The Demon Within

  the demon within

  the demon within

  linda kay silva

  Sapphire Books

  Salinas, california

  The Demon Within

  Copyright © 2015 by Linda Kay Silva

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN EPUB - 978-1-939062-82-6

  This is a work of fiction - names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without written permission of the publisher.

  Editor - Melissa Livanos

  Book Designer- LJ Reynolds

  Cover Design - Michelle Brodeur

  Sapphire Books

  Salinas, CA 93912

  www.sapphirebooks.com

  Printed in the United States of America

  First edition – February 2015

  This and other Sapphire Books titles can be found at

  www.sapphirebooks.com

  Dedication

  This one is for my editor, Melissa Livanos...editor, book collector, brainiac, and friend.

  You have sharpened my words, cleaned up my grammar, and pounded out the punctuation, but most of all, you have worked in tandem with me in a way that makes this just as much yours as it is mine. And because we both love him, a shout out to Chris Morris....because every rabid feminist needs a man who always has her back. Thank you both for having mine!

  Acknowledgments

  For my girls...Sunnie and Kelley...for loving me through it all, for growing into amazing women, and for never forgetting who we are to each other. There is no step in this mom.

  For Renee...as always...for just holding my hand when I was afraid and reminding me of who I am. Thank you isn’t nearly enough.

  For Lori...for showing me that the desert really IS beloved and that I really do belong here.

  For Beth Burnett...for holding my hand and letting me lick any damn thing I want. This is 2015...the year of LK. Remember that :)

  For Kat Warner...you know...well...maybe you don’t. For Chris Convissor...it will happen to you one day and when it does, my name better be there :)

  For Shelia Mason Powell...raging empath, kind friend, compassionate woman. You are a gift, my love.

  For Leslie Spoor...for welcoming me to the desert and actually reading my stuff.

  For Dana Miller...for also welcoming me to the desert and taking me and Lucky on awesome backroad rides! For Danielle Beatty...for taking me in, socks and all, at Indian Wells. You’ve helped me love playing tennis again. Thank you.

  Finally...I’d like to acknowledge the hard work and dedication of Isabella and Schileen, who always have their eyes on the prize. This is our year, ladies, and we are going to grab Fate by the throat and shake a living out of her.

  Bless you all. Without you, I would only be a mere shadow of who you’ve helped me to be.

  This particular demon fought harder than the others she’d faced. Maybe it was because he was of a higher level than those she’d recently destroyed, or maybe he just recognized the imminent threat Denny posed and fought harder to stay alive.

  Maybe he underestimated her as so many others had, or maybe he just overestimated his own abilities.

  Not that it mattered.

  Either way, he was toast.

  Like others before him, this one would die a horrific death—the proper death for an evil being.

  Snapping open Fouet, her sword-like chain whip, Denny Silver stood with her feet shoulder length apart and whipped it expertly over her head. It crackled and popped like a power line as it sliced through the muggy night air. Fouet spit and sizzled as if alive and desiring nothing else but the taste of demon blood.

  Fouet was an amazing tool…a killing machine that could sever limbs and destroy any demonic weapon it faced, and this demon knew all too well what would happen if the thin, razor-like whip managed to strike home.

  And it would.

  The demon dodged left, the chain biting off the top of his ear and part of his eyebrow; blood flowed freely from both wounds as he clamped his hand over the cuts and cursed loudly.

  In her left hand, Denny held Epee, a scimitar-shaped sword that crackled with the same kind of electricity as Fouet. Both weapons were of ancient origin and had a slight electrical glow about them and they sparked and sputtered as if alive and trying to speak. They were sharp, shiny, and capable of sheering through flesh and bone without slowing down.

  Ancient weapons for an ancient job.

  As she brought Epee down toward his head, the demon lifted the bat he’d been using to pummel a gang member and tried to deflect the blow.

  He was completely out-weaponed and outclassed.

  The Epee easily cut the bat in half, the sword taking the demon’s nose and biting through his lower lip as it did. Blood poured from his face.

  “Jesus!” The demon yelled, now trying to staunch the blood flow from his lip with his other hand.

  “Jesus can’t help you, demon,” Denny said, whipping Fouet for a second pass at the demon’s neck. He ducked and swept his leg out, taking Denny off her feet. She landed with a thud on her back, both weapons still in her grasp.

  She expected the demon to jump on her, but as she scrambled to her feet, she saw him take off running instead, disappearing around the corner.

  “Motherfucker,” Denny growled in a voice not her own.

  Sprinting after the demon, Denny rounded the corner straight into a two-by-four that clipped her in the forehead, sending her sprawling hard on the ground. Fouet clattered from her hand, immediately retracting into the silver cylinder that housed it. All she had now was Epee.

  “You never learn, do you, hunter?” Now the demon was on her, his hands around her neck, squeezing with all his might. “You got lucky before, but you’ll never kill me, rookie.”

  Denny had little training, but knew she had one shot at his throat. One shot. Demon or not, the human body could only withstand so much. The Adam’s apple was just one of many Achilles’ heels on the body and when Denny drove her fist into it, the demon gasped as it fell backwards clutching his throat.

  Scrambling for the whip, Denny flicked her wrists as soon as the cylinder hit her palm. Her weapons lit up the air around her as she took the ready stance, Fouet crackling in the darkness as if hungry for flesh and blood.

  It was hungry. It was the nature of these supernatural weapons to want to bite into flesh.

  They weren’t the only ones.

  Denny felt the demon within, her Hanta Raya. She felt it fill her entire being expanding like air in a balloon. The Hanta that possessed her had been dormant inside her for six years, but now that it was awake, it came to her whenever she was in danger. It came like a gust of wind that billowed a sail and filled her spirit with energy more powerful than any drug.

  It was danger personified and a menace to any demon within striking distance.

  The Hanta Raya was a spirit eater, a demon that craved the souls of other demons, and it was hungry for the soul of this foe. Ravenous. It wanted to feed.

  And she would let it. She would let her own demon consume the spirit and the energy of this one because this one demon in the alley was evil incarnate. Unlike the Hanta Raya, which was a spirit inhabiting a human body, her attacker was a demon physically walking the earth, and as such, she could destroy it without fear of legal repercussions.

  Could and would.

  The Hanta Raya would not let this pissant demon hurt Denny or another human aga
in.

  Ever.

  “Bring it, chump,” Denny’s demon-filled voice growled. “I’m just getting warmed up.” The Hanta slowly took over the majority of Denny’s body, filling her muscles with fast pumping blood, giving her a strength and a power she did not possess on her own. When the Hanta took over, Denny felt invincible, strong, fearless.

  And she developed quite a sailor’s mouth.

  “Come on, fuckwad. Take your best shot.”

  The demon in the alley shook its head as it watched Fouet crackle and whip back and forth over Denny’s head.

  “You’re going to take on a Hanta without any weapons? Are you stupid? An intellectual deficient? An idiot? What the hell is wrong with you, you mental midget, that you would think you were a match for me?”

  The demon looked around for a weapon.

  Denny jutted her chin out. “There’s a steel pipe over there. Why don’t you try that one on for size?”

  The demon glanced quickly at the pipe and then back to Denny. “That some sorta trick?”

  “No trick, dickweed. Just treats.” Denny crackled the whip. “Go on. Go for it. You think you’re such hot shit, let’s see whatcha got.”

  The demon scrambled for the lead pipe, losing his right arm to Fouet as it snapped to taste his flesh and blood.

  “Fuck!” The demon stared at his useless appendage lying on the dirty parking lot as if it were a dog that just shit on the ground. “You ain’t got what it takes to control that Hanta, Golden Silver. It’s gonna eat your soul for lunch and everyone else you know and love. Mark my words. They always do.”

  The Fouet snapped back into the cylinder. “Oh, I don’t want her soul, you dumbass cretin. I want something altogether different, and I can’t have it as long as I’m dealing with fuckheads like you.” The Hanta put the cylinder back in the inner vest pocket that the weapon called home. Denny was a passenger in her own body now, having allowed the Hanta to take over, which it did whenever a situation got too out of control…something that was happening more often lately. “You wanna live, all you gotta do is tell me who set my brother up for that murder. Give. Me. A. Name. And I’ll let you live.”

  The demon was bleeding out. “No way. I know you never keep your word, Hanta. Hantas lie all the time.”

  With the Epee in her left hand, Denny was walking toward the demon when she caught a brief glimpse of herself in a store window...or at least the self that came out to play when the Hanta Raya emerged.

  It wasn’t pretty.

  Glowing red eyes were the only outward indicator that a normal human might think bizarre...well, that and the voice. The Hanta Raya had a voice that sounded like Denny had swallowed gravel with a gasoline chaser after smoking six packs of cigarettes. The more control the Hanta had, the deeper the voice.

  The Hanta was somehow connected closely to her senses. She’d only discovered she was possessed by a demon three weeks ago, and there was so much to learn. So very much. She knew virtually nothing, other than what it felt like when it came to life and the power she had when hunting other demons. She had learned so little in these three weeks—just that she had inherited the demon within her from a family legacy over seven centuries old—a legacy many other demons had spent the better part of the last three weeks trying to destroy. This bleeding demon in the alley was no exception.

  The line of demon detritus she’d shed was long, as Denny had carved and whipped her way through dozens of fiends in human skin on their way to test their mettle against the newest legacy demon hunter—against her. They wanted to kill her family and destroy her Hanta. They wanted her and the rest of her family dead.

  She had other plans.

  Denny had but one goal: to find the demon responsible for setting up her brother, Quick, for a murder he did not commit. And she would stop at nothing until she crushed that demon and helped her brother out of a sentence and a fate he did not deserve.

  Nothing.

  And that’s what this demon was to her: nothing.

  Whirling around toward the one-armed demon, Denny smiled, but it was the grin of the Hanta Raya—evil, malicious, and somewhat antagonistic. “Give me a name, ass-munch, or you’ll discover there are worse things than dying.”

  The demon stumbled as he backed away. In human form, a demon can only be truly killed by special weapons that demon hunters carried with them, and the only time they appear demonic is right before they combust.

  Denny didn’t want this one to combust.

  Not yet.

  “I...I’m not even sure it was...him.”

  The Hanta stopped and cocked its head. Denny couldn’t believe how strong she felt as the Hanta flowed through her. “A name, my one-armed asswipe, and I’ll let you live to see another day. Just one name.”

  The demon looked left. Then right.

  “You’ll never make a run for it without bleeding out first. You bleed out and I’ll have to chase you down in the next body you inhabit. And if I have to do that, your next death will be your last. Do us both a favor...give me a name.” The Hanta placed the tip of the sword upon the demon’s chest. “Or my face will be the last thing you see.”

  The demon blinked. He swallowed loudly.

  “You have five seconds. One.”

  The demon held his bleeding stump in the air.

  “Two.”

  “Fine! Don’t! I seriously don’t know for sure, but I know a guy who knows.”

  The Hanta waited.

  “He’s a bartender at the Black Stallion. That’s all I know. I swear.”

  The Hanta smiled. “You know, I swear a lot, too, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the centuries, it’s that a demon’s word...doesn’t mean shit.” With one powerful thrust, the Hanta shoved the sword completely through the chest of the demon, who looked down at it, back up at Denny, and then opened his mouth to say something as he exploded, sending bits of flesh and blood all over. The only thing left was a small pile of flesh at her feet.

  The Hanta smiled as he put Epee away. “There’s no honor among us, dumbass.”

  Denny felt the Hanta recede back into whatever depths it lived inside her. It seemed to come and go at will. Again, one more thing on a very long list of things she did not know about the demonic world or her own personal demon. Some day, she would go back to the demonological education she’d started with Ames Walker three weeks ago. Someday, she would resume reading about Legacy demon hunters and the demons they passed down through the generations.

  Some day.

  Not today.

  Today, she was awash in demon blood. Today, she’d rid the world, or at least Savannah, of one piece of the evil puzzle that shoved her brother into an eight foot by eight foot cell.

  Today, she was content with drawing the blood of a mid-level demon and continuing her rounds in search of others who could help her help Quick.

  Today, she was just fine being…

  The demon hunter.

  ****

  Denny walked back to the edge of the city, stopping along the way to wash the blood from her face in one of the many fountains scattered throughout Savannah. She had no reason as to why demons always exploded. Perhaps it was Fouet and Epee’s power. She’d probably know that if she would have remained in her training, but she hadn’t. She’d find out some other day, when her family wasn’t in jeopardy.

  Had she delved deeper into the three thousand demonology books in her lair or finished reading her mother’s demon hunter journal, she would know, but she hadn’t made the time. She was uninterested in knowledge or educating herself. She was too busy on her quest to get her older brother out of jail to bother with her mother’s journals or the minutiae of her new craft. She would have to change that...of course. She would have to crack them open eventually and see if they could shed some light on the reason the demons combust, on how and when they take over the host, and on any number of important topics.

  But right now, she needed to track down the demon who worked at the Black Stallion
and see what he may or may not know about what happened the night of the murder. Freeing her brother was the only item on her daily agenda, and she been skulking around night after night in an effort to further it ever since she discovered what lived within her. Ever since everything in her world was turned upside down.

  Ever since her lover disappeared into the mists.

  As she walked through the darkened alleys and back streets of Savannah, she did so without one ounce of fear—without one slight hesitation, compliments of the Hanta within.

  A Hanta Raya, as Denny had discovered three weeks ago, was said to be the master of all spirits. This particular demon feasted on the spirits of other demons, of darker demons. The darker the better, and it was Denny’s job to keep it fed. Over the centuries, the Hanta/host relationship was one of symbiosis…mutual need. And her demon had lain dormant for so long, it was starving.

  The mid-level demon she had just killed would sate her Hanta’s blood lust for the time being, and for the time being, she was good with that, but it wasn’t the soul she craved. No, that was something darker, much darker than the cretin she’d just killed.

  As she walked along, eyes scanning the ominous shadows of a city filled with demons, the scents of Savanna filled her nose, reminding her that she was, indeed, human, even if she didn’t always feel that way. There was a combination of chicory coffee and wisteria mixing together that wafted into her nose reminding her that not everything in the world was sinister or evil.

  Stopping to gaze into the depths of one alley’s darkness, her cell phone vibrated.

  Pulling her phone out, she saw it was her best friend, Victor, but she let it go to voicemail. She knew he was worried about her. They all were. Denny hadn’t been the same since she’d discovered what she truly was. Concerned, her best friends Victor and Lauren called several times a day trying to reach out. She’d received nearly three dozen such calls in the last three weeks, and she’d handled each one the exact same way: letting it go to voicemail.