Chapter 3

Ruby kept up her circling, sniffing the ground, looking for someone who smelled like the angel dust she'd breathed in. Angel dust. Fucking assholes.

"Don't use the good shots," I said. "Just regular bullets will do the trick."

"On it," Dinah and Diego said in tandem and then immediately began to argue about who was going to do the actual killing. I let them bicker. I wasn't interested in sneaking up on people. Let them hear me coming.

Yes, I realized I was looking for a fight. I wanted to smash heads and let loose some of the rage burning through me. Killian was dying, I could do nothing about that. My children were essentially out in the wild, fending for themselves. I could do nothing about that.

And Mario, he couldn't even clean up his own fucking house.

That I could do something about.

I followed Ruby as she made her way through the factory. We went past the stairs that led up to the office. Mario had his hands in the air, but Easter just watched, eating her meal. "Get 'em!" she cheered us on.

Dinah laughed. "Fuck yeah, we'll get 'em."

Like we were going into a ball game. Top of the ninth or whatever.

Ruby never picked up her pace, she just kept on scenting the air and the ground until she brought me to a door. She bumped it with her nose, sneezed and shook her head.

"Here?" I pointed and she gave a quiet woof.

Here it was then. The door was wooden, with "Stay out!" scratched into it. But more than that, I could see the magic woven into it. Someone inside was a spell caster.

"Effective," Dinah whispered. "Did they think that would work?" I pulled her clear of her holster, motioned for Ruby to sit and stay.

"Watch for green," I said. Green being the color of a death spell.

"What about me?" Diego whined.

"Keep it up and I won't use you at all," I said as I leaned close to the door. The spell woven into the door would keep me from kicking it open and it would keep me from hearing anything inside that was being discussed. I needed them to open it from the inside.

The smell of abnormal was strong—they weren't all that powerful then, or at least one of them wasn't. I knocked. "Room service."

Dinah snickered.

"What the fuck?" rumbled from inside the room. I stepped back as the door opened.

The guy in the door was huge, muscled so heavily I wasn't sure his head wasn't attached straight to his shoulders. He had a tattoo across his left cheek and a single eye in the middle of his head.

"Who you?"

"Room service." I smiled and lifted Dinah.

The confusion on his face was solid—he was staring down a gun and not recognizing that he was in imminent danger of dying. "Didn't order room service. Get the fuck out of here."

"No." I kicked out, catching him on the inside of his knee and popping it out of joint. He went down, howling.

He was not the one with the big magic, though. One-eye was the muscle.

"Not very good at your job, hey motherfucker?" Dinah screamed as I stepped over him and into the room.

The other two abnormals, they were of a different class. The spell caster was a woman and she was already spinning her magic, her hands flicking and dancing in the air. I swung Dinah up and shot her in the guts. I might need to talk to her.

Her magic fled as she fell, her eyes wide and her magic hands going to her stomach.

The third, he had delusions of grandeur. He leapt at me, long spindly fingers reaching for my throat. He was reminiscent of a daddy long legs spider. All joints and thin limbs. I let him grab me.

"I got you now, bitch! Who do you think you are?"

"Your worst nightmare!" Diego yelled. "God, I always wanted to say that!"

I swung Dinah around and jammed her into his solar plexus, or maybe it was a thorax. I squeezed the trigger, but she hit nothing. I frowned. That close she shouldn't have missed.

He laughed. "Can't hit me?"

"He actually avoided me!" Dinah screamed. "Let me have another go!"

"No, my turn!" Diego bellowed.

I tucked her into her holster, as calm as if I wasn't getting the blood cut off to my head.

"Bellarose, I'll kill her! Then we'll get you help! They said they'd heal us. Lorn, grab her from behind!"

Hands free, I swung them up and around and snapped both his spindly arms at the first joint. He screamed and I turned my body into his, using the momentum to throw him over my back and onto the floor at my feet. I still held one of his long arms. I jammed a foot into his armpit and yanked hard.

The arm popped free. "Just like every other bug I've squashed," I said.

Lorn—one-eyed muscle man—stood and wobbled on one leg. "I kill you."

"Unlikely," I said as I pulled Diego around. The big gun let out a whoop as I squeezed his trigger and pumped two slugs into Lorn's chest. I only needed one informant to confirm what I already knew. Not three.

Bellarose and Insect Man lay on the floor. Pale green fluid dripped out the socket I'd yanked free, and her blood mingled with it.

"How much do you know?" I crouched in front of them, Diego across my lap. Lorn—still breathing, but shallowly—was behind me. So, I leaned back and sat on his chest, so his last sight was of me.

Bellarose shook her head. "You're . . . you're in a facility. They promised."

I laughed. "Promises are made to be broken, darling. Don't you know that yet?" I put my hand on Lorn's face and leaned closer to them. He struggled for his last breaths, and I just stared at the two in front of me. "I suggest . . . that unless you want to die horrible, tainted deaths, you start telling me all about your contacts with the fallen."

It tookthem all of ten minutes to tell me what they knew. They weren't the only ones inside the factory spying on Mario and his crew. They had been told to watch Mario to see if he had anyone that displayed a certain set of powers.

Spell casters.

Magelores.

Ascendants.

The night of the bleeding stars. That was the last thing that Lorn gasped out.

And something called a death talker. That one was new to me. I could guess at what it meant.

"Thank you," I said as I stood up. Bellarose didn't sigh with relief. The bug man did. I shot him first.

"They'll kill you," she whispered as I leveled Dinah at her head. "They . . . they hate you the most."

I smiled. "That's a position I'm used to."

The boom echoed through the room. I turned away from the bodies and stepped out into the hall where Ruby had waited patiently. I rubbed a hand over her head. "Good girl."

She snorted and rubbed her face against my thigh as we walked away, back to the office.

At the top of the stairs Mario stared hard at me. He was pissed.

I shook my head. "I killed three of your moles. They said they aren't the only ones."

The rage that rolled across Mario's face reminded me far too much of my father and that had me bracing for a fist to come my way. Surprisingly, he pulled his shit together. "Thank you. Any idea who the others might be?"

"They were kept in the dark," I said.

"It's safer than it was, then. But still not good to have our conversations out in the open," Mario said, anger still obviously humming through him. "Are you ready to discuss now?"

I didn't disagree with him.

I still didn't like the big fucking door.

Seeing as the most recent place I'd found myself with doors like this had left me . . . on edge when it came to heavy locking doors. At my side a tremor ran through Easter, her eyes flicking back and forth. She'd stood outside the room the whole time, waiting for me.

I didn't touch her, but there was a moment where I . . . reached for her was the only word I could use. Mentally I reached for her, and that connection I'd created when I'd burned her handler out of her was still there.

She turned her head to me. We shared a look, an understanding that if he was stupid, we'd make it out of here alive. We'd tag team the motherfucker if we had to. She smiled first, winked, and then I echoed both movements and we stepped across the threshold together, Ruby at my heels, her head swinging toward Mario. She really didn't like him, and that alone was enough to keep me from trusting him at all.

"You know that's creepy as shit watching you two interact," Pete said. "Like a pair of possessed dolls."

I shrugged and sat down at the table, started in on the food Easter had brought me, flinching only a little when the door clanged shut behind us. I kept half an eye on Easter, noting the sweat breaking out across the edge of her hairline.

I made myself focus on what was in front of me, namely the food. Even with that, I barely tasted it and slipped a chunk of the pseudo meat to Ruby. Food was fuel; I didn't have time for savoring anything.

Mario sat across from me, folded his hands on the large desk, and waited until I'd almost finished eating. "So, do you actually think you have a solution to our problem?"

Our problem, as if the whole world hadn't been under attack by the fallen and instead, we just had a territory disagreement between two gangs.

I took the last bite of food and washed it down with a swig of water. "Yes. I have a solution but it's far from simple. We need to find a demon, and stuff him in a new weapon the way Dinah and Diego here have been placed inside these guns. Then we can kill the fallen."

Mario didn't move but I could almost see the gears turning. "A demon."

"Yes. A rather particular demon, one that is strong enough to do the job." If it had been any demon, I would have just gone and bottled up Ornias from the church. I lowered my plate to the floor so Ruby could clean off the rest of the crumbs. "One I've cast out before."

Easter let out a slow breath. "Not the desert fire demon? He was a right powerhouse."

Yeah, that thought had crossed my mind, but I'd quickly dismissed it. "No, his power is too close to mine and he can suck me under. I can't risk it." I paused and pulled Dinah and Diego out, laying them on the table. "We need Bazixal. He wanted to control me once, I think I could convince him to play ball. Or at the very least, I can get him to the negotiating table."

Maybe need was not the right word. Bazixal was a monstrous demon, perhaps the strongest that we'd ever dealt with, and I'd barely been able to get rid of him. The truth was, he was strong and we needed a kickass demon that had fallen from grace.

If what my grandmother had been saying was true, that was, and the same power that imbued the fallen was what we needed to kill them.

And demons, they were just fallen who'd fallen a little further.

"And just how are we going to do this?" Pete asked, finally sitting up. "I mean, you can't just call a demon, it's not that easy. Even I know that. You need a circle, a spell caster, you need a sacrifice. And I am not going to offer up my ass as a sacrifice."

"You know an awful lot about calling demons." Easter spoke the very thoughts I was having. "No luck?"

He cringed. "I know things. That's all."

As if he'd tried to call one up. Yeah, it was likely he had at one point. Magelores were all about power and strength, and if he could have had a demon in his back pocket, I had no doubt he would have.

"So first we find a demon, but then you want to . . . stuff him . . ." Carlos looked at the two guns on the table. "Like these two. Who would want a weapon like that? It would likely turn on its creator! At least these two had souls! They have personalities!"

"Seems to be the case," I said. "But I don't know how to stuff a soul—demon or otherwise—into a weapon. Any of you know? I'm assuming there is a set of instructions out there somewhere." I took a good long look at Pete.

He cleared his throat. "I can help you with the calling up part, but that's it."

I'd take it. I gave him a nod. "Then that's your job. Get the pieces together."

Pete squinted. "I might need to contact another Magelore to help."

Another nod. "Fine. Just do it."

That was maybe the only step we did have nailed down. "Spells for putting souls into a weapon. Anyone?" I asked as I scooted my chair back. Ruby set her head on my lap and I rubbed around the base of her ears.

"What about you, Diego?" Carlos asked. "How was it done? Do you remember?"

Diego gave a grunt, shuddering against my back. "No. I was so far gone into dying that I recall nothing, only that it was done. They asked my consent, I gave it. That is all I know. Chanting. There was chanting. And music."

Easter leaned over and motioned at Dinah. "Girlfriend, what about you?"

Interesting. They'd created quite the connection while they'd traveled together.

"I didn't see how it was done," Dinah said. "But the person who would know . . . would be Eleanor."

Eleanor. My other gun. The gun that held the soul of my mother. The gun that had backfired to keep from killing me, and instead had ripped what was left of her from this world.

"She'd dead," I said. "She can't help—"

Mario held up his hand, stopping me. "That's not . . . entirely true."

I frowned as my heart picked up speed because he could not be saying what I thought he was saying. Not possible. Mario smiled back at me, and again I wasn't fully sure that I liked what I saw in him.

"She's not dead."