CHAPTER FOURTEEN

I braced my foot against the doorframe to help me hold Kate’s arm outside the room. I could feel her fingernails beginning to cut into my arm through my suit jacket. It reminded me of how my wife had held on to me when our son was born. Now I held on to Kate and she clung to me not out of pain and life but out of pure terror; the pain would come later.

She screamed and I jumped because nothing had changed that I could see. That one second of lost concentration let the demon pull her farther into the room, so that my knuckles banged on the doorframe. I prayed that the Big Guy would help me hold on, that he would help me be strong enough to save her, and I fought to gain back a few inches.

“My shoulder,” Kate said, “dislocated.”

Still hidden by the door, the demon said, “You’re strong for a human, Havoc; may I call you Havoc? I like the name, by the way; are you sure you’re not one of ours? Kate here is made of sterner stuff than the cop was, but if you hold on tight enough to pretty Kate here, we’ll tear her apart, too, and that’s fine with me. You can keep one arm while we fuck her. It takes time to bleed to death; she’ll still be warm when we finish.”

“I thought demons had more stamina than that,” a woman’s voice from behind me said.

I felt Kate move toward me, as if the demon had lost concentration this time.

I didn’t turn around to see Detective Lila Bridges, but I knew the voice and the attitude. She was a real ball buster and I half loved her for it in that moment.

“Bridges, thought you’d never show up,” I said.

“Hey, Havoc,” she said, and then louder, “Demon, you in the room, are you telling me that all that hype about demons being fantastic fucks is a lie? Hell’s bells, there go all my teenage fantasies. Satan take you back to Hell if you disappoint us that much.”

The demon hesitated again, and I gained a little bit more arm outside the door, but even if I got Kate back to the most of her out the door, the opening still wasn’t wide enough to get her out of the room. We needed an opening big enough to get her out.

“I heard you weren’t bulletproof, demon; what kind of demon isn’t bulletproof, for fuck’s sake?” Bridges said.

“I will tear the woman apart and fuck the pieces!” It pulled harder and I braced against the doorjamb and the door.

Kate whimpered as the demon pulled on her dislocated shoulder; most people would have been screaming by now.

“Where’s the famous seduction of demonkind? Is that just a lie like the whole bulletproof thing, or are you just not that powerful a demon? Is that why they let you out of Hell, because you’re just so fucking weak?” Bridges said, her voice thick with scorn.

“I am not weak!” the demon screamed this time, and it was more whine than roar. Kate screamed as he pulled so hard I had to give ground or pull her apart.

“Come out and prove it to me, demon, or are you just another weak-ass creep? I bet you’re Hell’s version of that creepy guy who lives in his mom’s basement and whines online that he can’t get a woman to fuck him. Oh wait, that is what Mark Cookson is, except he lived in the dorm.”

“Shut up, you fucking bitch!”

“Tough talk, brimstone boy, come out of the room and make me shut up, if you’re demon enough to do it.”

“No,” the demon said, but he didn’t yell it.

“No, you’re not demon enough to do it. Good on you admitting it out loud.”

“She is baiting us,” the demon said; he wasn’t talking to any of us.

“I have the body of a god!”

“With a tiny little penis,” she said, her delivery so dry that it almost made me smile, except I was looking at Kate’s face going paler by the second. Things were breaking in her arms and shoulders from the tug-of-war; if she passed out from the pain, I wasn’t sure what would happen.

Kate swallowed hard enough for me to hear it, and whispered, “I like her.”

“We’ll all go out for drinks later,” I said, voice tight with the effort to hold her and not hurt her more than I had to.

The deep voice growled, “Let go of her, Detective, or I will pull her arm off as I did to the other police officer.”

“What will you do to her if I let go?” I asked.

“Fuck her, better than she’s ever been fucked before! Just like I did to that bitch Megan! I showed her.” The rhythm of the words was different again; it was demon Mark.

“Don’t let go,” Kate said, her voice hoarse from pain and screaming.

The deeper voice said, “I will tear you apart, girl.”

“Then do it,” she said.

“You don’t mean that,” I said.

She looked at me, and she was having trouble focusing on me; shit, she was going to pass out, which meant she was in more pain than she was letting on. Please God, help her.

“I would rather die quick than let that thing kill me slowly.”

“She’s no fun,” demon Mark said; I’d never known that a voice that deep could whine like that.

“You won’t even come out and play with me, you’re the most unfun demon I’ve ever met,” Bridges taunted.

I looked into Kate’s face and said, “You sure?”

She nodded. “I’m sure.”

“I’ll fuck her and then you’re next, cunt!” Demon Mark’s whine again.

“Big talk from a demon that has to hide behind doors because he’s afraid of bullets,” she said.

The demon screamed, roared, and the sound made some of the cops behind me cry out, because you can’t hear the wails of the damned for the first time without it haunting you.

A red-skinned arm went around Kate’s waist. I had a second to decide if I’d hold on and force the demon to tear her in half while I was still holding her hand. I let go.

She screamed and clung tighter to me. “Don’t let me go!”

“Stay alive, we’ll get you out.”

“NO!” she wailed, and her nails cut into my skin through my sleeve, and then carved bloody streaks down my hand. I had one last glimpse of her pale face and then she was around the door out of our sight. The screams started, and I screamed with her, “God help us!”