Snake Eyes: A novel of the Demon Accords Read online

  Snake Eyes

  A novel of the Demon Accords

  By John Conroe

  This book is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Copyright © 2016 John Conroe

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.

  The Demon Accords:

  God Touched

  Demon Driven

  Brutal Asset

  Duel Nature

  Fallen Stars

  Executable

  Forced Ascent

  College Arcane

  God Hammer

  Rogues

  Cover art by Ryan Bibby.

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Epilogue

  Chapter 1

  Cobham

  Surrey, England

  The little girl watched me from the corner of her room. Well, to be honest, it was more like she watched me from the corner of the room where the wall met the ceiling, high above her pink, floofy, vomit-covered bed. Also, she wasn’t exactly a little girl—not at the moment.

  Her too-pale face and bruised eye sockets snarled at me in a rictus of anger, hate, and maybe a touch of fear. Like I haven’t seen that before. Hey Pumpkin, wanna get a little exorcism?

  The problem was her age. Not the age of the immortal demon that currently possessed her body, but her own frail, sickly, five years of existence.

  I’ve ripped demons out of all kinds of people, young and old, but never a tiny five-year-old girl whose lifelong illnesses had left her ready to break and snap in a stiff wind. Granted, right at the moment her body held the strength of several men, but that wasn’t anywhere near enough to slow me down, and the demon knew it.

  No, if I jumped up, stood upside down on the ceiling, grabbed her little frame in my hands, and yanked the demon from her body, I’d likely end up with a broken little kid… not the result I was here to achieve. Ooops, my bad doesn’t work with exorcism and terrified parents.

  The possession was pretty high profile. Global, in fact. The girl, Poppy Barden, had developed her unwanted boarder within days of her family moving into the old brick row house in Cobham. Seems it had a bit of reputation—the house, not Cobham. But the rent was cheap and the costs of treating Fanconi anemia for most of Poppy’s young life had left the family short on resources.

  Immediately after the move, noises and smells in Poppy’s room had started, bangs and clangs, and before Kate and Timothy Barden could seek help or even vacate, the possession was complete.

  In today’s world, society was ever-alert for signs of possession, demonic activity, or other supernatural activity. So Poppy had received a whole host of visits from high-ranking church exorcists, but all had failed, as the world watched.

  Hence my personal invitation by the British government to give it a go, as it were. It was currently near midnight, which is a bad time for an exorcism but gave us the best hope for avoiding crowds and sensationalism, at least according to the folks in charge. A quick peek out any of the windows would have put paid to that quaint thought… it looked more like the house was possessed by One Direction than a demon, at least based on the crowds that were pressing against the ring of Bobbies outside. It probably didn’t help that it was the only me inside and the rest of my highly photogenic team was outside, fully visible to the masses. I could hear news teams and autograph seekers all calling out to Tanya, Stacia, Lydia, Nika, and a few to Declan. There were even a few mentions of Awasos’s name among the reporters. Not so much Arkady, though. Something about a giant warrior vampire left people slightly reluctant to call attention to themselves.

  But having them outside couldn’t be helped. It’s how we roll when we’re treating a possession. Just me, at first, with my pregnant mate safely outside, surrounded by the rest of the team, all of them wearing amulets of my own making.

  I had mentally prepped myself for a torrent of hate-filled words about the unborn twins Tanya was carrying. But even so, Poppy’s unwanted squatter had reached new lows for foul demon-speak, and it showed no signs of stopping. It was inventive, I had to give it that, but it kept Grim straining at his cage door. I had made such progress on that psychological front, gaining more control over Grim. That lasted right up till the pregnancy, then my own inner monster took on a new, enhanced vigor of violent watchfulness. Must protect mate and unborn progeny. Grim smash. It didn’t make this situation better.

  Time for a new approach, one with its own set of risks.

  “Could someone send the Kid in please?” I said at regular, conversation-level volume. Most of my crew outside easily heard me. The demon shut up and cocked its head.

  A moment or two later, the front door opened and closed, followed by a series of steady, even steps. My eyes were on the demon-filled Poppy, but my Grim-focused senses followed Declan’s approach like an inbound 747 on London Heathrow’s radar.

  “Hey,” he said softly as he simultaneously entered the room and my peripheral vision, his own attention focused on the demon in the upper corner of the room. His heart rate was just a bit elevated, but his breathing was normal and he didn’t smell of fear… much.

  “I need your help,” I said. “How’s your TK?”

  “I’m thinking you’re wondering about control, not power?” he asked, understanding my question about telekinesis.

  “Yeah, gentle control,” I said.

  “Pretty good, but I’m not sure it’s that good,” he said, studying the demon-ridden girl. It was watching him back like a hawk watches a mouse.

  Poppy opened her mouth and hissed at him. “You should be ours. You will be ours, witchspawn,” the thing inside the little girl said. Then it spoke in another language, a guttural, harsh-sounding tongue I’d never heard before.

  Beside me, my side vision could just pick up Declan’s head tilting, maybe in surprise. Then he spoke back to it in the same language, haltingly at first, but gaining fluency as he went.

  “What the F was that?” I asked, caught off guard by that little plot twist.

  “I don’t know. Well, I do, but I didn’t,” he said, sounding shaken.

  “Ah, what?” I asked.

  “I’ve never heard that before, but I can apparently understand it and speak it. I think it’s from the book,” he said slowly, thoughtfully.

  It
took me a second but I realized he was speaking of the Book of Darkest Sorrow, the former grimoire of his evil ancestor from Germany’s Black Forest.

  “What exactly is it?”

  “I think it’s some kind of language for dark witches to speak with demons,” he said.

  “It’s not the language of Hell, though, because I understand that,” I said.

  “No,” he agreed, “it’s like some kind of bartering language.”

  “What did it say?”

  “Well, I think I just got a job offer,” he said.

  “And what did you say?” I asked, not liking this little development one bit. I took my eyes off the demon and glanced at him.

  “I wanted to know more about the medical benefits,” he said, grinning. “‘Cause that shit’s always going up, if you know what I mean.”

  I felt a frown form itself on my face. He was obviously joking, because what nineteen-year-old cares about health care insurance, but I was taking chances here by exposing him to demonkind, chances that I had been warned against by my angelic case officer.

  “I’ve got an idea,” he said. “Let me give this a shot. Trust me,” he said.

  Great. Now I could either take a world-changing roll of the dice or lose his trust.

  “They lie, right?” he asked as I thought furiously.

  “Yeaaah,” I agreed cautiously.

  “Cool. Hey Stinky,” he called out, then switched to that other language. The demon listened, head cocked in interest. Then it crept out from its corner, clinging to the ceiling like vomity Spidergirl.

  Declan kept talking, but now he moved further into the room, pulling a powder-pink chair from the vanity set by the wall. He set the chair in the middle of the open wooden plank floor, kicking various items of clothing away to clear more space. Moving back to me, he stopped speaking and waited.

  The demon crept out till it was directly over the chair. Then it began to speak back to him, its voice urging and cajoling. Abruptly, it let go of the ceiling and fell, spinning over to land in the chair with an awful sort of agility.

  Declan stepped forward, speaking again, and began to walk slowly around the demonic child. He was walking counterclockwise, widdershins, and his right hand was casually unwinding a slim strand of string from his spell bag.

  The demon smirked, not fooled by his act, but continued to sit in the chair, watching while the warlock circled it with a bit of string. This was his big play? An obvious and awkward attempt at putting the demon inside a circle? Made of string?

  He finished his circuit and then dropped the other end of the string back where he started.

  The demon finally looked at me for the first time since Declan had entered the room.

  “Maybe you deserve to keep this one,” it smirked.

  Declan dropped to one knee, connected the loose ends of string and spoke a word of Gaelic. The ends sparked and fused, the rest of the cord straightening into a perfect circle.

  “I Circle thee once,” the young witch said to the demon. Straightening back up, he pulled a cylinder of table salt from his bag and started to pour a second circle just outside the edge of the cord, moving faster than the first time.

  “Stupid witch spawn,” the demon grated, waving one hand at the floor. A blast of flame rolled off its fingers and shot straight to the cord in front of it. Nothing happened, except the wooden floor charred a bit. The cord stayed perfect.

  “It’s Kevlar, moron,” Declan said as he took the last few steps and finished his second circle of salt. “It’s fireproof. Oh, and I Circle thee twice.”

  The demon went batshit. It screeched, loud enough to make both of us cover our ears. It picked up its chair and smashed it against the invisible wall of magic that Declan had ringed it with. The chair broke into splinters, but the circle held. Ignoring the wood, it pounded on the invisible arc that held it in place, smashing back and forth across the circle too fast for a human. The circle held.

  Declan was now pulling a blue electronic cord from his spell bag. “Ethernet cable,” he said. “I was gonna throw it away, ‘cause, you know, not much use nowadays, but then I realized it’s flexible copper wire. Makes good circling material.”

  He stretched it out and laid a third circle around the salt and Kevlar.

  “I Circle thee three times, demon. Thou art bound,” he said, closing the third and final circle.

  Instantly, the demon stopped its frenzied rage. It stood, staring murderously at the young witch, but said nothing.

  “What now?” I asked.

  “Well, I made the first circle just a bit bigger than the chair, the others just outside the first. I figure you can lean over, grab her, and force it out faster than it can escape. You need to be quick because as soon as your body crosses the inner circle, it’s free. But speed isn’t really a problem for you, is it?” he asked.

  I smiled as he spoke and at his final word, I Moved.

  The Hell beastie was quick, I’ll give it that, but I was faster. My aura was already pooled and waiting in my right hand as I grabbed her left knee and then the back of her neck with my left hand. The demon arched the little girl’s back, but my aura was streaming out of my right hand and it flowed up Poppy’s body, pushing the demon ahead of it. Poppy’s nose started to bleed black, and then her ears bled ebony slime too. The black shit was demon essence and it poured out and ran around her neck straight to my left hand like iron filings to a magnet. Her mouth opened and another stream of demon crud gushed out, seemingly endless. But it wasn’t. As quickly as it had started, it finished. Poppy’s nose, ears, and mouth all cleared of demon snot and the little girl drew in a sudden breath when I pulled my crud-covered left hand away from her neck.

  The next part… well, you already know it, don’t you? Left hand up, silent call to Kirby, flapping of pickup truck-bed wings, giant smoky bird filling the room, snatching the gloppy demon crap, and winking out of existence.

  Declan was looking at me, blinking a bit. “I’ve never actually seen that, up close, before,” he said, eyes wide.

  “Tanya,” I said to my mate, simultaneously giving him a nod to acknowledge his words. It’s all the same to me, but I’m told it’s a pretty interesting experience when I banish a demon.

  A lilac and jasmine scented wind blew through the room and my vampire was standing there, her hands gently taking the little girl from mine. Her bright blue eyes were fierce and angry as she scooped Poppy up and took her to the bathroom to clean her up. My Tanya’s maternal instincts had appeared in a dump truck load when she got pregnant with the twins. They’ve been ramping to ever-higher levels of protectiveness with each day of her pregnancy. I had heard her foot tapping impatiently outside from the moment I entered the house.

  Lydia was suddenly there too, and she deftly wove around the witch kid and myself, grabbing fresh child clothes from Poppy’s dresser, giving us an unreadable look, and then disappearing into the bathroom with Tanya and the child.

  Declan raised one eyebrow at me before looking at the closed bathroom door, then shrugged and started picking up his two cords. He looked at the circle of salt with an expression of uncertainty, but then Nika came through the door with a small broom and dustpan.

  “I’d say something smart about you reading my mind, but it’d just be obvious,” he said as he took the cleaning implements and swept up the salt.

  “Nah. No one would believe you had enough mind to read,” Lydia said, opening the bathroom door. Tanya came out, cradling the little girl over her own rounded stomach, and marched past us, down the stairs, and out of the building, giving us a quick smile but still mortally offended that a demon would pick on such a small, sickly child. Then I looked at Poppy. Her color was better—a lot better. Like someone slipped her a vampire blood droplet or two and fixed what ailed her.

  Declan held up the salt-filled dustpan and took a pinch between his fingers before flicking it at his tiny vampire nemesis. “I banish thee, pixie of annoying pestiferousness.”

  “Aw
ww. The lad is learning new words, trying to make something of himself. Heartwarming, but tragically destined to fail,” Lydia said back, pulling a blanket from a linen closet and following Tanya’s path.

  Declan dumped the dustbin into a garbage can, leaned the broom against the vanity, and looked up, ready to leave.

  “You had quite a conversation with the Hellspawn. What did you say to it to get it to sit in the chair?” I asked.

  He raised one eyebrow but spoke without hesitation.

  “I told it I felt underappreciated, scorned, and always treated with condescension. That I wanted more respect. It fell all over itself to tell me all the ways that Hell would provide me with power and underlings that feared me,” he said.

  “But you don’t really feel that way, do you?” I asked the kid who was so much the little brother I never had.

  “Oh I had to tap real feelings to be convincing,” he said, nonchalant.

  It was my turn to raise an eyebrow. Behind him, Nika was smirking at me.