I rolled onto my back and found myself alone in his bed.
I propped myself up on my elbows and looked around. “Landon?”
The bathroom and closet doors were open, and there wasn’t any light coming from there. I sat up, pulling the covers over me. For some reason, I felt embarrassed. Had he slept with me then left me? I couldn’t believe that. I wasn’t expecting more from him, not right now, but we had an agreement. He would let me help him with avenging my father’s death. Unless …
Holding the covers around me, I stood from the bed and went to the table in the corner of his bedroom where his journal and his hunting gear were. My heart sank when I didn’t find the bag with his things. He had left. He had taken his gear, and he had gone after the demon without me.
The bastard.
Rage simmered in my chest as I sat down on the armchair and opened his journal. I knew for a fact he wrote everything about the case down, like my father had taught him, and if I were to find him, the clues were somewhere in here.
I backtracked through the pages until I found an entry from the night my father was killed.
We still don’t know what we’re dealing with. Isaac thinks someone summoned this demon and lost control. But we also don’t know what kind of demon it is. The only thing we know is that it first sucks the person’s soul, leaving only a hollow shell. Then, the demon kills by burning the person’s heart from inside out—the skin dries out as if the demon sucked all the water from the cells.
As the details grew gruesome, my stomach revolted and I skimmed the rest, until the next entry.
Isaac and I have finally located the demon. We still don’t know what kind of demon it is, but we’re hoping our weapons and knowledge will be enough to send it back to hell.
A blank space filled most of the page until one last paragraph at the bottom:
Isaac was killed by the demon tonight. Even through my wounds, I tried to stop it, but I was too weak. The demon killed Isaac the same way it killed the other victims.
I don’t exactly know what happened after. I just remember Douglas arriving at the house before I blacked out. I only know that I woke up at the manor, surrounded by Douglas, Aidan, and Nathan … and that Isaac was gone.
I’m sorry I couldn’t save you, my friend.
I wiped a tear from my face.
Then, the next entry mentioned me.
Today, I’m going to tell Tessa about her father. This won’t be easy.
There was a little curly thing he did for separation, which I thought was to indicate some time had passed, but it was still the same day.
Telling Tessa wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. Maybe it’s because she still hates me. Well, putting myself in her shoes, I think she’ll hate me forever. Why wouldn’t she? Isaac pushed Regina and Tessa away because he loved them too much, but he never told them that, not with words. For all Tessa knows, her father didn’t want her and only visited her out of a sense of duty. Which is far from the truth. If Isaac had his way, he would spend every weekend with Tessa, every day of the week, but he kept his distance from her, afraid demons, witches, or vampires would follow him and use her against him.
Anyway, she’s is here at the manor for the funeral tomorrow.
My heart shuddered. My father had loved me? And my mother too? That couldn’t be …
I could ponder and marvel at that, but I decided I would have to do that later. There were more pressing things needing my attention right now.
The next entry was about the day of the funeral.
I hope Isaac can forgive me. I can’t stop it. I can’t stop her. Tessa is a force to be reckoned with.
Tonight, she went to the place Isaac died. I hate to say I admired her drive, for about five seconds, and then I was mad as hell. She put herself in danger and almost died. If I hadn’t figured out what she had done and where she had gone … I don’t want to think about it. I can’t. It hurts too much.
Isaac, please forgive me for letting your daughter get involved in this life, after all you did to keep her away from it. Safe. And for the feelings that stir in my chest every time I think about her.
I sucked in a sharp breath, but once again forced myself to keep reading.
Then, he mentioned the investigations from the past few days.
It’s hard investigating the case with Tessa around. Not because she bothers me, far from it, but because I have to be careful what to mention to her. As much as I like her drive and need to help, I don’t want to see her hurt again. I can’t. I have to keep her safe, and to do that, I need to omit most of the case details.
She has no idea what I found while researching and interviewing Liz Morgan, who is still at the hospital, this afternoon.
So, Liz confessed a connection between them all. So far we have seven victims—one of them being Isaac, but he wasn’t a target, just like Vanessa and Josie’s husbands, which actually leaves four real victims. The four victims went for a camping trip many years ago with five other people. One of them, Peter Johnson, died in what the police called an accident and no report linking the victims was recorded. However, it wasn’t a complete accident. The teenagers were all drunk and playing and ended up killing Peter, Vanessa’s boyfriend.
Vanessa never recovered from the accident and each time Lola, Peter’s sister, comes into town to visit her parents, she looks for Vanessa. Vanessa feels terribly guilty about what happened.
There are four more involved in the incident, including Liz. However, since Liz is in the hospital under the care of a vampire, I’m not concerned about her. T.J. and Johnny don’t live in town, so the next victim can only be George, who lives in a ranch house a few miles out of town. Now, I just need a distraction or an excuse to leave Tessa behind, because I won’t take her into danger.
Son of a …
The last entry was a short one.
It’s the middle of the night and Tessa is sleeping. I couldn’t sleep, though, so I went down to Isaac’s office and unburied his ancestors’ journals. And guess what? I found our demon.
It seems we have a sin-eater on our hands. This kind of demon is summoned when someone who commits a grave sin can’t stop feeling guilty—the person often thinks about either confessing the sins or committing suicide. Vanessa summoned the demon by feeling guilty about Peter. That’s the only explanation.
If I’m right, then the demon isn’t sucking the victims’ soul. It’s eating the person’s sins. The lore I found says that the more sins the demon eats, the stronger it gets.
Though I hate leaving Tessa alone after last night, this is the perfect opportunity for me to go after the demon while she’s safe. By the time she wakes up in the morning, I’ll be on my way back. Hopefully.
Crap.
I couldn’t believe he had left in the middle of the night to go after a dangerous demon by himself. As he had mentioned, the demon was probably stronger now. I understood his hesitation about taking me; after all, I wasn’t a real hunter. I hadn’t been trained to kill demons, but the idea of him facing a demon alone …
I shuddered.
I flipped a few pages back in his journal and found a crude drawing of the town’s map—and Xs marking the houses of all victims, including George’s.
To the hell with it.
My heart sped up as I got dressed and raced to the underground garage to my car.
Twenty-One
LANDON
* * *
The house was quiet at four in the morning. The lot was large and isolated with the next house at least five hundred feet away.
I left my car a good ways from it, just off the road, hidden behind a few trees. Nobody would see it unless they drove by slowly and really paid attention to the side of the road. I took my gun and my dagger and a crude hunting knife from my pack, and made my way to the house.
It was a nice ranch style home—two story, two-car garage, wide front door and porch and big windows on the second level where the stairs probably were located. And it looked
empty.
A chill ran down my spine.
Either the house was really empty, or everyone was sleeping, or the demon had already arrived and—
I cut that thought short. This would be the fifth victim—not counting Isaac and the family members of the ones involved in that incident. Because the demon didn’t leave anyone behind. Once it went after its victim, it didn’t care about innocence. They might have only small sins, or no sin at all—they were all cannon fodder at this point.
I was done with this. I had to catch this demon now before it killed again.
I crept around the house, searching for any sign of forced entry or movement inside. Nothing caught my attention. Slowly, I tiptoed to the back door, and with a little help from my master key, I unlocked the door and stepped into a dark kitchen.
So far, nothing out of ordinary.
Careful with noises, I closed the door and looked around the kitchen, and beyond it, an eating area and a family room. Pictures on the wall displayed the happy faces of a family—a husband and a wife and two children.
Shit. I hated it when children got involved in this mess.
Letting out a long breath, I inched forward into the house and up the stairs.
A whimper echoed down the hallway and I froze, my heart going to my throat.
Shit.
I rushed forward and opened the half-closed door on my right—into the master bedroom, where the family cowered on the queen bed while the demon hovered over them.
“Hey, piece of shit!” I called the demon, my gun pointed right at its head. The demon turned and bared its gleaming teeth at me.
I gasped.
To my surprise, the demon wasn’t as I remembered.
No, it wasn’t an ugly monster with long claws and dark circles for eyes and parched skin. It was a man, once young, and tall with dark hair, but now with graying skin and dark eyes. The demon had shapeshifted into the person who started it all. Peter. Now, the demon used him as a way to terrorize and kill the rest of the group.
“Can you move?” I asked the family, but kept my eyes on the leering demon.
“No,” George Johnson answered, his voice strained.
“It’s like there’s an invisible wall around the bed,” his wife said, her tone shrill.
The kids cried.
Shit.
“They have to pay,” the demon-man said in a thin, eerie tone. “Peter is dead because of them. They have to pay.”
“Peter,” George started. “It was an accident.”
In a flash, the demon turned to him and grabbed George by the throat. “It wasn’t an accident.”
George gripped the demon-man hand, trying to get loose. “P-please. We didn’t mean to.”
That was the distraction I needed, but I had to be fast before the demon ate George’s sins and killed him.
I knelt on the ground and cut my palm open. With drops of my blood, I started drawing a circle with a pentagram in the middle. One of the many kinds of witches’ circles.
I was about to finish it, when the demon advanced on me, grabbing my throat in its hands and pushing me against the wall. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Stopping you,” I croaked, my throat burning. I aimed my gun at the demon’s exposed chest and shot.
The demon shrieked as the bullet forced it back. It released me, and I took in a deep breath before lifting my gun to fire again.
“No! Don’t!” George cried. “He’s my friend.”
“I’m sorry to tell you, but your friend is long gone.” I pulled the trigger. The demon was pushed farther back.
It snarled at me. “You can’t kill me with that.”
“I know,” was all I said before firing again. Again, the demon flinched with the impact and stood right where I wanted it.
I rushed forward and smeared my blood to finish the last line of the circle. The demon lifted its hand and sent me flying back. I hit the wall with a humph and fell to my knees. Crap, there was still an inch to close the damn circle.
The demon didn’t stop. It came at me with all it had, easily making me drop my gun and my dagger. It used its powers to make me stand and be still against the wall, my arms outstretched beside me, and my throat tight. Shit. I couldn’t even reach the hunting knife strapped to my waist.
“Well, well, well,” the demon said, leaning toward me. “It seems I’ll have an appetizer. Your sins aren’t flaring, but anything will do.”
The demon opened its mouth, and I prayed it was quick.
* * *
TESSA
* * *
I parked my car beside Landon’s. In a rush, I hopped out my car and went for his. I took off my jacket, wrapped it around my elbow, and broke the window of his car. I grabbed a spare gun and dagger from his bag, even though I knew these wouldn’t work on the demon, before running toward the house at the end of the road.
I slowed as I got closer. What now? Where was Landon? I considered calling him, but I was afraid that would disrupt him. What if he was fighting the demon right now? What if he was hiding, trying to trap the demon? I couldn’t risk calling him.
A shudder rushed through my body. Holy shit, he could be fighting the demon right now. By himself. I had to hurry.
Trying to think of all the detective movies and TV series I had seen, I came up with a plan. My heart racing, I tiptoed around the house, and when I didn’t find anything suspicious, I tried the back door. Surprisingly, it was unlocked. Or Landon had used it come inside.
Crap, where was he?
Trying not to make a sound, I crossed the kitchen and spied into the dining room in front of the house. I was about to check the office when I heard a loud thump coming from upstairs.
“No!” someone yelled.
My heart seized.
I almost lost my legs as I ran up the stairs. In the first bedroom, a couple and their children were huddled in their bed. What the h—?
“Tessa.”
I snapped toward the soft voice and gasped as I saw Landon standing along the wall, his feet a few inches from the floor, and a creepy man in front of him.
I didn’t think. I pulled out the gun, aimed, and shot.
The man let out a shriek as the bullet hit him in the middle in his back and turned to me. But at least Landon was free. On his knees on the ground, breathing hard, but free.
Not sure what to do next, I fired again.
“Enough,” the demon snarled. Its hair grew longer, and its shoulders and waist narrowed. The demon had shapeshifted from a man to a woman. Then, with a snarl, it came at me. Nevertheless, before she could touch me, Landon lunged at her, grabbing her by the waist and pulling her down.
“Tessa,” he said between loud gasps. “Close the circle.”
What?
I looked down and saw the circle with the star drawn in the center. The demon and Landon were with their heads, arms, and torsos inside the circle.
I pulled out my dagger and slashed the tip of my finger. Then, I ran my fingertip on the missing inch, closing the circle.
Wrapping his legs around the demon, Landon rolled forward, taking it with him and landing inside the circle. The demon screamed and Landon jumped up and back, leaving the circle.
“What have you done?” the demon yelled. It advanced on us, but bumped into an invisible wall. The circle kept it contained.
“The circle won’t hold it for long.” Landon pulled out a knife from his back. A simple hunting knife, probably like the one that had killed Peter that night many years ago.
Landon recited some enchantment in another language, and then plunged the hunting knife into the demon’s chest.
I flinched.
The demon cried as red light exploded from where the dagger had pierced it and spread like little cracks until the demon was all broken. The body fell on the ground as dust.
“It was P-peter then Vanessa,” George said, getting up from the bed. “H-how come?”
Landon sighed. “Vanessa accidentally summo
ned a sin eater,” Landon explained. “It can shapeshift. That’s why it showed up as Peter, then Vanessa. It wanted to scare you even more.”
“This is so sick,” George whispered. He turned to his wife with tears in his eyes. “I’m so sorry.”
The woman recoiled, her children in her arms, as if afraid of her husband. Crap, what a situation.
Landon talked to George a little more about demons and the supernatural. It was incredible to me that the man had lived his entire life in Willow Harbor and hadn’t known about all the crazy things going on in this little town. Landon also told George about what to say to the cops when they came, and about seeking some closure for this story.
Then, as we climbed down the stairs, Landon looked at me. “Are you okay?”
“A little shaken, but no wounds this time,” I said, aiming for a lighter note, but it didn’t ring well to my ears.
His eyes ran over me twice, as if trying to make sure I was okay.
Besides the shock of all I had seen and done, I was okay. I felt bad about leaving the couple and the children in such a situation, but I understood it wasn’t a hunter’s job to fix the rest now. Landon had stopped the demon and saved lives. That was all that mattered.
As we walked back to his car, I could feel the tension in Landon’s body. I could see it too—the clenching and unclenching of his fists, the way his jaw popped and a vein in his neck ticked, his sure steps and squared shoulders.
Finally, once we got to our cars, he turned to me. “What the hell were you thinking?”
I rolled my eyes. That again? “Hey. Don’t be a smart-ass. You needed my help.”
“You didn’t know that!” He ran a hand through his hair. “You simply came here, not knowing anything, and threw yourself into danger.”
Rage coursed through my veins. “I was trying to help. And, if memory serves right, I was a big help in there. If I hadn’t arrived when I did, you would have been killed.” The last word caught in my throat. Damn, he had been almost killed by a demon. My eyes filled with tears. “I was thinking that you were coming to face this demon alone, and I couldn’t bear the thought of waiting for you in your bedroom. Even if you made me stay outside, or hidden behind you, or just held a flashlight for you, I wanted to be here with you, because for some reason, I thought … I thought I could help you. Because I needed to make sure you were okay.”
Hunter’s Revenge: Willow Harbor - book 3 Page 16