Demon Lore

by Karilyn Bentley

  What the...? Instead of being the bright colors of a fresh bruise, faded yellows and grays brush across the skin of my jaw as if painted with a light stroke. The cut on my lip is healed into a scab, a thin line barely noticeable. A tad of swelling rounds out my jaw, but if you didn’t know me, you might not realize those weren’t the normal contours of my face.

  Bruises don’t heal that fast.

  Ever.

  Did I play a Rip Van Winkle and sleep for a week? I dash the idea almost as soon as it appears. T didn’t mention my excess sleeping habits, so it must be the day after All Hell Broke Loose.

  Well, looky here. First thing in the morning and I already have a question for Smythe’s weird and wacky expectations list.

  Wonder how many more will join it by the time I actually see the man?

  Grabbing a T-shirt out of the closet, shorts and under-things from the dresser, I carry the load into the bathroom and do my morning ritual. Then back to my room where I deposit the robe on the chair, make the bed, and dump last night’s outfit into the clothes hamper.

  Activity helps keep the shock at bay. Too much has happened over the last day, and my mind whirls along too many paths, all vying for top position.

  I rub my fingers over the bracelet, warmth seeping into my skin from the silver. Tiny black etchings mar the otherwise smooth surface. I hold my wrist close to my eyes and try to read the writing. No such luck.

  Guess that’s another question for my dear friend Smythe.

  My mind continues its disbelief over yesterday’s events. Am I really supposed to hunt demons? The bracelet sends a jolt of happiness into my nervous system. Oh, yeah. Definitely supposed to hunt the baddies down.

  Who the heck came up with that brilliant idea? Me? A demon hunter? I appear to be having issues grasping the concept. Mainly since I always put demons in the same category as angels, a nice mythology to explain good and evil things in the world.

  Expecting them to really exist never crossed my mind. However, believing the bracelet turns into an evil-destroying sword doesn’t present a problem. Odd, eh? Or maybe not odd at all. I saw it change, transform into an instrument of death. Its emotions permeate my thoughts. All I’ve seen of a demon is a minion.

  Which was bad enough.

  And what about that gray mist escaping out of the minion’s body? Did I ask Smythe about it? Nope, don’t think I did. Easily remedied.

  Another item on my list.

  My jaw pops when I yawn. No wonder I’m yawning. I’ve been ignoring the scent of fresh made coffee since T left. Maybe Smythe is up and can be peppered with questions.

  Quiet whispers through the house as I step out of my room, the wooden floors protesting my weight, squeaking until I step onto the kitchen tile.

  Someone, I’m assuming T, grabbed the paper off the sidewalk and stacked it in the middle of the table. A pot of fresh coffee sits on the coffeemaker, steam circling around the machine. Manna from heaven.

  I pour myself an extra-large mug and take a sip. Ahhh. Nothing like coffee to greet the morning. Now that important things are taken care of, I mosey into the living room to check out the door.

  First thing I see is Smythe stretched out on the couch, head flat on the cushion, feet hanging off the arm. He looks peaceful in sleep, young, less intimidating. His black laptop backpack rests against his chest, arms crossed on top, as if he fears it’ll be stolen.

  T and I are a lot of things, but thieves aren’t on the list. I should feel insulted, instead I stifle a laugh.

  Is he afraid we’ll steal the computer? Or what’s inside?

  Oh. Deep thoughts for another time.

  It’s hard, but I manage to stop staring at Smythe and focus on the door. The new front door. Completely. New. And the entire living room has been cleaned of blood splatter.

  He could’ve been nice and cleaned. But the new door?

  How the hell did he get that in place without me hearing it go in?

  And where’s the old one?

  I peer out the window into the front yard. No old door. It’s not in the house either, unless he hid it in T’s room, which is unlikely on so many levels. Maybe in the backyard?

  When I get to the kitchen, I walk outside onto the porch. Nope. Not in the backyard.

  What did he do with it?

  Part of me wants to go wake him and ask another part wants to sit and drink my coffee. As I’m usually a better person after coffee, I listen to voice number two.

  The paper splashes Will’s face across the front page, a dedication to him and Lara and their assault. I swallow, hoping extra saliva stops the burning in my stomach. My mind flashes back to his memories, his emotions. His blood pooling on the white linoleum.

  Shaking my head, I flip the page and swallow. Nothing like a good trip down a bad memory lane to start off the morning. Is he even alive? I make a mental note to call the hospital later and ask. Or maybe Smythe knows the answer.

  And another question gets added to my already long list.

  My attention turns back to the newspaper, back to a different attention grabbing article. I waggle my jaw in hopes of getting it to relax and suck in a deep breath. Despite the breathing exercise, my veins imitate a pressure cooker, jacking my blood pressure into the outer atmosphere. A headache forms behind my eyes, a warning to find a bottle of chill pills and swallow them whole.

  I did not just read what happened. And why wasn’t this on the news last night? A doctor shot in a hospital full of people, only one of whom see the attempted killer, deserves a spot on the news. This story, however, deserves the entire broadcast dedicated to finding the asshole perpetrator.

  My hands shake as I read the article. Who would do that to a kid? A clerk at a convenience store took a smoke break behind the store, but instead of getting a nicotine hit, he discovered a teenager naked and stabbed, bleeding to death. Security cameras caught a man yanking her behind the store, and she came to enough to describe her attacker to the police, but so far they haven’t found the man.

  Teenager lies unconscious in the county hospital, fighting for her life.

  “Whatcha looking at?”

  I let loose with a squeak and bang my knees on the underside of the table, splashing coffee over the edges of the mug to puddle on the paper. “Dammit, Smythe, look what you did.”

  “Learn to listen even when you’re concentrating.”

  I shove him out of the way and reach for a paper towel. “Don’t sneak up on me when I’m reading.” I blot at the spill, trying not to tear the newspaper.

  One hand grabs my wrist, while the other takes the towel out of my grasp. “Sorry.” He dabs at the newspaper, each touch removing the coffee stain. “But you need to learn to keep your senses open at all times. You never know who is going to sneak up on you. They aren’t all as friendly as me.”

  I watch as the paper towel soaks up coffee, until the paper looks as pristine as it did coming off the printing press. “How’d ya do that?”

  He picks up my palm and drops the wet paper towel onto it. A grin breaks across his face like the dawn, his eyes twinkling blue diamonds. “Magic.”

  I fail to stop the eye roll as I push around him, opening the cabinet under the sink. “The trashcan is behind this door.”

  He looks at it, back at me, holding on to his grin like a child holds a balloon. “That’s good to know.”

  “Coffee?” I gesture to the steaming coffeepot, which has yet to auto-shutoff.

  “I’m more of a tea drinker, if you have any.”

  “I’m big on caffeine in whatever form. What’s your poison?”

  He selects the English Breakfast tea, and I nuke him a cup of water, place it and the bag in front of him, and return to my chair.

  “Did you see this article?” I point to the one about the teenage victim, not caring if he sees my fingers shake.

  He takes the paper and reads the story, his jaw tensing. “I hope they catch the asshole.” He starts to lower the paper, but then picks it up, his e
yes scanning the page. “Is this neighborhood in east Fillmore?”

  “Yeah. It’s not the greatest area, but still. This kind of random violence doesn’t normally happen there.”

  “I need to find out who the girl was.” When he lowers the paper to the table, his lips press together in that determined way I often see on my twin’s face.

  “They don’t publish victim’s names.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll find out.” Getting out of his chair, he heads to the living room.

  “How?” I know ways, none of which I mention. I like my nursing license just fine and don’t want to lose it by doing something stupid like impersonating an employee at a different hospital and sneaking up to the victim’s room.

  He takes his laptop out of the black bag and tucks it under an arm before striding back into the kitchen. Putting the thing on the table, he pops the top and eases himself into the chair next to mine. His fingers fly across the keyboard as he pulls up a browser.

  T won’t be happy once he realizes he and Smythe share the character trait of determination against all odds. But it gives me the warm fuzzies to know they have something in common.

  Silly me.

  “Okay. I’m in.”

  “In where?” Leaning sideways, I peer at the screen. The angle is wrong so I get up and, coffee mug in hand, stand behind him. No sense in releasing my grasp on my morning addiction, ahem, I mean medicine. The substance needs to get into my system somehow and mainlining the liquid doesn’t work.

  Or so I’ve been told.

  Fillmore Police Department flashes across the top of the laptop screen, disappearing in a rush of data. I lean closer. “Holy shit!” Case files march in columns down the screen, blurring by as he scrolls down the page. “Turn that thing off! What if they track you here?”

  “They won’t.”

  “How do you know, Mr. Confident?” I eye the power button, but his hands lie between me and the off-switch.

  “I do this all the time. How do you think I found out about your past?”

  I stop eyeing the power button. Trying to breathe takes up all my energy. “How...” I clear my throat, gulp a swallow of coffee and try again. “How much do you know?”

  His fingers stop their flight of the bumblebee over the keys as he turns to face me. One brow raises a question as his eyes search my face. “I would say everything, but nothing I found should generate your reaction, so maybe my search wasn’t as thorough as I thought.” He shrugs and turns back to the screen. “Or you’re hiding information that wasn’t in your file.”

  Okay. My brain kicks in, rushing through my past, determining what he knows, what he doesn’t. He knows about the empathic abilities and about my stint in a psychiatric hospital as a teen. I remember last night when he mentioned it along with certain extra-curricular activities as he called them. Neither of which my employer would look favorably on, but plenty of teens do stupid things and manage to turn their lives around afterward.

  While I don’t like people to know those past facts about my life, it’s not as bad as the other things I fear Smythe might discover. Things no one should know. Things T and I will keep to our graves.

  “Which is it?” Smythe’s voice snaps my attention back to the present, out of the wretched past.

  I shake my head, raise my mug to my lips and burn my throat swallowing the hot liquid. No pain no gain. “Want more tea? I’m going to have another cup of coffee.”

  After a glance at his full mug he shakes his head. “Nope. But thanks.”

  My hands tremble as I walk to the coffeepot. Whether from my trip down memory lane, the story in the paper or caffeine, I don’t know. Maybe all three. I will not think about the distant past. I will not. Focus on the present. Remember Will.

  Fear of discovery bleeds from my muscles, replaced by the pain of loss, the fear of the unknown. I’d rather deal with Will’s attempted murder, with minions and demons and strange agencies than dwell upon things best left dead.

  “Ah! I found it.” He pauses, clearly reading, while I pour myself another cup.

  Focus on the present. On. The. Present.

  “Goddamn it! That’s what I was afraid of!” He shoves the chair into the wall, popping up to stalk around the kitchen, fingers curling and releasing, curling and releasing.

  I back against the counter, watching his anger grow like an expanding balloon before releasing into a deflated mass of muscle and bones as he sinks into his chair. My breath releases on a sigh, relief his anger remains self-contained. My fingers stop clutching the mug like it’s a weapon, but they still tremble.

  I clear my throat. “What were you afraid of?”

  He points at the screen. “She’s one of ours.”

  I walk toward him until I stand beside his chair. “One of ours?”

  “A descendent. One of the minor bloodlines able to wear the bracelet.”

  Chapter 9

  “Minor bloodlines?” Fear disappears under the onslaught of curiosity.

  “Okay. Looks like I have a lot to cover in a short amount of time. Sit.” He gestures to my chair, and I oblige, parking my butt on the wood. “The makers of the bracelets cast some sort of spell over the metal so that only descendents of their lineage could wear the bracelets.”

  “Some sort of spell? Don’t you know—”

  “No idea what it was. And quit interrupting.”

  “Sorry. Go on.”

  “As I was saying. The gift of the justitia went to the first-born female—”

  “Why not a male?”

  He growls. Literally. Growls. “I don’t know! Didn’t I just say—”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry.” I wave my hand in a circle. “Go on.”

  “Whatever the spell said explains why only females wear the justitia and not males. We haven’t been able to crack it. Okay?”

  “Okay.” I play the obedient student and keep my opinions to myself.

  “So. The gift goes to the first-born female. Best case scenario is the female gives birth to a girl before she dies, passing on the justitia and the gift. That’s happened with six of the bracelets. Direct descent from the original wearer through the female line. Primary bloodlines. Okay?”

  “Got it.”

  “Now, it gets tricky when the first-born female dies prior to giving birth. In theory, all descendents of the original makers have the ability to wield the justitia. When the oldest dies, sometimes her sister is able to take her place fighting. Other times the gift skips a generation. In those cases, the justitia is taken into the Agency and kept until the next wearer appears.”

  How do they know when that happens? “Do you have tryouts or something?”

  “Something like that. Yeah. That’s what happened to your justitia. The line died. Completely died out. It was one of the strongest lines, lasted until 1940. The wearer was young. Thought she could kill Hitler on her own.” He shakes his head. “Hitler was one strong-ass minion. But even minions can be killed by bombs. Remember that.”

  “Hitler was a minion?” I’m fairly certain my mouth gapes like a hole in the earth. Since Smythe doesn’t need to examine the back of my throat, I make an effort to press my lips together.

  “You don’t think he got that evil on his own do you?”

  I shrug. I really have abso-fucking-lutely no idea, since I never took Evil Beings and Their Penchant for Destruction 101. All I can say is I’m glad he died, the evil bastard.

  I blink away my surprise, eager for the lesson to continue. “And the minor bloodlines?”

  “Oh. Sorry. As you can imagine, in the millennia since the bracelets were forged, the descendents of the makers have multiplied. Not all of these descendents know about the justitias, but we track them. Julia,” he touches the screen with the tip of his finger, “was one of those.”

  “What about me?”

  “I don’t know.” He shakes his head. “I didn’t get far enough in your bloodlines to see. I don’t even understand how you got the bracelet.”


  “Will gave it to me. Yesterday.” The words escape my mouth before I realize what happened. Way to go, Gin.

  “How?”

  I pause. Should I tell him? Trust is a two-way street. Along with sharing information. He’s shared with me—granted, the question list I made for him remains a mile long despite all his sharing—so I should come clean and tell him about the bracelet. Besides, I can tell by that determined tic in his jaw my escaped words tantalize his curiosity, which means he won’t rest until I tell him the answer.

  “It appeared in my pocket.”

  His eyes narrow. “Come again?”

  I tell him. About touching Will. About delving into his memories. About the weight of the bracelet as it appeared in my pocket.

  Smythe curses.

  “Yeah. It’s weird, eh?”

  He shoves back from the table and stalks around the kitchen, punctuating each step with the f-bomb. Clearly he thinks it more than weird. He slams both fists onto the counter to the side of where I sit and glares.

  “What made you put it on?”

  Holding his glare, I run my fingers over the silver links, committing each groove and etching to memory. “It wanted me to. I wanted to. It’s hard to explain.”

  “That I understand. How Will got it...I have a theory.”

  “Care to share?”

  His eyes narrow. “More research is needed.”

  “Fine.” So much for the share game. “Then how did you fix the door?”

  “Huh?” He blinks, clearly thrown out of his thoughts into a different direction. Men don’t do well when you redirect their thoughts.

  “The front door. I see it’s fixed. I don’t see the old one.”

  He waves a hand. “The Agency has a crew that cleans up messes.”

  “You generate a lot of messes?”

  One brow raises, and he stares me down. I swallow, but refuse to drop his gaze. His lip twitches.

  “We need to find Julia’s attacker.”

  What do I look like? Sherlock Holmes? “That’s the police’s job.”

  “They don’t know what they’re doing.”

  “Hey, now. I admit they’ve had their problems, but they are perfectly capable of tracking down a would-be killer.”