Demon Master (Demonsense series Book 2) (37 page)

Leander felt a surge of fear climbing up from his stomach into his throat as she led the way forward. He focused hard and brought up a ward around himself and Bree, one that combined deflection of attention, causing people to want to look away from them, and general power deflection. It was a complex ward, and he felt rather proud of it as he and Bree worked their way through the onlookers to the center of the circle.
 

The fight was a fierce, chaotic brawl. Two of the young men were rolling around on the ground, throwing wild punches at each other’s bodies, pulling at hair, and swearing. Two more were grappling upright, like clenched boxers, focusing on body shots. One of the guys on the ground reached out as he rolled past and grabbed the ankle of one of the standing ones, causing him to lose his balance. The other boxer overbalanced him, and they both went crashing down. Each one of them was bleeding from earlier head shots. At that point, two of the onlookers joined the fray, grabbing at the men on the ground and trying to pull them upright. One of them, a young man with long red hair much like Leander's own, reached into his coat and his hand came out holding a gun.

“Drop the ward!” Bree shouted.
 

She must have sensed the power blocking element, and knew if she was going to cast, she needed the energy to be able to get out. Leander reached deep, found the focus point, and dropped the ward. Because he had to work so fast, he wasn’t able to drop only part of it. Bree was apparently able to get a cast off because the man with the gun dropped it. Bree darted forward, apparently intent on trying to retrieve the gun. Leander’s adrenaline spiked as the redhead recovered from the muscle weakness cast and kicked Bree just as she was bending over for the weapon.
 

Without conscious thought, Leander leaped forward and threw a punch at the man’s face, connecting well enough to hurt the hell out of his hand. The man staggered back, away from Bree, who had been knocked to the ground. One of the onlookers, a slight Asian guy, was bending over her, and the expression on his face was furious.
 

Should he protect Bree or go for the gun? Bree was closer, and with a growl of frustration, he went for her. The Asian guy had Bree by her braid now, and his hand had drawn back to strike her. Leander’s foot shot out in a well aimed kick to the man’s chest. He fell back into the crowd behind him, which roared with some primitive reaction.
 

Leander reached down for Bree and pulled her to her feet. The shocked look on her face told him she hadn’t expected him to be so skilled at hand to hand combat. He realized that in the heat of the moment, he’d forgotten the role he was trying to maintain. That he shouldn’t have been so good at it. Well, he’d have to weave some tale about his youth on the streets. In truth, Marton had sent him to study Tai Kwon Do while he was living with him. Leander hadn’t kept up with it, but apparently, his body remembered what to do.
 

Too late, he remembered the gun. The sound of a shot going off in close quarters caused both he and Bree to startle. They whirled around in unison and saw one of the young men, a blonde kid, down on the ground, clutching bloody hands to his chest, mouth widened in a howl of pain and surprise.
 

Leander felt a burning desire to run. He looked around frantically, trying to locate the shooter. The crowd was in total chaos now, some trying to get away, some pushing forward to look. There was a pall of negative energy over the whole scene, perceptible to his Demonsense. Leander could begin to feel it working on him. He was growing more angry than afraid, even though the deteriorating circumstances called for good old fashioned, self- preserving cowardice.
 

Bree’s voice was tight as she shouted at him, “We need to find the guy with the gun. Can you pull up a physical ward?”
 

He felt some of the demonic influence lessen as he glanced down at her. She was obviously terrified but resolute, and he had the surprising thought that if he didn’t live up to her courage, he’d be ashamed of himself. He pulled himself together, felt for his base energy and will energy, and drew on both, hard. Physical wards were very difficult. The law of physics resented being bent to such a great degree, and it took a lot of energy to maintain them. The ward came to his call, but it took all his concentration to keep it in place. “I’ve got it. You lead the way, and make it fast, I can only hold this for a couple of minutes.” Bree took him by the hand. Her hand was cold, which surprised him. He felt sweaty and hot with stress.
 

They were buffeted about as Bree tried to penetrate the milling, brawling crowd. While no one could physically touch them with the ward up, it created a kind of semi-hard bubble around them, like a mostly blown up beach ball. When people bumped into the ward, it jarred them in a mushy kind of way.
 

They managed to keep to their feet. Bree’s head was tracking back and forth as she tried to locate the shooter. Perhaps a minute had passed when they heard another gun shot, off to their right. The crowd seemed endless at this point. It had clearly grown. Doubtless there were police somewhere in the mob trying to contain things, but none were in direct view.
 

He only knew they had reached their destination by the fact that Bree had stopped. He was near the end of his ability to hold the ward. With an effort, he tried to divide his attention so he could be more aware of his surroundings. He saw the redhead Bree had taken the gun from before. His features were twisted into an attitude of intense rage, and Leander could just make out the orange spark in his eyes that indicated the demon possessing him was in full control. There was a little space around where he was standing, people having backed off as he raised his arm to point his gun at a struggling group on the ground. “Drop the ward!” Bree shouted over her shoulder at him, then made a gesture with one hand, and the redhead dropped to his knees, then onto his side.
 

He was still clutching the gun, though. A young man and woman dashed at him, trying to wrest the gun away. It went off, and the young woman, a pretty girl with dyed blonde hair, spun away with the impact of the bullet.
 

He and Bree were struck so hard from behind that they were thrown to the ground. The ward Leander had managed to pull back up after Bree cast cushioned their fall, then vanished as Leander’s concentration broke. Bree landed mostly underneath him. He tried to move off of her, and was distracted by the pain of a kick to his hip, followed by a second higher up on his side. He tossed off dizziness spell, one of the easiest to cast, in the direction of his assailant. The kicking stopped, but then another body landed on top of him and Bree. He felt someone step on his calf, another trod on the tips of his fingers. He was very much afraid they were about to be trampled to death.
 

The noise of the crowd was awful. People were in a panic, fighting like animals. He heard another gunshot, further away, then a second, closer. He tried to focus on putting a physical ward back up, but a glancing kick to his head threw him off completely.
 

At first, he thought the sudden increase in nausea was due to the blow to his head. But then his Demonsense locked in, hard, and he realized he must be in very close proximity to a demon. Even as this registered, he was flipped off of Bree, the force of the telekinetic spell clearly coming from her. She staggered to her feet, and began casting immediately, hands weaving in an intricate dance. People all around them were staggering. Some collapsed to the ground, and some were thrown back by an invisible force. There were cries of anger and surprise punctuating the roar of the crowd, and the sound of sirens that had started up sometime in the last few minutes.
 

Leander could hardly believe what he was seeing as he watched Bree. He had seldom seen such a display of power. It was the kind of thing really high power Keepers were supposed to be capable of. He must have mis-read Bree’s power somehow, and the thought was disturbing.
 

At first, she seemed to be making good headway. The space around them widened initially, and Leander had time to get painfully to his feet. His head was throbbing, and he still felt sick. His other pains were a distant second in his awareness.
 

All around was chaos. He was tall enough to see over the heads of some of the crowd, and he could see it had grown, spilling out into the street, stopping traffic. He could just glimpse police in riot gear beginning to assemble on the edge of things. His attention was drawn back closer in as he saw movement coming toward him in his peripheral vision. Several men were pushing through the crowd towards he and Bree, and in seconds, a group of seven had made it to the periphery of the little circle of open space Bree had freed up around them. If his Demonsense was serving him correctly, every one of the seven was possessed, and every one of them was powered. And that probably meant Keltoi.
 

He briefly considered abandoning Bree then and there. All his instincts were telling him that as amazingly good as Bree was at battle casting, there was no way she was going to best that many powered at once. Not all of them were necessarily Casters, but all they’d really have to do was rush her while some focused on casting, and she’d be overwhelmed quickly, and he with her. He had half turned away from Bree, caught in frantic calculation and indecision, when he was struck hard from behind, hard enough to throw him to the ground. It was all he could do to get his hands up in time to keep his face from smashing into the pavement. He got another kick to the side, and as he instinctively curled around the pain, he was able to glimpse Bree, arm outstretched, and heard her intoning, in a clearly demon possessed voice, “Demon, I command you! Out of your host!”

In stunned disbelief, the words formed in Leander’s mind.
Bree Jenkins is a Demon Master.
 

All
of the possessed Keltoi were down. Bree was pretty sure she hadn’t killed any of them by de-possessing them so quickly, but she couldn’t be certain.

My host, this is our chance to make our escape. To the south, I feel no others of my kind, and the crowd is thinner there,
Gelsenim prompted her. Bree turned to look south, and immediately saw what he meant. On every other side the crowd was thicker. She heard another gun go off, and there was a strange smell to the air. Tear gas?
 

Leander had made it to his feet and was shouting at her, over the noise of the crowd, “We’ve got to get out of here, Bree! We won’t be able to help anyone if we’re dead!” There was a wild look on his face, part fear, part anger, part something else she couldn’t name. She noted he was not touching her even though one hand was hovering near her elbow.
 

He had to have seen her casting out demons with Gelsenim’s help. She hadn’t had any choice. It was that or let the possessed Keltoi kill both her and Leander, not to mention all the other people they might yet hurt this night. It was probably the only good she’d managed to do in this whole fucked up mess, and she’d outed herself in the process. She realized belatedly that Leander had mentioned having low power Demonsense. There was a good chance he knew she was possessed as well. She was badly rattled and couldn’t think what to do.
 

My host, please hurry!
Gelsenim insisted.
 

Having been unable to form a next move herself, she went with Gelsenim’s plan. “C’mon, this way,” she shouted back at Leander. She was able to read the movement of the crowd to find the quickest way through, dodging the worst of the violence, and her Demonsense warned her away from any more possessed.
I might as well go ahead and de-possess more, I’ve already completely blown my cover,
she told Gelsenim. She wasn’t truly sure she was doing the right thing in trying to get out of the crowd.

You have not revealed yourself to any those ones you call Keepers, as far as we know. And your base energy is weak now, your will energy weaker. Even with my help, doing that much casting and so many de-possessions have drained you greatly.
 

I could at least try to do a few more,
she replied, slowing down.

Leander must have seen her hesitation. The crowd was thinner, and he didn’t have to shout any more. He bent close to her as she walked and said, “Don’t even think of going back in there. We’re damned lucky to get out with our lives. It’s just too out of control, and I can’t do much more warding, if any. And besides, there are more police now. I can smell the tear gas. Things will be winding down soon.”
 

When she still hesitated, he finally took her arm and propelled her along, though he let go as soon as he’d got her moving again. The crowd was thin enough here that they could move at a jog. Bree reluctantly let herself be convinced. Not that she wanted to plunge back into that nightmare. She’d never been so afraid in her life. This crowd was far worse than the one at Alki, denser, more violent. She was sure many people must have been killed. Just think of all the gunshots she’d heard, not to mention people probably getting trampled, or knifed, or beaten half to death. There had definitely been a higher proportion of demons in this crowd as well. She never had seen a Keeper, which she supposed on one level she should be thankful for.

As they passed the ragged edges of the crowd, she saw a group of men beating in the glass front of a store with a metal table, likely intent on looting.
The world has gone mad,
she thought. It was surreal, seeing the fabric of society break down like this. It had felt like that at Alki as well, but it hit Bree harder now, because now that first riot wasn’t an isolated incident. As they got free of the crowd, Leander took the lead. She was having a hard time keeping up with him in her dress flats. She was exhausted and on the verge of tears.

You did well. You did what you could do,
Gelsenim offered.