The Daemonicon Chapters: Books 1 - 3

by Ryland Thorn

  Jack feels a wave of relief wash over him. It is so strong that it rocks him, almost makes him collapse. When it has passed, he tries to make himself stand, to go to Lennox. But he lacks the strength.

  “Take it easy,” Madame Brigette says. “Give it a moment.”

  Jack grits his teeth. “Help me,” he demands.

  Despite her own apparent frailty brought on by her ordeal, Madame Brigette does as he asks. Jack leans as much of his weight on her as he dares, and with her aid hobbles the short distance to where Lennox lies amid the rubble.

  He doesn’t lower himself to the ground as much as he falls to his knees.

  “Lex,” he murmurs. Hesitantly, he touches her cheek. His eyes are starting to adjust to the darkness. He is able to make out her face, the smudges of dirt on her skin, and the hint of demon horns on her forehead.

  She is breathing. She looks like she is asleep. Even better, there is little hint of the demon within her.

  Jack utters a heartfelt sigh of relief. Lennox is okay. What that means for them both, he doesn’t know, but he does know that things have changed between them. They have been through too much for their relationship to stay as it was.

  And he is not unhappy about it. Surprisingly, given how determined he had been to define their relationship as solely professional, he is more than hopeful for what might now start to happen.

  But all that is for the future. Right now, there are other things he has to deal with.

  He looks up to Madame Brigette, who is standing beside him. “What of the tar man?” he asks.

  Madame Brigette’s expression hardens. “The tar man, you call him? That fiend still lives as well, although how that could be, I don’t know. It seems that your lady friend cast a protective shield of some sort over you both, which is how you survived. As for him – he’s a tough one, I’ll grant him that.” Her tone is full of justifiable malice. “His spawn, not so much. The glyphs did their job.” There is satisfaction in her voice at the last.

  “Where is he?” Jack grates.

  Madame Brigette gives him a smile that holds no amusement. “Face down in the dirt. Over there,” she indicates, but all Jack sees is an indistinct shape among the darkness and rubble. “It was tempting to smash his face in with a chunk of stone. But I just used his own belt to tie him, and carved a glyph into his back. He will not wake until I allow him to do so,” she says.

  “Good,” Jack grunts in reply. He is more than pleased with this result, although he wouldn’t have grieved very much if the tar man had died.

  He is relieved that it is over. For a moment, he does nothing more than look about. As he does, he grows to understand exactly how high the cost of defeating the tar man has been. He had almost lost Lennox, both to the tar man and to her own demon blood. And if it weren’t for her magic, Jack knows that even he might have been unable to survive.

  But it has been worse for Madame Brigette. She has lost her Emporium. Her livelihood.

  Jack wants to express his commiseration, but has never been good at that sort of thing. “Sorry about your store,” he mutters. She just gives a snort in response.

  Once more, they lapse into silence. Then Jack decides nothing is stopping him from asking what he and Lennox had come to Madame Brigette to ask.

  “The Brotherhood’s Lair was attacked earlier today,” he says. “It was well planned, and whoever did it got away with something very dangerous. I don’t think it was the tar man who did it. He uses a different form of attack.” He pauses to think about what he wants to know, aware that he hasn’t yet fully recovered. “There isn’t much that happens in the New Sanctum underworld that you don’t know about. I was wondering if you’ve heard any talk about it.”

  Madame Brigette raises an eyebrow. It is almost as if she is deciding whether or not to answer his question. But Jack has no energy left. He just waits.

  Finally, Madame Brigette starts to speak. “Don’t know anything about any particular attack,” she says. “But something is happening, that’s for sure. Something big. There have always been those with tainted blood who don’t like how things are between them and the Brotherhood. It seems to me that there’s a shift in the wind. Mark my words, this tar man of yours and the attack you speak of – they’re connected, and part of it. And it’s just the beginning. The hints I’ve heard tell of a plan far bigger than this, with a great many people involved. Demon kind, those who have had a taste of power and want more.” She pauses for a moment, as if considering her words. “They’re becoming more organized. Like the Brotherhood, in a way, but with a much darker purpose,” she says. “Beyond that, I couldn’t say,” she finishes.

  Jack nods. It makes sense. The theft of the Daemonicon, the wight, the Hell-beast, and now the tar-man. The events of the past day have been just too much to be normal. That there is something bigger going on is not truly surprising. And the tar man’s talk of ‘we’ and his ‘task’ seem to confirm it.

  But the implications are frightening. If this is, as Madame Brigette has said, just the beginning, then what other horrors will he and Lennox have to face?

  To what end?

  Jack thinks to question Madame Brigette some more, but he can see that she is as exhausted as he. Nor does he truly believe she is holding anything back. She has said all she knows.

  But that doesn’t mean he is all out of options. There are other sources of information to which Jack has access.

  As Lennox gives a soft moan and starts to shift, finding her way back to consciousness, Jack’s expression twists into a nasty grin. Nathanial and the other Brothers will find out what they can. But now there is a more direct path to knowledge.

  They can bring the tar man to the Lair and ask him what he knows.

  Hopefully, the tar man won’t want to say anything. Jack and the Brothers might have to persuade him to talk. And Jack is confident that he, at least, will enjoy the persuasion.

  Dueling in the Darkness

  Chapter One: Samuel’s Replacement

  Jack reaches the row house that hides the Brotherhood’s Lair as the sun peeks over the horizon. He is newly showered and shaven, and where once his skin had itched due to a buildup of grime, now it itches because it is clean.

  It is an unfamiliar feeling, as is the cold morning chill on Jack’s unprotected jaw and the heavy dampness of his freshly washed hair. Yet he feels surprisingly good. Happy, almost. He still carries the aches and bruises from yesterday’s battles, and there is still a piece of shrapnel embedded in his thigh. But the demon blood in his veins allows him to heal more quickly than most, and the last of his weariness has disappeared down his shower drain along with the spent suds and dirt he scraped from his body.

  It is as if he has washed away some of his ever-present anger along with the dirt. He feels refreshed, with new strength in his legs. His vitality has returned to nearly what it had been before being siphoned away by close contact with too many demon spawn.

  Even his clothing is cleaner. Jack is wearing a shirt and trousers that are only slightly rumpled and stained, and for him this is rare. Only his trenchcoat and purple sneakers are the same as he’d worn the day before. He has scraped the worst of the dried spatter of demon spawn remnants from both, but there will likely always be some of the loathsome substance embedded in the weave.

  Despite this, he is better groomed than he has been in years, and it is buoying his spirits. For the first time in what feels like forever, Jack is enjoying the morning and is eager to see what the day might bring.

  As he climbs the concrete stairs to the Lair, he notes with satisfaction that Lennox’s modified Ducati Diavel is once again parked out in front. Either she asked someone to pick it up from where Madame Brigette’s Arcane Emporium used to be or she had gone after it herself. Either way, its presence means Lennox is still somewhere within the row house walls.

  Even though it has been only a few hours since they parted, Jack finds himself smiling at the thought of seeing her again. She is the main reason th
e day seems full of promise.

  Yet Lennox is not the only person within these walls that Jack is eager to see.

  The tar man is there as well, and at the thought of him, Jack’s grin doesn’t fade so much as it twists with malice and hate.

  <<<>>>

  “Stand where you are!” the Brother says sharply, his voice cracking a little with nervous unease.

  Jack stops, arms at his side and his eyes staring straight ahead.

  He has made his way into the entrance hall of the Brotherhood’s Lair. For a moment, he thinks it is Samuel standing in his usual place behind the small reception desk. Samuel is as much part of the Lair as the polished granite and hidden levels, and has stood guard at the entrance for many years.

  But this isn’t Samuel. Samuel is dead, murdered by a thief who stole the Brotherhood’s most powerful relic, a book of dark magic known as the Daemonicon. To Jack, both the murder and theft are violations that leave him seething in anger. Yet, surprisingly given that he hadn’t really liked the man, when he realizes that it isn’t Samuel standing there, Jack’s first response is a wave of sadness indistinguishable from grief.

  Then his grief disappears. He has no time for it. In its place is a mixture of wariness and caution, because he doesn’t recognize the Brother in Samuel’s place.

  More importantly, the Brother doesn’t recognize him. And Nergal, Samuel’s cat, is glaring at Jack from her spot on the floor as she gives voice to a low, angry growl. It is the only sound in the room and echoes clearly off the stone walls.

  “Who are you?” the Brother demands, his anxiety plain. “State your business!”

  He looks like an accountant despite his security guard’s uniform. Medium height, middle-aged, with glasses and a paunch, he is glancing back and forth between Jack and Nergal with real fear on his face. Like condensation on a cold glass of beer, nervous sweat appears at the man’s temples.

  The Brother has good reason to fear. The cat is part of the Lair’s defenses. She can sense those with demon blood in their veins, and while Jack is familiar to her, she had bonded with Samuel. Where before, she would ignore Jack as if he didn’t exist, now the fur on her back is standing on end. She is wary of him.

  To the Brother, that wariness is a signal that Jack cannot be trusted. His hands move to an array of buttons on his desk that control weapons within the walls that are capable of leveling the entire row house and everything in it.

  Jack knows that he is one wrong word away from obliteration.

  He is irritated, but this is no time for anger. The Brother is too nervous for that. So Jack tries for a soothing smile even as he acknowledges to himself that ‘soothing’ is far from what he does best.

  “My name is Jackson Kade,” he says clearly and calmly. “I am a hunter, and work for the Brotherhood of Perdition just as you do. Deedee Vale would likely be disappointed if you were to hit that button.” Privately, he hopes that Lennox might share that disappointment, but Jack doesn’t say this out loud.

  Far from reassuring the Brother, Jack’s words seem to rattle him. He looks about as if the cold, hard walls can help him somehow. Then he turns to the angry-looking cat on the floor. “If that’s so, why is Nergal responding like this?” the Brother demands.

  “Because I have demon blood in me,” Jack replies, just as calmly.

  It is the wrong thing to say. At his words, the Brother flinches, and it is only pure chance that he doesn’t trigger the hidden weapons by accident. Jack grits his teeth, frustrated. He can see the irony of getting killed by one of the Brotherhood after surviving so many decades battling demons and monsters in support of its mission. If indeed he can be killed at all, and that isn’t certain.

  But just because it would be ironic doesn’t mean Jack wants to test this Brother’s resolve.

  “Nergal is upset because Samuel is dead,” Jack grates. “I would guess that it will take her a while to get used to people like me again. But that’s no reason to blow us both to Hell. If you’re unsure of me, why don’t you pick up that phone and call Deedee?”

  Such is the Brother’s state of panic that it takes a while for him to see the logic in Jack’s suggestion. Even when he does, he hesitates with his hand on the receiver. It is as if he expects Jack to jump him.

  It doesn’t help that Nergal is now standing with her back arched and her ears flattened against her skull. Her growl has changed into an intermittent hiss.

  Jack utters a sigh. He is irritated but knows there is little he can do beyond rolling his eyes and sending a silent prayer to whatever gods might be listening, if any would listen to someone like him. “Give me strength,” he mutters.

  Then, more loudly, he says to the Brother, “That’s it. Pick it up. Call her. I’ll wait over here. If I make any false moves, hit the button.”

  The Brother is projecting so much anxiety that it is coming off him in waves. He flicks a glance at the phone, then fixes Jack with an unsteady glare.

  “Stay there!” he says.

  Jack can’t quite stifle a sneer. “That’s what I said I would do,” he says.

  The Brother picks up the phone and punches a number. Jack doesn’t bother to pay close attention to what the Brother says on the phone. Instead, he wonders how Samuel, a tough old man with military experience, had been caught off guard by whomever had killed him. Surely Nergal would have reacted in fear and anger, the same way as she is acting now?

  As he ponders this little mystery, some of the Brother’s words get through. “Jackson Kade, he says … trenchcoat, purple sneakers … no, clean-shaven … a bum? Not really.” The Brother’s expression becomes suspicious. He asks Jack a question: “What was the last thing Deedee Vale told you to do yesterday?”

  Jack offers a grin in reply that carries a hint of irony. He and Lennox had traversed much of New Sanctum when they’d left Deedee and the Lair. They had fought an ongoing battle against the tar man and his demon spawn that lasted late into the night, ending with the tar man’s capture and the ruin of Madame Bridgette’s Arcane Emporium.

  During that battle, Lennox had nearly lost control over the demon inside her, and somehow things had changed between her and Jack. For the better, perhaps.

  “She told me and Lennox to go home and rest,” Jack says.

  At his answer, the Brother relaxes. “Deedee says that your timing is perfect,” he says. “She’s heading to the interrogation room on level five, and asks that you meet her there.”

  Chapter Two: Bunker

  The interrogation room on level five is far from the small, windowless room with a wooden desk and a couple of rickety chairs that appears so regularly on TV police dramas. Those rooms are for ordinary people who can’t destroy buildings with the power in their blood. The people – and things – the Brotherhood deals with are far more terrifying.

  The Brotherhood’s interrogation room, accessed through a steel door that is four inches thick, is a larger space designed to contain horrors and monsters.

  It is built like a concrete bunker.

  Five floors underground, it is a white, windowless room that conveys a feeling of solidity. To Jack, it also conveys a sense of comfort and peace. He knows that if the worst ever happens and New Sanctum becomes overrun by the vile creatures of Hell, a small number of people could find safety in this room at least for a short while.

  The back section of the room is cut off by a wall made of clear plastic that Jack understands to be nearly indestructible. This is to keep those under interrogation, no matter how dangerous they are, separated from everyone else.

  Jack cannot see into that part of the room. His vision is blocked by a number of Brothers calmly going about their various tasks.

  They are nearly all wearing the plain, brown robes of their order as they set things up to prepare for an interrogation. Some are fixing cameras onto tripods to capture everything from multiple angles. Others are arranging screens and keyboards on the double row of desks. More are placing microphones on stands next to the clea
r plastic wall.

  It is a hive of activity, a bustle of noise and busy, orderly conversation. To Jack, it looks like nothing so much as a film set with the director poised to scream, “Action!”

  He frowns, disappointed. He and Lennox had delivered the tar man hours ago. Jack had expected any questioning to be well under way, but it appears not to have started. He looks about, irritated by the delay, but cannot immediately see Deedee among the Brothers.

  Before he can approach anyone to ask where she is, he is surprised by a voice from behind him.

  “Jack!”

  Jack knows it is Lennox before turning and finds himself smiling. He would have known she was there even if she hadn’t spoken. Her perfume is intoxicating and smells like jasmine. Somehow, it also smells like intrigue, excitement, comfort, joy, and trust all rolled into one.

  She must have followed him in. He would have seen her otherwise.

  Jack looks her up and down, drinking her in but also checking to make sure that she is all right. The fight with the tar man had left her unconscious. Worse, it had brought her demon blood so close to the surface Jack had feared her lost to it. But she seems to be her usual self. Immaculately presented and fit, with a playful expression on her face and white, shoulder-length hair. She also has just a hint of a matched pair of demon horns peeking out from her temples.

  When her demon blood is in command, those horns are longer than Jack’s finger and wickedly sharp.

  Although Lennox wears the same leather and jeans as she wore yesterday, she is as clean and as fresh as a bouquet of flowers. Jack is tempted to say something about it, to express how perfect she looks, but there is still some confusion between them and his tongue has all the finesse and delicacy of a rough-hewn club.

  In all the years he has been alive, Jack has never truly mastered the art of banter and probably never will, much as sometimes he’d like to.

  Fortunately, Lennox is more articulate. “Looking good,” she says with a mischievous grin and a hint of flirtation. She is returning his inspection with one of her own and seems to like his comparative cleanliness. “What’s the big occasion? Do you have something special lined up for today? Got a hot date, perhaps?”