Demon Bone (The Demons of Oxford Book 1)

by Kara Silver

  Her entire body was a lightning-like being of pure electrical energy, and she turned it on the shadow mage, blasting him with every molecule of strength she had, feasting on his screams as he twitched and spasmed at her feet, listening to his curses as, twisting and clawing, light pinned him to the grass. “Oh, and shoot lightning bolts, apparently,” she added, before sinking to her knees, her body one huge ache of red-hot pain. She got her hands over her ears to block out the unholy scream that was the sound of the lesser demons being torn from existence on this plane. When the noise ended, the silence and emptiness was almost as horrifying.

  “Move away from him!” Aeth leapt to her side and yanked her away, pushing her to collapse against a tree trunk. He stared all around at the sudden emptiness. He snatched the leather coat from the unconscious shadow mage and draped it over Kennedy’s head and shoulders for her, his hands a little shaky as he did so. “Electrokinesis? Actually, that was quintessence force. It means you generate lightning that contains pure life energy. And you can stop now.”

  “Oh. Okay.” Soaked, freezing, her ears ringing, weak in every muscle and every single nerve in her body screaming a protest, Kennedy stared up at the storm until it ceased.

  “What…” Aeth coughed, a grating, sliding sound. Water dripped from him, darkening him. “Kind of demon mage are you?”

  Kennedy rounded on him. “Well if you don’t know, how the hell should I? And, yes, I’ll use that word if I want to. Hell, hell, hell!”

  She flinched at an ear-splitting high-pitched whine, a two-tone noise getting nearer. Red lights flashed and the growl of engines sounded. “What’s that?” She doubted she could face anything else.

  “You must be a very law-abiding citizen not to recognise that.” Aeth could barely move this head. “It’s the police.”

  “So it’s all over?” Later, she’d feel ashamed at the eagerness in her tone.

  He shot her a look of pure sympathy. “On the contrary, I’d say it’s just beginning.” He touched a hand to a fallen grave marker and vanished.

  Kennedy peered over at the shouting figures, swinging the beams of their torches and running towards her. Shit.

  29

  She wriggled into the leather duster coat and shot over to the figure of the shadow mage where he lay face-down, to crouch bent over and then kneel for as much cover as possible. Acting on instincts she hadn’t dreamed she possessed, she put her left hand over his demon mark. His eyes shot open but he remained prone.

  “Look at me,” she ordered, waiting until his irises lost their red hue and took on a beaten look. “I defeated you and now I compel you. Whatever story I weave is yours. Do you understand?”

  He nodded.

  “Good. Sleep now,” she ordered.

  “Stop! Stay where you are! No one move!” rang around the hollow, yelled by different voices sprinting toward her.

  “Help!” Kennedy screamed, thinking quickly. “Help me, please!”

  She backed away a little, trembling and pointing at the unconscious figure on the ground. “Quick, please!”

  “What the—” The grey-haired sergeant slowed to a stop and glared at Kennedy. “You!”

  “It’s him! He’s the one responsible for the girls’ deaths.” Kennedy give a shiver, rain dripping from her. She turned the shiver into a shudder and dashed water from her face. Tears had probably flowed, so it wasn’t a complete con job.

  “What?” This was another officer, who turned the unconscious body over with a foot.

  “Well, not him personally all of them, but it’s a cult!” Kennedy insisted, wide-eyed, her mind running on how long the disappearances had been going on for. “Their current headquarters is that tattoo place on the Cowley Road. He drugs the girls and then, then…” She burst into noisy sobs.

  A female officer swept her to one side, prompting her with questions to understand her story. It was jumbled, of course, but she thought she got the gist across about the guy meeting girls during Freshers’ Week events or at his shop, then preying on them, stalking them, grooming them and—

  “So, you set yourself up as a decoy, to lure him out?” the sergeant interrupted, hard-eyed.

  Kennedy nodded. “Yes. After all the research I did, and my theories, I deliberately went to parties until I got close to him and I pretended to be under his spell. In his cult. Then said I’d meet him here. Tonight.”

  “To do what? What were you intending to do?”

  Damn. “Record him confessing to abduction and murder,” Kennedy answered on a gasp, her eyes as wide as saucers. “Only that storm was right overhead and the electricity meant my phone wouldn’t work to record him. And then with all the chaos…”

  She looked around. Of course, there was no sign of any disturbance. No churned-up earth, no strewn-about tombstones, no freshly opened graves, and certainly no pressganged into service skeletons. Damn. “In all the confusion, of the storm, I think he was struck by lightning.”

  “My God!” exclaimed the policewoman. “That was incredibly—”

  “Stupid!” snapped the sergeant.

  “Sir! He’s coming to!” called a kneeling officer from the side of the handcuffed shadow mage.

  Kennedy couldn’t bear to listen to the officers’ questions and the mage’s answers, instead crossing her fingers hard that it all held together. “I did try and pass on my suspicions, remember. A few times,” she called loudly when the questioning flagged.

  “Yes, well…” The sergeant coughed.

  “Suspicions?” the female officer echoed.

  “That scholarship girls, from disadvantaged backgrounds were easy prey, easy targets for…grooming. By a cult,” Kennedy answered, her eyes on the sergeant. “Parties, drink, drugs. That new street drug—”

  “Kennedy?” It wasn’t Aeth’s voice. Not only was this a warmer, more down-home accent, but the degree of concern and alarm in the tone as the man ran up to her….

  “Chris. Sorry, PC Collier.” Kennedy smiled. “You almost missed the party.”

  “Party?” he exploded, making her step back. “What the hell? I just got the call for backup and—” He took a breath, collecting himself. “What’s going on? Sir,” he added on an afterthought to his sergeant.

  “Seems your girlfriend here’s been playing amateur detective.” The sergeant paused. “Unless the two of—”

  “No. This was all me. Nothing to do with anyone else. Although I did try and badger you all for info, if you remember,” said Kennedy, her eyes on the sergeant for a long second before she looked around the group, seeking out faces she recalled from the station. “But it was very frightening. I was scared.”

  Chris draped a tinfoil blanket around her, listening to both her and another cop catch him up. She smiled her thanks.

  “So, I’d rather keep out of it. He seems to be giving you all you need to convict him, right? No need to mention me. You can say a lady cop went undercover or even just heard something.” She shrugged. It looked so easy on TV. “Oh, and when you bust up that drug, Rush, or Russia? That’ll be a coup too.”

  “Never heard of it,” commented another officer. “And that’s my remit.”

  “Mind out now,” another officer cautioned, as they helped the guy to his feet.

  The knots of police broke up a little and Kennedy moved back to let officers pass and regroup, then, recalling her shrinking violet act, withdrew over to one side, her hand to her mouth. Her fear became real a second later when shouts and cries and contradictory calls and exhortations rang out—and the shadow mage, still handcuffed, stood right there at her side, his speed impossibly fast, his presence menacing.

  “You have no idea what you’ve done, do you?” He dripped each word into her ear like poison. “No idea what you’ve disturbed.”

  “Back off, everyone!” Chris shouted to the other cops, his arms out as shields, keeping everyone at bay. “No one approach. Repeat, do not approach!”

  “You think this was my operation?” The mage laughed in Kenned
y’s face. “You don’t have a clue how long it’s been going. Or for who.”

  “Don’t know, don’t care. Turn around.” Kennedy jerked her chin at the line of police. “Walk back there and submit to what’s coming to you.” She was proud her voice didn’t waver.

  The shadow mage turned, as jerky as a puppet. “Russia?” he sneered over his shoulder. “Try Obrussa. Latin. Useful language.”

  The way he said the last words… “Yeah, I bet you really understand that language, right?” she called to his back. “What with having to tattoo Nils Desperandum half a dozen times a week on your biker buddies. Oh, and thanks for the coat. Leather looks great on me. I’m gonna get it customised.” Lame, okay. But the last word, so, yay? “I, I think he’s crazy!” she stuttered to Chris. “Clinically insane!”

  “I’m not sure he’ll see much jail time,” Chris agreed, wrapping an arm around her.

  Kennedy was inclined to agree. Unless they had demon prisons, somewhere? Both Aeth and the shadow dude had referred to there being other dimensions, and she’d travelled through…something, so—

  “Kennedy!” Chris had been trying to get her attention. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m…” She really didn’t know. Her damsel in distress act must have been convincing—she was buying into it herself. She wanted to sag to the ground on weak, shaky limbs, then crawl under a table and sob for a few days.

  “What are you looking around for? Are there more of them?” Chris drew her closer still. Police were combing the cemetery.

  “No. Just him. I was just…” Looking for more people from Heylel. Because I thought I saw them. And that, coupled with the loser mage’s last words… “I just don’t want to think about it anymore, or anything associated with police work, okay?”

  “Ah. Right. So there’d be no point me asking you out for a drink anytime soon, then.” Chris’s face was turned away, and he looked very young, suddenly. “Oh. Erm. Hang fire. How old are you, actually?”

  She laughed. Couldn’t help it. Wondered if demons aged differently. Maybe she was a hundred. “I’m eighteen.”

  “Old enough.”

  “For…?” she queried, when he clammed up and blushed. “Catching serial killers? I thought we weren’t going to mention my extra-curricular work.”

  “No! For a pint in t’local!”

  “Oh.” Her turn to feel embarrassed and, as they walked to the entrance, her face flamed and her mouth dropped open at the sight of Aeth leaning against the stone post. He saw her too, her and Chris. “I think I’m in shock,” she said loudly, for Aeth to hear. That would explain the silver blanket…and the policeman’s arm around her.

  “I’m not surprised,” Chris agreed. “Do you like live guitar music?”

  “Is this part of the debriefing?” Kennedy still looked at Aeth. I’m fine, she mouthed. He nodded.

  “No. I just wondered if you’d like to go the Duke pub sometime and listen to the house band?” Chris kicked at a pebble in his path. She hoped it didn’t make Aeth wince.

  “I… Yes. Yes, I would. Yes, please.”

  “Great. That’s…great.” Chris beamed. He answered a shout for him, nodding and leaving her alone. He answered a shout for him, nodding at whoever had called, then held up a finger to her in the universal gesture for wait, before hurrying off.

  Not waiting, not one bit, Kennedy hurtled forwards. “Aeth, I—”

  He vanished.

  “Miss Smith?” She didn’t know this officer, in front of her now, cutting off her attempt to follow Aeth, but he had more stripes than the sergeant, so seemed important. “What made you suspect that man?”

  “Oh, the marks on the missing girls. The tattoos.” Kennedy nodded, glad she hadn’t called them scarifications. “So I looked for a tattoo place that fitted the bill and saw him.” She pointed at Loser Dude being helped into a police car. She could hardly speak or put one foot in front of another. “Can I go now?”

  When the officer didn’t reply, just stood scratching his head, she walked off. A second later, his words to another cop made her freeze.

  “What tattoos on the missing girls? What’s she talking about?”

  She’d…figure that, along with the rest, out later.

  30

  “Here! You haven’t paid for those!”

  Kennedy scowled at the newsagent as hard as she’d frowned at the newspapers while poring through page after page to find nothing about yesterday’s events, before crumpling the newspapers up. She handed over the cash with a bad grace.

  “No point looking at me like that. I don’t make the news, love,” said the woman.

  And neither do I, it seems. Well, what had she expected? She’d insisted the cops keep her out of it, downplay her role, and yeah, they’d done that, and more—there was no mention of the capture, the confession, the clearing up of a series of crimes. Nothing. Maybe it was too early for the news to have come out?

  “Early? Huh.” She’d slept the day away, missed every obligation she had, and only ventured out to the town centre now, in the late afternoon—to find nothing had changed. Would the news be in tomorrow’s papers? She doubted it. She’d hung around the first quad and the Porter’s Lodge, listening hard for any rumours about the events, and heard nothing. No one on the street was gossiping about it. She grabbed a coffee and doughnut from a café along Broad Street and sat at a table outside to check news sites on her phone. Nothing there. Well, this is Oxford. Much better for the place to hush anything like that up. Wouldn’t want the apple cart upset. But it all left her confused. She’d thought to go for a run, get some energy going, get her muscles working—everything was depleted and weak after yesterday—but putting on her running clothes and trainers was as far as she’d got with that plan.

  She meandered a little, shutting her eyes when she glimpsed any college or library building that reminded her should be studying, and found herself walking down a narrow passage leading from Radcliffe Square to the University Church of St Mary’s. She’d have to go in there one day soon, and pray not to flunk out, after doing hardly any work last week and nothing so far this. She stopped short at a doorway of some college or other—she should know what was where by now—and peered at the two grotesques, curled up under brackets sticking out on either side of it.

  Satyrs? Fauns? Who knew. Something about them reminded her of a certain herma and she wondered again where he was.

  “Behind,” said the one on the right.

  “You,” finished the one on the left.

  And they both unbent a little from their crouches, and removed their hands from their knees to point.

  “Don’t do that!” Kennedy exclaimed, spinning around. Aeth.

  “Sorry, Kennedy Smith,” he replied, searching her face just as she searched his. “So. Ready for training, before your shift?”

  She noticed he was wearing sports clothes, and pointed at him.

  “Just because you have a date, doesn’t mean you don’t have to train.”

  “A date.” She gave a tight nod. “Aeth—”

  “Later. Please. Not now.”

  Her heart stuttered a little at his tone. She nodded, and he started off. “I didn’t know hermai could jog,” she commented, catching up with his longer-legged stride.

  “I’d bet there’s a fair amount you don’t know.”

  About to remonstrate, Kennedy shrugged and put on a burst of speed, overtaking him. Then it became a competition, a mad dash, each taking the lead or losing it, along roads, streets and lanes, dodging foot traffic, attracting scowls or cat calls or smiles, until they must have run a few miles, leaving all the heartbreak and fear and chaos behind. If only for a while. A clock struck, and Kennedy slowed to a stop, holding out a hand to get Aeth to stop too.

  “You have a shift at the museum.”

  “I don’t think I’ll go. I mean, I can’t get back there in time.” They were way along St Clement’s Street, miles away.

  “Yes, you will. We can get there quickly. Come on.
Think of this as training too. And it is.”

  It turned out Aeth’s idea of getting somewhere quickly was to use the city as his own personal obstacle course. “What…the hell…is this?” Kennedy panted, following him as best she could up a series of bits of wall to pull herself up onto a low roof and race across in a diagonal.

  “Getting from point A to point B in the quickest and most efficient way you’re able to manage yet.” He turned back to grin at her. “Crouch down here so you’re not visible. They don’t like it.”

  “Who? What?” she wailed, duck-walking until she could swing down a drainpipe, with a lot less grace than Aeth did to find herself in a shop carpark.

  “You’re doing well,” he said, surprise in his tone.

  “This isn’t too bad!” Kennedy admitted. She’d always enjoyed running, climbing and jumping, just hadn’t thought of them as modes of transport before. “Wait!” she called, but copied him as he jumped from the side of Magdalen Bridge onto the grassy riverside path below. She thought they were probably trespassing, vaulting a barrier to cut through a college, but it was too much fun to worry about. Trees, benches, masonry, gates—it was all shortcuts and means to an end.

  “Hey, this?” she said as they walked across a flat roof of what she thought was a science lab. “Might mean I’m on time for lectures. Wait. This? This…is impossible. Careful!”

  “Come on!” He beckoned from the new building he perched on, on the other side of a gap he’d leapt to roll over on landing. “I know you can do it. I’ll catch you if you fall.”

  An odd little silence fell, and Kennedy looked down at the ground below, in the sliver between her roof and his. “I hope so,” she settled for, inching back to take a run at it. She’d wanted to say, “I trust you,” but she didn’t know if she did, yet. The undignified “wheeeee!” sound coming from her mouth as she ran and flung herself over should have embarrassed her, but didn’t.