Demon Master (Demonsense series Book 2) (7 page)

Daniel most definitely did not look at her as he said, “You know how much demons like to make threats.”

“Oh no you don’t. Don’t try to protect me on this! I’m likely to make up something even worse than it really is if you don’t tell me,” Bree insisted, turning toward him and putting a hand on his wrist. When he still didn’t answer, she shook his wrist a little. “Come on, spit it out.”

“It really may just be the usual demon threat.”

“But you don’t think it is.”

“It fits too much with what we’ve been seeing around here lately,” he said reluctantly. “The increase in possessions. The increased aggressiveness in the demons. There are cycles in demonic activity. It’s been documented over the years. There are times when they gather together for some reason, or are called together by Demon Masters, and you start to see wide scale changes in human behavior due to the increase in possessions.” Daniel was speaking calmly, but his visible reluctance to talk about it told her how serious it really was. “There’s usually some spiritual or esoteric explanation put forward about the surges in demonic activity. Right now, I’d say people are describing it in terms of our society, Western society any way, becoming decadent and corrupt, like the Roman Empire before it fell. There’s less of a widespread cultural belief in the devil. Maybe most people don’t think of it in terms of evil anymore. And as you know, I’m not sure I think of it in those terms either.”

“The ‘other dimensional beings’ idea. It’s not exactly a popular theory. Even I’m not fully convinced,” Bree admitted as she let go of his wrist and put both hands in her coat pockets. “I mean, after all the information we’ve gotten out of Gelsenim, I get that demons are probably beings from some other dimension, that it probably isn’t hell as I was taught to think of it. But I’m not sure I buy that they aren’t innately evil. They feel evil, they do evil. Seems pretty convincing evidence to me.”

“Well, whatever they are, sometimes they go to war. They organize, usually with human Demon Masters, and usually with the cooperation of other dark magic users who want something out of the transaction. We know what the demons want out of it. They want to be able to permanently possess human beings so they don’t go hungry. The question is, what do the people working with them want?”

Bree sighed. “What do they ever want? Power? Money? Revenge? We all have weaknesses. We all have darkness that can be exploited.” Her mood dipped as she considered just how much darkness she had sensed in Daniel today. He was, in many ways, incredibly kind and altruistic. But he was also very angry, and very wounded. And in addition to being a Demon Master, he was also a Binder. It was another forbidden talent that made him capable of utterly taking over the will of another person. He tried not to use it, and Bree tried not to remember he had it.
 

 
“So this war thing,” Bree said uneasily. “Should I be afraid?”

“Let's just say it behooves us to bone up on our warding and casting spells.” He paused a beat, then added, "Immediately."

Bree
cut around the avocado the long way, then put down the knife and twisted it slightly between her hands. It came apart smoothly, and she looked with satisfaction at the unblemished, creamy green interior. She’d managed to get one at a perfect stage of ripeness. She put down both knife and avocado and lifted the lid on the large pot of water on the stove to see how close it was to boiling, and set it back down. Not quite there yet. She looked at the clock on her microwave. Yep, both Daniel and Dion were late. That was a good thing, because she was running late as well. Her last massage client ran over so she was behind in getting dinner going.

She pushed back a strand of hair that had escaped from her French braid with her wrist and went back to cutting up the avocado, then arranged the chunks on the salad greens in a large wooden bowl. She was working in the limited counter space afforded in her small kitchen. She’d fallen in love with the tiny jewel of a Victorian house for its character, sense of history, and plain good vibes. She loved the tall ceilings, the long, narrow windows, the wide wood trim around all the windows and doors, the worn wood floors. Having lived here for two years now, she was less enamored with the lack of space. She’d given the kitchen cabinets a fresh coat of white paint when she first moved in, and painted what little wall space there was a light spring green, but that had failed to make the kitchen seem any bigger.
 

As she finished the salad, she heard a meowing at the back door. She went to open it, and in scampered her cat Hanroi. He was an older kitten, perhaps five months old, still slender, intense and playful. He was a classic striped grey and black tabby with prominent, rounded whisker pads, like a little lion. He announced his entrance with a loud series of meows, then jumped shamelessly up on the counter where Bree had been working.
 

“Hanroi, down!” Bree scolded, though without much hope. She was supposedly a Cat Master, but thus far, the only sign of that was the way she attracted cats. She seemed to have none of the Animal Master’s gift for training the species of animal attuned to her.
 
But at least with Hanroi here, the neighborhood cats had stopped trying to sneak into her house all the time. She wasn't sure how that worked, but she was grateful.

As expected, Hanroi ignored her, and she had to physically lift him off the counter. He struggled, and knocked the avocado seed off the counter and onto Bree, leaving a streak of green on her orange ballet neck sweater. She dabbed at the spot with a sponge, exasperated, and the lid began to rattle on the pot of water. She gave up temporarily on her sweater and took off the lid and dumped a package of spaghetti into it.
 
As she was giving it a stir, the doorbell rang. She hurried through the dining and living rooms and the hall to the front door, Hanroi scampering along behind, and opened it to find Dion had arrived for the pow wow first.

 
Dion Evans was one of her oldest friends. They’d met when they were both thirteen, in junior high, and had gone on to attend the same specialized private high school for powered kids on the outskirts of Seattle. He was a ridiculously good looking African-American man with a killer smile and a honey warm voice. He was a bit of a womanizer, and Bree was deeply grateful she’d never fallen for him, as she was pretty sure he made a much better friend than boyfriend.
 

They hugged each other hello, and he took off his coat and hung it on one of the hooks in the hall. He was wearing a maroon cashmere sweater and black jeans with a polished pair of black boots. They were having a last cold snap, and it was chilly enough out for winter coats and sweaters.
 

He leaned over and scooped up Hanroi, rubbing under the cat's chin vigorously. “Man am I hungry!” he exclaimed as he followed her back into the kitchen. “I had an early shift today, so I had lunch around eleven. Seems like eons ago.” He put the cat down on the floor, then reached into the salad bowl and plucked a chunk of avocado off the top and put it into his mouth. Bree slapped his hand as he dove for a second. “Back, back I say!” she exclaimed. “Don’t manhandle my salad. Dinner’s only ten or fifteen minutes away. I’m sure you can survive until then.”

“Any thing I can do to help? I’m all about getting the dinner train moving.”

“You can set the table. I’m running way behind.”
 

Daniel showed up shortly thereafter, and Dion let him in. Bree was just pulling the foil wrapped loaf of garlic bread out of the oven, when he came into the kitchen. He was definitely not the clothes horse Dion was. He'd come in his faded navy turtleneck cotton sweater and jeans. Daniel had a predilection for blue clothes, some kind of symbolic power balancing thing for all the fire in his nature.
 
“Perfect timing,” Bree told him as she pulled off her oven mitts and handed him the salad bowl. “Here, put this on the table, we’re just about ready.”
 

“Yes Ma’am!” he answered with a smile, and moved to obey her, nearly tripping over the cat, which had twined around his legs.

In just a few moments, the three of them were arrayed around the table in the small dining room between the kitchen and the living room. Steam from the boiling pasta had made it into the room and fogged up the window. Condensation was running in drops down the rectangular panes as they passed around the salad, spaghetti with marinara sauce and garlic bread. Bree had bribed Hanroi to keep out of their way by putting some canned cat food in his food dish, so they were blissfully undisturbed by feline attentions. Dion poured out the Merlot Daniel had brought along, and soon they were tucking into dinner.
 

After some initial relaxed small talk as they all sated the worst of their hunger, Dion asked, “So what’s with the meeting? I mean hey, I’m glad you’re feeding me and all, but I get the feeling this isn’t just a social occasion.”

Daniel looked to Bree, clearly signaling her to start, and she put down her fork before replying. “Daniel and I did an exorcism on Sunday,” she began.

“Right on!” Dion broke in with an electric smile. “Way to get back on the horse!”

Bree rolled her eyes at him while she took a sip of her wine. Dion had been pressuring her for months to get back to exorcisms. He was on the Seattle Powered Council, and one of his roles was coordinating taint clearings and minor exorcisms with power workers who were not Keepers. “Yeah, yeah, wonderful,” she said with not a little sarcasm. “Anyway, the demon said something about a war coming. Daniel told me there have been wars with demon kind in the past, which I guess were pretty serious. We thought we should tell you about it so you can pass it on to the Council if you think it’s important. And we were both curious as to whether any similar rumors have come your way.”

Dion finished chewing the bite of spaghetti he’d taken while she was speaking, then replied, manner serious now. “I’m sorry to say this isn’t the first I’ve heard of it.
 
Possessions have been up for months, as you know. We were pretty sure it had something to do with plans the Keltoi have, a kind of diversion.” The Keltoi were the American version of powered organized crime. “There was that big action they had planned with the heroin shipment that you two helped break up last fall. But there’s been nothing major from them on our radar since then. Possessions went down for a bit, but they’re back up. And yours isn’t the only demon to talk about a war.”

Daniel leaned forward as he said, “Any word from the Ecclesias on this?” The Ecclesias was the highest legal authority for powered. As they were also the ones who monitored and removed power from emerging Demon Masters and Binders, essentially crippling all their magical abilities, and in some cases killing them, they were a group Daniel wanted fervently to avoid.

“Oh yes,” Dion replied grimly. “Definite word to report any rumors, any further increase in demonic activity, and especially any signs of increased Keltoi activity. The way I’ve heard it, these so-called wars are almost always started by dark power users.
 
There’s usually some business or political power grab involved. It’s a classic case of making a deal with the devil at the cost of your soul.”

“Then why do they do it?” Bree asked in frustration. “Why do the Keltoi keep falling for it?”

“Because there are always people who think they can manage demons,” Daniel replied with a wry look at Bree. The irony of that flowed between them. Dion didn’t know that Daniel was a Demon Master and Binder. Naturally, Daniel was guilty of exactly the same hubris, and Bree wasn’t far behind him. Bree fidgeted uncomfortably with her fork at the thought.

“True enough,” Dion replied, missing the interplay while his attention was on getting a bite of spaghetti wound around his fork. “And I’m sure some of them do manage demons well, at least for a time.
 
In fact, I know they do. There are definite advantages to allowing demon possession. All that increase in power levels, the high pain threshold, the lack of inconvenient conscience. You can get a lot done if the subject retains some control, and the strong ones usually do for a time.” He took a bite of the spaghetti, then leaned back in his chair, chewing.
 

“So how do we know there really is a war starting?” Bree asked.

It was Daniel who answered. “More possessions, like we’re seeing. Quite a few Demon Masters deliberately call up far more demons than they have any hope of controlling. Keepers get overloaded, and there are more fatalities during exorcisms. And the demons get riled up somehow. They usually don’t actively want to kill their hosts, but during these wars, it’s as if they lose all sense of self preservation. The bigger ones like to feed on murder, but most classes of demons are fairly satisfied with non-lethal violence.
 
During a war, they all seem to want to kill people, even though as far as we can make out, they need people for food.”

“And all those possessed people run around cause one hell of a lot of trouble,” Dion chimed in. “Normal cops see a big increase in assaults, rapes, gang violence, normal guys suddenly killing their entire families, you name it.”

“So when was the last one, the last war?”

“They tend to be somewhat localized,” Daniel answered as he dropped his napkin beside his plate on the table. “The last one in the States was in the mid to late sixties. The last one in Europe was World War II.”

“World War II?” Bree repeated faintly.

“Yeah, this ain’t no light weight shit we’re talking about,” Dion rumbled.

“It doesn’t always go to that level,” Daniel reassured Bree, “not by any means.
 
But it can get very, very bad.”

“And we’re thinking it might happen here? In Seattle?”

“There is more activity here on the West Coast, by all accounts,” Dion replied.
 
“More in L.A. than here. There’s a Keltoi leader down there by the name of Marton Varga who’s taken over in a big way. He’s consolidated most of the California Keltoi under his leadership, and he’s been making some big moves.”