Death of a Demon_An Urban Fantasy Romance

by Lacy Andersen

  Distracting myself from the problem was easy enough with people like Noah Brown, who lived to butter up the ladies. He even had Esther blushing and laughing as we worked together to set up bleachers on the great lawn. It was hard work though, and I was glad by the time the afternoon came and my aunt called it quits.

  “That’s enough for the day.” She brushed off the grass stains on her knees and adjusted her large brimmed hat. Her cheeks shone pink from the lingering heat of the day. “We can finish these tomorrow.”

  Noah stretched his hands together, cracking his knuckles. “This Aussie’s ready to kick some tail. It’s about time we had an Aussie vs. Yank battle. I’ve been itching for a little competition for the past decade.”

  I squinted at him, once again amazed at the lifespan of the Nephilim. From what I’d gathered, he was about three hundred years old and unattached. Some of the girls had already noticed his boyish good looks and charming talk. I had no doubt he’d be swarmed at the dinner table. He had no idea how competitive the girls around here could be when it came to an eligible bachelor. Especially, one with a hot Australian accent. He was in for a big surprise.

  Just then, a large black SUV pulled into the gravel drive of the manor. My heart skipped a beat when I spotted it. With a little shout, I ran to meet it in front of the gigantic garage that housed the many Nephilim utility vehicles. My legs shook as I waited for the people inside to shuffle out. Anxiously looking them over, I assessed each through the windows.

  “Did it go okay? Are you alright? Did anyone get hurt?” The questions poured from my lips. “Was it a demon? Was there a fight? Is it dead?”

  “Easy, woman.” Adam was the first to exit. He rolled his blue eyes at me. “We’re fine. It was boring, really.”

  “If you count getting thrown down a busy freeway boring,” Raquel grumbled as she stepped out. She had a bandaged hand, but seemed all in one piece. “This guy was a giant,” she said, turning toward me with big green eyes. “Built like a silverback gorilla. It took three of us to subdue him.”

  “And the help of a semi-truck going eighty-five,” Ashley chimed in.

  If she had recently been in a battle, I couldn’t tell. She breezed out of the SUV with the ease of someone who had just spent the weekend at the spa.

  “When we couldn’t get him to cooperate, I threw him in the path of the truck,” she responded to my concerned expression. “It didn’t kill him, but it helped us get him under control long enough to do the ritual. Your sweetheart had to calm down the trucker afterwards. I’m pretty sure we gave him a minor heart attack.”

  I looked back into the depths of the SUV to see Gabe behind the wheel. He unbuckled and smiled up at me. “It was fine. Nothing we couldn’t handle. You didn’t miss much.”

  With a sigh, I threw myself into his arms, silently checking him over to be sure he came back in one piece. Satisfied with my search, I found his lips with mine and pressed against him. He responded in kind, his breath hot on my cheek. We kissed for a desperate few seconds until a sound of disgust behind me tore us apart.

  “Do they always have to do that?” Adam was asking Ashley. His nose wrinkled as if he’d caught a whiff of something rotten.

  “I think it’s cute.” She crossed her arms and tossed her head. “When I find a partner, I hope we’ll be half as devoted to each other as Gabe and Lizzy.”

  Adam snorted and stormed off toward the manor. I turned to look at Gabe, raising one of my eyebrows.

  “Don’t ask,” he warned with a shake of his head. Long strands of brown hair fell into his eyes. “There was a huge blowup between them last night. I found Adam sleeping in the SUV this morning.”

  I clicked my tongue and rubbed his back. Poor Gabe. He wasn’t a fan of relationship drama, and his brother seemed to attract the worst of it. Hopefully, he and Ashley were finally through. I couldn’t think of a couple less suited. They seemed to bring out the worst in each other and for the past two summers neither of them had found their Nephilim partners. That fact had only seemed to further complicate the situation.

  “What’s going on?” Gabe asked, eyeing the stands we’d just set up on the lawn. “Is that the arena from the training facility?”

  I laughed nervously. “Yeah, you’ve been volunteered to take part in an epic competition of brawn. A battle royale.”

  He tilted his head and stared quizzically at me. “What do you mean?”

  “A few of the Nephilim wanted a distraction, so we set up the arena. The competition starts tomorrow. Noah Brown is here. He specifically wants to fight with you.”

  Boyish excitement crossed his face and his eyes lit up. “Noah? That old beach bum? What’s he doing here?”

  “He’s one of Luke’s researchers.”

  He sucked in his cheeks and grinned. “Makes sense. He always was a nerd. I’ve got to go say hi to the guy. And hit the gym tonight. Being on the road has made me soft.”

  Clenching my teeth, I drew in a hesitant breath. I wished I didn’t have to break the news to him like this. “That might have to wait.”

  He gave me a quizzical look.

  “We have dinner plans.” I licked my dry lips. “With your parents.”

  The blood drained from his face as he shot out of the car, nearly depositing me on the ground. I managed to right myself at the last second and stand semi-gracefully.

  “They’re here?” he asked, oblivious to my plight but still holding onto my hand. “But I thought they weren’t coming until winter. I specifically called them last week.”

  “Guess they changed their mind.” My fingers became crushed in his as he pranced in place. “Luke ambushed me with them yesterday. Your mother insisted we all have dinner together today.”

  He narrowed his eyes at me. “How was she? My mother? Was she nice to you?”

  I opened my mouth to reply. She hadn’t exactly been mean, but that wasn’t what I called nice. When I couldn’t answer, Gabe sighed.

  “I’m sorry. I’d hoped to introduce you myself.”

  Shrugging, I smiled. “It was an awkward situation. Maybe tonight will be better.”

  “It will be,” he said, the right side of his mouth lifting in a small smile. “I promise.”

  Unfortunately, it seemed that Gabe wasn’t able to keep his promise. Four hours later, I found myself dragging my food around my plate as the four of us sat at a table marooned in the middle of the dining hall. Conversation was abuzz all around us. Thanks to the addition of Luke’s new thriving research team, the dining hall had spilled over into the ballroom and people laughed and dined all around us.

  Despite the merriment and warmth, we were stuck adrift in an awkward silence that became more painful by the second. Georgia kept sending me pinched expressions of distrust while Ben fumbled over his words, choosing to stuff extra-large spoonfuls of rice pilaf in his mouth when he couldn’t finish a sentence. Desperation had driven deep lines into Gabe’s face as he forced the conversation into topic after topic. Finally, he gave up and simply sipped at his water glass.

  “So, Elizabeth, tell us about your family,” Georgia finally asked. She’d abandoned her large salad and was shredding a napkin in her lap. “Where do you come from?”

  “Mom.” Gabe sent her a sharp look.

  “What?” She pouted her thin lips. “Doesn’t a mother deserve to know a little bit about the woman her son is dating? It’s a simple question.”

  “With a complicated and painful answer,” Gabe answered between gritted teeth.

  I reached over and squeezed his hand beneath the tablecloth. He squeezed back, his hands shaking slightly.

  “I grew up in Hanna,” I told her with a curt nod. “My mother’s mom raised me. That was the only family I knew for most of my life. When Gabe brought me here, I found Luke and Esther and Raquel. They’re my family now.”

  “And your grandmother? Where is she now?”

  I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from scowling. The last time I’d seen Granny, she’d run off into
the forest after I’d saved her life. No thanks, no nothing. She and the rest of Hanna had wasted no time in clearing out of the Manor once the demon threat was gone. We hadn’t heard anything from them sense.

  “I believe she’s still living in Hanna.”

  Granny would probably die there. She didn’t seem to have a desire to go anywhere else.

  “Wasn’t she the one who tried to kill you?” Georgia asked, her blue eyes wide.

  Beside me, Gabe shifted angrily in his seat.

  “Yes,” I rushed to answer before he could interject. “She and the town elders wanted to punish me for breaking the town law.”

  “For saving me,” Gabe added, his voice low and harsh.

  She turned to him. “And this is the same woman who tried to kill you?”

  Sucking in his cheeks, he nodded.

  “Doesn’t seem like a very good stable family, if they go around trying to kill everything that blinks.” She dropped the shredded paper napkin onto her salad bowl. “I’m just glad you made it out alive, son.”

  Gabe shot her a dark look. “Luke is her family and he’s as solid as they come. You know that as well as I do. You were ecstatic when he took me under his wing.”

  “Yes, you were supposed to take his seat on the board when he retired.” Georgia eyed me over her glass of chardonnay. “I guess that’s out of the question, now.”

  I lunged for my glass of water and gulped it down. She sure knew how to hit all the pressure points. Everything I’d ever felt guilty about with Gabe, she’d brought back to the surface. And here I was, pulling out of battle to throw myself into training with Luke for that very board position. I was abandoning Gabe and taking the position that long ago had been promised to him. I was a terrible girlfriend.

  Gabe growled softly beside me, but his mother didn’t bat an eye.

  “Plus, that was before we knew his wife had been possessed,” Ben said, his mouth full of a buttery roll. He glanced between his wife and son, his jaw working. “How that escaped his notice, we’ll never know. There have been a lot of red flags raised in this past year, son. We’re just concerned.”

  Gabe slammed his hand on the table. “Concerned about what?”

  My lungs desperately reached for a quick breath of air, as if the oxygen had been sucked out of the room. His parents regarded him over the white linen tablecloth, blinking innocently.

  “We’re just concerned for your safety,” Georgia said, her brows coming together.

  “I am safe.”

  Ben cleared his throat. “We’re not so sure about that.”

  “I am.”

  “We just don’t want to lose another child.” Tears formed in the corners of Georgia’s eyes. She regarded her son with the desperate plea of a broken parent. “We worry, Son. That’s all.”

  I remembered learning that Gabe and Adam had lost a sister a long time ago in a battle. The pain his parents had gone through must’ve been something awful. Suddenly, I could understand the third degree treatment. I probably would’ve done the same. They had every right to worry.

  “It’s okay,” I whispered to him out of the corner of my mouth.

  “No, it’s not.” He stood up, pulling me with him. Anger blazed in his eyes. “I think dinner is finished. Lizzy and I are going to retire. We will see you tomorrow.”

  With that, he marched us from the dining hall and up the grand lobby staircase. It wasn’t until we reached the darker corridors of the resident halls that his pace slowed and his grip on my hand loosened.

  “I’m so sorry about that,” he said, his voice cracking. The evening light coming through the window threw his face into shadow. “I didn’t realize they’d be so rude.”

  “It wasn’t that bad,” I replied.

  And really, it wasn’t a lie. His mother questioning me had been the least of my worries. I had pictured a thousand ways for this dinner to go—most of them ending in Georgia tearing her son away from me and forbidding us to be together, cursing our relationship. Silly, I knew. But my overactive imagination had gone there.

  “If they can’t be civil, they’ll need to leave.” Gabe was grumbling, pulling me toward his room. “I won’t be treated like a child. I’m a hundred and twenty-eight! It’s ridiculous.”

  The ridiculousness of the situation had me stifling a giggle. Even the Nephilim had problems with their mothers. I guess some things never changed, no matter how long you aged.

  At that moment, a sudden light-headed feeling came over me. My feet slowed and my ankles weakened, although Gabe didn’t seem to notice. He kept walking, pulling me along. It took me falling to my knees for Gabe to realize something was wrong.

  “Lizzy?” he cried, kneeling beside me. “What’s wrong?”

  Oh, no. This couldn’t be happening. I’d torn myself from Gabe’s side in battle, immersed myself in a calm environment, done everything I could to keep her at bay. She couldn’t pull me under. Not now.

  “It’s happening again.” I clutched at my head as searing pain split it in two. “I can’t stop it.”

  He reached up to cup my chin and mouthed something, but I couldn’t hear what he said. The darkness enveloped me, wrapping me in an agony so severe I was afraid I’d never wake up. Even in the haze of the pain, I could feel something at the edge of my consciousness. She was there.

  My demon was waiting for me.

  Chapter Eight

  I woke up in Gabe’s arms, my body still exhausted from the toll last night’s demon episode had taken. As horrible as the last, this face-to-face battle with my demon had left me internally bruised and scarred. Even though I reassured Gabe a thousand times that I was fine and the demon hadn’t hurt me, I couldn’t help lying awake for hours hearing the lies I’d told him reverberate in my head.

  He didn’t need to know the truth. All the truth did was hurt him, little by little. Knowing that my demon was killing me would do nothing for Gabe. At least I could save him some pain.

  The darkness seeping through the window told me it was still the early hours of the morning. Most of the Nephilim would still be in bed. I slipped from Gabe’s embrace and tiptoed around his bed to gather my clothes. What I needed now was a cool walk across the grounds. Time to clear my head. A chance to heal. I couldn’t do that listening to the sound of Gabe’s breathing, wishing I didn’t have to cause him so much heartbreak.

  I’d nearly made it down the grand staircase when I ran into a bleary-eyed Luke. His hair was smashed against one side of his head and his glasses on crooked. He’d been reading late into the night again. It was a habit of his. Judging by his state, he probably hadn’t even gone to bed yet.

  “Tell me you weren’t up all night worrying about me,” I said, stopping him from passing.

  He blinked rapidly, as if he just recognized me. “No...no, of course not.” With a sheepish grin, he rubbed a hand over his head. “I mean, I did spend a lot of time rereading some texts regarding your situation, but when I came to a dead end, I looked more into that mysterious box you brought back from your latest demon escapade.”

  I chewed on the inside of my mouth. All the excitement of the last couple days had thrown the box completely from my mind. I remembered the feeling I’d gotten from it. A powerful urge, as if it had been made for me.

  “Did you find anything useful?” I asked, swallowing the disappointment that he’d hit another dead end on my situation. After last night, I was hoping for some good news.

  “There’s a brief entry in an ancient Aramaic text about something called Psyche's Urn. That’s a rough translation, but I think it might be talking about our artifact.”

  My eyebrows knit together. “Psyche's Urn? Doesn’t an urn have ashes of the dead inside it?”

  “Sometimes.” The tip of his tongue traced his teeth. “But I think in this case, it’s more of a powerful storage container than anything else.”

  The fact that there might be the creepy remains of some dead person in the box I’d toted around for several hours made me feel
somewhat nauseated. Hopefully, Luke was right.

  “Does it do anything?”

  He sighed. “Not as far as I know, but I’m taking every precaution in my observations. We don’t want a dangerous situation on our hands.”

  “That’s too bad.” I shrugged and pursed my lips. “I was hoping it trapped demons or something useful like that. That priest seemed pretty intent on using it to save his friend. I wonder how he got it.”

  “That’s the mystery.” Luke blinked, his eyelids heavy. “But if you’ll excuse me, I think I’m going to have a lie down for a short while. My bed is calling to me.”

  I laughed and waved him on. “Get some sleep for the both of us. I’m going for a walk. The fresh air is calling my name.”

  He nodded gratefully and continued up the stairs. I found myself out on the lawn in no time, drifting across the wet grass and gazing up at the pink, soft glow of the morning sun. A few Nephilim were out and about, mostly the foreign researchers Luke had recruited, still on their home time. I spotted a few headed into the training facility.

  Not in the mood to visit with a stranger, I took a sharp right and headed toward the stables. It had been too long since I’d visited Reba, the spirited mare who seemed to only behave when I rode her. The stables were warm and smelled of hay and alfalfa. I inhaled the strong, comforting scent and strode toward Reba’s stall.

  The dappled gray horse was pacing in her stall, swinging her head from side to side. As soon as she caught sight of me, she nickered and snorted, coming forward to search my hands for treats.

  “Sorry, girl. Didn’t think to bring anything,” I said, stroking her forelock.

  She grunted, pushing against my chest.

  “Here,” a gruff voice said behind me.

  I turned to find Laramie, one of the few humans who lived at the manor. She was holding an apple in her hand. With a swift jerk of her wrist, she tossed it my way.

  “Thanks.”

  I turned to feed it to Reba. She snatched it from my hand and then walked away with an ungrateful twitch of her long dark tail.