The Demon Deception Read Free Page B

he was
right there with me.”
    Macey was suddenly very concerned, “Let’s get
you over to the combat life saver. I think you have a
concussion.”
    He turned and walked her to the medic. The
sound of helicopter blades beat percussion against the hills as
gunships arrived on station. Macey told the medic about her
possible concussion, and headed back to his command Humvee to radio
back the good news that she had been found.
    Hartman was ecstatic when she saw her crew.
They were all banged up, but everybody was alive. SPC Peltier
jumped up and threw his arms around her, “You saved my life. I
couldn’t get in, and you pulled me down. I saw the Humvee tipping.
I knew I was a dead man. I saw the ground racing up at me.”
    SSG Alciannas and PFC Reyes, the driver,
stood up and walked over. Peltier stood back, embarrassed by his
reaction. Alciannas gripped both her shoulders. He looked deep into
her eyes, and said in his lilting Haitian accent, “It is good to
have you back, Specialist Hartman. You had us very worried.”
    The congratulations continued as people
walked by. Combat medics showed up with the relief forces and took
charge of the wounded. They herded their charges to ambulances for
the trip back to Bagram. Before she got into the ambulance,
Specialist Hartman looked around for her savior. She wondered if
she would ever see Eli again.
     
    ----------------------------------------------------
     

Chapter One – Vampires, Witches, and
Werewolves, Oh My
    The sound of bass
thudded through the alley. The noise was coming from one of the
hottest hip-hop clubs in New York. The main club entrance was on
Empire Boulevard, but this alley ran directly behind it. Two large
men guarded the back of the club. Both stood over six feet, and
massed over two hundred and twenty pounds, none of it fat. One was
a light skinned Hispanic, the other an ebony skinned black man.
Their breath hung as thick fog in the cold of the night. Both of
them wore black leather jackets, jeans, and heavy boots. Glock 9mm
pistols were holstered on the right side of their belts, and
magazines with extra bullets were holstered on the left. They wore
watch caps against the cold. Gloved hands were crossed before them.
These two were professionals. It wasn’t the entrance to the club
they guarded, though. Instead, they guarded the entrance to
catacombs below the building.
    Eli watched steadily, noting the people that
went in and out of the catacombs. At current count, there were
twelve women, and seven more guards, each as large as the two on
the door. He was waiting for someone in particular, though, who
hadn’t arrived yet. This was a long time coming. He had tracked
this individual for many years, across Europe and South America.
The last time he had seen the coven master had been in the jungles
along the Amazon.
    Brazil was an assignment he didn’t enjoy. He
hated the jungle, and that coven had been extremely brutal. They
preyed on street children from different cities across Brazil.
Those children were considered throwaways by society, and when they
disappeared, the authorities didn’t care. The horrors he had seen
when he destroyed the coven would have given a normal man
nightmares for the rest of his life. The coven master had gotten
away, though, sacrificing the coven to gain his escape.
    It had taken a year for him to track the
coven master. Eli knew that the vampire would eventually make a
mistake. It was only a matter of time before Eli found him. Now, he
had tracked the fiend down. Missing people were often the trail
that Eli had to follow. Clusters of activity gave these monsters
away. The horror was, that children were a disproportionate
representation of the missing that he tracked. It was always the
innocent that suffered. The missing child he was looking for was
Cynthia Rowland, kidnapped off the street at a park in Brooklyn.
Eli was hoping find her before anything happened to her
tonight.
    His present business aside, Eli was happy to
be