Ah, hell. He really did intend to help us look for this nonexistent feline. So much for getting the warding finished tonight.
“Tim,” Eilahn said with a tilt of her head. “Perhaps you could run to the store for us and purchase some food for Fuzzykins to help lure her out.” She gave him a smile that even dazzled me. I quickly dug in my pocket and came up with a battered twenty-dollar bill that I passed to her. In turn she pressed it into his hand without ever breaking eye contact, letting her fingers linger on his.
The poor boy never had a chance. Half a minute later he screamed off in his cruiser.
I cocked my head and regarded the demon. “How the hell did you learn how to do that?”
Her brow furrowed in puzzlement. “Do what?”
“That smile-seducey, make-men-drool thing.”
She tossed off a shrug. “I read a lot.”
Damn. I needed to hit the bookstore.
I moved to the corner and peered down the street. A damp and chilly breeze ruffled the wrinkled tinsel wrapped around the lamp posts. One of the eyes of an illuminated reindeer flickered on and off, making it look like it had a twitch. A dog barked somewhere several streets away, but otherwise the smooth silence remained unbroken. No cars. No one to see us.
Eilahn turned back to the chain of arcane symbols, then paused, eyes narrowing. A whisper of arcane brushed over me even as a scuff of sound from the roof drew my attention upwards. I barely had time to note a black shape swooping down before Eilahn leaped at me in a flying tackle.
I remembered to tuck my limbs in, and somehow she managed to roll with me so that I didn’t hit the ground in a painful sprawl. The attacking demon was fast though. In the next instant it was on us, one clawed hand seizing my left bicep, and its other three on Eilahn. I tried to bite back the yelp of pain as one of its claws pierced skin. This was a graa—easy enough to recognize with its multiple arms. Hopefully this one only had the four. I’d seen some that had as many as eight—multi-jointed and ending in strange hands consisting of a thumb and two fingers, each tipped with curved claws. They looked almost spider-like—if spiders had wings like roaches and heads like crabs and hindquarters like a lizard.
Twisting, I tried to wrench my arm out of its grip, but I might as well have been a kitten trying to escape a lion’s mouth. Eilahn seized something on its head that looked like a spicule or antenna and yanked harshly, wringing a hiss like a teakettle from it. The three of us rolled in a weird tangle of arms and legs and claws—a strangely quiet fight, punctuated only by my breathless cursing and the graa’s hissing and snarling. They didn’t have vocal cords, and one of the reasons I rarely summoned this species of demon was because I had such a fucking hard time understanding them.
Eilahn had broken two of the demon’s arms, but now it was doing its best to slash a claw across her throat while she struggled against it, her own face set in a fierce rictus. I wasn’t wearing my duty weapon, but I had my backup piece in an ankle holster. It took a few more seconds of Twister-worthy contortions, but I finally managed to yank the little Kel-Tec .32 out of the holster, shove it against the demon’s midsection, and fire.
The demon let out a whistling shriek and released us both. I rolled aside, gasping raggedly, but Eilahn apparently had no desire to let it recover to attack another day. Her face twisted into a silent snarl as she pinioned three of the arms together. The fourth arm flailed uselessly against the pavement as the graa whistled and thrashed.
“Again, Kara,” Eilahn said calmly. “The side of the head should be sufficient.”
I staggered to my feet and shoved the gun against the creature’s head. It went still, oddly human eyes blinking at me, then it shuddered and looked away.
“Forgive me,” I murmured. This demon wasn’t attacking me for personal reasons. It had been summoned, and a bargain had been set for it to perform this service. My true vendetta was against whoever had sent it. But I had to do this, and there was no way it wouldn’t hurt the demon.
I fired once. The demon jerked, breath going out of it like a pierced balloon. Eilahn released it and straightened, standing over it as its limbs twitched and then went still. I stepped back as white light began to stream from the holes in its torso and head. Cracks appeared in its skin and the light flared to blinding levels. A heartbeat later a ripping crack split the air, and the demon was gone, leaving behind only the sour smell of ozone and a rancid perfume of rotted flowers.