‘Whosoever wishes to know the fate of
Demonkind must consult these prophecies…”
‘…as magic once more threatens the time, as
the peace of the Demon yaws toward
insanity…’
‘We must enforce ourselves more strictly as
the time approaches. In the age of the rebellion
of the Earth and Sky, when Fire and Water break
like havoc upon all the lands, the Eldest of the
old will return, will take his mate, and the first
child of the element of Space will be born,
playmate to the first child of Time, born to the
Enforcers…’
-- Excerpts from The Lost Demon Prophecy
Prologue
“Kes…what are you doing?”
"I thought I’d wash my hair,” came the
whispered, tart sarcasm of her reply over the
slightly static connection they had. “What do you
think I’m doing?”
Jim chuckled softly under his breath before
reaching to tap the mike of his wireless earpiece,
just to annoy her with the noise. Then he
clarified, “I meant I wanted to know which room
you’re in.”
“The Billiard Room,” she said dryly, “with an
unusually heavy candlestick in one hand.” She
paused and Jim heard her grunt softly over the
open line. He leaned forward a little further in
his chair to peer at his computer monitor. “I’m in
the machine room. Where else would I be?”
“Okay. I was just wondering.”
There was another brief pause, full of soft
static.
“Incidentally, why do you ask?” she queried at
last.
“Oh, no reason. It’s just that I have this huge
red blob on my infrared screen that looks
suspiciously like a security guard heading in your
direction,” he informed her, snapping his gum in
her ear over the mike.
Kestra cursed through her teeth, glanced around
with sharp, seeking eyes, and turned her face
upward almost out of innate instinct. After a
quick calculation in her head, she scuttled
rapidly across the vastness of the equipment room
and headed straight for one of the
air-conditioning turbines. With a running start,
she stepped up onto the rim of the large machinery
and launched her lithe, dark figure straight up
into the air.
There was a clang as her hands just barely made
the catch onto a pair of sturdy pipes that ran
across the high ceiling. She immediately began to
swing herself like a pendulum until at she was
able to get her momentum up high enough to hook
her feet over the piping. Without as much as a
single further sound, she wriggled herself up into
the darkness of the tight plumbing. She sprawled
over it, lying across it as if it were a casual
cotton hammock instead of a series of conduits
that ran both hot and cold against the press of
her flesh. Once secured in the shadows of the one
direction nine out of ten rent-a-cops invariably
failed to look in, all she could do was wait. She
covered the earpiece on her ear with her hand, not
wanting to risk any chance of Jim or random static
giving away her location.
She didn’t have long to wait before the guard
made his appearance. Kes rolled her eyes shut for
a moment, thinking that Jim had cut his half-assed
warning pretty damn close.
The guard had no reason to hide his progress,
so she could hear his approaching footsteps from
the moment he entered the stairwell just outside
the door leading into the room. The door clanged
open, recoiling off its backstop as the guard
released the metal handle that he’d opened it
with. In spite of all this noise, Kestra made very
certain her breathing never went above a barely
audible whisper of sound.
The guard clomped across the concrete floor,
walking the straight path between the rows of
turbines on one side, and water heaters on the
other. He flicked on a Mag-Lite and began to sweep
it back and forth over the dark shadows
surrounding him. Kestra closed her eyes briefly,
praying to whatever part of the universe it was
that protected people like her. Then she watched
the approaching man carefully for any signs that
he took note of the tiny green lights on the
undersides of half the gas heaters that were
guaranteed to be out of place.
He didn’t. He made it to the far wall, turned,
and retraced his steps. He passed within a foot of
her both times, but of course did not look up. He
barreled out of the basement door with a noisy
bang, his clomping footsteps echoing away up the
stairwell.
Kestra exhaled a half breath of relief. After
she was reasonably sure the guard was far enough
away and had no intentions of immediately
returning, she leveraged herself out of her
makeshift hidey-hole. She laid her forearms along
two narrow pipes and, using them like a pair of
parallel bars, she swung her legs down. She
released, allowing the momentum to somersault her
over just once, then lofted into a perfect
gymnast’s landing on the dusty warehouse
floor.
Resisting the habit of taking a personal bow
for herself, she swiped at the sweat dotting her
forehead, smearing the dust and silt from the
exteriors of the pipes across it, and turned her
attention to her communications system and her
smart-ass partner.
“Thanks for the warning, James,” she said with
low heat.
“You’re welcome.” He tried to sound bratty, but
she could tell he was relieved to hear from
her.
“James, I thought you said there was no
one on the premises,” she hissed.
Jim winced, knowing that he was definitely
going to be in a huge amount of trouble for being
wrong about that. “There’s not supposed to be. The
guy’s off schedule. I’ll let you know when he
moves on to the next building.”
“Not good enough. I want him out of my
perimeter completely.”
“Well, what am I supposed to do? Kidnap
him?”
“There’s an idea,” she retorted, kneeling down
in front of the turbine that had just helped her
escape the guard’s notice. She shrugged out of her
backpack and withdrew the two last square packets
she needed to deliver.
Kestra left the backpack behind and scurried
low across the floor to the next gas heater. She
rolled gently onto her back and reached beneath
the unit. There was the distinct clang of metal on
metal as the strong magnet on the back of the pack
stuck to the metal underbelly of the furnace. She
flicked the switch on the front and waited while
the lights went from yellow to green.
“The point is,” she continued as she rolled out
from beneath the unit and moved cautiously to the
next one, “that I specifically said no civilians
in the kill zone. It was your job to see to it
that’s what I got. That is why I spent a month
timing this operation just right.”
“It’s not my fault the guy changed his routine,
Kestra.”
“Make it your fault, James,” she bit back as
she hesitated next to the last furnace. “Make it
your responsibility. You have twenty minutes to
get him out of the kill zone. I don’t care how you
do it, just do it! And there better not be anyone
else.”
“There isn’t. You and the guard are the only
two heat sources in the entire warehouse row, save
a rat or two.” There was a distinct pause. “Do you
have any suggestions on how I can protect your
civilian without getting arrested?”
Kestra thought about that for a moment, using
the time it took to attach the last device to the
last heater in order to mull over the
situation.
“How long does it normally take for him to
round off the row and start on the docks?”
“There are three buildings in the row. You’re
the first on the round. If he follows form, it’ll
take well over an hour. And, if he rounds onto the
docks, he’s going to spot you. I don’t care how
sneaky you are, Kes, you don’t want him wandering
your escape route.”
“Damn,” Kestra muttered irritably as she slid
out from beneath the furnace and stood up. She
dusted off her backside with more violence than
necessary and marched toward her backpack.
Then
she stopped and cocked her head to the side, her
incredibly light eyes brightening just a little
more as she thought of a possible solution.
“Oh, James?”
“Yeah, Kes?”
“Do any of the buildings opposite those in this
row have an alarm system?”
“All of them. Take your pick.”
“And are they part of our rent-a-cop’s minimum
wage jurisdiction?” she queried further.
“Why, yes they are!” Jim gasped comically,
knowing she was already done formulating her plan
in her head.
“Now, call me crazy, but if you were a security
guard and one of the alarms in one of your
buildings went off, you’d run like hell to check
it out, wouldn’t you?”
“Oh, you’re definitely crazy,” Jim agreed with
a chuckle. “And you’re also right. But how do you
plan to set off an alarm and not get caught? Don’t
we usually do that the opposite way, where you
don’t set off the alarm? Do you even know how to
set one off?”
“How hard can it be?”
“And not get caught,” he reminded her.
“Mmm.”
“And blow up the row..?” Jim added.
“Yup…”
“And not get caught,” he reiterated most
importantly.
“Uh-huh.”
Almost exactly twenty minutes later, Kestra
dropped from the dock into the rear of the speed
boat docked there. She whipped off the tie line
and punched the ignition button. The motor roared
to life, the only sound possibly louder was the
blare of the resonating alarm in the
distance.
Kestra aimed the boat directly out of
the harbor and toward the open ocean. She glanced
down at the cabin when James stuck his head out of
the hatch.
“You forgot to blow up the warehouses,” he said
dryly.
“Yeah, I know.”
The row of warehouses blew up.
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