Pique would certainly go after a new demon like Petrify while he was vulnerable in his newly minted, nearly drained state. He might even try to go after Shock.
I glared across the street at Pique, clenching the towel. I wanted to confront him and drive the beast away. Who did he think he was coming into my territory and hurting my people? With the energy I’d taken from Petrify coursing through me, I felt as if I could beat him. It felt right to try.
Pique pushed his glasses up firmly, as if he were making a decision. He waited for several taxis to pass by, then started across the street. Some guy shouted after Pique, shaking his fist in the air. That was Pique, pissing off people everywhere he went.
“Trouble, Lo!” I called over my shoulder, hurrying to the door. I put my hands on the worn jambs.
Pique came straight toward me, apparently not concerned about anyone else. This was exactly why I worked for Vex: so he would keep demons away from me.
“You can’t come in. You’re not welcome at the Den,” I said loudly enough for the patrons inside and some passersby on the sidewalk to hear. They were walking toward the bright lights of Houston and barely noticed the argument. One guy quickened his steps to get out of the way.
Pique’s head was hanging slightly and he peered at me through his Coke-bottle glasses, making his eyes seem larger and more protruding. I hoped Petrify wouldn’t be such a nasty demon as Pique, but if he was, it was my fault for being so frightened during his birth and imprinting that fear on him.
Pique kept coming forward.
I shouted over my shoulder, “Lo, call 911.”
The police couldn’t stop a demon, but they could certainly help run interference. Surely Pique had enough sense of self-preservation that he wouldn’t reveal his true nature.
I stepped forward out of his line of attack, moving away from the door and to one side, the classic Aikido defense. As he tried to close the distance, I lightly pushed down his outstretched wrist with both hands. He resisted, stepping back as I took another step forward. Spinning in a full circle, I brought his hand up again, twisting it around into an armlock. With the slightest pressure, I pushed him down on his back away from the door of the bar.
I’m sure it looked easy, but it took good judgment and timing to do Aikido right. Demons usually went for the brute-force approach. We were stronger and faster, maybe because it didn’t matter if we ripped up our bodies. We might appear to have the organs and bones and digestive system of a human, but we were really a three-dimensional copy, like solid ephemera.
As Pique grabbed at me again, I turned slightly and deflected his arm away from me. Then, fueled by all that demon energy I had stolen, I took a step closer and punched him in the face three times, flattening his nose.
A human would have dropped down to the ground, but Pique took it with hardly a shake of his head.
Aikido moves technically weren’t supposed to include offensive maneuvers. I couldn’t have punched him if he hadn’t been attacking me. Yet my punches left me open when, instead of going down, Pique grabbed my wrist and his fingers sank in.
He had me. He was pure determination, wanting only to steal my energy—and the demon essence at my core.
I’d been too cocky and caught off guard when my punches hadn’t flattened him. As I was a creature of pure will, shock at my own stupidity made me vulnerable. My shields slipped.
He started ruthlessly sucking up my emotions.
I could barely breathe because of his pungent stench. It was truly amazing how dirty a person could get in the city in only a few weeks. I figured Pique used his smell to bother people. It bothered me.
I launched myself at his head, diving over him. He toppled backward, rolling onto the sidewalk as we both went sprawling. But his hold on me didn’t break. He instantly repaired his nose, ignoring the wet blood on his upper lip and chin.
If I were a human, I would have been drained within minutes, a husk left to rot from within. But even with all of Petrify’s energy, I had little more time than that to fight him off.
Lolita appeared in the doorway, her voice higher and faster as she cried into her cell phone, “He’s attacking her! You have to get here fast!” I heard her give the address.
Pique didn’t try to fight back as I kicked him, struggling against his one- handed grip. He kept spinning as I grabbed the back of his hand and tried to twist it away. Lo dived into the fray and flailed her fists, hitting Pique squarely in the chin. But his only concern was hanging on to me so he could continue to drain me.
I should have retreated upstairs and called 911 the second Pique moved toward the bar. I had installed a reinforced steel door on my apartment for exactly that reason.
Now I wished I hadn’t sent Savor packing. There was at least a fifty-fifty chance he would have helped me.
My aura was flashing luridly as I tried to resist Pique, with my first red flush of anger shifting to a frightful orange. I was going down in flames. What if I couldn’t last long enough for the police to pry him off me?
Would he really consume my essence and make me go up in a puff of smoke in front of all these witnesses?
It appeared that he would. I could just imagine the
New York Post
headline: BARTENDER SPONTANEOUSLY COMBUSTS ON LOWER EAST SIDE.
“You’re a psychopath, You can’t do this,” I hissed at him, desperate to break through. Pique didn’t respond. He never spoke. I wasn’t sure whether he could.
From the midst of the crowd that was gathering around us, a man stepped forward. He bent over me, reaching for Pique as Lo tumbled away again.
I caught sight of his angry expression; he was a dark-haired man, of mixed Mediterranean heritage. I figured he was in his mid-thirties. I had never seen him before, but he looked like the kind of tough guy who had lived in this neighborhood his entire life, long before the hipster boutiques and cafés arrived.
He broke Pique’s hold on me with a savage twist. I could feel the power behind his grip. “Let go of her.”
It sounded like both bones in Pique’s wrist broke. He screamed, more in frustration than pain.
Released, I scrambled backward, trying to gather the shreds of my shields around me. I ended up pressed up against the worn wooden paneling on the front of the bar. Lolita was sitting dazed on the curb, her curly hair standing on end and her lipstick smudged. She looked more angry than hurt.
A few of the patrons were hanging out the open front windows above me, shouting encouragement to our savior. The tall, dark-haired man with big muscles had managed to subdue a demon, something I’d never seen before.
He clearly radiated possessive pride, determined to keep his neighborhood clean. I could feel it even from a few feet away. He smiled slowly, cracking his knuckles. Still, there were no sirens. “You gonna do something about it?” he asked Pique.
Pique glanced around at the audience gathering on the street and finally came to his senses. He sniffled at the remnants of blood running out of his nose, luridly painting his mouth and chin red. Then he leaped up with surprising agility, and darted off.
I was about to sigh in relief, but the neighborhood hero took off after him. “No, don’t,” I called after him. “Let him go!”
At the corner, the guy grabbed Pique and they spun out of sight. Sirens finally sounded in the distance.
I had trouble standing up, but Lolita joined me, supporting me. Her alarm and flushed feeling of victory poured into me; I was grateful for the sustenance. Pique had taken everything I had stolen from Petrify—and more.
I rubbed my arm where it was swollen and bruised from the tightness of Pique’s grip. He had latched on so fast. He had almost killed me right there on the street in front of everyone. One mistake, and my life had almost ended.
If that man hadn’t broken Pique’s hold, I would be dead right now.
I swayed, pulling away from Lolita to run to the corner. What if Pique was draining him?
Lo wasn’t the kind of girl who hung back. She caught up with me in a few steps. “Watch the bar,” I ordered.
“Boymeat’s got it.”
I nodded, knowing he could be trusted. So we rounded the corner together. The sirens were getting louder.
“Where are they?” Lo asked.
I strained to see, but in truth I dreaded what we would find. Third Street was much darker and narrower than Avenue C, with the trees blocking the intermittent streetlights. Lo squinted her eyes, searching down the sidewalk, but I could feel Pique’s signature fading away; he was near Avenue B at the other end of the block. He would soon be out of range.
My shoulders sagged in relief. Pique was leaving.
A slight scuffing drew my attention to the stairway down to the Chinese restaurant. The tiny window was dark, and the door was shuttered under the stoop that led to the apartments on the upper floors. I almost dismissed it as some drunk peeing down there again. But the shape was wrong.
“Is someone there?” It definitely wasn’t a demon. There was no signature.
“No problem,” came a deep if rather breathless voice. “Nothing to worry about.”
My eyes widened at Lo. “That’s the guy.”
“You think?” Lo asked.
“That’s his voice.”
I ran down the steps. In the shadows at the bottom was the man who had forced Pique to let go of me. He was sprawled uncomfortably in the tiny space, his head leaning back against the wall. The smell of burned peanut oil and ammonia made me wince.
“What happened?” I touched the leg he had braced against the bottom step. Despite the canvas dungarees, his pain blossomed out at me. But he was quite good at controlling his response to it, grimacing rather than crying out loud as he shifted.
“I fell down the steps. Like a dumbshit.” He pushed himself up. His leg moved away from my hand as he drew his feet under him.
“Don’t stand up!” I tried to keep him down. “You must have hit your head.”
He touched his hairline; blood glistened on his fingertips. “Yeah, once or twice.”
“You should have let him go.”
“You’re welcome.”
I realized how ungrateful I sounded. “Thanks for helping me. Who are you? I haven’t seen you around here before.”
“Theo Ram,” he said, wincing.
The sirens were right on top of us. Lo called down helpfully, “The police are here.”
“Great.” We sighed together, in decidedly uneager tones. I gave Theo Ram a harder look. “What? You don’t want to deal with the cops?”
“Not particularly. I want to go home and forget about this.”
I took hold of his arm to help him, since he was determined to stand up. He tried to shrug me off, but I needed to know what he felt. He wasn’t panicked, like a criminal would be. He was angry at himself, humiliated by his fall, and hurt far beyond what he intended to admit.
It was a heady brew. Pique had siphoned off so much from me that I really needed the energy, but this guy was particularly tasty—irresistible. He was hurt and needed help.
I responded like a flower to the sun; I wanted to make him feel better so that his relief poured into me, filling me as if nothing else mattered. Then I could have blessed peace, if only for a moment.
“Thank
you
. . .” I tried to remember to breathe.
He gave me an odd look. “Anyone would have done it.”
My hand tightened, helping him up the steps despite his protest that he could do it. I soaked up as much of his potent emotion as I could, in all decency, allow myself to take, but it felt as if I could hardly hurt him; there were deep wells of feeling in this man. I was glad Pique hadn’t gotten hold of him.
The police car finally pulled up, blaring with lights and noise. The cops saw the curious onlookers at the corner and the gesturing patrons leaning out the windows of the bar, and came straight to the corner to meet us.
Theo squared his shoulders and faced the inevitable. I wasn’t scared of cops—I knew what the police wanted. As long as you were polite, cooperative, and honest, they would go away quickly. At least I had two out of three going for me. It wasn’t my fault that I would never be able to be fully honest with anyone again.
I handed over my driver’s license and told the police that an obnoxious guy had caused a disruption last week in the Den. When I refused him entry tonight, he had grabbed my arm. I showed them, having faded the bruises thanks to my savior’s energy, leaving my arm only reddened.
Theo patted his pockets when the cops requested his ID, but his wallet was gone, making him swear under his breath. Lots of demons were thieves, living off the spoils of their victims. I had seen Pique rifling through a backpack the other day.
In response to their questions, Theo said he lived up on Tenth Street and Avenue D, across from the Jacob Riis Houses. He didn’t have an accent, like most people born and raised in Manhattan. He said he drove a cab, and the cops gave the first sign of interest when he said he didn’t work for a company, that he drove his dad’s car under his medallion, reciting the number absently.
I felt bad about the grief the poor guy was going through. But I had the presence of mind to move us down the street so we stood in front of the bar. If any other demons showed up, I could get upstairs quickly.
Lo handed over Pique’s glasses, which she’d found on the street, and confirmed what had happened; then she went in to close down the bar with Boymeat’s help. I described Pique for the cops and agreed to come to the station house and look at pictures tomorrow morning. It set a good example for the community to report crime, and it let the other demons know that I would use the legal system against them whenever I could.