by Shona Husk
The train pulled into the station with a gust of wind and they all waited for people to get off before they moved as a herd onto the train. If it hadn’t been for her bag, she would have walked. But the bag was bulky and the weather was bad.
Would she be alive to see summer?
Where would she be?
She tried to imagine somewhere nice: a beach maybe, or the mountains. Not a city. She couldn’t imagine living somewhere so crowded. She stood with her bag between her feet, not making eye contact with anyone but aware as more people squeezed onto the train. She willed herself to remain calm instead of panicking. Safety in numbers. Just another brown-haired woman. Nothing special to look at in a beanie, jacket and scarf. No bright colors. Dull and invisible.
Someone bumped into her back and she turned slightly. Through the window she saw a broad-shouldered man push his way onto the next carriage. Her heart stopped. Before she could think, she was bending her knees slightly to become a few inches shorter, staring at the floor. She would not look up and check where he was. She would not risk eye contact. The feeling of being trapped increased. Sweat beaded on her back and trickled down. She was too hot. She couldn’t breathe. She closed her eyes and counted slowly, but all she could hear was the knocking of her heart on her ribs. Cory was on the train.
Noah hated the subway during peak hour. There were too many people, and he always expected the worst. Crimes could happen and people could melt away and blend in as if nothing had happened. Maybe that said more about him than anything. He’d kept track of Rachel all afternoon. Routine and kind of boring. He’d almost been tempted to bump into her and see if she’d like a coffee, but he’d decided against it. Best not to be seen with her if he was hoping to see Cory. He liked his arms and legs attached.
Rachel had almost spotted him, but the human mind was so wonderfully easy to deceive. A little magic and she’d convinced herself that it couldn’t be him. Of course, if she’d approached or taken a second glance the spell wouldn’t have held up. He couldn’t make himself vanish like Sawyer. As he stood on the train pretending to be busy on his phone, he was watching everyone around him. Rachel was in the next carriage. He’d rather be in the same one but one near miss was enough and he wasn’t expecting any trouble. The train filled up and a few more people pushed in. He kept a casual eye on her and the people around her. When she shrank down he paid a little more attention. He knew what her husband looked like. It was amazing how fast Oskar could find a person with only a first name, a city and a job.
He saw nothing around Rachel, but the hairs on his forearm prickled to attention. As the train lurched and started moving, he shifted his weight and glanced behind him. A man about the same height as Noah with a ball cap on—his team’s cap, how uncreative, but then Cory wasn’t the one trying to hide. Cory had enough shoulder for two people; once he got kitted up to play he must be an absolute menace on the field. Noah drew in a breath and readied his demon illumination spell. It was one he’d created, practiced, and could now summon very quickly. Every witch worth knowing had a few good spells on tap. This one he visualized like a flash grenade: it lit up a different spectrum and let him see the shadows that clung to people.
He blinked slowly, his lips moved in the single-word chant. Illuminate. The carriage lit up. People faded to outlines for a moment while the demons strengthened. Three of them. One on a man so unsettled he had to be using something. The demon was chewing on his ear and the man’s head was twitching. Another on a young woman—the demon’s long claws raking over her skin as it murmured poisonous sweet nothings in her ear. His heart lurched, that was a face-eater, the same kind that had killed Louise.
But they were both small compared to the horned monster shadowing Cory. As demons went, it was uncreative. What Noah called a standard horn. Brute strength was its selling point. He could see the cracks that had let the demons in. Cory’s crack was bigger, different somehow. The glow began to fade and Noah glanced at the woman with the face-eater nibbling at her self-confidence. When she looked up he smiled, and for a moment the demon lost its grip. He was sure it hissed. Then the spell was over and Noah returned to fiddling with his phone. While he wanted to walk up to the woman and ask what was bothering her, she’d probably mace him.
These days he kept a low profile. So low his belly was almost on the ground. He didn’t want the cops even looking in his direction, again, and there was no way he was risking becoming a murder suspect, again. Mason would have his ass. Even when he travelled for work he had an alibi and he used cash. But if a smart cop got hold of his flights and started pulling up weird murders, things would become rapidly unstuck for him. The train stopped. Noah didn’t move, didn’t draw attention to himself. Most people didn’t give him a second glance.
Rachel got off. Cory didn’t. Although once the train moved he lifted his head and looked around as if realizing he’d lost her. That had been close. Noah stayed on the train to watch Cory and the young woman with the demon. She was pretty, in that high-maintenance way. Fashionably dressed, painted nails, pouty lips that nature didn’t provide. The kind of woman who he’d once been attracted to, but now couldn’t be bothered with. Was her quest for perfection literally eating her up?
She picked at her nails, fiddled with her hair and glanced around. She looked at him for a moment and tentatively smiled. Another time he might have ignored her, but today he was interested and it gave him something to do instead of pretending to ignore Cory, so he smiled back and pretended that flirting with her was exactly what he wanted to do. But it was kind of sad that he was making someone’s day just by checking her out.
At the next stop she stood up, but she looked a little different, happier. Noah hoped that she’d be able to heal the crack and shake off the demon. And if she didn’t? Would he eventually be called to deal with her and her demon? Another freak death that defied logic? He glanced at Cory, who was scowling and flexing his fists. How did a personal demon become a problem hell bent on death and destruction? He had no answers, but he knew that there was a difference.
Noah waited until Cory got off, rode until the next stop and then looped back. Rachel’s stop had been close to the coven. Deliberate on her part?
He hoped so.
After being up for most of the night, Noah had given up and come to work early. He’d beaten up a bag in the gym, showered, and was now trying to get some thinking done in his office. The real kind, not the chasing-its-tail-at-midnight kind of thinking. He started up his laptop, determined to stare at his demon database until something made sense. The demon database was less a labor of love and more of a necessity. Seriously, people had still been referring to manuscripts, scrolls and tablets that dated way back. No one had compiled them into one source before him. He’d spent over a year logging everything he could find, making it sortable and adding everything from where, when, how it killed, what it looked like, how it died, what spells had been tried, everything and anything he could think of. There were holes because many had only recorded the end result, not the start. After looking at demons for so many years, he was beginning to think that the answer was at the start when the crack first formed in the soul and the demon first took hold.
Even now as he scrolled through it looking for standard horns, he saw more gaps than info. While standard horns looked similar they killed differently, and some didn’t kill at all. Not every demon resulted in death.
Why?
There had to be more, or he was missing a way of classifying them. He was missing something. He’d told Mason about the face-eater and the woman. Sawyer was looking into it and would get back to him with any info. He jumped to face-eaters. Black and ugly with six-inch claws, but, again, that’s where the similarities stopped. Sure, those that killed pulled people’s faces off and ate them—along with the rest of the victim’s skin. Some turned on the person who’d manifested them. Others seemed to cause fear, break up marriages and send men broke. The only thing face-eaters had in common was that they were usually s
ummoned by women. In the past, if the women survived they were often killed for being witches. Witches didn’t manifest demons to work magic, they didn’t need to; they had a direct line to magic through the god they served.
Mason’s warning echoed in his office.
Noah danced along a very thin line. He knew that, but if the rest of the coven had seen what he’d seen they might feel the despair and anger chipping through their defenses, too.
There was one rap on the door before it swung open. Oskar stood in the doorway. “You still staring at your ark?”
“Shut the fuck up.” He slammed the lid of the laptop down. Noah’s ark—the great coven joke—his collection of demons and demon lore. Except he wasn’t trying to save them, he was trying to kill them or stop them from killing.
Oskar stepped back.
“Sorry, let’s try that again. What’s up?” Noah even made himself smile. It wasn’t Oskar’s fault Noah had managed only two hours’ worth of sleep. None of it had been quality as his reoccurring dream was back. Maybe he needed to get laid. Fuck until he passed out. That or drink. Except he hated the hangover that followed, and he wasn’t that keen on the emptiness that followed after a random hook up, either. He must be getting old.
“I just came to see if you wanted a coffee. I’m going with yes, and a double.”
Noah stared at him. How could he be thinking of coffee when demons were preparing to kill? How many people died because of demons that he didn’t even know about? He’d had to stop searching for weird deaths on the internet two years ago because it was too much… Not every freak occurrence had a demon behind it. Sometimes people were just dicks, and not every dick had a demon. That was another mystery he couldn’t explain.
Oskar hesitated in the doorway. “You can’t let it eat you.”
“It’s not.” He answered too fast for it to be believable.
“Yeah it is. You’ve been tracking down demons for the last three months. These people would die anyway. That you are there to see it doesn’t change anything.”
Noah pushed his fingers through his hair. Oskar was right, Noah knew that, but it didn’t make it any easier. “I should be able to stop them.”
“And when you solve it, you will save people. But if you beat yourself up you won’t be any good to anyone.” Oskar leaned on the doorframe. “It’s the woman, isn’t it? You’re getting to know the victim this time.”
Was that all that was different? Usually the focus was the person with the demon, as directed by the other coven; this time the future victim had walked into his office. It was disconcerting. “You suck at pep talks.”
Oskar shook his head. “Have you spoken to the Morrigu about it? Why is She throwing so many at you? I’ve never seen you so busy.”
“She doesn’t exactly answer calls.” But he hadn’t made the effort to ask, either, just taken everything She’d thrown at him. What else could he do? Say no and break the vow? He shied away from the half-formed idea.
“She must have a plan.”
“Do you actually believe that?” Noah knew the Goddess was real, and that She had power, but was there really a grand plan? He wasn’t sure that gods really got that involved—it was more of an order to clean up a mess and keep things on track.
Eight months ago Oskar had beaten a century-old death curse that killed all the men in his family on their thirtieth birthday. A curse that the Morrigu had created as punishment. Oskar had almost died in the process. “I never asked you how you got up every morning knowing you could cross off the days.”
“At first I didn’t. I was angry and took it out on everyone. Mason kept me from doing anything really stupid. Gradually I accepted it and that there wasn’t anything I could do, but by the time I was in my late-twenties I realized I had to do something. I was going to die. So I decided to die fighting. I honestly didn’t think I’d come back.”
“We expected you to die as well.” Oskar had looked like he was going to die when Noah and Peyton had gone up to the house after getting a call. Death magic was worse than demons. He swallowed as if still tasting the rotten taint on his tongue.
Oskar shrugged. “I know. But the Morrigu got me through in Her own warped way.”
The trouble was, Noah wasn’t sure his faith was as strong as Oskar’s. Noah shortcut every ritual, did the bare minimum to be called faithful to Her, when in truth he’d pray to any god who helped him. He was such a whore. “She won’t help me.”
“You wear her mark.”
So did Oskar now, only a full coven member could wear the raven. Noah had chosen to have it over his heart. An overly dramatic gesture, maybe, but at the time he’d vowed never to give his heart to another woman. The Morrigu had laughed, had taken it, and promised to keep it safe because he’d need it eventually.
He hadn’t. He never rang them in the morning and never saw the same woman twice. He didn’t have a heart. In his line of work, it paid not to care about the victims, no matter how pretty they were, because it always ended the same.
Chapter 5
Noah knocked even though Mason’s office door was open. Mason beckoned him in and Noah took a seat. While he was able to justify spying on Rachel and learning more about Cory’s demon, he still needed to tell Mason since it was going to be on company time.
Mason gave Noah his full attention. “I’m guessing you aren’t here to tell me you’d be thrilled to take over the finances.”
“No. I’m still thinking about it.” He wasn’t sure he’d ever be ready to do that. That would mean committing to the coven, for life, and this wasn’t his life. He still had dreams of being normal and not spending his days thinking about demons and death and ancient goddesses.
“Thinking or stalling?”
There was no point in lying. “Both. I don’t know that I’m the right person.” The coven wasn’t his life. In that, he envied Peyton. He had a separate career and moved around the edges of coven life. If not for Noah’s elbow he would probably have never joined a coven—his father hadn’t, nor had his grandfather. Solitary practitioners who were happy to let the old way die out. The Morrigu had had other plans for him, though. His father hated that he was working with a coven and exploring magic.
“I’m just asking for help, not a lifetime commitment.” Mason was almost smiling. “Commitment isn’t your strong point.”
That wasn’t true. He could get behind things. Baseball had been his priority for years. He breathed, slept and ate the game. Now he couldn’t stomach it even being on TV. He’d replaced baseball with demons. Maybe he could only do one thing at a time. “I need to get on top of all the demons She’s been throwing at me.”
Mason didn’t move, not even a blink, and Noah wondered what the boss was hearing or seeing. “I wasn’t aware there was a new job on.”
“It’s not a job yet, but I want to look into it.”
“Why?”
“This one is different. I have the chance to learn why the demon got into the crack and why the manifester is becoming violent.”
Mason’s eyes narrowed. “And then what?”
“Then…then I’ll…” He just wanted to know. “I’ll know the difference between a personal demon and the public-menace kind. This is important, I can feel it. Maybe there’s a tipping point, or a reason.”
“Louise’s death wasn’t your fault and nothing you do will change that.”
Noah closed his eyes. He knew that. Had heard it a thousand times before, but he didn’t believe it. Breaking up with Tahlia and starting to date Louise had resulted in both women dying. The common element was him. Noah opened his eyes and looked at Mason; he’d never get it. “I need to know why it happens to some people and not everyone. I need to know why some demons take over.”
Mason nodded slowly, considering. “You’re using the coven to push your own need.”
“I’m helping—”
“You’re putting the coven at risk of discovery and you are placing yourself in a dangerous position. You are surrounded
by death, Noah. There is only so much I can do to protect you. If the police catch you in the wrong place, everything will unravel and you will be on your own.”
“You’re cutting me free?” The number of scrapes they’d pulled Sawyer out of and he was still thieving artifacts.
“No. I’m telling you to be very very careful. You’re getting involved when Rachel hasn’t asked you. Are you ready to confront her husband?”
Noah flinched. Is that what Mason had seen? “Well, if I’m dead I can’t be charged with murder.”
Mason didn’t smile at the bad joke. “This is your last demon case for the coven. I’m not risking one of my witches because they don’t know when to stop.”
“You can’t order me to stand by and watch people die.”
“Demons happen, people die.” Mason leaned forward, his voice calm and yet loaded with force. “If you want to continue pursuing demons after this case you leave the coven. If you choose to stay, you take on the finances and accept that the coven is as much a part of you as you are of it.”
Noah resisted the urge to scoot his chair back. He worked for the coven, helped the others when required. Was he being accused of not doing enough, of not being a team player? “Is that an ultimatum?”
“No, I am giving you choices. I am protecting the coven, and I am trying to protect you from your obsession. How badly do you want to know about demons, Noah? Do you feel the crack widening with every death you see? You take each one personally, call it failure. Sometimes there is no winner and no loser. Life isn’t like baseball.”
He wasn’t cracked. He’d know, he’d feel it. Wouldn’t he? He remembered the dreams of breaking a cup. They’d started a year ago, and at first it had been a pretty cup and full. Then it would hit the ground and become chipped, the liquid—like blood—spilling. Now the cup was rough and already damaged, the inside stained red but empty, and when it hit the ground it shattered. He frowned. The dream was just about working too hard and having nothing left. If he was cracked, why didn’t he already have a demon on his back? He wanted to turn around and check, as the skin on his back prickled as if claws were climbing up.