by Sara DeHaven
Lord, what if he died on her? Bree’s hands shook now, badly, in after reaction, as she tried to get the keys in the ignition. She groped for and found the lever to move the seat forward and searched for the gearshift as she turned the key. She found it on the floor between the seats. A stick shift. His car was a God doubled-damned stick shift! Bree had driven one once. About ten years ago. She glanced over at Daniel, and he looked like he might be unconscious. No way to move him to her car now. “Shit, shit, shit!” she swore as her left foot searched for the clutch, and viciously added more swear words as she stalled the car for what was likely to be the first of many times.
Chapter 7
Bree counted herself extremely lucky that Dion was available to help her with Daniel. Dion’s day job was as a paramedic. The drama of it all suited his personality to a T. While Dion tended to be outgoing and energetic, he managed to exude an unruffled, soothing confidence as he took over getting Daniel out of the car, into her house, and up the narrow stairs to her bedroom. At his direction, she brought him her first aid kit, hot water, soap and some old towels. She didn't think of herself as particularly squeamish, but when Dion wiped the blood away to reveal Daniel's knife wound, Bree's head swam. She must have made some noise, because Dion looked up at her. "Feeling faint?" he asked shortly.
"Afraid so," Bree admitted, averting her eyes from the disturbing sight of slippery red muscle revealed between the lips of the gash in Daniel's side when Dion blotted away the blood.
"Sit down and put your head between your legs. And when you think you can walk, get out of here," Dion commanded, and turned back to his work.
Bree was embarrassed by her reaction. She'd spent two years in nursing school, and it hadn't been trouble dealing with bodily fluids that had forced her to quit and switch to massage therapy, so she was surprised at herself. She sat down on the chair in front of her desk, head between her legs as instructed, and waited for her dizziness to settle.
Her Reader empathy had proven too strong for her to manage being around the kind of suffering found in hospitals. Maybe that was what was happening here. She focused on her Reader sense and found it was partly open. Well, that was no surprise. Getting attacked by a bunch of gangsters had automatically brought it online.
Damn it! She'd forgotten to ward the house in all the fuss of taking care of Daniel. The spurt of fear caused by that realization finished clearing her head, and she ran down the stairs. She hesitated at her front door, Reader sense open wide, casting about for signs of anyone lurking near the house. When she found nothing, she brought up her Demonsense. Still nothing. She stepped outside the door and cast a full house ward. It took considerable energy to cast the spell, given her Warder talent wasn't that strong. When she stepped back inside and triggered the final step, she felt dizzy for the second time in five minutes and had to stop and lean her head against the door to steady herself.
Once she was sure she could walk, she went into the living room and threw herself down on the couch and pulled her feet up. She reached for her fuzzy white throw and draped it over her lap. The two cats that had managed to sneak into the house when they brought Daniel in immediately jumped up on the couch and angled for a place on her lap. She irritably pushed them away until they relented and curled up on the couch near her, purring away as if she hadn’t just been rude to them.
Her mind kept going to Daniel. He was a Binder and a Demon Master, two things Keepers pledged to fight. How had he hidden both of those talents from Keeper screening? How had he hidden them from her Reader sense? Hiding powers was supposed to be impossible. People had been trying and failing at it for millennia.
A rattle and a crash sounded out in front of her house. Bree sprang to her feet, and the ginger cat meowed his unhappiness at being disturbed. She ran to her front door and listened, hard, her Reader sense and Demonsense both opening up wide. All she could hear was the sound of rain, coming down hard now, and her senses could detect no intruders. She got up on tip toes to peek out the window at the top of the door. A trash can that had been left at the curb was rolling on its side. The wind knocking it over must have been what she’d heard. She wished Daniel were himself so he could cast a stronger ward than she could manage.
Now she felt too wound up to sit down. She paced nervously across the faded crewelwork rug in front of her couch, mind circling what she knew of Demon Masters.
Demon Masters attracted demons whether they wanted to or not. They could call demons, cast a possession, and generally had a host of demon helpers allied with them. Demon possessions happened without them, but wild demons tended to do smaller scale damage. Terrible stuff to be sure, but nothing like what a whole group of demons directed by human will and intelligence could do. Terrorist attacks, grand scale organized crime, even a few of the wars in history could be chalked up to Demon Masters. She had never heard of one working for the light.
The black cat stretched luxuriously, then hopped down off the couch. It watched Bree for a moment, then started batting playfully at her ankles as she paced past. With a growl of frustration, Bree swooped down and picked it up, intending to toss it out the door, but then she remembered the ward. She'd have to lower the ward to put the cat out, and it wasn't worth it to have to do the ward all over again.
She put the purring beast back down on the floor, then sat down, thinking furiously. She knew what she should do. She should turn Daniel into the Ecclesias. Demonic energy was the energy of chaos, of violence, of malice. Demon Masters were turned by it, and eventually became unstable themselves. Yet they seldom could admit what was happening to them, that they were losing control. If you were of the light and discovered someone had Demon Master talent, you were supposed to turn them in to the Ecclesias for monitoring.
That had all seemed very reasonable to Bree until the day she found out what monitoring really meant. "Monitoring" was a euphemism for being watched long term after having your power stripped from you by force. If you survived, and that was a big if, there was a better than average chance you'd be crazy at the end of it. Since there were cases of the power coming back over time, you had to be monitored for rest of your life, and nobody survived having their powers removed a second time.
And here she was, thinking she should rat Daniel out to the Ecclesias. The thought brought tears to her eyes. She didn't want to do it.
And then she thought of Kevin. She was sure Kevin knew and had chosen to keep Daniel’s secret. He must have his reasons. She picked up her phone and dialed Kevin's number. She felt like throwing the phone across the room when his voice mail clicked on after only one ring. He must be on the phone to someone. She slammed the phone down, and was on her way back across the room to sit down when a thought stopped her in her tracks. If Daniel wasn't crazy yet, who better to provide protection for Hunter?
She remembered Daniel had just pointed his finger at that possessed thug and spoken words of power, and that was that, demon handled. She couldn’t help but think how useful that talent would be. If she’d had that power, Seth would still be alive. Her heart pounded at that thought, and she had to take a few breaths to steady herself.
Dion came clomping down the stairs and interrupted her deliberations. “Okay, I’ve got him wrapped up. He’s going to be okay. The knife sliced him pretty shallowly across his waist, and just got muscle. I did a little healing to speed things along.”
Bree settled wearily onto the couch and asked, “How about his head? And what about that syringe I found?”
Dion sat down at the other end of the couch and started scratching under the chin of the ginger cat. “He got a good bump on the back of his head, but I don’t see signs of concussion so far. As far as the syringe, I think your friend got a dose of something that’s probably doing him some good right now. Based on the smell of the residue in the syringe and the way he’s acting, I think he got hit with Ketamine.”
“What’s that?”
The ginger cat had worked its way up onto Dion’s lap, and Dion smiled down
at it as he answered. “It’s what we call a dissociative anesthetic. It makes you not really register pain even though you stay conscious. It’s not used much medically because hallucinations can be a side effect. Some people use it as a recreational drug because of that. Keltoi being in the drug trade like they are, they could have easily gotten hold of some. He’s been pretty out of it so far, but I want to keep an eye on him in case he starts seeing things and gets agitated. People have been known to have really bad trips on this stuff.”
He moved the cat gently off his lap, stood up again, and continued. “I don’t have to work until eleven, so I should be able to hang out until it wears off. Why don’t you be a good girl and get me some chow, then you can bring it upstairs and start telling me why you got some scary ass high powered upstairs bleeding all over your bed.”
“Do I look like your maid?” she returned grouchily, but she did as he asked. She pulled together a cheese omelet with some toast for both of them and brought it upstairs on a tray.
The top floor of Bree’s house was a converted attic space, one big room with the stairs coming up into the middle of it. The ceiling walls were slanted with the roofline, and it was a bit chilly. She kept her work desk at one end along with her supply of magical implements. There was also a small meditation area. The other end held her bed, an Art Deco waterfall dresser and cedar chest, a bedside table, and a prickly old horsehair stuffed reading chair that Dion had claimed. Daniel was lying on his back on her bed, his eyes closed and his brow furrowed. His hands pulled restlessly at the down comforter. Bree set the tray down on the cedar chest and dragged over her desk chair so she and Dion could talk together while they ate.
Bree loved Dion like a brother. She’d met him in Junior High, and he’d been the first person to tell her she was powered. He was a political creature, and he had a manipulative streak she disapproved of, but basically, she trusted him. He'd finagled a position on the powered City Council a couple of years ago, and the Council reported directly to the Regional Ecclesias. That meant she had to take great care in filling him in on what had been happening. She hadn’t had time to make up her mind what to do about Daniel, and she wasn’t ready to have the decision taken out of her hands. So she told the story as best she could without revealing that Daniel was a Demon Master and Binder.
Dion whistled in admiration as she described Daniel’s fight with the Keltoi. Bree knew he’d always wished he had the right kind of talents to be a Keeper. Instead, he was a Healer, a low power Caster, and a bit of a Reader. Fortunately, he wasn’t enough of the latter to read tells. So long as all of her statements were true, he likely wouldn't be able to tell that she was leaving something important out.
“Seems pretty clear the Keltoi are after your guy here,” Dion drawled when she was finished. “But what I don’t get is why they came after him with just four people the second time. If they really wanted to be sure to take down a Keeper of his caliber, they should have sent at least seven or eight.”
“It seemed like plenty at the time,” Bree responded wryly. “It bugs me that I was basically no help at all. I managed to come up with some kind of defense at Kevin’s house, but I couldn’t think how to direct a shield that would cover both of us. And I certainly don’t know any offensive spells. I know we learned a few during training, but you know how it is, you don’t use it, you lose it.” She put down her empty plate, leaned back in her chair and put her feet up on the foot of the bed. Daniel was still twitchy, and was rolling his head about on his pillow. Bree watched him with some concern.
“If you had just gone for Keeper like I told you,” Dion razzed her with a grin, “but no, it was too scary. Like doing exorcisms ain’t scary.”
“Oh, bite me,” Bree responded with a reluctant smile.
“Seriously Bree, you can’t expect yourself to know what to do in a situation like that when you’ve never come across it before. But if you’re going to keep hanging around with the Keeper here, you might want to consider getting better training.”
“Retired Keeper,” Bree corrected.
“Huh,” Dion grunted. “Doesn’t sound so retired to me.”
“He scares me, Dion,” Bree said quietly, and with more honesty than she had meant to expose. “I’m not sure anyone should have that much power.”
“Well, that’s always been your thing, hasn’t it Bree? You always were afraid of your own power, so I’m not surprised you feel that way. Why else do you think you tried to give it up after Seth passed?
“Enough with the amateur psychology please.” Bree shot him a distinctly unamused look, and was preparing to shut him down if he continued when Daniel’s eyes shot open and he tried to sit up. He looked grey as ashes, and he grimaced in pain. Dion leaned over him and gently pressed down on his shoulder until he was lying down again. “You just lie on back there, Daniel. It’s going to hurt if you try to sit up.”
Daniel looked at Dion without seeming to see him. His breathing was speeding up, and a look of trepidation came across his face. “I didn’t mean to do it, Dad. I wasn’t trying to call one,” he said desperately.
Dion flashed Bree a questioning look, and she shook her head. “I have no idea.” Daniel turned his head at the sound of her voice, and said, “Don’t let him, Mom, it’s not fair!”
He tried to get up again, and Dion had to use more force to get him back down. “You’re okay, nobody is going to do anything to you. It’s just a bad dream.”
Daniel started to struggle, and at Dion’s request, Bree moved to Daniel’s other side and held down his other shoulder, trying to keep him still so he wouldn’t hurt himself.
She was acutely aware of the feel of his muscled shoulder under her hands, and had a moment's wild thought that under different circumstances, she'd enjoy seeing a naked Daniel Thorvaldson in her bed. Sweat broke out on his forehead, and his hair was still damp from the rain that had hit as they were bringing him into the house. She could still hear it blowing against the window in bursts. The wind was picking up.
“I didn’t mean to, I didn’t mean to!” Daniel exclaimed, voice rising.
“I know you didn’t mean to, Daniel, it’s okay,” Bree replied, trying to sound calm, but feeling out of her depth. “You’re not in trouble,” she hazarded, and was relieved to feel him stop straining against her hands. He closed his eyes again, and both Bree and Dion gradually let up on his shoulders.
“This is way too much like possession,” Bree said with concern as she stood back and looked down at Daniel, on the alert for another outburst.
Dion sat back in his chair, long legs stretched out before him. “You’ve got to wonder how similar drug intoxication is to demon possession in terms of what’s really happening in the brain. There’s just so much we don’t really understand about possession. I sometimes feel if we could get a chance to really study it, maybe do a functional MRI, see what part of the brain it’s affecting, we’d have more to work with, maybe get away from all the religious interpretation.”
“Now you’re sounding like him,” she replied, nodding at Daniel. “He was on about something like that at Kevin’s the other night before we were attacked. Something about how maybe they were beings from another dimension, how if we understood them better, we’d be more effective in dealing with them. I get that, I get wanting to know more, but really Dion, once you feel one, it doesn’t leave much room for doubt that they’re just plain evil, in the old fashioned fire and brimstone sense.”
“I guess I’ll never know,” Dion replied wistfully.
“Wishing you had Demonsense is like wishing you could try out being flogged. Not an experience anyone should be sorry to miss,” Bree replied wryly.
“It’s a bad idea, Chesca,” Daniel said clearly and lucidly. His eyes were still closed, the lids fluttering.
Bree bent to touch Daniel, but Dion waved her off. “Let’s see what he says, we might learn something more about him,” he whispered.
“Don’t be such a snake,” Bree whispered back
, but she backed off.
“You have absolutely no reason to think you can control it,” Daniel continued vehemently.
“Control what?” Dion asked, leaning closer.
“Chesca, why the hell won’t you listen? Franchesca, love, no! No, stop!”
Scanlon woke up as the car came to a stop with a jerk. They were in a pothole laced parking lot in the Sodo district south of downtown. It took him a moment to register that the building in front of them was the one housing the new Keltoi main office. On the outside, it looked like any other battered warehouse in the run down neighborhood, white paint peeling from grey wood, door to the loading area hanging crookedly on its track.
His mouth was dry, his head hurt, and his back felt all scraped up. He looked around blearily and registered that he was in the passenger seat and Justice had been driving. They were in Roget’s car. He glanced in the back seat and saw Roget and Atami were still out. Justice was just sitting there, looking off into space, hands on the steering wheel. Then it finally started coming back to him, making him well and truly pissed. “What the fuck were you thinking, taking on that Keeper?” he snarled at Justice. “That was not the plan! We didn’t have enough back up, and you knew it! What the hell got into you?”
Justice gave a hollow laugh. “That’s great. How about what from hell got into me?” He laughed again, this time with an edge of anxiety.
He sounded more like the Justice Scanlon knew from before the possession. Scanlon looked more closely at him. “Is it gone?” he asked.
“Hell no,” Justice replied shortly. “Just hiding out. That Keeper scared the crap out of it.”
