Demon Hunter

by Linda Kay Silva

  When Princess left, Denny knelt in front of her mother and held her frail hands.

  “Hi, Mom. Well, I found your lair. What a cool room. I can’t wait to read those books, to learn more about my heritage. I just...I just don’t know if I have what it takes to hunt anything, let alone demons.” Denny laid her head beside Gwen’s. “To be honest, Mom, I’m a little afraid. No, strike that. I am scared shitless. It feels like something...something strange is happening to me. I threw this football player twenty feet away without batting an eye. A football player, Mom. I’m strong, but I’m sure I couldn’t even lift him.”

  Denny sat up and looked into eyes that stared into a deep abyss of nothingness, her heart slowly cracking. “I miss you so much, and now that Pure might be in danger, I feel totally paranoid. Everywhere I look I see shadows and danger. It sucks. I guess…I guess I understand why you were warning me off.”

  Denny rose and kissed her mother’s forehead. “I love you, Mom. If this is something I have to do to protect what’s left of our family, I will. I promise.”

  Five minutes later, Denny sat in her car with her forehead against the steering wheel, bawling.

  Being scared was one thing—saying it aloud to her mother just made it much more real. Denny was terrified of what lay ahead like some monster she couldn’t see or hear.

  A week ago, she was just another college kid with a dysfunctional family and a ghost for a lover. Now, she was being asked to do something she wasn’t at all sure she had the courage or the desire to do. How does one become a hunter of demons anyway? With every question, there were five more to follow, until she felt she was drowning in them.

  Denny drove slowly through the streets of Savannah, not quite sure who she was anymore. She’d never been a fighter. Ever. She was always the one who tried to keep the peace. She was against hunting for sport or pleasure, against wars to solve diplomatic issues, and never watched boxing, wrestling, or any type of ultimate fighting.

  Now, Quick was a great choice for a hunter. He was fast, brave, and could probably pull the trigger if threatened. He was curious to the point of distraction, but the one quality he possessed more than any other was loyalty. If Quick told you he had your back, he had your back. She wished he wasn’t locked up so he could have her back now.

  Pulling into the high school parking lot, Denny saw Pure with her group of friends in the quad laughing and messing around like teenagers do. Mike Cockerton kept bridging the gap between himself and her sister, to the point of obviousness. She watched them for a couple of minutes flirting back and forth. Mike Cockerton kept touching Pure’s back in a way that felt like hovering to Denny. Too close. Too possessive.

  He was spraying his territory, and it pissed Denny off enough that she got out of the car and leaned on the hood. When Pure finally saw her, she motioned she was going to her locker. Mike Cockerton jammed his hands into his jeans and sauntered over to where Denny stood, a look of smug victory on his face.

  “Yo, yo, yo big sis.”

  Denny crossed her arms and shook her head. “You know you’re white, right?” She felt the bile rise in her throat and the hackles on her neck rise with it. Something was off about this guy.

  “You don’t like me, do you?” Mike Cockerton stood five feet from her, his feet planted shoulder width apart, his hands still in his pockets, and his eyes...she couldn’t have seen what she thought she did. She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment.

  “I don’t know you enough to dislike you,” Denny heard herself say. “So just be damn sure you don’t give me a reason.”

  “Well, your sister is safe with me.”

  “I don’t know that either.”

  “Oooh, tough nut to crack.” He didn’t take his eyes from Denny’s. “I’ve met parents easier than you.”

  Denny pushed herself off the Prius and planted her feet in mirror image to his. “There’s no cracking this nut, Mr. Cockerton. Pure means the world to me, and it’s my job to make sure she’s safe from assholes and dickweeds and anyone else who might shove her off her path.”

  His eyebrows rose. “Whoa. I’m no asshole or—”

  “Good. Make sure you’re very clear about the proper way to comport yourself around my sister and you and I won’t have a problem.”

  “Comport?”

  “Act. It means act. As long as you’re not an ass around, to, or with Pure, then we won’t have any issues. Capisce?”

  He stepped back. His face changed as he finally connected the dots. “Oh. I get it. You’re one of them man-hating dykes, is that it?”

  Denny was rolling onto the balls of her feet just as Pure bounded up.

  “Hey. M.C., this is my sister, Denny.”

  Denny nodded once. “We’ve met. Come on, Pure. I’ve got shit to do.” Denny waited for Pure to say goodbye before opening the passenger door for her.

  Once Pure was in the car, Denny walked right up to Mike and said in a voice not at all like her own, “You ever use that word around me again and that stupid jacket you’re wearing is all they’ll find of you, asshole.”

  Before he replies, Denny pulled open her car door. “You need to teach your friend some manners,” Denny said, again in a voice she barely recognized. “Or I will.”

  ****

  Denny’s Journal

  I wasn’t at all sure what was happening to me. I’d never gotten in anyone’s face like that before, and...that voice? It sounded nothing like me. It sounded like I’d swallowed gravel and used Ajax as a chaser. It freaked me out. Big time.

  Pure did not speak to me the whole way home. I wasn’t sure if she had heard the exchange, but I knew she was mortified by my behavior. Truth was, so was I.

  Across the board. I was having thoughts and feelings I shouldn’t have been having.

  It was one thing to have lunch with someone in order to reap information—it was another thing entirely to have missed bits and pieces of that information because I was envisioning sex with them.

  That was something else I didn’t do, and I was more than a little appalled by my behavior, even though it was mental. Was I becoming unhinged because of all the weird paranormal crap flying around in my world? From my nearly superhuman toss of a man twice my size, to heightened sexual arousal and getting all bad ass in someone’s face, I’d say I’d stepped into the supernatural.

  And it scared the crap out of me. Was this a result of seeing my mom on another plane?

  Whatever was happening to me was having a direct effect on those around me as well.

  When Pure and I got home, I went straight to my room and fucked the hell out of Rush. And I mean...THE HELL. I barely gave her the chance to breathe. I was a lunatic…like someone who hadn’t been laid in forever. It would have been embarrassing if I had even the tiniest bit of control.

  I didn’t. I was completely out of control.

  When it was all said and done, she took my face in her hands, looked deeply into my eyes, and uttered three words before vanishing.

  “I knew it.”

  She was just a puff of smoke when I finally managed to say, “What? You knew what?”

  But she was gone, taking her answer with her, and leaving me wondering even more—

  What in the hell was happening to me?

  ****

  The Demons

  She watched him flirt, buy drinks, and act like he owned the world. Human men lusting after flesh were such huge targets for demons. They could not see beyond their drive to sate their physical desires. They could not hear the darkness creeping ever closer.

  They were careless simpletons who were too arrogant to recognize that it was the flesh of woman that controlled them and not the other way around. They were victims of a predatory instinct and yearning that overcame all other senses often placing them in grave danger.

  They were lucky so few women ever fought back.

  Men were weak—perhaps the weakest of the species, though they strutted around like the proverbial peacocks retelling this sexual conquest
and sexual deviation. Those men should have been the pariah of their people, but instead, were held up as faux warriors in a battle of gender relations.

  Men admired them and wanted to be them.

  Women pretended to disdain them, all the while wishing to be their next conquest.

  Heroes out of villains.

  The humans didn’t really need demons to ruin their lives and destroy their worlds—they were doing just fine on their own. Humans could seldom get out of their own way, and usually all it took was a little push to get them started on their downward spiral.

  Still, the mission was always about making as big a splash as possible so the ripples would reach as far as they could reach.

  And this rock of a man would make a huge splash wherever he went because he was the kind of man who never thought he needed protection. He was the kind of man who didn’t even bother showering between bedmates.

  He was, without a doubt in the demon’s mind, the kind of man who would spread the disease she was incubating between her legs. Like blowing on a dandelion, he would send the virus out into the world where weak-minded and sexually retarded women would infect the next macho man who didn’t use protection.

  And so on.

  And so on.

  The ripple effect was never more prevalent than in the weaknesses of the flesh and soft in the mind, and all she had to do was smile over at him to get the party started.

  It was that simple.

  ****

  Once Pure left the house to go to a see a friend, Denny went back into the lair.

  Lair.

  She found the word oddly fitting for a place of dark knowledge and murky secrecy. She wondered briefly if her mother had named it.

  The bookshelves were crammed with books, magnifying glasses, and pocket watches. Some of the books were about demons, some were religious tomes, others about history. But the one that caught her eye the most was the big leather book perched in the middle of the desk.

  While her mother’s journal beckoned her, that thick beast of a book drew her like a tractor beam. Cautiously approaching the desk, Denny tentatively touched the open page. The paper was thick vellum with fountain pen or quill ink inscribed on it.

  She looked at the text on the page. Beautifully scripted writing flowed across the page on the left hand side, while on the right side was a drawing of a creature out of a horror movie.

  He was broad-shouldered and had three massive claw-like fingers on each hand. Red eyes, angry mouth, his bald head sported ram-like horns.

  “Ugh. That’s just nasty.”

  Denny read the inscription:

  “Belphegor rules misogyny and licentious men who live as a man (or woman) to experience sexual pleasures. When a human allows Belphegor in to their life, the demon will bestow great treasures and wealth as well as enable the human to become overly creative and innovative. Eventually, the demon will consume the lover as balance for whatever was created— creator and destroyer being the polar opposites like life and death, or good and evil.”

  Denny inhaled and turned the page, where the information about Belphegor continued. There was a recipe of some sort and what looked like a knife, with instructions on how to vanquish this demon.

  “Belphegor is a demon who must be cast out, not destroyed, for complete destruction is nearly impossible. The casting out usually kills the host, and Belphegor escapes to a neutral zone where he will attempt to recover his energy to move on to a new host.”

  Denny pinched the bridge of her nose. “This cannot become my life.”

  Turning page after page, Denny could not believe how many demons there were and how many bizarre entries detailed ways of banishing, destroying, and even capturing them. It was a compendium of demon information that would take her weeks to get through.

  If she read it.

  Denny left it open to the same page she’d found it. She wasn’t sure why.

  This room...this lair...with her mother’s things, her books, her writing, felt somehow both sacred and profane. Opening the desk drawers, Denny gingerly moved items around. She had no idea what she was looking for and she found some strange things.

  There were vials for blood, dozens of gold-tipped nibs, and several different kinds of letter openers.

  The center drawer was locked. Denny contemplated trying to pick the lock, until her eye caught the title of a book perched on top of the roll-top hutch.

  Demon Hunting.

  She pulled the book off the desk and started to flip through it when she realized what it actually was. On a bookmark she pulled from the book, she saw her mother’s handwriting.

  My beautiful Golden Girl. If you are reading this, it means it is time for you to decide whether you can wear the mantle of demon hunter. Before you decide, read this book and determine whether you are capable of doing what must be done. It is not something to trifle with, Golden. If you choose to follow the precepts, it will change your life. If you do not want your life changed, close this book, walk away, and never return to Savannah. Ever. Leave tonight, take your sister, and never look back. Do not hesitate. If I am gone, the legacy has already been put into play. If, however, you believe you are the one to do this job, and are prepared to live a secret life of hunting and killing, then read on. And may the Goddess forever have your back.

  Love, Mom

  Goddess?

  The room swam before her and Denny suddenly realized that nothing in her life was what it had seemed.

  Nothing.

  Her mother was, or rather had been, a demon hunter. Pieces of a once obscured puzzle began to fall into place. That explained those “business trips” she took all the time, leaving her father home to...to what? Guard them? Care for them? What was his role in all of this? She would be gone for days and then come home and sleep for eighteen, nineteen hours at a stretch. She would wake up ravenous as their father practically tossed food at her.

  When Gwen was home, her mother always had her special quiet time, when no one was allowed to bother her. Ever. Often, their father would take them to the park so their mother could…do what? Come to the lair? Destroy demons? What was it her mother actually did? Again, there were more questions than answers, and Denny felt a headache coming on like a freight train.

  Shaking it off, she inhaled and continued her investigation of the lair.

  The letter. It had been addressed to her. Why were these notes and letters addressed to her and not Sterling? Since she was the oldest, shouldn’t Sterling merit greater consideration for the job than Denny? Why not Quick? Was he really the victim of a demon frame up? Was he too big of a screw up? And if so, where does one go to balance the wobbly scales of justice?

  And what about Pure? How on earth was Denny supposed to protect her little sister from demons sniffing about when she didn’t have a clue what to do or where to go or even how to begin?

  And finally, what did it mean that this was the family legacy? How did one fulfill a family legacy they knew nothing of and were reluctant to begin? How could she—

  Suddenly, a little red light flashed above the desk and a bell chimed.

  That was when Denny heard the front door open and close. The bell and chime warned her someone had entered the front door.

  Her mother had thought of everything.

  Denny started out of the room with the book on demon hunting. But the book suddenly vanished when she was less than a foot outside the hidden room, Denny looked at her empty hands.

  “What. The. Fuck?”

  She stood there a moment before stepping back into the room.

  The book appeared in her hands once more.

  “Wow. Weird.”

  Denny stepped back out. The book disappeared. She wondered if all the books in the room were somehow anchored there. She walked back in, grabbed the Big Black Book, and stepped outside the lair.

  The book was still in her hands. “Crap. There goes that theory.” She went back into the small room and set the book on the desk before gazing once more a
t the sheer volume of information contained on the shelves.

  “I don’t know what you did or why you did it, mom, but if I need to wear your shoes in order to protect Pure, then I’m all in. And by all in, I mean…I’m not looking back.

  ****

  “You should have told me,” Denny said as soon as Sister Sterling entered the conference room of the convent. The lights were dim and the ratty looking conference table had seen better days.

  Sterling folded her hands in front of her as she sat at the head of the table. “Please. Sit.”

  Denny sat, her posture mimicking that of her sister. “You knew. All this time, you knew and yet you said nothing. How that darkness must have eaten you up.”

  “I was afraid this might happen,” Sterling said softly.

  “This. What’s this, Sterling? You’re not going to tap dance around the demonic elephant in the room. What exactly are we talking about and why didn’t you tell me this long before now?”

  Sterling’s gaze remained on her hands. “Quick got you asking questions with answers you don’t want to hear and questions with answers that don’t yet exist. It was selfish of him. Typical of our brother.”

  “I heard them, Sterling. That’s the problem. I can’t un-hear or un-know what I’ve learned during the last forty-eight hours. Believe me. I wish I could, but I can’t.”

  Sterling finally looked up at her. “I’m sorry, Golden. I had so hoped this sad and dark part of our family’s history had passed us by. I hoped that Quick would take it with him to the grave if need be.”

  “Well, it didn’t. That darkness may very well have set up our brother for a crime he didn’t commit. It’s plagued me with some seriously weird supernatural shit, and it caused our mother to create a lair filled with books on demons and demonology before running her and dad off the god-damned road.”

  Sterling leaned forward. “Wait. Back up. Plaguing you? What do you mean? What is plaguing you, Golden? You said there’s some weird supernatural…ummm…stuff. Like what? What’s happened?”