Demon Master.
by Sara DeHaven.
CHAPTER ONE.
Time to call a demon. Bree Jenkins took in a deep breath and let it out slowly, willing the tension in her body to drift out on the exhale, hazel eyes half hooded. There was, sadly, no drifting. There was crawling, though. A sensation of big hairy spiders crawling up her spine.
"Aw, s.h.i.t!" She opened her eyes and shook out her arms and legs in an attempt to dissipate the unpleasant, nervy sensation.
Daniel Thorvaldson, who was standing across from her, raised his eyebrows.
"Don"t say it," Bree commanded.
"Don"t say what?" Daniel replied mildly.
"Don"t say, "It"ll be fine, Bree. You"re getting the hang of it, Bree." I won"t let it kill you, Bree.""
"Now why would I want to rea.s.sure you in any way? I"m sure this will go much better if you"re a nervous wreck."
"Oh, bite me!" Bree bent over in a stretch. It failed to ease the tightness in her back, and managed to make a mess of her hair. She stood up and combed out the thick, brown length of it with irritated fingers. Great, now she was getting prissy and self-conscious about her hair when she was supposed to be all calm and centered Warrior Woman. She sternly reminded herself that if she was going to try an exorcism again, it was time for her to do this with the training wheels off. Just her and Daniel, no other back up. Enough with the delaying.
She carefully took another breath and watched as Daniel did the same across from her. He looked far more relaxed than she felt, standing with arms loose at his sides, breath moving evenly through his slender, long boned frame, his normally intense dark gaze softened and directed somewhere toward the floor of his work room.
She seized the moment to study his face when he wouldn"t catch her looking, a pleasure mixed with guilt. Her eyes roved over the strongly defined cheekbones, the winged brows, and the slightly full, bitable lips. In the two and a half months since she"d let him back into her life, they"d managed to avoid throwing themselves on each other in the mad, impulsive make out sessions that had erupted so forcefully during their adventures together at the end of last year. Unfortunately, that didn"t mean Bree wasn"t attracted to him any more.
On the contrary, that had just gotten worse and worse. The more self-control he showed in not making a play for her, the more she started to trust that he wasn"t an unstable, demon burned Demon Master after all. She was starting to think the unending s.e.xual tension between them was even worse than the terror of courting demons.
There was a typically overcast Seattle morning visible out the window at Daniel"s back. The room was rather dark because of the dense cloud cover, the only additional illumination provided by several candles on the battered wooden table along one side of the room. The darkness of the room matched her rapidly darkening mood. Bree took another breath and firmly focused her mind back on the task at hand: spending a hard earned Sat.u.r.day morning trying to see if she could control a seriously nasty demon without becoming possessed herself.
A few more breaths and a greater attempt at concentration finally got her into the state of calm readiness she was seeking. Daniel seemed to sense it, and glanced up at her. She nodded, and he raised his arms slowly to his sides. A ward rose in a circle behind them, a worst case scenario back up to prevent the demon escaping out into the world where it could possess someone.
Bree set her stance firmly, a form of bracing herself for what was to come. She focused her intention to call a demon, one she had called before, and intoned loudly and firmly, "Holtis I call you! Holtis, I command you!"
The air went unnaturally still, then a rush of hot, wet air blew into the room from an invisible source to her left and coalesced into a burnt orange cloud between her and Daniel. Daniel swiftly raised another ward between them and the manifesting demon.
A form about waist high took shape in the cloud. It settled slowly into an evil-visaged wood gnome, a gnarled red-brown being with slender, stick-like fingers and toes, a long curved nose with bright red nostrils, and burning orange eyes. Bree could feel her connection to the rotten smelling little thing through her will energy, a slender rope of power that emanated from her hands and wrapped itself around the demon"s core. The sensation made her nauseous, but that was a good sign. So far, she was in control.
"Why do you call, Master?" the demon said in a high, childish voice that went ill with its appearance. Bree shot a look at Daniel, and he gave a small nod in acknowledgement. This was the first time the demon had named her "Master." That had to be significant.
"I call you as an experiment, a test, just as I have before," Bree answered cautiously.
"I don"t like your tests," the demon complained. "They never involve any food for me. I have not been able to come through in any other way in months, and I"m starving!" He made a run at the ward, then bounced off onto his back.
"I know you need to consume negative emotional energy to survive, but I"ve been wondering, is there sustenance for you in any other kind of energy?" She was totally focused on the demon now, and Daniel was letting her lead the questioning. This particular demon was a little smarter and more coherent than most, so they"d decided it was worth trying to get some answers.
"If I were allowed to possess you, I could feed even if you slept, but it would not be enough," Holtis answered as he climbed back to his feet.
"And yet it doesn"t seem to kill any of you to go without possession."
"And yet still we suffer," he answered bitterly.
"I know that you suffer, Holtis, and believe it or not, I"m asking these questions partly as a way to find some peace between us. If we could discover some other means besides possessing humans for you to feed, that would help."
The demon"s eyes flared brighter and focused more closely on Bree. "And what makes you think we want peace with you?" At the same time, Bree felt an energy surge in her connection to the demon, a much stronger one than she"d thought it capable of. She literally rocked on her feet trying to absorb and contain it. Daniel took a reflexive step closer to her, but he didn"t interfere.
"But what if peace meant you would not hunger?" Bree asked reasonably in spite of the rising, gibbering fear that the demon might get free of her control.
"There is always the hunger," the demon piped.
"Not always," Daniel put in. He managed to sound conversational in spite of the effort he was likely putting in to keep the s.p.a.ce warded and read the demon on an energetic level. "We"ve been told about the Seldenai, how you used to live within them and weren"t hungry."
"Bah! Tales of the old ones! I have not seen it, and I don"t believe it. If you are not going to feed me, release me!"
Bree felt another surge, a larger one. She gave an involuntary gasp at the size of it, but bore down with her will, calling on the well of her base energy to support it. Her hands rose before her in fists, where she concentrated the energy of control. She was able to hold it, but just. This was much worse than the other two times she"d tried with this demon. She had better try banishing it while she still had some control. "I will have more questions for you later. But for now, I release you. Be gone, Holtis!" She put as much command and will into her voice as she could.
The demon"s form shuddered, but it did not disperse. He began to cackle with laughter. "Still not Master enough, are you?" Bree glanced at Daniel for help, but he instructed, "Try again."
It was moments like this that Bree felt ridiculously out of her depth. Daniel was able to banish any demon, and she couldn"t even get this relatively small one to shift. Trouble was, she knew good and well that if she succeeded, it was final proof she was a Demon Master too. Maybe that hanging over her head was s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g her up, keeping her from making it work. She focused and gathered her will yet again, and said, "Holtis, I command you! Be gone!"
The demon misted out around the edges, and the doorway between her world and whatever place the demons lived started to open.
The little being solidified and darted to the edge the doorway, thrust its long woody hands into it and shrieked, "I have it! Come through!"
Too late, Daniel raised his fists to command Holtis. Another demon shot through, a much larger one, solidifying far faster than the first one had. It was in a form all too familiar to Bree, an archetypal devil, huge, scaled and ruddy, with a horned head, a huge erection and whirling, fiery eyes. There was a nightmare quality to the energy it brought into the room, the sense of terrifying, inescapable evil that people imagined when they thought the word "demon." Demons took forms culled from humanity"s visions of what was most frightening, and with her Catholic upbringing, a devil form really got to her. Worse by far was the fact that this was the demon she had specifically been avoiding for months, the demon Daniel had been risking his own sanity to keep away from her. "Gelsenim," she breathed.
Daniel shifted, both fisted hands together in front of him now, preparing to banish the demon. Before she could stop to think it through, Bree flung up an arm and said, "Wait! Let him talk."
Daniel sent her a concerned look, but he stepped back and did what she asked.
Gelsenim loomed over Bree, and she looked up at him warily. Her heart was pounding, but she was glad she"d done it, glad some part of her was ready to face him. Unfortunately, the part of her that was not sent panic signals up and down her nervous system, making her feel like she was inhabited by a crowd of miniature people, all screaming and running in different directions.
"At last, we meet again, my host," the demon rumbled. "I have missed you so." The demon"s p.e.n.i.s jerked toward her face as he spoke.
The ward between them was still strong, but she couldn"t help but flinch away. That annoyed her enough that the panic lessened somewhat. "Wish I could say the same."
"I don"t believe that," Gelsenim scoffed. "You felt what I felt when I possessed you. You felt the merging of our energies. When have you ever felt such power, or had such command of your magic?"
All true, of course. She had allowed Gelsenim to possess her in a last ditch attempt to save Daniel"s life last autumn, and the experience had been seductive.
"Okay, so it felt good," she admitted, meeting the demon"s eyes, though it took craning her head back quite a ways to do it. "And yes, we were effective together. But I know that"s how it works, how you get Demon Masters to allow possession even when they know it will eventually kill them or drive them crazy."
"And yet I sensed no ill effect when I was within you, or after," the demon argued.
"Oh for heaven"s sake, change form, will you Gelsenim? You"re not exactly rea.s.suring in that guise," Bree said.
The demon laughed unpleasantly, but did as she asked, melting and reforming into the shape of an exceptionally beautiful man with blond hair that waved back from his high forehead, his thin, mobile lips bending into a c.o.c.ky grin. "Is this better, my sweet?" He wore a dapper white suit, circa 1920. As usual, his nails were painted red. The orange eyes ruined the very human appearing illusion, along with the lingering sulfuric miasma left on the air.
"Better," Bree conceded. She glanced over at Daniel to check on him. Almost more than her fear of the ward failing was the concern that extended contact with the demons would destabilize Daniel. She used her Reader sense for a quick and dirty scan of his energy. It wasn"t critically down, but that dark layer to his energy had definitely grown a little. She had to keep this brief. "How unusual is that, that I didn"t get sick or pa.s.s out when you left?"
The demon shrugged. "There is a great range. Daniel, for example, does fairly well after a possession. Some die. To do as well as you did, though, is unprecedented."
Not at all what Bree wanted to hear. She crossed her arms in front of her. "I guess you did tell me that we were uniquely compatible."
Gelsenim took a step closer to her, and Daniel did the same, a beat behind. Gelsenim"s civil faade cracked as he looked over at Daniel. His face went cold as he said, "I am not happy with you, Daniel, not happy at all. You have kept her from me."
"At her request," Daniel answered evenly.
"It"s true," she put in, drawing the demon"s attention back to her. "I did ask him to prevent you contacting me. I did take damage that day, though not from you, and it took me some time to heal. I wasn"t ready to take this on."
"And you are ready now?" Gelsenim took another step toward her, face lighting up in pleasure.
Such swift changes of mood were part of what made him unnerving to her. "I"m ready to talk, and that"s it."
"But you could have so much more," the demon whispered. He raised a hand toward her and she felt an intensely sensuous shiver move through her at the energetic contact. Apparently that could get through the ward, just like smells and some measure of heat and repulsive energy could.
There was a mixture of hope and intensity on Gelsenim"s face, an expression strangely like that she often saw on Daniel"s, and she got a flash of insight that Gelsenim was copying Daniel. He"d had an interesting relationship with Daniel for some years before Bree came on the scene, and had apparently molded himself after Daniel. Well, that expression was certainly custom made to reach her, but she wasn"t going to get sucked in by it, or by the erotic nervous system goodies the demon was clearly offering. "Yes, but at what cost?" she asked tersely. "I might feel better than most people do after a possession, but that"s no guarantee I"m not getting hurt by it."
"Why would I wish to hurt you? You are my ideal host. I would naturally want the a.s.sociation to last as long as possible," the demon answered, dropping his hand.
Bree exhaled in relief at the cessation of intimate energetic contact. "I"m not exactly ready to sign on for some kind of permanent possession. You were a great help in a crisis, and I admit that I could easily be tempted to call on you again in like circ.u.mstances. And I"m sure I could learn something of your kind if I allowed you more possession time. The trouble is, I can"t trust you not to take over once you"re inside me, and I certainly can"t trust you to leave when I ask. I hate to think what you would make me do if you ever got the upper hand. Surely you realize that what you do to appease your hunger makes normal humans sick."
"What you don"t know, my host, is that I did not feel hunger when we were joined," Gelsenim said simply.
That knocked Bree back on her heels. All demons ever seemed to think of was their unending hunger. It was an aspect of demon kind no one had ever been able to fully explain. "I"ve got to say, the idea that I"m some sort of perfect demon food is pretty d.a.m.ned freaky."
Gelsenim smiled, and it was not a nice smile. Strangely, it only served to remind Bree how docile the demon had seemed most of the time he had possessed her, up until the point she had asked him to leave. She"d seen him possess Daniel before, and he"d been far different, seemingly ready to commit murder and rape and to enjoy the prospect. In other words, typical demon kind. "Why were you so cooperative with me when you possessed me? You didn"t seem like, well, like yourself. Like a demon."
Gelsenim"s head c.o.c.ked to one side. Holtis, who had waited quietly all this while, shuffled his feet and squeaked, "Lord, I am hungry! Can we not possess these?" Gelsenim glanced at the lesser demon, then at Daniel. His handsome face darkened with anger as his gaze locked with Daniel"s. "I would let you have that one gladly, but he will not allow it."
She checked on Daniel as well, reading for his energy level, and it was dropping, more quickly than when she had last looked. He was a strong Warder, but Gelsenim was one h.e.l.l of a strong demon, the strongest Bree had ever met. She had to end this fast, but she wanted an answer to her question. "Gelsenim, why? Why were you so different with me?"
The demon"s attention returned to her, and his expression morphed from hostile straight into confused. "I... I am not certain," he finally admitted. "Perhaps if you were to allow me in again, we could discover the answer."
A part of her wanted to try it, to end the suspense, just get it over with, but after a moment"s thought, she rejected the idea. She was concerned about Daniel"s energy level, and she needed to be better prepared, more clear on what kind of experiments she wanted to try. And it would be wise to have another powered person besides Daniel as back up, maybe Kevin to provide some heavy duty warding, given how strong Gelsenim was. "Perhaps another time. Let me think about it."
Gelsenim"s orange eyes flared brighter, and his face elongated and sharpened, features becoming more predatory. "But I am hungry now," he said, voice rising. Bree glanced nervously at Daniel. He gave a tiny nod, and drew in breath to banish both demons.
Before he could speak, Gelsenim charged the ward. A thick wall of air shoved against both Bree and Daniel, hard enough to make them stumble to keep their balance. Holtis joined in with a shriek of glee, and both demons together slammed against the ward again and again.
"Gelsenim, this is not endearing you to me at all! I command you and Holtis to leave," Bree shouted.
Gelsenim ignored her, and his form changed again, jaw stretching, muscles bulging, skin darkening towards red. Bree staggered as another wave of force slammed the ward, and with it came a wave of heat. That was bad news. The ward was weakening. She looked again at Daniel and saw with relief that he was raising his hands in fists, the gesture he used when he was bringing up his Demon Master talent.
"Gelsenim, I command you!" Daniel"s voice rang out.
"No, I will not obey!" Gelsenim screeched in response, all human tones gone from his voice. Bree felt another crash against the ward. Its outer edge slammed into her, and she fell to the ground. The windows rattled in their frames, two of Daniel"s African masks came off the wall, and she heard something made of gla.s.s in the room die a loud, inglorious death. For the first time, she began to be seriously terrified, the in fear of your life kind of afraid. She"d never seen Gelsenim successfully resist Daniel"s command, but it looked like he might manage it this time. The look of calm left Daniel"s face, replaced by anger. Both his fists clenched hard as he focused his will energy on the demon. "You must obey, I command you!"
"You cannot keep me from her, she is mine!" the demon roared back, and the inner ward blew.
Bree was sent sliding across the floor into the table, and Daniel down into a heap against the wall, where a painting fell on top of him. Gelsenim"s form morphed completely back to the demonic, less large than his first appearance, but no less frightening for that. He stepped toward Bree, and a wave of heat preceded him, heat Bree knew could turn into fire in the demon"s disembodied state. "And now, my host, it is time for us to join, as it is meant to be."
Bree held her hands, palm out, towards the demon. The wards against possession she"d drawn on her hands earlier heated up, and flared briefly with light. That quickly, Gelsenim"s energy burned through her personal wards. They were never enough to manage a demon as powerful as Gelsenim, but they should at least have slowed him down.
Holtis bolted all around the edges of the outer ward, smacking into it at intervals like a frantic housefly. He was nowhere near Gelsenim"s level in power, but there was no doubt he was helping to put strain on the outer ward. If the demons broke that, they"d be free to seek someone to possess.
Daniel sprang to his feet, face a mask of fury. "Holtis, depart! Gelsenim, depart!" he shouted, and Bree felt the air throb with magic so strong that it caused her heart to literally stop before it resumed its beat with a painful lurch. With a high cry of dismay, Holtis was sucked into the doorway between the worlds and vanished. Gelsenim threw his head back and howled, "No!" His form wavered and was drawn towards the opening as well.
The demon changed back to his human guise, though this time he was partially transparent. An electric shock ran through Bree as the demon"s eyes met hers, in a sensation part pain, part pleasure. His form began to solidify, and he stopped moving towards the exit.
"Bree, please!" the Gelsenim pleaded, voice perfectly mimicking the strangled, desperate tones of a young man begging for his life very much against his pride. His hands were outstretched towards her, and the simulation was so real, so nuanced, that she was moved in spite of her growing panic. "Daniel, wait," she found herself saying, and she avoided looking at what she was sure must be Daniel"s incredulous face. To her surprise, he listened to her. Gelsenim"s form solidified and he lost his desperate look.
Bree got her feet under her and stood up. Her knees were shaking and she had an almost irresistible impulse to sit back down in a heap. She took a deep breath and willed strength to her knees and her spine. "Gelsenim, you can"t fight us like this. I"ll never be able to trust you as long as you behave this way. If I can"t be sure you"ll leave on command, I can never let you possess me again."
"I am so hungry, my host," the demon whispered raggedly. "And you are so near. You have no idea how difficult that is."
It was a fine performance, and there was probably truth to it, but they were only moments away from Gelsenim"s clear attempt to possess her by force, so she wasn"t feeling that vulnerable to her all too easily triggered Reader empathy. "I"m sure it is difficult. Keep in mind that it"s difficult for me to tolerate your presence at all. Every instinct tells me to keep away from you, that you"re the ultimate evil. Anyone with Demonsense feels that way in your presence. If we have any hope of meeting halfway so that we can understand each other, you have to show me you can leave if I ask."
"Daniel has kept you from me for so long. How do I know you will ever call me again? How do I know this is not my last chance at our union?" the demon asked, one hand running through his shining hair as his posture slowly straightened from the half crouch it had been in when he transformed.
Bree looked over at Daniel then, feeling uncertain of the path that was opening up before her, but she didn"t want to discuss her options out loud in front of Gelsenim. The strain of holding the demon in place was evident in Daniel"s dipping will energy level. She had better come to some decision quickly. "I would like to discuss this further with Daniel, but I think I might be willing to call you in another week or so and discuss terms for a trial possession. In the meantime, I want you to stop trying to get to me by force. And I want you to prove you will leave on my request, and not because Daniel makes you."
"You ask me to go against my nature," the demon complained.
"And you ask me to go against mine," Bree retorted with heat. "Look, do we have a deal, or don"t we?"
Gelsenim regarded her solemnly for a moment, then his expression smoothed, and he gave her a courtly little bow. "As you desire, my host." Then his form swirled into a hot, damp cloud that imploded and vanished.
For a moment, Bree was frozen with surprise. She quested out with her Demonsense and confirmed Gelsenim was gone, and the doorway to the other world was closed. Daniel heaved a great sigh as he dropped the remaining ward.
Her knees finally gave out, and she folded down onto the floor hard enough to hurt her b.u.t.t. Daniel strode quickly over and crouched down in front of her, concern on his face. "Are you okay?" he asked.
A hysterical little laugh started to burble up in her throat, but she managed to confine it to a nervous smile. "Yeah, I"m okay," she responded faintly. "I guess I"m just worn out."
"I"m feeling it too," he answered ruefully as he settled down more carefully onto the floor across from her. He put his elbows on his knees and ran his hands forcefully through his dark, dense hair, making it stand up in messy clumps, then he rubbed his hands over his face briskly in what looked like an attempt at reviving himself.
"So how close was that?" Bree asked, more than a little afraid of the answer.
"Way more close than it ought to have been," Daniel replied, dropping his hands from his face. "And I"m not really sure why. As long as I"m not overly tired, I usually have no trouble banishing Gelsenim."
"I"ve seen you handle five demons at the same time before, when you were in a lot worse shape. Why do you suppose it was so hard this time? Was Holtis a higher level demon than we thought?"