Demon Master (Demonsense series Book 2) (14 page)

“Yeah, well, that’s what’s so fucked about the whole thing,” Kevin replied, voice rising. “Here you have these abilities that can protect you and others, and you’ll basically be crucified if you use them.”

“Kevin, I don’t even like to use them. I’ll admit I have at times, when it seemed like there was no other way. And yeah, okay, that could happen tonight. But do you really expect me to stand by and watch a bunch of kids get hurt, and maybe killed?”

“There will be other people there to help. Why does it have to be you that has to be the hero, that has to risk everything?’ Kevin answered stubbornly. It was clear as day to Bree that Kevin was anxious about tonight, and that was part of what was driving him to push Daniel on this. She also knew this was all part of a many years long conversation, and she was staying out of it.

“I tried to retire. I’ve been trying to contribute by doing research instead of being on the front lines. That’s what you always wanted, isn’t it? But if this is the start of a war, we have to do everything we can to nip it in the bud. We can’t let them succeed, not the Keltoi, not the demons. It can be pretty scary, how fast things can destabilize once you start getting riots.”

“I just wish..., oh hell, I guess it doesn’t matter what I wish,” Kevin sighed. “I should just shut up and get ready.”

Both Daniel and Bree forbore agreeing with him out loud. Silence descended, broken only by a few curt directions from Kevin. When they were nearly there, he pulled a black marker out of his jacket pocket, and Bree felt a quiver of power in the air as he focused and set his personal wards. He wrote warding symbols on the palms of both hands to seal the wards, and Bree knew it was a measure of his concern that he did so. As a high power Warder, he could ward with a thought, but setting the ward with a spell was a form of extra protection. He passed the marker into the back seat for Bree, and she did the same. She passed it back up, and Daniel held out first one hand, then the other and let Kevin set the wards for him.

 
Soon they were making their way along Alki Avenue, the street hugging the south shore of Elliot Bay. It was full dark, and the downtown skyline could be seen across the water. A mix of high-rise apartment buildings and funky little beach shacks lined the street on their left, looking across the bay at the view. A white ferry, lit up like a floating birthday cake, was chugging across the water.
 

They were moving slow, and traffic was dense, doubtless due to kids arriving for the flash mob. As they neared the designated meeting spot, Kevin directed Daniel down a side street so they could find parking. He ended up parking illegally, too close to a stop sign, but they were all anxious to get out and get moving. Kevin led the way to the bakery, and as they moved closer to the main drag, the sounds of a crowd grew on the cool evening air. There was a faint cacophony of music, several people having apparently brought boom boxes, or perhaps playing their car stereos, and there was the murmur of a lot of people talking. So far, Bree noted with relief, there were no screams or yelling that she could make out.

As they walked closer to the corner where they were to meet, Bree could make out the stiff, straight form of Keeper Javier Ortiz. He was talking to a group of perhaps fifteen or twenty people, all crowded in close to hear. She saw Dion standing a little to the right of Javier, and he saw her as well and gave her a wave. Bree and the others came up to the edge in time to hear Javier saying, “So I want you to disperse into the crowd in small groups of two or three. Do what you can just to be that adult presence, and intervene, ah, normally where you see trouble starting. Those of you able to pick out which of the kids are particularly troubled,” he said, obviously code for ‘possessed kids’, “keep close to them. If it comes down to it, you may have to physically subdue them and get them out of the crowd where you can deal with them. Police officers are arriving, so let them handle trouble where that’s feasible. We’re just trying to keep a lid on things here, and anyone who can ward will help with that. We can’t expect to solve the troubled kids’ problem tonight, at least not all of them.” More code, for “we can’t expect to do exorcisms on all of them tonight.”
 

No shit,
Bree thought, trying to picture setting up and concluding a full exorcism ritual with this many people around. Maybe if they could get the possessed kids away from the crowd, but how were they going to accomplish that?

“How many troubled ones have you counted so far?” one of the women near the front asked.

“Eighteen on my last walk through,” Javier replied grimly.

“Eighteen!” Bree whispered. It was a disastrous number of possessed. She looked around her. Of the few people in the group she was actually acquainted with, there were only five she knew for certain were Exorcists, and that included her, Daniel and Javier.
 
Dion was a low power Reader and a high power Healer. Probably some of the people were Keepers, and those were more likely to be Exorcists as well, but they weren’t all wearing their normal Keeper blue, so she couldn’t tell at a glance.
 

As Javier finished his instructions, he began dividing people up into groups. When he got to her, Daniel and Kevin, Javier said curtly, his voice pitched low so as not to be overheard, “You three make a team. Thorvaldson, try to limit your casting to the less obvious. If you see a chance to pull one of the possessed kids away from the crowd, you and Bree go ahead and try for an exorcism. Bree, let Daniel take primary, he’s got more experience.”
 

Daniel caught Bree’s eye at that, and she grimaced as Javier nodded and moved on. Like hell he was going to take primary, not if she could help it. Daniel turned to include Kevin, and said resolutely, “Let’s go.”

They crossed the street and were immediately enveloped in a throng of young people. They covered the steps down to the beach, and she could see from the top of the steps how far the crowd extended to either side. She had no sense of how big the numbers might be, as she had no experience in trying to guess such a thing. But it looked like one hell of a lot of teenagers.
 

There were three bonfires going on the beach, and kids were densely packed around and between each of them. Some were swaying and dancing to tunes coming out of boom boxes, others were talking and laughing, and she saw not a few drinking from flasks or surreptitiously smoking joints. She forced herself to open her Demonsense, which she had been consciously preventing in self-defense.
 

She immediately felt the presence of multiple possessed, which triggered a shaky nausea. As they wound their way through the crowd, towards the furthest bonfire where Bree could feel a likely target, she saw the first sign of trouble. Raised voices, then one young man shoving another hard in the chest. The second one nearly went down, and with a snarl, he steadied himself, then shoved back. Voices were raised all around them, some trying to calm the two boys, some egging them on.
 

Bree glanced around, saw a police officer heading their way, and continued on.
 
The sounds of the conflict intensified behind her, and she felt her shoulder blades drawing in and tensing in response. She suddenly felt far too short, and hemmed in.
 

With relief, she felt Kevin take her hand, felt the bulk of him behind her.
 
She heard some more cries in front of her then, and tried to quicken her pace to keep up with Daniel, but the crowd seemed even denser now.
 

Adding to the difficulty was the fact that where she might be able to squeeze through, Kevin couldn’t easily follow. Bree glanced at the faces around her. Some were still smiling and laughing, but many of the kids were looking ahead, the taller ones able to see what she couldn’t, the source of the rising yells somewhere in front of them.
 

Before she could break through to where the action was, she was jostled quite hard, as whatever conflict was up ahead started to spread out and affect the people nearby. Some tried to get away, while others pushed to get closer. Bree got her feet stepped on several times, and was shoved almost to her knees another time, only Kevin’s grip on her hand saving her. A frightening image of getting trampled to death leapt to mind. It wasn’t a crazy fear, either. If a crowd this big got out of control, she was sure it was a possibility.
 

Finally, she got close enough to the bonfire to see what was happening. She and Kevin came up beside Daniel and saw a fist fight was in full swing, involving at least six kids, most of them boys, but two of them girls, their screeching epithets rising above the lower rumble of the boys’ grunts and swearing. Quickly, Bree focused her Reader sense on the group, and what she felt made her heart sink. One of the boys was possessed by a good sized demon, and worse, both he and one of the girls were powered kids, both Casters.

Teenaged powered could definitely be a danger to themselves and others. And short of being Binders or Demon Masters, young Casters were by far the worst. They didn’t have the skill yet to shape their power into really lethal castings, but with enough emotional energy, they could stumble their way through some quick and dirty spells that could do some serious harm. And, of course, the easiest and the most harmful spells were those one could cast against people in close proximity.
 

Even as she stood there trying to evaluate the situation, a skinny blond girl flung out an arm at the girl across from her and sent the other girl sprawling and clutching her throat. Dear Lord, Bree thought frantically, she might have actually tried a stop breath spell. At least now Bree knew where to start. “I’ll deal with the girls, you see if there’s any cops nearby to flag down to break up the boys’ fight,” she shouted hurriedly in Kevin’s ear.
 

He nodded and released her hand with a little squeeze. “I’ll see what I can do to keep the boys in line,” Daniel told her. Bree hurriedly agreed, and marched over to the blonde girl who was standing over her opponent with a twisted smile on her face, both fists outstretched. Bree slapped the girl’s face and grabbed the girl by both arms and shook her before her face could finish registering shock at being struck. “You listen up, little girl. We do not cast in front of normals, and we do not cast to hurt another, except in self defense.”

An expression of mixed fear and defiance came over the girl’s face. “What’re you, some Keeper?” she sneered, and Bree realized from the tone of it that she was most likely holding a Keltoi’s daughter in her grasp.

 
“Yeah, something like that,” she told the powered girl with another little shake.
 
The other girl was climbing to her feet now, to Bree’s great relief. “No matter the right or the wrong of it, it’s just plain stupid to cast in public,” she hissed at the girl, moving in closer, trying for a little domination with physical proximity. “You think your people would be happy to hear you did such an incredibly idiotic thing?” Her attempt at projecting a convincing level of intimidation must have worked, because the girl’s defiance slid right off of her face, and she muttered, “Okay, okay, fine. I won’t do it anymore.”

“Go home before somebody gets killed here tonight. And don’t be so sure it won’t be you,” Bree admonished with a final shake.
 

The little blonde turned away, face flushed, and looked around, probably trying to find some of the people she came with. Bree would like to have followed her to see that she left, but she had bigger fish to fry.
 

She turned to see that while she’d been dealing with the girl, the fight had spread.
 
She saw Daniel physically separating two boys, one of whom was considerably heftier than him, and the big one was pushing back. She saw Daniel’s left hand make a subtle little waving gesture, and the boy fighting him flew back and landed on his ass in the sand. It was a beautifully controlled telekinetic spell. If she hadn’t been watching closely, she would have thought Daniel had simply been successful in pushing the boy.
 

He turned to the other kid, and did the same thing. “Okay boys, that’s more than enough,” he admonished. “You all came here to have fun, not get into trouble. This place will be crawling with cops any second. Do you seriously want to get arrested for assault?”
 

Both kids were scowling as they shook their heads and muttered, “No.”
 

Bree was shaken out of admiring how Daniel was handing the situation by a hard shove to her back. She stumbled towards Daniel, and his hands caught her and kept her from falling.
 

Daniel's eyes narrowed in concentration as he focused on whoever had slammed into her. This time, she didn’t see him move at all, just felt a wash of power shoot by her.
 
She heard a grunt and some swearing. Daniel must have cast another telekinetic spell to push people away from her. He let go of her and went on past her.
 

She turned to see him facing an angry group of four young men, two of whom were climbing to their feet. With dismay, she registered that two of them were both possessed and powered. Those two had likely perceived that Daniel had cast against them.
 

Daniel was holding up his hands palm out in a soothing, placating gesture. “Look, I don’t want anyone to get hurt here.”
 

“The only one who’s going to get hurt here is you if you try that again!” one of the possessed boys sneered. He was a soft, chubby looking kid with long brown bangs. He was clearly hopped up on the sense of confidence and power that being possessed could supply.
 

“Hey, I’m just trying to keep people from getting trampled,” Daniel replied, posture relaxed. “No harm done.” Bree could see at once that Daniel’s attempt at de-escalating the confrontation was working. Three of the boys had relaxed and had turned their attention elsewhere.
 
A short, wiry Hispanic kid, one of the possessed, wasn’t buying into it. His eyes narrowed, and he took a step towards Daniel, one hand raised to gesture some kind of offensive spell.