Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
CONNOR
Istare into Kieran’s pretty eyes and wonder how I fucked this up so completely. Oh, that’s right. I was showing off.
To be fair, usually when a demon realizes it’s been summoned into a circle controlled by a hunter, it chooses to concede the battle and go back to the otherworld.
There are a lot of dumb humans they can corrupt and feed off, but hunters are trained to kill demons.
Why face that when they can live to fight another day?
This demon, however, seems convinced it can take me.
It can’t—hydra demons are a pain in the ass, but with correct prep, not hard to kill—but I’ve been mostly on the back foot since it arrived, so who knows?
“That’s not going to happen,” I assure Kieran, “but I want you prepared for any eventuality.”
“I don’t understand what’s happening here.” He lifts the hand with the dagger as though to run it through his hair, realizes that would be a bad idea, and shakes his head instead.
I keep one eye on the demon and try to explain.
“This circle is basic and doesn’t have anything fancy built in, so I can’t banish the demon from outside it without killing Greg also.
I have to go in and get rid of it the old-fashioned way.
” Really old-fashioned. Like… from before the Vikings invaded Scotland.
“You have to risk your life to save Greg’s?” he asks incredulously. “Screw Greg!”
Aw, he likes me. I smile at him. “You know you don’t mean that. Greg deserves to live the remainder of his life knowing what he did and what happens next.”
His jaw sets, and he nods almost imperceptibly. “Do not die.”
I take that as a blessing and move to face the demon.
It’s completely regenerated its arm and is waiting for me.
It really is stupid if it thinks it can win this—almost all the advantages are stacked in my favor, including the fact that it’s trapped in the circle.
The only real handicap I’ve got is Greg.
If the demon was smart, it would be using Greg as a shield instead of facing me down.
I step into the circle and hold my sword steady, waiting for it to make the first move.
The potion on my blade cauterizes hydra wounds in such a way that it can’t regenerate.
From there, the blade and my hunter abilities are enough to do it in.
If the circle was smaller, I could do this from outside it.
The demon glowers at me, and I push aside the instinctive tickle of fear. It’s impossible to be completely unafraid in the face of a creature such as this, but this is my thing. I’ve killed dozens of hydras before. My primal reaction doesn’t impact my confidence.
It surges forward, but when I move to meet it, leaps back, leaving me overextended.
It then swings around, ducks under my guard, and slashes toward my body.
I raise my free arm and catch its claws on my thick leather cuff, but it seizes the moment to throw me off-balance.
I recover, but it has the advantage now, dammit.
I swing the sword in an attempt to push it back. The swing is sloppy—what I need to do is hit the torso or head, and instead I take a slice out of one shoulder. But with the treated quartz-inlaid blade, it has enough of an impact for the demon to rear back, and I get my feet fully back under me.
It recovers faster than I would have thought possible, turning its attention to the other side of the circle, where Greg is huddled, and I begin to think this might be a very old, very smart hydra.
They’re usually not this bold or sneaky.
I readjust my expectations and lunge at it just in time to shear off the arm reaching for Greg.
Fucking Greg. He’s way more trouble than he’s worth.
The hydra screams when it loses its arm again, this time permanently, and Greg cringes away from the severed limb. I push forward, wanting to end this. It’s enraged now, and that makes this moment the most dangerous.
It turns on me and swipes its remaining arm out, the claws whistling terrifyingly close to my face as I jerk back, but I don’t give it time to press me, bringing my sword up to bite neatly through its torso.
I mentally push my power into the blade, and energy races through it, heightened by the quartz—which is already painful for the demon—and zips into the hydra via the wound.
It has a split second to snarl at me in pained fury before it explodes into countless particles and is reabsorbed by the universe.
Breathing heavily, more from adrenaline than exertion, I lower my sword. Stupid fucking demon. There’s not even a scratch on me.
Greg whimpers and crawls toward me. “Th-Thank you. P-Please, please h-help me.”
Uhhhh, no. Just because I’m not willing to let him die doesn’t mean he’s off the hook.
I step out of the circle, then pace around it, checking that all the symbols are intact. It’s still holding him, so I assume they are, but you can never be too careful.
I lay my sword on the floor and send a gentle wash of power into the circle, activating it fully.
Greg screams, writhing on the floor as the last vestiges of his connections to the demons that own him are severed. When it’s over, he huddles there, weeping, just a pathetic, exhausted old man who’s going to have a lot of explaining to do to his family and friends.
I turn away and go to Kieran, who’s still clutching my dagger and the water pistol with a white-knuckled grip. Laying a soft kiss on his cheek, I pry his fingers loose.
“It’s done. You can relax now.” I catch the dagger, but the pistol clatters to the floor.
“Done?” he asks, gaze seeking assurance in mine.
“Done,” I promise. “The demon’s gone, and Greg has no more power than any other old man.
Less. He’ll never be able to summon a demon again—the part of his soul that allows it doesn’t exist anymore.
” I wish that wasn’t the only way to do it, but in Greg’s case, at least, it doesn’t matter. His soul was already in tatters anyway.
Kieran sucks in a deep breath, then throws himself in my arms. I barely avoid stabbing him with my dagger when I catch him. Still, I could get used to this.
He kisses my neck, then pulls back—way too soon, if you ask me. After all, I did just kill a demon, right?
“You are so getting a hero’s blowjob tonight,” he declares, and I instantly feel better about the hug being over.
“I’d say it was nothing, but… blowjob.” I wink, and he snorts and shoves me.
“Asshole. Okay, what next?”
I look around. “Next we pack up all my stuff, clean up the chalk circle so nobody can try to copy it and somehow accidentally summon a demon, and head home. I mean,” I correct, “back to your place. Or the estate.” Oops.
But Kieran doesn’t seem to have noticed. “Okay. I don’t want to make a mess in your kit, so I’ll do the floor. I can clean the sword and dagger too, if you want?” He gestures to the thick potion crust on both blades. I shake my head.
“I’ll do those.” It’s not that I don’t trust him, but these blades are valuable.
The dagger was Uncle Norval’s when he was alive and should probably be in a museum.
The sword is custom, and the quartz alone cost a fortune.
Plus, it’s delicate—quartz isn’t meant to be inlaid in a blade.
I have to have the inlay checked and repaired regularly.
For a while we work together without talking, Greg’s quiet sobs the only sound in the house.
I pack my kit quickly, making notes in my phone about what needs to be replaced.
There are multiples of everything and backups, of course, but a hunter who doesn’t replenish his kit when he uses stuff usually finds himself running out of a key ingredient at the worst possible time.
Kieran does a killer job on the floor, leaving it cleaner than it was when we arrived, and then the two of us go through the house, room by room, looking for any references to demons and summonings that need to be destroyed.
We find nothing, and I’m beginning to think I might need to scare the information out of Greg, but then Kieran goes down to the basement and yelps.
By the time I get down there, he’s turned on all the lights and is clutching the chunk of quartz I gave him.
It takes only a second to see why: Greg has turned the room into something from a B-grade Hollywood movie.
This is obviously where he communicated with the demons he summoned, but there’s a lot of unnecessary crap here.
Theater props, basically. All you really need to summon a demon is the circle.
Certain herbs and crystals can give things a boost, especially when you’re summoning a higher demon—though why anyone would want to do that is beyond me—but most of the shit humans think is part of the “ritual” is just them trying to add bells and whistles.
Here, though… beneath the heavy scent of incense and behind the excessive use of pentagrams and black candles—which just prove how dumb he is, since black candles are used to dispel negative energy—I sense the untold agony of sacrificial rites.
The screams of murdered souls stain the air in here in a way that can never be cleansed.
I grab all the books and journals in the alphabetized bookshelf, then the laptop and the backup hard drive, and send Kieran out to the car with it all while I approach Greg.
Hoisting him under the arms, I help him to the sofa and leave him there. He’s old. Lying on the floor can’t be good for him. “Is there someone I can call for you?”
He raises wet, red-rimmed eyes, glaring at me from his tearstained, splotchy face. “You’ve killed me,” he hisses.