by Sara DeHaven
"There was this thing, I don’t know, a kind of surge or something when the demon tried to jump into me. At first, my wards were working fine, and I was focused on gathering the ritual energy to encompass it. But then this thing happened.” His shoulders jerked up into a shrug. "I’m not sure I even have words to explain it.”
“Try,” Bree said shortly, controlling the urge to grab him and shake it out of him. She realized the anger she was feeling was an after reaction to the exorcism, and perhaps even more to the sense of security she had lost in the process. She’d been so sure Daniel’s Demon Master talent made for a safety net.
Daniel looked gradually less upset and more serious as he considered. “Something inside me triggered me to drop my wards. The only thing I can make of it is that some part of me wanted the possession. Consciously, that’s not what I want at all. The idea scares the living hell out of me.” He finally met her eyes as he continued with some heat. “I know how careful I have to be about demon contact. I’m very well aware I'm prone to Demon Master instability. I would have sworn that no part of me wanted the possession.”
“And yet possession can feel good. I’ve experienced that myself.”
Daniel shook his head. “I haven’t. There's a certain buzz to it, but to me, it's actively unpleasant.”
Bree took a moment to consciously read him as he spoke, and he came across as quite sincere to her. Her anger started to leak out of her. Maybe there really was some mystery here. And maybe if they could solve it, it would be safe again for Daniel to do exorcisms if he needed to. “It seems to me a deep read is in order. I have the one from yesterday to compare it to, so it could be quite revealing.”
“Well, I’d certainly like to know if I picked up taint,” Daniel conceded, sounding more tired than anything else now. He pulled his shirt off over his head, then draped it across his back. It was chilly in the church.
Bree moved to stand before him, and for once, she wasn’t all tied up in knots about touching him. She still had a little frisson of unreasonable anger going to keep her libido in check. She put her hands on his chest and plunged into the read right away, and was immediately surprised at how his base energy read. He should by rights be quite depleted, but if anything, he felt stronger on that level than he had yesterday. His will energy wasn’t down much either. She forced herself to sink deeper, and what came across at the next level was how dark the energy felt. It wasn’t taint, that was clear. It felt something like depression, something like anger, and a sort of buzzing discomfort. The image that came to Bree’s mind was red and black carbonated liquid that had been shaken up and might explode. She’d read perhaps four or five people after they were primary in an exorcism over the years, and none of them had read this dark. That thing she called “the darkness” was larger and closer to the surface again.
She leaned a little into Daniel, an unconscious response to her activating her attunment to go deeper yet. On the feeling level, she picked up shame, anxiety, more anger, and that old strain of self-hatred and self-doubt that Bree felt was related to growing up with Demon Master and Binder talents, widely considered innately evil and corrupt. Even worse, she felt a sense of hopelessness. She couldn’t help but soften at that. She wasn’t ready to give up on Daniel, not really, and she didn’t want him to give up on himself. She pulled out of the read, and regarded him steadily. “No taint, thank God. But I really do think there’s a puzzle to be solved here. That dark thing is worse again.”
He squeezed his eyes shut, put his head in his hands, and clutched at his hair, as if he couldn’t bear to take in what she’d just said. Bree was taken aback at his obvious distress, in spite of the emotional turmoil she’d just read in him. She’d seldom seen him look so outwardly upset. He usually had a gift for appearing calm and in charge under stress. Unless, of course, he was freaking out and acting seriously scary.
Without thinking, she reached out and put a hand on his shoulder as she told him, “I really do think there’s some mystery here, and I don’t have the experience or skill to solve it. There has to be a reason your wards fell, and I think it’s related somehow to that dark energy I’m reading. I get the weird sense that it’s part of you and not part of you at the same time. And that fits somehow with your feeling that you didn’t want the possession at all, yet something in you moved to allow it.”
Maybe it was her touch, or her effort to seem calm and straightforward about it, but his posture relaxed a little, his hands dropped and his eyes opened. “You know,” he said slowly, voice a little hoarse, “what you’re describing couldn’t sound more like taint if you tried. And if it looks like taint, and acts like taint, maybe it really is taint.”
“But my Demonsense isn’t picking up even the slightest hint of taint,” Bree protested.
“And I know you’re exceptional in that area. I’m not doubting you on that. But maybe this is some other kind of taint that we don’t know about.”
“The trouble is, who can we ask about that who won’t immediately turn you in to the Ecclesias?” Bree replied, troubled. The Ecclesias would rip his powers out if they discovered his Demon Master and Binder talents, which would likely kill him.
Daniel still looked upset, but at least it seemed like he was thinking again, like he’d backed away from the edge of despair. He took a moment to get his shirt back on, and just then, Father Steuban arrived with a tray bearing a pitcher of water, some cups, a small bowl and some washcloths.
The priest settled the tray on the ground beside Geoff with a grunt, and poured out some water that he handed to Bree and Daniel, then downed a cup himself in several large, thirsty gulps. Then he lowered himself down dipped a washcloth in the bowl of water, and began gently wiping the boy’s face and neck. Geoff had foamed a bit at the mouth there at the end, and there was blood on his mouth as well where he must have bitten his lip.
By unspoken agreement, Bree and Daniel walked out of easy hearing distance of Father Steuban and settled down into a pew, grabbing their coats along the way. Bree put hers on, and Daniel draped his across his lap. After a moment, he said reluctantly, “We could ask Gelsenim. He has eons of experience with demon kind and Demon Masters. Maybe he could tell us something about what’s going on with me.”
“You know how hard it is to get coherent information out of him,” Bree replied. Daniel didn’t answer, and what he was getting at dawned on her. “Oh, you mean I could let Gelsenim possess me, then read you. That way, I’d get a clearer sense of what Gelsenim knows."
Daniel sounded a bit guilty as he said, “It might work, but I don’t like asking you to do it.”
Bree found she was more intrigued than upset by the idea. “It could work,” she said, thinking hard. “In fact, let’s do it. I was planning on trying out the trial possession thing next weekend anyway. Do you think you…” her voice trailed off uncertainly.
“Do I think I’ll be capable of calling him off if I need to? As long as he doesn’t try to possess me, I’ll be fine. That's how I got into trouble today. And he's certainly not going to try to possess me if he can possess you."
“Well, that’s a point.”
Geoff was starting to come around, and Father Steuban was helping him to sit up. He murmured something to the young man, but they couldn’t hear what. Bree let silence fall between them. She felt tired out from the rollercoaster of emotions she’d just been through. At the same time, she still felt unpleasantly revved up and restless with a mixed anger/adrenaline hangover. Her mind skittered around speculations about what had happened to Daniel, about her own reactions, and she finally came around to thinking more about how the exorcism itself had gone. “You know, all things considered, that exorcism went unusually quickly,” she commented. “You got the demon to the surface fast, and it didn’t take you long to raise the ritual energy. It sounded like you were invoking Norse gods.”
Daniel looked a little uncomfortable as he replied, “Yeah, well, it’s how I was taught by my father. I’m not actively into the No
rse pagan religion thing, but I guess those are the deities I’m most comfortable invoking, that I have the most personal connection with.”
“What interested me most was that you didn’t seem to really attune to the demon’s energy to get a grip on it. It felt to me like you basically just powered it through, even though I never felt that you were using your Demon Master ability. That doesn’t make sense to me.”
Daniel put his elbows up on the back of the pew and leaned back tiredly. “I’m not the Reader you are, and honestly, I don't think my Demonsense is quite as good as yours either. I’m not that good at removing demon taint for that reason. The work is too subtle. For me, exorcism is more a use of Caster energy. If I can get the demon to come to the surface, I just raise a shit load of ritual energy and shape it in such a way that it encompasses the demon and forces it out.”
“But how can you feel the shape of the demon if you don’t attune? How can you feel that you’ve gotten it all out so there’s no taint left over?”
Daniel shrugged. “I’m not honestly sure how I do it. I’m reading enough of the energy signature to get the general feel of it, then I just sort of wrestle it into the ground.”
Bree zipped up her plum colored fleece jacket as she considered what he’d said. “I suppose since I’m not as much of a Caster, I’ve had to go about it another way. The only way I can get a grip on the demonic energy is to really attune to it. It feels pretty gross, but it works. It’s also the way I was taught to do it.”
“I think most Exorcists are taught that way,” Daniel conceded. “In a way, I’ve always thought of Exorcist talent as really more of a combination of Demonsense and Reader talents in people with strong will energy. They don't have to be strong Casters. Exorcist spells are actually quite simple compared to most castings. I suspect the type of will energy most Exorcists have is a sort of low level Demon Master ability. But since I’m not supposed to have Demon Master talent, I’ve had to figure out how to do it mostly on Caster ability alone.”
“I suppose that means you have less actual contact with the demon that way. That’s definitely a good thing.” She didn’t add, especially for you, but she thought it.
And then what the demon had said at the end jumped out at her. “Um, Daniel, didn’t that demon say something about a war?” When he didn’t answer right away, Bree felt her heart sink. “Okay, that’s a bad thing, right?”
Daniel most definitely did not look at her as he said, “You know how much demons like to make threats.”
“Oh no you don’t. Don’t try to protect me on this! I’m likely to make up something even worse than it really is if you don’t tell me,” Bree insisted, turning toward him and putting a hand on his wrist. When he still didn’t answer, she shook his wrist a little. “Come on, spit it out.”
“It really may just be the usual demon threat.”
“But you don’t think it is.”
“It fits too much with what we’ve been seeing around here lately,” he said reluctantly. “The increase in possessions. The increased aggressiveness in the demons. There are cycles in demonic activity. It’s been documented over the years. There are times when they gather together for some reason, or are called together by Demon Masters, and you start to see wide scale changes in human behavior due to the increase in possessions.” Daniel was speaking calmly, but his visible reluctance to talk about it told her how serious it really was. “There’s usually some spiritual or esoteric explanation put forward about the surges in demonic activity. Right now, I’d say people are describing it in terms of our society, Western society any way, becoming decadent and corrupt, like the Roman Empire before it fell. There’s less of a widespread cultural belief in the devil. Maybe most people don’t think of it in terms of evil anymore. And as you know, I’m not sure I think of it in those terms either.”
“The ‘other dimensional beings’ idea. It’s not exactly a popular theory. Even I’m not fully convinced,” Bree admitted as she let go of his wrist and put both hands in her coat pockets. “I mean, after all the information we’ve gotten out of Gelsenim, I get that demons are probably beings from some other dimension, that it probably isn’t hell as I was taught to think of it. But I’m not sure I buy that they aren’t innately evil. They feel evil, they do evil. Seems pretty convincing evidence to me.”
“Well, whatever they are, sometimes they go to war. They organize, usually with human Demon Masters, and usually with the cooperation of other dark magic users who want something out of the transaction. We know what the demons want out of it. They want to be able to permanently possess human beings so they don’t go hungry. The question is, what do the people working with them want?”
Bree sighed. “What do they ever want? Power? Money? Revenge? We all have weaknesses. We all have darkness that can be exploited.” Her mood dipped as she considered just how much darkness she had sensed in Daniel today. He was, in many ways, incredibly kind and altruistic. But he was also very angry, and very wounded. And in addition to being a Demon Master, he was also a Binder. It was another forbidden talent that made him capable of utterly taking over the will of another person. He tried not to use it, and Bree tried not to remember he had it.
“So this war thing,” Bree said uneasily. “Should I be afraid?”
“Let's just say it behooves us to bone up on our warding and casting spells.” He paused a beat, then added, "Immediately."
CHAPTER THREE
Bree cut around the avocado the long way, then put down the knife and twisted it slightly between her hands. It came apart smoothly, and she looked with satisfaction at the unblemished, creamy green interior. She’d managed to get one at a perfect stage of ripeness. She put down both knife and avocado and lifted the lid on the large pot of water on the stove to see how close it was to boiling, and set it back down. Not quite there yet. She looked at the clock on her microwave. Yep, both Daniel and Dion were late. That was a good thing, because she was running late as well. Her last massage client ran over so she was behind in getting dinner going.
She pushed back a strand of hair that had escaped from her French braid with her wrist and went back to cutting up the avocado, then arranged the chunks on the salad greens in a large wooden bowl. She was working in the limited counter space afforded in her small kitchen. She’d fallen in love with the tiny jewel of a Victorian house for its character, sense of history, and plain good vibes. She loved the tall ceilings, the long, narrow windows, the wide wood trim around all the windows and doors, the worn wood floors. Having lived here for two years now, she was less enamored with the lack of space. She’d given the kitchen cabinets a fresh coat of white paint when she first moved in, and painted what little wall space there was a light spring green, but that had failed to make the kitchen seem any bigger.
As she finished the salad, she heard a meowing at the back door. She went to open it, and in scampered her cat Hanroi. He was an older kitten, perhaps five months old, still slender, intense and playful. He was a classic striped grey and black tabby with prominent, rounded whisker pads, like a little lion. He announced his entrance with a loud series of meows, then jumped shamelessly up on the counter where Bree had been working.
“Hanroi, down!” Bree scolded, though without much hope. She was supposedly a Cat Master, but thus far, the only sign of that was the way she attracted cats. She seemed to have none of the Animal Master’s gift for training the species of animal attuned to her. But at least with Hanroi here, the neighborhood cats had stopped trying to sneak into her house all the time. She wasn't sure how that worked, but she was grateful.
As expected, Hanroi ignored her, and she had to physically lift him off the counter. He struggled, and knocked the avocado seed off the counter and onto Bree, leaving a streak of green on her orange ballet neck sweater. She dabbed at the spot with a sponge, exasperated, and the lid began to rattle on the pot of water. She gave up temporarily on her sweater and took off the lid and dumped a package of spaghetti into it. As she was giving it a stir
, the doorbell rang. She hurried through the dining and living rooms and the hall to the front door, Hanroi scampering along behind, and opened it to find Dion had arrived for the pow wow first.
Dion Evans was one of her oldest friends. They’d met when they were both thirteen, in junior high, and had gone on to attend the same specialized private high school for powered kids on the outskirts of Seattle. He was a ridiculously good looking African-American man with a killer smile and a honey warm voice. He was a bit of a womanizer, and Bree was deeply grateful she’d never fallen for him, as she was pretty sure he made a much better friend than boyfriend.
They hugged each other hello, and he took off his coat and hung it on one of the hooks in the hall. He was wearing a maroon cashmere sweater and black jeans with a polished pair of black boots. They were having a last cold snap, and it was chilly enough out for winter coats and sweaters.
He leaned over and scooped up Hanroi, rubbing under the cat's chin vigorously. “Man am I hungry!” he exclaimed as he followed her back into the kitchen. “I had an early shift today, so I had lunch around eleven. Seems like eons ago.” He put the cat down on the floor, then reached into the salad bowl and plucked a chunk of avocado off the top and put it into his mouth. Bree slapped his hand as he dove for a second. “Back, back I say!” she exclaimed. “Don’t manhandle my salad. Dinner’s only ten or fifteen minutes away. I’m sure you can survive until then.”
“Any thing I can do to help? I’m all about getting the dinner train moving.”
“You can set the table. I’m running way behind.”
Daniel showed up shortly thereafter, and Dion let him in. Bree was just pulling the foil wrapped loaf of garlic bread out of the oven, when he came into the kitchen. He was definitely not the clothes horse Dion was. He'd come in his faded navy turtleneck cotton sweater and jeans. Daniel had a predilection for blue clothes, some kind of symbolic power balancing thing for all the fire in his nature. “Perfect timing,” Bree told him as she pulled off her oven mitts and handed him the salad bowl. “Here, put this on the table, we’re just about ready.”
