Daemon Blood: The Daemon World, #3

By Mary Maddox

Our war will not unfold in your imaginary heaven. We will fight on Earth with human beings as pawns and weapons.

 

Lu Darlington is a seer, bound to the daemon Talion through ritual and blood. It's not a role she enjoys, but she has little choice: daemons take what they want and destroy whoever stands in their way.

 

So Lu's surprised when Talion doesn't punish her for her newfound ability to keep him from possessing her whenever he likes. In fact he's pleased. The stronger she is, he explains, the more powerful he becomes.

 

And he needs that power, because a war is brewing in the daemon world, a war that will be fought by—and through—humans.

 

Lu's friend Lisa Duncan can't see daemons, but she's seen what they can do and so has stayed far away from Lu for years. After a bizarre attack on Lisa leaves a man dead and she learns it's only the first skirmish in the daemon war, Lisa realizes the safest place to be is with Lu.

 

Then Talion sends Lu away to teach her skills to another seer and Lisa must stay behind to look after Lu's son Solly, conceived through a daemon ceremony with Talion. At four years old Solly's seer abilities are already so strong Lisa is sometimes more afraid of Solly than for him.

 

As Talion's enemies grow bolder, Lisa and Lu face attacks from every direction. There seems little hope any of them will survive—until Talion and his allies devise a plan.

 

The only problem is how much it will cost.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mary Maddox
• Release date: Mar 8, 2022
• ISBN: 9781942737292

Mary Maddox

Mary Maddox is a horror and dark fantasy novelist with what The Charleston Times-Courier calls a "Ray Bradbury-like gift for deft, deep-shadowed description." Born in Soldiers Summit, high in the mountains of Utah, Maddox graduated with honors in creative writing from Knox College, and went on to earn an MFA from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop. She taught writing at Eastern Illinois University and has published stories in various journals, including Yellow Silk, Farmer's Market, The Scream Online, and Huffington Post. The Illinois Arts Council has honored her fiction with a Literary Award and an Artist's Grant.

Book preview

Part I

1: Born Victim

Panic wells up in Lisa as the drugstore’s automatic door slides open and winter air balloons against her face. The idea of stepping outside suddenly terrifies her. Post-traumatic stress, says her therapist, Sandi—as if naming a thing steals its power. A bearded guy in a camo jacket is close behind her. She has to move. Clutching her plastic bag of antidepressants and tampons like a talisman, she hurries through the door.

A semi rumbles past on the two-lane highway beyond the drugstore’s narrow parking lot. Its diesel fumes trigger the usual nausea. The clouds unveil the sun. She imagines getting in her beat-up Honda Civic, driving until it runs out of gas, and then walking until her legs buckle. Wherever she ends up will be fine with her.

Hey Lisa! A gaunt man pops out of his SUV and trots across the parking lot. His glossy parka, unzipped despite the subfreezing day, bounces against his fashionably threadbare jeans.

He’s no one she knows or wants to know. She plunges her hand into her purse as she runs for her car. Where are the stupid keys? She’s still groping for them when she reaches the Civic.

A hand seizes her shoulder and spins her around. The man in the parka presses her against the car, his groin against hers, and pokes her in the ribs with something hard. She looks down at a pistol with a short barrel, almost toylike. His open parka conceals the gun from anyone watching. Not that anyone is. Halfway across the lot, the bearded guy is climbing into a truck jacked up on monster tires. She doubts he noticed her at all. Sorry, Lisa, the gunman says. I know what you've been through and I hate—really hate—doing this. But we need to talk.

Panic muffles everything but her thumping heart. She wrenches her gaze from the gun to his face and opens her mouth to scream, but his eyes silence her. Colorless irises encircle the bottomless wells of his pupils. Her scream drowns in their depths, but she manages to whisper. Who are you?

Willard Steeples. His grin displays a mouthful of capped teeth edged with black along the gum line. "Author of Professor of Death."

Evil parasite, feeding on people’s suffering. On her suffering. When she was fifteen, a psychopath tortured and disfigured her, and Steeples’ book made her into a freak show.

You’re angry, he says. I get that. But your story doesn’t end with the Professor. There’s Grifford Riley, the bent cop from Chicago.

She finally manages to speak. What do you want?

This isn’t about what I want. My readers cry out for the truth.

In the five years since fleeing to Utah to escape Riley, Lisa has managed to recover a fraction of her life. She overcame an opioid addiction. She fought the posttraumatic stress of having been raped and tortured, and she began to dream of a life not defined by the violence done to her. Now this ghoul wants to suck her back into the nightmare.

Please. Leave me alone.

Sorry. No can do. My publisher’s gonna cut me loose if I don’t deliver another book on you by the end of the month. She said it’s my last chance.

His publisher. Like she cares.

He prods her with the gun, a reminder. Even years after the surgeries, her face still aches in the icy wind. A frozen mask of pain, worse when she’s afraid. Steeples can have the story—some of it, anyway—but the dread lurking in her gut tells her that he wants more. A lot more.

Okay, I’ll talk to you. There's a coffee house on the Square.

No. Not after this. He glances apologetically at the pistol. I knew you wouldn’t talk to me unless I forced you to.

Another semi crawls past, picking up speed after the stoplight. If the driver looks their way, he won’t see any gun—only a man and woman beside a car, close enough to be lovers. Despair chokes her. My mother—expects me home.

I'll have you back in an hour. He grabs Lisa by the elbow, jabs the gun in her back, and hustles her to his SUV, a gray Ford Edge. Scream, she thinks as he yanks open the passenger door. Last chance. But no one is close enough to hear, or to stop him if he shoots her and drives away. He shoves her onto the seat. The label of a car rental company decorates the dash. It reassures her a tiny bit. Someone at the rental office will be able to identify him, assuming he cares about getting caught.

The other times she was kidnapped, she fought hard. This time, as Steeples gets into the Edge, she wonders if her life is still worth the trouble. Then she hears her therapist’s voice reminding her how much she’s endured. She’s lived through experiences that would’ve broken a lot of people. She clasps her hands to stop them from shaking. She can survive Willard Steeples.

As he peels out of the parking lot, she glimpses a ponderous figure near the pharmacy entrance. Mrs. Arlow, overweight and asthmatic, squints at the departing Edge. She lives down the street from Lisa’s parents. She might notice Lisa driving away with a stranger and call her mother. But Mrs. Arlow wouldn’t have a reason to remember any important details—the nondescript gray of the SUV, the make or license number—that could help the cops find Steeples.

He drives west, steering lefthanded so he can keep the gun pointed at Lisa. They pass the Seville Veterinary Clinic, Charlie's Soft Serve Ice Cream, Morris Chiropractic, the Chevy dealership with its lineup of gleaming pickups beneath colorful plastic pennants, and the First Christian Church with its sign asking, WILL YOUR ETERNAL HOME BE SMOKING OR NONSMOKING? It’s late November, and Christmas wreaths decorate the telephone poles along the highway. Cardboard signs nailed to the poles honor the military service of local young people. Lisa recognizes a few names from junior high. She missed high school because of the surgeries. She got her GED six years ago, back when she dreamed of studying at the Art Institute in Chicago.

Where are we going?

Steeples' eyes flick toward her then back to the highway. There's a few cabins on the lake. No one uses them this time of year.

You're from around here?

Nope. I just do my research.

A mile or so after they leave Seville behind, Steeples turns onto a county road that cuts a straight line through fields stubbled with the remains of corn stalks. The tires bump over rough spots in the pavement, but the SUV’s suspension softens the ride. At least she’s riding in relative comfort toward her possible death.

Regardless of what Steeples says about wanting her story, the vacancy in his eyes scares her. And an interview conducted at gunpoint? The whole situation radiates the weirdness of the daemon world. Lisa is wired into that world because of Lu, her closest friend. A friend she cut out of her life. Lu is a daemon seer. She possesses the talent to anchor daemons to the physical world, and five years ago she swore an oath to serve the daemon Talion. Lisa watched in numb horror as her friend knelt. She owes Lu and Talion for saving her life, and she’s grateful. But she just wants to forget about daemons.

For the past two years, she’s ignored Lu's telepathic calls. Several months ago, Lu stopped trying and Lisa was relieved. Until now.

Lu! I need help!

No answer. Maybe the connection between them has withered, thanks to her.

Lu! I'm with Steeples, he kidnapped me.

Steeples turns onto a narrower road. The flat fields give way to rolling meadows and stands of leafless trees, their branches clawing at the iron-gray sky, bird nests bulging from them like tumors. The SUV rolls across a rusted bridge that looks a hundred years old.

You do keep getting kidnapped. This is—what—the third time? Steeples flashes a wolfish grin, showing off those corroded capped teeth. Only this time Lu isn’t here to save you.

She tells herself it’s a coincidence, that he isn’t tuning in on her thoughts. What do you really want?

I told you. Your story. Your whole story. And you'll give it to me before we're done.

The road widens into a clearing and ends at a low metal gate with a sign: CLOSED UNTIL SPRING. Steeples stops the Edge. Don’t move. He slides out and circles to the passenger side, keeping the gun trained on Lisa. Now get out.

She gets out.

Give me your phone.

I didn't bring it.

He uses his left hand to pat down her pockets and then pluck the canvas purse from her shoulder. He dumps the contents on the ground.

Lisa squats and picks up her wallet and a ballpoint pen. She leaves an almost empty pack of Kleenex, a couple of receipts, a shopping list, and a cough drop covered with fuzz. Steeples returns the purse. She drops the wallet and pen into it and stands. I told you.

Pick up those receipts and the paper with your writing on it.

She gathers the muddy slips of paper and stuffs them in her pocket.

Now you can shoot me or whatever.

Willard Steeples giggles. Leave your purse in the car. I'm not going to kill you, scout's honor.

She imagines him as a scrawny Boy Scout that the others picked on. She doubts he has any honor.

Go around the gate post, he says.

She squeezes between the post and the thorny branches of a bush. Steeples follows. She hopes the thorns will catch on his parka, but he carefully avoids them. They make a turn and Lake Seville spreads in front of them, lapping the pebbly shoreline and reflecting the gloomy sky. The wind blows harder and colder over the water. Ahead of them, a green prefab cabin sits on a slope overlooking a boat ramp.

Is that where we're going?

He waves her forward. Stay in front of me.

As they walk along the shoreline, she concentrates on bridging the thousand miles between her and Lu with a strong and simple message. Help me help me help me. She half-heartedly thinks of running for the trees. Who knows, he might be a crappy shot. She keeps plodding toward the cabin.

Every nerve in her body screams for Vicodin. She stopped using almost three years ago and—with the exception of one slip—she’s stayed clean. She feels okay most of the time. But now, with the gun nudging her spine, time falls away and she’s raw again.

I have codeine, Steeples says. You can have some when we get to the cabin.

From behind her he can't see whatever pain her face might be betraying. She reaches out to him with her thoughts. What's the deal? Can you read my mind? Nothing comes back, but she senses an empty tunnel like the one where she and Lu used to communicate.

Beyond the lake the distant treeline clings like gray lint to the water's edge. No sign of human life. What are you on? she says. Not just codeine.

What do you think I'm on?

You look like a tweaker. Or maybe coke.

Would you like some?

No. And I don't want your fucking pills either.

He chuckles. You might change your mind.

Her stomach drops.

They climb a dirt path to the cabin. The window beside the door is broken, the glass removed from its frame. Steeples must have scouted the location and busted in. He opens the unlocked door. After you, Sugar Pie.

She enters the dim, musty space. Freezing wind from the lake howls through the broken window. The cabin is one room. A bed sags beneath a ratty quilt. A couch and two chairs huddle around a blackened fireplace. Steeples prods her toward the couch with the gun barrel.

I'm cold, she says. Can I get that quilt?

Have a seat. I'll bring it to you.

The odor of mold wafts up from the cushion where she sits. He wedges the gun into the waistband of his jeans, raising Lisa’s hopes. With luck he’ll shoot his dick off. He fetches the quilt and covers her from the neck down, tucking its edges beneath her thighs, pinning her arms. There. Nice and toasty. The damp quilt leaches the warmth from her. She pulls it loose.

Steeples plops into a wooden rocking chair. He scoops his phone from his pocket and stabs his finger several times at the screen. The chair creaks as he leans forward and places the phone on the low table between them. Okay, let's start with Grifford Riley. Tell me about him.

Lisa will never forget the psychopathic cop who almost killed her, but she keeps her face blank.

"You know, I wanted an 'after' picture of you for Professor of Death, he says. Your bitch mother wouldn't give me one, but now I can take one for this book. The main focus is Riley, but I’ll revisit your ordeal at the hands of Rad Sanders, too. People love that shit. I mean the parallels are dramatic. Twice you're kidnapped and horribly assaulted. Twice you’re rescued by Lu, a mousy little girl in glasses. We're talking best-seller, guaranteed."

When Rad was finished with Lisa, her face had resembled raw meat. Steeples, the piece of shit, wanted to display that ugliness to the world. Anything to make money.

So, what's the title gonna be?

"I was thinking Born Victim: The Unfortunate Life of Lisa Duncan. But my editor isn't crazy about it."

Me neither.

Back to Riley. I need the whole truth, the untold story. He followed you to Park City and then grabbed you and drove to a motel outside Laramie. That's where things get mysterious. Lu rescued you. How'd she manage that?

He went for cigarettes.

Bullshit. Only one place near the motel was open. A gas station. The clerk doesn't remember Riley, but he remembers Lu buying snacks and bottled water.

That was later, after she got me out of there.

It doesn't make sense, her stopping a couple miles from the motel when she knew Riley would be coming after you both.

Ask her.

She won't talk to me. He shoots her a reproachful look as though Lu's silence is her fault. Let's talk about the stolen Ferrari you abandoned in Park City. At least that’s your story. How come no one saw it there and the cops never found it? Doesn’t sound like the kind of car you overlook. Steeples grins as if he hears her nerves shrieking. Sure you don't want a Vicodin?

She has no name for the wrongness in him, a hunger that brushes past her on its hunt for the food it really wants. I can't tell you anything you don’t already know. Please. Take me back into town.

Lu ambushed Riley while he was on top of Lisa, shoved him into the narrow space between bed and wall, and stabbed him over and over with a sharp piece of metal. The hulking police detective broke Lu's arm, but she blinded him and pulverized his testicles. Lisa's breath snags as she remembers the viciousness of the attack. Lu was possessed by Black Claw, a daemon. But still.

All at once he leers. What's she up to?

Lu? I don't know, we don't talk.

You're telling me they broke the connection?

Who’s they? Her heartbeat speeds, pumping up her panic, and her head feels large and insubstantial, a membrane about to disintegrate. What connection?

He stares at Lisa as though deciphering her secrets. Don’t tell me the bitch let Talion cut you loose. He breaks into a stuttering laugh—heh-heh-heh-heh-heh—a crowing voice that no longer belongs to him. A daemonic voice. You're dead, the daemon says in a childish singsong. It stands and draws the pistol.

Her heart trips ahead of the frozen moment. She springs from the couch and darts sideways, holding up the moldy quilt like a shield. The daemon fires the gun and the world goes silent. The quilt is burning. She drops it and runs blindly. A bullet splinters the doorframe as she yanks the door open. On the porch a woman knocks her aside with the shotgun she’s gripping in both hands. Lisa stumbles a few steps before falling. Her arm and shoulder hit the frozen dirt with a jolt that snaps her teeth together. More gunfire erupts inside the cabin. The muffled pops seem miles away to Lisa’s stunned ears. She crawls down the path until shock overtakes her and she lies still on the lakeshore, tasting blood from her bitten tongue. The world blurs.

Someone grabs her arm and pulls her over and up onto her butt. Stand, the woman with the shotgun orders her. Lisa struggles to her feet. The woman wears maroon yoga pants and an orange hunting jacket. Her face, puffy and creased, reddened by the cold, looks vaguely familiar—someone glimpsed in the supermarket or the thrift store on the Square. Her eyes gleam like dark ice, inhuman. Why did you go with the journalist? Even the Flame is not reckless enough to kill you in a public place. Half-deaf from the gun blasts, Lisa realizes the woman is speaking in her mind. Not the woman but the daemon inside her.

Who’s the Flame?

The daemon heads back toward the cabin, its stride hampered by the woman’s stubby legs. It wears her body like ill-fitting clothes. Lisa hurries to catch up. What's happening? Is Lu in trouble?

The seer makes her own trouble.

Inside the cabin, Steeples' body sprawls behind the overturned rocking chair, the face and chest like raw chuck. The stink hits her and sourness floods her mouth.

Do not vomit. Speaking aloud now, the daemon stoops and picks up Steeples’ gun. Tell me what you touched.

Just that quilt.

Bring it. And the phone.

Lisa grabs the phone from the table and checks the screen. It’s recording us.

I will destroy it.

The recording could’ve been uploaded to the Cloud.

The daemon gives her a razor-thin smile. Perhaps you’re not altogether useless.

Thanks. I guess. She hands over the phone. Why did you save me?

Talion commanded it. I would have preferred the Flame destroy you.

Careful not to look again at Steeples' body, Lisa follows the daemon out of the cabin and down the dirt path. She clutches the phone in one hand and drags the singed quilt with the other. The daemon points to the boat ramp. Go to the end and toss the quilt and phone in the lake.

The lake’s too shallow there, Lisa says. The cops will find the phone. And the quilt’s probably gonna wash ashore.

It makes no difference. The daemon stands on the path, hands on hips and elbows spread wide. The water will destroy any trace of you.

The cops might still find a hair or fingerprint in the cabin or rental car. Why don't you just burn down the cabin?

A fire draws too much attention. Do as I say.

Lisa tosses the evidence in the water and returns to the path. Now what?

I will drive you to your car.

They hike along the lake, backtracking to the road where Steeples left his rented SUV. Water laps at the shore and their shoes crunch against the pebbles. Icy wind whistles in Lisa's ears and makes them ache. At least her hearing has come back. She wonders if Lu received her telepathic call for help and asked Talion to send this daemon, or if Talion was watching from the start. Why was the daemon inside Steeples after me?

The reasons do not concern you. Her rescuer’s harsh speech sounds strange coming from the rural Midwestern woman cradling a shotgun. She looks like a nice lady who probably goes to church on Sunday and spoils her grandchildren with cookies.

What's gonna happen to the woman you're possessing? Will she remember any of this?

The daemon fixes its empty eyes on Lisa. You are a parasite. Were it not for the seer's pleas on your behalf, you would have been destroyed.

Lisa feels herself contract like a turtle withdrawing into its shell. Only she has no shell. She’s at the mercy of this monster. She wipes her nose with her sleeve and trembles as they trudge along the lakeshore.

The daemon opens the door of a battered blue Toyota pickup parked beside the Ford Edge.

My stuff, Lisa says. It’s in Steeple’s car.

Get in the truck. The daemon batters the Edge’s window with the shotgun stock until it punches through the safety glass. It reaches through the hole to unlock the door and then retrieves Lisa's purse and the bag holding her drugstore purchases.

According to the clock on the dash, Lisa has been gone three hours. Way too long for a run to the pharmacy. She needs an excuse—a flat tire, an old friend who asked her for coffee, a spur-of-the-moment drive along country roads. The drive, she decides. Mom will yell at her for making them worry, but the other bogus excuses could be too easily checked.

When they enter Seville, she crouches out of sight and digs for her keys. Of course she finds them with no problem now that she’s not in desperate peril. The daemon stops in the drugstore parking lot and waits, silent.

Goodbye, Lisa says. And thanks.

Get out.

By the time she reaches her old Civic, the daemon is pulling onto the highway, headed back toward the lake. The possessed woman probably lives somewhere out that way. Lisa hopes she’ll be okay.

She clutches the wheel for several minutes, drawing slow, deliberate breaths the way the biofeedback guy in rehab taught her. The odor of mold clings to her like guilt.

2: No Angel

I’m stationed at a table at the entrance to Luxie’s boutique, folding angora sweaters into neat piles according to color and size. Luxie’s sells the kind of clothes you wear for a year, push to the back of your closet, and eventually try to sell online. This particular sweater is trending right now. People love the cotton-candy pastels: gaudy blues, pinks, yellows, greens. The angora slides through my hands like silk, itching a little, reminding me that angora fibers are torn from the skin of living rabbits. Their screams echo and die inside me. Terrible regret floods my heart, as if I was the one who tortured those bunnies.

I can’t afford this kind of sensitivity. It gives the daemons a way inside my head. Eyes open, I transport myself to the shallows of a mountain lake—silent except for the cool waves lapping my bare legs, dark except for stars reflected on inky water. My center. My anchor. I summon the words Montez taught me:

I contain the stillness …

Lu! Sharon, the manager, cuts through my vision with her nasal voice. Wake up.

I go back to folding sweaters. At the rear of the store, my coworker Mindy moves between the clearance racks, gathering items for a customer in the dressing room. A resentful scowl cramps her face. We work mostly on commission and earn next to nothing from the clearance racks.

I check the clock above the counter. Twenty-two minutes to closing. I might get out of here on time and make it to Debbie’s by six o’clock. Debbie, my adoptive mother, babysits my four-year-old son.

A woman comes in. Luxie’s is located in an outdoor mall, an impractical idea in Salt Lake’s climate, and she wants to escape the cold for a minute. She’s in her late twenties, a few pounds overweight. I touch her mind. Though she has no intention of buying anything, she likes the clothes. Her anxious gaze jumps from wool-blend pants to denim jeans and jackets to black-and-pink velvet dresses. Her ski parka is expensive, bought on sale. Her purse is a mainstream brand, nice but not designer. Her leather booties are well made. She can afford Luxie’s but feels like she doesn’t belong here. She hunches her shoulders as if to make herself small. Her insecurity opens her to me.

I calibrate my smile a few degrees above patronizing and several degrees below haughty. The kind of smile that slices into you without pain and makes you bleed. It’s cruel but I have to eat. Something I can help you find?

N-no. Just looking.

Before she ducks out the door, I hold up a sweater in a blue called Summer Sky. You’d look amazing in this, I say in a careless tone.

Her face ignites with panic. She wants to flee but knows that ignoring me would be rude. I don't wear that kind of thing.

Maybe you should.

Ravaged by the wind, her hair strings to her shoulders in hanks, but its sandy blond is pretty. Pink roses bloom on her cheeks. The sweater would look good on her. She has the complexion for it.

I find a Summer Sky sweater in her size and hold it up. The last blue one in large. You could at least try it on.

She wants to say, No, that’s okay, but my mind infiltrates hers, coaxing her to take the sweater. Kathy—that’s her name—strokes the angora. It’s so soft.

She doesn’t hear the rabbits screaming.

I lead her back to the dressing rooms. On the way I grab a pair of the wool blend pants in gray, size 12.

No, she says.

They’re just to try on with the sweater. The boot-cut pants flatter almost everyone. They’ll make her look sleek in the sweater.

I lead her to a dressing room in back. Just call if you need me. I give her a warmer smile than before, a reminder that she can buy my acceptance, and leave her with the clothes.

As I leave the dressing rooms, I pass Mindy. She’s loaded down with a green rayon dress, black sweatpants, a black sweatshirt bedazzled with the motto WHATEVER MOVES YOU, and ugly plaid leggings that should be burned.

Oops, sorry. I step aside. She glowers at me anyway, roiling with jealousy and resentment. The customer trying on full-price items should have been hers. But if she’d been working in front, Kathy would have escaped out the door.

I linger in back, close enough to hear Kathy if she wants something. I can read her thoughts from anywhere in the store, but I want to behave like a normal person as much as possible.

Mindy sidles up to me. I’m so sick of running back and forth. The old bitch isn’t going to buy anything.

She might. No way to tell what she’s thinking. I reach out to Mindy’s customer, whose eyes itch with unshed tears as she faces the mirror.

Nothing fits her. Her body’s got this weird shape. Verging on anorexia, Mindy looks good in clothes, but the dullness of her skin shows even through makeup.

I move farther away from the dressing rooms.