Demonsense (Demonsense series Book 1) (24 page)

She reflected as she sat at a red light that she could probably use a massage herself. She knew she was carrying tension in her shoulders. She was feeling the weight of responsibility for Daniel, for the work they were doing, and by extension, for the problem of increased possessions. She wondered if it was a cop out, doing this experiment of talking to demons rather than getting back out there and doing exorcisms. It had been hard tonight, seeing a demon again, and lord knew she dreaded triggering more nightmares, but she had to admit it had been fascinating as well. When she’d been ready to try to banish the demon with an exorcism spell, it had proven to her that she could still want to do battle with a demon in the right circumstances. She hadn’t known that for sure after that exorcism on Jeremy went south.

When she arrived at her office, it was verging on eleven, so even office mates with Saturday hours would be gone. She parked in the little parking lot to the side of the building, fished out the office front door key from her key ring, and opened the door. As she reached for the light, she felt a ripple in her Demonsense. She registered a dark shape moving toward her, and gave an involuntary scream as hands grabbed her arms. Whoever it was, they were possessed; she could feel it like razor blades against her spine. She instinctively kicked and twisted away, felt one of her kicks connect, and heard a grunt of pain. The grip of one of the hands on her loosened, and she pulled away hard, getting one of her arms free. She swung wildly, and connected with the side of her assailant’s head.
 

Before she could do more, another set of hands grabbed her other arm from behind. She struggled, kicked and swore, but couldn’t break free. Then both of her arms were immobilized with a bruising grip. The light snapped on, and she recognized the men holding her as those who had come after them at Daniel’s, including the possessed one. She should have been able to sense the demon before she opened the door, she thought a little hysterically. It must have some of that new ability to hide.
 

Then another person moved into her field of view, a tall, strikingly beautiful woman. She had long hair that fell in loose, blue-black curls like waves under starlight and wore a long navy coat, stilleto heels, and matching navy leather gloves that she was pulling off one finger at a time. She looked familiar, but Bree couldn't place her.

 
“Well now, that’s more like it,” the woman said with a smile. “There’s no need to struggle, we just have a few questions for you about your boyfriend Daniel Thorvaldson.”

Justice felt the presence of the demon inside him quicken with excitement at the woman’s fear as she struggled against being held, and felt its disappointment as she went still when Franchesca turned the light on. He was becoming familiar with the signs that the demon’s hunger was building. It enjoyed most kinds of visual and emotional stimulation, but what it really craved were the more intense emotions of terror, rage and hatred. It was hoping for some violence here. He tensed in heightened anticipation of the pleasure he would feel if he were allowed to hurt the woman.
 

“You can start with telling me where Daniel is,” Franchesca said to the woman, who they’d finally found out was named Bree Jenkins. They had traced her to her office with a simple internet look up of her cell phone number and her first name. It had taken longer to catch the woman alone at her office. He’d thought it ridiculous that Franchesca had made them wait as long as she had tonight, but it looked like she’d been right to do so.
 

Franchesca put her gloves in her pocket and paced closer when the woman said nothing. Franchesca’s hand shot out and hit Bree, hard and open handed, across the face. Her head snapped toward Justice, where he stood to one side of her holding her arm, and briefly, he looked her in the eyes. He saw surprise and fear follow one another quickly across her features, then she jerked away from him, though not hard enough to break his grip. He felt a tremor of excitement move up his back and down his arms, the beginnings of demonic pleasure.
 

Still Bree said nothing, and Franchesca put her hand almost tenderly under the woman’s chin and tipped it up. She was almost a head taller than both the woman and Justice. Franchesca regarded Bree closely, her lips pursed, and Justice saw the woman’s cheek was reddening from the slap.
 

“I suppose you’re attractive in a wholesome, healthy sort of way,” Franchesca said dismissively, releasing Bree's chin. “But really, Daniel could do better. You don’t imagine he would settle for a little nobody, do you? With his family connections and his abilities?”

Justice felt the demon stir at the anger it was sensing beneath Franchesca’s cool tone. He wanted to move closer to it, as one wants to move closer to a fire after being out in cold rain all day.
 

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Bree replied, voice high and tense with fear. With the increased awareness of emotion granted by the demon, Justice could tell she was angry as well as afraid.

Franchesca reached out and grabbed Bree's chin again, much more forcefully this time, and turned it roughly first to face Scanlon, then to regard Justice.
 

“Perhaps you recognize these two men? They saw you and Daniel coming out of his house together. And they both report that Daniel moved to protect you. So it's ridiculous to pretend that you don’t know who I’m talking about.”

“Oh, I know who you’re talking about, I just don’t know
what
you’re talking about,” Bree replied. “I’m not his girlfriend, and I have no idea where he is if he’s not at home. I just did a job for him.”

“What kind of a job?” Franchesca asked. Justice saw her eyes narrow as she read their captive.

“A taint clearing,” Bree replied, words coming quickly. “The attack, why it happened, all that, Daniel didn’t tell me much, and I didn’t want to know. The last thing I wanted was to get mixed up in something like that.”

“Oh, but you are mixed up in it,” Franchesca purred, and slapped the woman again. “And if you want to stop being mixed up in it, you’ll give me this little piece of information.”
 

“I don’t have it,” Bree responded.

“And you’re lying,” Franchesca replied, turning away.

Justice felt Bree stir under his hands, tensing herself for some kind of action, and he jerked her, hard. “Don’t even think of trying to cast,” he growled.
 

“I don’t think she
can
cast,” Scanlon said scornfully from her other side. “All she had the other day was one little defensive spell. If it wasn’t for that amulet, I could easily have taken you then.”

“That little defensive spell worked on
you
,” Bree shot back at Scanlon, who just smiled and squeezed harder on her arm. The demon flared up again at Bree's involuntary wince.
 

“Ah yes, the amulet,” Franchesca mused, turning back to face them, holding her purse now in one hand. “Aren’t you wondering why it’s not working? You see, I could tell from my associate’s description of the battle that you must have had one of Daniel’s protection amulets on you. So I made a casting on your doorway here to neutralize its effects. If you happen to know the other Caster intimately, as I do Daniel, it's possible to unravel their spells.” She reached into her purse and extracted a neat little hand gun, handling it casually as she set her purse back down on one of the magazine topped tables in the office waiting room. She dug back into the purse with one hand and withdrew a silencer, which she attached to the gun.
 

“Now,” Franchesca said, moving in again and putting the gun gently against Bree's temple, “I think we should just make this simple and quick so nobody gets permanently hurt. Just tell me where to find Daniel. That’s all you have to do to live. If you truly have no relationship with him, surely that would be easy to do.”

Bree went completely still, and when she made no reply, Justice figured there must be some kind of relationship or she would just answer the question. He glanced at Franchesca, and saw her cheeks coloring with anger. The demon inside him surged up in a rush, making his entire body heat and start sweating. His consciousness receded, moving back inside his skull like a man falling backwards off a cliff. He heard his own voice say, “Shoot her, Master. Shoot her and let me eat.”

Franchesca withdrew the gun from Bree's head, and looked thoughtfully at Justice. “Tirakku,” she murmured. “You have been so good. You deserve a little treat.” She turned to Bree again, grabbed her chin again with one hand, fingers digging in at the hinges of the woman’s jaw. Bree strained against his and Scanlon’s hold, but was unable to do much more than scuffle her feet on the floor. Her mouth involuntarily began to open, and Franchesca shoved the gun into it. Bree's eyes widened, and she gagged.

Justice, from his place far away, registered the demon was building toward a killing frenzy. There was something about the near presence of a Demon Master that made it responsive to the Master’s feelings and wishes. The Master wanted to kill the bitch, and the demon sensed this and wholeheartedly agreed. After a long stretch of moments, Franchesca took the gun out of the woman’s mouth without firing. “One last chance, Miss Jenkins,” she said.

“What are you going to do to him?” Bree blurted out. “I don’t want to give up some guy to be killed.”

“We’re not going to kill him, we just want to talk to him. He has some information I need. I can’t promise we won’t rough him up a little in the process, but it works against our interests to kill him. And you might as well stop pretending he is just ‘some guy.’ I'm a high power Reader, and even if I weren’t, your feelings for Daniel aren't that hard to read. Your pupils dilate every time I say his name.”

Bree was silent again, clearly trying to think up some response. Franchesca hit her again, this time with the gun. Bree cried out, and began to bleed where the skin on her cheek had broken at the blow.
 

At the sight of blood, Justice felt the demon expand to the last, outermost layer of his skin, trembling on the verge of leaving his body. Franchesca shot a look his way and said angrily, “Tirakku, enough. Now is not the time. Give Justice control again. I can’t have you running mad about the place. You will get fed soon enough.”

The demon whirled about in frustrated fury, and Justice staggered briefly under the internal pressure, then with a snap like a rubber band, felt his consciousness flung back to the front of his head, and the demon’s recede. Bree pitched against his grip when he briefly lost his balance, but he was able to restrain her again quite easily.

Franchesca pressed the gun against Bree's cheek where the flesh was torn, and Bree gasped in pain. “Where is he?” Franchesca asked, pushing in with the gun. Bree's eyes went wide, but she shook her head. Franchesca regarded her carefully, then gave a high, humorless little laugh. “Oh, so it’s love, is it?” she said, her voice breaking a little on the word ‘love’. “And you didn’t know it until just now, did you?”
 

Justice’s thoughts and impressions jangled together, then focused into demon-enhanced clarity. Franchesca loved Thorvaldson. That’s why she wanted him. Or at least a big part of why she wanted him, not just that thing she’d told Carson about the hiding spell. He wondered if Bree was a Reader, and could pick that up, but it looked like she was too freaked out to focus. It didn’t take much pain to mess with most powered’s magic.
 

Bree made no answer, and Franchesca pulled the gun away. “I see you’re not going to tell me, because you don’t really believe I’m going to kill you,” she said finally. “Fortunately, we have another way to resolve this.” She turned and set her gun down on the nearest chair, then moved toward Bree and began unzipping the woman’s coat. Then she unbuttoned the sweater Bree had on beneath it. Bree tried again to struggle, but to no avail. The protection amulet was revealed lying slightly askew against the skin of her chest, just below the hollow of her throat. Franchesca picked it up, looked at it closely, then turned it over and looked on the other side. She smiled. “Yes, I do know this one. Although I would rather seek him out on my terms, we can always call him here.” She made a little gesture over the amulet, then said, “All we have to do is touch one of your fingers to the back of this amulet, and he will likely be able to find you. Or at least come close enough that we can find him.”

“Ma’am, I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” Scanlon broke in. “That guy took out four of us, and we had the drop on him.”

“I’m perfectly capable of taking care of Daniel Thorvaldson,” Franchesca replied coldly. “I know how his mind works, and that's worth more than any power you care to name. Tie her up,” she concluded, nodding at Bree.
 

Justice and Scanlon hustled Bree over to one of the chairs, and Scanlon reached into his jacket pocket and brought out a roll of duct tape. Justice held Bree against the chair while Scanlon wrapped the tape around her ankles against the legs of the chair, then her wrists against the arms.
 

“I won’t say the spell,” Bree said stubbornly as Scanlon finished the tape job and Justice released the woman.

“You won’t have to,” Franchesca replied as she pulled the amulet roughly off over Bree’s head, then shoved the back of the amulet against the woman’s fingers.

Kevin was in the middle of an anecdote about Hunter when Daniel drew in a sudden, hard breath on the car seat beside him. They were sitting parked in front of Bree’s house, finishing their conversation, which Kevin had carefully constructed to be distracting and cheerful. Daniel was lit from behind by a street light, and Kevin couldn’t clearly see his face. “What?” he asked.

“It’s Bree. She touched her amulet.”

“The protection amulet you gave her? Couldn’t it be an accident? I mean, would you feel it if she just touched it taking it off or something?”

“No, she’s in trouble,” Daniel replied shortly. “She didn’t say the spell, but I can feel she’s in trouble. She touched it in fear of something. That’s one of the ways it activates.”