Demon Kissed: Book 2 of the Venandi Chronicles (An Urban Paranormal Romance Series)

by Sara Snow

  He was giving me a report on Jose over the phone. The boy had raccoon eyes, and he was in a lot of pain, but he was refusing medication. He was terrified of losing consciousness—at least the pain kept him awake.

  “Well, you couldn’t exactly tell her the truth, could you?”

  “Believe me, I wanted to. If the mortal realm knew about the danger they’re facing right now, they might be able to prepare for it.”

  “They can’t prepare for something they don’t believe in,” I pointed out. “The government isn’t going to mobilize the armed forces to confront an attack from the demon realm.”

  “No, and the military wouldn’t be of any use in this kind of war. The battle Paimon is waging is for our minds and our souls. He and his henchmen have their weapons of terror, but in the end, they’ll rely on Paimon’s charisma. His knowledge. His intelligence, his looks. He’s capable of mass deceit and mass destruction at the same time, and the mortals will flock to him because of it.”

  “Sounds like a cult leader,” I remarked. “Or a typical politician.”

  “Very much so. He’ll come to us in a form that’s both familiar and alluring. He’ll be accepted as one of us, possibly as a president, king, or savior. And when that happens, the mortal realm will be lost.”

  “You sound like you think there’s still a chance to save the poor, doomed mortals,” I said.

  “We have more than a chance,” Kingston said, with more confidence in his voice than I’d heard in a long time. “We have a plan. Jose’s episode proves that the demons are on to us. They know what we’re doing and where we’re going. We’re going to use their hunger for power to lead them to their destruction.”

  Kingston turned from the phone, and I heard muffled male voices. When he returned, he told me that Jose was being discharged. His face was black and blue, and his nose was swollen, but he hadn’t suffered any serious injuries in the episode.

  “Keep your spirits up, Carter,” Kingston said. “You’ll be leading this mission. You need to believe you can succeed.”

  “I do believe it, my friend,” I said, trying to sound convincing.

  I don’t have any other choice.

  I let Kingston go, then I went to the training room to stock up on weapons. Even with Georgia’s newly discovered powers, we were going to need a lot of ammunition to defeat the Tenebris.

  Another question burned at the back of my mind. Just before I ended the call with Kingston, that question flared up again, huge and overwhelming. I was so afraid of the answer that I’d put off asking it.

  Why didn’t your invocation work today, Kingston? Out of the thousand times you’ve banished demons, I’ve never seen you fail until today. What went wrong?

  Jacob was the one who had banished the demons this time. I’d never realized that he had that power. Did that mean Kingston’s light was dimming, while Jacob’s power was growing stronger?

  I couldn’t stand the thought of losing Kingston, not just because he was our leader, but because he was my closest friend.

  When I went to the training room, I found Jacob working out alone. He had set up a straw dummy in a corner of the room and was going at it with a long dagger. Each time he stabbed the poor dummy, clouds of dust laced with straw poured out, and Jacob gave a triumphant grunt.

  The way Jacob was going at the thing, Straw Man wouldn’t last another fifteen minutes.

  “Good work saving the kid today,” I said gruffly when Jacob stopped for a breather.

  He looked up in surprise, still panting. “Thanks. That means a lot coming from you.”

  Translation: I didn’t expect a compliment from an asshole who hates my guts.

  “How long have you had the power to banish demons? And what made you think to try it after your dad’s invocation failed?”

  “To tell you the truth, I don’t know how long I’ve had the ability. This was only the second time I’ve ever used it. I just couldn’t stand there and watch Jose suffer without trying something, so I gave it a shot out of sheer desperation. I’m surprised that it worked when his didn’t, and I still don’t know why. Dad told me he wanted to talk to me about it, but he had to take Jose to the hospital first.”

  Ever since Georgia entered the picture, Jacob had been on my shit list. But that didn’t matter when it came to saving Jose’s life. If Jacob hadn’t stepped in after Kingston’s invocation failed, Jose would probably be dead. We might all be dead.

  “Well, you saved another one of the team. You must have learned that invocation from Kingston.”

  “I’d heard him use it before, but he never told me I had that power. Maybe he never knew I could do it, or he didn’t think I was ready to learn.” Jacob wiped the sweat off his brow with his forearm. “Are you here to pack weapons?”

  “Yep.”

  The tension between us was so thick that I could barely get that one syllable out. There were so many things I was dying to say to Jacob, so many accusations, warnings, and threats.

  But he was my best friend’s son. And he had very likely saved Jose’s life today.

  I walked over to the wall where our weapons were displayed. They all looked pretty useless right now, compared to Jacob’s power of exorcism. What good would it do to have a sword, a flamethrower, or a crossbow if the demons were getting so strong that Kingston could no longer send them running home to Hell?

  “Don’t worry about me,” Jacob said. “I’ve got all the weapons I need.”

  “So, how do you feel about this trip tomorrow?” I asked, pulling down blades, a stake, and a rifle.

  “Are you asking for the truth? Or just making conversation?” Jacob asked.

  “A little of both,” I said. “Tell me what you really think about going to Texas. Do you believe we have a chance of defeating Paimon and his buddies? Or are we all going to be toast?”

  Jacob took a deep breath, then let it go.

  “It all depends on Georgia, and where her loyalty lies,” he said. “If she sticks with us, I’d say we have a damn good chance of torching those demon kings and sending their minions back to Hell. If she decides to side with her father, we might as well bend over and kiss our butts goodbye.”

  I had either underestimated Jacob, or I’d been so jealous that I’d been blinded to his intelligence. He liked to come across as a friendly goofball, a class clown. Maybe he didn’t have his father’s philosophical nature or his intellect, but under that goofy persona, Jacob was as sharp as a razor.

  “Your dad seems confident that we can pull this off,” I said.

  “The way I see it, he has to believe in this. It’s his big chance to pull off an act of salvation. If we destroy the Tenebris, he can go back to his pre-fall status.”

  “So, that’s how fallen angels get their wings back?”

  “Yep. That’s why this is so important to him. My father hasn’t said anything about it because he doesn’t want this mission to be about him. But I know he has high hopes.”

  “What about you?” I asked. “Why are you going to Texas? Why not stay here with your dad and Jose? If this ambush turns into a mass immolation, you’ll be a pile of ashes, just like the rest of us.”

  Jacob lifted his chin and looked me straight in the eye.

  “Because Georgia asked me to. And I’d do anything for her.”

  Jacob and I squared off, staring each other down like a couple of male wildcats. I eyed his muscular physique. His arms were taut, fists clenched. His jaw was set hard.

  This kid is ready to fight for Georgia. And he would probably beat me to a pulp.

  We could have fought at that point. We could have gone hand-to-hand, until one of us gave in and acknowledged that the other one was the winner.

  But there wouldn’t have been any point. After the scene with Jose this afternoon, I wasn’t in the mood for being thrown around the room. And fighting with Jacob wouldn’t make it any easier to sit in a car with him for hours on end.

  Besides, it was pretty clear which one of us Georgia ha
d chosen.

  13

  Georgia

  Now that I knew how Carter spent his evenings, it felt easier to distance myself from him. Clearly, he hadn’t left the dating scene, whatever that meant for a half-vampire, and I wasn’t about to offer myself up as a blood donor.

  So, that was it. We would be teammates. Buddies.

  Done. Over. Finito. The end.

  Having made up my mind about Carter, I could shove my memories of us onto some dusty shelf in my heart and move on with my life. There were better things waiting for me—much better.

  Kingston had told me I could use his library for research any time I wanted. When he first made the offer, I politely brushed him off. Those dusty old books, with their odor of moldy cheese, gave me the creeps. It seemed like every time I opened one, I found either some horrific information about my background or a family portrait.

  Now that I knew about my new powers, I wanted to learn more about where they came from. Until now, my telekinesis was just a freakish accident of nature, something that happened when I was pissed off or scared. The Venandi made a big deal about my telekinesis, but as far as I could tell, that “power” was more like the psychic equivalent of PMS.

  Sure, I had thrown some heavy stuff around when my life was in danger, but you heard stories all the time about people performing miraculous feats of strength when their adrenaline was high. Moms lifted buses when their babies were in danger, little old ladies shoved cars out of the way to save stray kittens, stuff like that.

  Suddenly, now it felt different. Making that barbell twirl in the air, then setting it on fire and controlling the flames, I had felt a dizzying rush, as if I’d truly accomplished something. And when Jacob gave me that look of pure admiration, I thought I’d melt like a stick of butter in the sun.

  That incident made me wonder what else I was capable of. With this trip coming up and everyone so nervous about the Tenebris, I wanted to make sure I knew about all the weapons in my arsenal.

  In Kingston’s library, I went back to the Dictionnaire Infernal, the Lesser Key of Solomon, and the Compleat Classification of Daemons, the three books that Kingston had recommended to me. I looked up Paimon again in the dictionary from hell, or whatever it was called, and stared at the illustration, trying to see if I had missed any clues about who my father was.

  Every time I looked at that drawing of the elegant King Paimon sitting gracefully on a camel, a tremor ran through my body and a thousand questions battled for attention in my brain.

  Did I really come from that demon? How is that possible?

  Why is he hunting me? What does he want from me?

  What’s going to happen to all of us?

  I held my head in my hands, as if that could stop the whirlwind inside my skull. This was the real reason I’d avoided the library. It held too many secrets that I really didn’t want to know.

  I put down the dictionary and picked up the Compleat Classification of Daemons. It was another ancient book, filled with grotesque illustrations of hideous beings, but it offered more details about Paimon. He was one of the high kings of Hell, a demon with many legions underneath him. He had the power to foretell the future, conjure up spirits, create visual illusions, and “perform acts of magic both wondrous and terrible.”

  In the Compleat Classification, Paimon sounded more like a magician than a demon. He could fly, breathe underwater, and raise the dead. He was also a philosopher, who understood all the secrets of the earth and its elements, the rain and thunder, and the wind:

  For Paimon is fair of face and broad of intellect, he knows all things and sees all things. When he appears, he is accompanied by two demon kings, Bebal and Abalam. As Paimon has command of the Seen and the Unseen, he has the power to make the invisible known to all mortals, and this was recorded in prophecy as the moment of the Revelare. When the invisibles are revealed, his legions will rise from the shadows.

  A shiver ran down my spine.

  When the invisibles are revealed, his legions will rise from the shadows.

  This description of Paimon didn’t match any of the demons I’d met on my missions with the Venandi. They had all been thugs, monsters, brutally ugly and crude in every way. They stank of sulfur, shit, and blood. Their power came from brute violence, not from knowledge.

  Paimon isn’t like all the rest of them. My father is a king. He’s a philosopher, a seer. A magician.

  I had never spoken of Paimon as my father, not without tossing in a big dollop of sarcasm. Now, here I was thinking of him as my father.

  He couldn’t be worse than some of the men I’d grown up with, the con-artists and abusers who had pretended to be stand-in fathers. They were the true monsters. Their only power came from their ability to threaten and bully much younger, weaker human beings like me.

  Paimon really was a king compared to them.

  And he is my father.

  Outside the vaulted windows of the library, the sky had deepened to navy blue. By the time the sun rose again, we would all be on the road, heading for Texas. The fear hadn’t left me, or the dread about meeting my mother. But behind that fear, I was beginning to feel a small flame of excitement.

  Georgia

  Jacob agreed to go to the store with me to stock up on supplies for the trip. So far, most of our preparations had involved packing lots of weapons and honing our combat skills. We hadn’t thought about the basics, like food and water.

  Of course, Carter wouldn’t need food for a while, since he had just fed off of that red-haired vamp at the Abyss.

  “I love road trips,” Jacob enthused, as we pulled into the parking lot at one of the urban supermarkets. “I’ve already got a soundtrack picked out. I think you’re gonna love it.”

  “Love what? The music, or the trip?” I asked, skeptical about both.

  “I’m just talking about the music for now. The early Beatles. John Lennon. Bob Dylan. All the oldies you used to play on your guitar.”

  A pang of loss hit me in the heart. I hadn’t thought about my guitar since I came back to the warehouse. That old six-string had been my best friend growing up, my most reliable confidant and companion. When the people in my life didn’t care or wouldn’t listen, the guitar was there for me.

  What had happened to it after I was abducted from my apartment? I’d probably never know. The shifty landlord might have pawned it, along with my other belongings, to make up for the rent I owed him.

  If he had managed to eke fifty bucks out of pawning my pathetic stuff, I would have been amazed.

  “How did you know what kind of music I like?” I asked.

  Did Carter tell him?

  I couldn’t imagine Carter revealing all my secrets to Jacob. Like the one about the guitar pick Carter had given me on my birthday, and how my joy over that gift had led to our first kiss.

  “I noticed the treble clef tattoo on your wrist,” Jacob admitted. “I asked Eli if he knew anything about it. He told me how much you loved music, how you used to play the guitar, write your own songs.”

  “Yeah. ‘Used to’ being the operative words. I haven’t touched the guitar in who knows how long.”

  “You’ll get back to it someday. I know you will. You’re the kind of person who persists at things she cares about.”

  Except keeping a job. And finishing nursing school.

  “I’m not as persistent as you think,” I told him. “I’ve given up on a lot of my plans to be part of the Venandi’s mission.”

  Jacob turned to smile at me as we walked into the supermarket. “You’re not the only one,” he said. “I gave up a lot, too. I could be drunk on beer in a sports bar right now. Instead, I’m stocking up for a mysterious road trip with the most beautiful being I’ve ever seen. Life really sucks, you know?”

  “You’re so full of it!”

  I laughed and slapped Jacob’s arm. If all the fires of Hell came raging down on us in the next few days, I had no doubt that Jacob would still be making me laugh with his sweet-talking b
ullshit.

  Jacob had already made a shopping list. He texted half of the list to me, and we each took a shopping cart. We were going to need a lot of supplies for all four of us. In addition to food, Jacob declared that we needed staples like lighter fluid, charcoal briquets, matches, and candles.

  “Are we planning a barbecue?” I asked. The barbecue supplies brought back memories of my near-branding at the park, and I shuddered.

  “You never know. We might need to roast a few minor demons along the way.”

  He set off in one direction while I wheeled my cart in the other. In the aisles of the cavernous market, I quickly lost track of Jacob as I searched for the stuff on his list: Oreos, sour cream potato chips, beef jerky, mustard, beer, tequila.

  The perfect diet for a demon-slaying angel.

  I was looking at the upper shelves, trying to find the brand of mustard that Jacob wanted, when I heard a small whimper. I had almost run into a little girl. I wasn’t very good at guessing kids’ ages, but she seemed to be about five or six years old. She was sucking her thumb with one hand and dragging a one-eyed teddy bear with the other. Her eyes were pink-rimmed and puffy with tears.

  “Jeez, you scared me to death!” I gasped. “I’m sorry. What’s your name?”

  The child’s black hair looked like it hadn’t been combed for a few days. She wore a grimy pink sweater that was unraveling at the hem and a green plaid skirt that didn’t remotely match. Her frayed sandals were totally inappropriate for the raw March weather, and her tiny toes were turning blue.

  She looked eerily familiar, but I had no idea where I could have met her. I didn’t spend a lot of time hanging around with kids. My own childhood had been such a nightmare that I felt more comfortable pretending that children didn’t exist.

  It was too painful to imagine the kind of torment they might be going through.

  “Hey, what’s your name?” I asked.

  The child mumbled something around her thumb, which was plugged firmly in her mouth even as she sobbed. She stared at me with enormous eyes, so red around the edges that I wondered if she had been crying for hours or just had a bad case of pink-eye. Had the purplish smudges on her cheeks come from tears, fatigue, or the back of someone’s hand?