Cry Havoc: Dogs Of War, #3

CHAPTER ONE

Kaalus pushed his way through the crowd, keeping his head down and his arms held tightly to his sides. He used the borrowed body's knobby shoulders to nudge a pathway through the other spectators, and he used his own, sharper senses to pick out the cloying spice of each human's emotions. They carried on the wind, wafting from soul to soul. Fear, prickly and sour. Lust, thick and honeyed. Despair and anger and a nervous salt that painted the whole scene in an anxious palate.

His unsophisticated physical form smelled only the heavy odor of blood and death.

He wore rags, ratty fabric with strings that tickled the tops of his sandaled feet. The body he'd stolen had belonged to a plebe, one with less status than the average slave, and one he'd like to be rid of as soon as possible. As he climbed the amphitheater steps, he was jostled by elbows, trod on by sharper sandals, and once, kicked aside so that he flailed and fell into the lap of some already seated spectators.

For a moment, then, he'd hoped to feel a knife. One quick stab and he'd be free of this walking casket and able to pick his next host from those with less filth and better access. Instead he was shoved away, rolling between feet that continued to kick and swipe at him until he'd fallen two full levels lower on the stairs. Their shouts rained down on Kaalus, hard as their blows, but their fury tasted like heaven. He curled into a ball and lapped at their emotions as if they came from his mother's teat.

It sustained him, gave him strength beyond what the stupid body possessed. Their anger filled him with power, but it also darkened him, hollowed out his eyes and made him vulnerable. When he rose, he fixed his gaze on his feet, clinging to the stone wall while the fury digested, and the waves of satiation passed. So good. So very unlike his natural existence.

He let go of the wall and merged back into the press of bodies. Kaalus followed their feelings, riding each eddy of emotion. They wanted to see the blood, wanted to escape their own misery by viewing the horrors in the arena. Not so unlike him, these people. They were hungry too.

The sun blazed above, adding discomfort and sweat to the scents. His body's skin dried and itched from the heat. He became sticky and the dirty clothing clung to him.

The demon skimmed the crowd, easing up and down and working his way into an alcove sparsely populated enough that he could see the wide arena for himself. Three corpses already lay in the churned dirt. Flies swarmed them, and Kaalus felt his body's stomach clench at the stink of blood. A smell that didn't bother him, but also did little to assuage his constant hunger.

They should have thought of that, of how they'd survive once the dark hellhound accepted their bargain and let them free upon the world. Kaalus had been a slave in Hell, but his hunger had never itched as it did among the living. His whole self ached with it, with a longing for the feelings he could never experience on his own. Each soul he touched taught him how empty he was. Each life he took brought only a moment's ecstasy and a lifetime's worth of things Kaalus could only experience from the outside.

Never fully understanding.

He dragged thin fingers along the stones, spawning blood and pain. The agony fed him for half a breath, a flash of real feelings, enough to hide the sinking of his eyes. The crowd howled around him, letting forth a surge of excitement so strong it drove Kaalus to his body's knees. Skin scraping against stone. A metallic, surface flavor.

It flittered away too fast, and his human belly rumbled at his mind's hunger. He crawled forward, forcing his way between muscled calves wrapped in thong leather. A man had entered the arena, bearing the bulky muscles of a gladiator, oiled and gleaming and heavily tanned. He walked like a cock, head thrown back and strutting. The crowd's reaction washed over Kaalus, adoring, peppery, and shifting like sand. Did they want the man's death or his victory?

For all their delicious frenzy, he found humans confusing. They owned souls, something a demon would have killed for... had killed for. They felt so deeply, a rapid-fire chaos of emotion that filled him with longing and delight, even secondhand. Even as he resented that his kind had not been allowed that simple gift. And yet these spoiled beings were never happy for long.

The gladiator brandished his gladius. The blade caught fire from the sun, and the arena shrieked with the people's pleasure. It made Kaalus dizzy, pressed his forehead to the cool stone in the alcove's shadow. So much, so much and never enough. He'd left Hell hoping for something else. Something he couldn't put a name to.

Something that didn't end in even deeper hunger.

He sat on his heels and inched toward the lip. If he fell, would the impact kill him? Perhaps, if he climbed into the arena, he could die at the gladiator's hand, feed the crowd's bloodlust and horror and then slip like a whisper into the burly warrior's skin. After which he would only die again. Kaalus had no skill with a blade, and when a gate lifted at the end of the ring and a heavy, shag-pelted beast rushed the gladiator, decided he could live without experiencing dismemberment for now.

His desperation to feel hadn't gone that far. Yet.

The monster rushed in for the kill. Its lumbering gait suggested a bear of some sort. The crowd's anxiety turned fearful, sticky and clinging long enough to be savored. Fear was a less fleeting flavor, one that lingered enough to provide a hint of satisfaction. He'd cataloged enough varieties in his days above the earth. He'd learned, as had his cousins, that there were many ways to die, many ways to kill, and that any one would feed him better than he'd ever dined in Hell.

The short sword flashed down, slicing a gash in the monster's hide and sending the crowd into a fit of cheering. The elation skipped over the surface, mingled with the screaming fury of the beast. A different taste, and one that Kaalus preferred to leave alone. Animal emotions had a dull, crass quality. It was the juice of humanity that he hungered for. The whisper of things so close and yet always out of reach for the soulless.

The battle in the arena concerned him less than the crowd. Those feelings, amplified by sheer volume, came closer to what he sought, the thing he ached for and couldn't name, that had driven him to bargain with the hellhound in the first place. And so he rode the swelling hearts like a tide, skimming and tasting, and looking for his next death, his next victim, all the while knowing it would never last.

Fear and triumph, lust and hunger. It washed through Kaalus and pushed him closer to the precipice. One tumble and he'd feel the bite of death, the deepest pain and then, as he took another host, the terror of a displaced soul slipping toward its next fate.

That would have to serve him. He'd as much as decided, leaning far out over the lower tier and considering which of the souls nearby he might evict. Kaalus sifted through their projected hearts, sniffed like the hound that had freed him, and then froze, stock still and rigid as the stone around him.

What was that?

It came in a rush and sent him reeling backwards. He landed on his hands, sitting with head spinning while the new sensation, the overpowering intensity, pulsed through his borrowed body. He felt it. He felt... all of it, and it was like nothing he'd encountered in a million years of Hell. Nothing, in several lifetimes on solid ground.

This feeling didn't ebb. It swelled and pulsed and trembled, but on it went, a constant river of something that wasn't lust exactly, nor joy, nor fear. It was all of them in one enduring package. His body curled as if to hold it nearer. His demon essence moaned in pleasure and pain together. This thing, by the fires, he had to have it.

Kaalus knew it in a breath. This was the food he sought, the thing that drove him from one victim to another without pause. He'd been longing for it, looking for it, forever.

With effort, he uncoiled and sat, letting his physical form catch its breath. Then, Kaalus crawled forward on hands and knees, prostrate before the tide of emotion, the sensation that filtered beneath his skin, that tasted of honey and the bee's sting both. He shook with it, rocked from side to side and crept to the alcove lip again, this time intent on living, on breathing that delicious aroma through his skin, his eyes, the hole where a soul should live.

The gladiator stood in the arena's center. One foot rested on the bear's torn corpse. His sword raised to catch the sunlight, but his gaze had fixed on the stands. His muscles gleamed, and his emotions ran like a stream straight for Kaalus. They flowed to a point above him, to someone seated in the higher tier, beyond the demon's vision. But that current was a flood, an earth-shaking torrent without ebb.

Kaalus sat back and let it fill him. His jaw fell open, salivating like the hound's, and his eyes sunk deeper into the borrowed skull. He couldn't contain it, couldn't hide his true nature with so much ecstasy to devour. Nor could he let it go. This drink, he had to taste and taste until it ran dry.

If it ran dry.

The demon leaned against the stones, devouring sensation, sinking into himself, and memorizing every detail of the gladiator who had satiated him for the first time in all of existence. Who was he? How had he come to such magic? Kaalus latched onto him without caring, clung like a tick, and drank.

ANGEL HELD THE LEATHER in tight fingers and reached for her revolver with the other hand. Caesar growled, leaning into the leash and bristling from the base of his neck to his tail. They had one. Nothing but a demon would spawn that sort of reaction in the shepherd. The dog growled, pulled on the tether, and Angel drew her gun and reached to open the door.

The floodlight cast the parking lot into long slashes of shadow, and the late hour ensured the only sound was the distant rush of cars along the freeway. Still, if Caesar knew the demon was inside, then it was aware they were here as well. Angel turned the knob as gently as possible, but even as she pulled the door silently open, she knew they were in for a fight.

Demons never played fair.

Inside, the warehouse lay darker than the parking lot. The tall windows were blocked by shipping crates, which stacked in towers and made a maze of the concrete floor. The door creaked when it swung shut. Caesar growled, and from deep in the crates, a soft sniffling answered. Angel drew her weapon and hunched lower. She gave the leash enough slack to let the dog lead her.

The shepherd ducked between the crates, scooting fast enough to force Angel into a jog. His nose lowered to the cement, but his hackles remained erect. Before they rounded the final stack, a voice joined the sniffles. High pitched and thin as a whistle, it wheezed each word with the grating tone she knew all too well.

If you release the dog, she dies.

Angel let Caesar drag her around the metal crate. She pulled him to a stop only by employing her full mass. He snarled and lunged, and the demon's voice screeched.

Don't.

It stood in a space devoid of crates, a clear circle illuminated only by the sparking of a half dead fluorescent strip. Lacey Jones knelt in front of her lawyer, a long-time family friend according to the dossier. Today, he was a demon, possessed and sinking into the dark circles that grew around his eyes. His fist held the woman's red hair in a twisting grip and his back hunched, making his athletic frame look sickly and unnatural. The other hand waved a pistol toward his victim's head.

I'll do it, he wheezed and lifted until Ms. Jones's knees raised from the floor.

If you do it, Angel ignored the woman's whimper. She kept her eyes on the demon, on the twin black pits that said only one thing mattered, then I'll damn sure let go of this leash.

You won't kill her. It grinned, a tight-skinned flash of white teeth. You let me go and she lives.

Maybe, Angel shrugged and let her gun falter, dip away from the lawyer turned demon long enough to give the parasite a false sense of security. Maybe I will, and maybe you can tell me what I want to know.

What's that? It hunched further, dragged the poor woman along in a wobbly sidestep. Its words stretched out, tasting its prey, Lacey Jones's fear. What do you want?

She wanted every single one of them back in Hell where they belonged.

Tell me where Kaalus is.

The demon jerked as if she'd slapped it. Its black eyes shifted, for a barest second looking human again. There was a flash of recognition in them, and just as quickly, a flood of fear. The lips moved, not quite forming the words that hissed from between them. It's you.

Where is he? Angel brought her weapon up again, trained it on the stretched face. Maybe I'll let you go.

You won't. The demon whined, shifting from one foot to the other. It released Lacey Jones and lifted the pistol it held, turning, twisting it around. "You won't spare me, First One. Not for her or anyone else."

Don't! Angel took aim as the demon turned its weapon on itself. She fired twice before it got a round off, and her second shot bored through his forearm. He dropped the gun, and Lacey Jones bolted for a nearby crate.

I'll tell you, the demon hissed. Just kill me, let me die.

I don't make deals with demons. Angel fed Caesar's leash through her fingers, letting her demon dog have two more feet of tether.

The demon screamed and grabbed its own throat, clawing at the skin with dull fingernails. Caesar's snarling drowned out the thing's whimpers. Angel took a step nearer, let the dog go another foot. If it managed to off itself before she let the shepherd loose, they'd only have to fight it again another day in another body. But if it knew where her personal demon was...

Where's Kaalus? She took another step. This time, Caesar jerked hard enough she nearly lost her grip. He wanted to do his job, the job they were both here for. Where!

He's coming. The demon laughed, a hysterical string of notes with no relation to one another. He's coming for you.

Not if I find him first. Angel dropped the lead.

Caesar streaked into action, launching his 120 pounds straight into the demon's chest. They fell backwards, and for a second, Angel feared the damn thing would brain itself on impact. She held her breath as the dog shifted its full weight onto the once-man's chest. There. The legs still kicked. The demon twisted and thrashed, and Caesar lifted his muzzle to the heavens and let loose a howl that was both attack and reckoning. Power and vengeance all together.

Angel closed the gap with clipping steps. She leaned over the dog and stared into the black pits that had once been a human's eyes. Caesar's howl came again, and again, and on the third sounding, she saw it. Black fog leaking from between the lips, oozing from the eyes and ears and sinking, sinking toward the ground and through solid concrete. Back to Hell. To return no more to this earth.

The warehouse filled with the stamping of boots. Her team was on its way. Lacey Jones was safe, and one more parasite had been dealt with for good. Angel stood, stretching her back, and reached one hand for the soft fur on Caesar's head. Her fingers scruffed him gently, gave him a solid pat.

Not if I find him first.

She sighed and picked up her leash again. Good dog.

CHAPTER TWO

Kaalus followed the woman to a narrow alley. He shuffled, twenty paces behind her and still within range of that overpowering flavor.

The gladiator had vanished into the arena's belly, and Kaalus had been kicked and threatened when he'd tried to enter. He'd hovered outside instead, sniffing and riding the euphoria that filled him even now with a taste he could not imagine living without. Now the