PROTECTED. Marcus Calvert

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СКАЧАТЬ stay down,” he muttered with soft ire in his Boston-accented voice.

      Spencer ignored the ruined kitchen around them and the biscuits Cara had been making before she had sensed him sneaking up on her. His many, many gunshots would definitely have been heard in this upscale Boston neighborhood. Even though it was well before sunrise, Spencer knew that the cops would be here any minute. A slick pool of blood poured out from under Tempschal’s body. He stood up and carefully stepped around it.

      Gun clutched in both hands, he quickly searched the basement and was surprised to find it empty. Desperate, he ran upstairs and searched the first floor of the house. Again, Spencer came up empty. The second floor was also depressingly opulent in its normalcy. But then he saw a flight of stairs, which led up to a wooden attic door with an old-style metal padlock.

      Hopeful, Spencer stepped back, covered his face with his left hand and blasted the lock with his right. To his relief, the lock broke apart on the first shot. He shoved the door open and entered the drug lab. Spencer ignored the vile fumes and alchemical array of ingredients. He stopped in front of a large, transparent refrigerator at the left side of the room. In the fridge, laid out on four small metal trays, were a few dozen capsules of a popular street drug called Demon Tears. Each transparent capsule was worth five grand and was guaranteed to give the user a very dark, unique, three-day high.

      As a former addict, Spencer recognized the capsules.

      The drug made him more confident, smarter, and quite the happy asshole. In less than a few months, the addiction cost Spencer his tiny engine repair shop, his house, his friends, his wife, daughter … almost everything. For a long, tempted moment, he stared at the capsules. Then he turned away.

      Spencer wasn’t here for the drugs.

      At the rear of the attic, he found Chira. Manacled to a wall with thick black chains, the N’Pathran demon still maintained her human façade. Voluptuous and short, she looked to be in her early thirties, which was a mere third of her true age. Barely conscious, stray locks of shoulder-length black hair draped over her bloodied face. Someone had recently beaten her, burned her, and inflicted a dozen or so small cuts. The injuries were all centered upon her face and neck. Spencer knew that Chira would regenerate within a matter of hours.

      Spencer felt a mixed sense of relief and rage at the sight of her. After she had been kidnapped from their loft in Vancouver, he tracked her here. The search had taken him about two weeks. During that time, he had broken a few jaws - and quite a few laws - in the quest to rescue his true love. The authorities, both American and Canadian, were already after him. By tomorrow, Chira’s kidnappers would be too.

      But none of that mattered right now.

      He sized up the plain black manacles that bound her tiny wrists. Forged without a keyhole, each one was linked to a thick length of chain set into the wall behind her. From what little Chira had taught him about the occult, these chains were mystical and could only be broken by strong magic, a release phrase, or by the hands of whoever enchanted them.

      “Wake up baby,” Spencer said as he knelt down and gently shook her left shoulder with his free hand. “I’m getting you out of here.”

      Chira winced as she forced her swollen blue eyes open and looked over at him.

      Before he had awakened her, Chira had been dreaming of how they had met, some three years ago. Back then, he was a homeless addict begging her for a dose of Demon Tears. Too broke to buy any more of the drug, Spencer had tracked down the source. What he learned was that the drug came from real demon tears: namely hers. She was one of the main suppliers for the Boston area and had been making good money doing so. Normally, Chira would have torn out Spencer’s heart and eaten it in front of his corpse. But instead, the despairing mortal made her feel something alien to her hell-spawned core – pity.

      For reasons still unknown to her, Chira took Spencer off the streets and weaned him off the drug. During those first few weeks in her apartment, they fell in love. It was Spencer who talked her into leaving her lucrative “career.” In spite of the fact that her business partners were just as infernal as she was, Chira opted to take the chance. They kept on the move for most of their three-year relationship, pursued off-and-on by her former partners.

      Upon returning to Boston, her captors immediately put her back to work making Demon Tears. Only this time, Chira was doing so for free and under outright torture. As they brutalized her, the she-demon’s tears freely poured.

      But she never lost hope.

      “I knew you’d come,” Chira grinned through cracked lips.

      The sounds of approaching sirens were heard in the distance. Spencer was too thrilled to care. All that mattered was that Chira was safe and sound.

      “I’d walk through Hell for you,” Spencer coughed, bothered by the fumes in the room.

      “How do I get you out these chains?” Spencer asked.

      “The nanny,” Chira licked her lips. “She has to utter the release phrase.”

      “You mean the nanny I left dead in the kitchen?”

      Chira eyed the mere Ruger in his hand and gave her lover a sad smile.

      “Guns can’t kill demons for good, my love. Only magic or starvation can do that.”

      Spencer found himself giggling.

      “Between a clip-and-a-half of hollow-points and a rolling pin, I’d say that she’s down for good.”

      Chira raised a blood-caked eyebrow at the mention of a “rolling pin” but decided to ask about it later. Tempschal was a Lingon demon, which made her stronger and tougher than most. Thus, many an occult drug dealer used them as sentries or bodyguards. Not only could they shapeshift (like Chira), Tempschal could regenerate from injuries very quickly. Odds were the she’d be up and around in a matter of –

      Both Spencer and Chira jumped at the sounds of a downstairs door being kicked in.

      “The cops,” Spencer muttered, his speech noticeably slurred as he looked down at his watch. “Think they can handle her?”

      Chira started to reply but was cut off by the sounds of gunfire and screaming male cops. About ten seconds later, the slaughter downstairs ended with a loud crashing sound.

      “Nope,” the she-demon sadly replied.

      Spencer rose to his full height with a sadistic grin. Chira couldn’t see his face but noticed that he looked a bit … wobbly. Then she looked over at the lab and remembered the fumes in the air. While Demon Tears was a potent drug, alchemical enhancements were needed to make the initial “high” last longer and without killing human users. One of the side effects was an invisible cloud of drug-laced fumes. Her demonic blood protected her. But Spencer – former addict that he was – was especially vulnerable.

      “Spencer? Are you okay?”

      Spencer turned to face his true love and waved with his left palm in front of his eyes. He saw after-images of his hand and frowned.

      “I’m high as motherfucker, ain’t I?”

      “Oh God,” Chira muttered as she realized something else about the fumes: they were flammable.

      Tempschal’s СКАЧАТЬ