Tooth and Nail

"You know something...?" Royal said to his companions. "Being surrounded by demonic corpses seems to the norm today."

"Just be glad that they're corpses." Keera replied. She flapped her wings briefly, shaking off any demon blood that may have splattered on them. Tibias, who was standing right next to Keera as she did this, ended up getting sprinkled.

"Ms. Trean!" Tibias grunted as he began to wipe the blood of his shirt. Keera realized what she had done right away. She smiled sheepishly as her wings withdrew into her back.

"Sorry about that, Tibias." Keera said.

Tibias chuckled. "Oh, don't worry. My hands are bloody anyway, so there's no sense in trying to wipe this off." Tibias pointed to the blood stain on his shirt and indicated how it had grown when he had tried to clean it. The cheerful man grinned widely and said with a laugh, "Look! I've only added to it."

Keera gave a bit of a smile. Then she remembered where she was and returned to seriousness. "Where's Cathburn?" She said sternly, looking around the room. Tibias shrugged.

"You guys! This way!" Royal shouted. He was standing next to the open exit door where Cathburn had gone through not to long ago. Keera and Tibias nodded in unison and ran to join Royal at the door. The three of them charged out the door and into a brick alleyway. Royal could sense Cathburn's demonically tainted human energy up ahead, but he didn't need to. The man was in plain view, fleeing as fast as he could. The time spent looking for him had given Cathburn enough time to put a great deal of distance between himself and the three council representatives.

The place where the underhanded company president was running to was a metal gate located across a courtyard. The entrance to the courtyard was located at the mouth of the alleyway that his pursuers were in. Cathburn had already cleared the alley, and was halfway across the courtyard. He was confident that his escape was an inevitability.

Back at the building's exit, Keera extended her wings and prepared to take off after the man. This plan met with a snafu when Royal began preparing a spell. A sphere of green energy was levitating between the palms of the elf-man's outstretched hands. Emerald sparks shot this way and that as the magical orb grew larger and larger. The sparks struck against Keera's wings, sending an electric shock through her body and grounding her. Royal didn't even seem to notice that his spell had hit his associate and kept on charging more power into it.

"Damn you, Royal! I can't fly with your irish magic in the air!" Keera jeered through gritted teeth.

Royal smirked. "Fly?" He said. "Oh, you won't have to. Cathburn is in my sights. I'll stun him with this spell. As a master of ranged combat..."

As Royal was saying this, Cathburn was sent sprawling to the ground. It was not by irish magic, but by Tibias, who had made a mad dash after the middle aged man as soon as he and his subordinates had stepped into the alleyway. Reginald Cathburn Jr was pinned before he even knew what had happened.

"You can't run from the council, Mr. Cathburn. Or shall I call you bitch?" Tibias said, looming over the helpless body of the Spinetap publishing company president.

Royal's energy sphere shrunk down to the size of a pea. Both his and Keera's mouths hung open. Neither of them had even seen Tibias starting to run. They slowly turned and looked at each other, then back at where Tibias was holding down their target. Both subordinates were in stunned silence.

Cathburn squirmed and struggled, his face reddening with frustration. He roared at Tibias, "To Hell with it all! I knew you council goons would be in better shape than me, but I thought I'd be far away enough for it not to matter. At the very least, I thought I'd have worry about the angel catching me. Not some scrawny human who's almost as old as I am! How on earth did you get that kind of speed."

Tibias grinned. "I licked my lips." Cathburn looked up and noticed that the half-blind man's skin had faint blue glow to it. He shuddered when he realized what it was.

"Of course, I owe it to Ms. Trean. If not for her wings, your bodyguard's blood would've never on my face in the first place." Tibias said. "Also, I'm not that old."

Suddenly, a vast shadow appeared over Tibias' head. Tibias was literally blind-sided as an enormous fist struck him and sent him rolling across the grass of the courtyard. He stood up as soon as he could to see Cathburn and another figure. The second figure was 10-feet tall, hairy, and covered equally in horns and teeth.

"Good boy, Gregaro." Reginald Cathburn laughed.

"I guess we missed one." Tibias spat, wiping some blood from his mouth.

"Gregaro wasn't in the office." Cathburn affirmed. "He's a gluttony demon and vastly more powerful than the others. I keep him out here so he wouldn't eat them all. It seems that worked to my advantage."

With that last remark Cathburn took off through the metal gate, looking back only to shout words of encouragement to his fiendish pet. Tibias attempted to give chase, but had to focus all his attention on evading the flailing limbs of Gregaro. The demon was a lot swifter than it's size would imply and soon it had Tibias backed up against the courtyard wall. The gluttonous monster drooled and was about to swing it's toothy claw when a small seed flew out of the blue and landed in the ground near the creature. In an instant, the seed grew into a full- size alder tree with Gregaro trapped inside.

Tibias looked towards the source of the seed and saw Keera and Royal on the roof of the building. In Royal's hands was a brown handgun, which he proceeded to reload. He turned to Keera.

"As I was saying..." Royal grinned at the angel. "Ranged combat specialist."

Keera rolled her eyes. "Nobody cares, Royal."

Tibias gave a thumbs up to his subordinates from the ground. Despite their target's escape, the field trip to Spinetap Publishing had been fruitful and rewarding. Tibias fondly remembered tackling Cathburn and thought with a smile, I should go out more often.