Demonsense (Demonsense series Book 1) (14 page)

Daniel looked dreadfully pale, but his voice was strong now. “I command you because I am your Master!” he intoned, power evident in his voice.
 

The demon cried out, a sound of despair, and Bree felt horror rise up and stick in her throat. A Demon Master? Daniel was a Demon Master?

“What is your will, my Master,” the demon whined, groveling.

“You will gather up these men. You will put them in that car.” He pointed to the Chevy. “You will take them away from here. You will take no further action against me, this woman, or my friends or their child for three days. You will not follow us by sight or by magic.”

“You cannot compel me for that long!” the demon screeched.

“I can,” Daniel replied, and power throbbed in the air around them.

“Yes, Master!” the demon grated out, bobbing the man’s head in a parody of servility.

“Start now,” Daniel ordered, and the demon obeyed.
 

Daniel turned to Bree. The pupils of his eyes were huge, and his expression was stony. Bree felt afraid of him. Watery gut afraid. A Binder and a Demon Master. That was the dark and no mistake.
 

“Bree, get me out of here,” he said, and she felt that wave of power in the air, her amulet got hot again, and she started to feel compelled to do what he asked.
 

“You promised,” she whispered. “You promised you only use Binding for self defense.”
 

His eyes closed, and the pressure was released. “Please, Bree. Please,” he said softly, all trace of power gone from him. He reached out blindly for her, and she felt a wrench of emotion, part terror, and part pity. She became suddenly aware that she was standing on the street in broad daylight with a demon dragging unconscious bodies to a car and a man with a knife wound bleeding all over the grass.
 

A car went by on the nearest cross street and as she scanned up and down the block, she could see a woman with a stroller heading their way about three blocks down. It had all happened so fast and it looked like so far no one had seen the commotion. She couldn’t see anyone in their yards or looking out the windows.
 

If there was one thing she’d had drilled into her when she finally got some training, it was “Don’t let normals see power working.” The whole, sad “They’ll burn you as a witch” history was behind it. She had to get Daniel off the street, regardless of who or what he was. She grabbed up the syringe from off the ground in hopes that if Daniel had been injected with something, there might be some clue as to what, and put it carefully in her coat pocket. Then she put his arm over her shoulder and began walking him back to his place.
 

“Not my house,” he said, eyes opened again. “Other Keltoi may come. Take me somewhere else. Not a hospital,” he ground out. “And don’t call in the Keepers, not yet. Take my car. Won’t get blood on yours.” He fumbled keys from his pocket and waved them vaguely around.
 

She snatched them when they came close enough. “Which one is it?” she asked.

“The green one, over there,” he whispered. Then he stumbled, and they both almost went down.
 

When she got them righted, she glanced around, and the demon possessed man was shoving the last of the bodies into the front seat of the car. The lady with the stroller was maybe two blocks away now. She saw an old, long nosed green Jaguar, nicely restored, parked in front of Daniel’s house. The key fit, and she got him into the front passenger seat. She got in the driver’s side just as the Chevy pulled away. The stroller lady walked by, leaned over and handed a blanket to the round eyed toddler inside, blessedly not looking at Daniel as he slumped in the car seat, eyes closed, blood dripping down his neck from what appeared to be a wound on the back of his head.
 

Lord, what if he died on her? Bree’s hands shook now, badly, in after reaction, as she tried to get the keys in the ignition. She groped for and found the lever to move the seat forward and searched for the gearshift as she turned the key. She found it on the floor between the seats. A stick shift.
His car was a God doubled-damned stick shift!
Bree had driven one once. About ten years ago. She glanced over at Daniel, and he looked like he might be unconscious. No way to move him to her car now. “Shit, shit, shit!” she swore as her left foot searched for the clutch, and viciously added more swear words as she stalled the car for what was likely to be the first of many times.

Chapter 7

Bree
counted herself extremely lucky that Dion was available to help her with Daniel. Dion’s day job was as a paramedic. The drama of it all suited his personality to a T. While Dion tended to be outgoing and energetic, he managed to exude an unruffled, soothing confidence as he took over getting Daniel out of the car, into her house, and up the narrow stairs to her bedroom. At his direction, she brought him her first aid kit, hot water, soap and some old towels. She didn't think of herself as particularly squeamish, but when Dion wiped the blood away to reveal Daniel's knife wound, Bree's head swam.
 
She must have made some noise, because Dion looked up at her. "Feeling faint?"
 
he asked shortly.

"Afraid so," Bree admitted, averting her eyes from the disturbing sight of slippery red muscle revealed between the lips of the gash in Daniel's side when Dion blotted away the blood.

"Sit down and put your head between your legs. And when you think you can walk, get out of here," Dion commanded, and turned back to his work.

Bree was embarrassed by her reaction. She'd spent two years in nursing school, and it hadn't been trouble dealing with bodily fluids that had forced her to quit and switch to massage therapy, so she was surprised at herself. She sat down on the chair in front of her desk, head between her legs as instructed, and waited for her dizziness to settle.
 

Her Reader empathy had proven too strong for her to manage being around the kind of suffering found in hospitals. Maybe that was what was happening here. She focused on her Reader sense and found it was partly open. Well, that was no surprise. Getting attacked by a bunch of gangsters had automatically brought it online.
 

Damn it
!
 
She'd forgotten to ward the house in all the fuss of taking care of Daniel. The spurt of fear caused by that realization finished clearing her head, and she ran down the stairs. She hesitated at her front door, Reader sense open wide, casting about for signs of anyone lurking near the house. When she found nothing, she brought up her Demonsense. Still nothing. She stepped outside the door and cast a full house ward. It took considerable energy to cast the spell, given her Warder talent wasn't that strong. When she stepped back inside and triggered the final step, she felt dizzy for the second time in five minutes and had to stop and lean her head against the door to steady herself.

Once she was sure she could walk, she went into the living room and threw herself down on the couch and pulled her feet up. She reached for her fuzzy white throw and draped it over her lap. The two cats that had managed to sneak into the house when they brought Daniel in immediately jumped up on the couch and angled for a place on her lap. She irritably pushed them away until they relented and curled up on the couch near her, purring away as if she hadn’t just been rude to them.
 

Her mind kept going to Daniel. He was a Binder and a Demon Master, two things Keepers pledged to fight. How had he hidden both of those talents from Keeper screening? How had he hidden them from her Reader sense? Hiding powers was supposed to be impossible. People had been trying and failing at it for millennia.
 

A rattle and a crash sounded out in front of her house. Bree sprang to her feet, and the ginger cat meowed his unhappiness at being disturbed. She ran to her front door and listened, hard, her Reader sense and Demonsense both opening up wide. All she could hear was the sound of rain, coming down hard now, and her senses could detect no intruders. She got up on tip toes to peek out the window at the top of the door. A trash can that had been left at the curb was rolling on its side. The wind knocking it over must have been what she’d heard. She wished Daniel were himself so he could cast a stronger ward than she could manage.
 

 
Now she felt too wound up to sit down. She paced nervously across the faded crewelwork rug in front of her couch, mind circling what she knew of Demon Masters.
 

Demon Masters attracted demons whether they wanted to or not. They could call demons, cast a possession, and generally had a host of demon helpers allied with them.
 
Demon possessions happened without them, but wild demons tended to do smaller scale damage. Terrible stuff to be sure, but nothing like what a whole group of demons directed by human will and intelligence could do. Terrorist attacks, grand scale organized crime, even a few of the wars in history could be chalked up to Demon Masters. She had never heard of one working for the light.
 

The black cat stretched luxuriously, then hopped down off the couch. It watched Bree for a moment, then started batting playfully at her ankles as she paced past. With a growl of frustration, Bree swooped down and picked it up, intending to toss it out the door, but then she remembered the ward. She'd have to lower the ward to put the cat out, and it wasn't worth it to have to do the ward all over again.
 

She put the purring beast back down on the floor, then sat down, thinking furiously. She knew what she
should
do. She should turn Daniel into the Ecclesias. Demonic energy was the energy of chaos, of violence, of malice. Demon Masters were turned by it, and eventually became unstable themselves. Yet they seldom could admit what was happening to them, that they were losing control. If you were of the light and discovered someone had Demon Master talent, you were supposed to turn them in to the Ecclesias for monitoring.
 

That had all seemed very reasonable to Bree until the day she found out what monitoring really meant. "Monitoring" was a euphemism for being watched long term
after
having your power stripped from you by force. If you survived, and that was a big if, there was a better than average chance you'd be crazy at the end of it. Since there were cases of the power coming back over time, you had to be monitored for rest of your life, and nobody survived having their powers removed a second time.

And here she was, thinking she should rat Daniel out to the Ecclesias. The thought brought tears to her eyes. She didn't want to do it.
 

And then she thought of Kevin. She was sure Kevin knew and had chosen to keep Daniel’s secret. He must have his reasons. She picked up her phone and dialed Kevin's number. She felt like throwing the phone across the room when his voice mail clicked on after only one ring. He must be on the phone to someone. She slammed the phone down, and was on her way back across the room to sit down when a thought stopped her in her tracks. If Daniel wasn't crazy yet, who better to provide protection for Hunter?
 

She remembered Daniel had just pointed his finger at that possessed thug and spoken words of power, and that was that, demon handled. She couldn’t help but think how useful that talent would be. If she’d had that power, Seth would still be alive. Her heart pounded at that thought, and she had to take a few breaths to steady herself.
 

Dion came clomping down the stairs and interrupted her deliberations. “Okay, I’ve got him wrapped up. He’s going to be okay. The knife sliced him pretty shallowly across his waist, and just got muscle. I did a little healing to speed things along.”
 

Bree settled wearily onto the couch and asked, “How about his head? And what about that syringe I found?”
 

Dion sat down at the other end of the couch and started scratching under the chin of the ginger cat. “He got a good bump on the back of his head, but I don’t see signs of concussion so far. As far as the syringe, I think your friend got a dose of something that’s probably doing him some good right now. Based on the smell of the residue in the syringe and the way he’s acting, I think he got hit with Ketamine.”

“What’s that?”
 

The ginger cat had worked its way up onto Dion’s lap, and Dion smiled down at it as he answered. “It’s what we call a dissociative anesthetic. It makes you not really register pain even though you stay conscious. It’s not used much medically because hallucinations can be a side effect. Some people use it as a recreational drug because of that. Keltoi being in the drug trade like they are, they could have easily gotten hold of some. He’s been pretty out of it so far, but I want to keep an eye on him in case he starts seeing things and gets agitated. People have been known to have really bad trips on this stuff.”
 

He moved the cat gently off his lap, stood up again, and continued. “I don’t have to work until eleven, so I should be able to hang out until it wears off. Why don’t you be a good girl and get me some chow, then you can bring it upstairs and start telling me why you got some scary ass high powered upstairs bleeding all over your bed.”

“Do I look like your maid?” she returned grouchily, but she did as he asked. She pulled together a cheese omelet with some toast for both of them and brought it upstairs on a tray.
 

The top floor of Bree’s house was a converted attic space, one big room with the stairs coming up into the middle of it. The ceiling walls were slanted with the roofline, and it was a bit chilly. She kept her work desk at one end along with her supply of magical implements. There was also a small meditation area. The other end held her bed, an Art Deco waterfall dresser and cedar chest, a bedside table, and a prickly old horsehair stuffed reading chair that Dion had claimed. Daniel was lying on his back on her bed, his eyes closed and his brow furrowed. His hands pulled restlessly at the down comforter. Bree set the tray down on the cedar chest and dragged over her desk chair so she and Dion could talk together while they ate.