Etched in Bone (Haven Chronicles #2)

Chapter 1

The pull of demonic energy that’s been leading him along like a fish on a hook ends at an out of use meat packing plant on the south side of the industrial district.

Knox has been following it through the last quarter mile of empty streets, because it’s a quarter after midnight and third shift is only something that happens on the west side and the south side is where businesses go to die.

Gravel and broken glass crunch underneath his boots and he makes his way to the large iron doors that look like they’ve been opened more recently than they should be.

His gray Templar coat is buckled up to his chin, perfectly pressed and immaculate, and the red cross on the back makes him both a target and a warning from a distance.

The mace he’s been using for the last forty years of service to the Order is hanging at his hip, forged of blessed iron and engraved with scripture older than he is.

His left hand has four blessing rings of consecrated silver stacked across his knuckles, each one etched with a different ward.

He is as ready as he’s going to get for whatever has been calling him across Haven all night.

Eighty years he’s been alive, earning his place as a Templar and becoming specialized in hunting demonic beings with a ferocity that has made his peers suspicious.

He’s seen enough botched summonings to fill a graveyard, and this one has all the hallmarks: an unleashed miasma of demonic energy pouring into the ether, a call about a missing textbook that should have never been available, and a trail of residual magic leading to the kind of place where bad decisions get made.

To be fair, a lot of the time it’s nothing.

It’s a college kid who found a grimoire at a used bookstore and thought it would be fun to play with forces older than civilization.

Those are quick fixes as long as he gets to them in time.

As long as he gets to them before the misguided summoner has tied himself to something ancient and hungry.

Knox pulls the mace from his hip and heads inside with these thoughts in his head, but they don’t stay in his head.

Mostly because, this time, it’s not nothing.

The first thing he registers is the glow of the light, sickly and pulsing, the color of a fresh bruise, that is pouring from a rift that hangs in the center of the warehouse floor.

It’s a wound torn in the fabric of reality and it’s the first sign that this is not the result of a stuttering co-ed and that there is real power at play here.

The second thing he clocks is the sound of wet, guttural snarling that is echoing off the concrete walls and metal rafters.

It’s coming from all around him, like a symphony of hungry beasts waiting in the shadows, and the fact that there is more than one demon present is also very concerning.

The third thing he notices is the witch.

Because he isn’t a college student or a lucky passerby with a piece of chalk.

He’s an actual witch, who looks to be maybe twenty if Knox is being generous.

He has red hair pulled into a ponytail and freckles scattered across a pale face, with bright green eyes that are currently frozen in terror.

He’s crouching behind a shimmering barrier, a ward that’s been hastily thrown up and is barely holding, and he’s clutching a leather-bound book to his chest that radiates wrongness.

The barrier flickers every time one of the drooling creatures throws itself against it and it’s not going to hold much longer.

The creatures. The demons. Well, they’re not his typical fare.

Knox counts four. No, there’s definitely five.

Actually, another one is dragging itself through the rift even now, slick and steaming like it was just made.

They’re canine in the loosest sense of the word.

Dog-shaped, if dogs were made of charred red muscle and exposed bone, with jaws that are dripping something viscous and hissing that could very well be acid.

Whatever it is, it sizzles where it hits the concrete and eats through it in seconds.

One of them is gnawing on a steel support beam that seems important, and Knox watches its teeth shear through the metal like paper.

At the center of all of this, drawn in chalk and salt on the warehouse floor, is a summoning circle.

It’s a little crude and the abstractness of the “circle” portion tells Knox a lot about the skill set of the undeniably powerful but painfully amateurish witch that drew it.

In the center of the circle, within the confines, is the demon he’s been tracking.

Knox’s pulse stutters before he can stop it.

The demon is taller than Knox by a good margin, but then again who isn’t?

He’s broad through the chest and narrow at the waist, dressed in a black collared duster over a black shirt that’s cut low enough to see the cut of muscle underneath.

His hair is short and dark, his ears are pointed with jewelry dangling from them, and there are two textured horns protruding from his head.

He would look like someone carved him out of granite to be perfect, the picture perfect model of a Greek god waiting in a museum for onlookers to see, if it weren’t for his eyes.

The perfection is marred by the existence of two piercing red eyes.

Not bloodshot, not irritated. The deep, burning red of embers banked in hearth.

They’re unnatural. Wrong. And when they land on Knox across the warehouse, something hot and electric jolts through his chest and settles low in his gut.

Knox shakes it off. He’s spent decades hunting demons and if there’s one lesson he’s learned it’s that they wield beauty like a weapon.

They don’t choose unattractive hosts, because the lure and the seduction of their physical image is part of their whole plan.

A blade wrapped in silk is still a blade, and Knox has been taught over four decades that touching will just get you hurt.

Besides, the beauty isn’t real. Underneath it they’re just hunger and chaos waiting to take you apart.

It still takes him a moment to look away.

Knox assesses the room in the span of a breath.

The witch has obviously botched the summoning.

The rift that’s been opened is anchored to the circle, feeding off the demon’s life force to stay open, and every second it remains open more of those demonic beasts are going to come through.

The demon can’t leave the circle without the witch releasing him, and the witch can’t release him while giant acid-breathing dogs are trying to maul him.

The acid-breathing dogs who are multiplying at a rate that would make even the most family-oriented rabbit be concerned.

Knox takes a breath and moves.

The first beast lunges at him before he’s taken three steps.

He sidesteps, swings the mace in a brutal downward arc, and blessed iron connects with corrupted flesh in a burst of white light.

The creature’s skull caves inward with a wet, concussive crack, and the whole body dissolves into a smear of black ichor on the concrete.

“Templar!” the witch shouts from behind his barrier, his voice cracking with relief. “Oh thank God, oh thank God—”

“Stay in your ward,” Knox calls back, already pivoting to meet the next one. It comes low, acid dripping from its jaws, and he vaults over a rusted conveyor belt to avoid the spray. The acid hits the metal behind him and eats through it in seconds. “How long has the rift been open?”

“I don’t—I don’t know, maybe twenty minutes? I didn’t mean to—the spell went wrong and—”

“It’s okay.” Knox brings the mace down on another creature, feels the impact shudder up his arm as the blessed iron does its work.

The thing shrieks, a sound of metal being torn apart, and collapses into a hissing puddle of ichor.

He kicks the remains aside. “We’re going to fix it.

I need you to send the demon back through. Can you do that?”

“Oh, yes, by all means,” the demon says from the circle. His voice is low and rich and dripping with venom. “Take your time. It’s only my flesh being burned away to fuel this lovely little doorway. No rush.”

Knox glances at him. The demon’s jaw is clenched, the tendons in his neck standing out in sharp relief.

The summoning circle glows white-hot beneath his feet, and Knox can see where the light is eating into him, hairline fractures of luminescence spider-webbing up his arms. It’s draining him.

Using him as a battery to keep the rift open.

And still, even burning, even furious, even cracking apart at the seams, the demon is watching Knox with an intensity that makes his skin crawl.

Knox turns back to the fight.

“Witch,” he calls between strikes. “The spellbook. Find the banishment ritual.”

“I’m looking, I’m looking!” The young man’s hands are shaking so badly the pages rattle. He flips through them frantically, eyes darting between the book and the creatures prowling around his barrier. “There’s—there’s a lot of spells in here and they’re not in order and I can’t—”

“Take a breath,” Knox says. He ducks under a lunging creature, rolls, comes up on one knee and drives the mace upward into its chest. The ribcage craters inward with a flash of holy light and the thing bursts apart. “You’ve got this. Just take it one page at a time.”

“You’re very calm for a man covered in demon blood,” the demon observes from the circle.

His red eyes track Knox’s movements with an unnerving intensity, dragging down his body and back up with an openness that would be indecent if it weren’t so deliberate.

“Is this a regular evening for you, then?”

“This isn’t even the worst bodily fluid I’ve had on me this week,” Knox replies back, and caves in the skull of another creature.