The hair on the back of my neck stood on end. I felt the heat of red laser eyes on my back and whipped around. There was nothing there, but I blinked into my shadow sight to double check. I scanned the street and sidewalk but there were no demon shadows clinging to light poles or bushes or hovering in the air.
I tried to make my shoulders relax but I was wound up tight and couldn’t. I turned back to Pete and gasped. Inky black demon shadows danced on his shoulders and clung to his clothes. He was covered in them.
Pete was possessed. He had to be to have that many demon shadows around.
I took an involuntary step back and tugged on the back of Conor’s jacket. He took one look at my face and his hand flew to his daggers on either side.
Pete’s eyes turned red. Blood tears poured down his cheeks, staining his skin. He opened his mouth like he was screaming but no sound came out. And then he flew forward.
Conor kept the obsidian blade sheathed and tried to fend off Pete’s attack without hurting him. I got the impulse, but the demon controlling him would only leave the body if forced out. That meant we had to make it unpleasant to exist in Pete’s body.
I conjured a ball of demon fire and silently apologized to Pete. I would do my best not to hurt him more than necessary to get the demon out. “Hey, Petey,” I yelled.
Pete snarled, his face twisting into an inhuman mask of rage and fury. He pushed Conor onto the ground with such force that Conor flew down the porch steps and landed on the walkway that led to the house.
I tossed my fireball at Pete’s chest. He moved too fast and I missed. Then he was on top of me. He dug his fist into the fabric of my shirt and lifted me off the ground.
I gasped, heart pounding as my feet dangled in the air. I struggled, wiggling and trying to get out of his grasp. He held fast with preternatural demon strength. Pete’s arm would be sore in the morning but that didn’t matter to the demon. Only Pete would suffer the consequences of the demon’s actions.
“You will submit to me and allow me to deliver you to the demon lord Ashraith,” the demon commanded.
“Fat chance.”
I conjured more demon fire and lobbed it at Pete’s shirt. This time it caught, igniting in a burst of blue flame. The demon screamed. He could ignore some pain but not all. He dropped me and I landed badly, twisting one leg under me. I clenched my teeth against the pain and let it roll over me. Then I got up and tried to walk it off. It wasn’t broken, I didn’t think. It just hurt.
I had more fire in my fist before the first fire went out. The demon in Pete roared like an angry bear. And then he came at me again, his hands reaching for my throat.
Panic washed over me as I remembered the demon using someone else’s hands to strangle me. I reached up and tossed the fire at his fingers. He touched the blue flame and reared back.
I danced out of his range and then strained to conjure more fire. I pulled at my energy and made a ball the size of a basketball.
The demon rounded on me, trying to corner me at the end of the porch. I could jump the railing but it wasn’t an easy move, not with him right there ready to grab me. I held the fire up to keep him at bay.
“Get out of Pete,” I yelled.
“Not until I deliver you as promised.” The demon licked his lips. “There’s a fine reward for your capture.”
Ice filled my veins.
Great. There was a demon bounty on my head. Just what I needed.
I kept my fireball burning in front of me. “I said, get out of the witch and no one gets hurt.”
The demon laughed. His laughter was strained but his eyes full of malice. And then his expression shifted. His face softened and the red light blinked out of his eyes. I let my fire drop. Pete screamed and fell forward. I extended my arms to catch him.
The demon roared again and Pete’s body stiffened in my arms. The demon snarled. I let go but he had his hands around my throat before I could get away. He squeezed at my neck and I gasped for air, kicking out but unable to get him with my feet.
I conjured yet more demon fire. And then I saw Conor behind Pete. He thrust one of his daggers into Pete’s shoulder. The demon screamed and let go of my throat. He whirled on Conor.
Conor drove the obsidian blade into the meaty part of Pete’s upper arm. The demon screamed again. I tossed a fireball at the back of Pete’s shirt and it went up in flames.
The demon howled. It left Pete’s body, a black swirl of evil energy rising out of him like smoke. Pete’s body went limp. Conor caught him before he hit the hard wood of the porch.
Conor removed the dagger and sword, plugging the wounds with paper towels I grabbed from the kitchen. Both had been aimed to hurt but not do much damage. There was still a lot of blood.
I helped him get Pete onto the sofa in his living room. And then I went in search of a first aid kit. We needed to clean up Pete’s wounds as best we could. Attacking him—hurting him—had been unavoidable with the demon trying to kill us. But it sucked for Pete, or anyone who got possessed. He would need time to heal.
In Pete’s bathroom, the bathmat was flopped over on one side, like someone had tripped on it and not bothered to smooth it out. Beneath the mat, I saw the dark outline of a blood circle and a lump formed in my throat.
Ashraith and his mage accomplice had set a demon trap for Pete. He’d stepped into it without even seeing it, allowing the demon to possess him. It was a sinister trick, one used by the demon-worshipping mages we’d fought months back. I didn’t know whether Jax had worked with them or just had the same playbook, but either way, it was truly vile magic.
Being possessed was a special hell that no one deserved.
I dug through the medicine cabinet and found some antibacterial ointment, bandages, and a potion bottle with the label “healing salve” that had maybe an inch of gray stuff at the bottom. I carried it back to the living room.
Conor pulled off the bloody paper towels and spread the healing salve on the wounds before bandaging them up. Pete was still out. Sometimes, possession pushes one so far back in their own mind that they need to sleep it off. Pete had fought against the demon valiantly, even managing to break through to us a few times. That took energy.
As long as he woke up within eight hours, he’d be okay. The worst case scenario was that he’d gone into a coma, and I hoped that wasn’t the case.
Conor sat in an easy chair next to the sofa and leaned back against it, defeated. “They guessed our move again.” Frustration oozed out of his words. “How are they always so far ahead?”
I shook my head. I didn’t know. “They put a demon trap in Pete’s bathroom.”
Conor winced. “I’m burning all of my bath mats.”
“I’m definitely going to be checking under rugs for the rest of my life,” I said. “Which I’m hoping is going to be longer than tonight. So we should work on protection spells and then get moving. They still have Penelope.”
Conor did one of those full-body sigh things where his entire being just heaved but then he stood and got to work.
He prepared a protection ritual, the one he usually did, and then did it for both of us. It tingled and I heard the audible pop! of magic. But it could only protect against so much. It might give us an element of luck or resistance, but it wouldn’t actually block any attacks.
I pulled my cauldron and supplies out of the car and mixed up a quick batch of shield charms, or as quick as possible. The stones had to marinate in the spell soup (a mixture of aloe, dried chrysanthemum petals, nettles, and rowan in water with droplets of my blood) for at least twenty minutes. Three hours was better, but we didn’t have three hours.
Once the stones were charged with the shield magic, I gave three of the stones to Conor and kept one just in case. The shield charms would throw up a magical shield to block a spell or other attack, but they could only block so much and didn’t last more than a minute or two. These, done so quickly, might only last ten or fifteen seconds, but it was better than nothing.
&nbs
p; Pete was in no condition to help us. Conor wrote him a brief note explaining what had happened, as being possessed was disorienting and he may or may not remember any of it.
And then, with a protection ritual done and a few shield charms in our pockets, we went to kill the demon and save my friend.
Chapter 21
The address in the note led us to an abandoned office strip about a mile off a freeway exit. It stood alone, away from anything else, except for a closed down gas station across the street. The pumps had been torn out of the ground, leaving only the car port cover that leaned to the side and a boarded up rectangle of a building that had probably been the adjoining minimart.
The road was torn up and clearly hadn’t been in use for over a decade, maybe two. Notice of land use boards were posted but had faded in the sun. Probably a developer had bought the land for some purpose but permits or funding had fallen through, the area was left to wild.
Conor’s SUV bounced over the broken pavement and pulled into the parking lot.
I got out, grabbing my sword and slamming the car door. Given the lack of traffic to this patch of land, our enemies had to have heard us pull up, so there was no reason to aim for stealth.
I pulled out my phone and turned on the flashlight, shining it around. Grass and dandelions sprouted out of cracks in the cement.
The office strip had once been home to three different businesses, although what they’d been was a mystery. Any remaining signage was too weathered and faded to read. Each had its own entrance and a window to the left of the door. All of the windows had been covered in boards that had “No Trespassing” signs pasted on top. None of them looked like anyone had been inside since the office park went out of use.
I blinked into my shadow sight. Sure enough, demon shadows crawled across the window and door ledges, but they were evenly spread out between all three units.
Conor came up beside me and gestured at my cell phone flashlight. “Not feeling subtle?”
“Screw it. I’m on the attack.”
Conor smiled. A raw, genuine smile that rose up to glitter in his blue eyes. It made me want to kiss him. Instead, I turned off the flashlight and shoved my phone in my jacket pocket. “Any guess if our demon is behind door number one, two, or three?”
Conor studied each door and then said, “Two.”
My eyebrows rose. They all looked identical to me, but I trusted his judgement.
“Door number two is our lucky winner!” I called and kicked it in. Well, tried to kick it in. It was harder to do that than it was in movies. The door was old and the wood rotten, so my sneaker made a solid dent but I didn’t exactly knock the door off its hinges.
Conor didn’t miss a beat. The minute my unsuccessful kick ended, he kicked the door with greater force, splintering the wood near the lock. The door banged open. A cloud of musty-smelling dust billowed out.
Conor smirked. “Don’t feel bad, Warren. I’ve had lots of practice.”
I gave him a sharp side-eye and raised my sword.
Conor moved to the next door and kicked it in. I was sure he was right about it being the second office, but he and I both knew it was best to cover our bases.
I remained focused on good old Door Number Two.
“Come out, assholes. The jig is up!” I yelled into the office.
When no energy balls or demon fire flew at my face, I stepped up to the door and glanced inside. There was an old reception desk with a high counter that formed a “u” and a waiting area. An open door to the left of the desk led to a hall. From a faded sign with a toothbrush on it, I assumed this had once been a dentist’s office. As if this place couldn’t get any creepier.
I stepped inside. The floor was dirty and covered with dust, but the dust had been disturbed and it looked like someone had walked around recently. Conor was probably right about this being the winning office suite.
I swallowed. My heart pounded in my throat. I checked behind the reception desk, but there was nothing. Then I took a deep breath, coughed out the dusty air and realized that had been a mistake, and headed through the inner door.
A loud caw rang through the air. My pulse quickened as I tried to pinpoint which room the sound was coming from. The first room was empty. The second was empty, too, and I could feel the blood rushing my brain. I wanted to call out but if Jax were lying in wait, I didn’t want him to know exactly where I was.
I inched up to the third room and gasped. This room had no windows so it was darker but I could make out a black bird cage in the dead center. Penelope cawed when she saw me.
“Shit. Hi. Sorry,” I said. “I’m here.”
Trapped in a small cage like that, there was no way she could shift into her human form. It had to be a helpless feeling and one thing Penelope and I had in common was we loathed the idea of ever being helpless.
I started to step inside.
She cawed and flapped her wings in warning. I paused. She tilted her head. I followed the gaze of her dark eye down to the floor. I squinted into the dimness, willing my eyes to adjust. The entire room had been ringed in a magical circle that edged as close to the wall as possible while keeping it round.
“Shit.”
To diffuse the circle, I needed to walk the perimeter, and I couldn’t since the circle took up the entire room. There were other ways to force circles closed but they were harder and took more time and energy. Maybe that was the point.
Footsteps sounded behind me and I whirled, sword out and ready. Conor put his hands up in a “don’t shoot” gesture. “The other two offices are empty,” he said.
“That’s because the demon trap is in here,” I said, nodding at the salt circle rimming the room. “How do we get Penelope without stepping into it?”
The circle glowed, as if in answer, and frozen air wafted out of it.
Conor stared into the circle for a moment and then, inexplicably, closed his eyes. After a moment, he opened them and said, “It’s not a demon trap. I don’t feel any strong demonic energy.”
I stared at it using my shadow sight. He was right. It was empty. A demon trap was a circle that was meant to hold a demon in place so that when someone stepped through and broke it, the demon could possess them. This circle had been left open, which meant monsters could get inside, but they hadn’t bothered to put any demon inside it on purpose. At least not yet.
Penelope was still trapped inside it, which was bad enough, and going to get worse if anything decided to come through the circle.
As if on cue, a strange buzzing sounded somewhere deep in the circle. I strained, trying to make it out. It got louder.
My pulse raced. “We need to close the circle now.”
Conor nodded. He produced a baggy of ash and began ashing the perimeter where he could reach it. That wasn’t going to work if we didn’t get all the way around, and given how close the circle came to the wall, we’d need to fly to make it happen.
I blinked into my shadow sight. Demon shadows clung to the ceiling. I pushed my will into them, coaxing them to cover and close the circle. They moved at a glacial pace, sliding down the wall like shadowy specters, inching toward the edges of the circle.
I strained, trying to make them move faster. The buzzing was now so loud that I could barely think over it. It was like a hundred swarms of bees. Penelope cawed, wings flapping in agitation.
“I know, working on it,” I told her. Whatever was coming toward the circle was big, nasty, and demonic. I pushed the demon shadows on top of the circle and they clung to it. I willed them to close it, to move faster, to get it sealed off.
They’d made it half way to the center of the circle when a giant black wasp burst through.
I nearly dropped my sword. The wasp was the size of a small dog, two feet long with a gleaming, sharp beak and a stinger as long as one of Conor’s daggers. It buzzed around the circle, using its long, sword-like stinger to poke at the circle’s edges. It summersaulted mid-air and its dark, beady eyes landed on me. It zoomed for
ward and slammed into the edge of the circle like a bug against a window.
Except this bug was huge and the impact didn’t hurt it. It just threw itself at the sides of the circle again, going around the perimeter looking for a weak spot.
I compelled the shadows to pull the wasp back down into the Underworld and close the circle. The demon shadows swarmed over the bottom of the circle, covering all but a small circle in the center that surrounded Penelope’s cage. The shadows ran toward the cage like liquid coal, a glittering black pool of demonic energy that could cover the circle and seal it shut.
The wasp, unable to get out, buzzed angrily around, darting up and down and side to side. It hit the ceiling and made a sound almost like a roar, a sound no insect should be able to make. It shook the marrow in my bones.
Conor shouted something and I waved him off, trying to keep my focus. He could sense demonic energy but he couldn’t see demon shadows and he didn’t know what I was doing.
I tried to force the shadows under the cage. Once the circle was full, the demonic energy would vacuum the demon from the circle and close, leaving Penelope safe and sound and the room clear.
I was almost there. I strained to keep it going, to put energy into the demon shadows. The wasp, zipping around the circle with increasing fury, slammed into Penelope’s bird cage. It fell over, hitting the ground. I swore, losing focus, and the demon shadows pulled back from the center.
And then all hell broke loose, almost literally: the rounded cage rolled toward the edge of the circle. Conor screamed. I shouted and tried to get the demon shadows to catch it, but they weren’t solid. The cage rolled to the edge of the room, slamming against the wall. Its top and bottom crossed the edge of the circle.
A pop! sounded in the air.
The circle opened.
The demon wasp, free from the confines of the now-broken circle, flew right at me.
Chapter 22
The demon shadows retreated, sliding back up the walls and hovering near the ceiling. Now that the circle was broken, the shadows couldn’t close it.
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