Demon Marked: Book 1 of the Venandi Chronicles ( An Urban Paranormal Romance Series)

by Sara Snow

  “Georgia, I need to ask you a favor.”

  “Sure. What do you need, Jose?”

  He stared down at his sneakers. “I want you to be extra, extra careful. There was something in my dream that I almost couldn’t tell you.”

  “You can tell me anything, Jose. Dreams don’t scare me. Reality doesn’t scare me much, either. Not anymore.”

  He smiled a little at my joke, but I could tell he was deeply disturbed by whatever he had seen. He gnawed his cuticle again, then returned to his vision.

  “In my dream, I woke up and you weren’t here.”

  “You mean I went back to my apartment?”

  He shook his head. “No. You just weren’t here. I came downstairs to find you, and you were gone...for good.”

  “Was I dead?” I asked softly.

  “I don’t know.” He closed his eyes as if he was trying to recall the details of his dream. “I don’t think so. But you weren’t coming back.”

  “That sounds like a riddle to me.” I tried to make light of Jose’s vision by tweaking him on the nose. “If I wasn’t dead, I wasn’t coming back here, and I didn’t go to my apartment, where did I go?”

  “I don’t know. None of us knew. I looked all over the warehouse, but you were gone.”

  Jose’s dream unnerved me. It sounded like he’d seen me step into some kind of limbo between life and death. What could that mean? Was I going to be seriously injured and end up in another coma? Or was it something even more sinister, a disappearance too mysterious and terrible to describe?

  “Be careful,” Jose repeated. “Be careful of anybody who’s afraid to tell you the truth.”

  “That sounds like good, old common sense,” I said. “Don’t worry. I’ll be extra careful today.”

  “Promise me, Georgia. You have to swear that you’ll come back to the warehouse tonight.”

  I knew I couldn’t make a promise like that. But with Jose watching me, his eyes wary and sad, I went ahead and promised anyway.

  25

  Carter

  On a weekday afternoon, the carnival crowd was sparse. The Ferris wheel spun sadly, its cars occupied by only a handful of passengers. In broad daylight, the striped canopy over the concert stage looked tattered and faded. Scraps of trash blew across the ground and sailed out over the water. Food vendors scraped their grills, smoked cigarettes, and chatted idly as they waited for customers.

  “Looks pretty desolate during the day,” Georgia remarked as we pulled into the parking lot. “It’s a lot more fun at night, especially with a group of friends. If you have friends, that is.” There was a wistful note in her voice.

  “So, you’ve been to this carnival before?”

  “Yes, about a year ago. With Adam, the guy I was dating at the time.”

  I felt a lurch of jealousy. I was jealous of any male who had been with Georgia, but more than that, I envied their youth. I could see Georgia and this jerk Adam, whoever he was, holding hands as they toured the carnival at dusk. Without the jaded lens of immortality to cloud their eyes, the lights and rides of the mid-way would be shiny and new.

  I tried to buy Georgia’s ticket at the gate, but she insisted on paying for her own.

  “No.” I put my hand over hers as she reached for her wallet. “Let me pay.”

  “I can afford my own ticket,” Georgia protested, a stubborn gleam in her eye.

  “That’s not the point. We don’t have time to buy two tickets.” I slapped down a couple of twenties—the carnival got more expensive every year—and yanked Georgia through the gate.

  “Let’s split up,” I said. “I’ll take the mid-way, where all the vendors park their carts. You go around asking every carnival employee that you see if they’ve seen a blonde in a pink t-shirt recently. We’re actually at an advantage, with no crowd to get in the way.”

  “Why do you get to take the mid-way? That’s probably where he’s got the girl.”

  “Exactly. I want you gathering information, not confronting a demon alone.”

  Georgia pouted, but she didn’t argue. “Fine.”

  I removed the flamethrower from her hands. “Not a good idea when you’re questioning the carnie folk. You need to look sweet and approachable, but with an edge. You want them to open up to you, not hit on you.”

  “Got it. I’ll call you if I learn anything.” Georgia held up her phone. “And you call me if you find the balloon girl.”

  I headed for the mid-way, looking back over my shoulder to see Georgia at a hot dog stand, talking to a vendor. The cambion was a lot tougher than she looked and a lot stronger than she realized. Georgia’s only problem was that she didn’t have the self-confidence to accept her own gifts. I intended to teach her how much she really had to offer.

  The mid-way smelled of hot buttered popcorn, cotton candy, and hot dogs. Even though the game booths and side shows were empty, I could see the carnival’s allure. Here was a fantasy land that defied the mainstream, urging kids to gorge on spun sugar and fake meat, offering glimpses of freaks and monsters. A young woman out with her sorority sisters would feel as carefree as a child, all of her homework forgotten while she toured the carnival with her friends.

  At this moment, those sorority sisters were probably sitting in a lecture hall, yawning as they half-listened to their professor and texted their boyfriends from phones hidden beneath empty notebooks. Had they reported their friend missing? Had they even realized she’d been abducted? Maybe they had taken off early, leaving her at the carnival alone. I envisioned her calling goodbye to them while they headed for their cars and she skipped off to buy a pink balloon.

  Because balloons made her feel like a kid again.

  And pink was her favorite color.

  Too bad her next favorite was yellow.

  I scanned the row of battered carts and food trucks, looking for a giant mass of multicolored balloons. The few vendors who were manning their carts that day eyeballed me curiously.

  “Help you find something?” called a guy who was sweeping the scattered paper cups and hamburger wrappers away from his cart. As he worked, the wind kept blowing more debris his way. A Sisyphean task if ever there was one.

  “Yeah. I’m looking for a guy who sells balloons. A friend of mine told me I could find his cart around here.”

  The man with the broom shielded his eyes with his hand as he looked up and down the windblown lot. “The balloon cart is usually right up there,” he said, pointing to the space between a taco truck and a t-shirt stand. “Don’t know where the guy could have gone. Maybe he’ll be back tonight.”

  “Tonight will be too late,” I said, more to myself than to the vendor.

  He chuckled. “You must really want that balloon, mister.”

  “No, what I want is to find out what happened to a young lady who bought a balloon last night. Were you here?”

  He nodded. “Yeah. As long as the carnival’s here, I’m here.”

  “Did you happen to see a pretty blonde in a pink t-shirt buy a balloon?”

  “Sure did. I couldn’t have missed her. She was a knockout, the kind you can’t stop gawking at no matter how hard you try.” He had a misty look in his eye as he recalled the girl.

  The hairs on the back of my neck rose. As thrilled as I was to find a witness who had seen the blonde, I couldn’t shake the feeling that we weren’t alone. I felt the dark, throbbing energy that told me there was a demon nearby. By the power of that vibration, I knew the demon had to be a major player.

  “What color was the balloon?” I asked.

  He squinted his eyes as he thought. “Yellow.”

  Bingo.

  The throbbing, percussive beat of the demon’s presence was growing stronger. For all I knew, it was the demon from the balloon cart, stalking me to find out what I knew. Although there was no way a demon could be picked up by the cops for kidnapping a human, he would want to know if I was on his tail. Not because he felt afraid or guilty, but because my pursuit flattered his sick ego.


  The demon’s eyes scorched the skin on the back of my neck. I wheeled around, expecting to find a hulking horned beast holding a pretty blonde by the hand.

  Instead, I saw the striking figure of a man, tall and slender, elegantly dressed in a silk suit. He had a brown, neatly trimmed beard, longish hair, and his hands were decked with rings. I might have assumed he was an entertainer performing at the carnival, or maybe an executive checking on his investment. But the pupils of his dark eyes gleamed like reddened coals, informing me that he was something else entirely.

  This was the source of my unease. Only a high-level demon would adopt such an elegant human form. But if he had abducted the blonde, a demon with that kind of vanity would have her on his arm, displaying his human trophy.

  There was no blonde in sight. The demon gave me a conspiratorial smile, placed his jeweled hands in his pockets, and strolled away, whistling. I watched him duck into the alley behind the Haunted House. Of course. He was probably posing as one of the characters, waiting to lure young visitors into eternal damnation.

  “Did you see what happened to the blonde after she bought the balloon?” I asked, turning back to the vendor.

  “She walked off to the other end of the pier. I saw her heading toward the water,” he said. “I watched her walk away until I couldn’t see her anymore. Such a sweet ass!”

  I ran down the mid-way toward the end of the pier, in the general direction that the blonde had last been seen.

  “Hey!” the guy called after me. “Be careful with that flamethrower! Those things aren’t toys.”

  I had no idea where the balloon vendor would have taken his prey. He could have dragged her into an empty food truck, an abandoned tent, or an alley behind one of the rides.

  That’s when I heard a woman scream.

  I skidded to a halt, trying to figure out where that high, piercing sound had come from. The woman screamed again. The sound seemed to come from below my feet.

  I knew there was a flight of stairs that led under the pier to the water. Underage kids would go down there to smoke weed and drink cheap wine. Brave lovers used it as a refuge for illicit sex.

  And demons went down there to savage their prey.

  I took off running again. By the time I reached the flight of stairs, I was gasping for breath, but my adrenaline kept me going.

  The sandy shore under the pier was dank and cool, perpetually shaded by the structure overhead. Empty beer cans and other refuse littered the ground. I crept forward, the flamethrower ready to rock.

  The scream came again, this time so close that I knew I’d found my target.

  “Hey!” I shouted. “Where are you?”

  “Carter! Help me!”

  Those blood-curdling screams were coming from Georgia.

  I sprinted through the shadows, leaping over trash and fallen posts. If I aimed the flamethrower in the right direction, I’d be able to torch whatever demon Georgia was facing. I only hoped I wouldn’t fall on my ass before I could get there.

  “Stand back, asshole. One more step, and I’ll tear out her throat.”

  The gravelly voice from Jose’s dreams emerged from the darkness. I always knew that I’d meet this demon one day, I just hadn’t imagined that he’d have Georgia in his grasp.

  I followed the demon’s orders and stopped. My eyes quickly adjusted to the lack of light. The demon’s burly body hunched over Georgia, holding her motionless against a piling. In the dim light, Georgia’s violet eyes glowed like phosphorescent stones. If I hadn’t known she was a cambion before, I would have known it then—human eyes don’t illuminate the darkness like that.

  Above Georgia’s head, clinging to the underside of the pier, was a yellow helium balloon.

  “Carter,” she whispered. “He got her.”

  Then, I realized that the two of them were not alone. A body lay on the ground, displayed in a ritualistic manner. If I hadn’t known that I was searching for a woman, I might not have recognized the body as female. Her lower body was clad in jeans and a pair of blue Converse sneakers. Her upper body might have worn a pink t-shirt at one time—now, it was clad in a dull red pool of drying blood. The girl’s chest had been torn open, and the cavity where her heart had been gaped like a screaming mouth.

  From the body’s rigid posture and the flies swarming the puddle of blood, I knew she hadn’t been killed recently. If there was any way I could have intervened, I would have given up my immortal life to save the girl from a death like that.

  “She’s the third lucky girl this week,” the demon gloated. “She picked the yellow balloon, so she won the prize.”

  “Why did you cut her open like that?” I posed the question in a casual tone, as if I was talking shop with this monster. If I fed his ghoulish ego, he might release Georgia long enough for her to slip out from under him and then I could burn his ass to a crisp.

  “That’s how I like to show them off,” the demon said. “Kind of a tribute, you might say.”

  “A tribute to what?”

  “To all the poor suckers out there who lost their hearts to beautiful girls like her.” His hollow laughter chilled me to the bone. “Just kidding. That little slut wasn’t who I really wanted. She was bait for this one here.” He motioned to Georgia with his thumb. “You’re going to come with me, aren’t you, sweetheart?”

  His clawed, filthy hand caressed Georgia’s cheek. Still trapped under his bulky form, she gave me a wild-eyed stare. The pieces of this horrifying puzzle were starting to fall into place.

  “Well, you do some great work,” I said loudly. “Mind if I take a closer look?”

  “Go ahead,” he said with gruesome generosity. “You can admire my handiwork all you want.”

  The corpse was starting to ripen, and I struggled to keep from gagging as I approached. The girl’s blue eyes, now filmed gray, stared up at the balloon that had cost her life.

  “My, my. You sure did a great job.” I pointed to the cavity in the center of her chest. “What kind of tool did you use here?”

  “A butcher’s knife. I like to stick to the basics,” he boasted.

  “Still got the knife on you? I’d love to see how you did this. You carved her up like a Thanksgiving turkey.”

  The demon chuckled. “Sure. Let me show you how it’s done.”

  He stepped away from Georgia. Her body went slack, and for a second, I was afraid she might faint. I stared at her, willing her not to move—not yet. Muttering to himself, the demon let her go and lurched away to his lair behind another piling.

  I motioned frantically for Georgia to join me. Smart girl that she was, she came to me on tiptoes, one hand clamped over her mouth to stifle her sobs.

  “Come on. Let’s go,” I hissed. I pointed to a piling about fifty yards away. I tried to hold her hand as we ran through the darkness, but she shook her hand free.

  “Hey! Where did you go? Where did you take that cambion bitch?” the demon bellowed. “She’s mine!”

  I glanced at Georgia. She stared straight ahead into the shadowy underbelly of the pier. Her jaw was clenched, and her hands were balled into fists. I nudged her with my elbow.

  “You okay?” I whispered.

  Georgia shot me a look of mingled shock and betrayal.

  “No,” she hissed. “I am not okay. You knew all along, you bastard. Why didn’t you fucking tell me?”

  “I was going to tell you. We were all going to tell you together. We didn’t think it was the right time.”

  “This is about me.” She jabbed a finger at her chest. “You didn’t tell me the single most important thing about who I am or what I am. You just kept it a big secret because you didn’t think it was the right time.”

  She spoke those last words in a mocking singsong, her voice rising in volume. I clapped my hand over her mouth.

  “Georgia, we will talk about this, but not now. Keep your voice down or that beast will hear you.”

  “Who cares? He already knows that I’m half-demon. That’s w
hy he wants me. That’s why he killed those girls. It was some kind of twisted gift to get my attention and bring me down here to this hellhole.”

  She was practically shouting now. I knew it was only a matter of seconds before the demon returned to the corpse. This time, thanks to me, he would have a butcher’s knife in his hand. But Georgia and I had something much more effective.

  If only I could get her to calm down, we might be able to save our skins.

  26

  Georgia

  Carter had warned me over and over again that there were demons out there. He had told me that they would try to seduce me for my powers, to recruit me into their evil army. But he’d failed to mention the reason that I was sought after in the demon realm.

  I was half-evil, myself. A cambion, like the human-demon hybrids described in the books in Kingston’s library. And I’d had to hear it from a demon who’d murdered four girls as an offering to me.

  After Carter and I arrived at the pier, we quickly split up so that we could cover more ground. Even though I wanted to join him in searching for the missing girl, I went along with his plan and took the more passive approach. One by one, I questioned the carnies who staffed the game booths and food trucks. I talked to a hot dog vendor first, then a woman who spent her days sprinkling powdered sugar on hot funnel cakes. She thought she remembered seeing a blonde with a yellow balloon, but it had been a busy night full of pretty young women trying to recapture their childhoods.

  I thought I’d hit the jackpot when a heavyset guy approached me. He had a comical way of rolling back and forth from side to side when he walked, as if he were on a ship. My demon radar didn’t go off when he waddled right up to me. His face resembled a melted wax mask, but under the brim of his Cubs baseball cap, he didn’t look threatening.

  “Hey, lady. Looking for someone?” he asked.

  His baritone voice had a hoarse, halting quality, as if he didn’t talk to other people very often.

  “Yes.” My heart skipped a beat. “Yes, I am. A very pretty girl wearing a pink sorority t-shirt. She was maybe in her early twenties. Long blonde hair. She was last seen buying a yellow balloon.”