by Aly Westman
“I don’t see anything,” I stated, leaning forward to inspect the live video feeds more carefully.
He clicked on the video of the backyard and enlarged it to the entire screen. “I’ll go back and then slow down the feed. They move faster when they don’t have a body slowing them down.” Corey pressed a combination of buttons and a control panel popped up on the screen, he went back a few minutes on the video and then slowed the speed down, so slow that it looked as if nothing were moving. “Okay, see here?” he asked, pointing to a small shadow in the corner of the screen. I nodded. “Keep your eye on it.” He clicked the video frames over a couple times and I watched the black shadow slowly form, it was like a large uneven bubble of smoke, no face or distinct features. In the next frames following the smoke dissipated again.
“How do you know it’s them and not some random ball of smoke?”
Corey chuckled. “That’s what your brain wants you to think. See our minds work in two different thought patterns, there is the, imagination half and then there is the logical half. Now, even though from what you tell us, you were raised to hunt, you were not raised to comprehend these entities. You weren’t taught how to recognise them or what to look for. Dame and I are the only ones in the group that grew up seeing these from an early age. For you, that means when your brain sees something it doesnt recognise it will automatically pair it up with something it does recognise. Your brain doesn’t know what a demon in true form looks like, but it does know what a bubble of smoke looks like and that is fairly close to it, so your logic takes over and it looks like a bubble of smoke.
“My brain knows what a demon looks like, in all ugly forms. So the minute I saw this I knew what it was, my ‘imagination’ half of my brain was strong enough to correct the logic and state, ‘nope, it’s not smoke, it’s an ugly ass demon.’” He smiled.
“Huh. Interesting.” I thought it over for a few minutes as I try to watch the balls of smoke on the camera, they moved incredibly fast.
“How’s the truck look?” Seth asked.
Corey looked back to the screen and closed the image of the demon down before opening the live feed from the garage up. “All is good, hasn’t been touched.”
Seth nodded slowly, he seemed to be in thought about something.
“It’s been four hours, how much juice do you think they have?” Damion asked.
Corey shrugged. “It all depends, so far this is the longest I’ve seen them do this, but they are fairly motivated.”
They all looked at me and I frowned, looking at my borrowed sneakers. The room got quiet for a while as everyone took up sitting. Seth was on his phone, though I doubt he got any reception down here. Corey kept his eyes trained on the laptop and Damion was leaned over having a hushed conversation with Quinn, their heads bent in close.
I knew Corey and Damion were born into this life, their parents hunters themselves. I knew Seth and Quinn chose this life, to avenge their family or pay back Ty for helping them, I wasn’t too sure on that part. So what about me. “I didn’t ask for this,” I said quietly. I looked up and Seth’s eyes were the first I met. “I wasn’t born into it… but in a way I was. I didn’t choose it… but in a way I did. I was trained to live this life but in a way I’m not. It doesn’t make much sense to me… but in a way it does.”
Seth nodded as if he understood, Damion said, “She’s talking in tongue, Quinn translate.”
Quinn shook his head and smacked Damion on the back of his. I smiled at him while he rubbed his head as if he were really hurt, though I knew it barely touched him. “What I mean is, my father trained me and raised me to fight in this world, so I was born into it like you and Corey, I just didn’t know it. I was ready to die, and leave, but I chose to stay. So far I’m not running, I’m staying.” I reached up and held onto the demon dog claw that hung from my neck. “I’m staying and I’m fighting. I don’t understand it. I don’t know the rules, what to kill, how to kill it… But learning it, it doesn’t frighten me. Not like before. Before I wanted to ignore it, hope they all went away. Now… I want to end them.
“They are after something, but it isn’t me, it’s what I can do. It’s… my trigger.” If felt like forever since I spoke the ugly word. “I don’t know how to activate it or anything, I know nothing about it.”
“It’s a spell,” Damion said.
My eyes shot up to his. “You know about it?”
“We had six weeks of searching for you that we also searched for answers,” Corey said beside me.
“Yeah, but how did you know about it, how did you know that’s what they took me for?” I asked him.
“Ty. He knew. You’re father called him just before he was taken,” Seth answered.
“You know, this looks really bad for Ty. My father and I were taken, right after Ty told him I had a spell on me, that I could find the location of this prince…” From the snippets of conversations I got whenever Seth was talking to Ty, Ty seemed pretty eager to get me to him. Not once has he ever asked to speak to me, his niece.
“Ty wouldn’t do that,” Seth said firmly. “He has honor, to the point of it crippling him. He wouldn’t have anything to do with demons in that way. He wants to destroy the prince, and not once has he asked us to do anything to trigger you.”
I nodded, Seth’s loyalty to my uncle was strong. “Did you guys do any research on the demon prince? Who is he?”
Quinn shook his head. “We tried, there is very little on him. We did find he is immortal, and basically that he doesn’t like to be found. A lot of hunters have searched for him, some have died in the process.”
“Aren’t all demons immortal?”
“Yes, but he is unique,” Corey said beside me. “He has a solid true form. I am trying to figure out how, but he isn’t in a capsule. Remember how I told you about demons being entities? In order to have solid human form on Earth they need a capsule? Apparently not this guy. There could be a number of reasons, most of them being that he is only partial demon, not full, but that didn’t make sense.”
“Why would demons want a partial demon for their prince?” I said rhetorically. All I knew about demons was what I read in fantasy books and movies. They always wanted power, always prideful and full of greed. So why would a prideful bunch of demons want a half breed that could have diluted power?
“Exactly,” Corey said. “Also, the demons are the only ones that seem to refer to him as their prince. I can’t find an actually name anywhere.”
“We’ve been over that though,” Quinn stated. “Even if he did have a name what good would it do? Immortals tend to change names often.”
“There are more? There are people that are immortal?” I asked, I don’t know why it shocked me given everything I had gone through up until this point.
“Yeah, most are registered but that is just a courtesy move. They usually do what they want and Ty leaves them be as long as they aren’t harming mortals,” Corey said, he looked back to his laptop and began tapping at the keys. “The storm looks to be clearing,” he added.
Seth nodded. “Give it a few minutes and then the three of us will head up and do a quick sweep before we move her.”
“Her has a name,” I told him. “I say we just run to the SUV, book it out of here.”
“Did you see how fast they move?” Quinn asked. “Do you think you can outrun them?”
Valid point. “So the bullets will banish them? To hell?”
“We don’t know exactly, but for the most part yes...When we are able to get a clean shot,” Corey said to me.
I smiled at him. “I never miss.”
Chapter 18
Looking through the monitors, the skies outside remained dark and grey, but the wind had died down. “Surprisingly they didn’t cause much damage,” Quinn said as he looked through the security camera. “It literally was like they had a temper tantrum and then left.”
“All the more reason to be cautious. Seems like they summoned all this energy for nothing,” Corey
said. He, Damion, and Seth were by the door, ready to go. I sat on the large chest with Quinn while he had the laptop sitting perfectly on his legs.
Quinn pulled his phone out. “If I call, answer it. It is probably me calling to tell you you’re screwed,” he said.
“You can get a signal in here?” I asked.
“Yeah. How’d you think we are able to get the live feed?” I guess I never really thought about that. Quinn looked back to the screen as the others opened the door and began filing out. The door closed and I went over to lock it as I had been told. I walked back and sat next to him, gun held protectively in my hand as I stared at the screen.
Seth was the first to be seen on a camera, he was in the garage. He had his gun held in front of him with two hands as he walked cautiously in the room. “How do you shoot smoke?” I asked as I watched Seth inspect the garage.
“You can’t when they are going so fast, but they have to slow down enough to land a good hit on you, that’s the only option you have. Wait until they attack first. Unless you somehow become freaky fast like them and move at their own speed.”
Seth pressed a button and the garage door began opening. I felt like Quinn and I both were holding our breaths, I’m not sure what I expected to be on the other side of the door. I was relieved when I saw Corey standing there, gun in hand but held to his side as if he were trying to conceal it from any passerbyers who may be looking. I was so busy watching Seth I hadn’t even seen Corey go out the front door. They stood talking for a moment and that’s when something hit me.
“Quinn, I thought this house was supposed to be warded… Why can the demons pass over the wards?” They all went on about how I was safe here. How demons couldn’t even step foot on the land, so what had changed?
“Damion is checking them right now,” Quinn said. He clicked on the live feed of the backyard and the video expanded to cover the entire screen. Damion was at the far end of the property line, it wasn’t a big backyard he was maybe fifty steps from the back door. He was kneeling and moving a bunch of torn up grass out of the way. “It looks like they somehow found where the ruins were and ripped them up so they could pass over.”
“You guys use ruins for a lot of things,” I stated.
He shrugged. “They work for a lot of things… most of the time. Sometimes ‘most of the time’ is the best you get.” With that he exited the large screen. “Fuck,” he breathed out.
My breath was caught in my throat as I stared in stunned silence at the screen. Quinn was quick with his phone. All three of the guys picked up their cells at the same time, Quinn must’ve group called them. “Turn the fuck around Damion, they are in solid form!”
“What the hell are they?” I nearly yelled. These things were huge, skinny black figures. They had to be seven feet tall, their scrawny arms touching the ground in a gorilla like way, their fingers just looked like five ten inch claws on each hand. Their heads were completely bald and totally black like the rest of their bodies, their eyes looked like they were missing. When they opened their abnormally large mouths that seemed to stretch from ear to ear, they had a massive set of pointed, sharp white teeth and an abnormally long pink lizard-like tongue.
“Damion, you’re surrounded, Seth and Corey they are crawling up both sides of the house. I’m going to the back for Damion,” Quinn said.
“No.” I heard Seth’s voice on the other end. “Fuck, stay there! I will collect Damion.”
Seth and Corey both put their phones in their pocket. Seth moved to one side of the house and Corey moved to the other. I looked to the side camera it was almost like watching a silent film, I could see the guns firing but I heard nothing as they picked the demons one by one off the side of the house. Only… the demons weren’t dying, or being banished or anything.
What the hell? “Quinn, what is going on? Why aren't they dying?” I asked, helplessly watching the screen in front of me.
“Most of the time, I said most of the time it works. They are full of energy, something has them charged.” Quinn’s knee began bouncing. “Turn the fuck around Damion…”
“Nope.” I stood up quickly and Quinn’s hand shot out, grabbing my wrist tightly. “I’m going.” I could feel the fire burning in my veins. “I can’t let them get hurt!”
Quinn set the laptop down beside him and stood up, not once loosening his grip on my wrist. “Yeah, and I can? Those are my brothers up there. But I can’t let you get in the crossfire.”
“Screw that! Throw me in the damn crossfire, the demons will probably stop. They don’t want to hurt me–”
“No, they don’t. They want to kidnap you and torture the fuck out of you. Damion told me some of what they did to you.” I flinched as he said that and a look of regret flashed in his eyes, but he was quick to mask it. I felt an odd cold settle over me, like a line had been crossed. Damion knew? He saw what they did to me… did he see… Shit, I shook my head to get rid of the image, the memory, my heartbeat nearly nonexistent as I battled with the fear. I had other things to think about. Quinn was quiet, he was sweet, he was the healer of the group and I learned he hated it when someone was hurt, he had to fix them. But I learned there was something he was hiding, some part of himself he didn’t want to think about or even feel. And he used his sweet quiet mask to hide it.
I pulled my arm from his grasp and he stumbled forward slightly. “I’m going. Maybe the sight of me will save your brothers.” I held my chin up, refusing to let his words affect me and keeping my lip from trembling.
“You’re offering yourself as bait?”
I grabbed hold of the demon hound claw that hung from the necklace. “Would you? If it meant saving their assess?” He eyed the claw between my fingers. “I don’t think I will ever outrun the demons. If this warded safehouse can be overrun by them then who’s to say the Ranch can’t. I can either keep running and hiding, or I can take a stand where it counts. The way I see it, there are a shit load of demons and only five of us, but I have had weeks of suppressed rage to unleash on them. So screw Seth, I can’t be put in a bubble, I wasn’t born to be put in a bubble, let me get my revenge.”
Quinn pulled a dagger from his belt, spinning it expertly in his hands. “You’re right. Who am I to stand in the way. But I swear to God Ava, if you so much as think about getting abducted I will hunt you down, drag your ass to the Ranch, and put you in a bubble myself. We spent months trying to find you, I don’t think we are ready to lose you just yet.”
He grabbed the blade of the dagger midspin and held the hilt end out to me. With a smile I took hold of it. “Deal.”
Chapter 19
Damion
Taking a deep breath as I got to my feet, I dropped my phone into my pocket. I could feel them, their disgustingly dark energy like black sludge pounding in my veins. I wanted to vomit with the tainted emotions they spread through my body, but part of me also welcomed it. The sick twisted part that ate up these emotions as if they were sweet candy. I couldn’t do it, I couldn’t allow myself to be consumed by their aura. I had to be careful not to take on their emotions, I didn’t want to lose myself.
I pulled a cherry sucker from my pocket, unwrapped it as I felt the demons creeping closer, and then popped it into my mouth. The sticky sweetness washed over my senses and I was reminded of happier times. I was reminded of brighter auras and pure emotions. It was in that instant that gunshot began ringing out from either side of the house.
I pulled both guns from their side holders on my chest and spun around. The bullets flew true and strong as they met their targets. God damn, I hated when they took on these forms, they were so hard to kill. And to have this much energy to produce so many of them! They wanted Ava badly, I could taste it in the air. The guns did good to stun them but the demons were so charged that they jumped right back up.
Once the guns were empty and proved to be fucking useless, I threw them to the side, muscle it will be, all I had to do was make it to the basement. I found a metal shovel leaning up against th
e fence beside me and grabbed it. Seth and Corey must’ve come to the same conclusion because I no longer heard bullets flying, instead I heard Seth cursing them up and down in Russian. Corey’s voice rang loud in a Latin chant: he was trying to send them back to hell.
When the first demon reached me I swung the spade into his neck, black slime spurting onto my grey shirt. “Son of a bitch.” This was my last clean shirt! I pulled the shovel from his neck and spun around, swinging it at his legs and taking him out.
They were slow to start, most likely using all their energy just to give themselves true form. I was able to cut through nearly half of them before their speed and strength began to grow. I spat out the empty sucker stick just as one of them swung its abnormally long claws at me. I tried to block with the shovel stick but it just snapped in half like a twig. I ducked and rolled out of the way as another swing came for me. I jumped to my feet behind the monster and threw one end of the broken shovel at him like a spear. It soared into his body, becoming stuck and black ooze leaked from the wound. I ducked just in time as another converged on me, only I wasn’t in time. His black, sulfur ridden, skin grazed my arm.
I did good controlling my… gift. But there was an extent to everyone’s control. I had worked so hard not to take on any of Ava’s conflicts, the guys desires for her, the constant battle to separate myself from them had worn me. Normally I would be fine, I would deal. But there was something different about Ava. Not only could she shed energy, positive and negative, but somehow she could also draw it out of me. I have never met anyone who could do this so easily, and she didn’t seem to know she could do it! At first I thought she was an empath but there were no other signs. She wore my control out when I was locked in an iron room with her for hours. My barriers were down, my levels drained, so my body naturally ate up the auras around me.
I felt the blood lust seep into my veins. I felt the desire to kill with my bare hands. The ache in my bones to curl my fingers around another's neck and squeeze tight. I could feel their need to capture Ava. I was changing before I could stop myself, I was no longer in control of my body. I mentally became one of the demons. Lucky for Ava and the guys, I could still direct that bloodlust somewhere other than them.
