Demon Hunter (The Collegium Book 1)

by Jenny Schwartz

  Elevator doors opened and Fay stepped in. She held the doors for Steve who came and stood a fraction too close for good manners, a subtle statement of intimacy. The doors closed and the elevator shuddered, shaking in place rather than ascending.

  “Oh no you don’t.” After a demon, a golem and a were leopard potential lover, Collegium protections weren’t about to stop her. She ripped the hold spell from the elevator and mundane electronics took over. They shot up to the seventeenth floor, one of the research centers. Specifically, the lab where they studied the demons she’d bound.

  The elevator doors opened.

  Fay stalked down the corridor to the third room. She twisted the handle and found it locked. Magic pulsed, re-enforcing the physical barrier.

  “Damn door.” She kicked it.

  “There are people in there.” Steve’s shoulder brushed hers. His head tilted as he listened. “Voices. I think the receptionist phoned a warning.”

  “They knew I’d come here.”

  “Or he had the sense to read the elevator display.” It was a quiet reminder to control her anger and suspicions.

  She nodded, then raised her voice. “Open the damn door.”

  No response.

  Her mouth compressed. Three seconds later the door shrieked away from its frame and collapsed inward.

  Inside, an older man replaced the phone on a corner desk and glared at Fay across the expanse of scratched wood that lay on the floor. A younger man and woman stood at the entrance to an inner room, the demon lab. Perhaps it was the unearthly timing and night light, but their complexions held a greenish tinge and even the adrenaline of her entrance didn’t straighten them from their slumped postures.

  “Angus.” Fay knew the chief demonologist. Under orders, she’d handed him the nine demons she’d bound to amulets. “What happened here, tonight?”

  Steve entered after her, prowling the perimeter of the room.

  Angus ignored him, concentrating on the threat he understood: Fay. “We had problems. We resolved them.”

  “Hell you did. I solved your problems. The demon broke your protections and came after me. I re-bound it and I’ll exorcise it.”

  “No.”

  Steve snarled under his breath.

  Everyone looked at him.

  “Blood,” he said. “I smell blood.” He advanced on the inner room.

  The two demonologists pressed themselves against the door, half in retreat, half in defense. The woman glanced once at Angus for help before her attention focused fearfully on Steve.

  “Call him off,” Angus commanded.

  Vicious anger spiraled through Fay. Steve was not an attack dog. “Who died?” she asked flatly, and knew her guess was right when the woman jumped, startled. The young man’s left hand closed tight on the doorframe.

  “It is none of your business, renegade,” Angus said.

  “As an insult, renegade lacks power.” Steve looked at Fay. “You want in?”

  The young woman slid away from the door, her courage gone. Angus’s glare could have incinerated her where she stood.

  “In a minute,” Fay answered Steve as she crossed the room. She stopped beside the woman. “I’m sorry I’ve forgotten your name.” She had never bothered to make friends, had known its unlikelihood in the Collegium.

  “Emma Jonker.”

  Fay nodded acknowledgement. “Who died, Emma?”

  “Lia and Hampton,” the young man beside her answered. “It ate them.”

  Emma shuddered.

  “Enough,” Angus snapped.

  “More than enough,” Steve purred.

  Fay met his eyes and gave the faintest nod. He stepped forward and the young man conceded the entrance.

  “Wait.” Angus walked around the desk. “What do you intend?”

  “I told you. To exorcise the demon.”

  “The Collegium still has use for it.”

  “The Collegium lost all rights over my decision when the hell-born thing killed, then came after me. You want me gone, Angus? Believe me, I don’t go till the demon has.”

  “It’s strong.” Emma slumped to the ground, her back to the wall. She looked up at Fay. “You’ll need help, but I…”

  “Knowing your limits is part of strength.” Steve found the words of absolution. He opened the door to the demon lab and the stench of gore and guts released on a wave of death.

  The young man broke. He ran out of the room with a hand to his mouth.

  “Young punk. Weak.”

  Leopard yellow flared in Steve’s eyes as he turned back to study Angus. “You were in charge. Their terror and pain, the demon’s kills, they’re your responsibility. Your burden.”

  Fay walked past him into the lab.

  Chapter 10

  Demonology was a conservative discipline. Shelves around the edges of the lab held jars of poison, amulets and the raw materials for their creation, metals and crystals. A large freezer held animal carcasses. Shelf after shelf held texts, prayers and chants. The floor was marble, easy to wash chalk marks off, not easy to burn.

  A man and a woman’s bodies lay torn in the middle of the room. The protective diagram chalked on the floor was smudged and broken. Candles were waxy pools set in a pattern new to Fay. She stopped at the edge of it.

  “Why haven’t you had the guardians in?” she asked Angus. There had been time enough since the demon attacked her in Fremantle for a clean-up operation.

  She read the answer in Angus’s tense face and his hovering in the doorway. “You weren’t sure the demon was contained.”

  “He was probably waiting for a way to escape responsibility for the screw up,” Steve said. He waited between Fay and Angus, protective.

  “People are irrational when it comes to demons,” Angus said. “I wanted to be sure they wouldn’t destroy the amulet.”

  Fay saw it, the silver gleaming, in the center of the broken pattern, beside the outstretched hand of the dead woman. The demon had ripped off half her face.

  “I’d say fear is a healthy response.” Fay breathed shallowly. The stink, the echoes of terror and the indefinable stench of demon all combined to induce nausea. A small part of her mind wondered how Steve’s heightened senses were dealing with the onslaught.

  She bent and drew her knife from its ankle sheath. It was the same blade she’d lent Steve in the African jungle. She’d been honing its magic for years. She could have thrown it at the golem, but she’d known she’d need it now. With a demon, there were seldom second chances.

  “Oran.” She’d learned the demon’s name in Africa. “Be visible.”

  The demon’s power was bound within the amulet, a binding it fought with the whole strength of its rage.

  Fay flinched.

  It was strong, standing here between the two people it had killed.

  “Bloody hell,” Steve whispered behind her.

  For one of the rare times, the demon appeared in its own form rather than within a human body. It was terrifying, so beautiful and remote that it hurt. It wasn’t flesh and blood, but fire. Colors of orange, crimson, saffron and white gold melded into one another to form a creature half a head taller than Fay. It was naked but for the crimson bat wings that folded around it.

  Without possession of a human body, Fay didn’t know if her knife could touch it, kill it. She held the blade ready for an underhand strike, ripping up through the stomach, under the ribs, to the heart. “Oran, I banish you from the world of humans, from the earth that nurtures, the sea that endures, the sky that holds our dreams. You are deceit and destruction. I know you. Name you.”

  The demon bared its teeth and threaded its own words through the ritual of exorcism. “You think you’ve won. You’ll lose everything. The infection is deep in the Collegium. I taste it.” Its tongue flickered.

  Ancient in evil, the demon followed its words with another sly attack. It worked around her bindings, not venturing a direct attack. She felt the lick of its powers fumble towards her heart.


  Steve covered her left shoulder blade with his hand and she pressed back into his human strength. But the demon wasn’t trying to physically kill her. She felt its frustrated rage as it touched her torn bindings to the Collegium. Through them it could have sunk claws into her, negating her exorcism by sending even a part of its power into her; blood to blood from the two demonologists it had killed.

  But she had destroyed every link to the Collegium.

  “Oran, I cast you into the exterior darkness, into hell with no hope of return.” Revulsion that it tried to possess her through loyalty to the Collegium gave her anger. She struck the air with her knife, opening a rip in reality and kicking Oran through it.

  The rip sealed behind the demon, leaving only the stench of brimstone and the amulet that had bound it melted to a blob of silver and gold.

  Fay leant back against Steve.

  He wrapped his arms around her and held her there.

  A near silent whisper crept from the doorway where Angus stood. “Ego voco vos...” I summon...

  Steve released Fay and shifted.

  Even her senses, trained and experienced in sensing magic pulses couldn’t track the speed of his shift.

  One moment human, the next, Steve snarled a warning. He was a leopard, but three times a leopard’s normal size. As his lips pulled back from sharp teeth, he looked more sabre-tooth tiger than hunting cat. His roar rattled the jars on their shelves and cut off Angus mid-word.

  The demonologist abandoned his summoning to shape and fling a constraining spell.

  Fay shrugged. Idiot. A spell wouldn’t affect a were leopard immune to magic attack.

  The futile spell fell shredded to the ground. Angus’s mouth gaped open, then his eyes widened and he staggered backwards.

  Steve paced forward.

  Angus flung another constraining spell, then a fire spell. From the outer room, Emma screamed as he grabbed her and slung her at Steve.

  “Enough.” Fay walked through the door.

  Steve shifted back to human. “You useless bastard.” He grabbed Angus by the collar of his shirt and slammed him against the wall.

  Fay hesitated. She was trained to attack and defend, but Steve had that covered. Instead she bent and helped Emma from the floor. “Are you hurt?”

  Emma shook her head, but burst into tears and cried against Fay, who patted her shoulder and looked helplessly at Steve. They ought to reverse roles. He’d know what to do with a crying woman.

  Steve had other concerns. Nails sharp as claws drew blood at Angus’s throat. “You waited till Fay was weak, vulnerable from cleaning up your mess, and then you attacked her. What was the spell you planned to use?”

  Glassy-eyed with terror and straining to vanish into the walls, Angus stayed silent.

  Sobbing and hiccoughing, Emma answered. “I recognized the chant. It was a summoning spell. They’re death magic. He wanted to call a demon to possess Fay.”

  A feral growl split the shocked silence.

  Then came the disgusting stink of Angus losing control of his bowels. “I was under orders. Demons channel magic. The Collegium wants to harness that ability to increase the magic it commands. Fay has no limit to the power she calls. It was…logical to channel a demon through her.”

  “I’ll eat your heart,” Steve said.

  Fay’s own heart seemed to start working again after the moment of frozen disbelief. Demonic possession was a cruelty beyond belief. For the Collegium to consider…no, decide to sacrifice her to that horror stabbed viciously.

  “I didn’t know. I would never…” Emma whispered.

  “It’s okay.” Fay patted her shoulder.

  Blood ran down Angus’s throat. “It’s by the President’s order. Since Fay won’t give her services freely, he said we must compel her.”

  “No father would order demonic possession of his daughter,” Steve said with the outrage of weres’ strong family and clan loyalty.

  Fay knew no such certainty. Her dad had ordered her possessed, utilized as a weapon, her spirit strangled. Freezing cold flowed out from her heart, chilling her thoughts into the cold ruthlessness she’d been trained in.

  “Go home.” She released Emma.

  “I should…” The woman looked from Fay to the other room, where the corpses of her friends lay.

  “We’ll clean up.”

  Emma’s gaze skitted away from Steve and Angus. She retreated slowly, then as she reached the outer door her pace quickened. She ran down the corridor.

  “Let him go,” Fay said to Steve.

  Angus collapsed to the floor.

  “He should die.” Steve faced her.

  “The Collegium can deal with its own trash,” she said. “Since no one else has called the guardians about two demon kills, I will. Their families need to be told. And Angus must take responsibility.”

  “He’ll lie or he’ll run. He’s a coward.”

  “Emma will tell the truth and there are truth-seers in the Collegium. You need to leave, Steve, so I can seal the room.”

  He glanced back at Angus. “Lie and I’ll kill you.” He walked out.

  Fay followed him to the door, then called magic. It answered sluggishly, her nerve endings burning. She’d reach the ragged end of the power she could command. First re-binding a demon, then destroying a golem, and finally, exorcising the demon took everything she had. Add in the emotional shock of her father’s treachery and she was running on empty.

  She ignored the pain and wove magic around the room, its windows and doors. Until the Collegium guardians arrived and brought their own mage, Angus would be trapped inside. Her ears popped as the room sealed.

  Steve put his hand at the curve of her neck and shoulder, possessive as much as protective. She didn’t shrug him off, but she didn’t lean into him either. They walked that way to the elevator and its doors opened.

  “I should have killed him,” he said.

  “Inside the Collegium building? Right or wrong, the guardians would have hunted you down. You’d have been judged and executed.”

  “What he did was wrong. What he said to you—” His hand tightened and released. “Sorry.”

  “Dad could have given that order.” Abruptly her cool voice shattered. She shuddered.

  Steve’s hand dropped to her waist. He stepped closer, pressing against her back. “He couldn’t. No father could.”

  “Mine could.”

  The elevator doors opened.

  Fay tilted her chin and stepped out. She caught the receptionist’s worried gaze as Emma leaned over his counter, half-hysterical. Fay spoke clearly, infusing her voice with the tone of command. “Dr. Angus Barnes is upstairs with the dead bodies of two of his staff. He tried to control a demon, partly loosing its binding. I’ve exorcised it. He should be charged with murder, manslaughter at the least. A Collegium demonologist banishes, he doesn’t call them.”

  “He tried to summon one to possess Fay,” Emma contributed.

  The receptionist’s eyes widened in dismay. “Is Dr. Barnes still alive?”

  “Regrettably,” Steve said.

  “Call the Collegium guardians to detain him,” Fay said. “They need to collect the bodies and formally identify them. Inform their families.”

  The receptionist fumbled for his phone, his attention on Fay with Steve at her shoulder. “I’ll call Nancy.” The all-purpose fixer who stood between the President and the Collegium, breaking his staff’s bad news to him, softening his arrogant commands to them.

  “Forget Nancy. Forget Dad. Call the damn guardians—and look after Emma.” Fay swung on her heel.

  Steve held his ground. “I have a message for the Collegium guardians and anyone else who needs to hear it. Fay isn’t yours any more. Let her alone.”

  “Or else?” The receptionist re-discovered his spine.

  Steve’s massive leopard form dominated the foyer. He flickered back to human. “Next time, Fay won’t stop me hunting.”

  Chapter 11

  Steve took th
e seatbelt from Fay’s clumsy grasp and fitted it home. “You’re wiped.”

  “I’m furious.” She turned her head and looked at him, seeing the stubble shadowing his jawline. He was hard and masculine, protective, concerned—but this was her fight. She pushed back a wave of fatigue. “You shouldn’t have threatened the Collegium.”

  “It was a promise.” He switched on the engine, pulling away from the Collegium.

  “Ha.”

  “Cute snort. You’re important to me, Fay.”

  She ignored him, too churned up with her own emotions to pursue his. “I’m in a mess with the Collegium. The smart thing would be for you to stay clear till I sort out what’s happening. It’s all gone to hell. Did you hear the demon Oran? He tasted infection in the Collegium.”

  “I heard.”

  “It’s awful. I shouldn’t even be in your car. Stop and let me out. I’ll take the subway.”

  “To where?”

  Her brain turned over the question, stuttering with tiredness. It found no answers. For her, New York had always meant the Collegium. Now the Collegium threatened her and was itself threatened, infected. If only she weren’t so hell-blasted power burned. She had to crash.

  “I have a place in New York,” he said. “Deep protections. A witch owed me a favor. It’s not in my name, either. We’ll leave the SUV at a were house and walk. The Collegium guardians might be able to track technology, but not you or me.”

  Him because he was a magic-immune were, and she because habitual protective magics guarded her.

  “I thought you lived in Cyprus?” She’d pictured him lounging in a hammock in the sunny grounds of a Mediterranean villa. In her vision, his eyes opened. He smiled at her and held out his hand, inviting her to tumble into the hammock with him. Cicadas shrilled in the yellowing summer grass.

  “Frig.” She rubbed the heel of her hand along her thigh. Her thoughts were scattering. Exhaustion shot concentration. She had the Collegium to deal with, her dad.

  “I do live in Cyprus. It’s a convenient jumping off point for espionage. But I’m in New York often enough to keep a small place.” A pause. “I’m not poor, Fay.”