They climbed back into the car, and Adria pulled out her laptop. “I’ll get you the address,” she said. Her fingers loudly clacked against the keyboard while Demi drove them back to the motel.
It was dark by the time Demi found herself crouched in the darkness of the yard behind Rebecca’s single-story ranch home. It was a quiet neighborhood, a subdivision, but an older development, so the houses were a little dated, their brick façades trimmed with atrocious brown wood paneling. The yard was small and grassy, a number of trees forming a natural fence-line along the back, their outstretched branches reaching across the entire yard and scratching the gutters of the house.
Adria had been tailing Rebecca most of the day, so Demi knew the tech was a solid forty-five minutes out, and Doug was staked out at the end of the block just in case. Crickets chirped in the darkness as Demi cut through a screen door with a box-cutter. She opened the sliding glass door behind it by pulling up sharply on the handle, forcing the simple locking mechanism open with brute strength. It slid open easily, and Demi crept inside the unlit house.
She found herself in a small combined kitchen-dinette space, and she hurriedly cleared a basket of fruit and an odd array of Asian condiments off the dinner table. It wasn’t as long as she had hoped, but Rebecca wasn’t very tall, so it would do. She set her tool bag down and began installing steel anchors into the bottom of the table, to which she attached chains forged from sterling silver—guaranteed to hold just about any unnatural beast Demi had ever come across. She wasn’t sure why it worked, but it did, just like iron and salt sent ghosts fluttering back to the Veil.
“How we looking, guys?” she said into her burner phone, sending out a text message to Adria and Doug.
“All clear here,” Doug replied as Demi ventured into the living room, where the floor creaked loudly beneath her feet. It was as small as the kitchen, with little more than a single couch and a television resting directly on the floor. There was an end table tucked into a corner besides the couch, and Demi cleared the magazines resting on its surface and carried it into the dining room, where it was just the right size to unroll her knife bag.
“Still at the grocery store,” Adria replied, and Demi set the phone down next to her knives.
“I was hoping I’d see you again,” a voice said in the dark, and Demi spun in search of its owner, her gun flying up from its holster.
“FBI,” she shouted, hearing the faint creaking of floorboards coming from the living room.
“I thought it was FAA,” the voice said, and Demi realized she’d heard it before. “But then there were so many IDs in your purse it was hard to keep them all straight.”
“Ethan,” Demi growled, angling the gun towards the sound of his voice. Two glassy orbs appeared in the darkness, and the floorboards creaked ever so lightly. He was a far lighter step than Demi, it seemed.
“I’m surprised you know my name,” he replied. He came closer, his outline taking form. “You didn’t seem too interested in it last night.”
“What do you want from me?” Demi asked, eyeing her phone, just out of reach on the end table.
“I like excitement,” Ethan said. “I’ve lived my entire life being careful, but I killed those skydivers hoping it would attract your sort of attention. You had hunter written all over you when you rolled into town. But I admit… I didn’t expect a hot lady hunter. So last night… what a thrill. Sleeping with the enemy. And you didn’t have a clue. But now you seem to be here to hurt Rebecca, and I can’t have that.”
“If she’s like you, she’s gotta go,” Demi said, her eyes locked on the shadow sliding closer to her. “No way around that.”
“She’s human,” Ethan said. “She has nothing to do with any of this. Her mom adopted me when my family was murdered by hunters in the Philippines. They wiped us out, clutch and brood. People like you, wanting to kill things like me just because we’re different.”
“Yeah, pretty sure that’s not why, buddy,” Demi said, focusing on the sound of her own breathing while she waited for him to get closer. She was a good shot, but it was dark, and while she was sure she could hit him, she wasn’t sure she could kill him before he warged into whatever he was. An injured monster was the worst kind, in her experience.
“You killed those people,” Demi said. “That’s the only reason I’m here, minokawa.”
“Play the hero all you want,” Ethan said, his eyes smoldering in the darkness. Moonlight poured through the kitchen windows. “You never save anyone—you only kill!”
Demi’s weapon jerked in her hand as her finger squeezed the trigger again and again, each shot lighting up the room. She aimed at those pale white eyes that drank up the moon’s light, flashes of gunpowder illuminating a figure that she could no longer recognize as human. The creature leapt into the air, a great mass of red and gold plumage, vast wings outspread around a feathered body and snapping steel beak. Demi continued firing, and the creature shrieked in pain. Silver bullets peppered his breast, and then he was upon her.
Ethan’s body struck her, his talons digging into the flesh of her arms, and together the two of them crashed through Rebecca’s sliding glass door. Demi landed on her back amid shards of broken glass, deep gashes carved into her arms. Her clothes were soaked in blood, not all of it hers.
“After last night I almost hoped you were different,” Ethan cried from the darkness, and Demi looked up to see the branches of the wide-stretching trees swaying as something moved within the canopy. She reached for her sidearm, but she’d lost it in the struggle, and the pistol she kept holstered at her ankle was loaded with lead, not silver, so it wouldn’t do her any good. She unsheathed a long dagger from her other ankle, the same one she’d taken off Cara’s corpse after her ghoul hunt in Idaho.
“You’ve never met a girl like me, that’s for sure,” Demi said, eyeing the shaking branches while she waited for the birdman to make his move. Death from above, that’s what Rebecca had said. Had it been a threat, or a warning?
“You threw me out like garbage,” Ethan said, letting out a piercing trill that made Demi wince. “That’s the kind of life you choose to live. You can’t respect yourself, let alone something like me. But I’m not garbage! I’m a minokawa, the eater of the moon and sun!”
Demi shot to her feet, and the trees exploded in a burst of red and gold feathers. Ethan’s massive form blotted out the stars as he descended towards her, his eyes catching the moonlight, his talons reaching down towards her. He’d hoped to snatch her up while she lay there helpless, like a hawk swooping down on an unsuspecting vole. Instead, Demi’s blade flashed upwards, burying itself in Ethan’s throat.
Vibrant saffron blood sprayed from his wound, and Ethan collapsed into Demi’s arms. His plumage and wings seemed to melt away, leaving him a frail young man gasping for breath. On any other hunt, Demi would have wasted no time removing his head from his shoulders and dousing the body in gasoline. He looked up at her, the moonlight dancing in his glassy eyes, a pleading look on his face.
“I… I don’t want to go,” he murmured. This was hardly her first time watching someone die—it had practically been a daily occurrence in Khost. They’d left this world in many different ways, some screaming, others crying, begging for mercy or whatever solace she might have been willing to offer. She’d watched it all with a passive disinterest—it was just part of the job. To dabble in mercy would have invited something far worse, a weakness that would have destroyed her.
He trembled in her arms. “It’s okay,” she whispered, pulling him closer. She sank down to her knees, cradling him against her breast, and he fell still. And when the moonlight disappeared from his eyes, she couldn’t help but feel that a little bit of magic had vanished from the world.
Wayward
One
North Carolina, August 2014
The car coughed and lurched its way to a stop, and Shawna slammed her palm against the steering wheel. There was no shoulder on the narrow two-lane backcountry highway, s
o she let her vehicle roll forward into a shallow grassy ditch between the road and a beanfield. She’d passed a farm implement store a few miles back, and she wasn’t far from the interstate, but she’d been doing her best to avoid tollways and heavily populated areas.
She glanced over to the gym bag in the passenger seat, stifling a yawn. She’d been driving since she’d spent Ed’s last twenty bucks on gas outside Philly, and she hadn’t eaten anything after the gas station breakfast burrito she’d bought with the change she scraped together from beneath the seats. The whole thing seemed like a dream, like she was watching this play out through someone else’s eyes.
I’m gonna really rack up the mileage on this beauty while I’m waiting, Brooke had said just two days ago when Shawna last saw her daughter. It hadn’t really been Brooke speaking, but the demon. Shawna’s hands reached for her stomach, and the icy void inside her sent a sharp pain through her body. It had been two days since Shawna had watched two of her children die and the third disappear in the demon’s clutches. Knowing Blair and Colin were gone forever should have been enough to break a mother’s heart, but the sickest part of all was the ache she kept feeling, the longing to have the demon back inside her.
The demon had left her there in her ex-husband’s house. It must have thought her a sobbing mess, content to accept defeat and wait for the police to arrive and blame her for all the death. It had been tempting. Whatever punishment came her way, Shawna knew she deserved it. But a singular desire had formed in her mind that night—to rip the demon out of Brooke and swallow it back inside herself, even if it cost her soul. The demon had only possessed her for about a day, but those hours had been the most vivid of Shawna’s entire life—a blood and sex-fueled road trip ending at her ex’s doorstep. Now that she was human again, she spent every waking moment craving that feeling of power flowing through her veins. The closest she had been able to come was driving that knife into Stacy.
She’d pulled herself together, hitting the road in her ex’s car with a gym bag full of his dead bimbo’s jewelry and clothes. She’d found a little cash lying around the house, but it hadn’t lasted long. Her first stop had been an ATM, and she’d drained her savings, but she couldn’t bring herself to touch the cash-stuffed envelope that was the last of her worldly possessions. She could sell the jewelry if she came across a pawnshop, but there was always a chance the pieces had been reported stolen. Then again, she was a long way from Connecticut. She didn’t know whether it was worth the risk or not, and she slammed the steering wheel again and again in frustration, wishing it would give her the satisfaction of breaking.
Her palm was raw as she unscrewed the Connecticut license plates from her car, shoving them inside the gym bag slung across her shoulders. She wasn’t sure it would make any difference—couldn’t the police always search the VIN?—but maybe it would buy her enough time to get very far away from here before they followed the breadcrumbs back to her murdered ex-husband.
By the time she reached the interstate, her sweat had soaked through her light black jacket, and she took it off, tying it around her waist. Even in just a tank-top, every step in the thick summer air left her gasping for breath. Her Yankee self hadn’t been built for this humid southern weather. Her water ran out right past the green highway sign indicating she was entering the city limits of Laurinburg, and her only consolation was that the sun’s relentless glare was obscured by a layer of dark gray storm clouds that rolled in suddenly, bringing a noticeable chill. She eyed the overpass about a thousand feet ahead, hoping she could make it there before the rain came.
She didn’t.
Her hair was plastered to her neck by the time she reached the shelter of the narrow roadway crossing over the interstate. Her legs ached from hours of walking, her neck and chest were sunburned and raw, her mouth was dry and lips cracked, and she was starting to remember just how hungry she was. But somehow, beneath all that misery, she still found herself wishing the demon was back with her, rendering all those other concerns moot.
A passing tractor trailer bleated behind her, and Shawna waved her arms, just like she had at every other passing vehicle, in the hopes that they would spirit her far across state lines before the authorities found her abandoned car and moved their search down south. Until now, every vehicle had passed her by, just like she would have done in their place. But the tractor trailer’s hazard lights began to flash in tandem, and it pulled into the shoulder a little beyond the overpass.
Not believing her luck, Shawna sprinted beneath the overpass. Her stomach was aching by the time she reached the foot of the towering vehicle’s passenger door. She hesitated—she’d never done anything like this before, certainly not as a fugitive. You always heard warnings about women who disappeared after climbing into a strange vehicle on the side of the road, but what choice did she really have? Death didn’t seem all that worse than the emptiness that yawned inside her.
Fearful her indecision would lead to her potential savior speeding away down the interstate, Shawna took a long step up onto the side of the vehicle and pulled the door open. The driver stared down at her from the opposite side of the cab. He seemed enormous from this angle, broad-shouldered and bulky, the thick beard around his face tinged with small streaks of gray. “Hi,” Shawna said awkwardly, not really knowing what else to say. “Thanks for stopping.”
“What’s your name?” the trucker said, his voice hard and uninterested, like he did this several times a day.
“Shawna,” she said. “Thanks for stopping. I know, I already said that. I’m babbling like an idiot right now.”
“Where you headed?” the trucker demanded, his eyes darting back to the road.
“Nowhere in particular,” Shawna said. “Wherever you can take me. Preferably somewhere other than North Carolina.”
“The name’s Jack,” he said, staring down at her with dark eyes. “I don’t normally do this. I ain’t running no charity.”
“I… I don’t have any money,” Shawna lied, still unwilling to part with her savings. Her mind flashed to the jewelry in her bag. Surely even a single pair of earrings would be ample compensation for a few hours in a cramped tractor trailer cab. “I can find a way to pay you though.”
“Fair enough,” Jack said. “Climb on in. Got a bed in back. We’ll seal this deal and get you on your way.”
“Sorry, what?” Shawna asked, pulling herself into the rig by an overhead handle. She’d never been inside a vehicle like this before, and it was larger than she’d imagined. In addition to the two front seats she’d expected, the cab continued further back. Both chairs could swivel 180 degrees to face small platforms for eating meals or completing paperwork, and on the other side of those was a fair-sized sleeping compartment. A ring of tiny kitchen appliances—a microwave, a coffeemaker, and even a pint-sized minifridge, each tucked into a dedicated niche—stared down on the wrinkled blue sheets of the bed.
“You heard me,” Jack said. “Let’s get in the back and git ‘er done, and we can get you on your way.”
Shawna stared back at him, unsure of what to say. Certainly a week ago she would have never considered his offer, even under her present circumstances. But in the few hours she’d been in the demon’s thrall, she’d had a lot of sex—more than some people had in months—and it had left her libido in overdrive ever since. She’d stopped twice along her drive down from Connecticut to masturbate, unable to focus on the road due to the burning ache the demon had ignited inside her. By the third time, she hadn’t even bothered to pull over. But none of it had done anything but take the slightest edge off the emptiness between her legs. As undesirable as Jack was, Shawna probably wanted him more than he wanted her.
In mere seconds, she was on her back on the wrinkled sheets, Jack pulling her spandex leggings down to her ankles while she tugged her tank top over her head, her breasts bouncing wildly as the big man climbed on top of her. She threw her head back, one hand clawing Jack’s back while the other pinched at her nipple, the void
of the demon’s absence momentarily forgotten.
***
Shawna ate her first real meal in days at a truckstop outside of Charlotte. She’d hoped being with a man would quench the thirst the demon had left her with, but if anything, it had whetted her appetite, and her eyes drifted across every male in sight, lingering just long enough to picture them moving against her, panting and red-faced. She couldn’t remember being this hopped-up for the opposite sex since her last pregnancy, and even that flood of hormones was nothing compared to what she was feeling now.
She washed away the sweat from her long hike in the truckstop showers, swapping out her soiled clothes for some of Stacy’s borrowed wardrobe. The whore had favored lacy, brightly-colored undergarments that left very little actually covered, and while Shawna had never worn thong panties before, it was either that or go commando. It made little difference, since she didn’t plan on wearing them for long.
Sleep had eluded her these last few days, and as badly as she probably needed it, she hadn’t felt tired since Jack had picked her up. If anything, she felt like she’d drunk all the coffee in the world, her body jittery and over-alert. She had no interest in sleeping that night, and Jack didn’t seem to mind. She lay on her belly, wiggling her ass while he enjoyed the sight of Stacy’s tiny red thong between her cheeks. He didn’t even both removing the garment, simply pulling it to the side while he slid into her from behind. Shawna’s fingers dug into the mattress, his thumb tentatively caressing her bottom.
Demi Mondaine: Volume One Page 17
