Demon Hunted

by H. M. Sandlin

  After everything he had done for me, he still wanted to apologize. Now that I knew exactly what he put on the line for me, I could appreciate him even more.

  I reached out and grabbed his hand. “It’s ok, Ian. I’m not mad at you. I’m glad I know everything now. Thank you for telling me. We’ll figure this out together, right?”

  “Right,” he said, leaning down to kiss me.

  Too many to save

  We went back to the compound, and I continued training in everything but my magic. I only practiced my demon magic when I was at Kellan’s house with Ian. I was starting to get a better feel for it and could use it to do simple magi spells. When I tried to do anything big, it fizzled out.

  Surprisingly, my demon magic didn’t seem as dangerous as my wild magic. I asked Ian about that, but he didn’t have a great answer. Supposedly, wild magic was one of the most powerful magics, even compared to demon magic. No one seemed to know any more than that. I didn’t want to make anyone suspicious of me either, so I couldn’t ask too many questions.

  After a week, I started to bother Ian about seeing my dad again. I still had questions, and I needed more help with my magic.

  We found another chance to go a few days later. Kellan needed Ian to go out and see if he could find any trace of demons, and he didn’t argue when Ian said he wanted to take me with him. I had a small suspicion that Kellan knew precisely why I wanted to go. He didn’t say anything about it, so neither did I.

  After I summoned my dad, I told him everything going on. When he learned that we were trying to track down demons, he stopped me.

  “I think I have a way to help you with that. It’s not the demons that you need to stop. It’s the people summoning them.”

  “We would, but we can’t track them since we don’t know anything about them,” Ian said.

  “You don’t, but Serena does.” I looked at my dad in confusion. “They’re summoning demons, which means a small part of the demon’s essence remains with them for a time. Because you’re part demon you can track it. All demons can usually find other demons if they know what they’re looking for, and there isn’t a spell blocking them.”

  I still looked confused, so he continued. “You fought the demons already. Your demon magic will search out the summoners who called them if you ask it to. You can hunt down whoever is doing this and stop it from continuing. I’ll teach you how to do it. Don’t fight them by yourselves though. I think it’s a group of summoners and some rogue guardians. They’re very powerful if they’re able to summon high level demons.”

  Ian looked shocked. “Why would guardians be working with summoners?”

  “They’re in league with wrath demons like I thought. My informants haven’t been able to get into the wrath demons inner circle to find out why yet, but they’re sure guardians are working with the demons.” Ian didn’t look convinced.

  My father spent the rest of our time together teaching me how to track down demons and those that summon them. Before he was pulled back into his realm, I felt his magic hug me again.

  “Thanks, Dad.”

  He beamed. “Anything I can do to help you, Serena. You’re my daughter. I’ll continue trying to stop them from here. Molly will stay by your side. She has grown quite fond of you and the human realm.” He laughed at my look but became serious as he turned his gaze to Ian. “You told her about yourself and your pack, that’s good. She needs to know everything. Protect her with your life. If anything happens to her, I’ll blame you.” I blinked, and he was gone.

  “I hate the way he leaves,” I told Ian.

  “He has to go back. He can’t stay here forever. I want to check out his information. I can’t believe guardians would work with summoners and wrath demons.”

  “Are you saying you don’t trust my father, a high level demon?” I asked teasingly. I didn’t really expect him to believe my dad. I was still trying to believe him.

  “Well,” Ian said. I walked over and tried to smack him on the shoulder, but he grabbed my hand before it made contact.

  “You heard him. You better protect me, or he’s going to be pissed at you,” I said, smiling.

  “I don’t think he realizes what a monumental challenge that is. You seem to attract bad attention everywhere you go.” He grabbed me and spun me around before kissing me. “But I think I’m up for the challenge.”

  We laughed and teased each other as we picked up our supplies and headed back. Ian left as soon as we returned to talk to Kellan, which gave me some time to consider everything my dad told me. If guardians were working with wrath demons, I would need to be even more careful.

  I was glad Ian tried to keep me mostly to myself. I was sure he would find a way to tell Kellan about the guardians without letting him in on our secret meetings with my dad.

  When Ian got back, he had interesting news. We would be leaving the next day to track down the summoners. He told Kellan that my dad sent me a note telling me about the rogue guardians and summoners. Kellan wasn’t as surprised as Ian thought he would be.

  Jabari was coming with us for backup. When I asked if anyone else would be coming, Ian shook his head. He didn’t trust anyone else but Kellan, and Kellan couldn’t come with us without arousing suspicion. We got everything ready that we might need and went over the plans again.

  It would all come down to me being able to track them. Ian knew of an abandoned house that he suspected may have housed the summoners at one point, so we would start there and see if I could pick up the trail. I was confident I knew how to do it but less confident it would actually work. I had to keep from using my wild magic, or it would overpower the subtle tracking spell.

  Working with two types of magic was exhausting. At least my dad was helping me with the demon magic. I don’t know if I would have ever found out how to use it on my own.

  The next morning we were packing up everything we needed in the car when Jabari arrived. “I hear we’re going hunting,” he called out happily.

  “We sure are,” Ian told him. They exchanged big grins as I watched them.

  “You both seem way too excited about this.”

  “This is what we were trained to do. Hunt down the bad guys. Being here with nothing to do but train is hard for us. We want to be out in the action,” Jabari explained.

  Men, I thought to myself. I would never understand them. I was scared out of my wits, thinking about coming face to face with a demon with only the three of us. Molly stayed in the backseat with me and put her head on my thigh while we drove. We arrived at the abandoned house, and Ian called Jabari back out to the car to discuss something while I wandered inside.

  Ian was keeping him distracted while I did the spell, so Jabari wouldn’t know exactly what I was doing. Ian trusted him but still didn’t want anyone knowing about my private lessons with my dad. If Jabari saw what I was doing he would know someone was training me. It wouldn’t take much for him to figure out who.

  As soon as I cast the spell, I could see a small wisp of light in front of me. It flew back and forth randomly and then settled in front of my face. “Ok, let’s see where you go,” I told it, and it darted off, leaving a light trail behind it that only I could see. I followed it out into the street and told Ian and Jabari that I could track the summoners.

  Jabari looked at me surprised, but Ian clapped him on the back and told him to hurry up. We jumped in the car, and Ian slowly drove down the streets, turning whenever I told him to. Eventually, the wisp flew through a field, and we got out of the car. I thought I lost it for a few minutes, but it came flying back and stopped in front of my face again before darting to the right at the edge of the field.

  “This way,” I said, hurrying Ian and Jabari along. “I can feel their magic coming from over here.”

  “How can you do that?” Jabari whispered.

  “A gift from one of my parents, I guess,” I said, casting a nervous glance at Ian. I veered left and headed into a cemetery. “Why in a cemetery? That’s just wrong,”
I said.

  “Who knows. I want to find them, get information, and leave. We don’t want to mess with anyone who is calling demons for fun,” Ian said. I led us to the front of a crypt and stopped.

  “Did you lose them?” Jabari asked.

  “No, it goes in there.”

  “Into it?” Ian asked.

  “Yes.” I put my hand on it and tried to push it open, but nothing happened. I could see marks on the ground where the door to the crypt had been opened recently. “Someone has been here,” I told them. “Look.”

  They looked down and nodded, both moving around the crypt, trying to find the way in. Molly stayed next to me and waited. I called on my father’s magic and used it to locate the locking mechanism on the door. I shoved the magic into it, and the door popped open, revealing a set of stairs going into the ground.

  “Hurry up,” I hissed. “I got it.”

  They came around to the front, and we stepped in, Ian going first and Jabari falling in behind me. Molly stayed near me, and I was surprised I couldn’t hear her nails on the tunnel floor. The magic continued down the stairs in the crypt, and we followed it, trying to keep quiet.

  At the bottom, we followed a tunnel straight for a few yards until it split in two. The magic went to the right and got stronger, but something to the left was pulling at me. I hesitated but gestured Ian to the left. We could come back to the other tunnel. Something this way needed us.

  The stench hit first, and an overwhelming desire to turn around and gag took over. Ian waved his hand, and fresh air wrapped around my head. I nodded thanks, and we continued forward.

  We passed through a large steel door and looked upon row after row of cages. Each one could fit multiple people in it, and half of them were full. The prisoners didn’t even flinch as we walked through, none having the energy to lift their heads and see who was walking past.

  “What is this place?” I asked, appalled at the filth the prisoners were forced to live in.

  A small voice made me glance farther down the row of cages. Near the end, a lone child sat in a cage by herself. I walked over and bent down.

  “Why are you alone?” I asked. She lifted her head, and I stared not able to look away from her eyes. They were completely black, not a speck of white showed.

  “They put me alone after they did this to me,” she said softly.

  “What did they do?”

  “They’re trying to bring demons here and put them into human’s to control them without The Guardianship becoming suspicious. It didn’t work right on me. The demon was too weak to take over. It’s still in me. I can hear it calling to me. They all are,” she said in a pained voice. “They didn’t think it worked, so they tried again. I was still able to overpower the demon, but this time they realized what happened. They know the demons are still in me, but they keep adding more, trying to get one strong enough to take over my body. Soon they will.” She sounded resigned to her fate, and I hated that anyone could feel so lost.

  “I won’t let that happen,” I told her. “What’s your name?”

  “Chloe,” she said softly.

  “We can help you.”

  “Not yet, you can’t. You need to stop this whole thing and help everyone. You don’t have enough people to do that. Get the information you came for and go back to your Guardianship. Bring them all here to end this. I can hold on for a few more days.”

  “How do you know all of this?”

  “Like I said, they put a lot of demons in me, and I can access some of their powers.”

  “We can get you all out.”

  “If you do, they’ll move their base somewhere else, and other people will have to go through it. We’ll be fine for a few days. They aren’t planning a sacrifice yet. They need more people.”

  “Oh god. Why?”

  “They need to bring in stronger demons to take out some girl. I’m assuming that’s you since no one else has come looking for any of us. We’re all runaways, or we’ve been kidnapped.”

  “Which were you?”

  “Kidnapped,” she answered softly.

  My heart went out to her. She was right, we couldn’t win today. We needed more guardians. I counted up the people in the cages. “Almost thirty,” I said. They would kill them all to summon stronger demons. I shook my head. “We’ll get them for this.”

  “Hurry. They’ll be back soon. You don’t have much time,” Chloe said.

  I reached my hand through the bars and grabbed her arm. “We’ll come back for you,” I told her, forcing a small amount of magic into her frail looking body.

  She gasped and looked up. “Thank you. I’ll be fine for a while now. I needed a little boost.” I smiled. I liked using my magic to help people. Molly pushed her snout close to Chloe and breathed softly on her. Nothing happened for a minute, but then Chloe smiled shyly at Molly.

  “Thank you. I can hear myself now. It will be easier to keep them under control.” I looked at Molly questioningly. She huffed at me, turned, and walked away into the tunnel.

  I looked at the rest of the cages and almost raised my hand to give them all energy when Ian grabbed my arm.

  “You can’t,” he said. “If you help them, they’ll know someone was here.”

  I hated leaving them, but I knew it was the only thing we could do. We left the room of cages and headed back to the fork in the tunnel. This time we followed the other path. The magic continued to grow stronger until we could make out voices ahead of us.

  “We need more people,” someone said.

  “That was your job,” a man’s voice answered.

  “I’m trying,” the first person whined. “It’s harder than you think to kidnap so many people.”

  “I don’t want to hear any excuses,” the first man said. “Find them.”

  The whiny voice didn’t say anything, and we continued forward quietly. I heard their footsteps moving farther down the path and kept following them. We went slowly so they wouldn’t hear us, and gradually their footsteps faded. We made it to a large room with a circle inscribed into the center. On one half of the room, seats were placed facing the circle. The other side had shelves and a counter full of ingredients for different potions and spells.

  I didn’t see anyone else in the room, so I quietly walked toward the counter. I saw a bunch of different herbs on the counter next to a bowl. I grabbed my phone to take a picture. Hopefully, it would come out, and I could show Kellan. Technology and magic didn’t mix well, and magic usually won. Still, I took a few more pictures of the room to show him if I could. It was easier than describing it all.

  “What’s this?” I whispered. I could sense the magic coming from the center of the circle. The wisp popped back in front of my face and startled me, causing me to almost lose my balance.

  “You ok?” Ian asked.

  “Yeah, I tripped.” Jabari looked thoughtfully at me, and I hurried past him so he wouldn’t ask me anything.

  “This is their summoning room,” Ian answered my question. “I would assume the chairs are for their members to watch how the summoning goes.”

  I turned and counted up the chairs. “Sixteen,” I said. “Is that possible? Could there really be that many rogue guardians?”

  “I hope not,” Jabari said.

  The wisp had been waiting off to the side, but now it flew around my head and moved across the room into another tunnel.

  “Come on. We need to keep going and see if we can identify any of the magi here.”

  I continued following the wisp forward. The tunnel went on for a long time before we heard noise coming from ahead of us. We crouched in the shadows and crept forward. We could hear multiple people talking quietly to each other.

  “Do you recognize any of the voices?” I asked. Both guys shook their heads.

  I crawled closer, trying to hear exactly what some of them were saying.

  “We need to do this soon. The Guardianship is starting to get suspicious,” a woman said.

  “I’m sure
Blake knows what he’s doing. He’s living right under their noses after all,” someone else said, and many people laughed.

  “How has he been able to stay under their radar for so long?” someone asked. “He’s pretty popular in this town.”

  “He’s ruthless to the people that cross him in this town, but he never does anything that would cause suspicion to fall his way. I heard if he has to use magic, he does it away from the town. Besides, almost everyone is too scared to say anything bad about him, even to The Guardianship.”

  “I’m pretty good at staying under the radar,” a man’s voice echoed across the chamber, and everyone got quiet. “Sinclair is right. No one is stupid enough to report anything I do back to The Guardianship. In case anyone was thinking of doing that, I would think again. I’ll know if you do, and I’ll make sure you never get the chance to speak to them or anyone else again.”

  No one said a word, and I heard footsteps moving across the chamber. I cautiously poked my head around the corner to see if I could spot the demon leading this whole thing. He was in front of a podium, looking out at the people assembled in front of him. He appeared to be a normal man.

  His square jaw and high cheekbones were highlighted by his short dark hair. I couldn’t see the color of his eyes, but I would have guessed brown from his complexion. Nothing about him seemed intimidating. He should be on the cover of a magazine, not summoning demons.

  I got my phone out and took a few photos of him and the group of people. He still hadn’t said anything, and I backed away slowly. We had what we came for, and I wanted to leave before he realized there were intruders. Jabari and Ian shuffled backward too. I stopped when the man, Blake someone had called him, started talking.

  “We’re almost prepared to strike. A few more weeks and we’ll have everything we need. The guardians have informed us that the girl we’re after is with them. When they strike, they’ll grab her at the same time. Germond informs me that we’ll have the necessary sacrifices by then, too, correct?” Blake asked, and I could feel the steel in his voice.