A Demon's Duty (The Demon Guardian Trilogy Book 1)

by Katherine Kim

  The research and scholarship done on the history, biology, and behavior of demons done by Temple scholars was remarkable. She checked her list and started stacking the books on a shelving cart the librarian had lent her upon seeing her arm in the sling. It felt good to be doing something, even though it seemed like the slowest, most tedious thing they could have picked. May realized that now that the shock had passed, she felt restless. Twitchy. She still wasn’t sure how she felt about the situation with Michael, but it was much easier to process without him around. Her grief still crept up on her at random moments, filling her eyes with tears she just couldn’t stop and squeezing the breath right out of her chest.

  She needed to be doing something— all of it was easier for her to deal with when she was busy— and finding a way to end the threat of those hounds was exactly the something she wanted to do. She silently swore to make sure that nobody else was hurt by these creatures. Paula had a good point that knowing more about them would help her prepare the spells May would need to destroy them. Her old standby spells had clearly not been enough— the weakening spells had just sunk into the creatures hides and her defensive spells had been shredded easily by those claws. She would not fail again. Ever.

  She placed the last book on the cart and started pushing it back to the table. Paula and Lee were already there, leafing through the history books. She rolled the cart up beside them.

  “Good. We should start, really, with what those things probably started out as. Standard demon hounds, I imagine, from your description.” Paula said, peering through her reading glasses at the pages she was flipping past. “Staffordson has much the best illustrations, I think, and sometimes has details that others don’t. Ah, here we go. Hounds. ‘The common Demon Hound is not much of a threat should you face it in direct battle. However they often cause a great deal of damage before being discovered: gardens and farm fields dug up, trees clawed up, and small animals killed.” She started muttering as she read over the entry. “Their hide can deflect some of the more common and basic attacks simply by virtue of its thickness, so having a selection of sharper, more specifically directed attacks at your disposal is the key to their easy defeat.”

  “Well I can certainly confirm that the normal spells I used did hardly anything. And that picture definitely resembles those things that killed James and Pike. But those are so much smaller and the wings are barely even there on that one. I mean that’s what, the size of a Golden Retriever? At most? The things we fought were the size of cars!” May frowned. How could these Hounds get bred to such an insane size? And to what end? There were occasional periods of High Demons invading the human realm, but no mentions of them using such creatures. Those small invasions had always simply used the guise of dictators or crime bosses or some such, the demons taking positions in the organizations or governments. They had always preferred subtle manipulations to all out bloody confrontations, unless the confrontation in question had been human against human. Maybe they found that amusing, the bastards. More pinpoint-able spells, May thought. Okay then. Better find a few things to use against whoever is breeding them, as well. May opened the cracked leather tome from the Rare Books section to learn some new spells.

  May had always been a quick study, and after a couple of hours she had memorized the few spells and facts that dealt directly with High Demons, and the couple of possibly useful spells she thought would help with the hounds. She felt as ready as she could possibly get, and was getting fidgety. She flipped idly through the rest of the books on the table. May leaned on her good arm and closed her eyes for a few minutes, still a bit tired after expending so much energy in battle just a couple of days ago. Really, she was just closing her eyes for a moment.

  She was a little girl again. It was just after her mother had died, and her uncle had come to take care of her. She didn’t know her uncle very well— he’d never visited them much and Mama had always said that he had no use for family responsibilities. Now that Mama was dead she had to live with her uncle and she hated it. Mama had smelled like flowers and always been ready to hug or snuggle her. Uncle smelled like old grease and people, held her hand too tight, and grumbled at her. Mama would tuck her in every night after a bath and read to her till the quiet words blended together into a dream. Uncle would leave her on the mattress in the corner in the evenings do snarl “Now you go to sleep. I’m going out.” And she would cry under the thin blankets till she slept. That morning he hadn’t come back home till after she’d woken up, and he was still drunk. He’d told her to get her shoes on and she was coming with him to his job cause he couldn’t leave her at home again or his nosy gods-damned neighbor’d call the cops. He dragged her along the street and waited at the crosswalk. And he was snarling at her the whole time, calling her a useless brat who was just dragging him down.

  What happened next she was never really sure, but suddenly she felt like she was falling, then there was some horrible noise and she was being cradled gently by a dark man who crouched on the curb and her uncle was gone, running down the street as fast as he could go. She blinked, feeling her eyes widen as she looked up at the stranger peering back down at her with dark, alien eyes.

  He blinked and they were normal eyes after all: brown and tired and a little sad. He said something to her, but she couldn’t hear it. Like someone had confused the sound and mixed it up with something else. A woman’s voice was asking if she’d left her glasses somewhere, and the noise of papers being shuffled made her frown.

  “Marshmallow rhinoceros.” She said into her arm.

  “Well I suppose that’s one way to go about it, but I don’t know how effective it would be.” Paula smiled into May’s confused eyes. May sat up and blinked a few times. Oh, she’d been dreaming. Paula was laughing quietly and Lee was apparently doing his best to let her wake up with some dignity.

  “What’s our plan now?” she asked. Paula’s humor faded and she sighed. Tired, wary eyes peered at May over the top of electric purple reading glasses.

  “We’re waiting to hear back from Michael. I know it’s hard to wait, sweetie, but be patient. The more information we have, the better decisions we can make. So while we wait, we study.”

  “Well why don’t we go to where ever it was that those hounds came from and tear the place up for clues? There must be something to tell us who’s doing this and where they are now! Not even High Demons can spend time somewhere and not leave any trace.” Now that she was awake again she was restless. “Sitting here and reading isn’t going to do us any more good. We’ve been there all afternoon! We’ve gotten all we need out of these books— the hounds seem like they’re just bigger versions of the things in the Staffordson book, and you finished reading that one hours ago. I’ve picked out the most useful spells from in here already, and between the two of us, Paula, we’re ready! Let’s go already!” May knew all she needed to know for this fight, and honestly if they couldn’t take out the other pack by now they never would.

  Paula sighed and closed the book she’d been reading.

  “I’m sure that Michael found out all he could from the warehouse, hon. He said it was pretty well emptied out, not to mention badly damaged. When he has something to tell us he’ll call, just be patient. We can’t be sure what those monsters are, and we need to be ready for all sorts of possibilities, which means we wait to hear from Michael who is better suited to this sort of thing than we are.” Paula looked over the pile of books stacked at her elbow.

  “Do you trust him?” May asked quietly. Lee closed his own book and eyed her.

  “Do you?” he asked. May’s brows drew together and she stared at the top of the reading table. Finally she shrugged.

  “I would have said yes, before.” She answered slowly. “Which sounds terrible, but I just don’t understand how he could… Why James would even suggest…” May grimaced at the wooden tabletop and struggled to find the words to express the conflict in her mind.On the one hand, he was a High Demon who had clearly taken James’ Mark and
his powers by ripping free and consuming James’ soul, and that idea left her feeling shredded and betrayed in the most terrifying way. No human was entirely clear on the process, but she knew that meant that James’ soul was now a part of Michael. On the other hand she somehow knew that Michael was, for some bizarre reason, actually a man of his word. He’d sworn to be her Guardian and wouldn’t have been able to receive the Mark otherwise, and she knew that he meant to live up to that oath. She didn’t see the older pair glance at each other. Instead she just heard Paula start sweeping books onto the shelving cart beside her.

  “We’ll just have to wait until we hear from him then. I’m sure it won’t be much longer, hon. For us, it’s time for some new tomes, I think. We’ve wrung all we can from these ones.” She stood up and stretched, loading the cart up with the books they’d already been through. “I think Laura’s gotten a new batch for us by now. Be right back.” She started pushing the cart back to the librarian’s desks. May sighed and stretched and shuffled some papers with her notes on them around the table then sighed again.

  “Half of a battle is waiting and planning.” Lee said. He was watching her quietly, his brown eyes mild and his hands folded on the table.

  “How can you stand it?” May asked. She scrubbed her hand over her face then pushed her curly hair back, again. “I’m going to go insane if I have to keep sitting here in this stifling silence.”

  “Practice, mostly.” He said, glancing up at her over his reading glasses and smiling, his mild brown eyes crinkling at the corners. “I understand what you mean though. Sam was always better at this part than I was. I was more like you, ready to get out there and kick some demonic butt, but he always wanted to know as much as he could get into his brain before he went out there.”

  “Kick demonic butt, hmm?” May sighed. “What about Michael?” She frowned. He’d been so careful of her, after, making sure that she was comfortable and making all the decisions for her once it was clear that she was unable to decide for herself. She was over that shock now, and was thinking like mad. And while she realized that she did trust him to a degree, she still had a decision to make. And that decision could very well affect whether the Temple let him live or not. It seemed entirely possible that soon it would be Michael they were preparing to hunt down.

  “Michael is a fairly unique case. He always has been.” Lee stretched back in the wooden chair, rolling his shoulders. “He’s never, to my knowledge, even tried to set up like any other High Demons who come here. He simply set up his businesses so he could sit back and do whatever it is he does when he’s alone in that apartment. We used to follow him around when he went out, and I think I’d rather have been here doing Paula’s research. He just went for walks. To the bookstore, to the museum, sometimes just walking. He’d get hassled sometimes, like anyone would if they go wandering around dangerous places in the middle of the night, but he never used more force than he needed to when he did. At least not that we ever saw.” Lee shook his head.

  “Do you think I should trust him? As a Guardian, I mean? To work with?” She asked, her voice quiet. Lee shook his head again.

  “I can’t decide that for you. You say the word and Paula and I will step in. But personally? I think he is taking his promise to James pretty seriously. We may simply need more time to see. For now, though. More research.” Lee smiled again when May groaned.

  “How did you not go entirely bonkers?” May asked. “I’m not sure how much longer I can sit here.”

  “Move around some. Keep your blood going.” He said. “I can’t tell you how many laps I’ve paced around libraries in my life.”

  May’s eyes lit up.

  “Good idea. First stop, the bathroom.” She said, jumping up and grabbing her small hip bag. “I’ll freshen up and that’ll help I bet.” Lee nodded and returned to his reading. May hesitated for a moment before turning the corner of the book case, glancing back at the top of his head. Then, taking a deep breath, she turned and walked as fast as she could to the front door and out into the evening air.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Michael opened the heavy door gently. He owned several properties in the area, and a number of others scattered over the whole world, and this office building was one of them. He liked the idea that he had options and was free to go where he pleased. This, though, was his private space, filling much the same role as his cavern had: a place to hide away where no other creatures knew to look. It was a dozen stories off the ground, and then further soundproofing had been installed ensuring a weighty silence, the air slightly musty with old books and recent experiments. Heavy drapes covered all the windows and subtle lighting kept the space in permanent dusk. His usual ward system and a spell-woven net encasing the space as well ensured privacy from any sort of intrusion.

  One large room, originally meant to be filled with cubicles was instead lined with bookshelves holding tomes on spell casting, enchanting, chemistry, metallurgy, and alchemy, and dominated by a long table that held reading lamps and a complicated alchemical workstation. At one end of the room sat a large wingback chair, covered with a shabby quilt to cover the even shabbier upholstery, and a side table and lamp. That chair was probably the oldest and most reliable friend he had, he thought.

  Some of the books had been brought with him in his flight— as had most of the delicate alchemical tools— and it was to this shelf he went, skimming gentle fingers over the familiar spines till he found the tome he wanted. Carrying it to the comfort of the old chair he settled in to flip through it, skimming over the opening text that now felt as if it was written in an unfamiliar language, letting himself taste words he hadn’t even thought of for years until this afternoon when Belit had appeared beside him and greeted him by name. During the chaos of the last battles against the invading forces of the Nefil, the great warrior Nergalash stood in the ashes of his clan and destroyed the army that had overrun it. Then, in the month that followed he paved his trail with the bones of those who opposed him until he came to a great, forbidding mountain. Here, he declared, he would gather the strongest demons and build a fortress that would repel any assault. Even the merest thought of his armies would cause their enemies to cower in fear. This was the beginning of the Branoor Clan.

  Michael flipped through the book, skimming more entries until he came to the one he sought. He read it twice through, then with a sigh leaned back in his chair. He needed to think. He closed his eyes and stretched his senses out till he could feel the vibrations of the watchman pacing the hallways below, the hum of the cars driving past on the street outside, the soft whoosh of air through the building’s ductwork.

  It felt almost as calming to him as his cavern had been, although he did rather miss the zickering of the bats that lived near the tiny chimney entrance deep in the back of the cave system. He had gotten out of the habit of reaching out like this, checking his surroundings as far as he could for possible threats. When had he let his guard down so much, he wondered again? It had been decades at least. He would have been dead many times over if he lived like this within the daily scheming of his clan, especially as close to the Court as he had been due to the simple fact of his parentage. He leaned back in the chair for a moment, considering.

  Belit did have a plan, and Michael understood it well enough. She was perhaps not actually an exile, but her father had been on the wrong side of the coup, and she desired to return not as the daughter of a traitor, but as her own woman. And she planned to trade him as the payment for her return to the ranks of the aristocracy. She was certainly not above offering her body to lure him into compliance, not that she seemed to think that he needed much tempting— either to sleep with her or to return to the clan. She certainly had reason to be confident in her own attractions.

  Michael stood and with a deep breath placed his book open on the table, its pages idly turning themselves till coming to rest under the glare of the reading lamp. He crossed over to a wardrobe and opened it to reveal the mirror inside the door, his oth
er hand going to the buttons of his shirt. He let it hang open, his skin shimmering and shifting at the same time to return to his natural state.

  Michael had decided long ago that it was safer to simply keep his glamour up at all times, and it now took conscious effort to release it. Now he stared into his own face for the first time in perhaps half a century and felt almost as if he looked at a stranger. His eyes were larger than a human’s, and so black they could have been all pupil, with a thin ring of red separating darkness from the narrow white edges. Sharp, boney protrusions marched in an undulating row from the outer edge of his eyebrow right into his hairline and he knew that as he aged they would grow together to fuse into the horn-like protrusions that were so iconically ‘demonic’ to human artists. And no human naturally had skin that dusky shade of dark red, like old bricks.

  He was almost afraid to look at the mark he had received from James. He had actually been avoiding the moment for the past few days, deliberately avoiding mirrors. He couldn’t say why, either, and that made him even less eager to look, but he could feel it like an itch, constantly trying to claim his attention.

  When Belit leaned over to touch him the Mark reacted volcanically and it had taken him enormous control not to startle at the pain. Belit would jump on any perceived weakness, even if she didn’t know specifically what it was, and that could be deadly. Nothing in the Temple histories he’d been reading that morning had mentioned anything like his Mark’s reaction being one of a Guardian’s tools. Of course, there had never been a Guardian like himself before. Perhaps it had been a warning for him, specifically. He glared at himself in the mirror and peeled the shirt off to look. Cool now, the Mark still shimmered faintly with power.

  He ran his fingers over the odd geometric swirl. Black lines crossing his flesh— though it could easily be mistaken for a tattoo the design was not drawn upon his flesh with ink, but was imposed upon it through pure power and was actually a part of his natural coloring now. He could cut through each line and the colored lines would go through skin, through muscle down to his bones. Possibly deeper than that, not that he wanted to find out. A gift freely given and strange as it seemed even to himself, freely accepted. Michael sighed and shook his head. He couldn’t lie to himself like that: he had been eager to accept James’ offer. It was strange to think that the two had only met a handful of times, but the young man seems to have understood something about Michael that he himself hadn’t even realized until that moment.