Defying Instinct (Demon Instinct Series) (2 page)

When
the boy was gone, so were the three demons.  I exhaled a deep breath I hadn’t
known I’d been holding.  Demons didn’t bother with me.  I’d never been jumpy,
but having a mental conversation with an Incubus who made my spine tremble put
my instinct on edge.

Something
wasn’t right.  Three full-castes shouldn’t have visited me.  Especially not the
Royal’s Tempter advisor.  He shouldn’t have even acknowledged my existence.

The
smoke-and-fire in my mind burst into flames, no longer hinting or wisping, but
rampaging.  Exquisite demon anger pushed and pressed until it dominated my
every thought, forcing my control to splinter.  

Rage
flared. 

Fury
boiled. 

There
was no cause for it.  The Tempter was gone.  He’d been messing with me.  There
wasn’t a logical explanation for this reaction, but that never mattered.  The
blaze hit, demon instinct reigned, and I was under its control.

My
skin grew hot and sweat broke out on my forehead.  My breath caught in my dry
throat, and I needed to obliterate something with my bare hands.  I needed to
cause damage.  Only destruction could ease the smoke-and-fire twisting inside
me.

Harm. 

Demolish. 

Rule. 

The
commands, the desires a seductive cadence in my mind.

This
was what I really was, what I denied.  And it was stronger than my denial.  The
temptation to let it take over, to allow the demon smoke-and-fire to consume me
was so strong.

Deep
in the back of my mind, I wondered if this was the time I would fail to fight. 
This could be the day I let the evil place inside finally have me.

“Earth
to Savvy.  Come in, Savannah Cole.”  A whistle echoed in my head.  “Is anybody
home?”

The
lightness of my best friend’s voice brought me back.  It always did. 

“Benn,”
I said, my voice sounding garbled and far away. 

“Sav,”
Bennett Cotton mocked my somber tone.  He rolled his kind, blue eyes and waved
a paper cup across the counter in front of my nose.

I
stared at Benn for a drawn out moment, taking the sight of him in feature by
feature.  His light eyes, his dark mahogany skin, his thick, brown hair, and
his easy smile.  The smoke-and-fire died down.

The rich
scent of heavily sweetened coffee closed the door completely to the hell that simmered
inside my mind.  Blinking at the cup, I grinned when the local coffee shop’s
symbol of the leaping goats came into focus. 

The
lapse into oblivion was pushed to the back of my mind, my demon instinct back in
her place.  Everything was normal again.  At least as normal as my everything
got.

The
little voice inside human minds that told them fighting, stealing, coveting,
and killing was wrong was like the voice in my mind.  Only my little voice had
a different message.

Fight,
steal, covet, kill.  And above all, rule.

On the
introduction page to the Razer chapter in every junior high Demonology book, it
said, “of the six demon castes, Razers (a.k.a. Destroyers) are the most power-thirsty
and destructive, ruled by greed and lust for knowledge and supremacy.”

Daydreaming
about hellfire and brimstone was an everyday occurrence.  My demon instinct,
the smoke-and-fire place in my mind, warred with my indifferent lack of
emotions, which I considered to be the real me.  Images of destruction and
mayhem bubbled beneath the surface of my every thought, even if I just wanted
to make it through the workday without any problems.

Logically,
I knew the possibility of my demon half taking over should be frightening.  A
few mishaps were enough to terrify Dad when I was young.  He’d made me promise
I’d keep my half-caste condition secret from the world when I was five and punched
a hole in my kindergarten classroom wall.  He said if I could learn to control
it, I could belong.  Dad believed it was the only way I would live a halfway
normal life Up Above. 

It
mattered to my dad more than anything mattered to me, so I kept the promise.  After
so many years of keeping the smoke-and-fire caged, there was no need to let it concern
me today.

The
corners of my mouth lifted further as I finally took the paper cup Benn still
held out to me. 

“Everything
cool?”  He leaned against the counter and picked up my pen, tapping it
repeatedly against the side of the cash register.

“Three
full-castes came in a few minutes ago,” I told him, knowing it was as good of
an explanation for my distracted behavior as any. 

Benn’s
eyes widened, instant excitement I sometimes envied brightening his face. 
“What did they want?”

Bennett
Cotton was mesmerized by demons.  He didn’t know I was one.

I
shrugged, a human gesture that always felt just a little awkward when I did
it. 

I
considered mentioning one of the demons was a Royal advisor, but Benn’s head
might explode if I did.  And even with my homicidal thoughts and daydreams of
destruction, I didn’t want to see any part of Benn explode. 

“They
came in, looked around, and left,” I said, leaving out the incriminating parts,
then felt guilty for lying. 

It
wasn’t as though I didn’t think Benn could handle knowing what I was.  Dad
might have even been okay if I told him…maybe.  Benn wasn’t scared of or
hateful towards demons like some humans were.  But we’d known each other since
grade school.  It was too late to tell him the truth. 

Benn
had been an ugly kid too.  Lumpy and clumsy with features too big for a
child’s.  But in high school, he grew into his looks.  For him, it was possible
to grow out of the awkwardness of preadolescence.  Now he was absurdly
attractive, with his dark skin and light eyes that spoke of his mixed
heritage. 

I
always liked that about Benn.  He wasn’t from just one world either.  His mom
was Irish, born and raised in Dublin.  His father had been Lakota Indian.  The
eclectic combo made for exotically handsome offspring.

He
would have understood I was a half-caste.  Benn even would have been excited to
learn more about the demon world.  My bouts with smoke-and-fire would have
captivated him beyond belief.  Firsthand accounts of what went on inside a
demon’s mind?  He’d be thrilled.

But I
missed my chance. 

“I
wanna hear all about it.  Every move they made.”  The awe in Benn’s tone and in
his blue eyes brought me out of my thoughts once again. 

Checking
the time, then peeking out the front door, I knew I could close at any moment. 
No one was rushing to beat the clock to our closing time, and the store had
cleared out at some point during my internal battle with fire. 

One
day a week, we closed early because Dad taught an evening class at Wash U and
Benn and I had our bi-weekly
Demon History and Defense
class to attend. 
I could have hired someone to work while we were busy but I didn’t want to
leave The Bookstore in anyone else’s hands. 

It
was my sanctuary.  And my apartment was upstairs.  It felt wrong to have
someone else responsible for what belonged to us.  To me.  Even though The
Bookstore was technically half mine now, it still felt like Dad’s most of the
time.

“I’ll
tell you all about it on the way,” I said, pulling the cash drawer from the
register and flipping the Open sign to Closed.

“After
last week, I’m surprised you want to go back,” he said, an easy, joking smile
on his lips.

“I
told you,” I grinned, feeling like laughing only because I felt so much at ease
now that Benn was here.  “It didn’t even really hurt.”

“Dmitri
pinned you to the mat, stood on your neck, and blasted you with some sort of
ominous, glowy energy ball, which…I didn’t even know a Razer could do, did
you?  Anyway, if nothing else, your pride had to have been bruised.”  He
chuckled.  “Your neck too.”

“You
know I have no shame.”  I locked the full cash drawer in the safe in the back
room, planning to count and sort it after class.  “And I told you, the energy
ball thing was just an illusion.”

Another
lie.  It felt like fiery knives cutting into my brain stem.  But I wasn’t about
to tell anyone that.  Dmitri shouldn’t have done what he did.  If I blabbed,
he’d be charged with demon cruelty by the
Division of Human-Demon Relations
. 
And in spite of his mild mistreatment of me, I liked him.

I
didn’t know why, but I did.

“Did
they look at any books?” he asked, returning the conversation to my three demon
visitors, unable to let it go.  “I wonder what a demon would consider
interesting reading material.”

Benn
looked around the room as if he were imagining where the demons might have
stood and I shook my head.

“Could
you tell what kind they were?”

Flatly,
I said, “They were wearing glamour.”

“I
know, I know,” he waved me off.  “But Mischief demons always have that bright
red hair.  Hammers look like pretty-boy soldiers.  Male Razers have that little
ridge between the eyes like Dmitri…”

He
kept naming the well-established demon tells, but I had always been suspicious
of the easy way demons were recognizable.  Demons were supposed to have chosen
their glamour.  It was commonly assumed they could make their disguise anything
they wanted, any time they wanted.  If there were any similarities within
castes, it could easily be to confuse humans into thinking they were one thing
when they were another.  It would be pretty smart for an Incubus to don red
hair and mask his silver eyes.  Mischief demons were harmless.  No human would
ever see him coming.

“I
think they were all Hammers,” I lied again, switching the store lights off and
pulling out my keys to lock up behind us.  “I didn’t even talk to them.”  Which
was kind of true. 

“Still,”
Benn slid into step beside me as we left the store.  “Wish I had been here ten
minutes earlier.”

Buttoning
up my jacket and shivering through a gust of wind that blew my frizzy hair
across my face, I realized I’d left the coffee Benn brought me on the counter. 
When I turned to go back for it, Benn handed the cup to me.

“And
what would you have done if you’d seen them here?” I taunted, taking the coffee
with a demure nod.  “Beg them for an autograph?  Or cut right to it, and drool
at their feet?’

Punching
toward my arm, but not making contact, Benn changed the subject.  He told me
about his classes, and I told him about the lady who snapped at me even though the
demon smoke-and-fire was long gone, smothered for the time being thanks to Benn. 

As I
clutched my coffee and shivered, breathing out a foggy puff of air, I couldn’t
understand why so many demons—who notoriously hated the cold but were
mysteriously unwilling to put on heavier clothing—would choose to leave
California last year to come live in St. Louis of all places.  Winters could
get brutal.

Once
we spanned the short walk to the community center, Benn greeted some of our
classmates with easy conversation as he and I stood outside the front door,
finishing off our coffees.  All I did was stand beside him.  Benn was more than
chatty for both of us, and their smiles and waves weren’t meant for me anyway.

“Hey,
Bennett,” one of the attractive, curvy girls from our class shrieked, her voice
desperate with flirtation.  Her ebony skin was so rich and soft, I indulged in
an atypical moment of jealousy while she completely ignored me.

“Hi,
Camille,” Benn said, his voice showing no signs of interest.

Camille
was the type of girl who was used to getting a guy’s undivided attention. 
Since Benn looked at me instead of her, offended disbelief marred her pretty
face.  Every class, she looked just as upset.

“Ready?”
he asked me, turning his cup upside down as he gulped the last drop of coffee.

I
nodded, doing the same with mine.  Benn took my empty cup and walked across the
sidewalk to the trashcan, all the while with Camille looking insulted and
wounded at the same time.  I’d stopped expecting her to learn.

Without
another word, I followed Benn into the gymnasium where our class was held. 
Something was off.  Usually, by the time we got to class, there were at least fifteen
people warming up.  The place was practically empty. 

“Today
we’re satisfying the history requirement for this course,” I heard Dmitri’s
gravelly voice call from the classroom on the other side of the gym. 
“Everyone, get in here and find a seat.”

There
was a collective groan from the students walking in around us.  Everyone
thought
Demon History and Defense
was just a title.  All we ever did was
spar and learn the tricks to closing off our minds to a Razer demon’s most well-known
ability.

Each
caste of demon had a set of natural skills.  Full-caste Razer demons, like our
instructor Dmitri, could manipulate another’s thoughts and actions, could
tunnel into their brains and turn it to pudding.  Demonology books called it
breaching.

It
was a thrill, each time a student was able to keep Dmitri from influencing
their actions.  It happened once a class, with only one student. 

The
class was a fantasy, but we ate it up.

Dmitri
only let us think we were succeeding, improving, when in reality, if a
full-caste Razer wanted to burrow into our brains and make us rip ourselves
apart with our own, bare hands, or simply disintegrate our cerebral cortex,
we’d be powerless to stop them.

When
the room was filled with our classmates’ familiar faces, eyes expectantly and
excitedly turned to Dmitri.

“You
all know of Lucifer, the first Royal, who likely spawned the Christian
incarnation of Satan,” he dove right in without any further explanation.  “A
Sorcerer demon, or Devil as they were once called, ruled for millennia, having
a ruthless blade and the gift of immortality.  Both human and demonkind alike
were terrorized by Lucifer, until Astor, the Devil Queen and her army destroyed
Lucifer, taking over the Underrealm.”

Three
students’ hands shot up, but Dmitri didn’t slow down, or even blink.

“Lucifer
believed in purity, and despised other demon castes.  Astor wasn’t so
narrow-minded.  She aligned with Warriors, now known as Hammer demons, which
the Royal disregarded completely.  As Astor ruled, human-demon relations began
to improve.  If Astor hadn’t taken over, if Lucifer still ruled, most scholars
believe the human population would have been wiped out entirely by now.”

Not
just humans, I knew.  Lucifer hated half-castes.  Many full-castes still did,
but not like the prejudice used to be if the demon history we knew was
accurate.  Though he disregarded other castes, Lucifer wouldn’t have committed
genocide against them.  But humans and half-castes?  We would have been history.