Kim Harrison: Pale Demon

“Kids!” Jenks’s voice was shrill. “We’ve talked about this! Lunkers are a no-kill species! How come you never listen to me like you listened to your mom!”

It looked like it might be over. “Get up,” I said, breathing hard as I eased up on my grip.

The man spun under me, foot and fist lashing out. Jerking up and away, I stood, grabbing for his foot. It smacked into me with a bone-jarring thump, but I caught it. Determined green eyes met mine, and when I went to snap his ankle, he sideswiped me with the other foot.

I gasped and went with it, trying to keep my presence of mind as I fell on the concrete walk, trying to turn it into something graceful. There was a sickening crunch under me. My glasses. Damn it! I’d let go, though, and when I again found my feet, he had stood and was coming at me with a knife.

“Rachel, quit playing with him,” Ivy said loudly, her cycle idling back to us, the zip-stripped woman meekly walking before her with an escort of exuberant pixies holding swords.

“He’s got a knife!” I exclaimed, teeth clenched as I did an X block, then dove under his arm to make him twist his own knife into his side. And there I stopped, breathing hard as I pressed the blade, still in his grip, into him, but not yet breaking the skin. He didn’t move, knowing it was right over his kidney. Jeez Louise, the curtains of the house across the street were moving. We had to take this inside before someone called Inderland Security. The last thing I needed was the I.S. out here.

“You’ve lost, Jack!” I shouted as I pinched his wrist until he let go of the knife, then wrenched his arm up and pressed him into the nearby light pole. “We got Jill,” I said as he grunted, “and no way are you getting that bucket of water in my garden. If you don’t relax, I’m going to bust your crown! We clear?”

The guy nodded, but I didn’t ease up. Spitting my hair out of my mouth, I realized that Ivy had parked her cycle and was coming up the walk with the woman. The female assassin’s hands were in fists, high over her head. Jenks’s kids were working together to shift the knife to the sidelines. Slowly I started to smile. We’d gotten them. Hot damn!

“Hi, Ivy,” I said as she scuffed her booted feet to a halt. “Get the errands done?”

The slightly Asian-looking woman quirked her lips at my robe, smiling as she held up her pharmacy bag. The unmistakable shadow of a second splat gun and several knives showed through the thin plastic. Her lips were closed to hide her small, sharp canines, but her mood was good.

“You want to take this inside or bag them up and leave them here for big-trash pickup?” she asked, her black eyes going to the deceptively empty street. Her pupils were fully dilated despite the bright sun, evidence that she was working to maintain control of her instincts. Being in the sun would help; so would the wind now carrying away the scent of sweat and fear.

“Inside,” I panted. I was out of breath, but Ivy wasn’t. She was six feet of lean, athletic living vampire, dressed in blue jeans, boots, and a tight black T-shirt. It would take more than running down a fleeing assassin on her bike to make her break into a sweat.

“You going to be good, Jack?” I asked the man pressed against the light pole, and when he nodded, I let up. He grimaced as Ivy patted him down, adding another knife and more blue splat pellets in a clear, crush-proof plastic vial to her bag. I held my hand out for the splat balls and I refilled his hopper, fast enough to make Jack’s eyes widen in appreciation.

Clicking the magazine away, I hefted the splat gun, thinking it felt good in my hand. “This is my house,” I said as I indicated the church. “If you do something I don’t like, you’re going to get whatever’s in the hopper, and the law will be on my side. Clear?”

They didn’t nod, but they didn’t spout threats, either.

“Move,” I said, and with an obedience that told me the potions were nasty, the two of them started up the cement stairs and toward the double wooden doors. Slowly I began to relax.

Ivy looked at the gun, her brow furrowed. “It looks like yours,” she said.

“You noticed that, too?” Eying the attackers, I pulled one side of the door open. Jenks’s kids entered the church first—three of them carrying my broken sunglasses—then the bad guys, then us. “Are you okay?” I asked Ivy.

She smiled to show her fangs, small until she died and became a true undead, and I stifled a shiver. Ivy was great at maintaining a grip on her instincts, but fight, flight, or food brought out the worst in her, and this was all three. “Not a problem,” she said as the dark foyer took us. One of these days, we were going to invest in a new light fixture, but the sanctuary beyond it was a bright wash of light, the sun coming in the tall stained-glass windows to make colored patterns on the new set of living room furniture, my unused desk, Ivy’s exercise mats, and Kisten’s burned pool table. I still hadn’t had it refelted. My bare feet squeaked over the old oak, and I shoved Jack toward the small hallway at the back of the sanctuary.

“Trent is here already?” Ivy asked, clearly having smelled him. “He’s still alive, right?”

I nodded, wiping the grit from the sidewalk off my feet. Good Lord, I had tagged an assassin in my bare feet and a bikini. If this showed up on the Internet, I was going to be peeved. “Last I knew, he was. I told him to go into the kitchen and wait.” Assassins usually traveled in threes, but these were elven. I didn’t know their traditions.

“He’s in there,” Jenks said derisively as he dropped down to us. “I don’t think they’re real assassins. They didn’t know any ley-line magic.”

“You don’t need magic to be deadly, Jenks. You of all people should know that.”

Jenks snorted. “I don’t think they know any. They stink like elves, but they’ve got so much human in them, they might not have any magic.”

I shrugged, guessing as much by the almost indifference Jenks’s kids had shown the two attackers. The man in front of us glanced back as we entered the dark hallway, and I smiled mockingly. “All the way to the end,” I directed as we passed the his and her bathrooms and twin bedrooms and headed to the huge, industrial-size kitchen. I cleared my throat in warning as Jack and Jill whispered between themselves, and they shut up.

The pixies were singing about blood and daisies as we entered the sunlit kitchen to find Trent safe within a circle of his own making between the cluttered center counter and the sink, full of dirty spell pots. The bright, cheerful gold of his circle was free of any demon smut, making me uncomfortable. He’d just been under my aura and had seen the mess I’d made of it. Demon smut. Ugly. Black. Permanent—mostly.

The kitchen was hands down my favorite room in the entire church, with its expansive stainless-steel countertops, fluorescent lighting, and center island counter with my spelling equipment hanging above it and in the open cabinets below it. There were two stoves, so I didn’t have to stir spells and cook on the same surface. My mom’s new fridge took up a wall. Bis, perched atop it, was asleep next to the skull-shaped cookie jar. The little gargoyle had probably been trying to stay awake after sunup and misjudged. He’d be down until sunset no matter how noisy we were, and it was getting noisy. Pixies were flitting in and out through the one small window over the sink. Ivy’s computer was set up on the big farm-kitchen table against the inside wall, but the space felt like mine. That Trent had been in here alone sort of bothered me.

Jenks’s kids were flitting everywhere, too excited to perch in one place, and they were starting to give me a headache. Trent, too, looked like he was hurting. “Look, Ivy! Elf under glass!” Jenks said, and I sighed, even as a small twinge on my awareness went through me and Trent dropped his circle.