Demonsense (Demonsense series Book 1)

by Sara DeHaven

  At the sight of blood, Justice felt the demon expand to the last, outermost layer of his skin, trembling on the verge of leaving his body. Franchesca shot a look his way and said angrily, “Tirakku, enough. Now is not the time. Give Justice control again. I can’t have you running mad about the place. You will get fed soon enough.”

  The demon whirled about in frustrated fury, and Justice staggered briefly under the internal pressure, then with a snap like a rubber band, felt his consciousness flung back to the front of his head, and the demon’s recede. Bree pitched against his grip when he briefly lost his balance, but he was able to restrain her again quite easily.

  Franchesca pressed the gun against Bree's cheek where the flesh was torn, and Bree gasped in pain. “Where is he?” Franchesca asked, pushing in with the gun. Bree's eyes went wide, but she shook her head. Franchesca regarded her carefully, then gave a high, humorless little laugh. “Oh, so it’s love, is it?” she said, her voice breaking a little on the word ‘love’. “And you didn’t know it until just now, did you?”

  Justice’s thoughts and impressions jangled together, then focused into demon-enhanced clarity. Franchesca loved Thorvaldson. That’s why she wanted him. Or at least a big part of why she wanted him, not just that thing she’d told Carson about the hiding spell. He wondered if Bree was a Reader, and could pick that up, but it looked like she was too freaked out to focus. It didn’t take much pain to mess with most powered’s magic.

  Bree made no answer, and Franchesca pulled the gun away. “I see you’re not going to tell me, because you don’t really believe I’m going to kill you,” she said finally. “Fortunately, we have another way to resolve this.” She turned and set her gun down on the nearest chair, then moved toward Bree and began unzipping the woman’s coat. Then she unbuttoned the sweater Bree had on beneath it. Bree tried again to struggle, but to no avail. The protection amulet was revealed lying slightly askew against the skin of her chest, just below the hollow of her throat. Franchesca picked it up, looked at it closely, then turned it over and looked on the other side. She smiled. “Yes, I do know this one. Although I would rather seek him out on my terms, we can always call him here.” She made a little gesture over the amulet, then said, “All we have to do is touch one of your fingers to the back of this amulet, and he will likely be able to find you. Or at least come close enough that we can find him.”

  “Ma’am, I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” Scanlon broke in. “That guy took out four of us, and we had the drop on him.”

  “I’m perfectly capable of taking care of Daniel Thorvaldson,” Franchesca replied coldly. “I know how his mind works, and that's worth more than any power you care to name. Tie her up,” she concluded, nodding at Bree.

  Justice and Scanlon hustled Bree over to one of the chairs, and Scanlon reached into his jacket pocket and brought out a roll of duct tape. Justice held Bree against the chair while Scanlon wrapped the tape around her ankles against the legs of the chair, then her wrists against the arms.

  “I won’t say the spell,” Bree said stubbornly as Scanlon finished the tape job and Justice released the woman.

  “You won’t have to,” Franchesca replied as she pulled the amulet roughly off over Bree’s head, then shoved the back of the amulet against the woman’s fingers.

  Kevin was in the middle of an anecdote about Hunter when Daniel drew in a sudden, hard breath on the car seat beside him. They were sitting parked in front of Bree’s house, finishing their conversation, which Kevin had carefully constructed to be distracting and cheerful. Daniel was lit from behind by a street light, and Kevin couldn’t clearly see his face. “What?” he asked.

  “It’s Bree. She touched her amulet.”

  “The protection amulet you gave her? Couldn’t it be an accident? I mean, would you feel it if she just touched it taking it off or something?”

  “No, she’s in trouble,” Daniel replied shortly. “She didn’t say the spell, but I can feel she’s in trouble. She touched it in fear of something. That’s one of the ways it activates.”

  “Where? Where is she?” Kevin asked, voice rising with tension.

  “I’m not sure. Since she’s not saying the spell, I can’t pinpoint it.” He closed his eyes for a moment, then shook his head. “I can get general direction, but that’s it.”

  “She was supposed to go to her office to pick up her mail,” Kevin replied. “That’s not far from your house. Does it feel like it’s that way?” Kevin asked, pointing off to the east and a little south.

  “Yes,” Daniel replied, smacking the dash in satisfaction. “That’s it.”

  Kevin started the car again, and pulled into the nearest driveway to turn it around. “What kind of trouble could she possibly be in at her office?” Kevin asked as he finished backing up and put the car into drive.

  “I don’t know,” Daniel said. He rolled down the window on his side, and stuck his head out into the cold air.

  “Hey!” Kevin protested. “We just got warm!”

  “I have to wake up,” Daniel replied, pulling his head back in and rolling the window back up. He unbuckled his seat belt, and leaned around until he could rummage about in Kevin’s back seat, and grunted when he came up with a half full bottle of diet soda. For all Kevin’s personal neatness, his car was a mess of crumbs, used napkins, and mostly empty water and soda bottles, and he was a bit embarrassed at the state of it.

  Daniel opened the bottle he’d retrieved, and took a swig, grimacing at the taste. “Jesus, Kevin, why would anyone want to drink diet Coke? It’s chemical water without all the addictive cane syrup that sane people admire in real Coke.”

  “Not all of us have your svelte figure, Daniel. And Jesus Christ! Why are we arguing about Coke? This is Bree we're talking about!"

  "Just trying not to freak out here," Daniel replied grimly, then downed the rest of what was left in the plastic bottle.

  Kevin's anxiety spiked further. If Daniel was freaking out, it had to be bad. "What the hell are we going to do when we get there? We have no idea what’s going on. Don’t you think we should call in some backup? What if this is some kind of Keltoi hit? Bree was seen with you at your house, you know. Maybe they found some way to trace her.”

  “She’s out of the loop in powered work, and under the Ecclesias radar. I really can’t imagine how they could have found her. But we have to assume they have, to be on the safe side.” Daniel planted his feet against the floorboard and lifted up his rear end so he could grab his wallet out of his back pocket. He pulled Javier’s card out of it, and asked for Kevin’s cell phone. Kevin concentrated on driving as fast as he could without going so far over the speed limit as to attract a cop’s attention. He overheard Daniel’s half of the conversation, and gathered that there might be some delay.

  Daniel tossed Kevin’s phone into the cup holder between the seats. “He’s coming with a team, but it’s going to take awhile. He’s going to have to bring some people in from their time off unless he can locate enough on duty Keepers that can be pulled from whatever else they’re doing. He thinks half hour to forty five minutes.”

  “We can be there in ten,” Kevin said. He took a right, and barreled downhill past the zoo. “What do we do, just wait around for the Keepers?”

  “It depends on what we find when we get there,” Daniel replied. “We’re definitely going in the right direction. I can feel it.”

  Kevin kept quiet so Daniel could focus. He made a couple of wrong turns trying to find Bree’s office. He'd been there before, but it had been awhile. It was a couple of blocks off the main drag, in the bottom of one of the newer condos that had gone up in the housing boom, along with a whole row of shops and businesses. Kevin pulled up half a block away, and turned off the car. They could see the front of Bree’s office across the street and up a little ways. Light was seeping out around the edges of closed blinds.

  Kevin looked over at Daniel, who opened his eyes and looked back at Kevin, eyes black in the gloom, expression straine
d. “They’re hurting her,” he whispered.

  Chapter 13

  Bree had never been hit before, not apart from a tussle or two with her brother when they were kids. It was shockingly painful, and she was rigid with the terror of being hit again. But that wasn’t the worst thing. She clenched her teeth against the feel of oily phantom lips against her navel, sucking energy out of her, the energy of pain, anger and fear. The demon was feeding from her as its host beat her.

  She felt like throwing up, but being covered in vomit would hardly improve her situation, so she unclenched her teeth and tried to breathe slowly. She had some vague idea of how you were supposed to breathe with childbirth pain, so she tried counting to five on the inhale. She got as far as four when another blow to her middle arrived, shooting the breath back out of her in a whoosh. She blinked hard against threatening tears. Somehow, she felt as long as she didn’t cry she was winning. Winning what, a big stuffed bear? she thought wildly.

  She was alone with the possessed man. The other guy and the woman had started arguing, then gone into one of the offices to continue their dispute. They were still loud enough for Bree to hear most of what they said. The man wanted to take her somewhere better defended, but the woman was in some kind of hurry and wanted to draw Daniel here. She said beating Bree would rattle Daniel, cause him to hurry and make mistakes. Bree couldn’t help but wonder how this woman knew Daniel so well. Was she one of the enemies he'd made when he was a Keeper? If so, she’d come a long way to find him.

  The man who had hit her was bent forward, hands on knees, his dishwater blond hair falling forward to cover his face. Then he stood up, carefully walked to the nearest chair and fell heavily into it.

  “Wore you out, have I?” Bree asked.

  The man made no reply. Bree observed him for a moment before saying, more calmly, “It doesn’t look that fun, you know. Being possessed.”

  “What do you know about it?” the man replied gruffly.

  Bree seized the opportunity of being alone with him to try to get to him somehow. “I know that unless you're a sociopath, you can’t really enjoy some of the things the demon wants you to do. And it only gets worse. Pretty soon, you won’t be able to remember half of what you’ve done, but you’ll know it isn’t good. You’ll get more and more restless, and you won’t be able to sleep. People die of it, you know, in spite of what you may have been told.”

  The man looked at her, seemed to actually see her for the first time. There was exhaustion in the curl of his spine and the slump of his shoulders, vulnerability in the droop of his eyes. She felt a flash of sympathy for him, which surprised her.

  “I can get rid of it, you know. I’m an Exorcist,” she offered. “The demon won’t volunteer to leave, not as long as you’re in this line of work. Your employers, or whatever they are, they put it in you for their own purposes. And if it doesn’t ride you to death, when they take it out again, your health will probably be ruined. And who’s going to take care of you? That lot? Don’t you see how unlikely that is?”

  “Don’t you see that you’re a nosy bitch?” He broke her gaze and crossed his arms.

  “Don’t you want your own mind, your own body back?” Bree countered.

  The man shifted uneasily in his seat, then bit out, “It’s not like you say, not all of it. The things you see, the things you feel. It makes you feel good. And the things it lets you do, the way it jacks up your power. They probably don’t tell you about that in your Academy, or whatever.”

  “They tell us about that,” she replied softly. “They tell us that it’s like an addiction to crack, and that the possessed feel better and better with each feeding of the demon, then worse and worse at the same time. It sounds awful. It sounds like torture to me.”

  The man’s head turned away. His breathing quickened. She was definitely getting to him. “If you let me take it out now, there’s still a chance for you, a chance of recovery.”

  “You just want me to untie you,” the man muttered.

  “Of course I do, but it’s not just that,” Bree replied, and found it was true. “I really do want to help. I can see what it’s doing to you. Let me help you.”

  The man glanced back at her, almost furtively, checking to see if she meant it. His expression shifted to one of speculation, and she thought he was actually considering her offer. Then his features twisted into rage and he shouted “Enough! Enough lies!” His voice had changed, had an extra buzz, and she knew the demon had been listening and had taken over. He got back to his feet, re-energized, and stalked toward her. She braced herself, tightening her stomach muscles, expecting a blow, and it came, a punch in the face this time that left her head spinning and her mouth bleeding. Then another blow. And again. And again.

  Kevin put his head down on the steering wheel, and muttered “Shit, shit, shit, shit.”

  “We can’t wait for Javier,” Daniel said tersely. His hand was already on the door handle.

  “I know. But god damn it, Daniel, you’re in no shape for this, and I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. I can ward us, and I can remember maybe two defensive spells. Chances are there are more than two of them, in which case my warding won’t be worth much.”

  “Let’s at least get closer so I can try to get a sense of what we’re up against.”

  “Isn’t there some kind of spell you can work, something to give us an edge here?”

  Daniel clutched the handle in frustration. “Nothing I can do fast, at this distance. At least nothing big enough to make a difference. Don’t worry, there are battle spells I can use if there’s a fight.”

  “But if we wait for Javier... ”

  “What if they kill her?” Daniel cut him off.

  “Shit!” Kevin repeated, and flung open his car door. Fortunately, he got hold of himself and closed it quietly after he’d clambered out. Daniel was ahead of him, already moving across the street, and Kevin followed quickly. He glanced around as a car went by, but it didn’t stop. There was no one else on the street.

  Daniel paused when they reached Bree’s building. He went around the side, down the narrow walk a ways, into an unlit spot where they would be less visible. Kevin watched as Daniel closed his eyes, presumably reading for energy signatures. He opened them again quickly and said, “She’s alive. And there are three of them. I’m pretty sure one is possessed. There’s some kind of casting on the door, but the place isn’t warded. The casting has something to do with eliminating protection spells. I’d have to get closer to see if I recognize any of the people.”

  “You can do that?”

  “Yeah, I can do that. But I’m not sure how much help it would be. Anyone who is hurting Bree can’t be on our side. Call Javier, confirm we’re at Bree’s office, and give him the address. And relay what I just told you about who’s in there.”

  Kevin did as Daniel instructed, and got an earful from Javier in return, insisting they wait for him and his team. Kevin hung up and said tentatively, “Are you sure it’s not safe to wait for Javier?”

  “Of course I’m not sure. That’s the problem. Look, I’m going in. Are you coming with me?”

  Kevin thought of all the ways he was not a warrior, all the ways Hunter could lose a father. And he thought about Bree, maybe being hurt, or tortured, or raped, God forbid. Thought about how he could not face his son if he turned away from this. “We have to have a plan,” he finally replied. “How is it going to help if we just go barreling in there?”

  “I do have a plan. I handle the powered, you get to Bree and get her out. We have surprise on our side, and I may be able to take down one or two of them before they even know what hit them. We haven’t run into any majorly high power Keltoi so far, and if we’re in luck, there won’t be any here." Daniel rubbed his palms briskly over his thighs, and Kevin realized his hands must be sweating. Not a good sign.

  "Go ahead and run a personal ward on yourself,” he continued, “but know remember that while it will magic and physical attack off of you, you
can’t touch anyone through it. If someone closes with you, use your weight.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  “Fall on them if you have to. Physical attack and pain disrupt magic use. If someone pulls a knife, block with your forearms, and try to kick them in the knees. If you see a gun, turn around and get out.”

  “Keeper Training 101, I presume.”

  Daniel’s teeth flashed in a fierce smile. “We can do this, Kevin. If we move fast enough, and hit them hard enough. We can get her out of there.”

  “Okay then, lead on,” Kevin replied with false bravado.

  Daniel melted back around the building and stopped in front of Bree’s office door. Carefully, he tried the doorknob. “It’s unlocked,” he mouthed more than whispered over his shoulder at Kevin, then nodded. He raised his left hand, counted off one, two, three with his fingers, and barreled through the door.

  Franchesca came back into the room with Scanlon behind her. “He’s here,” she said with a smile. “And he probably thinks he can surprise us.” She regarded Bree clinically, and said, “Good job, Justice. She’s already starting to bruise, and the bloody mouth is a good touch. Still, I think it’s wiser to silence her. I don’t want her confusing him.” She gestured to Scanlon, who came forward with duct tape and taped the woman’s mouth shut.

  Justice’s demon squirmed in satisfaction, which made him feel a little ill. Why didn’t his demon resist Franchesca more? He’d always thought they resisted being mastered, but apparently there were exceptions.

  Franchesca moved Bree's chair until the woman was facing the door, then took up her gun again and put it against their captive’s temple. “Justice, Scanlon, one of you on either side of the door. Daniel will come in first. He has another companion, power unknown. Daniel will hesitate when he sees me, and you should have an opening to take him. Don’t bother with magic, just tackle him. It’s highly unlikely that whoever is with him is as big a threat as Daniel. Anyway, neither of them is likely to make a move if they think it will threaten the woman.”