Familiar Stranger

by Michele Hauf

  Only Squire would be so audacious to use her past to tease her. “Will I ever live that down?”

  “Oh, you have. That’s why someone needs to remind you.”

  “Raskin is not so awful. He was just…having a bad day.”

  “Mersey, you continue to defend him after he humiliated you.”

  “It’s just his manner. He is a faery.”

  “Why do women do that?” Squire pounded the stainless-steel lab table with a fist. “They ignore the average bloke to swoon over the charming rogues, when we all know they are lecherous and only out for one thing. You’re too good for that, Mersey.”

  Nice to hear it said, even if it was hard to believe sometimes. She didn’t want to be so good that all her male prospects were ruled out. “I prefer to remain on Raskin’s good side, Squire. He does like his mischief.”

  “Point taken.”

  “But no more kissing faeries. So.” She looked to the interrogation. “Back to work.”

  The mischief demon had fitted itself into a corner and its orange fur shivered. The subject eyed the steel cage that harbored a fat white rat. It began to bawl like a spoiled child.

  “Name the familiar,” Interrogations repeated. She stabbed a glance toward the nervous rat. “Then you can indulge.”

  “Jack!” the demon howled, and lunged for the cage. The interrogator stood over the cage, eyeing the demon. The demon’s jaws morphed hideously into a complaining but silent moan. “Jack Harris!”

  Stepping back, and almost missing the step down to the main floor, Mersey clutched the edge of the steel lab table to steady herself. “No. Bloody. Way.”

  The demon had given up the familiar who had opened the passage to this realm. But, that couldn’t be right.

  “Jack? But he didn’t…”

  He hadn’t given her any sign, impression, or even a feeling that he was a para. Not that she had the ability to recognize another familiar with their clothes on. It wasn’t possible—unless she witnessed the familiar shift shapes or saw the crescent-shaped witch mark that all naturalborn familiars wore somewhere on their bodies. Or perhaps he was a mortal who had been tapped by a demon? Jack Harris had stepped into her world with guns blazing. He’d kissed her. He’d…killed a demon. Which could have also resulted in the death of another familiar, if said demon had bridged here via a familiar. Fallout.

  Mersey jerked her gaze back to the demon. A thin twitching white rat tail streamed out from between its tight orange lips.

  “Could it be lying?”

  Squire stepped down and sorted through a collection of quartz pyramids and various storage and collection stones arrayed on the steel table.

  “Doubt it. Give a demon its favorite treat and it won’t lie. Bitch when we get the war demons in here. Their favorite is human babies. Not that we have ever sacrificed—”

  “Squire, I…” She didn’t know how to react to this information. Besides racing back to Jack Harris and punching him in the kisser. And yet, why should she expect him to reveal himself to her? It wasn’t as though she introduced herself to others as “Mersey Bane, demon familiar. How’d you do?”

  “We’re sending it back.” Squire tossed a perfectly round hunk of pink rhodonite in his palm. “I’ve got enough of those things stored in the archives. You keen with that? Mersey? You don’t look so well.”

  She clutched her scalp and turned from Squire’s imploring hazel eyes.

  “Jack Harris was there last night in the warehouse. I thought he was a freelance demon hunter, one of those nuts who believe and take on the quest by themselves.”

  “The Jack Harris the demon gave up?”

  Mersey nodded. “But I didn’t know. How to know when in the presence of another…”

  “Familiar?”

  She looked to Squire and nodded, unable to voice the many weird thoughts running through her brain. Foremost being that she had kissed a stranger without getting any of the important credentials.

  “The demon is lying. It can’t be right.”

  “Demons do lie,” Squire agreed. He tapped the Lucite divider, and the mischief demon shivered. “But this one is telling the truth. It has no reason not to.”

  Then that meant…Mersey had been drawn to what she most needed.

  “I’ve got to get back to London. Now.”

  Chapter 7

  J ack stretched his arms over his head and pushed into the cushy leather office chair until it tilted against the wall. Below MI5 headquarters, deep in the basement rumored to house the tech geeks, was where P-Cell made its home. Only P-Cell agents had access. By now Jack had learned to offer a smirk to former MI5 colleagues ribbing about his being a basement geek.

  He’d been destined for this job since he was a boy. Even though he had been recruited because of Monica’s death.

  As had become ritual, each Sunday morning, he’d check in the archives and pore over the textbooks and grimoires kept under lock, key and warding.

  Books spread before him across the long glass conference table. An open laptop displayed an ancient scanned text. Today, he’d hit pay dirt. Finally, he’d found a picture and description to resemble the demon he’d seen months earlier. A dread demon.

  A daemon incultus, dread demons were powerful denizens of the dark realm. Their prime directive was raising dread in their mortal victims through macabre means such as violence, shock, even murder. A mortal’s dread could call a dread demon to this realm. A direct order from the Grigori, the ruling council that oversaw the dark realm, could send it here as well.

  Though the varieties of demons were vast, some were concentrated to one element, and worked their powers through the earth, air, fire or water. Dreads used air, including mortal breath as a means to feed off their dreadsome nightmares.

  And yet, for all that power the dreads did require a familiar to bridge to the mortal realm.

  So who, or what, had allowed that nasty son of a bitch to bridge to the mortal realm on the night of Monica’s death?

  Jack tapped a finger on top of the drawing and read the caption below.

  “Ba’al Beryth, Minister of Devilish Pacts and Rituals. Quite the title.”

  Red horns curled back from its forehead, hugging the side of its skull, to point at the row of sharpened teeth fit into a scythe grin. Emaciated so that its ribs showed, and yet wrapped in red muscle, it bore skeletal wings at the back of its shoulders. The hands were humanlike, yet stretched and curled with black talons.

  This was the demon he’d watched murder Monica. Was it the same he had seen as a child? Maybe.

  Obviously, a familiar had to be attached to the dread demon to allow it to passage to this realm. More than the one demon must currently tap the same familiar, for all that had been appearing in the concentrated area in Bermondsey. Unless some of the demons didn’t require a familiar, but merely an open passage.

  Hmm…

  Was there a familiar living in the area?

  Jack scoured the texts to refresh his memory on familiars. Virtually human—familiars were the closest OE to being mortal—yet familiars could shift shapes at will, most always feline. Hmm. Jack gave pause. That black cat in the underground last night…? Nah. Impossible. That would mean Mersey was a—no.

  He read on.

  Most familiars freely allowed their demon cohorts to tap them, but some were tapped against their will. Even common mortals could be tapped by clever demons. The bridging to this realm caused the familiar brief yet excruciating pain, but otherwise, they lived a normal life, until their demon master required a recharge, so to speak. Mine.

  Jack shook his head to obliterate the nasty whisper. Better not to think about those things, and to look to the future. Like destroying Beryth. No, he would not give it the preceding ba’al, which pronounced it a lord. And the easiest way to do that? Locate its familiar. However, besides finding a demon, Jack had a new assignment to contend. P-Cell wanted him to track Mersey Bane to the Cadre. After searching the computer database, he found a small article
on the Cadre, which had been written in 1960 by the founder of P-Cell, William Hanlow.

  The Cadre was believed to be a hermetic order. Hanlow also believed the order existed behind the veil of the Department of Anachronistic Research at London University—but he’d never gained substantial proof. He postulated that members of the Cadre were recruited from the department, and, according to the text, various forms of paras—the Cadre’s term for otherworldly entities—were also commissioned to serve the deceptively benevolent group.

  To Jack, a hermitic order was some sort of religious cult that believed in the woo-woo. He didn’t buy that stuff. Good solid firepower was the only magic he believed in.

  Hanlow suspected the Cadre researched all forms of otherworldly beings, possibly even experimented on and stored them. Lord Lawrence Maybank, Earl of St. Yve, had inherited command of the Cadre from his father, as it had been handed down to sons through the ages, and had served as head of the department for forty years before his daughter, Dawn, had taken over.

  There was a notation in the updates, made in 1976, of twin daughters born to the earl the previous year, Dawn and Aurora. Tough bit of luck there. Not a son in sight to inherit.

  All that background information helped Jack little. What concerned him was there had been no recorded infiltration of the Cadre by P-Cell. Seems the country manor where the Cadre resided was protected by a sort of shield that kept out intruders. If anyone were lucky enough to pinpoint the cottage inhabited by an elderly couple—alleged preternatural gatekeepers—they could get no farther, and often returned with complete confusion as to where they had been. Oftentimes memory loss was involved.

  The Cadre kept P-Cell at bay, and P-Cell continued their attempts to thwart the Cadre’s daft endeavors to befriend dangerous OEs. It was too dicey to allow any demon to inhabit this realm, even the ones that didn’t prove a danger. For if you allowed one access, then others followed. A crystal clear fact to Jack.

  Clicking out of the database and putting the computer to sleep, Jack stared at the picture of Beryth. His palms felt warm and sticky upon the paper. He realized suddenly that his breath had increased. He slapped a hand over his chest. Beneath his shirt the scar heated, yet didn’t tingle as it sometimes did when he touched it. Mine.

  No. And no! He was not connected to Beryth.

  I would know.

  “So, I’ve to find a familiar to stop the demons. And…”

  P-Cell believed Mersey was a Cadre member? No problem. He had merely to follow her home, and mission accomplished. If he could find her again.

  How to track a woman whose only known location was on his lips?

  “Lure her to the ley line that’s been leaking demons.”

  Right then.

  He swung around and, tapping out the access code on the desk console, the steel wall behind him slid open to reveal an array of weapons available to the hunters and seekers. Silver and black steel glinted. Guns and knives and throw stars were displayed. Laser scopes, GPS

  enhancements, grapple hooks and grenade launchers. P-Cell ordered the salt for their weapons directly from Egypt; only Dead Sea salt would work against a demon.

  He selected a few salt grenades and then, tucking the demon directory under his arm, headed out the back door, a secret exit that put him topside into a car park.

  “Look out, Beryth, your days are numbered.”

  The London Eye lit up the boardwalk and twinkled in the dark waters of the Thames to Mersey’s immediate right.

  Witching rods in hand, she hadn’t yet picked up para activity, though she did sense a ley line in the vicinity. She wanted to patrol the length of the river in London proper. A huge task, but the hot spot she’d located the other night could spread.

  She didn’t worry that people stared, remarking on her curious activity. Cadre members were particular to avoid allowing civilians to accidentally witness a crystal capture. And if they did? Memory wipe was used. Mersey prided herself on not once having to utilize the wipe—she’d always felt it morally wrong.

  “Jack!”

  Mersey spun abruptly, spying the couple, and the woman who had named her lover Jack. They kissed and giggled and walked opposite Mersey’s direction.

  Jack.

  How to determine if Jack Harris was a familiar?

  Her knuckles tightened and Mersey realized she was gripping the rods for life. Relaxing, she then marked her paces as she strode the boardwalk, cautious not to bump into anyone.

  She supposed it wasn’t something that should have come up in their previous conversation. “Oh, by the way, love, I’m the one who’s been letting those demons run free. Fancy more snogging?”

  Should she reveal to him that she was a familiar? Like trusting like? Mersey tried to be as honest as possible. Lies never came easily to her. And it wasn’t as though she were lying to the Cadre about her contact with the demon hunter; they hadn’t asked after her liaisons, so why start a row over something even she wasn’t sure about?

  “I will tell him.” Relieved, she let out a long exhale. “Yes. Then, he’ll feel comfortable enough to confide in me.”

  She walked onward.

  Jack propped his forearms on the Westminster bridge railing. An evening breeze sifted the Thames up into his face, and he zoned out on the spin of the 440-foot high moving observation wheel that he considered a blight on the cityscape—the London Eye. Thinking the way to track Mersey was to return to hunting, he dug out the EMF from a pocket of his canvas jacket and checked the readings. Close to a ley line.

  The mere fact she tracked demons, and captured them in crystals to stuff into her pocket, was wacky enough. And that getup with the goggles and cap? Definitely two steps to the left, that bird. Yet, Jack liked any woman who would rather snog than talk.

  Mersey seemed to be both. A talker and a kisser. Toss in a few demons, and he had a right fancy mix. Conversation, action and romance. Not that sex was romantic, but he never argued against a woman’s sexual demands. Or his own. It had been weeks since he’d last shagged. A man shouldn’t go that long unless he was near death, and even then—

  “Harris!”

  The EMF registered a faint activity. Weird.

  Jack turned to spy a rather normal young woman striding toward him. No cap and goggles tonight. She wore the long buff coat over slim black jeans and a green turtleneck. And was that a hint of makeup darkening her eyelids and calling attention to those bold green eyes? Like a kohleyed Cleopatra.

  “What are you doing here, hotshot?” she called as she approached and shoved the witch rods in a pocket.

  “Same thing you’re doing. So, you’re going to poke about with your copper rods to locate the big bads?” Jack wondered.

  “It’s called witching, and I’m marking out the ley line. Demons tend to use the ley lines for entry passages to this realm.”

  “Good old mortal realm. How I do enjoy my feet planted on it.” Jack joined her side, putting his back to the spray from the river. “Those bent wires really work?”

  “Yes. And they’re copper rods, not wires.”

  “Just don’t point them at me.”

  “Why not? You think I’ll learn something you’d rather keep secret?”

  “You think I have a secret?” He had put a wall around himself. And he liked it that way. “No secrets here.”

  The wind blew long strands of blackest hair across Mersey’s lips. It was all Jack could do to stop himself from reaching up. Why restrain himself?

  He touched the strands and she bowed her head. But the wind blew the hair right back. “I tried.”

  “You win or lose?” she asked.

  “What? Oh.” He followed her gaze to his eye and touched the slash wound above his brow. “I always win. At least against the things that play by the rules.”

  “I see. Ever go up on that thing?” She nodded toward the Eye.

  “Can’t pay me enough.”

  “Really? Afraid of heights?”

  “I fear nothing, little girl
.”

  “Oh, really? Well, I like it. Especially at night.” She stretched out her arms and leaned forward over the railing. The lights from the wheel reflected off the river and glittered over Mersey’s face. “Up there feels like flying in a slow-motion world of flashing lights and soundless sky.” A twist of her head tilted a daring look at him. “Want to go up?”

  He crossed his arms, wondering what the bird was up to this time. That teasing smile and those sensual eyes never alluded to business. She was all about the tease, this one.

  Weren’t you going to stop mixing business with pleasure? Bloody conscience.

  And yet Jack ignored his inner voice because no man should ever resist opportunity when it knocked. “All right, then.”

  “Great. We can talk.”

  “We can—?” Why did that not sound as pleasurable as he’d hoped? She strode away, the tails of her coat flying out, and called back,

  “There’s something I want you to know about me, Jack!”

  Well, then. Would she reveal she was with the Cadre? Jack sped after the gorgeous bird. Business, it would be.

  Chapter 8

  J ack jogged up to the observation capsule where Mersey boarded. The huge wheel never stopped—unless for the occasional handicapped person

  —and moved slowly enough that passengers could easily board.

  “I paid for you!” Mersey called and gestured that he hurry into her capsule.

  Jack stomped past the brightly lit vendor stand that sold replicas of the Eye to tourists, and joined Mersey in the air-conditioned capsule. No one followed, so they had the seating to themselves. For the next half hour.

  Trailing his fingers along the curved Plexiglas wall, Jack shot his gaze above and around the illuminated cell, enclosed and attached to the outside of the wheel and hanging precariously over the Thames. Nifty. Already his staunch avoidance of the thing began to waver as he anticipated viewing the city from the top. And, since the object of his interest couldn’t go anywhere, he was set.

  “All right, young lady.” Keeping in mind this was business, he crossed his arms and worked his best authoritative stance on her. “You got me here, alone, and unable to run away. What are your intentions?”