Chosen: Demon Hunter

by Adam Dark

  “I can’t tell if you’re joking or not.” April’s cheekbones had taken on a bright-red hue, but she didn’t look away.

  “Definitely not joking.” Ben rubbed the back of his head. “You just said probably the only thing that would ever get me to believe you and want to know what you saw. It’s not like I haven’t seen weird things before.”

  “Okay.” She leaned forward a little. “I saw you and this really pale guy.”

  Ben snorted. “That’s Peter.”

  She finally smiled again. “And you guys were walking into… well, like I said, a creepy old house at the top of a hill. There was something else in that house, too. Like, two different… I don’t know. Forces or something. One wanted to use you, I guess. And the other one wanted to keep you from leaving. That one was”—she took a sharp breath—“like diving into ice water.”

  Well, neither one of them sounded all that great, as far as Ben was concerned. “Did you see a boy with blond hair? Twelve years old? Or an old man?”

  April shook her head. “No. Just you two. And… this white bird flying across the room? Then the dream ended with the whole house on fire.”

  Ben sat back in his chair. “That doesn’t sound good.”

  With a raised eyebrow, the girl who’d apparently dreamed of his future said, “You don’t look very surprised by those details.”

  “Not really. Only a little that you saw them, because you don’t know anything.”

  “Excuse me?”

  Ben wanted to punch himself in the face. “Sorry, no. I didn’t mean it like that.” April frowned. “It’s just… there’s a lot going on with me right now, and a lot I haven’t told you. Things I thought I probably shouldn’t ever tell you.”

  And of course, their server came back to take their order. April fired away with some kind of salad, and Ben just randomly stabbed the menu with his finger, landing on the Reuben. Why not?

  When they were alone again, he hadn’t realized April had been trying to give him an opening to elaborate until she said, “So you’re gonna tell me, right?”

  Yeah, didn’t he have to? All his doubts flashed in front of him in a split second—all the adults and professionals who’d called his story a product of mental illness; the reporters wanting interviews; the stares and whispered rumors; Peter telling him it was better that no one else new about the returned voices, the suddenly reoccurring demons. But literally what did he have to lose right now? April had basically just said she could see the future. How was his experience any more likely to make her laugh in his face and call him insane? And what if she’d seen something that could help them? And what if he trusted her now more than he’d ever thought he’d be able to trust anyone ever again?

  “Okay,” he said. “This is going to sound like a giant lie. I stopped telling people when I got that same response a few dozen times.”

  April lifted her coffee mug to her lips, then lowered it just a little to say, “Try me.”

  16

  Ben managed to eat half the Reuben by the time he finished his story. He hadn’t thought he’d be able to stomach even the smell of food, but it turned out the smell was all he needed for his startingly large appetite to return with a ferocious battle cry. And it was only half the sandwich because he’d just been talking so much.

  He told April everything—almost. He didn’t go into the details of how Nico drank wine mixed with ground glass that cut him up from the inside; or how Henry had stabbed him over and over in the chest like his life depended on it; or how Ian had slit Henry’s throat; or how Max had clawed his own eyes out before he was crushed by the massive chandelier that had fallen all on its own. Those things were a lot rawer and a little more secret; just thinking about what he’d left out brought the panic and the guilt boiling up inside him. But he’d moved on, telling her only that four of their friends had been murdered by that evil place, and that Peter had saved his life by squeezing him through that second-story window through which they shouldn’t have been able to escape.

  But he did tell her everything else. She seemed more horrified by the fact that the only response he’d ever received was more pills shoved down his throat and more therapy and more psych evals and more lies. No, the doctors didn’t think they were lying to him, but he knew the truth. So did April, it seemed. He told her about the voices, that they’d finally left him alone before blistering back into his life last Friday at the party. He told her about his own dreams and The Lesser Key of Solomon and having actually summoned the demon called Ebra with Peter at his side. He left out the fight he’d had with Peter and the fact that his friend would blow a gasket if he knew Ben was telling her this now. But he did say that yes, he and Peter both thought Ian was still in that house—whether alive or dead, caught in some kind of time loop or suspended as a trapped spirit, or whatever he might be—and that they were going back tomorrow to do what they could. What they had to at least try to do.

  When he finished, the server passed briefly to fill his glass of water for the fourth time—how did the guy time this stuff so well?—and he took a deep breath. It felt so good to get all these things off his chest, to tell them to someone who seemed more likely than anyone else to believe him. And it was a little unnerving. Ben really had thought he’d feel worse afterward. Like desperately, shamefully, agonizingly worse because he’d relived so much of it and didn’t he just want it to end? But he’d been completely wrong. Just like he’d recently changed the driving force behind his getting up in the morning from having been survival and avoidance to now being discovering, hunting, and kicking some serious demon ass—or at least that was what he was trying to change—his mind-numbingly painful memories of the official end to his childhood had also taken on a new role. They’d given him nightmares, closed him off, been the bane of his desperate existence. Now he’d just used them to connect with a girl who looked like she’d been through something similar—or at least that she knew exactly what that kind of pain felt like.

  April just stared at him, her eyes glistening with tears that never fell, even when she blinked. The color had faded from her cheeks by now, so Ben took the liberty of assuming she wasn’t embarrassed or angry, at the very least. But she took her sweet time in letting everything he’d told her sink in, and he was starting to wonder if the weight of his revelation was too much of a burden for her. Was it possible to break someone else with his own story?

  “Thank you for telling me,” she finally said without any trace of pity or disbelief. “Really, Ben. That makes this a lot easier.”

  Oh, crap. Now she was going to tell him she never wanted to see him again. “What?”

  “I’m coming with you and Peter to that house.”

  “What?”

  The tilt of her head was a complete, wordless reprimand; it couldn’t have been anything else. “You heard me. I’m coming with you guys. To help you get Ian out, or free him, or whatever it is he needs that’s bringing you back there. I can help.”

  “No.” Ben shook his head. That was the last thing he’d expected, and he wasn’t prepared for this kind of bravery—or stupidity—coming from anyone else. “No, you’re not coming with us. I can’t let you.”

  “You can’t let me?” April folded her arms and sat back in her chair. “So you tell me this whole story and exactly what you’re gonna just go traipsing off to do tomorrow, and that gives you automatic say over what I can and can’t do? Is this when you start making my decisions for me?”

  Ben wanted to roll his eyes. Why did so many things with women have to turn into a power struggle? “You know that’s not what I mean—”

  “Oh, you’re in my head now, too?”

  “April.” He spread his hands out on the table, hoping the pleading gesture didn’t also have some kind of hidden meaning he’d never been aware of before. “I’m not trying to tell you what to do. And I never will. What I meant is that it’s way too dangerous. Peter and I barely got out the last time. If anything’s different, if this thing is stronge
r—”

  “Then you’re definitely gonna need some help.” She raised one eyebrow and stared him down. “It’s not like you’re going back to that place completely blind and with no clue what you’re doing.” He couldn’t help but scoff at that; of course he had no idea what he was doing. “Okay, you have more of a plan,” she amended. “You kind of know what to expect. If that Ebra thing comes back, you have a little more protection. But you don’t know how that’s going to work outside your apartment.”

  “You don’t, either,” he said, knowing he fought a losing battle but unable to just give in. What kind of awful person took someone as kind and smart and funny and compassionate as April to a place like that? A total jackass, that’s who. “Your dream didn’t tell you exactly what we had to do to make sure we don’t die, did it?”

  Her lips puffed out when she pressed them tightly together. “No. It didn’t. But the fact that I had a dream about you in the first place already makes me a part of this, don’t you think?”

  ‘When you see the signs, Ben, don’t ignore them.’ That’s what Ian had told him in that second dream. Signs like all Peter’s classes being canceled the day before, and his meeting with Dr. Montgomery, and the feathers in the parking lot from the random black rooster inexplicably released from its cage. Those were tiny things—ridiculous, really. But if April’s dream wasn’t one of those signs, none of them were.

  A heavy sigh of frustration rumbled in the back of his throat. “I don’t know…”

  “Didn’t you already tell me that you and the rest of those people at the party would never have made it out if I wasn’t there to break the window?”

  Man, she was good at this. He realized he’d never asked her about her major and briefly wondered if she was studying law; already, she’d make a great lawyer. But trying to ask now might just be a death sentence. She didn’t in any way look like she’d appreciate one of his untimely jokes right now. He had no choice but to wave the white flag. “Yeah. I did tell you that.” His eyes flickered up to the café’s ceiling. “And it’s true.”

  April didn’t gloat or shove it in his face; she only waited, giving him some time he interpreted as a moment to wholly understand she wasn’t going to hold anything over his head. But she also wasn’t going to let this go.

  “Okay,” she said when he hadn’t managed to find anything else worth saying. “I can help. You know I’m quick on my feet. And sometimes, I remember even more of my dreams. Especially when I’m almost reliving it. Kinda like déjà vu but actually useful.” She closed her eyes and gave her head a quick shake, as if she hadn’t meant to say that part out loud at all. “It’s a win-win for both of us.”

  “Still.” He shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ll have to ask Peter—”

  “You can’t let me do something, but then you have to go get your friend’s permission?”

  “Okay, I get it.” He almost shouted it, but he just didn’t want to keep drawing this around in a circle where she kept making more and more sense every time. It occurred to him that he might hate being called out by someone who knew he was telling the truth even more than he hated someone pegging his past as one giant, trauma-induced hallucination. “Fine. You can come.” All the fight fizzled out of him when he said those words. Peter was going to kill him—if the guy’s heart didn’t explode in anger, first.

  “Thank you.” She said it like she’d always known he’d give in—like she was used to arguing her way into whatever she wanted. But she was just so annoyingly graceful about it, he couldn’t really be mad at her. “So when are we leaving?”

  Oh, she had to put the we in there, didn’t she? “Tomorrow at two. From my place.”

  “Great.”

  “Do you have… class or anything?” Ben realized he should have just given up the ghost on trying to convince her not to come—that his attempts only ended in increasing failure. But the whole idea of April coming with them had seemed to just switch him into auto-pilot.

  “I think I can handle making up one missed class,” she said.

  Yeah, if she ever went to another class after this. Ben nodded. “Okay.” What else was he supposed to say now? He felt like the new purpose and drive he’d recently discovered had just been ripped out of his hands, morphed into a different shape, and handed back to him as something completely unrecognizable but made of the same basic stuff—like his new demon-hunting path was just a big ball of Play Dough. Awesome analogy, Ben.

  Smiling, April put her fork down on her empty salad plate and peered across the table at the second half of Ben’s Reuben. “You want a box?”

  17

  He couldn’t believe any of that had just happened. Why did he tell her everything? What was he thinking? Ben thought he was a sucker for people with troubled emotions—he’d always been pulled to try to make others feel better when he picked up on there being something wrong—but he’d basically confessed his entire life and what just might be the impending end of it to a girl he’d known for barely two weeks. So, yeah, he didn’t know her well.

  Except for the fact that April’s dreams were sometimes visions of the future and she’d proven it almost a hundred percent.

  Who was he kidding? It was totally a hundred percent. He believed her completely, and now he got to look forward to Peter jumping down his throat when the guy found out they weren’t going back to the old house alone. No, he didn’t need Peter’s permission; it had just kind of felt that way, seeing as they were the only two people who really knew what had happened and understood what they were up against—at least as far as the fact that the demon in that house was real and it had murdered three of their friends and maybe trapped Ian inside itself. And as much as he didn’t want to admit it, he was really pretty relieved that April would be there with them. Two people now had saved Ben’s life from the greedy clutches of evil spirits, and he’d have both of them by his side this time. That made it marginally less terrifying but not much.

  Ben scowled at the pile of books on the ground in front of his lopsided couch. There was no way he could even pretend to think about schoolwork and his dissertation and adding to the stupid outline. That was like trying to fix a leaky faucet when the rest of the house was already completely flooded. He didn’t want to be stuck in this stagnant cycle of waiting, with impending doom looming over him and threatening to make him break and run—to call the whole thing off just because he couldn’t hold onto the courage to do what he knew was the right thing to do. Even though that hadn’t happened yet, he couldn’t deny the possibility that it might. It made him want to text Peter and ask how he was doing, just to check in, but he figured getting this kind of cold feet was probably contagious. Ben didn’t want to be the reason they didn’t go; he didn’t want to have to live with even more shame if they knew they could have done something to at least try helping Ian but never really sacked up enough to quit running away. The thought of April’s irrational but still completely founded disappointment in him, if he changed his mind now, was enough in and of itself to convince him that was no longer an option. So he’d just have to deal with whatever happened, whether or not it got him killed or just seriously messed things up with his best friend.

  He pulled out the lidded jar of rooster-feather ink he’d made the day before. Admittedly, he had actually had to wash out both the jar and the lid before he could use it. His disdain for cleaning had to be ignored if he didn’t want the ink to dry out, in case they still needed it—for whatever other reason might come up for its use. It wasn’t like he could predict anything anymore. He’d transferred the ink from the bowl once Peter left after the whole trial-run with summoning Ebra. When he had what he wanted for some semblance of preemptive planning—namely the ink, Peter’s cut-straw quill, and the white t-shirt—he leaned over the black plastic of the card table in his kitchen and let himself take his time.

  Ebra’s seal and the Pentacle of Solomon hadn’t actually burned his shirt when the demon they’d summoned dragged him off to that other world,
and neither had the names scrawled across the messenger bag’s strap he’d used as a belt; they had looked like glowing coals and left brown stains around all the ink, as if his shirt and the leather strap had been singed paper. But he’d never felt any heat—besides the burning terror and confusion when he found himself facing Ian in real time in some other unexplained dimension—and he didn’t have any burn marks on his skin. Some of the ink, though, looked like it almost had burned away. Peter had drawn it on in pretty thick lines for how sharp his makeshift quill had been, but now almost a fourth of the ink had thinned out, scattered in places like tire tracks on a dirt road still half there after it rained. Ben wasn’t nearly as good at copying images as Peter—he knew that—but he could trace with the best of them, and that was essentially what he did now.

  The ink transferred surprisingly smoothly from the sharpened edge of the straw to the fibers of his t-shirt, making him feel like some kind of skilled craftsman from a time when everything had been painted this way. The smooth, oiled leather of the strap made it even easier. The simple act drew him into a kind of meditation, and when he finished, it was already almost 5:00. Looking at his handiwork, he felt surprisingly satisfied and more than a little proud of his repairs to the symbols, meant to protect him the next time he decided to summon a spirit from … wherever they were. If Peter had felt anything like this when he’d drawn the symbols for the first time, it made a lot more sense now why the guy had been so confident that it would work at all. Ben felt exactly the same way.

  He let the ink dry, then slid the leather messenger bag with the Table of Solomon drawn on it across the card table toward himself. This circle with a multi-pointed star in the middle—apparently for all the different combinations of cardinal directions—and names he couldn’t even pronounce was exactly the same as when Peter had put it there in ink. The lines were thick, smooth, none of them disrupted by Ben’s sudden lurch out of his own reality. This didn’t really make sense, but it wasn’t like he knew enough about any of this to sit around and start throwing out informed guesses. That was just something he’d have to either forget about or watch and wait for it to reveal itself. Good thing he didn’t have very many items on that list.