Demon Master (Demonsense series Book 2) (41 page)

“And neither of you could have told me that?” Bree asked hotly. She’d swung from guilty anxiety straight into anger. When she thought of how much she’d gnawed at this very question, feeling irresponsible for not seeing that Daniel was monitored, feeling equally faithless if she told anyone else of his struggle without really knowing how things were going. He’d seemed well enough, comparatively speaking, when they parted, yet she’d been suffering an agony of suppressed worry.

Kevin sighed and gave her a weary look. “I wanted to say something, Bree. I thought it was the best course. But Daniel seems to think he can protect you best by keeping you completely out of it.”

Bruce pounded his closed fist on the table, not very loudly, but hard enough to startle them all. “Exactly. That is exactly it. Bree is the one person who has the best chance at helping him, and he’s keeping her out of it. Does this sound like a man who’s thinking clearly to you? I’m not buying it.”
 

“Yeah, well, good luck getting him to do something else,” Kevin said tiredly. There was something of his long history as Daniel’s friend in his weary tone. Given Kevin’s mother hen nature and Daniel’s high risk lifestyle, it had probably often been a difficult ride for Kevin.
 

“Well I, for one, mean to try,” Bruce rumbled, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms, beard sticking out at an assertive angle.

“He did seem strangely normal when I saw him last,” Bree put in tentatively. “It was actually kind of weird. It made me wonder if I’d somehow imagined the whole break at all.”

“I don’t think you imagined it, not based on what Daniel told me,” Kevin replied. “But on the other hand, when I’ve spoken with him on the phone, he’s seemed perfectly coherent, at least so far.”

“I can see this puts our demon research project on hold,” Sophie commented. “I kind of have mixed feelings about that.”
 

“Well I’ll admit I’m relieved,” Steve said. “I get why you’re all doing it, but it's scary as hell. Except for this thing you’ve got going on with your demon, Bree. That’s really very interesting, isn’t it? You say you’re not having any negative effects at all?”
 

She shifted uncomfortably in her chair. “Not as far as I can tell. It has to mean something, that it’s working out that way. It has to mean something about what the demons are all about. Why is possession working so well with me and so poorly with Daniel? If we could find out the answers to that, we’d know so much.”

“I’ve been wondering if it has something to do with being such a good Reader,” Sophie speculated, light brown eyes snapping with interest in her round face. “Think about it for a minute. What do you do on a deep Read? You attune your energy to the other person. You have to have that kind of internal flexibility.”

“Bree, flexible?” Kevin snorted out a laugh.

“I mean on an energetic level,” Sophie returned with a little smile. It was a long standing joke among the group that Bree could be opinionated. “And come to think of it, that’s what you do during a taint clearing or an exorcism, isn’t it? Don’t you have to attune to the demon’s energy to some degree? Isn’t that the particular skill of an Exorcist, beyond the rudimentary Casting ability you need?”

Bree frowned in concentration as she considered Sophie’s theory. “Wouldn’t that mean that most Reader/Exorcists would be able to handle possessions? Or that the demons possessing them wouldn’t feel any hunger? Wouldn’t someone have noticed that by now if it were true?”

Bruce shrugged. “I don’t think most powered ever think about demons with any true curiosity or spirit of inquiry. We’re indoctrinated to believe they’re evil and it’s our God appointed duty to fight them in whatever way we can. And besides, there’s always that first time someone puts the pieces together and makes a new discovery.”

Steve nervously jiggled his fork between thumb and forefinger. “Why wouldn’t Bree’s ability to merge so well with a demon be like every other trait humans have, on a continuum? Maybe Sophie is right and powered who can attune energy are more likely to be good at it, but even of those there are individuals who are extremely skilled at it. Not to mention the fact that demons are supposedly of different types. Maybe it’s a combination thing. The right demon with the right person.”

“What I don’t get is why Daniel would be so negatively affected if this theory is true,” Kevin said with mouth still partly full of a bite of pita bread. Everyone gave him a moment to finish chewing so he could go on. “He’s a high power Reader, of energy at least, and a high power Exorcist. He has incredible flexibility in his powers.”

“That’s a damned good point,” Bruce said slowly. There was a little silence as they all considered what had been theorized so far. It was Bree who broke the silence. “You know, Daniel’s isn’t really like most Exorcists. When I worked with him on that teenager Father Steuban brought to us, he wasn’t attuning much at all. He just sort smothered the demonic energy with ritual energy and then wrestled it out of the kid. Definitely more brawn than finesse on that one.”

“Then maybe my theory is still valid. Maybe he’s not as skilled at attuning and that explains his trouble with demons.”
 

Steve backed Sophie up. “It sounds like your theory does hang together if you think of it that way.”

“But I’m not sure that explains Daniel’s particular vulnerability,” Bree said worriedly. “Lots of powered aren’t great at attuning, and they don’t all respond so badly to demon contact.”

“Yeah, but how many Demon Masters do any of us know?” Bruce countered. “It’s awfully hard to come up with any meaningful theories when we truly know so little about that particular talent, and how getting demon burned really comes about. What we really need on our team is some high power ex-Keltoi that has gotten out and is on our side. There’s a whole raft of lore that’s forbidden to us nice, law abiding powered.”

“Finding someone like that, especially in time to help Daniel now, seems awfully unlikely,” Kevin said doubtfully. “Like I said before, Bruce, feel free to see if you can get Daniel to consider other options, but I’m betting he can get this divided thing figured out.
 
Consider that as far as we know, no one else has ever come up with a workable hiding spell for power signatures. He’s very innovative, very knowledgeable, and he’s very strong, and I don’t just mean in powered terms. If he puts his mind to this, I think he can come up with a fix.”

“Well I hope you’re right,” Sophie said. She began putting silverware on empty plates.

“Amen,” Bree said softly as she reached to help Sophie start clearing the table. The conversation broke up as they all took on clean up tasks, with Bruce and Steve going out to be with the boys. Bree reflected that they were all feeling frustrated and helpless, not just about Daniel, but about the wider situation with the increased possessions and civil unrest. She talked with Sophie and Kevin about it as they did dishes, the kitchen smelling of the citrus dish soap Sophie used.
 

Kevin surprised her by insisting that it was still worth trying to be of some help in the riots that had been breaking out. “Given your description of what happened last night, maybe we need to be more careful about just plowing into these situations. But on the other hand, it’s like I was saying the other night. If we help even one person, it’s worth it.”

“Yeah, it’s worth if you don’t get killed,” Sophie said with some disapproval as she scrubbed out her frying pan with more than necessary force.

“We’ll be more careful,” Kevin insisted.

“Careful how?” Sophie challenged.
 

“I think we have to do better at just picking a single task and focusing on that. A sort of quick in and out strike. Keep in mind that I can keep up a physical ward for short periods of time if I have to. Even if there's gunfire again, we should be safe if we stay alert and on the edges of things. I think we should do what we did before, which is to go in pairs.”

Bree was somewhat convinced by Kevin’s argument, and she liked the idea of working with Kevin again. Leander had definitely been helpful, and he had the added plus of being a Caster, but the situation with him was now so confused and delicate that she didn’t relish getting into another high stress situation with him. “You know, I think you have the right attitude, Kevin.” She was familiar enough with the kitchen that she was able to put things away as she dried. “I get all stressed out when I think we have to somehow stop all this. But that’s an impossible goal. We’re not Keepers, even if we’re taking on some part of a Keeper’s work. If we just focus on what we can do, maybe we’ll feel better about it.”

“I know I feel better being able to do something, no matter how small,” Kevin replied stoutly as he rubbed a sleeve across his sweating brow. It was warm in the kitchen, and he tended to run hot anyway.
 

“You two make me feel like I should be doing more.” Sophie pulled out the plug on the sink and squeezed out her dish sponge and put it in its brown ceramic holder, a gift from one of her patients who was a potter. “Maybe, if you guys told me where to go, and I happened to be not at work or on call, I could come and do a little first aid and healing work.”

“I imagine that could be helpful in the aftermath of one of these situations. I think once there’s enough police presence and the whole thing is dispersing, it should be safe, although I’d still feel better if you were there with a Warder.”
 

“I don’t think I know any other Warders besides Kevin,” Sophie said uncertainly.

“Well, even if you had Bruce with you for some kind of physical protection, that would be better.”

“Good point,” Sophie conceded. They finished up in the kitchen and joined the others in the living room, keeping the conversation light around the two boys, who were soon showing the hyperactivity of tiring children. The evening ended relatively early as a result.
 

Bree ended up feeling very glad she’d come. She felt much less alone with her varying dilemmas, more clear on her stance with regards to how best to intervene in the terrible things that were happening around her. She said her goodbyes to everyone, then made the short drive home. As she got out of her car and walked to her front door, she felt a few sharp gusts of wind. She looked up into the night sky and saw that clouds were moving in, scudding across the half full moon. Probably tomorrow would bring back the relentless spring rains.
 

She undid the ward she’d set on the door, and went into her house. Hanroi came trotting up and butted his still lightweight, kittenish frame against her ankles, trilling in welcome. She picked him up and scratched under his chin, then put him down and went to turn on lights in the living room and bumped up the thermostat to get the heater going.
 

She went into the kitchen, thinking about having some tea, but once she looked into her cupboard at her choices, nothing really sounded good. She prowled around restlessly for a while, did the few dishes she’d left sitting in her sink, then straightened up in the living room.
 

She finally settled on her couch and sat still long enough to realize she was restless because she was avoiding calling Gelsenim. She’d promised she’d do that, and it was weighing on her that he was likely waiting on her call, suffering from his hunger and probably regressing to his former state the longer he was away from her. She turned and arranged herself sideways on the couch, knees pulled up, and moved the white alpaca throw that was draped over the back of the couch over her. As she cuddled up, Hanroi jumped up onto the small space between her knees and her chest and began kneading the blanket. He was, fortunately, in the mood to be petted rather than in the mood to run mad about the house. She stroked him absentmindedly as she considered whether she had a responsibility to take care of Gelsenim. It would be a very heavy responsibility if that were so. But she had to admit to herself that as long as Gelsenim was with her, he wasn’t off doing the usual terrible things that demons did if they managed to break through to human space and possess someone. The mechanism by which that happened was still entirely unclear to Bree. Obviously, demons could be called by Demon Masters but how, really, did they manage to get through sometimes on their own? And why didn’t it happen more often? With those thoughts, Bree’s resolve hardened. She would call Gelsenim, even though it still freaked her out to do it on her own, without Daniel present.
 

She drew her will energy together, focused on her desire for his presence, and said aloud, “Gelsenim, I call you!”

There was the betraying rush of heat, the shimmer of air, then, faster than usual, Gelsenim took human form, coming into being standing nearby and smiling down at her.
 
Bree noted that he’d made an effort to appear a little older. The beginnings of lines beside his eyes were evident. He looked more like someone in his mid-thirties than the younger form he’d taken before. And, interestingly, his nail polish, always a constant before in any form he took, was gone. He sported a light colored fedora with a brown band, perched jauntily on the back of his head, and a lock of his blond hair fell fetchingly over his brow. “Good of you to call, my host,” he said cheerfully. He was clearly pulling out all the stops to make himself appealing. While her Demonsense registered his presence, it was the mildest possible background buzz.
 

Bree’s paranoia meter jumped up a few notches. She had to guard against being taken in. She tried to bring to mind his demonic form to bolster her caution. “Okay,” she said, “you can go ahead and possess me, but I want your word first that you’ll leave when I ask.”

“You would take my word?” Gelsenim asked, with what sounded like real curiosity.

“Let’s just say I’m starting to feel like maybe I can take your word,” Bree replied carefully.

“Then, my host, you have it,” the demon replied. His form wavered, then dissipated into a mist that quickly entered Bree’s body with a rush of warmth. Gelsenim’s previous form reappeared in front of her, although she could very clearly feel his presence inside her. “May I sit?” he asked, gesturing to the other end of the couch.