Demons are Forever: Confessions of a Demon-Hunting Soccer Mom (11 page)

I was debating whether it was warm enough to fill up Timmy’s sand-and-water play table (and debating how much the other moms would hate me for getting their kids wet and dirty), when I heard gravel crunch behind me.

“Sorry I’m so slow,” I said. “I forgot the—”

But the words died in my throat. Because that wasn’t Fran barreling down on me.

This time, it really was a demon.

Five

The demon launched himself
at me, and from my precarious bent-over position, I barely managed to defend myself. An offensive maneuver was out of the question.

Pots clattered as I fell backwards against the potting table, one clay pot cracking and slicing hard against my exposed upper arm. I tried to get my footing, but the ground was damp, and my feet slid in the muck.

The demon took advantage of my poor balance and lunged forward, pressing me backwards so that the edge of the table was digging into my back, just above the waistband of my jeans. A few minutes ago, I’d had an ice pick tucked in my back pocket. But I’d foolishly tossed it into the sink when Fran and Elena had arrived.

Not one of my brighter moves.

With one hand, the demon held my neck, and with the other, he wielded a knife, the tip of it pressed right against the corner of my eye. I stayed perfectly still, my heart pounding against my ribs, and my body screaming in pain from the splintery edge cutting into the exposed skin of my back.

He’d shoved my whole body upward, too, so now my feet barely touched the muck. I wanted to kick, but knew it wasn’t any use. I had no leverage. And he had a large steel point just millimeters from my eye.

“Where?” the demon growled, his voice low and breathy. His dark hair matched the near-black eyes that were now locked on mine. All in all, he looked to be about thirty years old—or the shell of his body did, anyway. And that shell had been in damn good shape when it had died. Considering the grip he had on me, I think it was safe to say the body’s former owner had worked out quite regularly. “Where is the stone? What have you done with the stone?”

I stayed silent, both because I was mentally calculating my odds, and also because I had no idea what stone he was talking about.

“Speak!” he demanded, his sour breath bathing me with the stench of rotting eggs and bile.

I fought a gag, then managed to cough out a response. “What stone?” I asked, completely perplexed.

I kept my eyes on him, watching for his reaction even as much as I was trying to trap him with my attention. Because if he was watching me, then maybe he wasn’t watching my hand. The one that was currently stretching slowly—so slowly—toward the little silver potting trowel.

“Bitch. Do you think you cannot die, Hunter? Do you think we can only find it if you live?”

“Actually,” I said, my fingers finally closing around the handle of the trowel, “it’s you who isn’t going to live.”

As I made my declaration, I kicked up, taking advantage of what little leverage I had. I didn’t need much, just enough to distract. At the same time, I thrust the trowel toward his face, aiming for his eye. I was hyperaware of the knife next to my eye, and I turned my head sharply away at the same time that I thrust, risking choking if he tightened his grip on my neck, but deciding I’d rather gamble with my breath than with my eye.

His scream of pain echoed my own, and I felt the fiery burn as the point of his knife grazed the soft tissue from the corner of my eye to my hairline.

I could see, though. Better, I could breathe.

Unfortunately, the point of my trowel had missed its mark, smashing against the occular bone rather than the eye itself. The demon wasn’t dead, but he did release his death grip on my throat as he howled in pain.

I scrambled to keep the advantage, throwing myself on top of him, and upsetting the potting bench once again so that it finally collapsed in a clatter. I barely noticed. Instead, I was too busy aiming the silver point of the trowel once again at the demon’s eye.

“Kate!”

Fran’s
voice. For a split second, I froze—and that was all it took. The demon twisted sideways, wrested the trowel from me, and put his extra hundred pounds of muscle to good use, shoving me down hard and holding the trowel against my throat.

“Kate?” she tried again. “What was that noise? Are you okay?”

I watched the demon, who nodded and let up on the pressure on the trowel.

“I’m okay,” I yelled back. “I just knocked some stuff over.”

“You need help?”

“No, no,” I said, probably too quickly. “I’m fine.”

In truth, I desperately needed help. I couldn’t believe I’d let myself be distracted like that, but the fact is that I still haven’t gotten used to hunting around civilians. But there was no way I was letting Fran come into the fray. My own life, I’d take responsibility for. The rest of my son’s play group? No way.

“Well, okay,” she said, dubiously.

“The others should be here any minute,” I said. “Grab the door for me, okay? I’ll only be a few more minutes.” I kept my voice cheery as my eyes stayed on the demon.

He didn’t waste any time. The instant Fran shut the door, he was back in my face. “The stone,” he rasped. “You will release the stone.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, which happened to be the God’s honest truth. Considering the trowel he had pressed against my neck, I was hardly in any position to bargain. Still, though, I couldn’t resist. “And even if I did, I wouldn’t give it to you.”

I held my breath—not hard to do since he’d mostly cut off my air supply—and wondered if I’d gone one step too far. He obviously thought I had something he needed. I was banking on him wanting it badly enough that he kept me alive.

“Foolish Hunter,” he hissed, the stench of his breath almost enough to kill me without the trowel. “His followers gather. We will free him from the shackles of his prison. We will make him whole.”

Free him? My heart stuttered a bit as I remembered Tomlinson’s words. “Free who? Andramelech?”

He bared his teeth in acknowledgment, his eyes burning red with fury.

“Where is he?” I insisted. “Where is he imprisoned?” As I spoke, I twisted, trying to upset his balance or get free enough to grab Timmy’s green plastic rake, laying in the muck mere inches from my fingertips. But there are only so many things you can do with a sharp metal point pressed hard against your neck, and at the moment, escaping wasn’t one of them.

“Give it to us,” he insisted. “Or vengeance will be ours.”

He shifted the trowel then, so that the handle rather than the metal point pressed against my neck. He was still sitting on me, my hands and hips crushed under his weight. I struggled to breathe, the world turning a hazy red and then sharply gray, as if someone had flipped it inside out.

I was losing consciousness, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t hang on. I had no strength. No energy. No ...

Suddenly, the trowel was off my neck, and as I gasped for breath, chocolate chip cookies rained down upon me.

I didn’t waste any time pondering that oddity. Instead, I clambered to my feet, coughing and choking even as I reached for Timmy’s rake. Laura stood frozen behind the demon, her expression absolutely terrified. Apparently she’d clobbered him with a Pampered Chef stoneware cookie sheet, and he didn’t appear to be too happy about it.

As he lunged at my best friend, I launched myself back into the fray, my son’s plastic rake my only weapon.

The demon had reached her, sending her scurrying backward behind the storage shed. “Laura, watch out!” I called, but it was too late. She stepped onto a curve of broken pot, fell backwards, and landed heavily on her arm.

I heard the snap of bone even from a few yards away. So did the demon, and he was on her in a nanosecond. I was just as fast, though, and I tackled him before he could get her. We rolled over and over, my anger fueling my actions. Anger at myself for foolishly being unprepared for an attack in my own backyard. And anger at the demon for going after my best friend.

He reached out, clawing for my neck, but this time, I kept my balance and footing. And I was pissed.

I knocked his arm away, then twirled the rake around like a baton until the handle was facing him. One solid punch to the face with my free hand—just because I felt like it—and then bam, I drove the rake home.

This time, I didn’t miss his eye. The dense plastic sank in, and the demon was sucked out.

I allowed myself one sigh of satisfaction, then crawled through the muck to Laura.

“Damn, this hurts,” she said, her face a little green.

“You could have gotten yourself killed,” I countered.

She hugged her arm close to her chest. “Yeah,” she said through gritted teeth. “Well in comparison, maybe this isn’t so bad after all.”

I put an arm gingerly around her and squeezed her tight. “Thank you,” I said. “You scared me to death, and if you ever do anything like that again, I’ll kill you myself. But thank you.”

“Any time,” she said. “And sorry about the cookies. I know Timmy loves chocolate chip.”

“That’s okay,” I said, climbing to my feet so that I could help her up. “I think this play date is over.”

“I haven’t been
in a cast since I was eleven,” Laura said, looking mournfully at the chunk of white plaster that now encased her forearm.

The doctor chuckled. “This only proves how young at heart you are.”

“It proves how much of a klutz I am,” she countered, bolstering our story about how she’d tripped in my backyard. We’d wanted to come up with something a bit more original, but Fran and the rest were in my house, and they’d witnessed Laura’s ignominious entrance. Of course by that time I’d hidden the demon’s body under the tarp that Stuart had used to cover the pile of topsoil. And at the first opportunity, I’d called Father Ben and begged him to deal with the body before Stuart got home.

I’d driven Laura to the emergency room, and Fran had taken Timmy and Elena back to her house. I wasn’t happy that Laura had been injured, but I also knew that it could have been a lot worse. And for that, I said a silent prayer of thanks.

For that matter, I’d been mostly silent for the last twenty or so minutes. Because my soon-to-be-single friend—now happily hyped up on Vicodin—was chattering on with the doctor about anything and everything.

“Well,” he said. “I think you’re good to go.”

“What now?” she asked, lifting her arm.

“I’m going to have the nurse come in with a referral slip and a prescription for painkillers. I want you to see Dr. Kline in a few days to follow up.” He turned to me. “What about you?” he said, tapping his temple.

My hand automatically went to my own injury. “It’s nothing.”

“You trip and fall, too?”

Laura giggled, the reaction presumably the result of the Vicodin. “More or less,” she said.

“Hmm.” Finally, the doc nodded. “Keep some antibiotic ointment on it,” he said. “And you might consider a tetanus booster.”

“Right. Absolutely. No problem.”

He nodded at me, then turned to go. He paused in the doorway and flashed Laura a smile as white as his lab coat. “Keep me posted,” he said. And then he was gone.

Laura released a very long sigh.

I laughed. “Careful, Laura. You’re not single yet.”

“I’m pretty damn close,” she said dryly. “We’ve filed the paperwork, and as soon as our sixty days are up, it will be final.”

I frowned, and rolled a stool over so I could sit in front of her. “Laura, are you sure? All these years. Maybe you can work it out.”

She shook her head. “No. I’ve been thinking about this for a long time now.” She lifted a shoulder. “It’s over. He had an affair. End of story. There’s no going back from that for me. I can forgive a lot, but not cheating. Never that.”

“I know,” I said. “I couldn’t either.”

She leaned forward, propping her forehead in the palm of her uninjured hand. “God, Kate. How did I get here? How the hell did I get to the point where I’m flirting with doctors?” She held a hand up before I could comment. “No, don’t answer that. I don’t even want to go there.”

“All right,” I said, unable to keep the smile out of my voice. “What shall we talk about? Maybe we could take bets on whether Dr. Kline is more or less cute than your jailbait ER friend.”

“He’s at least thirty,” Laura said.

“Uh-huh.”

She pointed a finger at me. “Be nice to me,” she said. “I know your secrets.”

“Damn. You’re right. I’m stuck with you as a friend forever.

That earned a genuine laugh. “I’d say we’re stuck with each other. Who else would put up with us?”

I glanced at the door. “Doc Cutie Pie looked interesting...”

She smacked me with her free hand, and I shut up.

“Changing the subject to something less dangerous,” she said. “Why the hell did I bean a demon with my best stoneware?”

“Because you love me and didn’t want me to die at the hand of someone whose breath smelled worse than day-old broccoli?”

“Well, yes. Obviously. But why was Broccoli Breath in your yard?”

“I’m not sure,” I said. “But it was pretty ballsy. The middle of the day. Other people around. That’s not the usual modus operandi for the general demon population.”

“He must have wanted to get you pretty bad,” Laura said.

“I think he was more interested in some stone than in me,” I said, then gave her the rundown of the demon’s demands.

“But what stone?” she asked. “And isn’t it bizarre that David was attacked out of the blue, too? Although I guess you guys are the only Hunters in town. If they’re looking for something all demon-spookylike, you two would be the ones to harass.”

“Mmm,” I said, not particularly thrilled about being on that particular hot seat. But I’d gone in with eyes wide open, so I could hardly complain now. Still ...