to hold all of it together in his mind, it was familiar enough an idea.

  He let his arm drop slowly back down to the table.

  “You do intend to let me ash him, though,” Kelly said.

  “Yes,” Jason said, shoving Kelly over and sitting down next to him. “That’s what we’re here for.”

  “Pity,” Heath said. “You seem like you’d be more fun than that.”

  “We are,” Jason said. “There’s just a bet riding on it.”

  Heath nodded and Kara laughed.

  “I thought we weren’t going to talk about that.”

  “We aren’t talking about it,” Jason said. “I just mentioned it.”

  “Fine line, Elliott,” Kara said.

  “So why vampire?” Jason asked.

  “Pardon?” Heath asked.

  “You come over to this side, you’ve got, what, every form you could ever imagine to pick from. Why go for vampire?”

  Heath grinned, sipping at his drink.

  “You don’t know the rules for demons very well, do you?” he asked.