Hellgate #2

ONE You have found them, vassal. Now I want them dead.From the third-story fire escape, Warren Schimmer gazed down at his prey and tried not to think of them as human. Not that it would have mattered too terribly much. With his life in the balance against theirs, he would save his own life every time. That was how he'd done things for the last four years.Do not hesitate or your own life will be forfeit.The deep, rasping voice in Warren's head belonged to Merihim, a demon who had chosen Warren as one of his pawns in the demonic wars playing out over England. To disobey orders would be to die in a most horrible fashion.Warren was afraid of dying. He'd nearly been killed by his stepfather when he was a boy. His stepfather had just succeeded in killing Warren's mother. The sound of the gunshots still haunted him at night.But those dreams were less scary than the ones of the demon.The five people below moved cautiously. Four of them, three men and one woman, were security guards. Warren knew that from the way they moved and the weapons they carried. They also wore hard-shell Kevlar vests and Kevlar helmets.The fifth person was a man in his middle years. The others had bundled him up in body armor, too, but he moved uncomfortably in it. He clutched a package tightly to his chest.Merihim wanted the package.Warren didn't know what it was. He rarely knew what Merihim sent him after. During the last four years, the demon's primary command had been to watch and grow stronger in his powers. Warren knew that Merihim often watched through his eyes. The demon's flesh bound them.Occasionally, when Merihim's guards were down, or because Warren was growing stronger in his powers, Warren sometimes got glimpses of the things the demon saw. When Merihim caught him spying, as he did most of the time, Warren ended up getting migraines that left him sick and hurting for days.Worst of all, those episodes left Warren defenseless. He'd had to rely on others to keep him safe. Dependence had never come easily to him. These days he hated it worse than ever.Control had always been a big part of Warren's life. Now, what little control he did have was just an illusion. Merihim controlled him. But he also protected him.It was a suitable trade-off. Most of the people Warren had met over the last four years had died hard deaths. Living, even as a demon's vassal, was better than dying.Even when it meant killing others.The five men entered the alley and walked beneath Warren's position. A small object, no larger than a racquetball, trailed them from a discreet distance.Warren gestured. The object changed course immediately and came to him. He caught it in his right hand, the demon's hand that Merihim had given him after he'd lost his own in battle against a Templar named Simon Cross. It was the hand that bound Warren to Merihim so tightly.Covered with silvery-green scales, the hand was proportioned to his own. In the first few months he'd had it, it had changed. Except for the coloration, the scales, and the black nails, most wouldn't give it a second glance. Unless they'd heard the stories about him.The object squirmed inside Warren's hand."Stop," he said softly, too quietly for the men below to hear.The thing stopped trying to escape.Warren opened his hand and examined it. The object was an eyeball he'd plucked from a dying Blood Angel. As the demon had expired, Warren had worked the binding spell that Merihim had coached him in.When he'd finished, the eye had been his and he could see through it as Merihim could see through his eyes. Over the years, he'd made more of them. He'd created other things as well. They sometimes moved and jerked in the demonhide bag he carried slung over one shoulder.None of the other Cabalists he knew had been able to make such things. Of course, none of the others were bound to a demon.He pushed the Blood AngelOdom, Mel is the author of 'Hellgate #2 ', published 2007 under ISBN 9781416525806 and ISBN 1416525807.