Possessed (Bozley Green Chronicles Book 1)

by Bradford Bates

  I heard the blade the demon had been holding clatter to the ground, but that didn’t stop it from grabbing me around the neck and throttling me like I was a chicken. It was trying to talk, but the words couldn’t make it past the gaping wound that used to be the thing’s throat.

  The demon shook me violently from side to side and then fell to its knees. The hand loosened against my throat, and I shoved the shade away. Gideon receded to the back of my mind again as I stood over the shade’s corpse.

  You might want to take a step back.

  I moved back without hesitation bumping against the wall and rubbing my hand against my throat. Damned if I wasn’t going to be sore tomorrow. It already felt like there would be fat finger-sized bruises on my throat.

  “Fuck,” I croaked.

  That could have gone worse. If it had just been me in here, I probably would have been dead, but for now, I had Gideon riding along. Looking down at the fat, bloated corpse of the shade, I felt a certain sense of accomplishment. How many humans could say they sent a fully materialized demon back to hell?

  A shade of a demon. I’m not sure you’d survive running into a fully materialized demon, even with my help.

  Come on, Gideon, just let me bask in this moment for a minute before you shit all over it.

  Blue flames roared across the shade’s body. I tried to jump farther back, but I was already against the wall. The heat was intense as the flames turned black and the demon's body melted into the floor.

  Thirty seconds after it had begun, it was over. There was a circle of black goo on the ground, and I was alone in a freezer full of corpses. Making sure not to step in the puddle of what used to be the butcher, I moved towards the door. Hopefully the thing’s death would have released it.

  Trying to pull the door open only elicited a grunt from my mouth. The thing was still fucking locked. I didn’t have the code to open it, and I wasn’t looking forward to my chances of survival if Balthazar’s men stormed in here with guns.

  Try rubbing some of the demon goo on the lock, but don’t get any on you, he instructed.

  Curiosity got the best of me. Gross, but what’s the worst that could happen?

  It could melt your flesh down to the bone.

  My eyes momentarily widened as I grimaced. Got it. Don’t touch the goo or you die, super helpful.

  One of the shade’s cleavers was still stuck in a body. I pulled the blade free and used it to scoop up some of the goo. The goo started to bubble on the blade, so I ran for the door. The dark bubbling liquid met the lock right before the blade disintegrated. The lock started to smoke as the demon residue ate through it. The light flicked to green as the panel met its final demise. Now that I was free, I had to find Rain as quickly as possible.

  The guards were still snoozing in the other room. Bending over them, I pulled a handgun from the holster on one of their hips. After my encounter in the refrigerator, it seemed logical to take a little extra protection with me while I searched for Rain. I tucked the gun into the waistband of my jeans against my lower back.

  That’s where things like that went when you didn’t have a holster, right?

  It’d be just my luck to shoot myself in the ass when I tried to grab it, but I wanted my hands free in case I needed to do some nifty spell work.

  The heads-up display Gideon provided appeared in my head again as I stepped outside. Balthazar hadn’t gotten the wards back up yet, which meant he was hunkered down with Rain somewhere else in the compound.

  It didn’t seem like it would be smart to search all of the outbuildings, so I was going to head towards the cabin now. Cabin was a deceptive word for it. I’d be surprised if the large wooden house was less than four thousand square feet, and that’s if it didn’t have a basement. The way my luck had been running for the last couple of days there would be a creepy basement, and that is right where Balthazar would be.

  No time like the present to find out. “I’m coming for you Rain.”

  17

  The men continued to patrol around the grounds while the guards at the gate stayed stationary. The gun I had taken from the unconscious guard felt heavy in my hand. The rubber on the grip wasn’t doing much to stop my hand from sweating. I was half convinced that if I tried to fire it, that I’d just drop it and wind up dead. Still, it was faster acting than my magic, although firing it would bring the rest of the guards running and that would probably lead to my eventual death.

  The weapon in your hand seems impractical; you would be better off using your knife.

  How much do you know about guns? I asked.

  I’ve only glimpsed a few things during my briefing, but looking at the thing now it’s almost hard to believe it’s good for anything more than knocking someone unconscious from close range. How is it such a small lump of metal can be so destructive?

  Oh, we humans have perfected the art of killing each other over the centuries. I’m assuming the angels have done the same thing when it comes to fighting demons. What would you think if I told you that this weapon generates a small explosion to shoot a projectile from the barrel at high speed?

  How high? he asked, sounding cautiously curious.

  Of course, he skipped over my rudimentary explanation of how a gun works and moved right on to what interested him the most. Think of a slingshot, but a thousand times more powerful.

  I would very much like to see this weapon in action.

  I smiled. How about this, you get me into that building without anyone seeing me, and I’ll take you somewhere that we can shoot one.

  Do not let me down in this, Bozley Green. I am very interested in what you call guns.

  Who knew angels had a hard on for learning about new weapons?

  There was a momentary pause before Gideon asked, What is a hard on, Bozley Green?

  I nearly laughed. This was almost too much fun It was too perfect. I’ll explain the birds and the bees to you after we save Rain from Balthazar.

  Bozley I understand Birds and Bees. I was there when God created them.

  Trust me when I tell you that what I’m talking about is infinitely more interesting than creation. Although, it is a form of human creation, I countered.

  That remains to be seen.

  My body slipped into that state where I was thrust into passenger mode as Gideon took control. The only thing that kept me from freaking out so far was that he seemed to only be able to assume control when I let him, and he always relinquished control when the task was over. Despite myself, I was starting to like the guy, but he had some serious catching up to do on the twentieth century.

  Now I truly felt like a secret agent. Before, when I had been in control, I had felt so out of place. I’d never been much for sneaking around, and in magical circles it was pretty much impossible for me to sneak anywhere. Just another skill set that I was lacking in that my warrior angel seemed to be able to do with ease.

  My body ducked, sprinted, and rolled its way across the open space toward the front of the cabin. We slipped inside the front door, and within a second I was back in control.

  That was a feeling I wasn’t sure that I’d ever get used to. Riding around in my own body while Gideon did things I could only dream of. Part of me wished there were cameras filming this whole thing. If I showed David how I was able to sneak into the building, he would shit a brick.

  Not to interrupt, but how does one shit a brick? To my knowledge, the human body couldn’t handle the stress that eating a brick would put on it.

  It’s just an expression. I really wish I could just sit you down and play movies and tv shows for a few days, but the way things are going right now, we just don’t have the time.

  The more we bond, the more I can pull from your subconscious, he said.

  Just be careful digging around in there; not everything smells like roses, I warned.

  Another one of those expressions?

  Got it in one.

  The main room of the cabin was a little fancier than I would have e
xpected. The floors were tiled with a light gray and white pattern that made it look like wood. The main floor was completely open leading all the way to a kitchen at the back. Everything in the kitchen was modern and sleek, just like the furniture I was looking at now.

  It appeared you could get Balthazar out of the city, but you couldn’t take the ostentatious out of the man. Or was he a demon? I still wasn’t sure on how the whole trapping a demon inside of yourself thing worked.

  Now, the real question was should I go up or down? It seemed like it might be just too much to ask for Balthazar to be holding Rain in a well-lit room upstairs, so that meant I was going down into the basement.

  The thought of it gave me that feeling like I was about to be the first one to die in a horror movie. The kind of feeling you didn’t want to have when the man in question was holding the woman that you might possibly be in love with hostage.

  Ok, so love might have been too strong of a word for what Rain and I had. Let’s call that a momentary slip of the tongue. Separating lust and desire from my feelings wasn’t exactly easy. Every time I thought about her I got two images stuck in my head. The first was the smile she flashed me with when she was driving her Jeep, and the second was of her bent over in my kitchen trying to pull the piece of glass out of her foot.

  I’d never seen a body quite like hers before. Something about it called out to me. Just thinking of it now made it hard for me to focus on what I needed to be doing.

  One last glance at the well-lit stairs leading to the second floor, and I started to move further into the house. Nothing in my line of work was ever easy, so I couldn’t just head up the stairs and expect Balthazar to be waiting for me with a glass of brandy and a few witty minutes of banter that would lead to Rain’s eventual release.

  Instead, I continued moving to the door I saw under the stairs. Did anything say good times like opening a creepy door and heading into the darkness?

  There were a thousand places on my list of where I would rather be, but Rain was in this because of me. No one else was going to die because of my mistakes. I wouldn’t willingly condemn another soul to hell, unless maybe it was Balthazar’s. You make your bed with demons, and you get to pay for that mistake for eternity. A little hellfire for breakfast followed by a quick torture session on the rack after lunch. Good times.

  The door to the basement was warded. At least I knew I was heading in the right direction. I’d seen this kind of warding before, it was an early warning system. Break the ward and whoever put it in place knew you were coming. Don’t break the ward and you couldn’t get in. At least that was how it worked for everyone else. I’d been breaking into places others weren’t supposed to go for the last ten years. How else would I have gotten all my cool little trinkets?

  It felt good to have something to do that I didn’t have to count on Gideon for. Who knows, maybe he could also bypass this kind of warding. Although, I had the feeling that angels were more of the we don’t care if you see us coming type. They had that God is on our side so who would dare to stand against us thing going on. And really, why mess with what works? For us mere mortals, well, we had to do things a little bit differently.

  Looking in my bag, I found just what I needed. I never leave home without one of those sharpie paint pens. The damn things worked on almost any kind of surface, and you had to scratch the paint off to remove it, which made it just permanent enough for me to do whatever I needed to do in the short term.

  First, I had to get eyes on the entire ward. “Revelare!”

  Balthazar’s ward flared to life. Neon blue lines traced the invisible outline that had been placed on the door. The bright blue glow bathed the hall in an eerie light. Gideon still had his radar thing going on, but it didn’t work in the house. Still, it was nice to know that none of the guards outside were moving in this direction, even if I couldn’t tell if something was standing right behind me now.

  It only took a few moments to look at the ward and figure out what I had to do.

  Pulling out the silver pen, I started to trace symbols on the door. Slowly, faint pink lines started to draw and link together inside the blue lines that made up Balthazar’s ward. The final symbol was painted on the door. Now, it was time to see if what I had done was going to work.

  The pen went back in my bag, and my folding knife replaced it in my hand. A quick cut to the finger was all I needed to complete the spell.

  First, I reapplied the blood to my right forearm and the tattoo there. No reason to push the boundaries of Balthazar’s warding without my protections in place. When I felt the spell take hold, I placed the same finger on the wards I had drawn and watched them flare to life.

  What was the worst that could happen? If it failed, Balthazar would know I was coming, but he probably already did. He just didn’t know how close I was. Reaching for the handle, my hand trembled just a bit. There was no way to know what I was in store for down there. It wasn’t only Rain’s life that hung in the balance. I kind of liked being alive; it was something that I’d grown quite attached to over the years. That and if I died, I’d never get to find out how Game of Thrones ended.

  That would be a real waste.

  Nothing happened when my hand touched the doorknob. That was a plus. Slowly, I tried to turn the knob, and it worked. With a quick yank I pulled the door open. Nothing happened. I stood there breathing heavily as I waited for the other shoe to drop, but nothing greeted me except the silence.

  Standing here wasn’t going to bring me any closer to Rain. I took the first step down, and when a bolt of lightning didn’t strike me dead, I felt a smile spread across my face. It worked, I was in the clear.

  When I closed the door behind me, the whole world seemed to go dark. It hadn’t really dawned on me until now that the only light in the stairwell was coming from the room outside. There was an easy fix for that, but the last thing I wanted to do was alert anyone to my presence by casting a light out in front of me.

  Instead, I stood there in the dark waiting for my eyes to adjust. It took longer than I would have liked and waiting on the stairs seemed like a bad idea. If Balthazar got itchy feet, I was standing in the one place he had to go.

  If there had been time, I might have been able to draw a ward above my eyes to help with the light, or if I was at home I could have found a talisman to fix the problem. Since neither of those were an option, I thought about how my magic could help.

  I’d never cast a spell to see in the dark before. Looking back on all the exorcisms I’d done at night, that seemed kind of odd. It was something that would have come in handy a few times, might have even prevented me from having to use my soul blade more than once.

  Quickly, I cut my left and right index fingers. With each finger I placed a spot of blood at the corner of my eyes. “Videre!” The darkness evaporated, and I could see.

  Everything was tinged in red, though. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that I used my own blood to enhance my magic. I would have laughed if I wasn’t so fucking nervous. The whole feeling was surreal.

  It was kind of like being in one of those low budget horror movies when someone is supposed to be looking through a video camera with the night vision on, only my vision was red instead of green.

  The irony of continuing to picture myself in different horror movie situations wasn’t lost on me. I was a horror movie nut, and since I decided to throw myself into danger, I also wasn’t blind to the fact that those movies became more and more relatable. Although, when I pictured myself in the movie, I’d always imagined not being the idiot that was about to die. So, I guess spending all of those hours watching what not to do hadn’t really paid off in the long run.

  Still, there was only one direction for me to keep moving and that was forward. Rain was counting on me, at least I hoped she knew that she wasn’t alone.

  The stairs ended, and there was a wall that was six feet from the last step. The hallway moved in both directions. Right or left? It was a tossup. If Rain
wasn’t waiting on the side I selected, it wouldn’t be too hard to turn around and choose the other one.

  I felt more comfortable turning right, and my gut confirmed that was the easier choice, so I went left. What was the worst that could happen? I’d bypassed Balthazar’s wards, so he didn’t know I was coming, and I eliminated the second biggest threat to my survival by casting a spell.

  There was only one door at the end of the hall. The thinnest trickle of light escaped from the tiny space under it. The light didn’t look right, though. It was almost like it was dancing and moving along the bottom of the door. There was nothing to do now but go for it. I’d made my decision on which way to go and now I was going to have to live with it. Three more steps brought me to the door.

  I watched my hand reach out for the knob almost as if someone else was in control. Gideon wasn’t driving this bus right now, though. It was all me.

  My fingers closed around the doorknob, and it felt warm to the touch. Checking for wards was out of the question now. There was only one thing left to do. The doorknob turned in my hand slowly, almost as if I were moving underwater. When it stopped turning, I tugged gently at the door, and it opened.

  The room in front of me was an office or a library of some sort. The lighting from the bulbs along the roof was dim, but the giant fireplace more than made up for it. Standing across from the door by a small bar at the back of the room was Balthazar.

  He was alone.

  Balthazar turned with a drink in his hand, and his eyes found me a moment later. His face registered shock and then was quickly replaced by a mask of calmness. His eyes stayed locked on mine as he took a sip from his drink.

  “You’re too late, Bozley Green. I’ve given her to the dark.” A slow smile spread across his features, and he began to laugh.