Page 35 of The Demon’s Due (Bedeviled #5)

Not only were infected vampires rampaging, healthy ones were also panicking, which put humans at stratospheric levels of freaked the fuck out.

It was all boots to the ground, each of us assigned a squad and a quadrant in Metro Vancouver.

My task force was in the same unit, deployed to our local Seaside to help our colleagues already on-site deal with the vampires refusing to leave.

I reassured myself that Darsh was in charge out there, and he wouldn’t let this become a bloodbath.

Unless he had no choice.

I quickly traded my heels and suit for runners and sweats, then sprinted through the rapidly emptying out building, bound for the bus idling in the underground garage.

Power was out in large swaths of the city, but we sped through the clear night with front-row seats to fleeing citizens, smashed car windows, and pockets of fighting where Trad officers and operatives attempted to regain control of the human population.

Injured people littered the sidewalks, some raging, some crying, and others eerily silent, their shell-shocked faces pale in the moonlight.

Vampire corpses glowed against the concrete like horrible nightlights. A few had stakes protruding from their chests, others looked like they’d been savaged by wild animals, i.e. other crazed vamps, but most were unfortunate victims of the Luce.

I was too numb to worry every time the speeding bus leaned too hard to one side or the other. I had no idea how Sachie, Olivier, Darsh, and Silas were faring, and given the footage Gemma couldn’t stop doomscrolling through, it wasn’t only Vancouver that had fallen into a dystopian nightmare.

The entire world was burning.

Our bus zoomed into the neighborhood where Seaside was located, passing the smoldering remains of a building and a bashed-in fire hydrant.

I stared out the window at what should have been dark silhouettes of a far-off group of office towers but now had flames licking out of several stories.

Sirens wailed in the distance, punctuated by what sounded like bursting fireworks.

Next to me, Gemma flinched.

“I’m not used to hearing gunfire,” she said. “It’s Canada, you know?”

“Yeah.” I handed her the Zen Zapper I’d grabbed on my way out of HQ.

“You won’t need it?”

I flexed my hand, letting scales ripple across my skin.

Gemma gave me a wan smile. “You and your party tricks, Fleischer.”

“Step up your game, Huang,” I teased back just as half-heartedly.

The driver had barely finished his tire-squealing drive through the high front gates before we were jumping out. He told us that he’d been redeployed to pick up casualties, his taillights disappearing into the night the second the final operative hit the ground.

Toxic green scales burst across my body like living armor and my left hand extended into razor-sharp claws. The transformation sent familiar waves of power through me, my more muscular physical form stretching my shoulder seams.

My crimson hair whipped in the icy wind, which carried dancing sparks from a burning car. I assessed the battlefield, the scene before us something from a medieval painting of Hell.

The wide front lawn had become a killing field, with vampires turning on each other. Pine resin from the trees on the property mixed with the sickly sweet smell of blood and decay.

There shouldn’t have been this many undead here. Not if Seaside was only being used as a treatment or hospice facility, yet it seemed like most of southern British Columbia’s vamp population was present.

Had their close proximity made it easier for the Luce to tear through them? How many remained strong and uninfected?

Which were more dangerous?

All of the three dozen or so Maccabees on our bus partnered up. Joe with Marilyn, Eduardo with Fyodor.

I wasn’t sure how many Vancouver operatives were already on the premises, and thus, our total numbers handling this situation.

Gemma fell into step beside me, her stake in one hand and the Zen Zapper in the other.

The operative who’d laughed snidely when first seeing my shedim side at HQ now looked from the chaos to me and gave a thumbs-up.

Two vampires were locked in combat near the fountain. It took me a second to recognize them as foot soldiers from the same local Mafia. Their grimy clothes hung on withered frames, their mottled skin loose like ancient parchment as they tore at each other with desiccated hands.

One’s fangs slashed viciously at his former ally’s throat, trying desperately to feed from the other, to heal—not understanding he was beyond repair.

His victim fought back with failing strength. Neither noticed us, they were too far gone, driven mad by the combination of bloodlust and the Luce.

To our left, another vampire crawled across the ground, her legs having given out as her supernatural strength flickered and died. She pursued a vamp who stumbled away from her, his own movements jerky and desperate.

Gemma had deployed the Zen Zapper on the jerkily moving one, but he kept coming. “Fuck!”

“Right femur!” I mimed slashing it.

A fraction of a second later, her dagger glinted through the moonlight. Flesh tore and viscous liquid arced.

The vampire crashed to its knees, where Gemma immediately staked him. She left the Zen Zapper on the ground, its prongs still buried in the vamp’s skin.

“Tone down the glow.” She squinted and pointed at my eyes. “If I want a flashlight, I’ll punch you in the shoulder to power on.”

I didn’t have that kind of control—yet. Plus, she wasn’t funny. I threw her the finger.

We ran across the lawn, almost ploughing into an enormous healthy-looking vamp.

He cracked his knuckles, fangs out and blood running down his chin.

I prayed it was from feeding on one of his own kind and not any of the human staff who’d chosen to remain when Seaside was repurposed to treat infected vampires.

The vamp blurred forward with the speed of a cobra striking.

I barely managed to thrust myself in his path, his fangs striking my scales and not Gemma’s throat. A tingly reverberation ran down to my toes. It was almost ticklish, unlike his grip crushing my windpipe as he lifted me off my feet.

Lungs seizing and toes scrabbling against the concrete, I jammed my claws into his eyes. The second he dropped me, I snapped his neck.

He crumpled to the ground, where Gemma staked him.

“Over here!” One of our younger operatives, Rupinder, was supporting a wounded male Trad officer.

Rupinder hadn’t been with us on the bus or around for my shedim reveal, but word had traveled fast, the gossip working to my advantage since I didn’t have to offer explanations or deal with her attacking me in terror.

The Trad officer, however, took one look at me and fainted in Rupinder’s hold.

“Better that way,” Gemma muttered.

True, but the pair were caught in the crossfire of vampire-on-vampire violence, and now the cop was dead weight in our operative’s arms.

“Yoo hoo! Bloodsuckers!” I waggled my claws in a flirtatious wave.

The vamps charged Gemma and me. One moved with terrifying speed, another stumbling but determined, the third dragging a clearly broken leg. The fast one reached us first.

I spun sideways, calling, “Left kidney!”

The vamp’s momentum carried him forward—right into Gemma’s one-two combo of stab and stake.

Luckily, the other two were also quickly vanquished, their compromised abilities making them easy targets despite their enhanced strength. Sadly, we had no time to celebrate because more bodies were emerging from the shadows.

Inside the facility, someone screamed.

Gemma called out to Joe and Marilyn, our closest team members.

They fought their way to us, ending vampires with practiced efficiency.

We gave Rupinder and the Trad officer’s care over to them and ran for Seaside’s door.

Just before we reached it, another vamp dropped from the roof—or tried to.

Her supernatural abilities stuttered mid-leap, turning catlike reflexes into a catastrophic fall.

She hit the ground hard, bones snapping.

When she looked up, her eyes were wild with pain and hunger, yet they flicked between Gemma and me, the vampire having enough presence of mind to assess which of us was the greater threat.

She reached out psychically, attempting to control my mind, but the infection had corrupted that power too. Her compulsion whispered across my skull, barely an itch.

Her scream of pure anguish when her psychic assault rebounded, however, shivered through me, ringing in my ears.

I was on her before she could recover, my clawed hand tearing through her chest.

Her lifeless body fell to the grass with a sound like dry leaves in autumn.

Gemma and I hopped over her corpse and ran inside. Glass crinkled underfoot from the blown-out lights, fixtures torn out of the ceiling and discarded on the tiles under dangling live wires.

Photos of past staff and founders that once hung neatly on the wall had been strewn around like a child flinging toys in a temper tantrum.

We edged around a corner.

A vampire slumped against the wall. His healing powers had turned against him and a small cut on his arm was spreading, flesh decaying faster than vampire regeneration could handle. He struggled to stay on his feet, but seeing us, he gave one last burst of speed.

My claws found his heart before the infection could finish its work. Mercy, of a sort.

A crash from above drew our attention. Through a huge hole in the second-floor ceiling, a vampire fell, couldn’t catch himself with his supernatural reflexes on the fritz, and shattered like ancient pottery against the marble floor.

The sound drew more of them, some still graceful, others moving like broken puppets.

We cleared assailant after assailant, slashing, staking, breaking bones, gaining inch by precious inch of territory, all while bathed in the red glow of the emergency lights.

“Behind you!” Sachie emerged from the cafeteria, her stake whipping past my head to take down a vampire attempting to flank us.

“Coming through!” Darsh was right behind her, herding three terrified human staff into the hallway.

I pressed a hand to my sternum, trying to contain the wild beating of my heart at seeing him and Sachie safe.

Ezra’s Prime magic and the lack of rain were on Darsh’s side, because the Luce hadn’t harmed him beyond a couple white streaks in his hair. It was a good look on him, though Darsh tended to rock most vibes.

“The Authority blindsided us with that fucking announcement!” The raw pain in Darsh’s voice yanked me back to our desperate situation. A woman leaned on him for support, and while he kept his solicitous attention on her, one of his fists was clenched and a muscle ticked in his jaw.

A howl shook the walls.

Silas .

Incredibly, Darsh didn’t abandon his flock. He told Gemma to help him get everyone outside to safety. He didn’t need to ask Sach and me to check on his boyfriend because we were already halfway down the corridor.

Silas was upstairs in one of the activity rooms, his massive frame gone utterly still as he stood over a crumpled form on the floor.

I said a quick thank-you to the universe that Silas looked uninjured, but my heart clenched at the corpse with its thinning yellow hair.

Green eyes, once so alert and alive, now stared sightlessly upward, the man’s prosthetic legs splayed at awkward angles.

Rylan Quinn was one of the Ashbishop’s many victims. He’d spent his life paying forward the kindness he’d received from Silas, his unknown benefactor who’d cared for him from afar.

What a testament to this man that he’d remained here to help the same kind of beings who destroyed his village, killed his mother, and took his legs. I wasn’t sure I’d find that same compassion were our situations reversed.

“This isn’t how we were supposed to meet.

” Silas spoke softly, his voice heavy with a weight I’d never heard before.

Not even when he admitted to creating the Ashbishop.

“I was going to introduce myself properly once the madness with the Luce was over. I’d finally forgiven myself, you see, and I wanted to say hello. ”

He knelt beside Rylan, gently closing those unseeing eyes with one massive hand. The tenderness of the gesture stood in stark contrast to the sounds of violence raging around us.

Sachie placed her hand on his shoulder, and he gripped it without turning around.

The three of us held this awful tableau, glued together by senseless loss, until the screams of the infected forced us to move again.

Over a century of carefully preserved humanity crumbled in my friend’s boyish face, Silas now stripped down to nothing but teeth and hunger and ancient animal grief.

“Let’s end this and get the survivors to safety,” he said in a rough voice, and plunged back into the fray.

Dawn was a long time coming.