Demon Fire (The Angel Fire Book 3)

by Marie Johnston

  A grunt left the host as he scooted to the edge of her chair. “These knees.”

  “Remember her meds.”

  Rheumy eyes pegged her. “The purse is full of meds. The bathroom cabinet is full of meds. I’m not going to forget the fucking meds.”

  Sierra watched the demon struggle to rise in his older host. “Then why didn’t you possess a younger human?” Demons weren’t picky. They took what they could get, but her question was a way to find out what she could about this one.

  “Alma likes me.”

  “What now?” Jameson had built an empire around humans who wanted to serve the underworld and help them. Had his sickness spread this far?

  “Don’t get your angelic panties in a twist. Alma’s a good soul. But she’s lonely and in constant pain. I’m a good distraction.”

  And he likely felt the brunt of that pain, muffling it for Alma’s consciousness. “She’s not fighting you?”

  “It might surprise you that I’ve done nothing to make her fight me.”

  “You’re possessing her.”

  “Everyone needs a break.”

  Exasperating demon. How could he be what he was but speak fondly of his host? Demons were selfish. Hosts were a means to an end.

  Yet she couldn’t escape the sense of kinship she had with him. He wasn’t a normal demon. He thought out his actions, for one. A cunning demon was the most dangerous, but he wasn’t needlessly cruel. She didn’t trust him, but he was different and that was enough to take notice.

  He hobbled past her on his way to the bedroom. “Where are we going, fallen?”

  “Far from here.” She hadn’t forgotten that this demon wanted her blood too. But she needed answers and he was the best route for her.

  “I don’t know how far Alma’s car will make it.”

  “We can procure another one.”

  He turned, delight gleaming in his host’s eyes. “Do you plan to jack a car? Is that the definition of how the mighty have fallen?”

  “Fuck off, demon.”

  “I can’t. Andy has a fan club in Daemon. I can’t go home until I kill them all.” As he disappeared in the bedroom, she caught his muttered, “And then I don’t ever want to go back again.”

  Was he tricking her?

  A message popped up that the send was a success. Now she waited. Should she go into the bedroom and see if any of Alma’s clothing fit? She was back to having nothing and she didn’t want to flee town on the dime of a human living off social security.

  Her mind went back to the picture. There’d been no kids, but Alma had found someone to spend her life with. Sierra wouldn’t ever find anyone to spend her life with. She’d never planned to. Someone like her didn’t get a happily ever after with a mate. Others of her kind could sync their life with another’s, or wait until they got matched to a sync mate. But she’d been a warrior, and the chances were supposed to have been better that she’d mate. Mates could heal, and many warriors got theirs when they’d been severely injured.

  But Sierra wasn’t like the others. She’d assumed that whatever ethereal force assigned mates would skip over her, leave her unique makeup out of the Numen gene pool.

  Somehow, she was procreating anyway.

  Awareness prickled along her spine. She stared at the computer screen but concentrated on her other senses. Was someone watching her? Alma’s shades were drawn. She didn’t know if the human normally kept her house this dark, but the demon did.

  Was someone approaching the doors? Did Alma get visitors? How did the demon handle those?

  There was a faint rustle by the back door. Sierra moved her fingers over the laptop keys in case anyone could see inside. They’d think she was focused on her task, but her senses were attuned to the back door.

  She strained to hear over the racket the demon was making as he packed. Pill bottles rattled and the host’s footsteps shuffled between the bedroom and bathroom.

  She had to get the demon’s attention. Discreetly. “Psst.” She winced. That would have to do.

  The host disappeared into the bedroom. Dammit.

  Pushing away from the computer, she shoved a hand through her hair. She’d done nothing more than brush it and it was long enough to hang in her face and get in the way. Her coat was by the front door with her hat and gloves stuffed inside the pockets. The pile rested on top of her boots. She hadn’t wanted to track snow all over the human’s tidy house.

  She was barefoot and pregnant and unarmed.

  Striding to the kitchen, she looked through the cupboards. When she found the glasses, she took one out to make it look like she was getting a drink. The back door was to her right. The curtain across the door’s window was thin, just thick enough to hide the specifics of what she was doing. A shadow moved on the other side, crouched low.

  A block of knives sat on the counter. She slipped out the paring knife and tucked it into the palm of her hand. It was small, but if the person on the other side was possessed, it wouldn’t kill the host if she was careful.

  Creeping close to the door, she edged back against the wall, inching left and right to catch a glimpse beyond the curtain.

  “Okay.” A bag hit the floor and Sierra jumped. The demon had marched out of the bedroom and headed straight for the recliner. “I’m packed, but I need a minute. This heart is fluttering like a billion butterflies.”

  He flopped into the chair and peered at her, the host’s eyes narrowing. “What the hell are you doing?”

  A crack wrenched the back door open and a man holding a matte-black gun stormed inside.

  Who the hell was Sierra? How the hell did she know Alma? And why the hell had she left after a clandestine bathroom conversation?

  Boone hadn’t followed Sierra and the old lady here. He’d let her go, disbelief rooting him in place as she hooked her arm around Alma’s and walked out the damn pharmacy and away from him.

  But he hadn’t needed to follow her. He’d made free use of the small-town gossip line. After Sierra had left with the lady he’d never seen before, he’d bought a soda and candy bar and made a comment about not having seen her in a while, leaving the her in question nebulous. As he’d hoped, the cashier, who was a good twenty-five years older than his thirty-eight, had filled in a lot of blanks about Alma. Alma Swanson had lost her husband eighteen years ago, kept to herself, and lived on the edge of town. Using his knowledge of what businesses were where, he’d managed to get the address out of the cashier.

  Oh, you mean by the old insurance office that’s now a coffee shop?

  Yes, Alma’s two straight blocks north of that. Merle used to work there when it was an insurance place.

  I’d like to drop by and check on her yard, make sure she’s doing okay. Is it the blue house, or white? The two most popular house colors in any small towns.

  Alma hires out the neighbor kid, but I’m sure she’d appreciate the effort. And Merle had the house painted green a few years before he died. I’m so glad he was around long enough to see how cute the new look was.

  Ah, small towns. He’d found Alma’s house without a problem.

  He was parked a block away. Alma’s old beater was parked out front. Why not use the one-stall garage attached to the small farm-style house?

  He pondered the question way too long—no automatic garage door? The space was filled with decades of memories? They were leaving ASAP? The questions kept his mind off of why he was parked and spying on Sierra in the first place. She was nothing to him.

  Yet his world had revolved around her for the last two months. He’d planned on helping her, and the whole time he’d stood by the door of the drug store while she supposedly took a pregnancy test, he’d thought about what it would mean. He’d be helping a pregnant lady. Not only was Sierra’s welfare in his hands, but so was a baby’s.

  Then she’d left and he’d been angry and worried and full of questions. He had no idea what had happened to her and who had left her with those scars, or who’d abandoned her pregnant in the sn
ow. He didn’t think she was the type to up and leave, but she seemed to know Alma.

  But Sierra and Alma weren’t friendly. His intuition screamed that something was off about the old lady. The same sense of wrongness flared whenever he thought back to how tense Sierra had acted around the woman. She’d left the drugstore like someone’s life depended on it.

  How could an old woman coerce Sierra to leave him?

  He needed to make sure she was all right. He’d left home for work that day years ago, thinking his world would be fine when it had ended hours later.

  He peered at the house. Every other house on the block was a similar style to Alma’s. Old, square, farmhouse-style structures. Some were two stories, some had two-car garages, others had none. A few were smaller, but several were larger, wider. All of them had their curtains open in the middle of the damn day. Except for Alma’s.

  His gaze dropped to his shoes. Since he’d quit work, he no longer carried a weapon in his vehicle. His hunting rifle and shotgun were at the cabin. For a fleeting second, he wished he had a sidearm again.

  Alma had to be pushing eighty. Why the hell was he thinking about being armed?

  He fisted his hands on his thighs. The street was quiet for the middle of the week. At the end of the block, a man veered around the corner. He marched, heedless of any icy patches, his gaze glued to the green house Boone had been watching.

  The man got closer.

  Jim?

  What was Jim from the sporting goods store doing out for a walk around Alma’s place?

  Jim plowed through a neighbor’s yard and charged through the bushes separating the properties into Alma’s backyard. Snow from the branches rained down on his head and shoulders but that didn’t slow him down.

  How were these three people connected? Did Sierra know Jim too? Alma and Jim had to know each other. They’d both lived in Green Valley for years.

  It was time for some answers. Boone got out and eyed the front door. Did he just walk up and knock? What would he say? Hey, I’d love to know what’s going on.

  As he approached, muted sounds of a crash came from the back of the house. He knew the sound of a door getting busted in. Was that from Jim?

  He trotted through the yard, using Jim’s footprints to plow through the snow in less time. The screen door hung off a hinge. Boone scanned the backyard. Tall evergreens cut off the view of the yard behind Alma’s house, and the neighbors each had rows of shaggy lilacs that blocked their view.

  Stalking closer to the door, he went as fast as he dared. If he went barreling in, with or without a weapon, he could create more problems.

  Scuffles reached him. A grunt. Chairs scraping across a floor. Another giant crash propelled him forward.

  He swept through the door, wishing he had more than his bare hands, and took in the scene. Alma stood in the living room, her hands on her knees as she peered into the kitchen, saying, “Is he dead?”

  Sierra stood over an unconscious Jim. Her cheeks were flushed, but she appeared unhurt. “Nope. Can you tell if the demon’s still in him?” She pushed the magazine release on a Beretta and pulled open the slide, locking it open as a round flew out and tinged on the floor. The moves were fast and efficient. He barely had time to register the danger of a firearm. She tossed the gun on the counter and stilled. She swung her head toward him.

  This was more than a man breaking into a house. It was more than two women taking on an intruder. Alma’s calm inspection of Jim. Sierra’s efficiency with the Beretta. Demons? And Jim. Alma wasn’t the one who’d incapacitated him.

  “Shut the door before the world sees,” Sierra said and went through the drawers of the kitchen. “We need rope.”

  He stared at her. “Why?” Of all the questions, finding out why she needed rope at the same time there was an unconscious man on the floor of a house that wasn’t hers seemed priority.

  “To tie Jim up. He hit his head on the table as he went down and knocked himself out, thank goodness.” Her gaze went to Jim, up to Boone, then to Alma. She shoved a lock of hair behind her ear and put a hand on her hip. “What are you doing here, Boone?”

  Alma cackled. “Your boyfriend was trying to rescue you.”

  “Shut it, demon.”

  “I thought the demon was in Jim.” The sentence sounded crazy as it came out. Was Sierra insane? Did she suffer from a mental condition and had lost touch with reality?

  He didn’t want that to be the case, but it’d explain a lot.

  “Is it, Sandeen?”

  “Well, that cat’s out of the bag. Gerzon and his big mouth.” Alma crept closer, hunched down, and peered at Jim. “No. Gerzon’s gone.”

  “What the hell is going on?” Boone roared. He jerked the screen door closed behind him and by the grace of God, it actually stayed latched. He swung the main door closed, but he doubted there was anything left to latch after Jim had busted in.

  No one said anything. The two stared at him.

  “Start talking.”

  If Sierra was in another reality, then Alma was too.

  Alma’s mouth curved into a toothy grin. “Good thing you’ve already fallen, Sierra.”

  “Shut it, demon.”

  “Why do you keep calling him demon?” Boone gritted out.

  Sierra pointed to Jim and addressed Alma. “Tie him up.”

  Alma lifted her hands. “With these arthritic hands?” She shifted her gaze to Boone. “I’m a demon possessing Alma, but don’t hold that against me. I’m really not that bad. Sierra here is an angel who’s lost her wings because she was worse than she looks. And the one you call Jim was also possessed by a wicked motherfucker called Gerzon.”

  Silence echoed through the house.

  “Are you kidding me?” He wanted it to be a joke, but his gut, the intuition he’d relied on most of his career before it had failed him in the worst possible way, said no. They weren’t joking. That left two possibilities: They were insane. Or they were telling the truth.

  Sierra let out a sigh. “Dead serious. For once, Sandeen’s not lying.”

  He’d seen a lot of evil shit in his life. When he’d lain in the hospital bed, recovering and wishing he had died with his family, he’d wanted a reason. An answer. Someone or something to blame that wasn’t his wife or himself.

  He wasn’t going to go off the deep end just because fantasy made him feel better than reality. “Who’s Sandeen?”

  She pointed to Alma. “The demon possessing Alma.”

  “Alma’s dead?” He’d charged into this house like a white knight rescuing a damsel in distress. Sierra was no damsel, he’d seen that with his own eyes. But if Alma had suffered because of her, he would have to face the thought that Sierra wasn’t his to save, that he might have to save others from her.

  “Alma’s just fine.” The elderly woman waved him off. “She loves the excitement. Sierra, we should show him.”

  “You’re not getting more of my blood,” she growled.

  The levels of weird shit in this situation continued to mount, and Boone still didn’t have any satisfying answers. “You took down Jim?”

  She winced. “I disarmed him and kicked his feet out from under him. I didn’t mean for him to get hurt, but it’s for the best that he’s out cold.” She pulled open another drawer. “Twine. Perfect.”

  She withdrew a ball of twine and scissors from a clutter of items in what must be a catch-all drawer.

  When she crouched to tie his hands, Boone said, “We have to call the police.”

  “You can when we leave. Sandeen and I need to go before anything comes after us.”

  Anything, not anyone. “Demons are after you?”

  “I guess,” she said as she worked a figure eight around Jim’s hands and knotted it. “When we were in the store, I saw that he was getting hounded by sylphs.”

  “By what?”

  “Little demonic creatures that disrupt a person’s life. Leaves them open for possession by archmasters like Sandeen.” She jerked her head
toward Alma.

  “You’re saying Alma was hounded by sylphs?” He’d have to look up what those were, if they were even real.

  “No,” Alma answered. Or Sandeen. Or, fuck, he didn’t know anymore.

  “We have to go.” Sierra cut the twine and went to work on his feet. “Gerzon is going to come back and this time he’ll be prepared.”

  Alma rocked in the recliner. “We were lucky it was just him in the first place. Zanda would’ve shot first and asked questions later.”

  “How much money does Alma have? We need a computer so I can send a report. A tablet might do. Something that’ll connect to Wi-Fi. Alma’s is too old.”

  “If I pay for it—”

  “If Alma pays for it.”

  Boone watched the exchange. Urgency rippled over Sierra’s body. She snatched a grocery bag lying on the counter and dumped the gun and ammo inside, followed by a paring knife that matched the ones Alma owned. Had that been hidden in her shirt?

  “My host, my decision.” Was this a multiple personality thing? “If I buy it, you have to tell your team that I’m not the bad guy.”

  “That’s still up for debate.”

  Alma swept an arm at Jim. “I could’ve let him take you.”

  “Just because you don’t want Andy to get me doesn’t mean you don’t have your own plans.”

  Alma just shrugged. “That’s the deal. I have keys and more money than you. See if your boyfriend will take you.”

  Boone was no one’s boyfriend.

  “He has to come with us,” Sierra said.

  She’d tried getting away from him less than an hour ago. Now she was telling him that he was leaving with her? “I don’t have to do—”

  “They’re after me, Boone. Demons. Real ones from the underworld. I have no other help on Earth.” She shot Alma a dubious glare. “Other than him. Jim knows I was with you. That’ll be enough for them to find and torture you.”

  Did he stand and argue, or did he play along? Jim had broken into the house. Boone had heard him. Jim’s chest was rising and falling. These two hadn’t killed him. If Boone played along, he could find out what they were up to.