Demonsense (Demonsense series Book 1)

by Sara DeHaven

  “I’m going to head home now,” he continued, looking at his shoes now. “I’ve been here all morning, and it looks to me like the, um, suggestion I planted last night has held. There’s been no more trouble. And three high powered Keepers ought to be able to handle the kind of thing that happened last night. I’m more worried about what’s going to happen if their investigation doesn’t lead to any resolution. They can’t keep this level of manpower going for long.”

  “Have you thought that maybe if they’re after you, you shouldn’t be here at the house?”

  “Yes, I have thought of it, which is why I’m not moving in for the duration,” he replied.

  “I wonder what help I’d be if I stick around,” Bree admitted. “You know, I just charged in there like I was going to go to war with Javier, like I had to make him protect Hunter. I think it’s because I feel like I’m not really of any use on that score.”

  “Oh, I don’t know, you were pretty good in a fight last night,” Daniel replied, humor creeping into his voice.

  “I'm really not much of a Caster,” she responded.

  “No, really, you called up a good protection spell with almost no time to prepare.”

  “Well, in any case, I find myself wishing I knew more defensive magic. Most of my Caster training was focused on exorcism spells, apart from some very basic self defense.”

  “You know, I might be able to teach you a couple of things,” he replied, meeting her eyes at last, with that mix of intensity and shyness you saw when someone was asking you for a date. She told herself she was probably imagining things, and pushed her own rush of excitement-tinged embarrassment aside. She had more important things to focus on. Under the circumstances, learning some more defensive casting was appealing, particularly when she thought about the fact that Keepers were unlikely to be posted at the house indefinitely. She couldn't be comfortable with the idea of there being no guard on Hunter until the mystery of what the Keltoi had been after was solved.

  Of course, Daniel wasn’t really her first choice of instructor in defensive magic, what with the Binder issue still an unresolved part of the equation in how she felt about him, but she didn’t personally know anyone else in his league except maybe Javier. She'd conceded last night that Daniel didn't appear an immanent risk regarding using his Binder talent irresponsibly, so all that was stopping her was her own superstitious dread of Binders.

  After an awkward moment of silence while Bree considered, she said slowly, “That’s probably a good idea. Look, I’m planning to stay here for the day, but I’m going to take the next couple of days off from work, so tomorrow or Wednesday would be good.”

  “How about tomorrow afternoon at my place, say around three? I have a workroom set up upstairs where we could practice.”

  Say no, part of her said, the part that had been hiding out, grieving, yes, but using her grief as a shield against the big scary world, her world, where demons lived. “You’re on,” Bree replied, with more courage than she thought she had.

  Warren Justice felt his demon surge with hostility as Jim Scanlon said, for the fourth time, “Jesus Christ, are they ever going to leave?” They’d been staked out down the street from the Daniel Thorvaldson's house for over three hours, and a woman had gone in about ten minutes ago. They were hoping that meant the pair of them would leave to go someplace, but there was no sign of movement from the house. The plan was to wait until the place was empty, then call in the other two Keltoi sitting on their asses in the coffee shop down the street, and see if they could break the house wards and do a search for some spell Scanlon wanted.

  Justice knew that if he didn’t have his demon on board, there would be no way the four of them could break those wards, but with it, there was a chance. He felt the demon stir again, and a wave of heat, boredom and hunger passed through him.

  He was always hungry, and it didn’t matter how much he ate or what he ate. His eyes felt hot with lust, the lust to take in, to see more, to perceive more. He was always running his fingers along things he walked by, and when he was sitting, his hands roamed restlessly across his clothes, his face, his hair. Strangely, his sense of hearing was the only thing that seemed unaffected by this hunger for sensation. He didn’t like music anymore, any kind of music. It irritated him to the point of violence. He had broken Scanlon’s car stereo with his fist because the bastard wouldn’t turn it off when Justice told him to. Scanlon had started to whine about it, but the demon showed his face, and Scanlon had given him a scared look and shut up.

  He found himself thinking about the Keeper again, how maybe he could take him by surprise if he was with some woman who distracted him. Maybe he could go for the woman and get control of the Keeper that way. He knew that wasn’t Scanlon’s plan, and Scanlon was paying him, but the demon didn’t care about money. It liked dominance, and fear, and death.

  Justice liked scaring people himself. That had been true before the possession. There was a shame-tinged excitement to it before, but now there was no shame at all, and that made it truly fun. It was one of the cool things about being demon ridden. Another was the augmentation of his powers. Before he’d been a middle of the road Warder and a low powered Caster with a modest gift for offensive spells. Now he was a high powered Warder, Keltoi style, better at breaking wards than making them, and his Caster ability, when he had any control over it, was at least double what it was. Not major league, maybe, but good enough to get most jobs done. Trouble was, he seldom did have control over casting, or over any other damn thing. And that was the bitch of being possessed. You got to go along for the ride, and sometimes the high was like the best drug you ever had, but you didn’t get to decide where it went. Hell, half the time he couldn’t even remember what had happened. And sometimes, a tiny part of him admitted from where it cowered deep in his brain, he didn’t want to remember.

  Justice’s breath sped up, and his thoughts went even darker. The woman, tied to a bed, panting with fear, Thorvaldson drugged and forced to watch while Justice raped her. His hand strayed to his jacket pocket where he had a syringe full of Ketamine. That sure as hell should put the Keeper out at the dose he had loaded. But Justice couldn’t remember putting it in his pocket. Shit like that was happening more and more, and he didn’t like it.

  He felt more than heard the voice of the demon in his mind: I don’t care what you like. You serve me now. Justice shook his head hard but it didn’t help. Sometimes his demon had shit for brains. Yeah, he could stick the Keeper and put him out that way, but he had to get close enough first. The guy had to be ready for trouble, and he had some kind of binding spell, Justice had felt it two nights ago. Let me handle the Keeper, the demon purred. Justice felt an erotic shiver as his pleasure pathways were stimulated by the demon. Definitely one of the perks.

  Scanlon sighed in frustration next to him, slid down further on the cold car seat and put his hands in his jacket pockets. "If they don't come out soon, I'm going to need some fucking coffee to stay awake."

  Justice grunted in response, hoping Scanlon would just shut up. The guy clearly didn't have the patience for a stakeout. It was the kind of thing Justice used to be good at, before the possession. Now it took a real effort to keep the demon at the back of his mind, to keep from jumping out of his skin with restlessness, and Scanlon's chatter wasn't helping much.

  He sometimes wondered if the possession had been worth it. But after he'd come here from Las Vegas it was the only way to work his way up fast in the local Keltoi clan. He liked to think it was the right decision. It wasn’t going to be forever, and there was a certain status you got if you survived. He was a survivor; he knew he’d make it.

  Only there were some things he’d done, some things he’d thought in the last couple of months that even his hard heart had quailed at. He used to be pretty businesslike about his job. While he liked people to be afraid of him, he didn’t really get a jolt over having to shoot somebody, or from cutting them up. He just did what he had to do. Now he liked to do it
with his hands, up close and personal.

  On those rare occasions when the demon was busy and distracted, and he could really think his own thoughts, he thought it was kind of disgusting. In fact, he could feel the demon getting excited right now. It seemed to get real happy every time someone was talking about that Keeper, Thorvaldson. In fact, Justice was worried the demon might try to jump bodies on him, possess the Keeper. He wasn’t done with it yet, hadn’t had enough time to get the really hard reputation a longer possession would give him. He’d have to find some way to avoid getting too close to Thorvaldson. He was mostly there to lead the ward breaking anyway, and if he was lucky, the demon wouldn’t take full control.

  Like you were ever lucky, some sane part of him responded.

  Chapter 6

  Bree opted to go through with meeting Daniel to brush up on her defensive magic. She arrived a little late, coffee in hand, hoping to avoid an intimate chat over tea. She had decided she would be all business. She wanted to trust Kevin's assessment that Daniel could handle using his Binder talent responsibly, but it made her feel vulnerable being around him just the same.

  Daniel let her in, and after taking her coat, led the way upstairs to his workroom. It was in a lot better state than the rooms downstairs in terms of being fully unpacked. There were bookshelves on two walls, including shelves that surrounded the room’s only window, and a wall-length series of tall mismatched cabinets with doors and drawers of many different sizes on another wall. He had a long, battered wood table in lieu of a desk with a laptop and printer taking up only a small portion of its length, with a single chair behind it. The rest of the table was littered with books, candles and hand-labeled bottles of various colors and shapes. She caught sight of what looked like another protection amulet on the table, with a scattering of small tools around it. Jeweler’s tools?

  There were a variety of masks in amongst the books, everything from African to Tibetan to Chinese to Native American. An easel sat in one corner, with a half-finished canvas portraying a dreamy seascape, which answered her question about whether Daniel might have painted the canvases downstairs. A trace of incense smoke in the air competed with the smell of paint. Bree reflected that Daniel giving so much house space to his workroom and getting it unpacked first said something about his so-called retirement. He may have retired from being a Keeper, but she didn’t think he was retiring from being a magic user, not like she had.

  “I’ve been thinking about the best place to start,” Daniel said, leaning up against the table, arms folded across his chest. He was in blue again today, Bree noted, jeans and a thick wool navy sweater. So far, it was always blue or brown.

  Bree felt an internal snick as her Reader sense came up with a pattern. Blue for water, brown for earth. Some powered wore specific colors to represent certain energies they were working or trying to balance. It was a more traditional style of working, the sort of thing someone from an old, East coast family would do. And she would bet her last dollar the colors were for balancing, not working, an attempt to balance fire and air, which she was sure were the energies Daniel was most naturally attuned to. Fire for will, action and protection, air for intellect. Bree was so absorbed in this realization that she missed half of what Daniel was saying.

  “…So I thought it made sense to start working on protective spells that focus on defending against other magic users,” he continued. “Something pretty basic and all-purpose that works to supplement the amulet.”

  Bree saw that he was looking at her a little quizzically. She hoped she hadn’t been standing there with her mouth hanging open as she worked through her insight about his wardrobe choices. “Okay, so, right,” she sputtered, feeling her cheeks warm as she struggled to think of something intelligent to say.

  Daniel, obviously taking pity on her embarrassment, looked down at his shoes for a moment as he continued. “I find it’s best to work with symbols that already mean something to you, to make the casting more personal and natural, rather than just teaching a spell I already know. You’re more likely to think of it under stress that way too.”

  Bree took a sip of her coffee, and gathered her thoughts enough to ask one of the questions on her mind. “I’ve been thinking about the defensive spell I used at Kevin’s. It was basically a shortened version of one I use to ward myself for exorcisms. I just threw all the will energy I had into it and tried to imagine it big enough and wide enough to stop the demon. Kind of like an expanded warding. I can’t say I ever learned much about defensive spells besides stuff that’s specific to containing and banishing demons, but that one felt different.”

  “Yeah, you’re getting an important distinction there,” Daniel replied, sounding energized. “Warding and containing spells for exorcism are all about enclosing and guiding a particular energy, demonic energy.” He demonstrated the motion with his hands. “You’re already attuned in your mind and will before you start to the type of energy you’re dealing with, and you have a specific place you want it to go. Defensive spells can be learned and practiced in advance, but they usually need to be more general until you have a moment to read what kind of energy is coming at you. Obviously, if you can figure that out, you can attune your casting to that energy and that will make the defensive spell more effective. Then it will require less will and base energy, and you'll tire less quickly.”

  “Now that you say that, I think I did attune the warding spell somewhat to that specific demon,” Bree mused.

  “Sometimes your unconscious reads the energy and shapes the spell without your being consciously aware of it,” he answered. “But you can’t count on that, especially if you’re relatively new to defensive spells and haven’t done much casting. The other issue is that dealing with powered magic and demonic energy are very different. The problem with the defensive spell you cast at Kevin’s is that it was attuned primarily to the demon. So it wasn’t going to hold off the magic users for more than a minute or two. That’s why I think we need to focus more on defensive spells that are useful in battle."

  Battle. That Keeper word Javier always used to throw around. "I'm a little vague about how a basic defensive spell is different than warding,” Bree admitted. She drained the last of her coffee and set the cup on the table.

  Daniel shifted his weight to rest more firmly against the edge of the table. “A basic ward deflects interest and intent. A stronger ward stops physical contact and can block magic. But unless you have a strong Warder talent, you won't be able to keep up that kind of a ward for long. A defensive spell specifically blocks hostile magic. You're attuning it to block only that type of energy. Because it's less general than a ward, it takes less energy to sustain. Then you can defend yourself or whoever you're protecting for longer."

  Bree nodded as the distinction became clear to her. "Okay, that makes sense."

  "Now, it’s important to give the spell some shape, some symbolic resonance. That amplifies its power so you don’t have to just muscle it through. That’s why I wanted to start with some symbols that work specifically for you. Here, why don’t you, um…” Daniel straightened up and looked around the room, then said, “I want us to do a brief meditation. Let me go get something for us to sit on.”

  He disappeared back down the hall and through a door Bree could see leading off it and came back in a moment with what looked like two bed pillows. He plopped them down on the floor across from each other, and gestured for Bree to sit down on one while he took the other. They were situated a little closer to each other than Bree was comfortable with, and sitting across from him like that, she had to meet his eyes. They were a very dark brown, almost black. The light in the room was dim, especially with the day being so overcast outside. The one lit candle on the table cast a faint glow. She felt out of time, that she could be any powered with a master, learning spells anywhere in the world, at any time in history. She felt her connection to a long line of power users, and experienced a rare moment of appreciation of her heritage.

  Daniel
closed his eyes, and Bree closed hers along with him. He started off with pretty standard stuff about focusing on the breath, calming the mind. Meditation practice was something all formally trained powered learned as a way to focus will and base energy, so Bree quickly got to the particular blend of receptiveness and focus she was reaching for.

  “I want you to begin to bring to mind an image of something that frightens you,” Daniel said, voice calm and remote. “Something you know is not in the room with us right now, but that you have personally experienced."

  Bree’s mind considered and disregarded several images in quick succession: A snake, the taint she’d cleared for Daniel, a creepy guy from her old neighborhood. Then another image took shape, and she felt a hot stab of fear. She knew instinctively it was the right one to work with even though she dreaded its appearance. It was a dragon, the shape the demon had taken to kill Seth. It was a green acidic enough to put her teeth on edge, and it had orange, slit-pupil eyes. Razor sharp spikes jutted from its head and back at odd angles. Its muzzle was long and narrow, and blood and gore dripped off its protruding fangs. It had the unnerving gaze of a predator on the hunt, and she felt like a very small, shivery little beast under its regard. She knew her mind was just remembering, but her body was reacting as if it were here, in the room with her again. “I have the image,” she told Daniel, finding it hard to get the words out.