The Daemonicon Chapters: Books 1 - 3

by Ryland Thorn

  The wight spins about in a circle at the same time as lifting Jack from the floor. It is a startling move that has Jack swinging about in midair. He has only a moment to gasp out in shock and the first real fear he’s felt since he stepped into the station. He manages to bring his arms up in a feeble attempt to protect his head. Then he collides with stunning force into the gargoyle statue.

  The impact is enough to tear his ankle away from the wight’s grip and to jolt Jack’s knife from his hand. He lets out an involuntary grunt of pain and crashes to the floor. Jack’s arms are numb. His brain is rattled to the point of bewilderment, and all he knows is confusion and pain. Only the unnatural durability granted to him by his not-quite-human nature has kept him from serious harm.

  Yet Jack fears that even this might not be enough to save him much longer. Not if the wight continues to attack with such speed and strength. Perhaps he should have drawn his gun the moment he’d thrown the vial of holy water. The bullets are hollow and packed with garlic salts. Perhaps they have the power to slow this creature down enough for Jack to slit its throat and send it back to Hell.

  Jack snarls to himself as he shakes off the shock of the impact.

  “Come on, you stinking wight,” he mutters, “I said it’s my turn!”

  As quickly as possible, Jack rolls onto his back at the same time as forcing his numbed arms into action. Then the wight lands on top of him, its elongated arms raised like clubs to batter him. Jack is swearing in fury under his breath. He keeps one of his arms up to protect his head at the same time as he fumbles for his gun.

  Before he can successfully draw it, he hears a woman’s voice shouting words in an ancient, awful tongue.

  Chapter Three: Lennox

  Time slows.

  Jack is aware of everything. He can feel the coolness of the hard, concrete floor beneath his back. The new bruises and scrapes on his arms and shoulders feel raw and mashed, like tenderized beef. He can sense the small hairs on the back of his neck start to rise, and goose bumps appear on his skin as if he is freezing. He hears his heart beat a single time, thud, but other than that there is an eerie silence throughout the station.

  Jack knows what is happening. The shouted words are in a language he recognizes. An ancient, vile-sounding language used by sorcerers and those who deal with the occult. Those who have the blood of demons running through their veins.

  Like Jack. And like Lennox Valdis, the woman who shouted.

  Jack feels an instant of relief at the same time as he tenses for impact. The wight hasn’t had time to move, hasn’t had the chance to assess this new threat. It probably doesn’t even recognize that there is a new threat. It is still intent on clubbing Jack with its elongated arms and its monstrous strength.

  Jack has forgotten all about his gun. He shuts his eyes and turns his head away from where Lennox must be.

  A fraction of an instant later, he is buffeted by a blast of pure power that picks him up and skitters him across the station floor like a leaf in the wind. He tumbles and rolls in an uncontrolled way, and yet even then he understands that most of the force has missed him completely.

  Jack comes to rest in the middle of the floor. He takes a moment just to breathe, to let go of some of the rage and hate that has been driving him until then. And to reassure himself that he is okay despite the battering he has received.

  Then he cranks open his eyes.

  Lennox is already standing above him, grinning in good-natured amusement. She is nearly as tall as Jack himself and slim and muscular. Fading flickers of demon-fire are swirling about her head and hands, and her eyes are returning to their normal shade of blue. Today, her hair is pure white and cut off at the shoulders. Perhaps tomorrow it will be a different color, but now it stands out in contrast to her coffee-colored skin and the black leather jacket she wears.

  “Hey, old man. Looked like you could use a hand,” she says, still grinning. Most people wouldn’t notice, but she has a matched pair of growths at her temples. Slight bulges that in certain lights resemble the beginnings of horns. Like Jack, she has tattoos of protection that can be seen at her neck, above the collar of her jacket. Unlike Jack, she is clean and carries with her a hint of perfume that smells like jasmine.

  In one of her hands, she is holding a motorcycle helmet. She reaches down to Jack with the other and helps him to his feet.

  “I could have handled it,” Jack snarls. But the snarl is more out of habit than any true rancor. He is genuinely happy to see her, but also annoyed, and a little humiliated that she had seen him at such a disadvantage against no more than a wight. “You’re late,” he adds.

  Lennox raises a playful eyebrow. “Looks like I was just in time,” she observes. Then she wrinkles her nose in mock disgust. “You’re kinda ripe. When was last time you showered?”

  Her tone is light and teasing. Jack has to study her to see how serious she is. “Really?” he asks. He is indifferent to personal grooming and for him, days can often merge into one. He doesn’t care much about how he looks or how dirty his clothes might be, but even he has his limits.

  “Little bit,” Lennox says.

  Jack has lived long enough that he is rarely embarrassed. Yet at her comment, he turns away in chagrin and searches for a way to change the subject. “Nice detonation,” he says finally. “Your strongest yet,” he adds.

  Lennox’s grin returns with a vengeance. “Yeah, I know,” she says, brimming with confident satisfaction yet still teasing him with her tone. “I’ve been practicing.”

  “Good,” says Jack. “Keep it up. Now, let’s finish this.” With that, he turns his attention back to the wight.

  Lennox’s blast of magic had indeed been powerful, and the wight has borne the brunt of it. The loathsome creature is crumpled against the front of the ticket booth.

  But it is still alive, and it is twitching in pain.

  Even now, Jack can’t help but despise the vile thing. He has no sympathy for it. To him, it is nothing more than a disease, a blight upon his city, and Jack is the cure. As far as the wight is concerned, Jack is judge, jury, and executioner all rolled into one, and his judgment is final.

  He shifts his shoulders in preparation for carrying out the sentence and stalks toward the wight with Lennox at his side, collecting his knife on the way.

  As he approaches the wight, his pager once more buzzes and vibrates. Jack ignores it again and assesses the creature that has given him such unexpected trouble.

  It seems broken. Perhaps the wight would collapse in on itself and give its essence back to Hell without further assistance. Yet it still retains enough strength to glare with hollow, eyeless hate at Jack, and its broken limbs quiver as if it is still trying to attack.

  “You going to check that message?” Lennox asks. “Might be important.” She says it with an impudent tone. She knows full well Jack’s aversion to the pager and technology in general.

  “Later. Kinda busy right now,” Jack grunts. The wight offers a howl that is much feebler than before. Even without eyes, Jack believes it can see the knife that he is holding before it. It is an ancient weapon, forged hundreds of years ago by sorcerers who knew their arts well. The blade is nearly as long as a forearm and curved inward. Both the blade and the handle have been inscribed with demonic symbols that bestow unusual strengths.

  Jack takes the last step toward the wight and pauses. As he does, Lennox’s cell phone starts to ring, and she pulls it from her pocket to answer.

  The wight’s wailing grows louder, but Jack pays it no heed. He looks at it with congealed hate and a complete lack of mercy. “Go back to Hell, where you belong,” he snarls. Then he plunges the knife up through its jaw and into its skull.

  Lennox has turned away, although Jack knows this is not due to squeamishness. The wight’s wailing is distracting. Likely, she just wants to hear whoever is on the line and the wight isn’t dying quietly. Its wail has turned into a high-pitched shriek, and its limbs are flailing about, clattering against the
ticket booth and the concrete floor.

  Jack gives his knife a twist, and the wight stiffens as if it has been tased. Then it relaxes and crumples in on itself.

  In moments, there is little left beyond a miasma of sulfur and rot and a mess of sludge and ashes.

  Jack gives a grunt of satisfaction. He does his best to clean his knife on his coat before putting it away. Though disappointed with his own errors, he is happy enough with this result. In his mind, New Sanctum is no place for creatures of this ilk.

  But if he thinks that the day’s troubles are over, then he is sadly mistaken.

  Lennox has gripped his forearm to get his attention. “That was the Brotherhood. They have been trying to get hold of you. Apparently, something is going on that is much more urgent than this. They want us both back at the base.”

  Jack peers at her closely. She still wears a ghost of her typical smile, and her eyes are sparkling. But there is worry in her expression as well. Whatever is happening, it must be major.

  He takes one last look around the station. “Did you order a cleanup crew?” he asks.

  “Of course.”

  “Then we are done here,” he says. “Let’s go.”

  Chapter Four: Ducati

  It is gloomy and gray outside of Coven Street station. The first spits of rain have started to fall. Jack doesn’t care. His trenchcoat will keep his body dry, and as for his head, Lennox was right. It has been a while since he last showered. His scalp has been starting to itch, and he can feel the grime building up at the back of his neck. Perhaps the rain will do him some good.

  He ignores the spitting and looks about. Coven Street is in a mainly commercial part of New Sanctum. The station is set a little apart from a jumble of office buildings made of old stone and new glass. There could have been crowds of people about, watching in morbid curiosity as they do when someone lost to despair is preparing to jump from a ledge. There could also have been cops and firemen, unaware of how inadequate they would be in facing the wight. And maybe an ambulance or two to give hope to the injured.

  Instead, Jack notes with some relief, there is just the usual mix of everyday folk, going about the day-to-day business of their dull, oblivious lives. They are sheep, and he is their shepherd. Their protector. They don’t know of the terrors that haunt their city’s shadows, and Jack is determined to keep it that way.

  Those who might have witnessed the wight in the station are no longer present. They are gone, perhaps back to work or on their way home, putting the experience behind them however they can. Either way, the Brotherhood will find them and ensure they do not talk about the horror they have seen.

  But none of that is Jack’s concern. He just needs to get to the Brotherhood, to find out what is so important. Jack’s pager is one that will let him reply to the messages he receives, to acknowledge that he has seen them. But he doesn’t even check the messages. Lennox has told him what he needs to know, and in his mind replying would only delay them.

  “Need a ride?” Lennox asks him. Also ignoring the drizzle, she is looking at him with a playful grin. She knows Jack doesn’t have his own set of wheels. He uses public transport whenever he can, and walks when he can’t. He’d arrived at the station by bus, wary that his foe might have been on the tracks and unwilling to be taken by surprise.

  He offers an affirmative grunt and looks about for her bike. But Lennox is looking him up and down and still grinning.

  “Try not to stain the leather this time, will you?” she says. “I mean, sure, you’ve just been fighting a creature of darkness, but what is that you’ve got on you?” She raises an eyebrow and points to the front of his coat.

  Jack looks down and sees a new, brown smudge that hadn’t been there before, on the left side. He stares at it in confusion, then tests it with a finger. The smudge sticks to his skin. He sniffs it, then gives it a lick.

  “Eww!” says Lennox, her voice filled with disgust and her face screwing up.

  Jack can’t help but give her a half-grin. “It’s chocolate,” he says. “The wight was gorging on it.”

  Lennox’s expression relaxes somewhat, but she rolls her eyes in disbelief. “It’s still revolting,” she says. “But then, what did I expect? Come on, old man, and don’t get any of it on my bike.”

  <<<>>>

  Lennox’s bike is a Ducati Diavel, a sleek, black monster with red highlights and a throaty roar. It wouldn’t look out of place on a racetrack and would likely leave many of the competition bikes in its dust. It has been fitted with foot pegs and a modified seat for a passenger, and Jack rides on the back with his hands gripping Lennox’s hips. He is acutely aware that she is no longer the abandoned demon-child he had first met more than twenty years before. In the eyes of the law and the rest of society, she is an adult in all ways.

  She is also beautiful and wild and fun and is one of the few people in all of New Sanctum who knows his true nature and has no reason to fear him. For, despite being his polar opposite in personality, she is the same. If anything, she has more demon blood in her veins than Jack does in his. And it is much closer to the surface with her.

  Compared to him, she is young. Impossibly so. And he is her partner, her mentor. He is also her protector, despite her growing power and that she has just saved him from the wight. To think of her as something more feels wrong. Almost incestuous.

  Yet this is what he is wrestling with as she shifts against him to lean into a corner.

  The roads are damp, and while Lennox is dressed for riding in her helmet, leather, denim, and boots, Jack is not. He doesn’t care to wear a helmet, and the rain isn’t heavy enough to be more than a minor irritation. His trenchcoat is billowing out behind them like a superhero’s cape as they speed in and out of slower traffic. Lennox is reveling in the thrill of the speed and the danger it represents.

  Jack leans close, over her shoulder almost, to ensure as much as possible that she can hear. “Don’t you think you should slow down?” he yells loudly.

  Lennox looks at him briefly. Her helmet is open-faced, but the visor is down. Jack can see the exhilaration in her eye.

  “What’s the matter, grandpa?” she shouts back, her tone playful. “Can’t handle the heat?”

  With that, she throws the throttle wide open. The powerful engine roars and the front wheel leaves the road. Combined with the acceleration, this is nearly enough to dislodge Jack from his seat. He feels a moment of anxiety and grips Lennox more tightly, only to hear fragments of laughter blow by him on the wind.

  Jack’s first response is anger at Lennox’s careless behavior. But he knows that she is in total control of the bike, is wearing protective clothing, and can probably use her magic to save herself at need. And it isn’t like he would be hurt much in the event of a crash.

  With some surprise, Jack finds that his anger fades quickly. He discovers that he is enjoying himself.

  He starts to smile.

  Chapter Five: Row House

  The ride through New Sanctum is liberating but disappointingly brief. All too soon, they pull up in front of the Brotherhood’s temple in the middle of Hybrid Lane. The temple is an old, gothic church, made of spires and rough-hewn stone, and complete with stained-glass windows and numerous grotesques high up on the walls. It is a foreboding, grim-looking structure that would not be out of place in a horror movie. Nevertheless, Jack thinks that it is magnificent. It is also much newer than it appears, having been built no more than a century ago.

  It is called the Temple of Hope and Eternal Defiance. Jack remembers walking its halls just after its completion and before the demonic protections had been added. It had been surprisingly bright and open, and he’d experienced a true moment of peace. It had felt as if there might be an alternative to this lifetime of rage and hate and battles that are all he’s ever known. As if there really is a reason for hope.

  He’d wanted to stay and savor the feeling for as long as he could. But then the protections had been completed, shutting him out for goo
d.

  It has been a few seconds since Lennox parked the Ducati on the pavement outside of the church, and Jack has not moved.

  “You okay there, old man?” Lennox asks. “Was the ride a little scary for your ancient bones? Or are you just taking a moment to enjoy the feel of my ass in your hands?”

  Jack flinches his hands away as if he is stung, but Lennox is still wearing her grin. She is still teasing him. Jack gives a noncommittal grunt, wipes the drizzle from his face on his sleeve, and clambers awkwardly from the bike.

  “Come on,” he says. “Let’s find out what’s going on.”

  Together, they head not toward the temple, but to the row houses on the opposite side of the road.

  The row houses are older than the temple and made of a similar stone. Three stories tall, they might once have been grand but are now faded and warn and largely covered in lichens and ivy. Yet there is something defiant about them, something stately, and Jack thinks it would be sad if they were no longer there.

  Perhaps one day the whole block will be replaced with high-rise apartments. But until that happens, one of the row houses is the true home of the Brotherhood of Perdition. It is their Lair, their headquarters, and to Jack, that feels right. The defiance, the age, even the misdirection. For him, it all works.

  Jack and Lennox make their way to the top of the short flight of concrete steps and Jack thumbs the button on the intercom.

  A few moments later, the intercom crackles to life and a metallic voice replies. “Yes?” It is impossible to tell if the voice is male or female, young or old.

  “Jack and Lex to see Deedee Vale,” Jack says. The intercom seems perfectly normal, an attempt at security that is both commonplace and completely inadequate in the world of horrors in which the Brotherhood lives. Jack also knows that he and Lennox are being scanned in a variety of ways, and the door is much more formidable than it appears. If they weren’t who they say, their chances of gaining entry were slim.