by Sara Snow
Dominic peered down at me. “Is that some kind of weird tattoo?”
“That mark wasn’t made with a needle and ink. It was burned into the dude’s flesh. See?” I pointed at the charred edges of the P. Its lines were embedded deeply into the victim’s skin. “It’s a brand,” I explained. “This guy was branded, so that no one could ever forget that he was the property of a maior daemonium.”
“Wanna translate that into English? Or at least an ancient language that I remember?”
“A major demon. This was an act of vengeance, and the perp felt totally justified in killing this individual.”
I tipped my head as I scrutinized what was left of the victim’s face. The mutilation had been effective, but not effective enough to hide the guy’s identity.
“If I’m not mistaken,” I said, “I know this person. Or knew him.”
Vince, he had called himself. He had aspired to become a double-agent, like Father Michael, walking the fine line between good and evil. Vince had looked me up about two weeks ago, asking what it would take to join the Venandi.
“What’s your ‘why’?” I asked him, copping a riff from some motivational speaker I’d seen on late night television. “Why do you want to join a group of supernatural freaks who are constantly being pursued by demons?”
With complete sincerity, Vince told me his story.
Before he was devoured by a soul-eater, Vince had been a full-fledged human. Once a juvenile delinquent, he’d been lucky enough to step into a life that promised a happily-ever-after ending, with a pretty wife and a baby daughter in a cracker-box tract home. Vince worked as a driver for UPS, putting in long hours to pay the mortgage. He didn’t mind that his life had turned into an American cliche. He loved his family and felt like he’d finally found his place in the world after years of feeling like an outcast.
Then, one afternoon, when he was delivering packages in a Chicago suburb, Vince met a demon. This was no cambion half-breed; it was a ravenous soul-eater who had stolen the skin of a feeble elderly woman.
Vince stopped to help the little lady, who had dropped a bag of groceries in the street. The frail old woman had peered up at him gratefully from under her broad-brimmed hat and revealed a mouthful of needle-sharp teeth like the fangs of a leech.
Three hours after being engulfed by the soul-eater, Vince had a brand on his chest and an official membership to the tribe of Paimon, one of the most powerful demons in the world.
They say downtown Chicago is dangerous, but it’s nothing compared to the suburbs.
I had given Vince my business card and told him to come to the warehouse to meet Kingston and the Venandi that night. He’d never showed up. Until tonight.
“You’re a little late, Vince,” I said softly. “Too bad you couldn’t join us. I bet you would have been a brave warrior.”
I stood up and straightened my trench coat. “Here’s your hankie.” I extended the bloody rag to Dominic. He recoiled.
“Don’t you dare touch me with that thing!”
“What’s the matter?” I asked. “I thought you liked blood.”
“Yes. When it’s flowing.” Dominic slapped the soiled cloth away.
“Fine. Suit yourself, Mr. Metrosexual.” Then I got serious. “Listen, Dom, you have to promise me something.”
We left the body where it lay and headed back to my car. The park was starting to fill up with the usual crowd of creepers, grifters, and junkies. It wouldn’t be long before someone called the cops, who would take their sweet time coming out here.
“Why should I promise you anything?” Dominic asked.
“Because I came out to this godforsaken wasteland when you called me, interrupting what would have been a pleasant evening with the Venandi.”
“Okay, whatever. Tell me what you want me to do.”
“It’s what I want you not to do. Don’t tell Kingston about this. Not a word.”
Dominic shrugged. “No problem. Kingston and I aren’t that tight.”
“Good. Because I want you to keep this quiet. I want to be the one to tell him—when it’s the right time. There’s too much at stake here for the news to come from someone outside the Venandi.”
“May I ask what news you’re talking about?”
“No, you may not.”
“Fine. I’ll keep my pretty mouth shut,” Dominic snipped.
I left the vamp at the public toilets to continue his hunt. Even though I’d given him a hard time, I had to admit he did me a favor that night.
The Venandi weren’t dealing with the bottom-feeders of the demon realm anymore. We had caught the attention of one of the big guns, maybe the biggest of them all: Paimon. Was it a coincidence, or did this ritualistic murder have something to do with the beautiful cambion I met last night? The message I got from Vince’s murder was this: what happened to Vince could happen to any of the Venandi.
And now that I had connected with Georgia, it could happen to her, too.
I didn’t have time to flirt with the cambion, as much as I would like to. If I wanted to save Georgia’s soul, I had to start training her to fight—yesterday.
10
Georgia
Kingston’s library was a dome lined with books. The room was cool and smelled of ancient paper. The dark blue ceiling, painted with stars, looked like the vault of heaven.
The library’s shelves rose so high that Kingston had to use a rolling ladder to reach the books he wanted. He chose four thick volumes, climbed down the ladder, and set them down on the surface of a polished wooden table, whose mahogany surface gleamed under the glow of a reading lamp.
I had seen libraries like this in movies, but I’d never set foot in one. I felt like I’d stepped back a few centuries into a time when the world’s knowledge and wisdom was recorded on paper, not on computer hard drives. There were so many texts here that I could have spent my whole life going from one to another and never even touch all the cracked spines.
“Have you actually read all these?” I asked in amazement.
He chuckled. “Believe it or not, I have.”
“Wow.” I touched the mottled leather cover of the book that topped the pile he had chosen for me. When I opened the cover, a tiny poof of dust burst out. “It must have been a while since you read this one.”
“About fifty years,” he agreed. “I haven’t needed to consult it recently. I’m very familiar with its contents.”
“A Compleat Classification or Survey of the Categories of Demons,” I read aloud from the speckled title page. “Sounds like a real page-turner.”
“Yes, it is. You should read it thoroughly.”
“Tonight? All of it?”
“No, of course not. Tonight, I want you to familiarize yourself with the major categories of demons and the structure of their hierarchy.” He turned past the title page of the Compleat Classification to a pair of pages covered by a complex diagram.
“That looks like someone’s family tree,” I said wistfully. I had always envied people who knew not only who their parents were, but who their grandparents and great-grandparents had been. When I was in the third grade, my class was assigned to trace the history of our families back for at least three generations and draw a family tree to share with the class. I hid in the coatroom on the day we were supposed to present our trees to the class. The tree I drew had only a trunk—me—and one broken branch that pointed to my mom.
“It’s more of a classification system. Demons fall into categories, and those categories have a hierarchy. At the highest level are the fallen angels, who were separated from their divine source at the beginning of creation. You will meet very few of those, if any, in your lifetime. In our day-to-day lives, we typically encounter the lower-level demons. Incubi and succubi are two of the most common types. They are sexual demons who prey on the carnal urges of humans. Soul-eaters are also widespread in the lower demonic realms—they feed on the spiritual essences of human beings.”
I shuddered. I didn’t need
Kingston to tell me about soul-eaters. The smoky stain of Sucker Face was embedded in the carpet back at my apartment. I just hoped my landlord wouldn’t charge me for the damage.
“Then, there are the foot soldiers in the army of demons,” Kingston went on. “These are the creatures who wage war against beings of light, both mortal and immortal. The lower-level demons can be killed with iron through the heart, but the higher demons are much more elusive. Their hungers are endless, and their goals are nothing less than to bring an end to humanity.”
A shadow flitted across the green glass shade of the reading lamp, darkening the open book and the gleaming table. I looked up at the domed ceiling, and I could swear I saw a small, winged creature hovering in that space. I blinked, and it was gone.
I was being watched.
“Do demons come in different sizes?” I asked.
“All sizes, shapes, and forms. Some take the form of humans, while others look more like serpents, birds, or bats. And then there are those with monstrous forms that don’t resemble any creature born on earth. These aren’t natural beings we’re talking about; they’re supernatural. Even when they adopt the forms of animals or human beings, their essences are nothing like what exists in nature.”
“But you would recognize a demon if you saw one.”
“I don’t have to see them. I can feel them from miles away. They have a unique energy, a miasma of negativity that surrounds them. Once you’ve been sucked into that vortex, you never forget the experience.”
“You said the lower-level demons could be killed with iron through the heart,” I said. “How do you kill the higher ones?”
“That’s where warriors like the Venandi come in. We fight demons and protect weaker creatures from the chaos that they cause.”
“So, you’re the good guys, in other words.”
“You might say that. Although ‘good’ is a relative term. Like any other beings, we have our dark and light sides.”
“Where do I fall into all this?” I asked. “If I have powers, does that make me a human, a demon, a superhero, or what?”
“Perhaps you’re all of the above.” He laughed. “Enjoy your reading. I’ll go and make you something to eat. I’m something of an amateur chef.” He used air quotes around the word “chef.”
At the mention of food, my stomach gave a rumble that could easily have been classified as demonic. I hadn’t eaten anything since my meager lunch of string cheese and an apple, and I was starting to feel some serious hunger pangs.
Before leaving me to my light reading, Kingston rested his hand on the small of my back. Though it seemed like friendly contact, the weight of his hand sent a charge through my body that was anything but casual. It felt like the energy of a lightning bolt coursing along my spine. I jumped. He smiled at me, and I knew he was aware of what I’d felt.
“Make yourself comfortable, Georgia. I’ll be back shortly.”
“Comfortable” wasn’t the first word that came to mind when I glanced at the stern, hard-backed chair beside the reading table, but I sat down anyway and began to browse through the book. The pages felt stiff and frail under my fingers, as if they would crumble if I turned them too quickly. I read about incubi and succubi, demons who feasted on the desires and lust of their human prey. I read about familiars, who allied themselves with witches in order to gain influence in the mortal world. And I read about cambions, who were formed through the union of a demon and a human being.
Cambion are the offspring of an illicit union between a human being and an incubus or succubus, the book informed me. Though they lack the full powers granted by the Realm of Demons, the cambion have skills unknown to human mortals. They have been known to set fires or displace objects only with their intentions, causing havoc and destruction from untold distances. To destroy a cambion is a true challenge, for their bodies restore themselves instantly when pierced with a common knife or sword. Only a stout blade of iron through the heart can kill a cambion and release it back to Hell.
A cold lump of dread formed in my belly. Forget this moldy book. I was going to consult the true source of all knowledge: my phone. My hands shook as I tapped the phone and opened my internet browser. The battery on my phone was almost dead. I just hoped it would hold out long enough for me to do a little more research.
The word “cambion,” I learned, had both Latin and Celtic roots. The original word meant “change,” and cambion were also known as changelings in some traditions. Changelings were basically baby demons who were swapped with human babies in their cribs. There were all kinds of creepy traits associated with changelings. They cried constantly, for example and their bodies were as heavy as lead, which made them an absolute joy for a human family to raise. But I didn’t see any other reference to telekinetic or pyrokinetic powers. There was a small footnote about the veritatum that I would need to remember to look up later.
“They’re just nasty, unpleasant little brats,” I said out loud.
“Who’s a nasty little brat?”
I wheeled around in my chair, startled to hear a male voice. Carter stood in the doorway of the library. I’d forgotten how magnetic his eyes were, or maybe I’d never realized it in the first place. We had only met once, after all, and the circumstances hadn’t been ideal. I’d been more focused on defending myself against Sucker Face than on checking out Carter’s assets.
And assets he did have. His tall, angular body was draped in a trench coat that fell the length of his long legs. His longish brown hair was brushed back behind his ears, displaying the square cut of his jaw and the clean lines of his neck. Brown-black eyes gleamed under thick eyebrows, and his full mouth was curled up in a mocking smile. The only flaws in his looks were a dent in the bridge of his nose that set it off-center, and skin that was just a few shades too pale.
“I hope you weren’t referring to me,” he sniffed. “I’m an absolute angel, as you already know.”
“I don’t know anything of the kind,” I said. “But I do know that you saved my life.”
“All in a night’s work,” he said. “You weren’t prepared to save your own life, but I can teach you how to do that. It’s simply a matter of knowing how to fight demons.”
“Hey, I fought off a lot of foster brothers and a few horny fathers. I think I’m well-equipped to fight with demons,” I said.
“You probably are with the human kind, but you need to learn a few techniques to kill supernatural beings. What’s that book you’re reading, the Oxford English Dictionary?” Carter walked over to the table and sat down beside me. He slid the book out of my hands. “Oh, yes. This one is important. You need to know what you’re confronting here.”
“So far, I’ve learned about the lower-level demons, but not so much about the higher ones. How do you kill one of them?”
“That’s complicated,” Carter said. “We can’t kill the higher demons very easily, if at all. Most of the time, we have to find a way to banish them to Hell so they can’t interfere with humans anymore.”
“Does that really work? Can’t they just come back? I mean, if they came from Hell in the first place, it can’t be that hard for them to escape again.”
Carter was sitting just a little too close to me, and I couldn’t help wondering if he’d arranged that on purpose. I could feel the cool night air rising from his coat and smell the scent of some strange fragrance wafting off his hair. The hard, male bulk of his body made my skin go warm and tingly, and I realized I hadn’t felt that way in months. Being in a coma can really take a toll on a girl’s libido.
His eyes were focused on the diagrams of the demons, and I decided that I must be imagining things. Carter couldn’t be attracted to a cheeky kid like me. In some ways, I was too immature for him. In other ways, I was too old. I was damaged goods, like one of those fake fur coats at the thrift store that have been worn on too many walks through trashy neighborhoods. Carter was one of those sophisticated types who probably preferred classy blondes with trust funds. Someone more
like Olympia.
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We’ll focus on the lower-level demons first, the cannon fodder of the war between good and evil. We’ll work on getting you strong enough to protect yourself, then we’ll advance to the true mission of the Venandi: protecting others. Then, maybe, if you’re a straight-A student, we’ll teach you how to banish a fallen angel. How does that sound?”
Carter faced me in his chair, his left knee barely brushing mine. Up close, he was even hotter than he’d seemed when he was standing across the room. He wasn’t the sort of guy I’d usually fall for. I always went for moody outsiders, sexy but unfaithful musicians, or jockish dorks like Adam. Carter was more like the mysterious older brothers of the girls I’d known in junior high school—boys who had sprouted facial hair and muscles, who’d worn aftershave and tried out for football or the debate team. I couldn’t even guess how old Carter was or where he came from. He could have been thirty or forty, or even four hundred for all I knew.
“Sounds good,” I said. I backed my chair away. Its wooden feet squealed on the parquet floor.
“Not so fast, Carter. Georgia needs her energy first.”
Kingston’s mellow voice broke into our conversation. He set a plate in front of me, followed by a generous glass of red wine. On that plate steamed a heap of buttered pasta topped with grilled mushrooms and tomatoes, and crested with curls of prosciutto and shredded parmesan.
Now, my stomach was really growling, but I didn’t care. I wrapped my forearm around the plate and pulled it close to me, all pride abandoned as I shoveled the pasta into my mouth. My childhood had taught me to eat as fast and as frequently as I possibly could, and I was living up to that lesson. When I stopped inhaling pasta for a minute to gulp down some red wine, I saw Carter staring at me.
“I think I’ve changed my mind about you, Georgia. You might be a werewolf. Or at least you were raised by werewolves.”
“A den of werewolves would have been great compared to the foster homes I grew up in,” I snapped back. Then I returned to my food and wine. Fuck him. Carter was hot and he had good hunting skills, but I didn’t care about his opinion of me or the way I ate. I’d had enough condescension for one night.