DemonWithin

by Rebecca Royce

  Her response to him bounced around in her mind. She could see Nanette staring up at her from the table, where they’d bound her arms to keep her from hurting herself. Her eyes had been hard and Dakota hadn’t thought it had anything to do with the demon within.

  “Oh shit,” She said. Brady pulled her against him again and this time she let him. Her knees felt weak. “She doesn’t want the demon for herself. If she did she could just use this one, but no…”

  “Go on. What were you going to say?” he asked.

  She breathed in and out next to him. “The demon that was inside of her was a powerful one. She wouldn’t be satisfied with this nonsense.” She waved her hand in the air as if to dismiss the demon.

  This was nonsense?

  “Then what does she want?” He wished he knew more about this so he could help. Brady’s specialty was problem solving.

  “That’s it, Brady.” She tapped on his chest. “The one in your sister. He doesn’t do theatrics. He’s strong. She wants that one.”

  Brady kissed her head. “How would she get this demon to agree to help her? Why would it? Why would the demon want to leave my sister?”

  “It wouldn’t. What a sweet life it’s had. Fed, cared for and torturing a woman since she was a child. Every demon’s dream. But you’re right. Why would this idiot help her?”

  “What could she offer it?”

  Dakota gasped. “I know what she has.”

  “What?” He wanted to kick something from frustration.

  “Me. She wants to punish me. Stick the thing in me.”

  Calm was the name of the game. “How would she get that to happen?”

  “All she would have to do is wait until I worked on Sydney. I’d be open and ready for an assault.”

  “I won’t let her anywhere near you. Where’s my phone? I’ll make sure she doesn’t get anywhere near my house.”

  “She doesn’t need to be there. She has something helping her, something that’s been messing with your aura, following you around, making it impossible for me to entirely monitor your intentions. No wonder I can’t turn off my second sight. It has nothing to do with you and everything to do with the demon that’s stalking you.”

  “What?”

  The room boomed again and the sound of a low, dangerous cackle reverberated through the air.

  “I think we might be in more danger than I initially thought.” She hoped she didn’t sound terrified, because she couldn’t remember the last time she’d been so afraid.

  Chapter Four

  Brady froze, his legs unable to move. This had to be some kind of panic attack, and the man they called “Ice” at work simply had no idea how to handle anxiety. To his knowledge, he’d never felt it like this before.

  “Are you telling me there’s a demon here right now?”

  Making Dakota actually say the words might not be a great move. If she didn’t repeat herself perhaps he could live in denial.

  Her hand came down on his arm. “Listen to me. I’m going to make it go away. I may not be much of an exorcist, but this I can probably do.”

  “I feel like I can’t move. I’m panicking.” The words cost him little, not even pride. He guessed the whole “being stalked by a demon” thing had thrown him off. Sydney might be possessed—somehow he’d made peace with that idea—and he had no idea he’d turn out to be such a coward.

  “You’re not panicking.” She cleared her throat. “Something else is actually going on.”

  “What?”

  “Can you feel my hand on your shoulder?”

  That seemed an odd question to him. “Yes.”

  “That’s good.” Dakota smiled at him. “Let go of him.”

  “What?” He wasn’t holding on to anything. Confusion filled his mind. She meant to leave him. Her emotions darted all over her face. Dakota would leave and he’d be all alone with the demon. And he would die…slowly, painfully, and alone.

  “That’s enough.” Dakota walked away from him. She’d done it. He’d been right. Abandoned forever…

  She strode back through the door holding a container of salt in her hands. “I hate to resort to this level when it would be so easy for you to simply leave. Right. Now.”

  He couldn’t move. Why didn’t she make sense? He quivered and he feared his knees were about to go out from under him. That was where he’d die—alone on the floor.

  Dakota flung the salt into the air over his shoulder. He heard a hiss but couldn’t turn his head to look at what had made the sound. Not while his body slowly died.

  She walked in a circle, sprinkling the salt onto the floor around him as she spoke in a low voice.

  “Be gone.” She sprinkled some more. “You cannot cross the salt.”

  Nothing about what was going on in that moment made any sense to Brady, but somehow the pressure on his shoulders eased, inch by inch, until it felt as if he could take a deep breath.

  His mind felt…lighter. Why had he thought he was dying? He grabbed his head and shook it. Hell, he’d been so fucking afraid.

  Whirling around, he watched Dakota as she finished her salt circle. The temperature in the room had dropped significantly and Brady felt as if he might fall over. His knees finally did give out and he hit the ground hard. His breath came in and out of his lungs as if he’d run a race. What the fuck?

  A black blur whirled past him and he thought he smelled sulfur. His mind couldn’t make sense of the things he saw, couldn’t decipher them. A cool cloth pressed against the back of his neck and he closed his eyes.

  “Take deep breaths or you’re going to pass out.” Dakota’s voice felt like a warm balm on an open wound.

  “I feel…wrong.” He couldn’t even speak articulately. The sensation delved into an area so much worse than the word “wrong”, but it would have to do for now.

  “Well, demons will do that to you.”

  He blinked rapidly, hoping he could clear his vision. “Was I possessed?”

  Dakota laughed, a cold, hard sound. “No. God, no. The demon had his hand on you. That’s all. One hand on your shoulder. The miserable beast had a lot of nerve taking corporeal form in front of me. They’re usually subtler. The second I realized it had come in the room with us, it must have decided it had nothing to lose.”

  Brady stumbled to his feet. He’d just had mad, passionate sex with the woman who was now babying him as if he couldn’t take care of himself. Not the image he wanted to portray. His pride might have fallen under the influence of the demon. It had slid properly back into place. He cleared his throat, trying to find his center.

  “That…feeling…it was like all hope had left the world. That came from just a touch?”

  Dakota rose, wringing the rag she’d cooled him with. “Just a touch.”

  Brady hadn’t cried since he’d been ten years old and his beloved sister had changed so drastically into a creature he didn’t recognize. Tears threatened, so instead he did what he usually did when anything became too heavy for him to handle—he forced his way into the problem in order to locate the solution. Only, as with anything relating to Sydney, no answers were forthcoming.

  “Are you telling me that what my sister goes through is worse than that? On a daily basis? For twenty-five years?”

  He couldn’t read Dakota’s emotions. She’d closed herself off from him, become withdrawn and he didn’t know why. When she finally spoke, her bland tone did nothing to show how she felt. But her words brought him no relief from his own internal struggle.

  “I’ve never been possessed. I don’t know how Sydney is faring. I can’t imagine it’s pleasant.” She raised and lowered her hand and he watched transfixed as her delicate-looking fingers moved in the air. What did she want to say that she was holding back?

  “Dakota.”

  Her name, a prayer from his mouth, begging for solid ground in the ever-shifting ocean of the paranormal. Brady dealt in science, in computers. He’d just been touched by a demon. How could he reconcile all of this?
He’d wanted it, sought it out, both manipulated and been tricked into finding her. It all begged the question—now what?

  “I’m going to get it out of her.” She looked away from him but not before he saw one tear travel down her face and be brushed away. “I can’t leave your sister like that. I don’t know why I ever thought I could. My mother and I always helped those who sought us out. That’s what I do. I’d just forgotten until now.”

  He couldn’t look at her. In two strides he moved to her small window. He wanted Sydney better, but not by placing Dakota at risk. She wasn’t the only one who had to remember their upbringing. He hadn’t been raised to use and abuse to reach his own ends. Life could be short and brutal. Brady didn’t have to be.

  “Don’t tell me not to. I’ve made up my mind.”

  Turning to regard Dakota, he smiled. “Reading my aura again?”

  “Yes.” She didn’t try to hide it and he appreciated that about her. She didn’t play games. “I think you need to get your cell phone and call home.”

  “Why?” His heart beat rapidly against his chest. Not knowing what she was going to say didn’t mean he couldn’t feel that the tension had just amped up in the room.

  “Nanette. She’ll know by now that she doesn’t have you the way she thought she did. I should have killed the demon but I was more focused on you. He’ll have reported that we know what she’s done.”

  “You think she’ll go after Sydney?”

  “I think she already has her.”

  “Not possible.” He stormed into the other room. “Sydney has the entire top floor of my home. She has nurses and doctors. There’s security on the property. Nanette couldn’t get in there and get her.”

  He could hear Dakota’s quiet footsteps behind him. She hadn’t said a word as he ranted and searched for his phone. Where the hell is it? The fact that she didn’t say anything gave him too much time with his own thoughts.

  Of course Nanette could get to Sydney. He’d only been touched on the shoulder by a demon and look at what had happened. She could have every member of his staff touched by one of those creatures and it wouldn’t even be complicated to get to Sydney.

  Spotting his phone, he bent over to pick it up.

  “Call home.”

  His phone did as it had been programmed to do and called his San Francisco address. Brady owned many houses but only one qualified as home—the location where he’d managed to keep Sydney unharmed and hidden.

  He waited, tapping his foot on the carpet. Dakota walked up behind him and he noticed she’d swapped her robe for a pair of sweatpants and a plain gray T-shirt. She stood next to him, pulling her hair into a high ponytail while he listened to his phone ringing endlessly. None of what was happening could be happening. He had an entire staff available in that house—someone would pick up the phone and if they couldn’t the voicemail should come on regardless.

  Finally he gave in to the inevitable, wishing he could give in to the anger surging through his veins and throw his phone hard against the wall. But grown men didn’t do that. They strategized on how to bring down the people who hurt them instead of indulging in temper tantrums, no matter how much they wanted to hurl something.

  “Can we get to your plane now?” Dakota’s voice held a subdued tone, not something she’d had earlier. He knew that by dragging her back into the world she’d hidden herself from, he was responsible for her unhappiness.

  “We can.” Because he was an asshole and he had no choice but to drag her with him while he dealt with whoever had his sister. “But they’re not answering the phone. How do we know where to go?”

  “Oh, they’re still at your house. They want me to move around some demons. They’re not going to make it hard for me to find them.”

  “If it means anything, I’m really sorry I sought you out and dragged you into this.”

  Dakota looked at him, chewing slightly on her bottom lip in the distracted way she did when she checked his aura. He wondered if she knew she had a “tell” when it came to using her gifts.

  “It doesn’t matter. None of us can undo the past. All we can do is move forward one step at a time.”

  * * * * *

  Brady had never been with anyone so unimpressed by his wealth. She’d remarked on some of the gadgets he had on the plane, things not released into the general population yet, but the usual oohing and ahhing that usually went on had been missing. Now, four hours into their trip, she’d not uttered a sound other than to answer questions when asked directly.

  He’d been staring at her face for some time as she looked out the window, a blank expression guarding her secrets from him. In the rising sun that shone through the opening, she appeared so breathtaking that he wanted to reach out and pull her into his arms.

  In all the years he’d worked and plotted to make himself such a success that nothing could touch him, not even his sister’s psychosis or possession, he’d never once wanted anyone’s approval. His parents had long since disappointed him, each in their own way, fading from the world and abandoning him to the responsibility of Sydney without much input from them.

  He wanted Dakota to approve of him. The thought made him sit back in his seat. Why? It wasn’t as if they could have any kind of future together. She’d never want to see him again after this misadventure, assuming they lived through Nanette and the removal of the demon from Sydney’s body.

  Even if he wanted her, wrapped up in his arms, smelling sweet, where he could keep her safe from the horrors in her life.

  “As we get closer to the house, things are going to start to happen.”

  He blinked rapidly. Had she noticed him staring?

  “Oh yes? Like what?” He took a sip of his long-cold coffee.

  “The demon doesn’t want to be removed. It’s had twenty-five years of a comfy home inside your sister. If it wanted to leave, it would have done so long ago. So it’s going to try to stop us remotely.”

  That made sense. They were forcibly evicting the creature from its chosen victim. “How can it do that?”

  “Small things at first. Your driver may suddenly not know the way to the house, even if he’s driven it a hundred times. Just can’t remember how to get there. A tree could fall over in the road. One time, my mother couldn’t remember, for a few minutes, how to operate her car.”

  “Shit.” He shook his head, closing his eyes. His lids felt heavy but he knew he wouldn’t sleep. Instead he took a deep breath and made himself open his eyes to stare at Dakota. “Do you think Nanette wants Sydney’s demon? I mean, shit, she can have him. Take him out and let him in her.”

  “No.” Dakota stood up and walked over to him. She kneeled in front of him and he could see the strain of the last twenty-four hours in the dark circles under her eyes. With his thumb, he traced the smudges. “First of all, if the demon wanted Nanette he would have taken her. Not that I care what the beasties want, but it’s just as likely to jump from Sydney into someone else than to do what Nanette wants. Top demons don’t take instructions from humans well. It could jump into a member of your staff, or it could vanish and hang around the house waiting for some poor susceptible person to come along and…”

  Her voice trailed off and he nodded. “Use a Ouija board.”

  “What a perfect way to possess one child and leave another child scarred for life.”

  Brady nodded. “Devious.”

  “Demonic, even.”

  He couldn’t help his smile. “Funny.”

  “I try.” She sighed. “Plus I don’t want to give Nanette a demon. She’s dangerous enough as it is without one of those things back in her.”

  “What do you propose to do?”

  Brady didn’t feel particularly comfortable with letting others plan things, not when he could handle them himself. In this case he’d fallen so completely out of his element that he had no choice but to trust Dakota’s abilities—even though she’d told him more than once that she might not be up for the job.

  “I propose
that when we get there we see exactly what Nanette wants. If it’s anything other than a demonic possession, we give it to her, let her leave and free Sydney. If it’s not…”

  He ran his index finger down the gentle slope of her nose. “Let’s say for shits and giggles that it is, in fact, a demon she wants.”

  “Then she’s going to have a firsthand view of me killing a demon. She just won’t get it in her.”

  “And obviously she can’t know that.”

  Dakota nodded. “Hey, will the pilots let us know when we’re close to landing?”

  Brady stared at his watch. “We have at least two hours, and they’ll call out on the intercom.”

  “Great.” She stood up, climbing onto his lap. “I don’t need two hours. Just a few minutes to forget.”

  She reached between them with her hand, stroking his cock. He groaned and sucked in his breath. “I did not see that coming.”

  “Well, a girl likes to have a few surprises.”

  “You have more than a few.” His cock jumped to attention remembering how hot it felt to be inside her pussy. He nibbled on her neck.

  “Listen, I don’t want a lot of foreplay. I want you inside me. Hard, fast—whatever.”

  “Hey.” He kissed her on the lips, trying to show her with his mouth that he cared about her.

  “No, I mean it. This is all going to get really bad. The last time I did this, my mother died. I want you. Please.”

  She stroked him hard, reaching between them as she kept eye contact with him, never looking away. Brady had never wanted to be out of his pants so fast in his life.

  He tugged at the elastic waist of her sweatpants, pulling them down her legs. Brady yanked hard at the white cotton of her undies, the only barrier between him and what he wanted, until they were also removed.

  Dakota smiled. “You’ve got the idea.”

  “Whatever you want, whenever you want it.” It wasn’t until the words had left his mouth that he knew them to be absolutely true. This woman had the ability to bring him to his knees and under her command.