Demonsense (Demonsense series Book 1)

by Sara DeHaven

  Chapter 16

  Bree looked at her hands as silence descended on the room. She expected them to be black and burnt to a crisp, but there they were, still wet with the wine, but otherwise fine. Her hair was hanging half out of the hasty braid she’d made. She regretfully wiped her hands on Kevin’s very nice, but already ruined rug, then pushed her hair behind her ears as she carefully straightened up. Javier was lying on his back with silent tears streaming out of his open eyes and down the sides of his face. Waves of trembling moved across his body, but the worst of the physical reaction seemed to be over. Lane seemed to be asleep, which was a fairly common after reaction to a possession. Kevin’s glasses had gotten knocked off somehow in the melee. His face looked pale and vulnerable. He stirred as she watched.

  She went over to the red-haired Keeper sprawled on the floor. She knelt beside him and gently shook his shoulder. He moved limply, his head lolling at an odd angle. Cold prickles went down her spine. He looked dead. Feeling sick, she felt for his pulse, then leaned close over his mouth, hoping to find he was breathing. He wasn’t. She didn't know if it was a broken neck from being slammed into the wall, or if it was the magical backlash of the wards being blown out so forcefully, but it didn't matter. The demon had killed the Keeper. Bree started to shake.

  The front door opened, and one of the other Keepers came in, with Daniel following close behind, looking more frightened than she had ever seen him. He pulled up short as he saw her, closed his eyes briefly, then moved toward her more slowly. She put a hand up as he approached, saying, “taint,” and he stopped again. He looked down at the Keeper, then up at her, brows raised in question.

  "He was killed when the wards blew," she told him.

  "Jesus fucking Christ." He glanced around the room, then went over to Kevin, who was trying to sit up. Daniel righted him, and started untying him.

  “What in God’s green earth happened in here!” the other Keeper exclaimed as she knelt beside Javier. “We felt the wards break, and there was so much backlash, we had one hell of a job getting new ones set up outside. ”

  “The demon jumped to Lane, and then to Javier, I don’t know how. It got Javier to break the wards, but I managed to complete the exorcism before it could do much more.”

  The Keeper shot her a look of respect, then closed her eyes, probably doing a sweep with her Demonsense. Bree was relieved she didn’t have to be the one to do it. She wasn’t sure she was going to be able to stand up much longer, let alone use any more power tonight.

  Kevin was sitting up now, and he sobbed into Daniel’s arms. “I tried, I tried so hard, Daniel,” he moaned out between sobs. Bree realized that the sooner Steve got out here, the better this would go for Kevin, so she went and fetched him. Steve’s face was streaked with tear tracks, but he had himself under control. He looked more determined than scared as she led him out into the living room. She was proud of him as he took Daniel’s place and told Kevin over and over that it wasn’t his fault.

  Daniel approached her with a cautious look and stopped a careful two feet away. “You need to eat. Food first, and then sleep.”

  Bree nodded and followed him into the kitchen, washed her hands, and sat at the breakfast bar. Daniel pulled sandwich fixings out of the fridge and he was halfway into making a roast beef sandwich when Bree registered what he was doing. “Sorry, I’m a vegetarian. Just give me the bread,” Bree told him, but he shook his head.

  “I’m sure we can do better than that.” He rustled around in the fridge until he came up with some leftover Pad Thai. He picked the chicken out of it and heated it up in the microwave for her. Bree slowly ate it, as well as two slices of buttered bread he put in front of her. He was silent as he munched through the sandwich he’d started to make her, then irritated her by slamming things around the kitchen as he cleaned up. He knocked over a glass of water and dropped a knife onto the floor with a clatter as he went. By rights he should be dragging, but it was clear he was wound up, even angry. And right now, she couldn’t bring herself to care.

  Javier came in about ten minutes later. His hair was carefully combed into place, and his face had been washed, but there was no hiding the strain in his expression. She was surprised he could stand up.

  “No demon sign,” he said. “The exorcism was successful.” He was carefully looking somewhere between Bree and Daniel.

  Bree knew she should clear the air with him somehow, maybe apologize for what she’d said during the exorcism, but her brain just wouldn’t bring the words to mind.

  “I called in the description of Hunter. Keepers are already monitoring some of the known Keltoi locations. I’ll take some of Hunter’s things, and we'll do what we can with a finder spell.”

  “Steve said he had on the locater amulet Daniel gave him,” Bree finally responded, but Daniel shook his head.

  “He knew the spell, and I would have felt something by now if he'd used it. It’s most likely they found it and took it off him.”

  Bree’s heart sank. She hadn’t realized how much she was counting on the amulet. She was missing hers. Franchesca probably still had it.

  “A finder spell is far more likely to work if it’s done by someone with a connection to Hunter,” Daniel argued. “It should be me.”

  “It would be safest if you did no further working until your taint is cleared. I assume you picked it up in having contact with Kevin after he was possessed. And I won’t have anyone to spare to do it until at least tomorrow. Besides, as you well know, a finder spell has only a very outside chance of working given that it was apparently high powered Keltoi who took him. I’m sure they'll have adequate defenses against such spells.”

  “It can’t hurt,” Daniel replied impatiently. “If I can just get some of my things at my place…”

  “Out of the question,” Javier replied, looking directly at Daniel for the first time. “It’s clear the Keltoi still want you, and I don’t have people to spare to go with you and protect you. Our resources are better spent elsewhere right now.”

  “I don’t recall asking for your protection,” Daniel returned. He took a step closer to Javier as he spoke. Bree felt a male dominance battle winding up between the two men.

  “Whether you asked for it or not, you hardly serve our cause if you’re taken by the Keltoi,” Javier returned. “We have information that a major action is going down soon, and between preparing for that and the recent increase in possessions, my people are spread thin and hurting. I don't need you making their job more difficult.”

  “What I’m planning would make it easier! For God’s sake, Ortiz, I’m hardly a civilian. Let me help!”

  “Perhaps tomorrow, when your taint is clear, and your base energy is recovered, if I have personnel to spare.”

  “Do you really want to leave Hunter with these people one second longer than necessary?” Daniel's face reddened in anger. Bree had seen him in a number of stressful situations, and she’d never seen him like this. Granted, she didn’t know him well, but her sense of him was that he didn’t lose control easily. He moved closer to Javier, and he was radiating readiness for a physical confrontation. She wondered if it was the taint pushing him over the edge, or the stress of his confrontation with Franchesca. She found herself agreeing with Javier that Daniel wasn’t in good shape to do a working.

  “No one wants that, Daniel,” she interrupted. “I know you’re a good Caster, and of course you should try the spell. But Javier’s right that you need the taint cleared first. I could probably do the taint myself tomorrow. With any luck, Hunter will be found before then anyway.”

  Javier shot her a grateful look, then continued before Daniel could respond. “We have a safe house that you and Bree can stay at tonight, and for the next couple days if need be. There’s only a couple of hours until morning in any case.”

  "The next couple of days?" Now it was Bree's turn to get upset. "I'm not staying in some safe house for the next couple of days, not with Hunter missing. There has to be some way I can
help in the search for him!"

  Daniel crossed his arms. "I'm with her."

  Javier frowned and regarded each of them closely, clearly reading them. "You do realize both of you are dangerously low on base energy? You won't be in the position to help Hunter if you die."

  "Oh come on," Bree started to protest, but Javier interrupted her.

  "Go ahead and read each other if you don't believe me."

  Bree had a stubborn impulse to refuse, but she knew Javier was good at energy reading, so he was probably right. She tried to call up her Reader sense to double check, then winced at the lance of pain that went straight into her forehead at the effort. She swayed, and Daniel put a hand under her elbow to steady her.

  "I've seen Keepers up and talking one moment, only to drop dead the next when they've overused their power," Javier pressed. "Thorvaldson, I'm sure you've seen it as well. And you're in even worse shape than Bree right now. Now both of you, just please do as I say for tonight. I promise you'll be kept updated on events, and I will personally check in with you tomorrow."

  It was hard to swallow, but Bree could see the sense in Javier's request, and apparently Daniel did as well, because the aggression went out of him. They both agreed to go to the safe house for the night.

  The Keeper who had been outside with Daniel, introduced simply as ‘Chen’, was assigned to drive them there. Chen had been questioning Kevin, who reported he had no information at all about where they might have taken Hunter. He simply didn't have enough time with the demon to get any feel for that at all. Both he and Steve looked absolutely ravaged, and Bree gave them each a long, hard hug goodbye.

  She fell asleep in the car and awoke only when they arrived at the safe house and Chen shook her awake. It was an older contemporary style house, probably from the seventies, wood and big expanses of glass, surrounded by tall Douglas fir trees that were swaying and rustling in a brisk off shore breeze. Bree could just make out a glimmer of light from another house through the trees, but otherwise, the setting was very private. Chen told her the house backed onto Carkeek Park, and being fairly close to home struck her as a comfort.

  The man who let them in was an older black man with salt and pepper hair and a moustache. He was wearing a plaid bathrobe and old blue slippers. Chen introduced him as Joe Blanchard, and told them he was a retired Keeper. Joe said little as he led them each to a bedroom in the upstairs of the house. Daniel stumbled on the stairs, twice, and Joe managed to steady him both times. Whatever had kept Daniel upright so far seemed to have left him, and it was even clearer now that Javier was right. Daniel was dangerously depleted.

  Bree dragged herself up the stairs by pulling on the handrail, and every step hurt like hell. Just as she reached the top, Joe came out of the bathroom with a bottle of Ibuprofen and a cup of water, which he handed to Bree without comment. Daniel practically fell into the room Joe indicated was his, and he shut the door without saying a word. Joe bid Bree good night, and shuffled off back downstairs, where presumably there was another bedroom where he slept.

  The sun was well up by the time she awoke, sneaking in past closed blinds to stripe the light blue walls of the room in which she had slept. The first thing that occurred to her was that hours had gone by, and there was at least some chance the Keepers had already found Hunter. She wanted to believe it, was almost afraid to wake all the way up and find out it wasn't true.

  Her second thought was that she hadn’t had any nightmares. That was unexpected. She'd been so sure that another exorcism would start the whole cycle again. Not to mention the lingering horror over that poor Keeper's death. Her body jerked as the memory of the dead Keeper flashed through her consciousness. She shook her head, trying to banish the image. She couldn't think about that right now.

  She sat up, stretched carefully, and began to register her surroundings more fully than she had last night. She was in a twin bed in what appeared to have last seen service as a teenaged boy’s room. There were a couple of baseball trophies on a shelf next to an autographed baseball under a dusty half dome of glass, as well as some little league and high school team photographs. If the kid had been Joe’s, he was long gone by now, given her impression that Joe was at least in his late sixties. She was just about to stand up when the door opened and Daniel slipped into the room. His hair was sticking up, and beard stubble darkened his cheeks. "Joe's fixing breakfast. Come on, we both need to eat if we're to get our power back up."

  "Any news on Hunter?" she asked.

  Daniel shook his head, and the hope Bree had woken up with collapsed. "I'm just going to take a quick shower first," she told him. Daniel just stood there, and for a minute, she thought he was going to argue with her, but then he nodded and left. Bree understood why Daniel was in such a hurry. Like her, he likely wanted to be up and involved somehow in the search for Hunter.

  After her shower, she ruefully inspected her black eye, puffy split lip, and the shallow cut and bruise on her swollen cheek. Though she was longing to don her oldest, softest sweats, she had no choice but to get stiffly back into her dress from last night. She found she was sore in surprising places, not just where she’d been hit. She had likely strained her muscles in her efforts to get out of her bonds last night.

  She made her way downstairs, where she found Joe and Daniel sitting over cups of coffee in the kitchen. They were at an octagonal wood table with a smoked glass top that was probably as old as the house. The brief sunshine had gone behind the clouds again, and the close cover of nearby trees leant a greenish tone to what natural light was coming in the windows.

  Joe set a plate of scrambled eggs in front of her, poured her some coffee and put two slices of bread in the toaster for her. Daniel was silent but fidgety, jiggling his foot and turning his coffee cup around and around.

  Joe left the room for a moment, then came back with the bottle of Ibuprofen, which he set down in front of Bree. "I'm going to go out and do a sweep of the property, make sure no Keltoi picked up your location." He retreated from the room, seeming to sense that she and Daniel needed to talk. She tentatively opened up her Demonsense to check on the taint, and to her surprise, it was gone.

  Daniel had been watching her as she sat across from him, and he must have seen some sign of surprise on her face because he said, “Joe cleared the taint for me this morning before you woke up. Apparently that was one of his specialties as Keeper, and he said he didn’t want it stinking up his house all day.”

  It was a line Daniel would usually have delivered with a smile, and its absence was telling. Bree looked at him more closely, and saw that he looked far from rested. Of course, having taint cleared tended to be draining, not to mention the possession from last night, but she suspected she was right and he hadn’t slept well. She could see tiredness, worry, and the remains of anger, and there was a cant to his shoulders that read as guilt. She experienced a jolt of discomfort as she remembered how his face looked last night when he was possessed. But she was worried enough about the aftereffects of the possession that she opened up her Reader sense further.

  “Can you not do that right now?” Daniel said irritably while avoiding her gaze. “I just woke up from what little sleep I got, and I’m not in the mood to be under the microscope right this minute.”

  Her Reader sense shut down with an uncomfortable snap. She was annoyed that her unconscious mind had moved to obey him before her conscious mind had decided how to respond.

  “You look terrible, and I’m worried about you,” she responded more sharply than she meant to.

  “You look terrible yourself.”

  “Such chivalry, and first thing in the morning too.”

  Daniel sighed and put his coffee cup down. He ran one hand through his hair in his habitual nervous gesture, then looked at her apologetically, the fire out of his eyes. “Okay, you’re right. I’m sorry I bit your head off. And frankly, I’m afraid to look too closely at you, because it’ll make me want to go kill the guy that hurt you. And I’m a little too clos
e to that state of mind already.”

  “Any news about Hunter?”

  “No good news. They’re gradually ruling out some known Keltoi locations, but it all takes time.”

  “Daniel, last night…” Bree began, then paused, not sure how to start on all the questions she had.

  Daniel quickly passed his hands over his ears, and Bree felt a small surge of power as he set a sound stop spell around them. “Last night, I had to make a call,” he said leaning forward over his cup, face serious. “I knew you wouldn’t approve of my letting Gelsenim in, and I knew it was dangerous. I know Franchesca, and I don’t think she would kill me, but I’m afraid I was quite certain she was going to kill you. She’s been Keltoi and a Demon Master a long time now, so she's probably demon burned, and she always had a ruthless streak.”

  “She said she was going to show Gelsenim how to keep control of your body. I’d certainly call that ruthless.”

  “I doubt she was telling the truth on that,” he replied, leaning back in his chair again.

  “You don’t think she knows how to do it, or you don’t think she would do it?”

  Daniel hesitated, then said, “Both, I think. She and I have a history. It’s complicated, but I guess I just can’t believe she would really want to see me obliterated like that.”

  “Yeah, well, I gathered the bit about having history,” Bree replied. “But I’m not sure I agree that she wouldn’t hurt you like that. She seemed pretty pissed off at you.”

  “And I’m beyond furious at her. But I think she was telling the truth when she said she wanted out of the Keltoi.”