The Demon Within Page 4

  “What? He just what?”

  Putting her glasses back on, Reese read one of the papers before closing the file. “He had an incredibly inadequate defense, Denny, bordering on malpractice. How the DA’s office allowed his attorney’s continued ineptness is beyond me. I’m going to keep digging and see why that was.”

  Denny adjusted her chair. “What does your gut tell you?”

  Reese leaned back in the chair and studied her a moment. “You know, it’s not even my gut. They rushed to judgment because Lisa’s remaining family wanted someone behind bars. I don’t think they even cared who it was.”

  “Then you don’t think he’s guilty?”

  “I didn’t say that. I just said there are a lot, and I mean a lot of holes. Too many inconsistencies.” She shook her head. “You did the right thing coming to me. It’s unfortunate you didn’t come to me before the trial. This whole heartache might have been prevented.”

  “Is there anything I can do?”

  Reese rose and walked around the desk to sit on the chair next to Denny. Their knees touched before Reese’s eyes bored into hers. The air was thick with only the sound of the ticking clock.

  “I’ve read through the court records. I’ve gotten my hands on evidence lists. I’ve combed through witness statements, and I’ve got to be honest...I think your brother was railroaded. There’s no way this should have gone to trial. I...I’ve never seen anything like this. Ever.”

  For the first time in a long time, those crumbs of hope expanded inside her. “You have no idea how happy I am to hear you say that.”

  Reese reached out and gently laid her hand on Denny’s knee. “Don’t get your hopes up too quickly, Golden. A lot has to happen before we can see an attorney to talk about filing an appeal.”

  That was when she felt the familiar pull of attraction—something she hadn’t given a shit about for the last three weeks.

  And as quickly as it came, it left. She had no time for amorous flirtations, harmless or otherwise.

  “I’m not saying we can get him out. I’m not at all sure there’s anything we can do without the real killer, but I think if we gather enough evidence it might warrant an appeal. You know how it works here in the South; we don’t cotton to letting convicted killers go free.”

  Denny nodded. “Regardless of his guilt or innocence.”

  “Exactly. I have a bunch of calls out there and an early appointment with one of the first responders to the scene. There was a great deal of his testimony that was left out as well.”

  The hackles rose on the back of Denny’s neck. “How could that be?”

  “Oh, you’d be surprised and amazed to know how badly and how often the judicial system fails. But like I said, we need the real murderer, or at least a bead on one for us to get noticed. Reversals are rare. No one likes being told they made this horrific kind of mistake, especially judges.”

  “So, what’s next?”

  “I need to interview Quick. For my own peace of mind, I need to know his story and feel his innocence. I won’t take this if he’s guilty.”

  Denny nodded. “I know. I can do that.”

  Reese finally lifted her hand as she reached for her calendar.

  Denny smiled. “What, no piece of technology for the super sleuth?”

  “Oh, I have more technology than you can shake a stick at, but for calendaring, I like the big picture right at my fingertips.”

  The way she fairly purred those last four words confirmed Denny’s suspicions: the private detective was, in fact, flirting with her. Not that it mattered. There was no place for this to go except into the dumpster, so Denny finished with the calendar, begged off an offer for a drink later that night, and headed for her car. Then she drove by the coffee shop to see if Brianna was working her usual morning shift.

  Brianna.

  There was another prospective lover who stalled out of the gate. She’d been very attracted to Brianna, but once the demons attacked, it was all Denny could do to keep her people safe. For now, distant was the safest place to be. Denny had no intention of stopping by for a brief hello. The last time she’d spoken to Brianna Stuart was when the demons had come after Denny, hoping to kill the Hanta before Denny could learn how to become the demon hunter.

  Brianna and her coven had saved them, and the demons lost that night...at least...on the front of it. Denny knew better. They had managed to kill the demon who had come for Pure, but they hadn’t won the war. Not by a long shot. What the demons had done was force her into the isolation she needed to protect those who cared about her, an isolation Denny felt to the core of her soul.

  Maybe it was for the best.

  Maybe in the long run, being alone was the only real option for her.

  As Denny drove by, she didn’t look in the rearview mirror. If she had, she would have seen Brianna Stuart gazing out the window and watching Denny as she drove away.

  ****

  Gwen’s Journal

  For the past week, I’ve been training with a man named Ames Walker. He is a handsome devil who actually makes Robert jealous. It’s so cute. I didn’t know he was capable of jealousy after fifteen years of marriage, but he is. Of course, he has nothing to worry about. There is definitely something about Mr. Walker that turns heads. Not mine, of course. He turns my muscles into mush. He turns my brain into scrambled eggs, and he’s turned me on to how to better wield my weapons, but my heart belongs to my husband.

  Ames knows so much more than I ever could and has opened my eyes to the many ways I can keep my family safer. At first, I was leery of moving to Savannah…to a haunted house. I wondered what Robert could have been thinking. But then, I met Ames and I knew that he was the reason I came here. Ames Walker knows more about demon hunting than all the books in my lair, and has already made such a huge difference in my life.

  Yesterday, he sent me to this woman who sells handmade goods on the dock—Tirobia, a fascinating young woman of African descent, with skin so dark it looks purple.

  So, Ames told me to go and so I went to see Tirobia and am thankful I did. The woman was a font of information on protecting my home—squashing all those silly Catholic prayers and Circle of Light mythologies the Christians employ to defeat demons.

  Demons care not a lick about our beliefs or myths. Jesus is not their concern. Religion means nothing to them one way of the other. They are as likely to possess a Buddhist as a Jew or Catholic. Tirobia opened my eyes to the truth when she said in her deeply accented Haitian voice, “Dey laugh dat humans turn to der Christ for help dat ain’t comin’. Dey tink it good humans look inna wrong direction for der help.”

  We spent an hour talking, when she suddenly grabbed my hand and looked hard at me before letting it go. I swear she knew right then and there, but she did not say anything. Instead, she gave me quite an education about the many ways to ward off evil. All this time, I’d been trying to protect my family from demons when I needed to be protecting them from evil. From all evil. It all made perfect sense now.

  When I left her, I had a bag filled with the following ingredients, most employed by the Celts and Wiccans for hundreds of years. She said these were just the beginning of home protection and that she would tell me more after I secured my home. Here is what I purchased:

  Angelica—protection from evil spirits

  Foxglove seeds—to protect exterior of house

  Hazel—protects against spirits from Dark Side

  A variety of incense for protection

  Pure salt.

  Apparently, pure salt, because of its purity, will work best. I brought a five-pound bag from her and sprinkled it around the entire house, making sure there were no gaps in the line of salt.

  Funny thing was Rush watched me the entire time. I suppose if she were evil, she’d have taken umbrage. I wonder if she thinks I’m nuts, if she sits up there amused. I wonder if she watches Denny so closely because she worries about what I might do to her someday.

  Someday, I am going to have
a conversation with that little ghost and see just what the hell it is she’s waiting for.

  Robert still loves his job at the university, and it seems that Savannah was a good choice for us, despite all the demons. It is easier to keep the Hanta fed here, though I am getting more and more calls for help as the news spreads that a true legacy hunter lives in the state. I travelled to Baton Rouge three days ago to destroy a demon who wandered all around a neighborhood bothering little boys. His death felt really good. I don’t mind helping others as long as doing so keeps the damn things from my family.

  Nevertheless, I’ll start a ritual of candles and incense burning during the day, when the doors and windows can be open. I’ll sprinkle, purge, and rub my head and belly at the same time if I have to. Anything to keep my family safer.

  Anything.

  I wonder if doing all this will affect the Hanta. Perhaps he’s not pure evil. Maybe just a little bit. Ames told me never to trust my own Hanta—that even the Hanta could turn on me or make me do something I wouldn’t normally do.

  I find that a frightening concept, for if I do have something in me that can do that, how am I any different than any other possessed woman?

  I have so much to learn.

  ****

  Denny’s Journal

  So I bought some salt and the other ingredients mom used, and sprinkled it about the house. Then I called Lauren and told her to do the same. After she finished laughing, Lauren sighed loudly and promised me she would do so, and that she would do the same at Patterson’s.

  As I spent days in the lair reading portions of my mom’s journal, studying the titles of the three thousand plus books in the lair and focusing in on the BOD or Book of Demons, many of my childhood questions were slowly being answered. Holes were being filled in with every page I read. I was surprised that my mother had as few answers about our shared demon as I did. So why hadn’t my grandmother shared with her what she knew? Surely there were better ways of passing this legacy down without having to reinvent the wheel each time. What were we missing?

  Staring at my mother’s beautiful script, a pang of guilt washed over me. I’d gone from seeing her several times a week to once in three weeks, and that was only to explain to her why I would not be coming by for a while.

  I knew she heard me.

  I had proof.

  Three weeks ago, I’d been privileged to visit her on a spiritual plane I knew nothing about. I was afforded the luxury by Ophelia, Victor’s psychic mother, who sent me in to the opaque world my mother resides in now. It was both heart breaking and heart mending at the same time.

  Ophelia and I made a trade and she helped me reach deep into my mother’s comatose state so she could tell me what I needed to know to live through my initial possession—to save her youngest child. Mom made it very clear that, while she had heard every syllable I’d ever uttered since her accident, she did not want me to go under hypnosis and into that plane again. Of course I promised never to return there.

  But that’s not why I didn’t visit her anymore.

  I was pretty certain she would not care for the woman her daughter was becoming, and I couldn’t bear to break her heart anymore than it had already been broken.

  So I stayed away.

  After the accident, when she lay dying in the hospital, the Hanta had made its biggest play by leaving her and entering me. That was six years ago, when I was just fifteen. For six years, I carried this thing around inside me, never knowing I had it. Never realizing how much my life would never truly be my own. For six years, the Hanta lay dormant within me, like a moth in a cocoon.

  Waiting.

  I was the cocoon.

  And though it slept, its influence still touched my life in many ways—the most significant of which was how I was able to make love with a ghost.

  Hantas and ghosts have a lot in common, I suppose, and my Hanta enabled me to connect with Rush on a spiritual plane much like I’d done with my mother that day. On that plane, Rush and I made love, cuddled, hung out, and enjoyed a physical life otherwise closed to us. I had always wondered how I managed to feel Rush. I never could quite figure out how we were able to do that and whenever I asked her, she just said it was because I was special.

  I know now.

  What I hadn’t known back then was that Rush knew, too. She’d known all along that I was possessed. How could she not, right? She was part of a supernatural world I knew very little about. She had known since the very first day I returned from the hospital sporting a demon inside. She’d known and said nothing.

  Not one damn thing.

  Three weeks ago, she confessed to knowing the truth just before she left me. For thirteen years, Rush had been by my side and now...nothing. Nothing. And while I understand her breaking up with me, I do not understand why she left completely or where she went. My greatest fear is that she finally, irrevocably, let go, that she truly gave up the ghost and went to wherever spirits go when they die.

  And that thought breaks my heart…a heart that feels like it is slowly shrinking to the size of the Grinch’s heart.

  I’d never had to face the shitty teenage moments alone because Rush had always been there to talk me off the emotional ledge. She had always been by my side, through the terrible pre-teen emotions to the high school disappointments. I’d never been really been alone.

  Now...now when I need her most, she’s gone.

  Completely vanished.

  And I’ve never felt more lost or alone in my life.

  ****

  Denny stayed in the lair for three more hours researching, taking notes, and trying to make sense of the order of the library she’d started spending too much time in. Three thousand books were a lot to comb through. One of the larger books mentioned something about a legacy library where all family records were kept, but Denny had been through the books over and over, never finding anything from the Silver Legacy other than her mother’s journals.

  “Let’s see...simple math tells us that there are, at the very least, two legacy hunters per family in a century, right?” Denny found herself talking out loud more than ever since Rush had left. “Let’s say, on average, there are three. If our family started in the fourteenth century, that’s approximately upwards of twenty-one hunters in the Silver Legacy. That means there should be at least that many journals.” Denny glanced at the bookshelves. “So where are they?”

  Just as she returned to her mother’s journal, the red light on the wall blinked on and off. Her mother had installed a light to let her know when someone was at the front door, and that light was telling Denny she had a visitor.

  Denny ignored it and walked around the sixteen by sixteen square foot room once more. She had managed to find the secret drawer under the green marble by removing a book from its rest on the shelf. Were there many more such hiding places? Denny couldn’t help but wonder. Her mother had proven to be very crafty in the creation of the lair…so where had she hidden the legacy library?

  The red light continued blinking.

  “Persistent son-of-a-bitch,” she muttered, caressing the antiquated leather spines. Some were so old, the spines resembled an old woman’s wrinkled face. “Some people never know when to give it up.” Many of the books were ancient, dating back to shortly after the Gutenberg printing press was invented in the fifteenth century. Ornate lettering, often in gold, lit up the cracked spines of antiquated books that would fetch thousands in the open market, more on the black market.

  “Where did all of these come from? Grandmother must have given them to you, Mom, but when? And what did she say when she gave it to you? Here, daughter, read these so you can learn how to kill demons?”

  The light continued to pester her until she lost patience with it, closed up the lair and headed downstairs.

  “I know you’re in there, Denny. Open the goddamn door.” A fist pounded on the front door. Denny recognized the voice.

  Brianna.

  She had come by every day for twenty-one days, bu
t today she seemed particularly agitated. Normally, she set a Tupperware dish full of food on the stoop before leaving. Food, a sweet note, and her business card. Then she would pound on the door some more before eventually giving up. She came at sporadic times, as if she was trying to trick Denny into answering the door.

  Not today.

  Today she was clearly going to beat the door until her fist was bloody.

  “I’m not leaving until you open the door. It’s been three weeks, Denny. Three fucking weeks. Victor came by the coffee shop and told me you’d dropped out of school. No one has seen you. No one has heard from you. What the fuck? Open. The. God. Damned. Door or you’re going to experience the powerful nature of one really pissed off witch.”

  Denny sat at the foot of the stairs. Three weeks ago, for a moment, just a brief moment, she had thought maybe she and Brianna could be something more than friends. They had the same interests, they liked the same things, and there was clearly a physical attraction there.

  After the attack on her home and family, Denny realized what a foolish thought that was. No one, not even a witch, deserved the fate of loving a demon hunter. She cared too much for Brianna to lead her down that thorny path, but no woman wants someone else to make choices for her.

  “So this is how you’re gonna play it, huh?” Brianna’s voice was, at once, both fiery and frigid. “I thought this was something that would pass—that you would lick your wounds and return to the land of the living, but it looks like I was mistaken. You’re shutting everyone out when you should be asking for help. This isn’t healthy, Denny, this…this reclusiveness, but if it’s what you want, then you have it. I won’t darken your doorstep again.”

  Denny waited for the sound of a car to start before heading back up the stairs.

  “She’s better off without me, Rush. Who knows? Maybe you are, too. What do you think about that?”

  Denny’s question was met with the same hollow emptiness as all her other questions.