Awakening of the Demon Girl Read online

  Awakening of the Demon Girl

  Contaminated Souls Book 3

  Eddie R. Hicks

  Awakening of the Demon Girl

  Contaminated Souls Book 3

  By Eddie R. Hicks

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  Copyright © 2018 Eddie R. Hicks

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  This novel contains scenes of graphic violence, explicit language and sexuality and is intended for mature readers.

  Cover Art by: Ravven

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Epilogue

  Reika will return in 2019

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  My eyes opened and I stared high up into the grey end of the summer sky.

  There was a storm crashing down on me, a storm of shattered glass cutting away at my face, neck, and arms. I sat up stroking the back of my head, stopping when my fingers touched the warm and thick fluid leaking out from me. Cringing at the lingering pain, I gave a quick glance at my surroundings and the top of a smashed-to-fuck-up car that I made my bed.

  Took me a while, but I recognized the neighborhood. I was outside an abandoned apartment building; the same one I followed my target into. Everything was a blank after that, then I woke on top of this car surrounded by shards of broken glass. Typical signs of being knocked unconscious, you can’t remember what happened leading up to the blow.

  The source of the glass was found a second later once I tilted my head up. The fifth-story window was blown out, with light rapidly flashing out from it. The flashes of light were accompanied by the echoing claps of gunfire. I was caught in an ambush and then pushed through a fucking window. The nerve of people in New York these days!

  A pair of cars came screeching to a grinding halt close to my location, their occupants all brandishing firearms ranging from pistols to AK-47s. Five bucks said these men absolutely, positively needed to kill every motherfucker in the area. Including me.

  A quick jerk of my aching body to the side threw me off the top of the car I fell on, landing feet first as the first wave of gunfire roared, sending what remained of the car’s windows scattering next to me. And here I thought this was going to be an open-and-shut case. More like an open-a-bottle-of Advil at the end of the day, every day, until it was done.

  My spinning head calmed enough for me to hear the voices of the gunmen behind the car I used for cover. They sounded Russian. I guess the Russian Mafia is still a thing. And if I wanted to continue to be a thing tomorrow, I was going to have to unleash the good shit.

  I went for my katana . . . only it wasn’t there, or beside me, and I’m 90 percent sure it wasn’t on top of the crushed car’s rooftop either. Fuck it. I don’t need a sword to kill people. A swift peek around the corner showed the two cars on the opposite end of the street, with the Russians using it as cover for their assault. Big mistake. I tapped into my Umbral energy, fueling my magical talents, and selecting a new handy talent I unlocked from the spirit element, scan.

  Once in use, I was able to see the city’s ether, turning my vision into an almost X-ray like sight. I could see through walls, structures, and other obstacles, like cars. The scan talent gave me a better glimpse of what was going on inside the abandoned apartment. There were a number of prone bodies, with a live target dragging one other away. Each body had a fallen pistol next to them. Gunfighting in the streets and a deadlier gunfight inside. I guess getting pushed out the window wasn’t a bad deal after all.

  AK bullets flying over my head forced me to look back and scan the cars. Not sure if I mentioned this, but the range of my scan talent was limited. Buildings far away still appeared as solid green-and-black-colored structures. But that was fine, I just needed to see where the gas tank of the cars the Russians hid behind were. I found them, and they were full.

  My body ignited in flames when I attuned to the element of fire, trench coat and all. The streets below me glowed, turning them into gold and red colors, as did the walls of the apartment behind me, and what remained of the car I took cover behind. The Russians let up on their weapons fire when they saw me step out. They must be newbies.

  With the aid of my scan talent, I conjured and pitched two basketball-sized fireballs in the general direction of the cars’ gas tanks. The hesitation of the Russians allowed me to take aim at the second car and do the same. By the time they realized they were dealing with the vigilante from hell, their cars burst into flames and then exploded when their full gas tanks shook hands with the fires. I counted six bodies trying to stop, drop, and roll, six bodies that were too distracted to notice me waltz up, grab one of their AKs and empty its magazine into them.

  Oh, did I mention I imbued the AK with my fire talents? Yeah, those weren’t just normal bullets, they were flaming ones. I flicked the AK away and made sure to consume the fragmented remains of their souls and combat experience in life, as I strode away from the hellfire inferno of cars and bodies. The downside to imbuing firearms with my fire talents, they don’t last long in the heat.

  Tires screeching across the roads further up echoed. I counted at least three cars, the sounds of their spinning wheels and engines were nearing my position. Backup for the Russians, I figured, I need to get the fuck out.

  I made a sprint into an alley in between the abandoned apartment, dousing the flames that covered my body and trench coat, replacing it with a coat of water and icicles. It was dark after all, the light from the flames worked as a glowing sign that said to the Russians, ‘Hey, this is where your target is!’

  It didn’t help.

  Four men crashed through the second-story window, raining shards of glass onto the ground as they landed around me. Moving forward or backtracking wasn’t an option, not while they yelled obscenities at me in Russian. They must really want me dead.

  They came at me, and I came at them. An icicle the size of a baseball bat appeared at the flick of my wrist. I made sure to swing really hard when the first gunman lifted his pistol at me, cracking his fucking skull in half, and then impaling his chest with the tip of my icicle. With his pistol now in my possession my hand rose and, with it, three glacial shields rising from the ground. I slipped behind my frozen barricades when the bullets started to fly.

  One gunman thought he’d be slick and sneak around the glaciers I created to get to me. I broke his arm in five places, disarming him in the process, and then kicked him back to the alley’s wall. Another came at me from behind with a dagg
er placed at my throat when I was distracted with his friend, clever boy.

  The ground below him hardened with a thin sheet of ice. His feet slipped and slid when I jerked my body to fight back. He lost his grip around me. I turned and gave him a kick to the balls, then another into his chest. His ass flew back, crashing into mobster number four that picked the wrong time to try and get behind my glacial shield. The force of my kick caused the two to hit the wall, one behind the other. And so, I decided to let them know of the two-for-one sale on bullets I had tonight. A single bullet left the chamber of my pistol, entering and exiting through the heads of both men, painting the wall a nice crimson color in the process.

  Mobster number two was still alive, you know, that guy I kicked into the wall first, but didn’t finish. He must have been pissed because he ended up screaming like a little bitch when I ended the lives of those two with my gun and came running at me. A quick draw of my now water-imbued pistol fired water elemental bullets at his chest, encasing his body in ice. A quick pistol whip turned his frozen-solid body into a pile of ice cubes. The coroner is going to have a fun time cleaning that mess up when it melts.

  I went to do some quick math in my head as I leaped up and over a fence, landing in the adjacent alley. I was like, what? Less than thirty minutes into this? The body count was already at ten, and the exploding cars were at two. I’m on a fucking roll.

  Two men stood waiting for me at the end of the alley wielding hatchets. A body count of twelve within the first thirty minutes? I was game for that challenge.

  “About fucking time,” I said as a third shadowy figure stood behind them.

  The two men laughed like I was a comedian.

  “She’s talking to me, by the way, boys.”

  The two men about-faced in shock. They were joined by a silent third party. That third party was Emily, dressed in her brief ninja garb, dual wielding a pair of kunai that had tiny bolts of lightning dance up and down their blades.

  The catgirl ninja made her strike, I joined in.

  The darkness within the alley vanished when my flames returned to cover my body, giving me the power to unleash my flamethrower talent. Hatchet-wielding mobster one turned into a billowing bonfire on the ground. I became the bigger threat, so the last one turned and charged at me, keeping his back turned to Emily and the smoking corpse of his friend.

  Emily’s kunai vanished into nothing as her hands went to perform a quick set of mudra gestures. When the mudra was complete, a ninjutsu-conjured cyclone went hunting for the charging hatchet-wielding bad guy. The cyclone crossed over the burning body, picking up the flames, turning it into a flaming cyclone that engulfed his body when it hit him from behind.

  His burning body fell to his knees, screaming as the pain from the flames turned his flesh, hair, and clothes into blackened char. As amusing as it was to watch people that tried to fuck with me die slow, horrible deaths, I had shit to do. I took the now flaming hatchet from his hands and beat his head with it until he fell from the force and the chasm I carved into his forehead. If you looked close enough, you could see his barbequing brains. Just don’t smell it, human flesh and hair burning produces a fucking terrible odor.

  The two of us made our exit from the alley. Police sirens wailed in the distance, Emily and I needed to not be here when they arrived, the drawbacks of being a badass vigilante. We booted it back to where I had parked my car and made our getaway in one direction. Another black car did the same in the opposite direction, probably Russians that I didn’t get around to ending. I thought about chasing them, but what was the point? This whole stakeout went from ‘bad’ to ‘fuck my life’ in seconds.

  “So, how did it go?” Emily asked as I sped away, ignoring all red lights in the process. I think I heard a car or two crash because of that.

  “That a serious question?” I snorted.

  “Yes, because your hair is covered in blood.”

  I touched the back of my head again, this time checking out my red-soaked fingers. I made a frown scary enough to frighten most children away. “Ah, fuck!”

  “You didn’t find her, did you?”

  “I followed her inside, and then somebody got the jump on me.” I sped past the next set of red lights. “Next thing I remember was waking up on that not-so-comfortable car bed.”

  “Then the Russians showed up.” Emily looked back at the abandoned apartment we were leaving behind. “I don’t think she’s walking away from that alive.”

  “Honestly? I think someone set us up. The Russian mob must be pissed off for what we did to them back in June. Guess we should have stuck around to get rid of them all.”

  “Would have been pointless, we took down one group of many. These thugs must be backup from elsewhere in the world.”

  “Great, nice to know all that fucking work we did is about to be undone.”

  “At least we’re making it harder for them to bounce back,” Emily said. “Think about it, they just lost a bunch of men already.”

  “I should have said no to this job, seemed pretty screwy from the start.” I looked at the Bakeneko ninja shifter sitting next to me while we came to a stop at another intersection. Traffic was too thick. There was no way I was running this light. “You find anything on your end?”

  Emily shrugged. “Nothing, just a bunch of cars that showed up before the fun started.”

  “Before?”

  “Yeah, some shifty people entered the building from the back entrance,” she said. “Didn’t get a good look at them though.”

  “Must have been the people that jumped me. Probably scouts for the mob.”

  The light turned green, forcing the sea of cars ahead of us to accelerate and venture into the maze of streets that made up New York City. The process repeated until we made it back to our safe house near Upper West Side Manhattan, overlooking Central Park. The slow and depressing transition from summer to fall was in its early stages. It was a reminder I needed to take time off and enjoy the summer next year. Not chase and slay demons all night long.

  My body rudely reminded me that I was in pain, injured, and probably in need of medical attention two minutes after shutting the front door to our place. I was, after all, flung out a fifth-story window and crashed on top of a car. A fall like that would kill most humans, good thing I’m not like most humans.

  I limped my way into our kitchen with my blood-soaked hands searching the cabinets for a healing potion. I found it, an unopened bottle of whiskey. You better believe I chugged that motherfucker straight from the bottle.

  “Oh, fuck, that’s so much better,” I said with bliss, then went for another hit.

  Emily’s disappointed gaze looked away and entered our living room. “Booze isn’t going to heal your wounds.”

  “Let me enjoy the fantasy that it does, okay?”

  After a third hit, I went to sit on the couch, booting up my laptop. With the bottle of booze next to me and the light from the laptop’s screen giving our darkened living room a bluish glow, I went to bring up my files on the case I was working on. Photos I snapped of the woman my client hired me to track appeared. She had tanned skin, dressed in an expensive-as-fuck, black, designer jacket, and had long, dark, wavy hair. According to my client, a man that went by the name Donovan, he suspected her of either being a demon or working for them.

  I was secretly following her around town all evening, watching her every move, keeping my distance. Creepy as fuck, I know, but I needed to make sure I wasn’t walking into an ambush. Note to self; don’t follow people into an abandoned apartment building without checking it out beforehand.

  The next photo that appeared on my screen was the one I took of Donovan, in secret, with his drop-dead gorgeous looks and spiked brown hair. I was debating doing a background check on him before I took the case, but he made it pretty clear that if I didn’t take the case and find her quickly, bad things were going to happen. He was right about that.

  Emily sat next to me, looking at the screen. Didn’t even
hear her move to the couch, let alone sit on it. “Think he’s working for the Russians?”

  If he was, it’d explain the ambush. My phone came out next, dialing his phone. Here’s hoping I could get some answers from him. The voicemail was the only reply I got.

  “Now he’s not answering,” I said after three failed attempts at calling him. “Whenever I called his ass he picked up quickly.”

  “I’ll see about stalking him as a cute tabby,” Emily offered.

  “Please . . . I want to know everything about him, now.” I went back to my photos of the woman I was tracking, staring at her sultry face and eyes, like the construction workers in the streets that were looking at her when she walked past them. “And her, there’s something strange about her.”

  I went to perform a few internet searches. I didn’t get very far, the booze in my body made it hard as fuck to type. It was time for me to rest up and recover. Emily made a fast motion mudra gesture, and her body transformed into her cat form, her ninja attire dropping to the floor. I let her out to leap onto the fire escape ladders outside and disappear into the streets below. With the night now in full swing, my healing spring talent became active. I stripped naked, cringed at the dried blood on my Yakuza-tattooed body, attuned to the element of water, and sank into an illusionary spring of water that began the task of mending my injuries while I slept.

  Here’s hoping Emily will come back in the morning with some useful information. If Donovan was secretly working for the Russian Mafia and sent me into a trap, I will fuck him up and burn his apartment down.