Familiar Stranger

by Michele Hauf

  but Jack remained vigilant to find the demon that had killed his partner.

  Forty-two. Forty-three.

  Mersey Bane needed someone to keep her safe. For Christ’s sake, she even had a comic-book name. Must have delusions of fighting demons and saving the world.

  Jack could get behind saving the world.

  Sixty-three, sixty-four.

  And yet, destruction never felt right. Violence begat violence. How to make it end?

  Seventy…

  And now there was a woman standing in the path between him and the big bads. She thought to fight the demons? Well, she needed a kickarse weapon to do that. And muscle—seventy-five— and a death wish. Which he had.

  Out in the kitchen, the phone rang. Curled up and gripping the bar for a pause—his abs straining—Jack huffed and decided it must be Belladonna. The answering machine was turned on high, so he could hear her from here.

  He swung back down. “Eighty—oh, sod me.”

  An upside-down demon face grinned at him.

  Chapter 6

  T here were horns. Everywhere. Jack head-butted the grinning demon. One of the horns cut through his temple, embedding a deep, stinging pain above his eye.

  “I hate horns!”

  He didn’t take the time to assess for damage. Swinging backward, which was really forward, he couldn’t gain enough momentum to swing all the way up to grip the inversion rack and release his ankles.

  “Jack, I’ve some information on your Mersey Bane,” Belladonna’s voice announced over the answering machine.

  “Brilliant.” Jack swung back—this time it was backward—and fisted the same spot where the demon had been squatting, but his knuckles punched through air.

  In the brief flash of his surroundings, he didn’t sight the demon. But it wasn’t gone; he could smell the brimstone and hear the sepulchral chuckles that seemed to echo out from the very walls.

  “So it’s that way, is it?”

  Another swing toward the doorway spied what he didn’t want to see. Demon in the nine o’clock position—wielding a bronze floor lamp like a cricket bat.

  Jack curled his arms up over his face as he swung into the demon’s attack zone. The lamp shade prevented the hit from being too painful, but he did take the stiffly corrugated linen shade beside the eye. His attacker yowled in disappointment and sent the lamp flying toward the plasma television. Jack winced as he swung away. He did favor his high-tech toys.

  “You’ve found yourself an interesting woman,” Belladonna said. “Good job, Jack. A dynamic find.”

  Not nearly so dynamic as his houseguest.

  He swung once more to gain momentum. The demon slashed a razored appendage. A snarl splattered toxic spit across the floor. Heavy droplets steamed and sizzled through the varnished surface of the hardwood.

  “You piqued my interest when you mentioned she called you a death merchant,” Belladonna said. “There’s but one organization known to label hunters that way—the Cadre.”

  What the hell was the Cadre? Sounded vaguely familiar. Jack swung up to the target. He wrapped his arms around the pumpkinsized head, peppered with horns. In that split second, his body hung horizontally in the air. A jerk of each leg unhooked the gravity boots from the inversion bar. He used inertia to fall backward, flipping the demon over his rolling body as he did so and kicking at the swishing black mist that hung at the base of the creature instead of demonic feet. Though fitted with deadly claws that could halve a good-sized sofa with one swipe, it was a small demon in body, so the toss proved an easy one.

  “P-Cell has been trying to nail the Cadre for decades,” the answering machine continued. “We can never get close enough to their guarded establishment. We suspect they are somehow linked to the Department of Anachronistic Research at London University, since all roads lead directly to Lord Lawrence, Earl of St. Yve—er, one of his twin daughters currently heads the department. I did a background check on your Mersey Bane and she’s a former student, and a suspected Cadre member.”

  Jumping upright and landing in a defensive crouch, Jack surveyed the room. He positioned his arms, ready for fisticuffs. “Come on, you ugly scruff. Show your face!”

  “This is quite a coup, Jack. You’ve made contact with the Cadre. You’ve orders from Dirk Marcolf to track Mersey Bane.”

  The demon untangled its limbs with a wicked clack of talon. Its roar hummed in Jack’s sinuses. It wasn’t the volume so much as the wretched smell of sulfur that lifted the bile up Jack’s throat.

  “You likely know little about the Cadre,” Belladonna continued. “Haven’t been with us long enough, I’m sure. We believe they may have existed for centuries. P-Cell, and those we’ve suspected to be with the Cadre, have been at odds since P-Cell’s inception in the forties. They’re a bunch of parapsychologists and demonologists. And get this, they like to study and preserve the demons and then return them to the dark realm. Isn’t that a hoot?”

  “Completely,” Jack uttered. He eyed the M4 still propped by the front door. Twenty paces away. The next closest weapon was the .45 down the hall inside the bedroom.

  The gravity boots slid down and over his ankles, making flexing his feet

  —and thus running—difficult.

  “P-Cell has never had access to the Cadre. Their base is protected by some sort of magical shield. Most frustrating, for a few agents have almost succeeded. Or so we can guess. Lost their memories, they did, when they got too close. Marcolf wants you to verify the location of the Cadre,” Belladonna said. “Destroy all demon activity, if necessary, to obtain admission. It’ll be a real feather in your cap, Jack.”

  Click.

  Feathers, he didn’t mind. It was the snarly, horned, niffy things that put up his hackles.

  “And what did I do to deserve you?” Jack muttered to the swaying demon whose glowing red eyes were to be avoided. Staring into its eyes could enchant the daemon incultus—at the expense of a man’s sanity.

  “Now you filthy lot are showing up in my own home?”

  “Ave magister, Ba’al Beryth!”

  “I don’t speak demon, but I’ll take that as an unflattering comment on my living quarters. It was tidy until you crashed the party. Stinking bit of—”

  The demon lunged, claws slashing the wall near Jack’s ear. Deep trenches cut through the plaster. Jack dove backward, catching his right shoulder on the floor and rolling his body up into a run. It was at moments like this that the little boy inside Jack stood up and thrust back his shoulders. Jack the Demon Frightener? Don’t let the big hunk of glass hit you on the way out.

  Or rather, do.

  It was an awkward race with the gravity boots clunking about his ankles, but he made the bedroom door, gripped the frame and swung himself inside just as the demon soared by, growling and gnashing its teeth. The .45 under the bed was loaded and ready. Salt rounds always did the trick. Jack sat up, aimed and blasted the face that appeared in the doorway—if you could call drooling black lips, red eyes and horns a face.

  “Spot on.”

  A perfect hole opened between the glowing eyes. Jack could see through it to the slashes in the wall on the opposite side of the hallway. No splatter. Sometimes they didn’t do that. Instead—

  Jack slammed his body flat, facedown on the carpet. Behind him the demon hardened and cracked, as if sprayed with liquid nitrogen, and then exploded. Hard bits flew about the room. Something conked the back of his head. An eyeball rolled under the bed. The chunks began to sizzle and pouf, they fizzled and broke apart to a simmering red ash.

  “And I just had this ugly carpet shampooed,” he muttered. Sitting upright against the door frame, the pistol clutched and ready, Jack peered down the hallway. He didn’t smell any others, but wasn’t about to let down his guard. If one had entered, then others must surely know the way.

  P-Cell’s job description hadn’t included entertaining weird snarling, horned creatures in his home. He’d been living in a surreal horror flick ever since tha
t bust had gone bad months earlier.

  Something had happened that night. The demon in the warehouse, it had…touched his heart. Literally.

  Jack placed a hand over his chest. A thin line of scar tissue above his nipple proved that he hadn’t imagined the strange happening. Each time he traced it, a weird vibration gripped his heart. Engaging a salt round into the chamber, he muttered, “What did I do to piss off the demon realm?”

  He knew the answer, and it hadn’t been anything recent, he felt sure. This war had begun over twenty years ago when a little boy had thrust a wishing ball at a monster to save a beautiful woman’s life. Swiping a finger across his eyebrow, Jack felt a cut. Blood curled into the whorls on his fingertip. Another scar to add to his collection. From his doorway position, he eyed the red light blinking on the answering machine. Mersey Bane was involved in a covert demon-hunting group? The Cadre?

  Now that he had a moment for clear thought, he had heard of the organization. Dirk Marcolf, P-Cell’s deputy director, had mentioned them once during training. Marcolf made routine visits to the Department of Anachronistic Research at the London University, to check up on them, hoping to catch anything untoward going on. They’d not sniffed out a solid lead to the Cadre headquarters yet. I believe in you, Jack.

  Belladonna’s support felt strange to him. He couldn’t muster belief in himself, so how could any other manage it?

  Brushing off a scatter of demon ash from his forearm, Jack disengaged the pistol. Another female’s voice shattered Belladonna’s comforting statement.

  Are you even aware of the chain of fallout that occurs each time you kill a demon?

  He wasn’t sure what Mersey had been talking about, but he wondered now. Demon annihilated. Job complete. What more was there? Fallout? Beyond the mess settling into his carpet, he hadn’t a clue. But he’d find out because he had just been given a new objective. Tracking Miss Bane.

  Four hours later, Mersey tugged on cigarette-leg jeans and a soft green sweater, still warm from the dryer. Her boots were polished, along with the buff coat (cleaned and folded). Attribute that to the house brownies who did their work on the periphery of usual perception. She’d see to leaving them some rosehip wine in thanks. They preferred the French appellations, as she’d learned years earlier when she’d thought to leave cheap English ale and returned to her room to find her sheets stained with ale and the chairs nailed to the ceiling. Brownies were offended by overgenerous gifts, but true affront rose at thoughtless, cheap presents.

  Stuffing the goggles and cap in her coat pocket, she then donned the coat and headed below to see if the interrogation had begun. She had lain in bed for hours, but was pretty sure she had only gotten fifteen minutes of real sleep. The rest of the time had been a lucid dream of sexy, sweaty bodies doing the nasty. Starring herself and a particularly fine male body, with a muscled back, tall stature, gruff manner and commanding kisses. Oh, and the kitchen sink of a rifle he wielded propped by the wall three feet from their bed of passion. She wondered about those kisses. When she’d initially kissed Jack, she hadn’t been sure, and being out of practice, she’d been more than a little nervous. But nervousness had fled with the warmth of the man’s commanding touch. And the overwhelming feeling of safety she had felt nestled in his powerful embrace.

  What the hell was she doing?

  “Mersey, you so need to get back in the game.”

  For years she’d truly believed in her mother’s portent, and had simply waited for the one. Then, realizing nothing would come to her—not even romance—unless she put herself out there, she’d begun to explore the idea of a relationship. Brief, noncommittal relationships that hadn’t felt right to continue beyond a few weeks of dinners and sex. She’d never had a real, devoted boyfriend, though there had been two lovers in her past. Mersey had come to learn that mortals didn’t do it for her, but neither did paras. So what remained?

  The one faery she’d kissed had left her with a sour taste for the sidhe. Yet, she still hungered for Raskin in her dreams—an ostracized prince from the Black court. A girl couldn’t dream up more of a bad boy than that.

  Mersey wasn’t sure where she stood on the scale of acceptable partners. It was difficult being a familiar in a realm that didn’t even believe in her existence.

  Her parents had been familiars, and so Mersey had been born a familiar. Even though a familiar’s principal habitat was the mortal realm, she was not considered mortal, and she had never felt right out there in the populated sectors. Though, certainly she did function and fit in just fine.

  Her paranormal skills were particular, yet few. Besides being a vessel demons tapped to bridge to this realm, shifting to cat form was her most outstanding. Shifting was a carryover from the ancient familiars who were once cats, with the ability to shift to human form. Over the centuries her kind had adapted. Her senses were heightened, especially her eyesight. She could see like a cat, which made her world a gorgeous abundance of texture. And her connection to the organic electromagnetic structure of the world made it easy to locate ley lines, and sense paras.

  As well, she’d studied martial arts. The Cadre didn’t offer the training as a means to kill opponents, but rather defense. They frowned on violence.

  Here at the St. Yve manor she was accepted. But never really loved. Would love be possible? Had her mother unknowingly sealed her destiny so many years ago?

  Rubbing her right hand along her coat, Mersey toyed with the hematite rings, rolling them around her fingers. Mirabelle Bane had chosen a mate for her daughter—and had given that person a ring like the ones Mersey wore, so her daughter would know the man when she met him. As if she would ever meet the one out of billions.

  “Thanks a lot, Mom,” Mersey muttered, as she did so many times when her thoughts drifted to her lack of mate. “A photo would have been more helpful…Oh, no.”

  A quick count resulted in seven rings instead of the usual eight she wore. Had one fallen off? Broken?

  Her heart sinking, Mersey swallowed.

  She’d always worn these rings. They were bespelled to protect and warn her of demon presence—one very dangerous demon, in particular.

  “One gone,” she whispered. “This doesn’t bode well.”

  But what to do? She did keep one ring in safekeeping. “No, I’ll save it. I still have eight total.”

  Pressing her beringed fingers over her heart, she strode the quiet manor hallways. The lab was on the lower level in the dungeon. Mersey found Squire Callahan bent over a microscope, his long fingers enrobed in thin blue latex gloves and a pristine white lab coat cutting below his hips—he was beyond six feet high. Blond hair that might never see a comb twisted this way and that on his narrow skull. The raucous noise of a rock band was flipped off as he noticed her entrance. “Oh, hey, Mersey. You’re looking spiffy.”

  “Feeling it, too, Squire. So, what’s up?”

  He nodded toward the far end of the lab, where the interrogation was already in progress.

  Segregated behind a massive Lucite wall that was bulletproof, clawproof, fireproof and reinforced with magically enhanced nano-bars to keep whatever magic may be released inside, the interrogator paced the white marble floor below the floating demon.

  Known by her distinctive moniker, Interrogations was a slim, short woman with severe straight brown hair and equally severe black plasticrimmed glasses. Mersey often mused that if the woman would remove the glasses and add a bit of pink to her dour wardrobe she could be a real looker.

  The interrogatee was plump and a blushing shade of salmon. Short orange hairs stuck out all over the thing and the glossy green eyes bugged as it took in the room. Obviously a daemon incultus, for the other, daemon sapiens, always wore a mortal form.

  “A lesser incultus demon?” she asked Squire as they observed. “Turn the volume up.”

  Squire tapped the console before them. “A mischief demon, to be exact. Interrogations has almost broken it. It’s peckish. And we have rats.”

  Misc
hief demons were the bawling babies of the dark realm. They were easily upset, very loud and craved rodents. Interrogations always had rats on hand. Mersey was never too interested in discovering how the woman came by the demon treats.

  Mersey listened as the expressionless woman mercilessly questioned the quivering demon regarding its entrance familiar. The majority of daemon incultus required a familiar to passage to the mortal realm. Find the familiar, and the Cadre would have their source of the leak. But Mersey’s thoughts strayed.

  She wondered how Jack would handle such an interrogation. Likely he’d forgo talk and instead blast the subject to Kingdom Come. And then he’d turn on that sexy smile and kiss her.

  She sighed and hugged her arms to her chest. Last night was the first time she’d met anybody in the know who wasn’t a Cadre initiate, though certainly she had heard of freelance hunters.

  The idea that there was someone out there—who wasn’t a Cadre member—who could relate to her world, intrigued her. He had stood over her, locking her in his sight with deep blue eyes the color of a twilight sky after the rain. And her heart experienced delicious palpitations.

  Jack. Wasn’t that the standard name for the hero in all the action movies?

  Heroes were well and good, but…ah, blimey. She could use a tall, dark and muscular man to rescue her from indecision and answer her quest for fulfillment.

  Things like a relationship, and companionship, and love sounded pretty good to her right now. She wanted passion. Dash it, she craved passion. Hmm, Mersey wondered if the hero was in the mood for damsel rescuing. She was far from helpless when it came to tracking paras. However, when it came to flirtation, desperation made her kiss perfect strangers.

  “Mersey?”

  “Yes,” she answered dreamily.

  “What’s with you?” Squire shrugged a hand through his tousle of springy curls. “Are you paying attention?”

  “Huh?”

  “Ah, she’s got men in her eyes, she does. Or is that faeries?”