Tremble (Denazen #3)(87)

“Hey, Lis, we’ve got a situation.”

“Vamp, were, or demon?”

“Vamp, I think.”

She pulled a wooden arrow out of the quiver and watched as I threaded it into my bow.

“Remember,” she cautioned, “you have to wait until human blood is spilled. Any unprovoked attack on a Crossworlder violates the Peace Tenets. Do you need thermal imaging for vamp confirmation?”

“Do we have thermal imaging?”

She rummaged in the backpack. “No.”

“Add it to the shopping list.”

Thermals or no, I was ninety-eight percent sure this was a vamp attack. Maybe ninety-seven. My hand drew back the bow as the dude crouched over Sorority Sally, a predatory look in his eye. His fingers tapped her cheek, tenderly at first, then harder. I could see his lips forming the words, Hey, baby. Want to party?

Yeesh. After a hundred thousand years of verbal evolution, could a guy not produce a better pick up line than that? I barely had time to stifle a groan before the girl’s eyes fluttered open. Faster than thought, her hands gripped his collar, her mouth in a vicious twist.

That’s when I released the arrow. The shaft wasn’t as tight or familiar as the weapons at school, but it flew straight enough.

“Bull’s-eye,” I said as it entered her shoulder.

I’m not even sure if the poor schmuck noticed, he was so wasted. She definitely noticed. Her eyes narrowed to angry slits as she turned in our direction, fangs bared. Served her right. Maybe next time she’d remember to flick some water on her face before she went hunting. Only vamps and zombies wouldn’t sweat in this humidity.

“Duh, why didn’t you just kill her?” Lisa asked, annoyed. “Two more seconds and it would have been justifiable vampicide.”

“Lis, for all we know, she volunteers weekends at the soup kitchen. Besides, it wasn’t a vampire who killed D’Arcy.”

“Yeah, well,” she sniffed, “it wasn’t a demon, either.”

I was about to ask what she meant when I noticed a stirring in the distance.

The blond girl had shooed her would-be snack on his way and was in the process of working the arrow out of her shoulder when something dropped from a tree about fifty feet away. It scuttled toward her, razor sharp talons scraping the pavement, a bubbling snarl at its lips.

“Oh, crud. New target. UV arrow.”

It took me less than two seconds to reload and take aim, but by the time I did, the demon had already launched itself at the girl. Its skin was black and mottled, with coarse, oily hair along its shoulders—one part beetle, one part gorilla, three parts Sicilian mafioso.

“Uh, Lis? I need an ID.”

Lisa slipped on a second pair of night goggles and started paging through the ginormous Encyclopedia O’ Demons she’d brought along. Headmistress Smalley seriously needed to get that thing in an e-book format.

“Got it! Rangor demon, third level. Head shot only, everything else is armored. Left eye for the kill,” she summarized aloud. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“Me, too.”

The Rangor slashed at Sorority Sally with manic glee. For a second, it looked like they might topple down the embankment into the Mississippi where I couldn’t get a clear shot, but the girl recovered enough to get her arms up. She rolled to the ground, tossing the beast over her head. Not as fast as some of the vamp videos we’d seen in training class, but way faster than I could have moved in that dress. Impressive.

“Hey, Guido,” I called.

Startled, the demon jumped to its feet (um, claws?) and ran toward us, gathering momentum. Arms raised, it let out a howl of fury. Its whole face seemed to fold open, rows upon rows of teeth bared in serrated ridges.

That’s when I sent off the second arrow.

The shaft pierced the beast’s left eye, spilling bright UV liquid down its face in a trickle of purple acid. A cry ripped through its throat. Inhuman. Screechy. Like the emergency brakes of a railway car. Lisa clamped her hands on her ears.

“Wow, this is super subtle,” she yelled over the ruckus. “Maybe next time you could take out an ad in the Times Picayune?”

In hard lurches, the demon writhed and twisted on the ground. Rangors weren’t known for their passive deaths, but really, it seemed to be taking longer than necessary. In the distance, horns honked and garbage trucks clanged, sure signs of human approach.

“We’re so gonna get busted.”

I sighed. Lisa was right. If a Guardian caught us, that would be one thing. But involving humans was a whole other enchilada.

“All right, give me a knife,” I ordered.

She handed me a hooked blade about the size of a banana and stood back.

It took less than twenty seconds to separate the crucial parts, at least enough to stop the twitching. By the time I finished, my arms were scratched, my hair was clumped with mucus, and the vampire had fled into the night.

“You’re welcome,” Lisa yelled after her. She humphed and turned back to me. “Omigod, did you see that? Ungrateful toads, every last one of them.”

“Tell me about it,” I said, wiping the demon goo off my arms. “You want to get the body or the weapons?”

“I’ll get the body. You’ll probably end up summoning a demon horde if you try to dismiss it. Remember Veronica’s sweet sixteen?” She smirked. “Priceless. I thought she’d never get her hair back to its normal color.”