by Terry Spear
“I saw a Matusa holding a snake’s head, pressing exposed fangs into a human’s juggler. The man was already paralyzed, his eyes wide, but he wasn’t fighting the demon. Once I learned the murder took place at the reptile exhibit, I assumed he was the same Matusa that I had seen. Envisioned, rather.”
“Psychic,” Jared said from the back seat of the car. “It says here in my reference guide to demons that the Camaran are known to see future events.” He sounded vehemently opposed to the notion, and she imagined he knew the rest.
He closed his laptop. “And they try to mess with the future so those events don’t occur. Unless of course they want them to. And then they don’t interfere.”
“Can you?” Hunter asked. “Alter future events?”
“No.” Celeste didn’t want him or any of the others believing she could stop an event she envisioned from happening. Sometimes she could. Sometimes she couldn’t. Maybe as she got older and became more experienced with it, she could control it more.
“You were at the zoo?” Hunter asked again.
“Yes.” She parked the vehicle and motioned to a fence. “Over there.” She chewed on her lower lip as she stared in the direction of the fence. She knew they had to do this, but what if the police were about? Or other employees? What if they got caught? “He cut through the chain link. The summoner.”
“You were here at the same time that Alana was?” Hunter asked incredulously.
“No. I was here last night. I… envisioned the Matusa killing the summoner last night, but it didn’t happen until I was in classes with Samson and Alana had astral shifted to the zoo.”
“Why were you at the zoo last night?” Hunter asked.
“To change the outcome of future events,” Jared said, answering for her. “What a mess that would have been. The summoner would have continued to kill demons by summoning them through several faulty duplicate portals.”
“The Matusa could have been dead,” Celeste said quietly. Except she’d realized as soon as she’d heard the demon die inside the portal last night something was horribly wrong, and she had to refigure her plan to go after the summoner. She’d never expected that he was operating several of them at once or that they would kill the summoned demons.
Then she’d unexpectedly found Alana, a gate guardian, who was drawn to the opening of a portal in an out-of-body sort of way. When she’d seen her sitting in class like a zombie, unresponsive to the teacher’s questions and Samson looking worried to death over Alana, she’d uncamouflaged her own demon aura to let him know she was one of them. And offered to help him in any way that she could.
She hadn’t planned to speak with him until she was certain he was one of the good guys, but anyone who was as studious as he was couldn’t be all bad.
“I don’t know that we’ll find anything here that will clue us in as to who the summoner was or where he might have his portal duplicator machine. Or any lead as to where the Matusa went,” she warned.
“We start at the beginning. If we don’t find anything here, we’ll go to the morgue and see if we can get the summoner’s effects,” Hunter said. “How did you know that you were a Camaran demon? If you were brought here when you were three, your summoners wouldn’t have known. And we can’t see our own aura.”
“The Matusa who killed them told me. He looked straight at me and said, ‘Camaran!’”
“And he didn’t take you with him?” Jared asked.
“A three year old? Are you kidding?” Celeste snapped.
Hunter smiled darkly.
“What else does that list of yours say about my type?” Celeste asked.
“They can conceal their aura,” Jared said.
They got out of the car and headed for the break in the fence.
“Anything else?” Hunter whispered to Jared.
“Yeah. Like Alana is drawn to portals, Camaran demons are drawn to danger. They like dangerous sports, fighting in wars, or police type work. So I’d say we have another demon on our hands who’s bound to cause us more trouble.”
“I’m not the enemy here,” Celeste said, slipping in through the cut in the fence. She turned to Jared as he followed her inside the zoo. “Make me one of those demon detectors, too. Will you?”
“Hey, this requires a highly technical process. It’s not factory mass produced, you know. Right now, I’m working on one for Hunter and then one for me. And that’s it.”
Hunter gave him a dark look.
Jared scowled back at him. “And Alana. But that’s it!”
“You know, I could have a future vision that shows you’re in some kind of danger, and I could alter the future so you would survive, if I had enough of an incentive,” Celeste said.
Jared snorted. “You said you couldn’t alter the future.”
Celeste smiled in an evil way. “I lied. Put that in your list of attributes for a Camaran demon, Elantus,” she said. Then she turned to Hunter. “Have you known Alana long?”
“For only the summer,” Jared answered for him. “But it seems like forever.”
Hunter glowered at him.
Celeste smiled. She had not had a brother. Even a human foster brother, but she loved seeing the interaction between Hunter and Jared. She could tell in the brief time she’d observed them, Hunter really did care about Jared. And Jared was loyal through and through to the Matusa. It seemed like a strange kind of friendship—a warrior teaming up with an electronic wizard. She realized then, each of the hunters had special skills. Each demon would, but the combination of the group would surely make it more difficult for the bad guys to win.
She thought Samson was more of a loner like she was, which was another reason she was attracted to him. She had wanted to see what he was capable of had he come with them. But since he’d been seen with Alana, she could understand how he might be wanted for questioning and put the rest of them at risk.
“You like Alana, even though you try to rile her,” Celeste said to Jared. “Why?”
“She’s a witch,” he said, quite sincerely.
“She seems really nice to me.”
Jared grunted. “She’s really a witch. Like in—magic and spells kind of witch.”
Celeste looked at Hunter to see if he agreed. He gave her a stiff nod.
“Which makes her unlike any Kubiteron there is,” Jared said.
“Ah. So you can’t analyze her by using your database on demon types,” Celeste said.
“Yeah, she’s totally unpredictable, like a wildcard.”
They grew quiet as they made their way across the zoo as quickly as they could in the direction of the reptile house. They soon saw police scouring the area for evidence at the crime scene and the three of them stealthily made their way back to the fence.
“We’ll go to the morgue and see if we can locate the summoner’s effects,” Hunter said.
“We need Alana,” Jared said, which surprised Celeste because he seemed to put her down more than he was kind to her. Which made her wonder if he was interested in her when Hunter was definitely intrigued with the Kubiteron.
“With her ability to force people to do what she wants and wipe their minds that she’s even been there, we really could use her,” Jared said.
Celeste could tell Hunter did want to take Jared up on his suggestion, but then he said, “I’m certain that after she vanished from the police station, she’ll be wanted for even more questioning.”
“True,” Jared said. “I’d say once we locate the portal device and destroy it, we’ll need to take her somewhere else.”
“We may have to,” Hunter agreed, though he didn’t sound like his heart was in it.
“Did Alana really save your life?” Celeste asked Hunter as they climbed back into the car and drove off.
“Three times,” Jared said.
She cast a look at him over the back seat. He grinned at her and shrugged. “He doesn’t mention the first time, only the other two times when she beat on him.”
Neither explained wha
t they meant and she didn’t ask, although she would query Alana when she had the chance. “Have you ever wished you were human?” she asked Jared, figuring that since Hunter was half human, he didn’t need to answer.
Jared snorted. “And have all these human emotions?”
“Demons are just as emotional, though perhaps not quite in the same way,” she told him.
“Do you wish you were human?” Jared asked, his voice riddled with disbelief.
She thought about it as Jared directed her with the GPS as to how to proceed the quickest way to the hospital.
“No. At least I don’t believe so. I think I’d have to be human and alternately demon to know which I would prefer for certain.”
“Have you ever wanted to find your parents? To learn if you have siblings?” Jared asked.
“Do you?”
“Yeah, I do. I want them to know that I’m alive and well. Not so much that I want to live in the demon world since I’ve always lived here. But I’d like to know them. My human parents have been extremely generous with me, but I still would like to know where I come from.”
“Speculating and knowing can be two very different stories,” Hunter warned as they pulled into the parking lot of the hospital.
Jared didn’t say anything for a minute, then as they left the car, he said, “I still want to know—good or bad.”
Celeste realized then that Hunter might be afraid Jared would find something to shatter his allusion of what his parents would be like. Or maybe he was even afraid he’d lose Jared. That Jared would want to return home and stay in the demon world with his real family.
“I don’t think I want to find mine,” she said. “I would be afraid that they’d want me to stay in their world. I might not have a family I care for here like you do, Jared, but I still wouldn’t want to return to the demon world.”
“You don’t even know anything about it from what you said.”
“True.” She took a deep breath and walked into the frigid hospital with Jared and Hunter. “But I’ve moved a lot over the years with foster parents, and I don’t like it. I don’t care for having to adjust to each new place, every new school, trying to make new friends. A world that’s even more unreal to me would be even worse.”
Hunter looked over at her. “We’re going to have to move Alana, most likely. And Samson, when the police can’t find anyone else to blame for the summoner’s murder. Leave it to a Dark One to murder a human and ditch the body for others to have to explain. In fact, he may have done so to implicate Alana anyway, thinking she might have to take refuge in the demon world. Then he’d have her.”
“He can’t go back to his world without a human’s help,” Celeste said.
“True, he can’t open a portal and send himself back. He could force a human to do it.”
She let out her breath. So they would have to move Alana and Samson. Was he hinting that she could go with them also? He didn’t come out and say she could go with them. Maybe he didn’t want to because she was living with foster parents. Maybe he was afraid if she disappeared, it would cause more trouble for the rest of them. If Samson and Alana disappeared from the same class and so did Celeste, some might believe she was with them. She assumed, being that he was a Matusa, he would be the one who would decide to ask her if she wanted to go with them or not.
Would she want to? It seemed to her that if she did, she’d end up in a skillet of burning oil faster than anything. The quirky demon side of her, which since she was all demon, meant the whole of her being, was fascinated with the idea. Yet, they were higher ranked demons—both the Matusa and the Kubiteron. She didn’t know where her type fit in the ranking of powerful demons. She didn’t think her abilities were all that powerful. At least not yet.
So far, all she could do was see glimpses of the future and sometimes stop events from happening. Which meant if she returned to the demon world, she could be at the bottom of the totem pole and that didn’t agree with her at all.
When they reached the morgue, Hunter took charge. Celeste knew he would.
But nothing went right from the beginning. She and Jared stayed outside the room, but when Hunter went in, he was only there for a second and back out again. “Police,” he whispered.
“What did you say?” she asked.
They all hurried for the door.
“I was told my Uncle Andrew was here and I had to ID him, but I had the wrong place.”
Jared said, “Okay, so now what do we do?”
“We return to the hotel and wait until it gets late. We’ll check the morgue for the guy’s effects then.” Hunter turned to Celeste and said, “What did you do about leaving school early?”
“I just left. I followed Alana’s car until Samson parked at the hotel, and then hailed him.”
“He didn’t even know someone was tailing him?” Hunter sounded as though he was ready to strangle him. “He’s her bodyguard, or so he claims! What kind of a bodyguard would let a stalker sneak up on him.”
“He knew I was behind him. He pulled the car over, and I parked behind him.” Celeste turned to Jared. “How do we get to the hotel from here?”
He gave her directions and they got in her car and drove off. “Stop for carryout first, would you?” Jason said.
“I don’t have any money,” Celeste warned.
“I do,” Jared said.
“So, Samson pulled over and you parked behind him and…?” Hunter said to Celeste.
“He confronted me, and then he saw I was from their class and that I was a demon and I asked if I could help. I didn’t know about the astral business. Just thought Alana was having some kind of demon seizure. Anyway, because we left the school in different vehicles, no one suspected I was with them.”
“But you skipped school and when your foster parents learn of it, then what?” Hunter asked.
“I’ll deal with it.”
“You’ll have to,” Hunter said. “Jared and I have graduated from high school. His parents and mine know we’re on our own, working, or so they think. Alana’s mother is a witch, and her father is a demon. Both know her situation. Samson is probably older than all of us, and he’s on his own. But you’re living with foster parents who are clueless about what you are. And you still have another year of high school. So you have to go to classes just like any other regular human.”
“Burgers? Chicken to go?” she asked, wanting to ignore Hunter. Here was the first time she felt a real sense of purpose, other than chasing after future visions and trying to right wrongs all on her own. Even though she barely knew any of these people, they were more like her than not.
They understand how different she was from others. She wanted to help them and wanted them to help her also. What was wrong in that?
On the other hand, she knew Hunter was right. If he and the others had to take Alana and Samson far away from here, she knew she couldn’t go with them. She’d be a missing person. Her foster parents definitely wouldn’t allow her to run off with three guys and another girl to who knew where.
She might have wanted to do so, but she couldn’t cause more trouble for them also.
“My foster parents don’t get home until late. They have a drinking party they’re going to after work. I’ll tell them I got sick at school, and my foster mother will write a note for me. Tomorrow, I’ll go to school and if you’ll give me your cell number, I can let you know what I hear around school.”
Hunter nodded. She thought he even looked glum that he couldn’t let her go with them. Jared didn’t say a word. She wondered what he was thinking.
So much for finding her demon kick-butt team. She was on her own.
“Skip the burgers,” Jared suddenly said. “A Matusa demon is headed in the direction of the hotel where Alana is staying.”
Chapter 6
News about rising floodwaters in another state blared on the television in the hotel room first, then an annoying woman who was sobbing about her boyfriend being unfaithful on a soap opera-type
story filled the airwaves, followed by an ad for wipes that would clean up any spill, and then a sports commentator giving a play by play.
Grinding her teeth and frowning, Alana tossed and turned, trying to sleep, to shake off her tiredness from astral traveling. She pulled the spare pillow over her head, but she couldn’t block out all the noise. She finally yanked the pillow aside and glowered at Samson as he sat in a chair beside a table, eyes focused on the television, thumb poised on the channel changer. “Quit… switching… channels!” she demanded.
He raised his brows as he eyed her as if trying to figure out if she was serious or not.
“I’m… not… joking!” she said, her body still tired from being separated during the astral travel for longer than she’d ever done before. She hoped Hunter and the others were all right as they returned to the zoo to locate the portal creator device, but she was ready to kill one Samuria. Next time, she’d insist Jared stay with her instead. He could be annoying, but even so, she didn’t think he’d be this annoying. “Either leave the T.V. on one channel, or turn it off.”
“I could lie down,” he said, smiling in a purely demonic way, motioning to the other side of the mattress.
“Your funeral if Hunter catches you in bed with me,” she said, smiling just as evilly back. Then she scowled again. “But it’s going to be your funeral anyway if you flip that channel one more time.”
He held the channel changer in his hand, and the look on his face said it all. He was trying to decide whether to obey her or not.
“You know, you’re supposed to listen to me, Samuria.”
“Protect you,” he corrected.
She snorted. “Who’s going to protect you if you change the channel one more time?”
He chuckled, turned off the television, and sat down on the mattress next to her. “I’m not interested in her, Kubiteron,” he said. “I’m here to serve you.”
She let out her breath. “Fine. Serve me.” She motioned to the chair that he’d been sitting on. “Stay there and protect me.” She still had every intention of getting Samson together with Celeste. He had it in mind it was his duty to protect Alana and be her mate. There had to be more to a relationship than that.