Demon Witch (The Ternion Order Book 2)

by Daniel R. Marvello

  A sudden weight on his back informed him that he’d underestimated the little witch. As he twisted his face down and away from her clawing hands, the hunters hesitated in confusion.

  Hoping to take advantage of their bewilderment, Rutlinger shoved Jessie to the side and reached over his shoulders to grab Cara by the arms. With a duck and twisting heave, she was airborne. She crashed into Jessie, and both women landed in a heap on top of Skyler. He grimaced at unintentionally adding to Skyler’s pain. He would have thrown the women toward the hunters, but he couldn’t afford additional congestion at the doorway.

  Jonathan started to raise his rifle again, but Rutlinger’s werewolf speed made it seem as if everyone else was moving in slow motion. He raced forward, grabbing the rifle and shoving it against Jonathan’s chest as he pushed the man backward into the second armed hunter. The dark-haired woman was apparently a witch because she was fingering a pendant and muttering what sounded like an incantation. A well-placed, flat-handed blow to her upper chest toppled her backward, interrupting her spell as he ran toward the basement stairwell.

  The hunters had time to fire a couple of shots before he ran far enough up the stairwell to be out of sight. One bullet splintered the wood of the banister, and the second scored a burning path along the side of his calf. Rutlinger hissed at the acidic sting of silver that polluted the wound.

  During his flight, Rutlinger’s thoughts raced through the implications of the rescue attempt. The Order wouldn’t have risked the entire operation on a team of four hunters. It was possible the hunters in his basement were operating independently, but that scenario didn’t fit Jonathan Pesce’s reputation. No, it was more likely that additional teams of Order personnel had already invaded the building.

  At the top of the stairs, Rutlinger stopped at the door to the entryway and listened. Voices … Marcella’s and a man’s … Blackstone. Rutlinger remembered Blackstone’s eerily calm and confident tones from their encounter at the Hayworth Farm. Good. Perhaps the senior hunter would be easier to negotiate with than the trigger-happy bunch in the basement.

  Chapter 26

  Collateral Damage

  Amanda turned to fully face Reggie. Whatever trouble Blackstone’s team was having at the entryway would have to wait.

  Reggie stood next to an open door with his hands loose at his sides. He’d probably been drawn out into the hallway by the gunshot sounds from below. As Kyle and Joel turned to face the new threat, Reggie’s eyes and coiled stance mirrored the excitement of a cat poised to pounce on a mouse. Kyle edged closer to Amanda, and Joel adjusted his aim to point his rifle toward Reggie.

  “If it isn’t the little girl behind all this hysteria and angst,” Reggie said. “I’ll bet all the problems go away if you go away.”

  “Stay back,” Joel warned, but Reggie was on the move before the hunter spoke the second word.

  Kyle slammed into Reggie before Amanda had time to do anything more than flinch in response to Reggie’s lunge. The two combatants moved so quickly that Amanda heard the blows they traded more than she saw them. Joel raised his gun but didn’t dare shoot for risk of hitting Kyle.

  Amanda found herself back-pedaling from the ferocity of the duel. Her eyes had trouble making sense of what she was seeing. She’d watched Kyle during a couple of his sparring sessions with other Order hunters, but in those bouts, he had to hold back his strength and speed. There was no holding back against Reggie—an opponent who matched or exceeded his abilities.

  One of them would momentarily get a grip on the other before the fight would resume at full speed, giving their fight a stop-action strobe effect. Grunts and flecks of blood emerged from the shifting whirlwind as their blows took a toll on each other. It was as if the cartoon whirlwind of the Tasmanian Devil had come to life.

  When the motion finally stopped, Reggie had Kyle bent over the banister. His hands gripped Kyle’s neck while Kyle clung desperately to the railing to keep from going over. Kyle’s face turned red as Reggie strangled him, but if he let go of the rail to pry at Reggie’s hands, he’d plummet to the tile floor below. Reggie grinned, knowing he’d won.

  “Reggie, stop!” Amanda cried uselessly.

  Reggie was only a few feet away at that point, so Joel took advantage of the moment to aim his rifle. As the barrel came up, Reggie took one hand from Kyle’s neck and swiped it to the side. He snatched the rifle from Joel’s hands and threw it down the hallway in the same motion. Stunned, Joel looked at his empty hands.

  As Reggie turned his attention back to his opponent, Kyle did something unexpected. He let go of the banister and threw himself backward. He pinched Reggie’s waist between his knees and carried the werewolf over the rail with him. Already unbalanced from leaning over Kyle, the additional leverage launched Reggie off the walkway, his arms windmilling.

  Amanda screamed Kyle’s name as a body thumped sickeningly on the floor below. Then she noticed hands gripping the bottom of the metal balusters.

  She ran to the railing and peered over the side. Kyle’s battered face looked up at her with a grim smile. She reached her hand out to him, but he shook his head. He gathered himself with a deep breath, walked his hands up the supports, and hauled himself over the rail. He groaned as she hugged him tightly, but when she tried to step back, he wouldn’t let her go.

  Joel was staring over the rail at the floor below. “That had to hurt,” he said.

  Amanda didn’t want to look, but she had know.

  Reggie lay in an unmoving heap on the tiles below, dark blood pooling near his head. Could even a werewolf survive such an injury? She couldn’t tell if he was still breathing.

  “Reggie,” she said softly. Her stomach clenched, and she had to fight an urge to vomit. So this was how it ended. All that research. All that work. In an instant, her brother was lost to her forever.

  She ran down the stairs to where her brother’s body lay, only belatedly realizing that the voice in her earpiece was no longer echoing from the entryway. As she knelt next to Reggie, she looked toward the front door. The entryway was empty. Both Marcella and Blackstone’s team were gone.

  Amanda reached toward Reggie’s still form, her hand stopping just short of touching him. Did she want him to be alive or dead?

  If he was dead, her brother could rest in peace, and her mission was over. It didn’t matter that the Order were going to ban her exorcism.

  If he was alive, her struggle continued, and she’d have to find a way around the Order’s ban.

  Kyle knelt next to her, watching her face. “I’m sorry, Amanda. I didn’t mean to kill him.”

  Amanda blinked in surprise. “Kyle, I don’t blame you. You were fighting for your life.” She looked at Reggie’s face, and her eyes filled with tears. She blinked them away and rested her hand on his chest. “Maybe it was supposed to end this way.”

  Thump, thump. Thump, thump. Her palm detected the slow beat of a heart and the slight movement of an extremely shallow breath.

  She jerked her hand back. “He’s still alive!”

  Amanda’s voice expressed both horror and relief, reflecting her torn emotions over her seemingly doomed mission to save her brother. For a second, she considered the unthinkable. The werewolf who occupied her brother’s body was helpless. She could end the ordeal right there and ensure the release of her brother’s spirit. But as soon as she started to think about how she would go about such a dreadful task, her mind recoiled in disgust and shame. She couldn’t destroy her brother’s body even if it was possessed by a lupusdaemon.

  Kyle was still watching her and seemed to know what she was thinking. He put a supportive hand on her shoulder. “We’ll find a way.”

  Having no earpiece of his own, Kyle didn’t know about the Order’s proposed ban on the exorcism. Finding a way was about to become much harder.

  “Amanda, I think you need to get over here,” Joel said from the entryway. He had retrieved his weapon and joined them on the ground floor. The front door was wide open, and
a second interior door was ajar as well. According to the Foundation floor plan, that second door led down to the basement.

  Amanda stood and took a last look at Reggie. Fate would decide whether he lived or died. She would have to deal with the consequences, however it went.

  As she stepped up from the sunken living room into the entryway, Amanda realized that Joel was looking down at another body. It was Fenris Kellen. She didn’t need to check for a pulse. The open-eyed stare and bullet hole between his eyes made his condition clear. He’d apparently resisted arrest after all.

  Fenris’s werewolf abilities made him fast, but not fast enough to dodge a silver bullet to the brain. The tactical hunter who’d taken that shot must be exceptionally skilled.

  Although she was sick of the bloodshed that continued to flow from the events she’d set in motion, she had no pity for the dead lawyer. A world without Fenris Kellen was a better place.

  The sound of voices rising from the basement indicated that was where everyone else had gone. And since there were no screams or gunfire, she guessed Blackstone and Marcella had reached some kind of agreement.

  Joel raised an eyebrow, waiting for Amanda to decide what to do next. With a hand flourish, she invited him to lead the way into the basement.

  The cold gray concrete basement echoed with conversation as Amanda stepped off the last stair. Across a large open space supported by square columns, two groups kept a wary distance from each other. Tanya had a hand on Cara’s shoulder, leading her coven mate out of a room with a heavy metal door. Cara looked shaken but otherwise okay. When Jonathan exited the same room supporting a battered Jessie who was pressing a hand to her head, Amanda broke into a jog.

  All conversation ended the moment the others spotted Amanda’s team.

  Amanda went straight to her friend. “Are you okay, Jessie? What happened?”

  Cara huffed and glared. “Don’t mind me. It’s not like I wasn’t abducted and thrown around like a rag doll.”

  Amanda ignored Cara and looked to Jonathan for an answer to her question.

  Jonathan nodded toward Rutlinger with a glare. “The good doctor threw her against the wall. She has a few scrapes and a nasty bump on her head, but she’ll be fine.”

  A shape behind Jonathan caught Amanda’s eye. It took a moment to figure out what she was seeing. It was Skyler, contorted in ways that shouldn’t have been possible. “Oh, my God,” she said. Kyle came to her side to see what she was exclaiming about and gasped when he saw Skyler’s distorted form.

  Rutlinger pushed roughly between the two of them and entered the room.

  After checking for a pulse, he hung his head and sighed. Then his nostrils twitched, and he looked intently at Skyler’s hand.

  Amanda stepped forward, wondering what had caught his attention.

  Rutlinger noticed her movement and held up a hand in a stop gesture. “Please leave.”

  She deserved his scorn. Demon or not, Skyler’s death was another to lay at her feet. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “I doubt that,” was his bitter retort.

  Kyle took her hand and squeezed it in support. She turned with him and left the room, but not before she’d moved close enough to see the blood on Skyler’s fingers. The blood could easily have been Skyler’s own, but the majority of the damage to her body appeared to be internal. If it wasn’t Skyler’s blood, the possibilities were disturbing.

  Marcella was speaking to Blackstone when Amanda and Kyle rejoined them. “We have a deal, so you can get off the property now and take your little commando force with you. As long as the Order bans the exorcism as promised, we have no need to defend ourselves against its practitioners.”

  Blackstone’s response was cold and direct. “Don’t think this agreement gives you blanket immunity. Using dark magic has the same consequences as always. If you persist in using it, I shall return.”

  Marcella sneered and folded her arms across her chest. “I got what I wanted.” Then she cut a chilling glance toward Amanda. “Mostly.”

  Now that the immediate danger seemed to be past, mention of the agreement fanned Amanda’s disappointment and anger over the exorcism ban. “When were you planning on telling me about this little agreement?” Amanda asked Noreen tersely.

  “That agreement is the only thing keeping you alive right now,” Marcella stated.

  “Shut up, Marcella,” Noreen spat. Addressing Amanda, she answered, “We didn’t want you to be distracted from the mission.” With a glance toward Blackstone, she added, “And we honestly didn’t think the offer would be accepted.” Her tone suggested that she and Blackstone had hoped it wouldn’t.

  “Whatever,” Jonathan said dismissively. “We need to get out of here and get medical attention for Jessie and Cara.” He started moving toward the stairwell up to the entryway.

  The Order people followed Jonathan out of the basement, watching the werewolves over their shoulders as they left. Marcella and Cyrus waited for them to leave with smug expressions. Rutlinger stood at the holding-cell doorway, looking exhausted in body and spirit.

  When they reached the entryway at the top of the stairs, Noreen tilted her head toward Fenris’s corpse. “Now, there’s a lesson. Fenris expected Marcella to back him up when he attacked, not knowing she was willing to sacrifice him to achieve her goals, whatever they may be. I think we’re crazy to trust her.”

  “I don’t trust her,” Blackstone said. “But our orders were to make the offer, and our hands are tied as long as she honors the agreement.”

  On the return trip to the vehicles, Amanda tried to find out more about Cara’s and Jessie’s injuries. The bloody marks on Cara’s arm were worrisome—they looked distinctly like fingernail scratches. Jessie had a bleeding abrasion on her cheek and a bruised shoulder from where she had fallen against the wall. She didn’t want to alarm her friends, so Amanda tried to be circumspect with her questions.

  “How did you get hurt?” she asked them.

  Cara was quick to answer. “That bastard Rutlinger used Jessie as a shield, so I jumped him. But he was too strong and fast. He threw both of us on top of what was left of Skyler.” She shuddered at the memory.

  “Yuck,” Amanda agreed. “Being hurled onto a dead body must have been unnerving.”

  Cara shrugged. “She wasn’t dead at the time. She cried out when we landed on her, but that might have been what did her in.”

  “Is that when you got scratched?”

  Another shrug. “I honestly don’t know if it was her, Jessie, or Rutlinger who scratched me. It all happened so fast.”

  Cara was silent for a moment, and then her eyes widened. She glanced at Amanda before looking up toward the cloud-obscured sun and then back toward the west. The clouds to the west were broken up enough to show that the moon had dropped below the horizon.

  Cara turned back to Amanda with pale panic on her face. “You don’t think … but the sun was up! It’s only on the night of the full moon.”

  Amanda patted her coven-mate’s shoulder reassuringly. “I’m sure you’re right. It was already sunrise when we arrived at the Foundation. Skyler’s demon has gone back to the abyss, I’m sure.”

  Cara stared back at her. “But you aren’t sure, are you? Last night was the full moon. That’s why you’re asking me all these questions.”

  “I didn’t mean to scare you. Like you said, the sun was up. I’m sure the window of danger had passed.”

  Cara stumbled down the trail silently for a few moments before commenting, “I hope you’re right. The Order just banned your exorcism ceremony. If Skyler’s demon is inside me, I’m screwed.”

  Amanda put her arm around Cara, who had fallen silent. As they continued along the trail, she said, “Don’t worry. I’m sure you’re fine. But no matter what, I won’t abandon you.”

  Cara looked up, seeming more vulnerable than ever before. A glimmer of hope eased the worry in her eyes. “Thanks, Amanda. I appreciate that.”

  Had she just lied to Cara? C
ould she really defy the Order’s explicit ban? If she did, her time with the Order would be over, and they would probably punish her in some way.

  Kyle would insist on helping. She’d get him in big trouble as well. All for an improbable chance of rescuing her brother, who might already be beyond saving.

  Looking over her shoulder, her eyes met Kyle’s. His knowing gaze and shallow nod told her he’d heard everything she said to Cara and that he agreed. His willingness to help her was a measure of the trust he placed in her. It was time she acted responsibly and worthy of that trust.

  For the rest of the hike, she kept her face averted from the others. Tears spilled down her cheeks in memory of the brother she was giving up on. She had tried for so long and so hard, but the obstacles had become insurmountable. Her only remaining hope was that Reggie’s body would die, releasing his spirit and sending the demon that had possessed him back to the abyss where it belonged.

  Chapter 27

  Despair

  A week later, Amanda woke up with Kyle’s arms around her, gently stroking her head. “It’s okay, babe. It was just a bad dream.”

  He meant another bad dream. She had been having them nightly. Sometimes more than once a night.

  Most of the nightmares were a variation on the one where Reggie tried to cross the chasm to reach her. As before, he failed every time. Sometimes, she tried to jump across to him. Those were the worst because she invariably woke up screaming, escaping the dream as she plummeted to her death. In the latest version, she stood on the top platform of a tall rock spire with the canyon surrounding her. She was helpless to do anything but call Reggie’s name.

  She was sick of waking up screaming, crying, or both. It was exhausting. The sleeping pills she’d tried didn’t stop the dreams—they only made her feel fuzzy brained and depressed.