Demonsense (Demonsense series Book 1) (15 page)

Bree loved Dion like a brother. She’d met him in Junior High, and he’d been the first person to tell her she was powered. He was a political creature, and he had a manipulative streak she disapproved of, but basically, she trusted him. He'd finagled a position on the powered City Council a couple of years ago, and the Council reported directly to the Regional Ecclesias. That meant she had to take great care in filling him in on what had been happening. She hadn’t had time to make up her mind what to do about Daniel, and she wasn’t ready to have the decision taken out of her hands. So she told the story as best she could without revealing that Daniel was a Demon Master and Binder.
 

Dion whistled in admiration as she described Daniel’s fight with the Keltoi. Bree knew he’d always wished he had the right kind of talents to be a Keeper. Instead, he was a Healer, a low power Caster, and a bit of a Reader. Fortunately, he wasn’t enough of the latter to read tells. So long as all of her statements were true, he likely wouldn't be able to tell that she was leaving something important out.
 

“Seems pretty clear the Keltoi are after your guy here,” Dion drawled when she was finished. “But what I don’t get is why they came after him with just four people the second time. If they really wanted to be sure to take down a Keeper of his caliber, they should have sent at least seven or eight.”

“It seemed like plenty at the time,” Bree responded wryly. “It bugs me that I was basically no help at all. I managed to come up with some kind of defense at Kevin’s house, but I couldn’t think how to direct a shield that would cover both of us. And I certainly don’t know any offensive spells. I know we learned a few during training, but you know how it is, you don’t use it, you lose it.” She put down her empty plate, leaned back in her chair and put her feet up on the foot of the bed. Daniel was still twitchy, and was rolling his head about on his pillow. Bree watched him with some concern.

 
“If you had just gone for Keeper like I told you,” Dion razzed her with a grin, “but no, it was too
scary
. Like doing exorcisms ain’t scary.”

“Oh, bite me,” Bree responded with a reluctant smile.

“Seriously Bree, you can’t expect yourself to know what to do in a situation like that when you’ve never come across it before. But if you’re going to keep hanging around with the Keeper here, you might want to consider getting better training.”

“Retired Keeper,” Bree corrected.

“Huh,” Dion grunted. “Doesn’t sound so retired to me.”

“He scares me, Dion,” Bree said quietly, and with more honesty than she had meant to expose. “I’m not sure anyone should have that much power.”

“Well, that’s always been your thing, hasn’t it Bree?
 
You always were afraid of your own power, so I’m not surprised you feel that way. Why else do you think you tried to give it up after Seth passed?

“Enough with the amateur psychology please.” Bree shot him a distinctly unamused look, and was preparing to shut him down if he continued when Daniel’s eyes shot open and he tried to sit up. He looked grey as ashes, and he grimaced in pain. Dion leaned over him and gently pressed down on his shoulder until he was lying down again. “You just lie on back there, Daniel. It’s going to hurt if you try to sit up.”
 

Daniel looked at Dion without seeming to see him. His breathing was speeding up, and a look of trepidation came across his face. “I didn’t mean to do it, Dad. I wasn’t trying to call one,” he said desperately.
 

Dion flashed Bree a questioning look, and she shook her head. “I have no idea.” Daniel turned his head at the sound of her voice, and said, “Don’t let him, Mom, it’s not fair!”
 

He tried to get up again, and Dion had to use more force to get him back down. “You’re okay, nobody is going to do anything to you. It’s just a bad dream.”

Daniel started to struggle, and at Dion’s request, Bree moved to Daniel’s other side and held down his other shoulder, trying to keep him still so he wouldn’t hurt himself.
 

She was acutely aware of the feel of his muscled shoulder under her hands, and had a moment's wild thought that under different circumstances, she'd enjoy seeing a naked Daniel Thorvaldson in her bed. Sweat broke out on his forehead, and his hair was still damp from the rain that had hit as they were bringing him into the house. She could still hear it blowing against the window in bursts. The wind was picking up.

“I didn’t mean to, I didn’t mean to!” Daniel exclaimed, voice rising.
 

“I know you didn’t mean to, Daniel, it’s okay,” Bree replied, trying to sound calm, but feeling out of her depth. “You’re not in trouble,” she hazarded, and was relieved to feel him stop straining against her hands. He closed his eyes again, and both Bree and Dion gradually let up on his shoulders.
 

“This is way too much like possession,” Bree said with concern as she stood back and looked down at Daniel, on the alert for another outburst.

Dion sat back in his chair, long legs stretched out before him. “You’ve got to wonder how similar drug intoxication is to demon possession in terms of what’s really happening in the brain. There’s just so much we don’t really understand about possession. I sometimes feel if we could get a chance to really study it, maybe do a functional MRI, see what part of the brain it’s affecting, we’d have more to work with, maybe get away from all the religious interpretation.”

“Now you’re sounding like him,” she replied, nodding at Daniel. “He was on about something like that at Kevin’s the other night before we were attacked. Something about how maybe they were beings from another dimension, how if we understood them better, we’d be more effective in dealing with them. I get that, I get wanting to know more, but really Dion, once you feel one, it doesn’t leave much room for doubt that they’re just plain evil, in the old fashioned fire and brimstone sense.”

“I guess I’ll never know,” Dion replied wistfully.

“Wishing you had Demonsense is like wishing you could try out being flogged. Not an experience anyone should be sorry to miss,” Bree replied wryly.

“It’s a bad idea, Chesca,” Daniel said clearly and lucidly. His eyes were still closed, the lids fluttering.
 

Bree bent to touch Daniel, but Dion waved her off. “Let’s see what he says, we might learn something more about him,” he whispered.
 

“Don’t be such a snake,” Bree whispered back, but she backed off.
 

“You have absolutely no reason to think you can control it,” Daniel continued vehemently.
 

“Control what?” Dion asked, leaning closer.

“Chesca, why the
hell
won’t you listen? Franchesca, love, no! No, stop!”
 

Scanlon woke up as the car came to a stop with a jerk. They were in a pothole laced parking lot in the Sodo district south of downtown. It took him a moment to register that the building in front of them was the one housing the new Keltoi main office. On the outside, it looked like any other battered warehouse in the run down neighborhood, white paint peeling from grey wood, door to the loading area hanging crookedly on its track.

His mouth was dry, his head hurt, and his back felt all scraped up. He looked around blearily and registered that he was in the passenger seat and Justice had been driving. They were in Roget’s car. He glanced in the back seat and saw Roget and Atami were still out. Justice was just sitting there, looking off into space, hands on the steering wheel. Then it finally started coming back to him, making him well and truly pissed. “What the fuck were you thinking, taking on that Keeper?” he snarled at Justice. “That was not the plan! We didn’t have enough back up, and you knew it! What the hell got into you?”

Justice gave a hollow laugh. “That’s great. How about what
from
hell got into me?” He laughed again, this time with an edge of anxiety.
 

He sounded more like the Justice Scanlon knew from before the possession. Scanlon looked more closely at him. “Is it gone?” he asked.

“Hell no,” Justice replied shortly. “Just hiding out. That Keeper scared the crap out of it.”

“Bastard,” Scanlon muttered, as he reviewed his memory of the fight. He’d heard Thorvaldson was high power, but he’d never seen anything like the casting speed or power of the spells he’d exhibited. The people Scanlon could put together for a side job just weren’t up to safely taking Thorvaldson and holding him long enough to drug him. There were Keltoi in his clan that could do it, if they were prepared and worked together, but he didn’t have the authority to bring them in. He tried to think of an angle that would still impress Carson and convince him to keep Scanlon involved. He’d been the one to locate Thorvaldson, and they may have lost him for now, but he’d probably try to come home sometime. Or maybe he’d show up back at the kid’s house. And there was the kid. Should he tell Carson about that? Not yet, he decided. But how was he going to explain about getting his ass kicked by the Keeper without it looking like a royal balls-up? Well, it was Justice’s fault, or, he supposed, the demon’s. He could just claim they were there to make a positive ID on Thorvaldson to take it back to Carson.

He heard Roget and Atami stirring in the back seat, and waited until he was sure they were fully conscious. “All right, look you guys,” he said, trying to inject some authority into his voice. “Here’s the story if you don’t want Carson to hand you your ass. I called you in on a stakeout and ID on Thorvaldson because I traced him from Kevin Whitman’s. Don't say a fucking word about trying to get Thorvaldson and the kid the other night, or
I'll
hand you your ass, got it?"
 

Scanlon saw Roget shoot Atami a doubtful look, but ignored it. He pulled the rearview mirror around so he could see himself in it, and ran his hands through his wavy brown hair, trying to put it in some kind of order. He pulled his shirt cuff out of his jacket and wiped the dirt off the side of his face. It was the best he could do.

“Okay, let’s go,” he said, and got out of the car.
 
The other three followed him into the building, and they took the stairs at the back of the warehouse to the office on the third floor.

Jeff Carson headed the South Seattle Keltoi clan, with his office a loft above and to the back of the warehouse. It was a masculine combination of brick walls, wood beams, large windows along the west wall, and black leather furniture. A comfortable seating area fronted a wide screen TV, with a sleek, well-stocked bar was to the right of it. The TV was off and jazz played softly on the sound system. Two of Carson’s usual bodyguards, Mosel and Destry, sat
 
reading the paper.

Scanlon had always had a thing for Destry. He was a leg man, and hers were on display, calves encased in low heeled black boots, with luscious mahogany skin peeking between her boots and skirt. She put down the paper and slinked to her feet. “You have an appointment with the boss?” she asked shortly, a certain amount of doubt in her voice, like she didn’t rate Scanlon important enough for that to be likely.
 

“No, but he’s going to want to hear my report,” Scanlon replied with some of his usual swagger. Destry shot a look at Mosel, who shook his large, block-like head. “The boss is busy, doesn’t want to be interrupted,” he said, barely glancing up from his paper.

Scanlon hadn’t wanted to play his cards in the open like this, but he could tell he wasn’t going to get a meeting with Carson anytime soon if he didn’t. “It’s about Thorvaldson. I found him.”
 

Mosel actually looked at him this time. “Now how would you know about that?” he asked softly. Scanlon felt his face heating. He hated this, practically having to beg to get in to see Carson. “That’s for Carson’s ears, not yours,” Scanlon said, trying to sound more confident than he felt. Mosel and Destry exchanged another look, and Destry nodded.
 

Destry narrowed her eyes and with a terse wave of her hand, cast a freeze spell on all four of them, then frisked them. She confiscated Atami's freeze crystal, and as she ran her hands professionally over Scanlon, he realized he didn’t have his knife on him. He’d dropped it in the fight with Thorvaldson.
 

“The boss is in a meeting. You’re going to have to wait,” Mosel responded after they had been cleared. But just as Scanlon and the others were moving to sit down, the door to Carson’s office opened and Carson came out, accompanied by a woman Scanlon had never seen before.
 

Scanlon literally stopped breathing when he saw her. She was tall, close to six feet in the heels she wore, and had the kind of body most women would have to have surgery to get. She looked Italian or Greek or something, with long, curly black hair, dark eyes, and elegant bone structure. She looked expensive; Scanlon had no other way to describe it. Expensive, and striking, and way out of his league. She was laughing at something Carson had just said. Scanlon’s eyes tracked along her throat and down to the cleavage she displayed in the scoop of her tight, white sweater. Scanlon heard Justice stir behind him, and thought wryly to himself that Justice’s demon would probably come out of hiding now, if only to ogle the babe. Carson had a possessive hand under her elbow, and Mosel had to walk close to him to get his attention. He leaned in close to Carson, and all Scanlon could make out was his and Justices’ names, and Thorvaldson’s.
 

At that, the woman gave Scanlon a penetrating look. It felt like a cold wind had blown across the back of his neck. She was reading him, the kind of up front, in your face reading that someone high up did to someone they thought little of, someone they didn’t have to be polite with. Scanlon felt a sharp sensation in his head, a sense of invasion that produced a wave of embarrassment and shame. She looked away, and quite suddenly, the feeling vanished. Scanlon felt almost as reamed out as he had after the Binding spell by Thorvaldson had worn off. He heard Carson say, “All right, just Scanlon and Justice then.” He and the woman turned and went back into Carson’s office. Mosel nodded to Scanlon and Justice, while Atami and Roget went to sit and wait.