I rushed her, and she lifted her hands in surrender.
“Please don’t eat me,” she cried.
I narrowed my eyes, seeing my own reflection in her dilated pupils.
Blood covered my lips and ran down my chin, splattering my coat.
I looked like a monster.
But I suppose I was one.
Just like them.
I backhanded her hard enough that her body half whipped around before her head hit the alley wall. She toppled to the cracked pavement, unconscious.
I sighed. To carry her, or to drag? Hard question. I was still mulling over the answer when an inhuman roar shook the very ground I stood on. Not wasting time, I bent my knees, slipped one arm around her back and the other beneath her knees. Hoping like hell she didn’t wake up, I took off down the alley, as fast as my legs would carry me.
Heads turned as I bolted down the main road. My energy was flagging, and fast. I didn’t usually tap into my other side. While powerful, it was draining.
Not to mention unnatural, my brain inserted. All magic had its price, and the price of using mine took its toll on my body.
Slowly, the red faded from my vision, and with it, the strength and speed I’d possessed.
This mission had been a complete and utter shit show.
I’d unleashed a demon on earth for nothing.
I’d let those bastards live for nothing.
I took a ragged breath, the girl in my arms still unconscious.
“Not for nothing,” I muttered. I lifted my head and surveyed my surroundings. I was a block away from an L station. New Chicago kept the old metro system, but what was once public transport powered by electricity was now just another part of my past controlled by magic. While I usually avoided it like the plague, my options were limited if I wanted to get out before the demon found me. I may already be too late.
Screams sounded in the night. They were coming from the direction I’d just escaped.
I glanced over my shoulder just as the demon stepped beneath a streetlight.
I swallowed hard, and my feet took off. The soles of my boots thudded against the cobblestone as I veered right and headed for the station.
In the old days, you presented a card to enter and your money was subtracted. These days, the method of payment was infinitely more and less, depending on who you were.
At the sliding gates, instead of a reader for a card, a single needle jutted out.
My eyes flicked between it and the train approaching.
A shrill whistle blew, and people crowded the doors. I took one look behind me.
The demon was a mere twenty yards away.
His silver gaze burned into me.
Shifting my hold, I clumsily held the witch’s body with one arm as I lifted her hand and stabbed the fatty part of her palm down on the needle. It was probably a bit overkill, given that the payment required was only a single drop of blood, but I didn’t have it in me to feel bad.
The barrier flashed green, and I bolted to the other side.
I sensed more than saw the demon run for me. I pumped my legs as the train let out a second shrill trill. My foot just touched the train floor as the doors started to close. I stepped inside and turned around.
On the other side of the plastic window the demon lifted his hand and blasted the entire machinery apart that controlled the entry and exit of the trains. He started for me, that black fire in his eyes threatening to set me aflame.
Then the wheels started moving.
A slow smile curled up my lips as we gained speed. He ran beside the train, keeping pace with my window until we hit the tunnel. Darkness took over. The metal contraption shook. Bodies were packed in. Men and women pushed up against walls. Children cried, and the homeless solicited acts of entertainment for scraps of food or coin—not that the latter did much good. Most places no longer took physical money because witches and warlocks were prone to scamming people. Still, solicitors took any and everything they could get because in this world, nothing was free.
The L smelled of desperation and depravity, but as the train shot out from a tunnel, and the cloudy sky opened up, I sighed in relief.
I’d come toe-to-toe with a demon, and I’d lived.
This time.
I sagged against the double doors, looking through the foggy plastic at the city below. My relief at getting away slowly faded as worry tinged it, seeping in like ink on paper.
A niggling feeling ate at me. As relieved as I was to be alive, this was far from over.
6
The Demon
My hands clenched into fists.
There was a pounding in my ears and everything aside from the retreating lights of the moving train faded in a cloudy haze.
She ran from me.
I unclenched my fists and took a few hard breaths, trying to settle into this new form. It was different from my previous one. More confined. Contained. It held all that I was beneath a sinewy package of muscle and bone. Once, I would have hated it.
However, thousands of years of searching for her made me ambivalent. I didn’t particularly care which form I took, as long as it led to her.
She ran from me. The words repeated in my mind, but I did not feel pain like one might expect. A hint of anger was there, but more than anything it was a driving desire to hunt her. Find her.
I had to know who this female was, and why she ran.
The distant roar of another train approaching pulled my attention back to my surroundings. I looked over the disgusting train station. It was so unlike the world I’d come from.
To find her, first I needed to understand this plane. While my magic made it possible for me to communicate with all life-forms, it did not grant me instant knowledge. That I had to take.
The two warlocks I’d killed in the cathedral gave me enough to understand some things, but they didn’t know who my mystery female was, or why she wanted their leader alive.
No matter. All I needed to do was retrace my steps and follow the trail.
I’d find the leader that created the door between realms, figure out why she wanted him, and then use him to track her down.
She could run all she wanted. She wouldn’t be able to evade me forever. I’d waited too long for her. I followed her from my world and into this one. If I had to, I’d follow her into the next.
There was no escaping me.
7
I groaned, climbing the last few steps. While she wasn’t very big, the cloaked witch was heavy when it was pouring rain outside and the water weighed us both down. My clothes were mostly dry from my shoulders to the knee where my trench coat ended. From there down had been soaked to the bone in icy cold water.
I shivered and leaned against the doorway as I let the witch’s body slide down my own. My arms were shaking from the exertion of carrying her so far. While I was strong, I wasn’t Superwoman. Especially when the crash hit.
My fingers fumbled with the ties on my jacket as I worked to open it and dug out my key from one of the inner pockets. I touched the end of the bronze fob to the panel on the door. It beeped once, and the tiny light at the top of it changed from red to green.
I wrapped my hand around the handle and the door swung open on its own. Sighing once more, I bent down and hauled the witch up as carefully as I could manage. While I didn’t have much left before the crash, I needed to get her tied up before she woke.
I took one last look up and down the stairs, checking my neighbors’ apartments. All was quiet, and as far as I could tell, not a soul knew I’d brought an unconscious woman back.