Roguish Demon

by Kat Cotton

  Roguish Demon

  Clem Starr: Demon Fighter

  Kat Cotton

  Published by Candy J Starr, 2017.

  This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

  ROGUISH DEMON

  First edition. June 10, 2017.

  Copyright © 2017 Kat Cotton.

  Written by Kat Cotton.

  Also by Kat Cotton

  Clem Starr: Demon Fighter

  Demon Child

  Moonlight Virgin

  Vampire Prince

  Undead Alchemist

  Super Starr (Coming Soon)

  Roguish Demon

  Merry Clem-mas

  Mystery Widow

  Clem Starr Demon Fighter Box Set: Books 1-3

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Also By Kat Cotton

  1 Duffy’s Problem

  2 Old Hungarian Lady

  3 Drinks with the Duffys

  4 Market

  5 All That Glitters

  6 The Big Reveal

  7 Dead Husband

  8 Goulash

  Demon Child Preview

  1 Duffy’s Problem

  I HEARD A CLATTER. The damn client had tripped over something in the outer office. Probably looking for a receptionist. As if I could afford one. I mean, the dude could’ve phoned first instead of just waltzing in here.

  I got up and went to help him. I assumed it was a him. Most of my clients are.

  I opened my office door and found him sprawled on the floor.

  “Hell, you’ve broken my sofa,” I said.

  “That thing? That was broken long before I set foot in here.”

  I wondered if I could force the point and get him to cough up for a new sofa for the waiting area. I rarely had people waiting, so I’d never worried much about making the front office fancy. Still, if I had a nice, new sofa I could use it for napping.

  “Is your boss here?” he asked.

  That was my most hated question. Like I had to have some fool man working over me. I was all the demon-defeating dynamo they needed. Looks can deceive and I wasn’t as fragile as I seemed. I had years of martial arts training, some hefty demon fighting kudos and an awfully bad temper.

  I didn’t have a boss.

  My evil glare soon got rid of that notion and he followed me into my office. He looked around as though he didn’t know what to think. Sure, the place needed dusting and there were books everywhere but hey, that’s demon fighting for you. It’s not like I could get in a cleaner. This stuff was full of top notch secrets. Except for my script for the Demon Hunter’s Bible. I was planning to publish that as soon as I found a good editor.

  He gave me the once over, that look that I was a bit too punk for his tastes. What did he expect? That I’d be wearing a suit? That’d be useless for fighting demons. Instead, I had kick ass hair and a ton of eyeliner.

  The guy dusted off the chair before he sat down.

  “I’m Percy Duffy,” he said and held out his business card. As I suspected from his very conservative suit and haircut, the man was an accountant.

  I put the card on my desk and waited for him to continue.

  “You deal in the... umm... paranormal...” He said “paranormal” like it was a dirty word. Like he was asking for the jerkoff booth at a $2 peep show. I hated that shit and normally factored having to deal with it into my final bill.

  I nodded.

  “It’s my wife...”

  Okay, incubus. Had to be. As soon as they started with “it’s my wife”, you could pretty much bank on it being an incubus. Luckily for him, I was the top incubus fighter in the business. And luckily for me, these Joes, they paid a fortune to get rid of them. Personally, I’d think more about getting rid of the wife. It’d be cheaper and easier that way. I mean, after a few rounds of hot incubus sex, they were going to be ruined anyway and no normal man would satisfy them again but you didn’t tell the Joes that.

  “Give me the details,” I said and got out my jotter pad to pretend to take notes. I never really took notes. The cases were all the same.

  He blabbed on with all the details.

  I drew up budgets of what I’d spend the money on. Rent had to come first.

  “She’s been drawing away from me. Nothing I do...”

  Then some food. Maybe some awesome banana cake from that fancy bakery. I’d been living on what I could scrounge off my housemates for the past week and I needed sugar. High-quality sugar.

  “Maybe I’m being stupid thinking this is otherworldly. I mean, there could be some logical explanation for it.”

  “Could be but I doubt it. It’s not as uncommon as you think. It’s just that you don’t hear about it. I mean, it’s not like some bloke is going to come into the office on a Monday morning talking about the demon that’s shagging his wife. You don’t go around telling people, do you?”

  His whole face perked up.

  “No. No, I don’t. So, I’m not alone in this?”

  “Definitely not. The world is full of things you can’t even imagine.” I got up and walked over to my filing cabinet, slapping the drawer so a resounding metal ring clanged out. “A whole cabinet full of cases. And they are just the people with the good sense to come to me. I shudder to think of the number of stupid ones that don’t.”

  I shuddered more to think of the ones who didn’t pay.

  I gave him a reassuring smile.

  “Look at it like this, you get a strange noise in your car so you take it to the mechanic to get it fixed. Your tap starts leaking so you call a plumber. You have a supernatural disturbance in your home so you call me. Nothing airy-fairy about it. It makes pure logical sense.”

  He nodded. The types like him, the dry accountant types, they needed that reassurance. If they thought they were just like everybody else, it made them happy. No matter how weird the goings-on. That’s what they paid me for. To be normalised.

  Before I sat back down, I gave his shoes the once over. Even though he seemed quite dingy, his shoes were top quality swank. Maybe he was richer than I gave him credit for.

  Then I knocked the blind as I got behind my desk and it whizzed up with a bang. Muted light came in through the frosted glass window, brighter where the frosting gave way to the clear glass of my name and title. Clem Starr: Demon Fighter. In reverse from this side, of course. The blind had long been broken and had hung down lopsided but at least it had covered the grime of the window. It looked like we were back to square one with the reassurance.

  My chair creaked as I sat down. This office sure did need some refurbishment. It would stop the Joes looking so goggle-eyed.

  One time, I’d had to call into the office of my archrival, Harry McConchie. Oh man, did he have it sweet. Everything looked top drawer swank. Leather seats, a huge, real wooden desk. Lots of framed artwork on the walls. His father paid for it, of course. I hated Harry McConchie so much but you had to admit, it did create an impression. Even though I was so far above him in every way, winning the demon fighter’s award every year. But my award certificates were taped to the wall, yellowing and curling at the edges. I needed someone to look after that shit.

  Duffy was slipping away so I had to keep him talking.

  “So, tell me more about the situation. I need to build up a profile of the perp.”

  I smiled at him. That stroked his ego. They love it when you use words they hear on crime shows. It makes the process seem less like crazy, spooky shit and more like an investigation.

  His wife sounded like she was getting a proper going over by this guy. It was all standard incubus stuff until he said something that changed everything.

  “I thought i
t could all be explained logically. I mean her first husband was dead. He was definitely dead. I took her to visit his grave on his birthday every year. I saw that tombstone. She said he died in a car crash.”

  This did not seem so stock standard anymore. I nodded and sucked on the end of my pen, giving him my “tell me more” look.

  “So, when he walked into our home, she nearly fainted at first. I didn’t believe him but she had no doubts. He was her first husband. She knew his looks, his walk, his smile. He said some mumbo-jumbo about mistaken identity at the hospital and having amnesia for many years. How could I argue with that? If Mary believed him then she believed him.”

  Holy crap. This sounded like a liderc, not an incubus. And where there are liderc, there is treasure. It’s well known. I sat up straight. This case had suddenly got a lot more interesting.

  After getting more details off him, I was convinced it was indeed a liderc. I inched forward as he described the demon to me until I sat on the edge of my seat. Oh, this was going to be so sweet. I would be rich. I’d never encountered one of them before. They were so rare that they made the boring old incubi seem as common as household pests.

  “So, do you think you can get rid of it. I mean, him. It or him? Which is it?”

  “It works for me,” I said.

  I handed him the quote I’d written up. His hand shook as he read it.

  “Are you sure this is right? It seems an awful lot...”

  “Now, what price can you put on a happy marriage? I’ll have this thing out of your home and gone forever. You and the missus can be back to your normal life in no time and you’ll have peace of mind.”

  He nodded.

  “It’s half in advance. I take cards or cash.”

  I set a date with him to go to the house and check out the target. It helped if they weren’t at home and I could interact with the demon alone. You didn’t need interference from the demonically-infatuated wife.

  Then he paid me.

  You can’t smile when they hand you the money. It looks cold and grasping. You can’t do a happy dance until they leave the office. But, behind their backs, you can kiss that money and stroke it like a puppy.

  When I’d finished my happy money dance, I got down some dusty old books from the shelf. You could look a lot of this stuff up on the internet but most of the online info was rubbish. All put together by religious freaks or goth kids. Not much of it was based on reality. These old books though, I’d picked them up from a chick in a garage sale. She’d said they belonged to her grandmother and they were worthless. Ha, she knew nothing. Her grandmother had been one of the foremost demon hunters of her time. She’d changed her name and taken on a new identity when she’d given up the game but I'd tracked her down.

  The sweetest part had been seeing Harry McConchie pull up at the sale while I drove off with the books and some spell jars and other handy shit. He was left with a worn-out sofa and a bunch of old aprons.

  The lore on lidercs was nowhere near as detailed as other demons. They came from Hungary for starters. That meant you needed someone to translate the lore before you could even get it written down. Not many demon fighters nowadays knew Hungarian. Maybe I could find a Hungarian place across town. Then I could get myself some goulash as well as finding someone to translate.

  I threw the necessary books in my bag. It weighed a ton but you couldn’t get this stuff on Kindle.

  I knew exactly where to head. A charming little Hungarian place I'd gone to on a date once. I’d get there right in time to get some dinner but before the rush. My stomach rumbled just at the thought of that delicious goulash. Real food rocked my world.

  2 Old Hungarian Lady

  IT’D BEEN PRETTY EASY to find someone to translate my books. The owner’s mother sat in the corner of the restaurant making little dumplings but it seemed a task they’d given her to keep busy more than anything. She was about 200 years old and, when the owner introduced me, she scrutinised me with her sunken eyes. She knew a lot. I bet she’d stopped talking a long time ago, though, because no one believed or cared about her stories from the old country. They’d laughed at her until she’d just stopped trying. Fools.

  The restaurant was all dark wood and checked tablecloths. It looked like it hadn’t changed for decades. There were faded pictures of Hungary on the walls and piano accordion music playing in the background.

  She had gestured for me to sit down. I’d hoped to get some of that delicious smelling stew into me first. The spicy smell from the kitchen wafted through the air and my stomach rumbled like a runaway train. I felt faint. But I sat down and showed her the book.

  She grinned. “Ah, you want to know about this?”

  I sure did. She read through the books, translating the details with her heavily-accented English.

  The liderc was a critter shrouded in mystery and folklore.

  “He will change shape, often as a dead one.”

  Yep, I’d got that from the dude looking like the dead husband.

  Then she went on with a whole lot of stuff about chickens – how they were born from black chicken eggs and sometimes the eggs were smaller than normal chicken eggs but sometimes they were the same size.

  Then the shitty bit. They attached themselves to one person. That was the killer part for me because I needed to get this critter unattached from one person – the wife – and reattached to another – me. There were ways of doing that but it was more difficult if they were a one woman type monster.

  “He will find gold for his owner until they become very rich.”

  I sat up then. Finding gold sounded pretty much a win-win to me. You got mind-blowingly amazing sex to boot. Why would you want to get rid of him?

  I guess the husband might be feeling a bit left out. I mean, what could he offer her to compare with that? Okay, there was a bit of an ick factor with the demon basically being a chicken but other than that, I saw no downside.

  “Sometimes, they will suck the blood of the woman.” She lowered the book to appraise me. “Is this you? Are you the one who is with the liderc? You are too pale and too thin. You must eat. You must get rid of him so you can grow strong.”

  She called out to the kitchen to bring me some food. I didn’t want to tell her it wasn’t me he was feeding off until that food arrived. I would do some mighty damage to anything the kitchen had on offer.

  The owner came out with a big steaming bowl of meaty soup. I grinned so wide my face hurt. I could almost swim laps in that soup bowl.

  I picked up the spoon and tasted it. Spicy but not too spicy with a flavour I couldn’t really name. The warmth of the soup heated my insides and I was torn between wanting to get that soup in me as fast as possible and wanting it to last forever.

  An old man came in with a violin case.

  “Jimmy will practice before the dinner customers come in,” the owner explained. “You can still talk.”

  He took out his violin and began playing a mournful song. If that was meant to encourage customers, I’m not sure it’d work. Perhaps it was to hurry them out in case they took too long over dinner.

  I finally scraped the bottom of the bowl and my stomach felt full.

  “How do you get rid of it?” I asked the old lady.

  “There are many tales. Some say burning incense.” She gave a throaty laugh. “Some say you must trap it inside a hollow tree. But the best way is to give it a task that is impossible to do. The liderc need to do tasks. Every day they want new tasks to do. You must give it harder and harder jobs until you find one that it can’t do. If you like, you can bring him in here to wash the dishes.”

  She laughed again and her laughter mingled with the wail of the violin. This job didn’t sound too difficult. I’d have that stupid liderc gone in no time.

  I laughed with her.

  “Actually, that’s what we need. He can do the dishes during the day and keep an old lady happy at night.”

  With that, she gave me a wink. Then she grabbed my wrist with
her bony old hand.

  “It’s not you, though,” she hissed. “It’s not you that he wants. Be careful. The troubles might come to you.”

  Well, the old Hungarian lady hadn’t been that helpful. I mean, it wasn’t her fault. She could only tell me what was in the books, ergo it was the books’ fault.

  3 Drinks with the Duffys

  THE MAIN ISSUE, AS far as I could see, was that this critter needed to be given an impossible to task to do, but only she could give it to him. Since he gave her awesome sex and buckets of money, as well as having her in thrall to him, there was no motivation for her. It’s not like I could just say hey, your husband would really like you to stop now. Also, she believed it was her ex-husband and not an evil demon chicken.

  When I went for the first meeting, I’d try out the incense thing the old lady had told me. It might work. Weirder things have happened. If not, then I’d try Plan B.

  When I arrived at the house for the preliminary meeting, they’d made dinner for me. All fancy food too.

  I looked around for signs of the demon gold they’d be getting. The house was far from fancy. Everything about it screamed comfortably middle class. They didn’t even have a very big TV set. I’d hoped for more obvious signs of wealth.

  Before his wife joined us, I asked Percy about the treasure.

  “You know, pots of gold or other expensive things?”

  “No, no, nothing like that.” He was lying, though. He couldn’t keep his hands still when he lied, and he flushed. This guy would never make a poker player.

  “Listen, if you aren’t totally honest with me, this isn’t going to work. I need to know exactly what is happening here.”

  He stared at the ceiling and gripped his knees with his long fingers. It took him a while to work up the guts to spit it out.

  “Okay, there is gold but we’ve not told anyone about it. If there’s gold, it belongs to someone and comes from somewhere. You can’t make gold out of thin air. So, someone is going to come looking for it. Then there’s the matter of the taxation department...”