Demonsense (Demonsense series Book 1)

by Sara DeHaven

  A frown settled between her brows as she struggled with the over-empathy that was a curse for most Readers. She suspected this would be a difficult conversation, so she squelched her burgeoning nurturing impulses and prepared herself to ask some tough questions.

  Just as she was mentally paging through several of the conversation openers she’d spent half the morning rehearsing, Daniel pre-empted her by saying, “Look, Bree, I know some very disturbing things happened yesterday, and I’m sure you have some questions. I have a few myself. In fact, the only good thing to come out of the attack is that it makes much more likely the Keltoi are after me, not Hunter."

  "That's what I've been thinking," Bree responded. "Still, it doesn't answer the question about why they're after you. Not to mention the question about why the Ecclesias aren't after you. Jesus Christ, Daniel! A Demon Master? You're a Demon Master as well as a Binder?" The tension she'd been struggling with all morning came out in her tone.

  Daniel raised a hand, palm out, in a placating gesture. "I'm going to explain all that, Bree. But first I just want to say how sorry I am you had to be anywhere near what happened yesterday. I know you could have been seriously hurt. I'm afraid I wasn't expecting anyone to make a play for me in broad daylight, out on the street like that.”

  Bree folded her arms across her chest and said, “I’ve been at exorcisms much worse than that. Don’t sweat it. And you’re right, I do have some questions. Like for instance, how you ever got to be a Keeper. And does the Ecclesias know about your Binder and Demon Master talents? Somehow, I don’t think so.”

  He didn’t look taken aback by her antagonistic tone. He just looked tired and resigned. “I do want to answer those questions, and any others you might have. The cat’s basically out of the bag here, several cats in fact, no pun intended. And I just wanted to, to...” He stopped, took a breath, and continued. "To tell the story. To tell you the truth.”

  She nodded for him to go on, though she mentally reminded herself that this could all be some kind of act, some effort to get her sympathy. Someone used to dealing with Readers could tell enough of the truth sometimes to fool Reader sense. But, Bree reflected a tad smugly, I'm not just any Reader.

  “When I was nine years old, I accidentally called a demon,” he began, scratching absent-mindedly at his beard stubble. “I was trying to call fire on my own, out in the woods on our property. I’d been having trouble with my control, and I wanted to practice alone, where my father couldn’t see me. I wanted to impress him. Instead, I ran home with a demon on my tail. It was a fairly big one, and I narrowly escaped it burning me. It started a fire in the house trying to get to me. My father and mother between them managed to control and banish it, but it was a near thing because they were caught unprepared. My father…”

  He hesitated and looked down, then continued with a harder tone to his voice. “Well, he was a proud man, and just recently appointed to the Ecclesias. He felt it would shame him, shame the family name if it were known I was manifesting Demon Master talent. So he didn’t report it. He believed at first, I think, that maybe it was some kind of fluke, a random occurrence, or maybe that’s just what he told himself to justify not turning me in. But I started attracting demons regularly not long after that. My Demonsense started coming in at around that time as well. I had to be decked out in wards and protection amulets full time, day and night. My parents had to keep up high-level house wards and renew them daily. They didn’t want me leaving the house in case I encountered a demon on my own. And at first, I was too scared to leave. You have Demonsense as well, so you know how frightening the presence of demons can be to a kid.”

  Bree shivered and nodded. She had far too many bad memories of those early demon encounters. She’d come into her Demonsense at six, an unusually early age.

  “There was a girl next door named Franchesca that I played with, and she was basically my only friend,” Daniel continued after a pause. "I missed her, and I got lonely being inside all the time. I had heard of Demon Masters, of course, rumors and scary stories. But I’d heard enough to make me wonder if I really had to hide from demons. If I had Demon Master talent, if that was why they were attracted to me, then why couldn’t I use my powers to just make them leave me alone? At first, that’s all I wanted. I just wanted to be able to play outside with my friend. So I snuck out. I went prepared, having practiced it all at home in advance. A demon came, and I focused my base and will energy and sent it away. It worked." He smiled a little. "As you can imagine, I was very full of myself after that. And soon it occurred to me that if I could send them away, maybe I could make them do other things.”

  Bree was shaking her head. “That’s exactly why children should be monitored, isn’t it? That’s where it all gets dangerous.”

  “Or course it’s dangerous, but so-called monitoring is dangerous too,” Daniel replied intently, leaning forward. “I don't know if you're aware of this, but 'monitoring' is a lot less benign than it sounds. It means being stripped of all your powers. More than half of the people don't live through the process. And if you do live, there's a good chance that a part of your mind has been excised along with your powers. The results vary from person to person, but the more power you have to start with, the more of you they have to take away to take all of your power."

  "I know all that! Why do you think I haven't turned you in? Not that I haven't thought about it," Bree said darkly.

  "I hope you'll hear me out before you decide to do anything like that."

  "Just finish what you were saying," Bree replied, not wanting to commit yet to anything.

  "In any case," Daniel went on, gaze focused inward on his own memories, "I started to experiment, and Franchesca egged me on. She was powered as well, and was always one to try something risky. Her mother basically let her run wild.” He shook his head a little, at some thought or feeling. “At first, I just worked with whatever demons showed up. Had them do little tricks, run errands, you know, fetch us some candy, spy on the neighbors. They were just the local wild demons, small ones, mostly trickster types, more interested in causing chaos than pain or suffering. But Franchesca finally convinced me to try calling one. And that’s when I found out that the ones you call are a different breed altogether. They're attracted to power, and many of them have been called before, by real Demon Masters, the kind that work in the dark.”

  He took a breath and focused on Bree again, apparently willing himself back to the present, to face her. “I called a big one. And it possessed Franchesca. I finally managed to get it out and banish it, but not before some very scary, very disgusting things happened. The kinds of things I still don't like thinking about. You've been around demons, you know what I mean."

  Bree nodded. She knew exactly what he meant. In fact, she had to work to suppress a whole host of ugly memories brought up by his words. A possessed little girl biting a chunk out of her own arm, a man stabbing a fork over and over into his wife's head before Seth could wrestle him to the ground, a mother holding her baby son by his foot and threatening to bash his head against the altar of the church.

  "And that was it for me," Daniel continued. "I stopped all of it, and I focused on shifting my energy so demons wouldn’t be so readily attracted to me."

  "How is that even possible?" Bree broke in, finally getting to ask one of her burning questions.

  Daniel shrugged. "At first, I didn't know enough to know that it was supposed to be impossible. My father caught me at some of my earlier experiments, and I guess it made him question some of his own assumptions that it couldn't be done. He and I worked on it together. He was a very strong Caster, and my Caster abilities were coming on by then. Between us, we found a way to hide all traces of Demon Master power. I won’t go into details now, but it’s basically a combination of a spell that needs to be regularly renewed and an actual shifting of base energy. By the time I was fourteen, I could do it reliably, and I was allowed to go away to boarding school.”

  “What happened to Franc
hesca?”

  Daniel’s expression became shuttered. Bree had been reading him for all she was worth while he spoke, and her sense was that he was being truthful, but some kind of wall clearly came up with that question.

  “Franchesca? She went on to join the Keltoi. Her mother came from a Keltoi family, and she turned to the Keltoi when her father disowned her for coming up Demon Master.”

  Ah, definitely much more to that story, Bree thought, given he’d been raving last night about this Franchesca, but decided to leave it for now.

  “My Binder talent showed up about two years after the Demon Master talent," Daniel went on, "and I was able to hide that as well. My father never turned me in, though I think it drove him a little mad. He was a pretty rigid person, a conservative really, a voice for the most stringent interpretation of powered law. He personally monitored a number of people with Demon Master talent. So he was basically a hypocrite, and he hated that. He died of a brain aneurysm about a year after I made Keeper.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Bree said.

  “Thanks.” Daniel tried to lean back a little in his chair, then winced and appeared to think better of it. “I can’t say we were close. In fact, I’m not sure I can say I even liked him. And heaven knows I was a disappointment to him. But in his own way, he protected me, and gave up a lot to do it. Not that he ever let me forget it."

  The sun peeked out from the persistent clouds, and rays came in through the windows, warming the gold tones in the wood floors and brightening the pink and peach flowers in the rug in front of the couch. Just as quickly as it came, the cheerful light disappeared back behind the clouds.

  After a little silence, Bree ventured, “So I’m guessing it got to be hard to hide your abilities as a Keeper. The self defense impulse has to be pretty strong, and,” she reflected aloud, suddenly remembering that night at Kevin’s, “the impulse to protect others. It must be hard not to use what you have.”

  Daniel gave her a speculative look. “You’re good at this, you know. Good at putting the pieces together. Your Demonsense is clearly very good, and you’ve done exorcism work. Did it never occur to you to put all that together with your Reader abilities and become a Keeper?”

  Bree broke eye contact, cheeks coloring. “Hah, another one I’ve heard before. No, I never wanted to be a Keeper.” She stopped herself, and then revised, “Or rather I thought about it, but I decided I just wasn’t cut out for it. Don’t have the courage, really.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. I’ve seen you under pressure, and you pulled off defensive magic you weren't really familiar with. You have to have some courage not to just freeze or run in those kinds of situations.”

  “Are you kidding me?” she replied. She reflexively pulled her knees toward her body, dumping the calico cat off her lap. It arched its back in a stretch, then sauntered over to Daniel and jumped up on his lap. “I was scared out of my mind both times we were attacked, and provided almost no help at all. I feel the same way about exorcisms. Demons scare me big time. The only way I get through an exorcism is to get good and angry. That gives me the base energy I need, although it kind of messes with my will energy. No,” she shook her head, “I think I’d get too scared in the face of battle, or too angry and lose my focus.”

  “Everybody gets scared in the face of battle, everybody loses their focus to anger,” Daniel argued. “With good training, and with experience, you learn to work around it. You gain confidence. Think about your work with the taint I had. Don’t you remember a time when you found taint work scary? You seemed completely confident in dealing with my taint, and you handled it perfectly when it started to go bad.”

  “You’re not much of a Reader, are you?” she asked, slanting him a skeptical look. “I was scared that day before I even got to your house. Apart from a recent exorcism, I hadn’t done any power work at all for close to two years.” Bree realized she was clutching her knees to her chest and consciously tried to unclench her posture. “Anyway,” she shot back, “if being a Keeper is so great, why aren’t you one anymore?”

  Daniel scratched the cat on his lap behind the ears, eliciting thunderous purring, and replied, “What I told you that first day was true. I was pretty burned out, and I’m sure the taint wasn’t helping the situation. And, as you guessed, there were times I had to choose between someone getting seriously hurt or killed and using some of my Binder and Demon Master talent. It was...difficult. Agonizing, really. At first, I was so out of the habit of using either talent that I couldn't bring it up in time even when I was working alone and it wouldn't have been any risk to me to use it. I didn't save people I could have saved."

  He stopped and met her eyes, and she got the sense he almost welcomed any judgment she might have about that. Her Reader sense sharpened, and she came up with a pattern. He wanted judgment because he'd never been punished and he thought he should be. In fact, she would bet money he had a self-destructive streak of some kind as a result.

  "Later on, I used it too much," he continued. "Sometimes I could explain it away, but word started to leak out. I got some questions from the Powered City Council, and finally a review with the Ecclesias. They couldn’t find anything to nail me with, but I was under suspicion in a way that was making it hard for me to do my job. And honestly, there was a bigger issue too.” He regarded her seriously for a moment.

  “Which was?” Bree prompted.

  Daniel huffed out a sigh. “It’s just all so never ending, Bree. The battle with the demons and the Keltoi. Our powers are so equally matched that neither side has ever really gotten the upper hand. This has been going on for literally thousands of years. We win battles, we lose them, maybe one side dominates a particular city or region for a time, then the balance shifts. No matter how many demons we exorcise, more show up wild or are called by Demon Masters.”

  He stopped, and his jaw clenched. He glanced back up at Bree, and a blazing intensity lit up his face. “There's a way, I know there has to be a way to put a stop to possessions and other demonic intrusions into our space. To do that, we have to understand them. We’ve relied on old lore and religious interpretations, but none of that has ever gotten us more than temporary mastery over a given demon. We still have no real idea where they come from, what they're made of, what they truly want, and why they want to get it here. And the only people who have a hope of finding out, Demon Masters, are shunned! There's such a knee jerk reaction of fear, such a culture bound horror of Demon Masters that no one is even willing to explore if there is a way to safely use Demon Master power to get some answers!”

  "Come on, you know that's been tried countless times. All that ever comes of it is more dangerously insane Demon Masters."

  "And because it's been tried and hasn't worked, everyone should just stop? Look, thinking has evolved. The world has evolved. Someone's got to try this without all the religious preconceptions."

  Realization dawned on Bree that he was talking about himself. “You’ve been calling demons, trying to get answers,” she accused. “My God, that is just so insanely dangerous!”

  “That’s what everyone thinks,” Daniel argued urgently, leaning forward, “and I’m not saying it’s easy. But I have found a demon that's willing to talk to me. I have to wade through a lot of the usual shit demons spout, but I've gotten enough hints about their nature that I've got to continue. I’m not saying I know a way to be sure that it’s safe. But someone has to try. Someone has to take some calculated risks, or this will never end!”

  “How do you know it hasn’t already damaged you?” she asked. That dark streak she'd read in his energy came instantly to mind, and it suddenly seemed a direr sign than she'd considered it previously. Maybe he was a lot closer to the edge than she'd thought.

  Daniel hesitated, and some of the fire seemed to go out of him. “I don’t know for sure. I can’t know. There’s something innately corrupting to demon contact and it’s very difficult for the one affected to see it. I need monitoring, and it can’t be the E
cclesias, and it can’t be a Keeper. There's just too much weight of tradition against this kind of experimentation. I would never get a fair hearing, they’d just shut me down. I need a high power Reader, an Exorcist and someone with exceptional Demonsense. Someone not afraid to call me out if they think I’m crossing the line. I need you, Bree.”

  Bree was stunned. Of all the ways she imagined this conversation going, nothing like this had remotely crossed her mind. “But, but I’m not high power,” she protested weakly.

  Daniel regarded her wryly. “That’s not what I hear. And frankly, that’s not what I read. I’m not much good at reading people’s emotions or intentions, but one thing I can do is read power. Trust me, you’re high power on at least two talents, and maybe three. You're power signature is really pretty amazing.”

  Tears welled up in her eyes. Impatiently, she wiped them away but they kept coming. She felt something dissolving inside her, and she didn’t know what would come next. If she admitted he was right, what responsibility would that bring? More than one person had tried to tell her she was high power over the years, but she had brushed them off. She’d never wanted to be high power.

  Yet she found she believed him, or rather, she found the sense of the truth of what he’d said resonating inside her. Maybe holding herself back in her power use these many months had set her up for this, for realizing it meant more to her than she wanted to admit. Only Seth had never really pushed her, only he had accepted her reluctance to try to develop her power further. And for the first time, she found herself seriously wondering if that had been a good thing.

  And what of Daniel’s ideas about the need to learn more of demons? There was logic to it. That was undeniable. Yet how could she know it wasn’t demons influencing him to want to have more contact with them? What if they were toying with him, trying to take him over? She could easily believe his intentions were good; her read was clear about that. As she’d reflected last night when she couldn’t sleep, it did seem he tried only to use his dark abilities for good, and had the self-control to avoid using them in very difficult circumstances.