Demon Bait (Keeley Thomson)

Keeley Thomson:

Demon Bait

P.S. Power

Orange Cat Publishing

Copyright 2014

Table of Contents:

Chapter one

Chapter
two

Chapter
three

Chapter
four

Chapter
five

Chapter
six

Chapter
seven

Chapter
eight

Chapter
nine

Chapter
ten

Chapter
eleven

Chapter
twelve

Chapter
thirteen

Chapter
fourteen

Chapter
fifteen

The trick, Keeley knew, to
defusing a bomb under a car, was to locate it first. Normally that wouldn't be
a problem for her, if the thing had been placed by anyone even close to normal.
A Human for instance would do the trick pretty well. Even a Lesser Demon would
have most likely, not that any of them were all that technologically savvy.

This one however was placed all
the way to the center of her car, underneath the thing, meaning whoever had
tucked it into place had, for some unknown reason, lifted the whole
thing
up, probably with one hand, and then connected it to the undercarriage of her
little beat up plum and primer colored vehicle with the other. It was, to say
the very least, annoying.

So much so that even she, a
Greater Demon, nearly missed the cute blond boy waving at her from across the
Raintree high school parking lot. It was after the last bell and Keeley, much
like the boy that was rather high handedly summoning her to walk over to him,
was done for the day. Actually, for the year, since it was finally over.

School
, as the old song
went,
was out for the summer
.

"Keeley! Can I talk to you
for a second?" Quince, the Captain of the football team, who'd lettered in
three sports and always seemed personally impressed with that feat, smiled at
her lazily.

As if he
weren't
getting
her to move away from her car, just as it was about to explode.

She sighed and pasted a smile on
her lips. The boy was after all, cute, in a healthy and slightly too well
muscled way. In a regular Human that might have meant either an obsession with
working out, or steroid use, but in his case it was just a subconscious
manipulation of his physical form. He wasn't a real boy, after all was said and
done. Just a Durg mercenary that had pretended to be one, in order to get his
brothers back from an evil woman that had kidnapped and enslaved them all. They
were dead now though, Keeley didn't really think he knew that.

She brushed her dark brown hair
out of her face, having worn it back in a ponytail for the day, which meant
that some of the strands had pulled loose. Or, more exactly, that she'd let
that happen, to make herself seem more like a real teen girl. Just like she'd
added a few blemishes to her face and hadn't worn makeup that day. That left
her looking like a solid eight, rather than the ten that had become normal for
her all year long. It wasn't a mistake either. Looking good was helpful at
times, but with the Second Crucible upon her, she knew that looking like a hot
teen girl wasn't really going to help her for much longer. There was a reason
that all the Greater Demon leaders looked like crusty old men all the time.

What that was, she didn't know,
but it wasn't lost on her that they all
did
it.

She jogged over, making herself
seem excited by the prospect of the good looking guy talking to her. He wasn't
unpleasant really, though Durg, as a race, tended to be a little slow. About
like an average Human. Sure, that was a relative thing, since Greater Demons
just functioned on a different mental plane most of the time, but it still had
his kind being thought a bit less of, by hers. Which, she knew, was foolish. A
Durg was at least as dangerous as anyone else could be, unless they were made
into a slave. They were strong, fast, and fanatically loyal to their brothers
and sisters. Their leaders too, if they had them at the moment. It was why they
were among the best mercenaries in history. Once bought, they stayed that way.

"Quince! Or are you going
back to Kevin, now that you're done with school? For that matter, didn't you
graduate last week? What are you doing here?" Placing a bomb under her car
came to mind, which, when she leaned in to give the old creature in front of
her a hug, she picked up very clearly.

His life slammed into her, the
thousands of years of memories running through her head in an instant. She held
it all away from her inner self, just a bit. There was a lot of violence, and
more than a little bit of evil involved in his mind. Things done to him,
certainly, but mainly things that he'd
done
. Eating people, raping them,
torturing creatures of a hundred kinds.

Cheating on his finals.

She nearly lost it and smiled at
that last one, since
that
, lacking in honor as it was, actually made him
feel bad. It was charming however, but she didn't want him to feel like she was
making fun of him, so schooled her face without locking down her emotions, and
looked into his fairly attractive blue eyes. She could see herself reflected in
them, the bright Arizona sun glinting off the moist surface just enough to show
that he wasn't looking back at her directly, but at her poor little car. The
one that he was about to destroy, trying to get the attention of the Greater
Demon that had killed his brothers.

It was so clear that he knew all
about what had happened that she nearly sighed. He wasn't
totally
certain that it had really taken place however. The boy, who was at least four
thousand years old, had
wondered
if this was about a Greater Demon, but
couldn't prove it. It really was of course, since her half sister Darla, who
was known as The Technician, had slaughtered them all, in retaliation for them
killing Rob. A friend of hers. They'd been the tool that had done the work for
the Gatherer, and not in control of themselves, but as everyone sane knew, you
didn't go up against a Greater Demon if you could help it.

One of the reasons everyone
thought that was simply situations like this. Asymmetrical response patterns.
In this case a troop of Acadian Apples, powerful mercenaries despite the fruit
flavored name, had allowed themselves to be taken as slaves to a Human with a
magical device. Their punishment for failing to resist that, and killing in her
name, was death. It wasn't fair, or good, but it sent a strong message to
everyone that heard about it.

Don't screw around with Darla
Gibson.

The boy glanced at her, tension
just visible around his eyes, meaning that the blast was close. She stayed
relaxed, and didn't let herself be more than a little impressed that Quince,
who was a minor celebrity at the school, was there to chat with her.

"I wanted to ask you
something..." He stalled, clearly not wanting to involve himself with her
too much. The plan was to create a distraction and then watch for atypical
reactions. Why he'd picked her car... Well, he knew that one, and now, having
gotten his whole lifetime of memories, so did she.

Quince had targeted her, because
he didn't think she was the one he was looking for. Keeley was, after all, just
a pretty and nice, if slightly nerdy girl that got good grades and had friends
on the cheerleading squad. That wasn't the kind of thing that real Demons did,
to his way of thinking. No, he figured that the one he wanted was on the staff.
In a position of power and influence.

That kind of mistake, letting
himself be distracted by what he
thought
he knew, was part of why his
kind were thought of as a little slow, even if they were, otherwise, almost
Greater Demons. They had the same base ability set, but were just a bit too lacking
to make the cut. Given that most of what made her special had to do with
learning and magic, it seemed pretty glaring to Keeley at the moment, but she
knew that Quince was probably a lot more like she was than not.

So she smiled at him, letting her
mouth quirk a little at the sides and tilting her head, then licked her lips,
wetting them as if it were a subconscious move. It worked and for half an
instant he noticed that, thinking about other things she might be able, and
possibly even willing to do with her mouth.

Then he shook his head slightly,
remembering why he was there, glancing at the emptying parking lot.

"I... Would you like to go
out some time? I should have asked earlier, but..." He seemed embarrassed,
but sounded nearly perfect. A popular and confident boy, awestruck by her
loveliness, taking a last second chance to not lose out forever.

If she'd been a real girl, it
would have worked pretty well, to tell the whole truth. As it was, if she
weren't about to lose her car, she still might have considered the idea. If
he'd really meant it. Quince was decent at playing his role, but the truth was
he couldn't be bothered most of the time to follow through when it came to sex.
It was, she knew, too boring to him, most of the time. Not all Durgs became
like that, but he had, over the last millennia. The mercenary played at it well
enough, making stupid remarks and ogling the pretty girls on demand, but his
heart just wasn't in it, most of the time.

Even with her.

She grinned a little and nodded,
since there was no particular reason not to.

"That sounds like fun! Let's
do that? Do you need a ride home? I know that Misty isn't the best looking car
in the world, but she runs pretty well. I don't think my mom is home right now,
if you want to come over?" She was just a bit too casual about saying
that, but it was true, since her mother had moved to Washington State about two
months before. Going to live in a house provided for her by the Line Walker.

Keeley's nephew, Zack.

That wouldn't have been so bad,
but he'd taken
all
her people away, or was going to. To protect them,
true, which was why she hadn't charged in to fight him for them. For a Greater
Demon, Zack was actually a sweetie, after all. Not that he wasn't planning on
sleeping with all the girls she'd sent in.

Keels knew that one because he'd
told her about it. Or, well, he'd promised
not
to sleep with Hally,
since she was Keeley's girlfriend, but he clearly had designs on her mother.
More than that, she knew, fearing that they'd already been going at it for a
while now. It was the kind of thing that she blocked out, because the concept
of her mother sleeping with a guy that she had as well, was icky. Which meant
that no matter what she thought of herself, she really needed to grow up a lot.
Adults of her kind didn't have emotional issues like that. They certainly didn't
play by
Human
rules. She needed to stop that, and fast.

Not fighting a genuine smile at
the ridiculous thought, she started to walk toward her car, getting Quince to
put his hand out, stopping her.

"That sounds good, I need to
talk to someone first-" There was a sudden pulling on her arm, and
Keeley's body whipped around firmly, so that he stood between her and the
explosion. The movement started just before the sound hit them, which meant the
thing had been timed pretty precisely. It was a dead giveaway, to someone like
her, but most people wouldn't be able to get that he'd started moving before
anything happened at all.

First there was a boom, and then
a lot of white smoke, coming from a canister under Misty. Poor, poor Misty.
Everyone in the parking lot stared, except for Quince, who looked around for
people acting out of place.

For her part, Keeley yelped.

"
Argh
!" It was a
bit too dramatic, but she hammed it up a bit, letting her eyes go wide. Then
she clung to the muscular, young looking Durg and started to hyperventilate.
"
Misty
!"

That was just to make him feel
bad, for hurting her car. She didn't care
that
much, since she could get
another pretty easily. Or given the nature of the smoke coming out, possibly
just drive home after it cleared. It took thinking about and pulling from the
memories that the Greater Demon Tarsus, The Librarian, had gifted her, but she
could tell it was just a smoke grenade. If it had been planted correctly, the
heat shouldn't be enough to really damage anything. It wouldn't melt metal, and
Misty, for all she looked like a piece of trash junker, was practically a high
end race car, under the hood. There would be no fuel leaks or anything to set
it on fire.

Still, she was a girl, and only
sixteen, so tears were in order. That meant thinking about something very sad,
to get the right effect. Then, as she focused, increasing the gain on that
sense of things using magic, to really hammer the thing home, that moisture
came as twin rivulets down her mainly smooth cheeks. It wasn't hard,
unfortunately, since she had a lot to choose from. She nearly ran with the most
traumatic memory she had, that of being tossed her father's head by Xenses, who
as it turned out was her biological brother. Half brother, but since that kind
of thing barely mattered to her kind, they didn't count it that way. Charles
had been her dad, but not her biological one, even if she'd thought that for
most of her life.

She passed on that one though,
since Misty, while a good piece of machinery, was still just a device. A tool
to use, in order to get things done.