Demon Hunter (The Collegium Book 1) (12 page)

The elevator doors opened. Fay stepped out, with Steve beside her. The echoes of her last visit engulfed her. Then, she’d been alone, raw and desperate. Now, as awful as the situation was, she could feel Steve’s strength. He would be there for her, fight with her.

She bumped her shoulder into his.

He glanced at her, the corner of his mouth turning up.

His return bump would have staggered a lesser woman. Fay was still smiling, remembering how it had all started at LaGuardia airport, when the corridor ended and they entered the outer office of the Presidential suite: Nancy’s domain.

The large glass vase that Fay had shattered when she’d broken her ties to the Collegium, had been replaced with a beaten copper vessel. It sat on a low table, and Nancy stood beside it. In front of the door to Richard’s office.

Nancy looked good. Her suit was a crimson red, bright and defiant—the color of fresh blood. She’d painted her fingernails to match, and they were on display with her hands at her hips, the nails filed to pointed tips. Black high heels had equally sharp toes.

And Nancy’s smile was sharpest of all. “Fay. I always hated you.”

Everyone stopped, just inside the room. It was odd how hate immobilized them. The power of Nancy’s emotions throbbed, filling the space and pushing out the light.

Fay glanced at the windows. No, not just Nancy’s emotions. A storm was rolling in, pressing against the top floors of the building, closing in with furious intensity. It made the artificial lighting in the office starker.

A trick of reflection seemed to concentrate the light on the bronze sun disk that hung on the wall behind Nancy’s desk.

“You made your hate clear.” Fay walked forward.

Steve walked a pace behind her, protecting her back.

“Not as clear as I should have,” Nancy said. “But then, you were always hard to kill.”

Someone among the senior members gasped. Closer, Steve growled a low warning.

Fay felt the threat in the air, aimed at her. It whined and buzzed and whipped around the room. Nancy barely registered as a magic talent. It was in her employee file, part of the reason she’d been cleared to act as the president’s secretary. So where was the threat coming from? Fay looked over Nancy’s shoulder, at the door to Richard’s office.

But again, a flash of light glinted from the bronze sun disk, distracting her.

Her breathing hitched a fraction before deepening into battle-readiness. The disk wasn’t distracting her attention. It was claiming it. Guardian-honed magic instincts screamed at her.

Fay ignored the drama Nancy represented and focused on the sun disk.

It shimmered. Jagged flashes of light rippled over it, and spread through the room.

“Everybody out!” Fay shouted, even as she reached back and grabbed Steve’s arm. He had to stay. He’d fought demons before, and survived. “Out!”

Of course, these were senior members. No one listened to her.

And the demon stepped out of the sun disk.

It took the glimmering form of an elegant middle-aged man, short black hair just silvering at the temples, mouth seductive and full, body beautifully muscled and supple beneath a thin silk shirt and tailored trousers—all in the bronze of the sun disk.

“Faith Olwen.” The voice was whiskey, rough and smooth, a stroke over the senses.

“Kill her,” Nancy demanded.

The demon laughed, head back, enjoying some private joke.

Steve jolted forward, and stopped as Fay’s hand hit his chest.

“Wait,” she said.

Gilda, the head of the Demonology Department, ignored her. She strode forward, the words of banishment unrolling with practiced ease even as she gathered her power.

The demon ceased laughing, but amusement lurked in its voice. “You are an improvement over Angus, aren’t you?” But then it lifted one hand and Gilda slammed up and back, losing consciousness as her head hit the back wall.

“Not her.” Nancy was single-minded. “Kill Fay.”

Steve snarled.

“Settle your fur, cat,” the demon said. “Nancy ceased to compel me years ago.”

Nancy stopped glaring at Fay to stare at the demon.

It raised an eyebrow and looked back at her.

Fay felt nauseous as the ugly story took shape. Nancy had summoned the demon, binding it to the sun disk. She had brought this evil into the heart of the Collegium. And it was a powerful evil, a demon strong enough to have no need to possess a human body. It could maintain a form in this world.

And for years she, Fay, had walked past the sun disk and the demon, unknowing and unaware.

Richard, her father, had lived with it daily.

Of the others, it was Lewis who understood first. “Everybody out!” He turned on the senior members with such ferocity that they retreated before him. He picked up Gilda, shoved her unconscious body at two of the more robust senior members and pushed the whole lot from the room by sheer force of personality. “Go!”

“Clever man,” the demon said. “It’s a shame you burned out your powers saving those children, Lewis. I could have used you.”

Used him?
Full understanding hit Fay like a hurricane, and like a hurricane it brought devastation. She ignored the demon and whirled on Nancy. “You stupid woman.”

“Not stupid.” The demon remained urbane. He could have been a host at a an upmarket art gallery, one hosting a billionaires-only private auction. “Merely self-centered. It makes her easy to manipulate.”

“Mano, I own you,” Nancy warned. Her hands were claws, fingers curled with tension.

“No, pet.” And the endearment was anything but caring. It was supercilious, possessive, dismissive and definite. “I own you.” The demon smiled, turning to Fay. “I’m grateful you resisted the urge to remove her years ago. She has been useful to me.”

“I’ll bet.” Fay struggled, her mind spinning with the problem Lewis had recognized and done his best to minimize. The one which meant trouble for all of them.

Behind the door to her father’s office, Richard ought to have felt the storm of power. He ought to have emerged, fighting. Moderate though his own powers were, he held the oath-ties of all Collegium members, and through them, could usually compel their magic to add to his edicts. He could banish the demon.

But Nancy had screwed up that protection. She’d perverted it, under the demon’s guidance.

Now the damned creature smiled at Fay. Smiled as if they were allies, lovers.

Steve stepped close, his hand flattening against her back. He was warm, alive, real and loving.

Nancy dashed for her desk, grabbed a visitor’s chair, pulled it up to the wall and dragged down the sun disk. “Mano, I compel you—”

The sun disk melted and flowed into a new shape; into the form of a bronze pair of handcuffs. They closed about her wrists.

She gaped at them, mouth open, eyes popping. When her gaze lifted to the demon there was fury there, and betrayal.

“She’s a very ordinary lover,” Mano said. “It’s fortunate for me that Richard is satisfied with such a boring mistress.”

“You bastard.” Nancy bared her teeth.

“She’s insatiable though.” The demon was tormenting her, enjoying it. The creature strolled across to Nancy and in an obscene mockery of a lover’s touch, unbuttoned her jacket and explicitly caressed her breast.

What shocked Fay was the instant look of desire that darkened Nancy’s eyes.

The demon hadn’t lied. It had controlled Nancy for years. And through Nancy, it had gained intimate contact with Richard. That had been the path the demon had taken, weaving its magic through Nancy, through Richard, and so gaining access to the oath-ties and power of the Collegium. It would have taken it years to subtly build that control.

Oran, the demon she’d banished two days ago, had been right. The Collegium was infected.

That was why Lewis had ordered the senior members out. Their magic was tainted with the touch of the demon.

That left the three of them. Lewis had no magic power for the demon to harvest. Steve was were and immune to magic. And Fay? She was their best chance of banishing the demon.

It smiled at Fay as it caressed Nancy’s breast. “Sometimes, just to stay interested in fucking her, I’d imagine she was you, Fay.”

Nancy whimpered, a harsh, hurting sound. She jerked away from the demon, and it let her go.

“You know the Collegium won’t let you stay,” Fay said. “They’ll cut you from their oath ties, whatever the price.”

“I know.” It was sly and satisfied. “I have taken nearly all I can here.” Its flickering smile focused on Nancy. “Nearly all.” The demon licked its lips.

Fay reached for her knife.

No human sacrifice was as sweet to a demon as the human who summoned it. Nancy would be the demon’s final death within the Collegium.

Its bright eyes locked with Fay’s. “Consider her my farewell gift. You won’t miss her.” It extended a hand and Nancy moved like a sleepwalker into the thing’s embrace.

“No,” Fay said. “No more deaths. I banish you,” she began.

The demon tightened its hold on Nancy, on its hostage. “Fighting you, Fay, will be as good as fucking you. And maybe I’ll get to do both.”

Steve roared and changed to leopard in mid-leap. He couldn’t kill a demon, but he could get Nancy free of it.

The demon had taken human form and it dripped human blood after Steve charged through the thing’s magical warding and slashed a massive paw, claws out, down its face.

Steve pulled back, dragging Nancy with him, and leaving a path torn through the demon’s warding for Fay to follow.

The path he’d slashed saved her from having to expend precious power creating it.

She had a fraction of a second to appreciate his tactic before the demon slammed at her, shedding its human form for the infinitely more mobile and difficult to corral incorporeal body. It was incandescent flame roaring from floor to ceiling.

Steve abandoned Nancy to Lewis and returned to Fay; staying out of her way, but staying close. He waited, his massive leopard body strong beside her. They both watched the demon with calculating eyes.

Here and here.
Fay marked the demon with her knife and with her magic. But the damn thing only drew on the Collegium’s oath-ties. She could feel the human magic surge into it and heal it.

It was the puzzle that had kept her still and silent, giving all her attention to it, until Nancy was directly threatened. Fay frowned, shifting her knife from hand to hand, concentrating on her combat moves as she tried to gain time. How did she cut the demon’s perverted ties to the Collegium? It couldn’t be banished till she did. And she couldn’t let a demon this powerful loose on New York. She had to tackle it now.

Disastrously, though, the demon had been laying its plans for years—even if her own sudden separation from the Collegium had accelerated matters. It knew and was prepared for anything she might do.

But it wasn’t prepared for Steve.

A were in the Collegium was unheard of. That was how Steve had gotten close enough to break the demon’s warding. It hadn’t prepared for an attack from a being immune to magic.

“Steve! Change,” she shouted as the demon’s flame body whirled tighter and tighter, the inner core glowing white.

Steve blinked back to human and she threw him her knife, the knife she’d spent years honing and pouring magic into. The knife that could rip reality and tear a path to hell.

There was one way to cut the demon’s ties to the Collegium. Oath-ties had the power of blood. The demon had perverted them via intimacy. Fay would be even more direct. The President of the Collegium was her father. His blood ran in her veins. And she had power that was just hers. She could sever the demon’s control of the oath-ties, if she gave her life for it.

But she couldn’t give the demon an instant’s warning or it would vanish. It was playing with them now. Secure, as it thought, in its power over the Collegium. But it would flee if it thought itself truly threatened.

Fay wished she had one last chance to kiss Steve and tell him she loved him.

Instead, she leapt without hesitation into the heart of the demon’s fire.

It hurt. Oh God, it hurt.
Pain blazed through Fay’s body and burned into her heart. Agony tore into her, and still she concentrated. This wasn’t physical pain, no matter how her body translated it. This was pain on the magical plane and she could fight through it, just long enough to do what had to be done.

She found the oath-ties to the Collegium, saw them knotted and twisted in the demon’s grasp, coiled around its hold on this world.

She was inside the demon. In its being, where no human should be, and she had only an instant before the wrongness of it and the intense power she was expending to achieve the impossible gave out and claimed her life. Everything had its price, even magic. She grasped the oath-ties, felt them pulse with her father’s blood, and pulled.

The demon screamed, not in pain, but in rage.

Fay fell.