by Kat Simons
A faint scent reached her. One she hated. One she recognized.
The very faint rotten egg smell of sulfur.
“I smell it,” Sebastian said even before Angie could comment.
“You ready?”
“Always.”
He wasn’t boasting, Angie knew. Demon hunters had to be ready for a hunt at every moment. If he let his guard drop, if he let his will to overcome any demon lapse for even a moment, he would die.
They edged forward, toward the open room. Angie pointed her flashlight through the door. Silence and stillness greeted them.
Several rows of washing machines lined the wall to the left, dryers lined the back wall. There was a table for folding clothes and a small card machine for adding money to the cards the washers and dryers took. Scuff marks on the card machine gave evidence to its abuse. Four metal laundry carts on wheels lined up next to the row of washers. Nothing obviously moved. None of the machines were in use. No shuffling sounds. No cockroaches skittered out of the light.
The space behind the row of dryers was big enough to hide a person, though, which made Angie distrust the quiet.
The scent of sulfur was stronger now, but as she took a single step into the laundry room, the scents of soap and dryer sheets overpowered the sulfur.
“Not here,” Sebastian murmured.
She nodded. This wasn’t what they were looking for. As soon as she turned back to the corridor, the smell of sulfur hit her again. The dark corner that veered to the right. The scent was coming from that direction.
On instinct, she cut the light from her flashlight. They were plunged into darkness. She expected Sebastian to protest, but he held perfectly still next to her and didn’t say a word. He stood close enough for her to feel his presence in the dark, though, and that was very reassuring.
A primitive part of her nearly panicked without any light, her finger tapping the flashlight button without hitting it hard enough to turn it back on. Holding off that inner panic long enough for her eyes to adjust to the darkness took effort.
Finally, her eyes adapted, and a red glow emerged from the dark, just around the bend in the corridor.
“Mm hmm,” Sebastian murmured.
A new kind of panic gripped her. She’d known what they were walking into. She’d known what they were going to face. Still, with the evidence in front of her, the red glow, the sulfur… Her heart hammered so hard she had to blink back spots. She hated this. Hated it. It was partly why she’d moved, why she’d given up so much. Why she kept trying to give it all up.
Sebastian took hold of her free hand. “You don’t have to go,” he murmured. “This part is my job, not yours.”
“None of this is my job,” she muttered, mostly because annoyance and anger were easier than the fear.
He sighed, audibly. “I know.”
“Don’t apologize,” she warned. “Not now. Not yet. We’ll talk later.”
“Still willing to talk to me later? A good sign.”
“Don’t count on it.” She was too scared to be nice.
It didn’t matter how often she’d had to face demons and the demon realms in the past. She’d never gotten completely used to it, never shaken that fear. Give her wizards and shapeshifters and vampires. She could deal with those. But her innate ability to see into the demon realms had only made her more terrified of demons, not less.
She’d never been intended for the life of a hunter.
They slowly approached the bend in the corridor, the red glow guiding them now. Angie wanted to flick her flashlight on again, but if they still had any element of surprise at this stage, the light would end that.
She couldn’t imagine whoever was back there hadn’t heard them approaching. They’d been quiet but not silent this whole time. Still, no one was attacking them so that might, might, be a good sign.
She hoped.
As they reached the corner, Sebastian eased her behind him and they both leaned against the wall so he could look around the corner. He didn’t react at all to what he saw. No fast, indrawn breath, no grunt, no gasp. He looked and then he leaned back against the wall and faced her, frowning slightly.
“What?” she mouthed. Now that they were this close, any noise seemed a bad idea.
His lips flattened in a scowl and he shook his head. Then, without warning her, he stepped around the corner. Instinctively, she reached for him but he was already gone.
Damn him.
She squeezed her eyes shut for a beat, completed the spell that put a shield in front of her, and followed him around the corner.
Chapter Ten
Angie blinked into the red and yellow light, brighter now that she faced it fully. It took a moment for the scene to resolve itself. And when it did, she gasped.
The corridor opened up into a larger room, like a recreation room or meeting room, but without anything in it. At the far side of the room were two elevators, but the doors were obscured by the flames rising from the circle of fire in the center of the room.
Inside the flame circle, an Anchor demon stood, looking out with eyes white with heat. The demon itself looked like a skeleton encased in flames, just the barest of structure for the racing fire to adhere to. The skeleton was mostly human-shaped, though larger and thicker, but the skull was the skeletal shape of a bull, complete with thick horns coming out of its head and a snout shaped of fire where the nose would be. Its feet were hooves. Its bone hands were human-like though with only three fingers and a thumb. Still the kind of hand that could grasp and hold.
Angie’s heartbeat hammered. Not the same beast. But from the same realm as the Fire demon…
The demon’s full focus was on someone much smaller than it standing just outside the circle. The girl was about five-foot tall, her light brown hair loose down her back. She wore jeans and a sweatshirt that had to be sweltering in the heat created by the Anchor demon and the circle containing it. She had her arms raised and was chanting something difficult to hear over the sounds of the rushing flames.
Angie didn’t have to see her face to know who the girl was.
She opened her mouth to call Mara’s name, but stopped herself just in time. Interrupting someone controlling a demon could be a disaster. Especially if their control over that demon wasn’t very strong.
Though, as Angie moved slowly closer, she realized the Anchor demon looked well contained. The circle held.
The scent of sulfur was stronger here, making her want to gag. It blended with a kind of burnt scent that was a little too close to roasting meat for Angie’s peace of mind. She’d be off meat for a month after this, and she loved a good steak.
She looked around for Sebastian, but she didn’t see him anywhere. She’d expected to see him closer to Mara, but… Nothing.
Where the hell was he?
There was nowhere to go. Except the elevators. And the lights over the doors indicated they were on much higher levels. He wouldn’t have left the room anyway. Not with a demon right there. He might be a bastard sometimes, but he was an excellent hunter.
She narrowed her eyes and searched the area with a sense outside her normal five, a sense she didn’t call on often. She couldn’t see auras well or consistently the way her workmate Laura could, but she could…sense things if she concentrated.
The roar of flames broke her focus, the sound like a living thing, all its own.
“I will help you, child,” the demon said. “If you meet my bargain.”
“You’ll kill him? Before he can take me? Before the other demon is called again? You’ll kill him?”
“I will.” The demon leaned forward with that promise, getting as close to eye level with Mara as it could while still inside the circle.
Angie opened her mouth to shout a warning to Mara. This was the moment, the worst moment. If the bargain was made, things got a lot more complicated.
But before she could utter a sound, Sebastian seemed to materialize out of the air right next to the girl, facing the demon.
“You have no place here, hunter,” it said.
“I beg to differ,” Sebastian said. He moved to put Mara behind him. “No bargain, beast. You will not enter this world this day.”
“The child has made her choice.”
“Not yet. And I intend to talk her out of it.”
The Anchor demon laughed. “Her father will kill her, sacrifice her to the other one. Their deal is set. The bargain made long ago. You cannot change that.”
“Won’t have to,” Sebastian said. “And unless you want a full fight and want to test your will against mine, I’d recommend leaving.”
“You think your will can overcome mine?” the demon growled, lowering its head to put its face close to Sebastian’s this time.
Sebastian leaned closer as well, close enough only the column of fire from the flame circle separated them. “You’d like to test me? I’ve nothing better to do right now. Your choice.”
The glowing white eyes flared briefly inside the skull head. The bone area where a bull’s snout would be, that hole in the front of its face, released a stream of steam, almost like the demon was letting out a breath.
As they stared at each other, the hairs on Angie’s arms rose. The demon was testing Sebastian, a silent clash of wills, and while she couldn’t see or hear anything of the fight, her instincts jumped and her nerves tingled with awareness of it. A staring contest might seem innocuous to most. But with a demon, it carried a whole level of danger the observer couldn’t comprehend.
It was the strangest thing, sometimes, watching the demon hunters work. Will, and the act of wielding it against a monster, was… She didn’t have the word for it. Just strange.
Finally, the demon straightened away, towering up over Sebastian’s head. Sebastian leaned back slowly without taking his gaze from the creature’s face.
The demon looked away first but pointed a finger at Sebastian. “This isn’t done between us, hunter. The child will call me again. And when I’m free, I will come for you.”
“Looking forward to it,” Sebastian said quietly.
The demon made that screeching sound again, loud enough Angie had to cover her ears.
“I’ll be back,” it snarled.
“Right you are, Arnie.”
The white glow of the demon’s eyes flickered, as if it blinked at being called Arnie. Then it let out the screech again and vanished in a cloud of steam and a column of flames.
The flame circle remained. But the center was empty.
“Best cut the circle now,” Sebastian said as he turned to face Mara. “Wouldn’t want him sneaking back.”
“What have you done?” Mara wailed up at Sebastian. “Why did you do that?”
“To keep you from making a mistake,” Sebastian said gently. “Because no matter what your father has done, this isn’t the answer.”
“How the hell do you know? How can you possibly know?”
“It’s my job,” he said, still quiet and gentle.
“What job is that?” Mara spit. There were tears streaking down her cheeks. She swiped at them angrily.
“Demon hunter.”
That brought Mara up, her shoulders straightening. “What?”
“I hunt demons.”
“Why haven’t you stopped my father?”
“I’m working on it.”
Angie saw the faint twitch in the muscles along his jaw in the light from the still-burning circle. Something about all this was more significant to Seb than just an ordinary hunt. What had gone wrong the last time he’d been here?
“You can’t,” Mara said, attempting to fall back on her earlier anger.
But some of the heat had leeched away. She sounded very young. And very scared. And Angie wanted to pull her into a hug and assure her everything would be all right. She didn’t move from her spot. She didn’t dare touch the girl just then, when her own senses were so heightened. But the desire to comfort choked her up.
“I will,” Sebastian said. “I will stop your father, and I will keep you safe.”
“I’m not the one he’s really after,” she said, loudly, then slapped her hand over her mouth.
Sebastian’s eyes narrowed.
Angie stared at the side of Mara’s face for a long time as some of her earlier impressions and the jigsaw puzzle of suspicions settled into place.
“Your mother,” she finally said, stepping fully into the room so Mara could see her. “She’s not actually dead, is she?”
Chapter Eleven
Mara started and faced Angie. “Who are you?” she demanded. The flame circle still burned brightly behind her, obscuring the elevators behind it. But the flames were lower now that the demon was no longer contained inside the circle.
Angie made an effort to appear as harmless as possible as she introduced herself. “Angie Jordan. A friend of Sebastian’s. And a witch,” she added, just to be fully upfront. The girl had been through enough betrayals. Secrecy wouldn’t win Angie any points.
“What kind of witch?”
“I refer to myself as a green witch. Gets out of those black and white dichotomies. That part’s mostly theological, though. Practically speaking, I’m a touch psychic, and I can work magic through spells.”
Mara blinked at her a few times. “I don’t believe you.”
Angie smiled. “You were just trying to bargain with an honest-to-goddess demon and you don’t believe in witches?”
“How did you find me?”
Angie held out the lipstick she’d kept in her jacket pocket. “Sebastian was…called to your house because of the demon issue. Your father asked him to find you. Sebastian brought me in to help. I got this from your room to help scry for you. But that was after I’d touched a few things and tried to see if I could…pick up your location.” She paused as Mara’s face squinched up into a scowl of anger. “I’m sorry we invaded your privacy. Carmen was there with us. We didn’t damage anything. We wanted to find you and make sure…” When Mara narrowed her eyes, Angie shrugged. “We wanted to make sure you weren’t dead or taken by the demon your father summoned.”
“He’s horrible.”
“The demon or your father? Because I’m afraid I agree with both.”
Mara’s mouth twitched. “He’s not really my father, you know.”
“That would explain a lot.”
“You’re not surprised? Did you psychic that out?”
Angie’s turn to nearly smile. “No.”
“Why aren’t you surprised?”
“Not a lot surprises me.”
“You’re not scared?”
“That’s something different. I’m afraid of a lot of things. Just not often surprised. Not by people anyway.” She shrugged again. “Occupational hazard for a psychic.”
Mara looked between her and Sebastian. “I can’t trust anyone.”
“Fair enough,” Sebastian said. “You don’t know us from Adam. No reason to trust us. And given your own father was going to sacrifice you to a demon, I imagine your trust is in short supply.”
The blunt assessment of her situation seemed to settle Mara somewhat. Like being able to just talk about it and not dance around the subject took a weight off her shoulders.
“I was just a…a bonus sacrifice,” Mara said quietly. “He’s really after my mother.”
“I think there’s a lot of story here,” Sebastian said. “If you’re willing to tell us, it’ll make protecting you, and your mother, easier. It’s not necessary, though. If you’d rather keep your secrets, they’re yours to keep. I’ll stop the demons either way.”
“You sound very sure,” Mara said.
“I am sure.”
Sebastian had to be, Angie thought. Any sense of unease, any doubt, would impact the strength of his will. A deadly outcome. Absolute confidence in their skills was as necessary to the life of a demon hunter as breathing.
Yet ano
ther reason she’d refused that life—or kept trying to. Over and over again. Fear and doubt when it came to the demon world haunted her. They had from the very beginning, but that had only gotten worse when she had, for a brief period, embraced Sebastian’s life. Because she wanted to be with him. She’d made mistakes. She’d almost been killed, more than once. She’d very nearly gotten stuck in a demon realm with demons surrounding her and trying to kill her…
She suppressed a shudder. No, she wasn’t cut out to be a hunter. She didn’t have the will.
“He tells everyone my mother is dead,” Mara said, circling back to her father. “That she was killed in a car accident.” She looked at the ground. “I believed him for a long time. Too long.”
“I’m very sorry,” Sebastian said.
“You didn’t do it,” Mara said with a very teenager shrug. But tears still leaked onto her cheeks. She rubbed them off with her sweatshirt sleeve.
Angie glanced at Sebastian, then at the still burning circle. An active circle meant a demon could overhear them. If Mara was willing to talk about all this, it was better they didn’t have a demonic eavesdropper.
“Mara,” Sebastian said, “would you please cut the circle? It’s safer for everyone. Then we can talk more.”
Mara blinked and looked up at him, then at the circle as if she’d forgotten it was there. “I… Sorry. I know I’m not supposed to leave it like this. That’s…” She shook her head, as if shaking off the comment.
She bent down and picked up a small athame off the ground at her feet. Angie finally noticed the collection of stuff that Mara had used in her ritual to call the demon. A thick yellow candle burned on a glass candle stand next to a little package of matches. A bowl with salt, a thick stick of sidewalk chalk, a bowl of water, and the small ritual knife—a plane silver athame with no obvious designs or etchings on the blade and very simple Celtic scroll work on the hilt—were all set in a semicircle in front of Mara.
Beside it all, a small book sat open but with its pages fluttering in the breeze created by the fire.
One of the books she hadn’t left behind in her bedroom, obviously. Although, given what she’d left behind, Angie was afraid to think what the book at her feet contained.