Demon Master (Demonsense series Book 2) (74 page)

"Fair point. The trouble is, all that will take time. And what I've been thinking is, what will Daniel be like if I can bring him back to his old self after he's spent time doing God knows what in the state he's in? Who else is he going to kill in the meantime? What will Varga and Franchesca have him doing? You know how hard he is on himself already. Maybe I can heal the divide, but I don't know if that will come even a little way toward healing Daniel, if you see what I mean."

Kevin frowned. "I see what you mean all too well. And I can't help but wonder if Daniel would even want you to try. He told me you nearly got yourself killed when you tried before."

"I suppose he was probably right to refuse me until I get more training," Bree admitted reluctantly. "And I will get more. I don't want to die trying, trust me. But all this supposes I can even get access to him if I do think I have a fair shot at healing the divide. How am I supposed to locate him? There's no guarantee I'll even be able to find Daniel, wherever they're keeping him."

"One thing at a time, Bree, one thing at a time," Kevin soothed. "We both need to heal up and find our feet again. I'll do whatever I can to help you, but on one condition."

"Which is?"
 

"That you don't hare off to L.A. without a plan that has some hope of you getting out alive. It's possible I've already lost one friend to those Keltoi fuckers, I don't want to lose two."

Bree just looked at him.

"Bree..." Kevin's tone turned chiding. "What are you thinking?"

Something in Bree went hard, hard like iron. "I'm thinking it's my responsibility to fix this. I've been running from responsibility since I did my first exorcism, since I first found out that being powered wasn't just fun and games. That's over now." She looked past Kevin, at something in her own mind. "I don't care what it takes, Kevin. I don't care what I have to do, what I have to be to make it happen. I am done fucking around." She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and said, "Gelsenim, I call you! Gelsenim, I command you!"

"What are you doing?" Kevin sputtered as orange smoke poured into the room and coalesced into Gelsenim in his human form. The demon loomed over the hospital bed, blue eyes locked on Bree and burning with intensity. "I have missed you, my host, and I have been worried about you. Even these few hours apart have pained me."

"Possess me, Gelsenim."

The demon hesitated, a calculating gleam in his eyes. "For how long, my host? I have served you as best as I can. Do I not deserve a longer possession?"

"Bree, I really don't think you're in the kind of shape..." Kevin tried to interrupt.

"As long as you like, as long as we're not around powered with Demonsense," Bree answered evenly. "But you must help me get Daniel back. You must do whatever I ask, and you must resist any other powered calling you, especially Daniel. Those are my terms."

"Agreed," the demon said shortly, and his form vanished instantly.
 

She took a hard, sharp breath as felt the hot rush of power and vitality enter her. She looked at Kevin defiantly. "Don't try to talk me out of this."
 

"You're grieving and in shock. You're not thinking straight," Kevin replied sharply. "You don't know what an extended possession will do to you."

"You think I have a hope in hell of taking on Varga and his crew without Gelsenim? And that's what I'm going to have to do to get Daniel back. I'm going to need every last bit of help Gelsenim can give me, and he can give me a lot, in more ways than you realize."

"You could not be sounding more like a Demon Master if you tried," Kevin replied. His voice was angry, but his face was tired.

"I'll get him back, Kevin," she said, conviction ringing in her voice like cathedral bells. Her body had turned rigid, her hands clutched the edge of the sheet in a white knuckled grip. "One way or another, I will get him back."

The End

Afterword

Thanks for reading Demon Master. If you enjoyed it, please consider leaving a review online wherever you purchased the book. Reviews help readers find books and encourage authors to spend even more of their all too fleeting time on planet Earth writing. Otherwise, please invent immortality so I will have forever to write everything I want to write as well as do all the other cool stuff life has to offer. To get information on upcoming books, sign up for the newsletter or to contact me, check out my website at saradehaven.com

Look for Demon Mate, Book 3 of the Demonsense series, coming out December 2015

About the Author

Sara DeHaven has been writing since she was eight years old, starting with the short story "The Demon of Detroit." That first impulse to write Urban Fantasy never really waned, probably because she's always been convinced magical powers ought to exist in the here and now, starting with teleportation. If she could teleport, she'd be in a small bakery in Colmar, France for breakfast, that place in Istanbul where you can look out the window and watch men get a shave and a haircut for lunch, and the impossible to ever find again tiny cicchetti place in the maze that is Venice for dinner. In addition to travel, she enjoys reading, gardening, hiking and trolling craigslist while pretending to be a DIY type person. Her day job is terribly serious (and mysterious - if you knew what it was, she'd have to kill you), so writing fantasy is the perfect complement. She lives in Seattle, Washington with her husband and extremely naughty cat.

Acknowledgements

Thanks ever so much to my wonderful friends and beta readers, Kim Zimring and Julia Kay. And thanks also to my brother Paul, a writer himself, who never stopped encouraging me even though he’s not remotely interested in genre fiction.

And thanks must go to my husband Mike, who miraculously doesn’t pout when I’m glued to the computer in a writing trance for hours at a time. On the weekend. He’s a saint. Thanks also to my cat Josephine, who, equally miraculously, consented to be trained to sit on my feet, not on my computer, when I’m on the couch writing. You are a very bad cat, but you got that one right.