by Kris Greene
THE DEMON
HUNT
St. Martin’s Paperbacks Titles by
KRIS GREENE
The Dark Storm
The Demon Hunt
THE DEMON
HUNT
Kris Greene
St. Martin’s Paperbacks
TABLE OF CONTENTS
TITLE
COPYRIGHT
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
NOTE: If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE DEMON HUNT
Copyright © 2010 by Kris Greene.
All rights reserved.
For information address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
ISBN: 978-0-312-94423-0
Printed in the United States of America
St. Martin’s Paperbacks edition / August 2010
St. Martin’s Paperbacks are published by St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
PROLOGUE
When he was a little boy still studying the first circles of Sanctuary, Julius had loved to sneak off from his lessons at the Great House and catch the Saturday afternoon horror movies. There was something about the terror in the victim’s eyes right before the monster got him or her that gave Julius an indescribable rush. But now that he found himself living in his own horror movie, he wished he had been more compassionate.
Julius was completely naked, his arms pinned above his head to a wooden pillar that overlooked the ocean—if the murky black waters below him could even be called that. Through the spill of white hair covering his face he could see the black liquid and the faces of the poor souls trapped beneath. They were the forgotten, spirits too weak or too vile to make the trip to either heaven or hell. Julius tried to close his eyes and imagine he was on a peaceful voyage across the Atlantic, but when he sucked in the cool air he tasted no salt, only death and sorrow. As the pinging of the dinghy a few yards off filled his ears, he feared that it would be the last thing he heard. All passengers on the Jihad had one-way tickets.
In all his years of training with the order he had never seen the likes of the things crawling from the ground at Sanctuary. Monsters, so hideous that they could only have been spawned by the pits of hell, had destroyed everyone in their wake, including the High Brother Angelo. When the battle had erupted, Julius’s blade was the first to taste the blood of the order’s enemies, laying low as many as he could before he was struck down by a goblin’s ax. His terrified eyes watched as the foul beast reared back for the killing blow, but he could remember nothing past that. He had awoken as a prisoner on the Jihad, the Ghost ship used to transport departed souls to the Deadlands, and at the mercy of something far more fiendish than the brutish goblins—the ferryman Ezrah. Julius tried to call on his seldom-used magic to break his shackles, but there was nothing. He couldn’t muster even a spark of the power passed on to him by his wayward father in the lands of the dead.
“You have no power here, so save your strength,” Ezrah said as he stepped from the fog that was covering the deck of the Jihad with his hands folded behind his back. His skin was so transparent that Julius almost couldn’t see him through the fog. However, the closer he got the more solid he became, as his skin darkened to it’s original bronze color. He wore a thin breastplate of leather armor over a white tunic that stopped just above his knees. The single braid that hung from his shaved head blew softly on the ghostly winds that pushed the ship.
Julius craned his neck and watched the approaching specter with a fierce sneer. “If you’ve come to take me to the hereafter, then get on with it.”
Ezrah smiled, and when he did so he looked almost human. “Hardly, brave soldier. I have come to offer you a bargain.”
“After what you and your wraiths did to the order, I’d rather die than serve you!” Julius said venomously.
Ezrah gave him a look of amusement. “I think that the fact that you are here to even have this debate with me proves that death is just a relative term.” He waved his hands through the mist and Julius caught a glimpse of himself being struck down by the goblin ax on the steps of Sanctuary. “Quite a few of your brothers have crossed these waters tonight and more will surely travel on my ship before it’s all said and done. The only reason you still live is because I have need of a unique vessel such as yourself.”
Julius averted his eyes. “There is nothing special about me. I am but a soldier and servant of the order.”
“Come now, Julius. There are no secrets here. I know just who and what you are, mage.”
“Liar. I am a child of the first order!” Julius shouted, jerking at his chains.
Ezrah laughed. “You are the child of a turncoat and a whore. It was only the mercies of Brother Angelo that saved you from becoming a victim of your own self-hate.”
The truth in Ezrah’s statement cut Julius like a knife. Outside of his parents, the secret of Julius’s heritage had only been known to Brothers Angelo and David. Since he had been adopted by the order, he had used his hatred for his father and his people to mold himself into one of the order’s most devoted followers.
“Save your tall tales for someone who has not peeled back the layers of your soul and seen what lies beneath.” Ezrah took Julius’s face and turned it toward him. “A thing of great power has been unleashed upon the world, and I will have it and my revenge on the ones who betrayed me and condemned me to this hell.” Ezrah’s eyes grew bright and in them Julius saw the vision of the crew members of the Jihad being locked below decks just before the agents of the church set the ship on fire. “Tell me, Julius, have you ever heard the screams of a man being burned alive? The scream of one man is more horrible than anything you can imagine and there were twenty in my crew.”
“A fitting punishment for the agents of Satan if you ask me,” Julius said with a smirk.
Ezrah thought about it. “Possibly, but we can debate what is fitting and not after you have done my bidding. Serve me and I will give you back the life stolen by the goblins.”
Julius gave a maddened laugh. “You have wasted your power and your time, hell’s spawn. In life or death I am loyal to my order and will not serve the likes of you. If I am to choose between your offer and death, I choose the latter.” He then spat at Ezrah’s face, but the saliva passed through him and landed on the deck.
“And who says you have a choice?” Ezrah raised his hands and called the fog to him. A ring of mist encircled Ezrah’s feet and from the fog came ghostly shapes. “Be it as my champion or my slave, you will serve me.”
Ezrah pointed his finger accusingly at Julius and the ghosts descended on him. Julius could feel the fl
esh being stripped from his back as the ghost rode him, the wounds spewing forth fog instead of blood. As the mist rolled from his back it thickened and lay across him like two sheets of chilled silk. Soon the vision of the Jihad’s deck was gone, replaced by the swirling forms ripping him limb from limb. When the spirits finally faded, Julius was gone, leaving behind something dark and frightening.
“What is your will, Master?” the shadowy figured asked in a distorted voice. The thing that had once been Julius knelt at Ezrah’s feet.
Ezrah smiled like a proud father. “Bring me the spark and the head of Gabriel Redfeather.”
CHAPTER ONE
“Redfeather, are you still with us?” Asha snapped Gabriel out of his daze. He had been sitting completely motionless for the last ten minutes and it unnerved her.
Gabriel blinked and looked around as if seeing the faces surrounding him for the first time. “Yeah, I’m good,” he lied.
Ever since he had come into possession of the Nimrod he had been slipping into trances and seeing things through the eyes of the Bishop. For the most part the visions were jumbled and he could make no sense of them. The Bishop was trying to tell him something, but he had no idea what.
Gabriel ran his fingers through his thick black curls but it didn’t help his appearance. His delicate hands were bruised and covered in blood, some of it his, but most of it coming from the friends he’d lost the battle the night before.
The fuel light on the dashboard blinked, but they dared not stop until they were out of Manhattan or the sun had fully risen.
It was sheer luck that they had survived the initial onslaught of the dark forces, and in their present battle-worn conditions not even luck would save them from a second attack.
The forces of hell had nearly destroyed them along with Sanctuary. The stretch Hummer drew more than the occasional glance as it rumbled down the FDR en route to the Queensboro Bridge. It wasn’t every day that you saw a modified Hummer with a religious emblem etched into the hood and doors. The cross sat in the center of three rings, which represented man, demon, and spirit. The ancient symbol once struck fear into the hearts of the enemies of the order, but that morning it served as a grim reminder of all that had been lost.
Each passenger’s face bore a different expression, but their eyes all held the same weariness. In what felt like the blink of an eye, several totally different people from different walks of life found themselves thrown together by one common object, the Nimrod.
The Nimrod was not just a trident, but a thing of pure magic that was neither good nor evil and was empowered by the imprisoned spirit of a man known as the Bishop. During the Seven-Day Siege it was the Bishop whom the Nimrod had called master, until Titus the Betrayer slew him in an attempt to claim his weapon.
Because of the warped love affair between weapon and master, the Bishop was denied the peace of the grave. The Bishop’s displaced soul lay nestled in the bosom of the thing he had loved most in life, waiting for the moment when he would walk the earth again, cleansing it of its impurities. But to execute his plan the Bishop needed a willing vessel, which is where Gabriel came into the picture. The Bishop had expected the Nimrod to corrupt Gabriel as it had done with him centuries prior, but Gabriel’s will was stronger than either of them had anticipated.
With his tattered clothes and mussed hair, you’d have hardly taken Gabriel Redfeather as someone who, only a few hours ago, had been living a bland life. He was a bookish-looking young man with pronounced Native American features and curious eyes, whose biggest thrills came from deciphering ancient languages and Thursday night chess club. He and his grandfather had lived a quiet life in a brownstone in Harlem until the day he met De Mona Sanchez and lost everything he had, including his free will.
To everyone’s, especially Gabriel’s, surprise, the Nimrod had responded to his touch and stirred the spirit within it. The Nimrod had bound itself to Gabriel’s flesh while the Bishop invaded his heart, constantly tempting him with promises of power. For the most part Gabriel was still in control, but there was no denying the strength in the Bishop’s words. Gabriel looked over at De Mona and cursed her for the hundredth time for coming into his life.
De Mona rested her head against the window and stared blankly out at the pinkish sky. The bubble-gum effect as the increasing light played on the clouds took her back to when her mother and father would buy her cotton candy at the carnival. That was before she found out that she was the real freak. De Mona walked in two worlds, those of men and demons. Her father had been a retired professor turned antique dealer who fell head over heels for a demon. Her mother, Mercy, was a Valkrin, a race of demons whose sole purpose was to wage war. Next to the goblins, the Valkrin were the most feared creatures in service to the dark lord, but that all changed shortly before De Mona was born.
Mercy had been the first of the Valkrin to cross over to the light, but she hadn’t been the last. Soon others came seeking peace from the war that had been raging since the beginning of time. They found that peace within the walls of Sanctuary, but it wasn’t to last. Not long before the anointed weapons began resurfacing, the Valkrin and some of the others began disappearing. No one knew what caused the withdrawal, but when a Valkrin was connected to the mass murder of the inhabitants of a missionary village in Guam, the reason had become clear. The dark lord had put out the call to arms and the Valkrin had answered.
De Mona ran her fingers through her hair and winced when she nicked her scalp. She held her hands in front of her face, almost expecting to see the smooth knuckles and frail digits she’d known for the first eleven years of her life, but she didn’t. She hadn’t called the change, but her fingers were gnarled and twisted with shiny black nails that looked like spearheads. Sucking in a deep breath, she tried to banish the demon that was inching toward the surface, but the best she could do was smooth out the skin on the back of her hands. Since coming in contact with the Nimrod she had been having difficulty controlling her changes. It was as if the demon inside her was becoming more pronounced and the woman less so. She didn’t like it.
What felt like a soft whisper of wind touched her honey-colored cheek and she immediately knew what it was . . . magic. She turned her hooded brown eyes toward the rear of the transport, where the mage and the witch sat watching her intently, whispering together. When they noticed her watching them watch her, they averted their eyes. For this she was glad, because there was something about the starry flakes in the mage’s eyes that made her uneasy.
“Why don’t you take a picture or something?” De Mona snapped.
“Somebody woke up on the wrong side of the bed,” Asha said with a crooked grin. Her familiar, Azuma, bristled on her lap, but he dared not go near the demon. While De Mona’s form was hidden to human eyes, Azuma could see her for just what she was, and it frightened him.
“You’d be in a pissy mood too if you’d been getting sucker punched by demons all night,” De Mona said.
Asha rolled her eyes and folded her arms. “Try getting blown out of a third-story window. You ain’t the only one who’s had a trying night.” The Blood witch replied. Asha represented a darker side of the coin than her sisters of the coven. Because of her mixed blood she was rejected and feared by her peers.
“I think we’ve all been through a lot over the last few hours, so why don’t the both of you cool it?” Rogue interjected.
His ribs were still busted to hell, but at least he had gotten the bleeding to stop. He hadn’t heard a peep from the demon he shared his soul with since he’d taken shadow-form. Normally the demon encouraged Rogue to tap further into his shadow magic, but never to attack one of its own species. Using his shadow-form, Rogue had managed to destroy Moses Shadow Master’s host body, but the victory was a temporary one. You couldn’t destroy a real shadow, only hold it back, especially one as powerful as Moses. The demon had been around since the early days, close to the time when the shadows first learned to think and move outside the collective.
“
You’re one to talk. I don’t even know you well enough to be giving me orders, dude. So please tell me why your opinion should count for a damn thing?” De Mona asked defiantly. She hadn’t known Rogue more than a few hours and still wasn’t sure where he fit into the mystery.
“Because if it hadn’t been for him we would all be dead.” Gabriel spoke up unexpectedly, drawing the attention of everyone in the Hummer. De Mona hadn’t noticed it before but there was something different about him. He seemed somehow older than he had been when they’d first set out. “Rogue saved my life so I could be around to save yours, even though I don’t know why I bothered since you caused all this.”
“I don’t think pointing fingers is going to help us much,” Jackson said from the passenger seat. His leather jacket was ripped, but other than that he seemed in better shape than the rest of them. His incredible resilience was one of the upsides of surviving a vampire attack. The downsides hadn’t shown themselves yet.
“Let me be the judge of what’s helpful and what isn’t, since I’m the one with a centuries-old relic bound to his arm.” Gabriel flashed the tattoo on his arm, which was pulsing slightly.
“And how did you manage such a trick?” Morgan asked from behind the wheel. “My hammer has been with me since I was a boy and it’s never done more than open the overripe skulls of demons and vampires. I fancy myself somewhat of an authority on these weapons, but I’ve never heard tales of the trident or any of the other anointed weapons merging with the wielder’s flesh.”
“As soon as I figure it out you’ll be the first to know,” Gabriel said sarcastically. He had been in a foul mood since being dragged onto the supernatural roller coaster.
But Morgan had asked the sixty-four thousand dollar question. Since he had come into possession of the Nimrod, Gabriel had learned a great many things, but its darkest secrets were still kept from him by its true master, the Bishop. When it suited him the Bishop allowed Gabriel to taste undreamed-of power, but the more powerful Gabriel became the more of himself he seemed to lose to the addictive properties of the magic he wielded. The rational side of him said that he should get rid of the trident and the vengeful spirit as soon as possible, but there was a little piece of him that craved the old magic, the same piece that seemed to be steadily growing. Knowing that he was his grandfather’s only hope was the only thing that kept him from completely falling into the Bishop’s thrall.
