Demons and DNA (Amplifier 1)

by Meghan Ciana Doidge

  Daniel laughed again. “Please. I’d know. Plus nothing like that would work on me. I’m not stupid enough to trigger some trap with my blood.”

  “You’re sleeping with her, aren’t you?”

  His shoulders stiffened. “What does it matter to you? You’re sleeping with the sorcerer.”

  “I’m not,” I said quietly. “Not yet.” And now Aiden might well be dead. I shoved away the well of grief that tried to choke me at the thought. “But he showed up here five days ago, completely drained of magic and missing any memory of the previous three days.”

  “Oh, yes? Did he meet you in a back alley? Can you wipe memories when you steal magic now?”

  Ignoring his attempts to unsettle me, I plowed ahead, clicking the last pieces of the puzzle together. “Then a snatcher demon showed up with Aiden’s familial title carved on its chest.”

  “Teleportation?”

  A rare trait, even for demons. “Yes.”

  “You’re thinking it was blood tied …”

  I waited. He was putting it together.

  “You think … the witch and the sorcerer were sleeping together.”

  “I know they were.”

  “Well, the guy is an idiot to let a witch …” He trailed off, his expression going blank.

  “Did you use a condom?”

  He shook his head. “You, more than anyone else, know I don’t have any reason to …” Then he grimaced. “Semen. Fuck. Fuck me.”

  Yeah, Daniel had led the black witch to our doorstep. She had played with us all for a while and then snatched Christopher.

  “Silver fucking Pine,” Daniel snarled.

  “Yes.”

  “I was fucking Silver fucking Pine. Who tried to kill you, kill us. I thought … you destroyed everything in and around the compound. For kilometers! Fucking shit, she’s ancient. She’s got to be sixty fucking years old.”

  I laughed, completely inappropriately.

  Daniel eyed me darkly. But then he started laughing himself. “Silver Pine. Silver Pine. The fucking Collective.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why aren’t you losing it? You should be losing your shit as badly as I am.”

  “I lost it earlier, Daniel. Now I need to move forward. I need to find Christopher.”

  “Right. Right.” He scrubbed his hand over his face harshly.

  “When was the last time you slept with her?”

  He shook his head. “Over a week ago.”

  “How long can she keep the semen viable? Three days?”

  “Presumably. If it’s the same as blood. But …”

  “Aiden had been here for four days before she tried to collect him, and he’d likely been knocked out, drained and disoriented for a day or more before.”

  “So she can hold the semen in stasis, and the magic contained with it. For, say, a week at least.”

  “Yes. Though the timing might be a clue.”

  “Maybe only a week.”

  “Yes.”

  He looked at me grimly. “She still might be able to manipulate me. If I get within a certain range of her. Line of sight at least.”

  I grinned. It wasn’t a nice smile. “Not as well as I can.”

  He snorted. “Too true. No one can fuck with me, with any of us, as well as you, Socks.”

  There might have been a compliment buried deeply within Fish’s accusation, but I wasn’t interested in figuring it out. I didn’t want to figure anything else out. I wanted to be moving, doing. I turned to the demon dog, who’d been listening to the entire conversation. “Paisley? Have you got a bead on Christopher?”

  She blinked her red-hued eyes at me.

  “I’m going to need Knox’s sword,” Daniel said. “I didn’t want to try to bring mine over the border.”

  “Under his bed.”

  He stepped by me, pausing in the doorway. “Wait for me, Emma.”

  “I will.”

  He nodded. “She won’t have hurt Christopher.”

  “No,” I said wryly. “His semen is too valuable.”

  He laughed harshly. “Six months, Socks. I waited. I thought after we were free, of the compound, of the others, that you’d finally come to me. And stay. That you’d choose me, freely. Not because I was your only option. But you didn’t even reach out. After that, you couldn’t have possibly expected me to be a fucking monk.”

  “I never expected anything of you, Daniel.”

  “Yeah, right. Because I could never measure up.”

  I looked out at the dark night, feeling Aiden’s magic within the honed edge of the blade slung across my back. I was ready to use it. And not even remotely interested in discussing the past.

  Daniel snorted, pausing to wrench the kitchen table out of the wall before walking away through the house and up the stairs.

  Chapter 10

  A shapeshifter was prowling along a six-meter length of the property’s back fence, where an entire section appeared to have been crushed.

  Obviously, it was beneath a greater demon to climb over anything in its way.

  Jenni Raymond, out of uniform again, was hunkered down and digging her fingers in the churned and trampled grass.

  She didn’t even notice as Daniel, Paisley, and I approached. It was full dark now, but that shouldn’t have compromised her eyesight or her hearing.

  “Some shapeshifter.” Fish curled his lip in a sneer at the oblivious RCMP officer. He was carrying Christopher’s steel shortsword over his shoulder, the gems that decorated its pommel and cross guard long drained of the magic they’d once held.

  I snorted.

  Jenni Raymond stilled, reacting like prey, not the predator she was supposed to be. She raised her head, scanning the field before her, but she still didn’t see us enveloped in the darkness. Granted, we three were unique predators. And if the shifter refused to use all her senses, then she didn’t have a chance against any Adepts who could mask their presence as well as we could.

  That was a pathetic excuse, though. No matter how quietly we moved over the dry ground, a shifter should have heard us. And Jenni Raymond had been in my house multiple times. I’d actually touched her bare skin. She should have easily catalogued my scent, should have been able to pick it up meters away, and to track it for kilometers.

  Paisley gathered herself and leaped, landing in the churned grass next to the shapeshifter. She lowered her broad head and snarled — a rippling, fierce declaration of might.

  Evidently, the demon dog was out of patience.

  Raymond scrambled back in the dirt, jaw dropping as she stared at the demon dog. But she didn’t transform to face the sudden threat. She didn’t utilize any of her magic to defend herself.

  I stepped up beside Paisley, gently laying my hand on her head. She snorted and shuffled, then returned to tracking mode. We had followed the demon’s tracks from the house, trying to see if and where the path it had taken onto the property diverged from the path taken out. The path it had taken with Christopher and Aiden in tow.

  Thankfully, the demon didn’t appear to be capable of teleportation.

  Jenni Raymond’s gaze flicked to me, then Daniel.

  Fish scoffed. “So, completely useless then?”

  “Yes.” I sighed, peeved. Apparently it was time to pause for another chat. “Can we help you, Officer Raymond?”

  The shapeshifter scrambled to her feet, jabbing her finger toward Paisley, who was systematically covering the area in short steps, nose to the ground. “That … that …” She shook her head, then gestured to the broken fence and the surrounding darkness. “What the hell is going on here?”

  “Cows,” Daniel said, completely straight-faced.

  “Cows. I’m not an idiot.” Raymond jabbed her finger toward me. “First you were missing. Lani Zachary texts to say she found you, but won’t say where.” She jabbed the same finger over my shoulder. “And now the house is dark. The house is never dark this time of night.”

  “How would you know?” I asked, hearing
the threat threaded through my question. I needed to calm down, stay focused.

  She ignored me. “Which means Christopher isn’t on the property. And Christopher never leaves.”

  “Knox doesn’t leave the property?” Daniel asked quietly.

  “He does,” I said, not offering any specifics in front of the ranting shapeshifter. “Occasionally.”

  “Something came through here.” Jenni Raymond jabbed her finger toward the crumpled fence and the ruined grass. Her voice was far too loud in the still of the evening, grating. “It smells like …” But she caught herself before admitting that she could smell something a regular person wouldn’t be able to sense.

  I laughed. It wasn’t a nice sound. But it was better than running her through with my newly sharpened blade to get her out of my way. “Smells? You’ve been using your nose, shifter.”

  The demon did smell. Though to my insensitive nose, its reek — a scent like burned wet wood — was already fading, as it had been in the house.

  “And now … now you two.” She waved her hand. “With the swords.”

  “This isn’t any of your business, shifter,” Daniel sneered.

  “I represent the law in this town.”

  “You represent enforcement of that law, actually,” I said coolly. “And we aren’t under human jurisdiction. And neither is this situation.”

  “So there is a situation,” Raymond crowed, as if she’d just won some sort of game.

  Paisley stopped her snuffling about five meters to my right. She looked back at me over her shoulder, blending into the dark night so much that all I could see were her blazing red eyes. She only paused and looked at me that way when she found blood.

  “Time to go,” I murmured to Daniel.

  He stepped toward Paisley without another word.

  I followed.

  Jenni Raymond darted forward, grabbing my arm. “You’re not going anywhere until you answer —”

  I looked at her. “Remove your hand, shifter.”

  “I … I … have a responsibility …” She gulped.

  “You don’t want to tangle with me,” I said almost gently. As if chiding a toddler to not touch a hot stove.

  “Christopher …”

  “You don’t want to tangle with him either,” I said. “Though it’s obviously too late for that. And I’m not his keeper. Remove. Your. Hand.”

  She loosened her hold, stepping away from me. But then she jutted her chin out stubbornly. “I’m coming with you. You think Paisley will be able to track … whatever took Christopher, yes?”

  She’d put that together quickly. Evidently, her ability to problem solve was more functional than her magic. “Can you even achieve half-form?”

  “I … I …”

  So no. “Can you transform into your animal?”

  She sputtered. “The moon is only five days away from full. So yes, if I have to.”

  The moon was, in fact, drawing close to full. It just wasn’t visible yet. It also had nothing to do with the shifter’s ability to transform, which she should have been capable of doing anytime, anywhere. “You are useless to me, Jenni Raymond. Untrained. Weak. You don’t even pay attention to what should be instinct for you. Like not touching me. I can’t be saving your ass when I’m already tasked elsewhere.”

  “I’m trained. Well trained. In hand-to-hand combat and firearms —”

  “Both are useless against what we’re facing.” I leaned toward her. “You know how a shapeshifter kills? With tooth and claw. With a strength that should be capable of tearing someone’s head off. If you could do that, I’d be asking you to come with us.”

  “That’s insane.”

  I walked away.

  She didn’t follow.

  And that was for the best. Though I was fairly certain I had just made an enemy when I had only wanted to blend in.

  I had just wanted to be.

  I left those desires in my wake. I had run as far as I could from my past. And now I was standing with blades in hand, ready to confront that past again. For Christopher, who had saved me from myself on more than one occasion. Who kept me grounded and focused. And for Aiden, who I thought I just might be able to love. If I had the capacity. If we both took a chance on each other.

  The first floor of Peter Grant’s house was lit from within. Standing by the open gate at the top of the dirt drive, I could see the soft glow from the fireplace in the living room. The demon had crossed from the main road and through the northern fields of Meadow Lane Farm, crushing the wire fence.

  The location couldn’t have been a coincidence. But I had no idea how a mundane like Grant or the derelict pig farm could have been connected to Silver Pine. And I didn’t like not being in possession of all the facts. Not one bit.

  Daniel turned off his flashlight. We had traced the demon along the back edge of the Wilsons’ property, where it had run up against the lake and veered north to the main road. Apparently, the demon either didn’t like water or couldn’t cross over it. Which was an interesting observation, but which didn’t seem likely to help us vanquish it in the least.

  Daniel had scanned the edges of the road as we’d jogged the fifteen kilometers from our property to the Grants’, looking for signs that the demon had veered off or dropped its human cargo along the way. It hadn’t. Paisley hadn’t paused at all, so her read on Christopher was steady. Whatever spell Silver Pine had used to block the demon dog from tracking me — likely something built into the replica doll and strengthened with my own blood — she wasn’t using it to mask the clairvoyant.

  She wanted us to follow the demon’s path. She was using Christopher to lure Daniel and me. And she wanted whatever confrontation she had planned to take place away from town. But why?

  I didn’t know yet. But it was all fine by me. I preferred not to play games or piece together puzzles. I was much more skilled at taking down what lay immediately in front of me than I was in figuring out rules or collecting clues.

  I could see in the dark to a certain extent — another ability that had been stolen on the path to the Collective making me their ultimate tool. But I wouldn’t have minded keeping the flashlight on or having the moon make an appearance. Paisley could see in the dark perfectly well, though, so we left the road without discussing it. Daniel fell in behind me, ghosting my footsteps and following my magic through the deep gloom of the evening.

  He had once told me, after we’d shared an intimate moment, that I glowed. That we all glowed to him, each of us a slightly different shade of white. Christopher was the purest. I was the brightest, kissed with light gray, like a fallen star.

  I had left his bed then and hadn’t returned for three months. Six months after that, I’d slept with Mark Calhoun, had almost been killed by a black witch and her pet demon, and had destroyed the Collective. Daniel … Fish had never murmured anything intimate, anything suggesting that what we shared was more than physical, to me again. As I’d intended.

  Paisley led us on a diagonal across the property — the same path we’d taken seven months earlier when tracking Hannah Stewart. The further confirmation that our present location wasn’t a coincidence put me on edge, enough that I caught myself clenching my teeth and holding my blades too tightly.

  The pigpen that had been empty the last time was empty again. But for a very different reason. A swath of blood and body parts indicated that the pen had recently held pigs. But the fencing had been shattered at either end as the demon swept through, most likely consuming those pigs without even stopping. The remains didn’t smell yet, so the carnage had been relatively recent.

  I paused, glancing back at the house. “They must have squealed. Loudly, if briefly.”

  Daniel shrugged. “Drunk.”

  I glanced at him. “I’ve been here before, tracking a woman … Hannah, who the owner’s son had beaten and chased into the forest.”

  He nodded. “Christopher told me about it. And that the old guy carries a grudge. Which is why we came through he
re earlier, Paisley and I. Grant was already tying one on when he ran us off.” He laughed darkly, likely at the idea of him running from Peter Grant. “He’ll have passed out by now. I didn’t bother with him because I knew you hadn’t been on the property recently. It’s devoid of magic, even naturally occurring. Which is actually odd.”

  “And Paisley couldn’t track me. Did you figure out why? Was she spelled directly?”

  He shook his head. “She seemed confused. But we’ve never worked together, so I’m not certain. Knox said that this idiot had given you some trouble.” He grinned at me, his teeth just a flash of white in the dark. “It’s awful when you can’t just scare everyone into submission, isn’t it Socks?”

  “Oh, he’s scared.” I stepped around the pigpen. Paisley had already moved on, and I didn’t want to lose her in the dark. “We’re lucky the demon can’t teleport. Paisley might not be tracking Christopher so easily right now either.” Though I honestly wasn’t sure how true that was. When I’d rescued Paisley from the compound in the middle of destroying it, Zans had indicated that the demon dog was genetically programed to track the Five. But we had never tested that ability or her range — which was idiotically shortsighted of me.

  “We’re lucky no one noticed a fucking demon racing down the road.”

  “It has to be cloaked. Even Silver Pine isn’t stupid enough to draw attention to herself that way. At least, not more attention than what she wants to draw.”

  “Because there’s a reason Paisley can track Christopher but couldn’t track you.”

  It wasn’t a question, but I answered it anyway. “Yes. The witch is playing with us.”

  “Drawing us in now, but not before she was ready for us.”

  “Maybe. Or maybe the spell on the doll was just to distract me long enough for her pet demon to grab Christopher. And Aiden. Maybe this was her endgame all along.”

  “Or she’s insane and simply reacting in the moment.”