by Susan Illene
“We’ll see.” I kneeled down and looked at the cat. “Come here.”
She left Emily and came straight to me. I cautiously allowed my hand to touch her fur. It was the first time in my life I hadn’t had an allergy attack while touching a cat. The shape-shifter rubbed my hand and purred. Curiosity got the better of me.
“Turn into a panther.”
We all jumped when the shape-shifter stretched out and turned into a large panther in the middle of my living room floor. She nudged my hand again, wanting to be petted. I rubbed her fur and reveled in the feel of it. Maybe I’d keep her.
“What’s her name?” I asked.
“She doesn’t have one. It’s up to you to decide.”
“I’ll figure something out. Is there an Idiot’s Guide or something for this thing?”
“Oh, yeah. Glad you asked.” She went over to my dining room table and picked up a big book. “You’re supposed to read over this so you can know how to deal with her.”
Great. Now I had something else to keep me busy. I was still half-tempted not to take her. She’d be a reminder every time I looked at her, but there was something about the shape-shifter that appealed to me. Maybe I’d give her a chance.
About Susan Illene
Instead of making the traditional post high school move and attending college, Susan joined the U.S. Army. She spent her eighteenth birthday in the gas chamber — an experience she is sure is best left for criminals. For eleven years she served first as a human resources specialist and later as an Arabic linguist (mostly in Airborne units). Though all her duty assignments were stateside, she did make two deployments to Iraq where her language skills were put to regular use.
After leaving the service in 2009, Susan returned to school to study history with a focus on the Middle East. She no longer finds many opportunities to test her fighting abilities in real life, unless her husband is demanding she cook him a real meal (macaroni and cheese apparently doesn’t count), but she’s found a new outlet in writing urban fantasy heroines who can.
For more information visit:
www.darknesshaunts.com
You may also find her at:
Twitter- @susan_illene
Facebook- www.facebook.com/SusanIllene1
Goodreads- www.goodreads.com/author/show/6889690.Susan_Illene
Acknowledgments
I’m going to keep this brief because I haven’t slept for twenty-seven hours. When I’m tired I tend to say inane things, which would be bad in acknowledgments. So I’ll just say thanks to all my family, who have been really supportive. To my husband, who didn’t mind me not cooking for the last couple of weeks before releasing this novel. Okay, he did mind, but like any good man he learned to deal with it after I yelled at him for disturbing me enough times.
Also, to my Dad for helping me with online matters such as my author website and to my grandfather for listening to me talk about my book plot. He even helps though he isn’t quite sure about me writing paranormal/fantasy. An important twist in this novel came about while chatting with him. I also tell him all the spoilers for future books because I know he’ll never read them anyway.
To my online community of friends who have been awesomely supportive. There are many beta readers and proofreaders who deserve a shout out, but I want to give the biggest one to Mary who so selflessly gave up her time to check over my MS at the last minute. Someday I’ll find a way to make it up to her. Angela has also been a big help in more ways than I can describe for helping walk me through the publishing process. There are many more, but my eyes are starting to droop and I’m afraid this is going to go on sounding like nonsense.
One last shout out for the fans before I go. There are some amazing ones who were very supportive and encouraging. If you are wondering who they are, just see my Facebook page. Much love to you guys.
Oh, and my cat, who never fails to keep me company while I write and who likes to walk all over my keyboard. Thanks, Manfusha, for your unswerving loyalty and the scratch you put on my hand the other day.
Read on for an excerpt from
A
DEMON
BOUND
BY DEBRA DUNBAR
(The first novel in her Imp Series)
1
I parked down the street from the bail bond office and pretended to fuss with some papers on the passenger seat as I watched two boys race toward me out of the corner of my eye. They were hauling ass, and one darted across traffic in a daring effort to cut the other off.
“Wait for it, wait for it,” I muttered as they sped toward the car.
One, two, three, open. I flung the car door out to its full width and a wave of satisfaction rolled through me as I heard a thump and felt the door vibrate against my hand. The boy toward the outside had managed to dive out of the way, missing the door by inches and rolling expertly as he landed on the ground. The inside boy wasn’t so lucky. He’d bounced off the door with the thump I had felt and hit the cement sidewalk with a meaty thwack.
“Yeah,” yelled the outside boy as he hopped to his feet. He punctuated the word with an exuberant fist pump. I got out of the car and gave him a high five.
“All yours, Roberto,” I told him.
I paid a twenty to any kid who watched my car while I took care of business. That normally wouldn’t have been a good deal. A Corvette in this neighborhood would attract a lot of attention, and a kid watching it wouldn’t necessarily deter theft. But my car was well known. All the kid needed to do was inform anyone looking to lift the tires that this was my vehicle, and let me know if anyone was stupid enough to do so anyway. Well worth the twenty.
I turned to the other kid, who was staggering to his feet from the pavement and wiping a bloody nose.
“Maybe next time, Dante,” I said. He nodded, pinching the bridge of his nose and staggered off.
I had a moment of panic as I shut the car door and thought that Dante may have dented it. Humans were soft and squishy, but he’d hit with a good bit of force. I lucked out this time, though. No dent, just a bit of blood and snot that I wiped off with the side of my arm. Fuck! That was close. I don’t always think things through before I do them, and it would have really sucked if he’d damaged my car.
“Are you going to evict Old Man Larson, Ma’am?” Roberto asked me.
“Nope, just collecting rents,” I replied.
Most people would rather have been home by the pool with a cold beer on a hot day like today, but I actually liked collecting rents. I’d spent the morning taking cash from those tenants who didn’t trust the mail system, or who found it impossible to obtain a checking account. This was my last visit of the day with one particular tenant who needed an in-person, see-the-light kind of call.
I’m a slum lord. Commercial, residential, it doesn’t matter as long as the building is cheap, squeaks by code, and I can rent it. About seventy percent of my tenants pay promptly. I’ve been told that’s an incredible percentage with these types of properties. The others shove cash-stuffed envelopes at me as soon as I ring the bell.
I’m also a demon, which is probably why I have such a high compliance rate on my rent collections. We demons usually live in another realm and pop over here to vacation. Low ranking demons save for centuries to pay someone for safe passage. Ones with status in the hierarchy come over whenever they feel like it. Of course, it is still risky trying to get through the gates undetected, and to hustle your ass back before your fun activities bring death down on your head. The more often you come over, the greater the chance is that you’ll be caught and killed by the angels.
I’ve been here over forty years on a sort of extended vacation, which is unheard of among my kind. I’ve managed to stay alive by laying low and posing as a human, with as little energy usage and bad behavior as possible for a demon. So far I’ve succeeded in remaining undetected.
I walked the block down to the apartment building feeling the heat from the broken sidewalk right through my shoes, and kicked an empty whis
ky pint out of the way to ring the doorbell. My tenant should have been waiting for me since I pulled some favors and had a friend arrange a drug buy. Otherwise he would most likely hide in the back and pretend he was not home. When that happens, I have to sneak around the place peering in windows and eventually breaking in to confront the tenant. I hate that. These houses are all over one hundred years old and the windows aren’t standard size. It’s very difficult to get them repaired. My tenant was expecting a buyer and not a landlord, so I hoped I didn’t have to break any windows to get in this time.
After a few moments, I heard some shuffling near the door and sensed someone looking out the peephole. I tried to look around nervously like I was a proper yuppie addict. I’m a terrible actress, so I was actually a bit surprised when he opened the door and ushered me quickly in. He looked me over and visibly relaxed. Humans are sometimes uncomfortable around me, but once they really look at me, and their eyes tell them I’m an average sized woman with average features, their brain squashes any fearful instincts. I go out of my way to look harmless. Not covered in tattoos, not pierced all over, no punk hairdo. No big warts, bulging muscles, glowing eyes, horns, etc. Just a nice normal, middle aged, rather plain woman.
“Are you Brad?” I asked him while looking around the place.
The inside looked like a frat house with old pizza boxes and beer cans carelessly tossed on coffee tables or stacked on the rather dirty beige carpet. I eyed it in distaste. I’d have to clean that carpet when their lease ended. I’d charge them double for it too. A plaid second-hand couch sat in front of a huge flat screen TV on the wall. Two guys sprawled on the couch with pistols visible in their waistbands. They were big, but flabby with wrinkled dirty clothes and longish hair. They looked pretty stoned and rather unaware of my presence.
“Yeah,” he replied “what are you looking to take home?”
“The rent.” I gave that a moment to sink in. “I’m actually the landlord, not a buyer.”
That announcement was greeted with laughter from Brad. The guys on the couch didn’t budge, still slumped with their eyes fixed on the TV. At least they weren’t lunging at me with guns drawn at this point.
If the stoned guys on the couch managed to somehow achieve a miracle and hit me, I could repair almost any wound. It would hurt, and it might take a while, but I wouldn’t’ die. Or I could convert the bullets before they reached me.
When demons convert, we dissect the molecules or atoms of something and rearrange them into something else. Transmutation, as the human alchemists called it. That is the big ‘magic’ of demons. Sometimes conversion works out neatly and you end up with all your atoms and molecules used and accounted for. Sometimes you have spare shit that you have to figure out what to do with. Some of that shit isn’t particularly stable on its own, leaving you to borrow atoms out of other things around you to stick together. All this has to occur in fractions of a second because that’s usually all you have before something explodes, or there is chlorine gas, or worse.
In the bullet scenario before me there were some troublesome atoms to deal with. You could do pretty much anything with carbon, but iron was the atom demanding attention when a bullet was speeding at you. Not a big deal when viewed on a world disaster scale, but kind of messy to deal with on the fly like this. And any conversion action on my part could possibly be messy enough to attract notice of the angels, who dedicated their existence to noticing these kinds of things and coming down with holy fury on our heads.
I could weld the steel triggers of the guns. Just shoot a blaze of energy across the room and melt the guns, burning half their pants off in the process. Back home, no one cared if you set the guys on fire welding triggers. Back home, no one would even bother with welding triggers, just shoot a big flashy burst of something and cook them all dead. Problem solved.
I couldn’t afford to be too flashy though, since I was living under the radar as much as I could. I would bet that a small amount of energy from me wouldn’t set off alarm bells with the angels, but why take the chance? Plus, I kind of got off on the risk of handling these situations without any energy usage at all. It was a real adrenaline rush. A bullet to the head or a vital organ would most likely kill me in this form, contrary to mythology.
“Come on, cough it up,” I told him. “You owe it, I’m here. Just pay me the three months rent and no one gets hurt.”
I had a premonition someone was going to get hurt. Might be me. Definitely would be Brad.
Brad sneered. If I had been a human, I probably would have been shaken. It was a good sneer. Very dramatic. Very Hollywood.
“You are the only one likely to get hurt, babe,” he said. “And you’re not leaving here with a dime.”
Brad then proceeded to look me over like I was a steak on the grill and added an addendum. “Maybe the guys and I could enjoy some quality time with you to repay us for time wasted on this bogus deal you set up.”
To bring his point home, he took a menacing step toward me.
Now this is when the fun starts for me. I live for the day this sort of thing happens. I smiled at Brad and let my mean out.
“All three of you?” I asked. “I haven’t had that kind of pleasure in a long time. I prefer to leave my tenants alive and functioning so they can pay their rent, but if you’re offering this in lieu of cash payment I am very tempted. I get a little carried away with the rough stuff though, so I can’t guarantee that any of you’ll survive.”
I didn’t see how the guys behind me reacted, but Brad looked unnerved for a brief second before he pulled himself together. He must have been made of tough stuff or perhaps sampling his own wares since he took the remaining three steps toward me, well within my zone of personal space, and gripped my chin in his hand. I locked eyes with him and froze him to me. Stupid human. To meet a demon’s gaze like that was to give them control.
I smiled, convinced that I had him and was shocked when he punched me in the face. It was a good uppercut to the chin that knocked me on the filthy stinking carpet. I was reminded of Dante as I felt blood drip down my chin, although mine was from my mouth. Fucker had made me bite hard into my tongue. What had happened? Why couldn’t I lock him in place? Was he legally blind or something? Maybe his drugs had blurred his vision? Did I suddenly suck at this particular skill?
“You are one sick psycho, freak,” Brad told me. “Maybe you’ll be less cocky with a few broken bones.”
He went to kick me in the side and I rolled out of reach, scrambling in an embarrassing fashion to my feet. I was pissed enough to want to just blast him through the front of the building, but instead held back and assessed the situation. I backed up to a table and glanced quickly at the two on the couch. They sat still as statues, so thankfully all I needed to deal with was Brad.
Brad dove at me, and I spun out of his reach, putting the table between us. This wasn’t working out like I’d planned. He had greater strength than me in my human form, and I wasn’t exactly skilled in human fighting methods. I was reluctant to use any of my demon energy, but it would really suck if he pummeled me. My reputation would suffer.
We circled the table a few times. Brad looked smug. It pissed me off further. Pissed me off enough that I reached down and used some energy to snap a leg off the table, hoping it wasn’t enough to be detected by any angels. The table remained improbably upright, so I kicked it over with my foot and dove at Brad, swinging.
His visual impairment wasn’t so severe that he couldn’t see a table leg coming at his head. He backed up, ducking and dodging as I chased him into a corner, and I finally connected the thing with his stomach. He doubled over and presented me with a lovely opening to whack him on the head. He dropped, but I gave him a few more swats to his kidneys just to make sure before I rolled him over and really locked him in this time. Fucking bastard. I should kill him. I should Own him.
It had been so long, and the urge to Own was beginning to gnaw at me with an annoying regularity. It would be risky, though. Owning
is our process of gathering the essence of a being into ourselves. Of course, the physical body dies, and it’s not pretty either. Humans have their spirits so deeply embedded in the flesh that there is a lot of shredding that happens when we Own. That’s part of the appeal, honestly. The pain, screaming, thrashing about, terror as you rip them from their very cells, it’s very stimulating to a demon. And the fun continues because they live on inside you to play with and enjoy as long as you live. Brad didn’t look like he’d be worth the risk though. Sad, since I haven’t had the joy of Owning a human in several decades. Killing him would be almost as much fun. I didn’t like to kill tenants who paid though. And I was hoping he’d pay.
“Perhaps you’d rather just pay the rent?” I asked him as he stared up at me.
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