Retro Demonology (2 page)

Now her first solo trapping run had been a success.

Dad is going to be so proud.

The Biblo woke and threw a hellish fit as Riley was completing the paperwork with the hippies in their kitchen. It screamed and banged against the side of the cup like a crazed thing.

“Chill out, will you?” Bandana said. The demon shot him the bird and made a rude remark in Hellspeak.

“What he say?” the man asked.

“Trust me, you don’t want to know.”

Ten minutes later Riley was headed toward downtown Atlanta, singing along to
Dead and Lovin’ It
on the car radio. On the seat next to her was the messenger bag, the signed paperwork and the Offending Minion of Hell. No surprise, it wasn’t happy so Riley had learned a couple new fiendish swear words, ones she didn’t dare use around her dad. She’d also scored a hug from Sunflower and three strands of beads that didn’t go with anything she owned.

What wasn’t sitting on the seat next to her was the couple’s oversized brownies, though they’d offered to send some home with her. Riley had pleaded a chocolate allergy. It was more like a “I don’t need to get busted for weed” issue.

As she edged her way through the intersection onto M.L. King toward downtown Atlanta, the messenger bag began to rock on the seat. She slapped her hand on it to keep it in place while the bag bounced around like a cat with its tail on fire. Tiny feet drummed against her palm as green liquid leaked onto the seat. Somehow the demon had managed to unscrew the sippy cup’s lid and now it was a good bet it was trying to find a way out of the bag. If it did, it might take off. What would she tell her dad?

The bag thrashed on the seat and then the demon poked its head out.

“Oh no, you don’t! Get back in there.” It pulled itself completely free, grinning manically.

Distracted, Riley jerked the steering wheel and nearly collided with another car. The driver honked his horn and glared at her.

“Stop it!” she shouted at the fiend. “You’ll get us killed, you idiot.”

At the last minute, she looked up and gasped in horror. Ramming her foot on the brake pedal, she plastered herself against the seatbelt causing the messenger bag to careen to the floor. The demon sailed upward and landed on the dash.

There was a screech of burning rubber. “Noooo!”

The car finally halted, missing the one in front of her by inches.

“Thank God,” Riley sighed, flopping against the steering wheel in relief. She didn’t dare lose her driver’s license. It’d taken her two tries to pass the road test.

Peals of demonic laughter came from the dashboard where the demon was doubled over, tears rolling down its eyes in mirth. She made a grab for it, but it skittered out of her reach.

“Hey, I didn’t hit him,” she said, retrieving her messenger bag from the floor. She had to put the thing back into the cup. The laughter grew louder causing her to hesitate. “What’s so funny?”

As she looked up she spied the row of blue lights on top of the car she’d nearly rear-ended. Like you’d see on an emergency vehicle. Or a…

Oh crap.

The Atlanta city cop climbed out of his car and headed her way, a ticket book in hand. His frown promised someone was in deep trouble and that someone was Riley.

“Good thing I passed on the brownies,” she murmured.

There was one final burst of hysterical laughter from the demon, then it dove down under the passenger seat, spreading green urine in all directions.

The moment the cop arrived at the car, Riley turned on the charm. She politely handed over her driver’s license with green-stained hands and tried to ignore that the car’s seats were splattered with demon pee. The smell was worse: rotting gym shoes.

When Riley explained the problem, the cop’s right eye began to twitch.

“I’ve heard ‘em all, young lady. Don’t even go there.”

So she handed over her apprentice license. The cop’s frown deepened as he studied it.

“You’re kidding me. You’re really a trapper?”

“Yes. The demon is under the passenger seat,” she said. Or at least she hoped it was. If not, she’d be out one fiend and get a ticket to boot.

Despite her charming personality, the cop wasn’t buying her story until she painstakingly fished Hell’s smartass from under the seat and dropped it into the sippy cup. She attached the lid with more care this time and then held up the cup so the officer could get a view of the little monster. It promptly flipped him off.

“Oh, God, that’s really a…” The guy turned pale and slowly backed away. “You drive safe now,” he said and then beat a quick retreat to his car. A few seconds later he sped away, no doubt keen to ticket someone who wasn’t packing a demon in their vehicle.

After a lengthy time at a car wash cleaning the seats, the windows and just about everything else inside the vehicle, Riley drove home. When the messenger bag gave another lurch on the seat next to her, she didn’t panic: she’d made sure the sippy cup’s lid was on tight. From the extent of the demon’s swearing, she’d done it right this time.

It hadn’t been pretty, but she’d trapped her first Hellspawn on her own.

Her dad was going to be very proud of her.

She cranked up the radio to cover the demon’s swearing. Next time she’d get the lip on right. Next time there wouldn’t be demon pee all over her and the car.

Next time it’ll be perfect.

READ ON FOR A PREVIEW OF

THE FIRST BOOK IN THE DEMON TRAPPERS SERIES

THE DEMON TRAPPER’S DAUGHTER

Available February 1, 2011 from St. Martin’s Griffin

One

2018
Atlanta, Georgia

Riley Blackthorne rolled her eyes.

“Libraries and demons,” she muttered. “What
is
the attraction?”

At the sound of her voice the fiend hissed from its perch on top of the book stack. Then it flipped Riley off.

The librarian chuckled at its antics. “It’s been doing that ever since we found it.”

They were on the second floor of the university law library, surrounded by weighty books and industrious students. Well, they’d been industrious until Riley showed up, and now most of them were watching her every move.
Trapping with an audience
is what her dad called it. It made her painfully aware that her work clothes—denim jacket, jeans, and pale blue T-shirt—looked totally Third World compared to the librarian’s somber navy pantsuit.

The woman brandished a laminated sheet; librarians were into cataloging things, even Hellspawn. She scrutinized the demon and then consulted the sheet. “About three inches tall, burnt-mocha skin and peaked ears. Definitely a Biblio-Fiend. Sometimes I get them confused with the Klepto-Fiends. We’ve had both in here before.”

Riley nodded her understanding. “Biblios are into books. Rather than stealing stuff they like to pee on things. That’s the big difference.”

As if on cue, the Off ending Minion of Hell promptly sent an arc of phosphorescent green urine in their direction. Luckily, demons of this size had equally small equipment, which meant limited range, but they both took a cautious step backward.

The stench of old gym shoes bloomed around them. “Supposed to do wonders for acne,” Riley joked as she waved a hand to clear the smell.

The librarian grinned. “That’s why your face is so clear.”

Usually the clients bitched about how young Riley was and whether she was really qualified to do the job, even after she showed them her Apprentice Demon Trapper license. She’d hoped some of that would stop when she’d turned seventeen, but no such luck. At least the librarian was taking her seriously.

“How long has it been here?” Riley asked.

“Not long. I called right away, so it hasn’t done any real damage,” the librarian reported. “Your dad has removed them for us in the past. I’m glad to see you’re following in his footsteps.”

Yeah, right.
As if anyone could fill Paul Blackthorne’s shoes.

Riley shoved a stray lock of dark brown hair behind an ear. It swung free immediately. Undoing her hair clip, she rewound her long hair and secured it so the little demon wouldn’t tie it in knots. Besides, she needed time to think.

It wasn’t as if she was a complete noob. She’d trapped Biblio-Fiends before, just not in a
university
law library full of professors and students, including a couple of seriously cute guys. One of them looked up at her, and she regretted being dressed for the job rather than for the scrutiny. She nervously twisted the strap of her denim messenger bag. Her eyes flicked toward a closed door a short distance away. “Rare Book Room.” A demon could do a lot of damage in there.

“You see our concern,” the librarian whispered.

“Sure do.” Biblio-Fiends hated books. They found immense joy rampaging through the stacks, peeing, ripping, and shredding. To be able to reduce a room full of priceless books and manuscripts to compost would be a demon’s wildest dream. Probably even get the fiend a promotion, if Hell had such a thing.

Confidence is everything.
At least that’s what her dad always said. It worked a lot better when he was standing next to her.

“I can get it out of here, no problem,” she said. Another torrent of swear words came her way. The demon’s high-pitched voice mimicked a mouse being slowly squashed by an anvil. It always made her ears ache.

Ignoring the fiend, Riley cleared her suddenly dry throat and launched into a list of potential consequences of her actions. It was the standard demon trapper boilerplate. She began with the usual disclaimers required before extracting a Minion of Hell from a public location, including the clauses about unanticipated structural damage and the threat of demonic possession.

The librarian actually paid attention, unlike most clients.

“Does that demonic possession thing really happen?” she asked, her eyes widening.

“Oh, no, not with the little ones. Bigger demons, yeah.” It was one of the reasons Riley liked trapping the small dudes. They could scratch and bite and pee on you, but they couldn’t suck out your soul and use it as a hockey puck for eternity.

If all the demons were like these guys, no big deal. But they weren’t. The Demon Trappers Guild graded Hellfiends according to cunning and lethality. This demon was a Grade One: nasty, but not truly dangerous. There were Grade Threes, carnivorous eating machines with wicked claws and teeth. And at the top end was a Grade Five—a Geo-Fiend, which could create freak windstorms in the middle of shopping malls and cause earthquakes with a flick of a wrist. And that didn’t include the Archdemons, which made your worst nightmares look tame.

Riley turned her mind to the job at hand. The best way to render a Biblio-Fiend incapable of harm was to read to it. The older and more dense the prose, the better. Romance novels just stirred them up, so it was best to pick something really boring. She dug in her messenger bag and extracted her ultimate weapon:
Moby-Dick
. The book fell open to a green-stained page.

The librarian peered at the text. “Melville?”

“Yeah. Dad prefers Dickens or Chaucer. For me it’s Herman Melville. He bored the…crap out of me in lit class. Put me to sleep every time.” She pointed upward at the demon. “It’ll do the same to this one.”

“Grant thee boon, Blackthorne’s daughter!” the demon wheedled as it cast its eyes around, looking for a place to hide.

Riley knew how this worked: If she accepted a favor she’d be obligated to set the demon free. Accepting favors from fiends was
so
against the rules. Like potato chips, you couldn’t stop at just one, then you’d find yourself at Hell’s front door trying to explain why your soul had a big brand on it that said “Property of Lucifer.”

“No way,” Riley muttered. After clearing her throat, she began reading. “‘Call me Ishmael.’” An audible groan came from the stack above her. “‘Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world.’”