Chapter 2
“So the kid’s got some evil inside her,” Eddie said, leaning back in the recliner he’d claimed as his own. He rubbed his stubbly gray beard and made a snorting noise. “Like that’s news? She’s fifteen. Whoever heard of a fifteen-year-old who wasn’t evil?”
“Um, hello?” Allie said. “Sitting right here! And so not evil!”
My daughter Allie, the subject of this particular conversation, glared at her great-grandfather.
Or, rather, at the man she considered her great-grandfather.
Like me, Eddie Lohmann had retired from the Demon-Hunting life.
Also like me, he’d been pulled out of retirement and is now back in the thick of it.
I’m a Level Five Demon Hunter, which puts me out in the field. And although he’s not officially on the Forza Scura payroll, Eddie’s stepped up as my alimentatore, a sort of mentor-teacher-researcher-coach. And, in Eddie’s case, a sometime babysitter and all-time curmudgeon.
Forza Scura is the secret arm of the Vatican created thousands of years ago to train, educate, and organize hunters to fight the demons, vampires, zombies, and other creatures of hell who move secretly through our world.
Demons are the most prevalent because they’re the ones who can look the most human because, well, they pretty much are human.
The thing is, demons are all around us all the time, and I mean that literally.
Walk through the world, and you’re walking through demons, albeit demons in another dimension.
Those of us in Forza call it the ether, but it’s fair to say it’s a kind of limbo, and it’s where demons wait, lurking around for the chance to slide into a body that a human doesn’t need anymore.
Not that they can take over every dead body. There’s a very short window of opportunity, so the demon has to be right there and ready, paying attention and on his toes.
But that’s not all. Even if the timing is right, the departing soul can still protect the body. It can fight, and most souls do. And the more faith that a person had in this life, the harder it is for the demon to battle its way inside.
Still, quite a few demons make it, and you hear about it every day. A heart attack victim miraculously revived? A drowned swimmer brought back to life? Maybe that’s just exceptional work by the EMS folks, but I usually assume demon. Call me a pessimist, but I figure it’s better safe than sorry.
Once a demon is inside a body it could simply stay there for as long as the body lasts, living out its life as a super-strong human.
Most don’t, though. They’re demons, after all, and that means they want to get out and do a little damage.
Shake things up and go all evil on the world.
Also, most tend to be minions, doing the work of High Demons who have a Serious Agenda.
Like, oh, bringing about the end of the world as we know it.
Those demons are easy for a Hunter to spot.
But the others? Well, they manage to blend in.
Some slide into regular jobs. They’re demons, yes.
They’re evil, absolutely. But they also just want to be human.
I’ve known demons who ran convenience stores and strip clubs and telemarketing farms. Usually their true nature gets the better of them after a while, but the point is, they’re out there.
And now I can’t help but think that Allie has something in common with them.
The thought isn’t a happy one.
“—just like Father Donnelly said. Right, Kate?”
Eliza’s voice pulled me from my reverie. “I’m sorry. What?”
My eighteen-year-old cousin and Allie exchanged exasperated glances.
“Jeez, Mom. Distracted much?”
I didn’t answer, because yeah, it was fair to say I was little distracted. Exhausted, too. We’d only arrived back home in San Diablo two hours ago after flying more than fifteen hours from Rome. There wasn’t enough coffee in the world to unfog my tired and garbled brain.
“Eliza said that all the stuff inside me’s good,” Allie plowed on as my husband Stuart, who was sitting beside me on the couch, tightened his grip on my hand.
“Just like Father Donnelly said. I’ve got the essence but not the evil.
Strength. And strategy. So, that’s all a plus on the hunting end. Right?”
She shifted to look from me to her father, Eric, who was sitting in one of the dining room chairs that we’d pulled into the living room for this impromptu family meeting. “Right?” she said again, and though I couldn’t be sure, I thought there was a note of panic in her voice.
“Of course it’s all good,” Eric said, his body shifted toward the left to favor his working eye. He’d lost the right one in our last battle before going to Rome, and all things considered had adapted remarkably well.
“Right,” Allie said. “Okay.” I was grateful that Allie was looking at Eric so intently that there is no way she could have noticed how Eddie rolled his eyes, making his caterpillar-like eyebrows twitch.
“You saved the world, didn’t you?” Eric added.
“Damn right she did,” Eliza said fiercely. “She saved all of us.”
At the time Allie had been saving the world, Eliza had been in the hospital, having faced death in the process of trying—and failing—to save her mother, the aunt I’d never known.
I glanced at the leather cuffs she now wore on her wrists.
They looked like the fashion statement of a badass girl with attitude.
And while that description fit Eliza, the real reason for the cuffs was to hide the nasty, jagged scars.
“I’d never freaking kill myself,” Eliza had said on our last day in Rome, two weeks after the world hadn’t ended.
We were on her first outing after the hospital, and she’d wanted to go to the open-air market.
I’d understood why when she’d headed toward a display of leather goods and picked out the cuffs, then snapped them around her wrists and had Allie adjust the laces so they were perfectly sized.
“And there is no way I’m letting every clerk at Target think I tried to slit my wrists,” she’d added, then thrust up and down as if blocking an attacker. “Plus, they should do good for deflecting knives, right?”
I’d agreed. More than that, I’d even bought a set for both me and Allie, though we don’t wear them constantly the way Eliza now does.
Now, Allie scowled from where she was sitting cross-legged on the floor beside Eliza. “I saved the world because of what I am.” She pulled her knees up and hugged them, her attention tight on Eric. “I’m different, aren’t I? From you, I mean. We got it out of you. But with me—”
She cut herself off with a frown, then shook her head.
I knew what she was thinking. For years, the demon Eric’s parents had put inside him had stayed bound, trapped through a binding ritual performed by the Church.
But the binding didn’t work the way it should have, and things got out of hand not that long ago.
Eric had gone all Jekyll and Hyde, losing it so much that he’d almost hurt Allie, not to mention me.
It’s better now; the demon was destroyed and Eric survived. And there weren’t any little demonic bits lingering inside him. At least as far as we knew.
“It’s different,” Eric assured her gently. “I had an actual demon shoved inside of me. That’s not you. You’ve—”
“Got it all through me,” she said. “Infused with the essence of the demon. Isn’t that what Father Donnelly said? I mean, I’m stuck with it. I am it. And I just—”
“Essence,” Eric said. “There’s no demon inside of you, waiting to take control.”
“Oh, right,” Allie snapped. “And you know this because it happens all time. I’m the first, remember? Because your parents wanted to freaking breed their way to me, and—”
“Sweetheart,” I said gently, because her voice was rising, edging toward hysteria.
She took a deep breath, then tossed her hands out to her sides the way she does when she’s overwhelmed by a pile of homework. “You know what? Never mind.” She stood. “Can I go?”
“Go?” Eric asked. “Go where?”
“Out. The beach. The mall. Mindy,” she finally said, referring to her best friend. “Can I just go out with Mindy?”
Her eyes were still on Eric, and for a moment he said nothing. I could read his face well enough, though, and I knew he wanted to keep her in the house, safe with us. Safe from the outside world. And, hopefully, safe from herself.
Apparently Allie could read his expression, too, because she snapped, “I can take care of myself, you know. And I’m not going to go all demonic at the beach.
I promise not to open any portals to hell.
You just said there’s no demon waiting to pop out.
All I want is to get out of here. I want to see Mindy. I want—”
“Of course you can go,” Stuart said gently, and the storm I’d seen brewing on Allie’s face started to fade.
Eric turned to Stuart, and since I could tell he was about to argue, I held up a hand. “Stuart’s right,” I said. “Allie and Mindy have a lot of catching up to do. And it’s a gorgeous day for the beach.”
“I’ll come too,” Eliza chimed in. She’d been watching the four of us, obviously trying to assess the situation.
“I don’t need a babysitter! I’m not going to grow horns!”
Eliza sat back, her hands rising as if in self-defense. “Didn’t say you did. But I thought you wanted me to meet Mindy. That’s what you said in Rome, right? And I’m dying to go to the beach. I went all the time in San Diego, and I’m having withdrawals. Is there anyplace to rent boards?”
“You surf?” The looming issue of Allie’s demonic heritage faded against the shining brilliance of learning to surf. “Will you teach me?”
“Allie,” I said. “Remember the last time you were interested in surfing?”
“Well, yeah. But this time, I’m the demon.”
“Allie!”
“Kidding.” She scrunched her shoulders, looking like my little girl. “Honest, Mom, surfing isn’t the problem, and you know it.”
“Well, it might be a problem, but we can have the sports and safety discussion later. Now, I guess you can just go.”
“Really? Awesome. Can you drive us?”