Stacia Kane - Demon Possessed

“Right.” The goosebumps on her arms refused to be soothed away, no matter how hard she rubbed. There was really no reason for her to be so nervous, none that she could see. Whatever the odd emptiness was, that blank sort of pressure she felt, it didn’t threaten. The brothers stood around her and Greyson, their poses confident and prepared; she didn’t think a moth would be able to get past them, much less anything else.

Malleus caught her looking around. “Don’t you fret none, m’lady. Nowt’ll ’appen wiv us around.”

“Yeh.”

Greyson knocked on the desk again. “What a rathole.”

She felt the clerk coming before she saw him, the stirring of thoughts and emotions in a back room.

Wait. How did she feel that? She wasn’t open. Wasn’t focusing. Usually in order to sense people in other rooms, she had to lower her shields a little. She’d had to earlier, when she felt Agent Reid and the wi—

No. That wasn’t what she’d felt; at least it hadn’t been what she thought she felt. She’d thought it was a demon. But why?

The clerk, a large man with dandruff dusting his cheap suit and the shiny look of someone who’d been sleeping rough, ambled out from behind a wall. “What do you need?”

“I believe you have a guest here by the name of Walther? Reverend Walther?”

“I can’t give out that information, man. Our guests are—”

Greyson leaned forward. Megan felt his power slide through the air. “I think you can,” he said softly. “Why not tell me his room number? That’s all I need. It’s not so much to ask, is it? No. Of course not. It’s the right thing to do, really. So why not?”

A moment of silence, Greyson’s power curling in the air. Megan shivered, and not just from the weight of it. That power was everything she felt in the hidden hours they spent together, alone, and her body responded. Couldn’t help but respond.

His free hand reached for her, stroked her arm. The touch whispered through her body; she felt it spread through his as well, but he didn’t look at her. He couldn’t, she knew. To break eye contact with the clerk would break the hold on him as well.

“Room three thirty-three,” the clerk said finally, in the slightly dreamy tone of someone asleep.

“Has he had any visitors this evening? Anyone ask for him?”

“A woman came, half an hour ago. The reverend came down and met her. They went back to his room.”

“Has she left?”

“Didn’t see her leave.”

“Thank you. You can go back to sleep now.”

The power snapped away as Greyson turned. They left the clerk, already shuffling off back behind his wall, and headed for the elevators.

Megan stopped halfway there. The emptiness was stronger there. She felt it like stepping into a cold draft. “Hold on.”

They stood outside a nondescript brown door. The thin plaque on the wall beside it informed them that this was the entrance to the Flower Ballroom.

“What is it?” He’d taken her hand as they walked away from the desk. Now he gave it a faint squeeze. “You look a little pale, bryaela . Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m just . . . it feels weird in here.”

He examined her for a second, his gaze sweeping over her face and resting on her eyes. “Want to go in?”

She didn’t, actually. But she didn’t want to admit that. She wasn’t scared, necessarily. It wasn’t fear making her heart beat a little faster. It was that emptiness, that sensation of nothing. She hadn’t felt that in a while. Or rather, she hadn’t felt that outside Ieuranlier Sorithell, a houseful of demons she couldn’t read.

She’d never felt it out in the real world, the human world.

So she nodded. Even as she did so, she was aware that they could be walking into a trap, but she did it anyway. “The room feels empty.”

He glanced up, nodded at the brothers. The secret sound of knives being drawn from pockets and sheaths filled the air around them before Maleficarum opened the door.

The room wasn’t empty.

What the hell?

How had she not been able to feel them? They were just people. Three hotel employees, two maids and what looked like a maintenance man, tidying the room. They glanced up when the door opened. Quick movements beside her were the brothers tucking their weapons behind their backs.

“C’n I help you?” The man plucked a screwdriver from his pocket. The brothers tensed around her, but he simply held it. Beside him were exposed wires and a wall sconce half dangling like an open seashell.

“We were looking for Reverend Walther,” Greyson said smoothly, as if he’d expected to find people in the room. People she hadn’t sensed. People she couldn’t read.

“He’s not here now.” One of the maids picked up a chair, started carrying it to the stacks against the wall. The room was set up as for a seminar of some kind, with a table at the far end and rows and rows of chairs lined up to observe it. About half the chairs appeared to be gone, waiting against the wall for the next day. Or so she assumed.

“Bless him,” the other maid said. “He must be just exhausted from what he did here earlier. You should have seen it. He was amazing.”

“He’s touched by the angels,” the maintenance man agreed.

“I’ve never seen anything so amazing.” The first maid turned around and headed back to the row of chairs. Her gold necklace caught the light and flashed at Megan before she bent again to grab another chair. “He truly has the power of Jesus behind him.”

“We’re lucky he’s here,” the maintenance man informed them.

“We’re all blessed by his presence,” said the second maid.

Megan and Greyson glanced at each other. His eyes were troubled; he cut them sideways, back at the chair-stacking maid, and raised his eyebrows.

Megan looked again but didn’t see anything. He shrugged. “Well, thank you. What time does the show start tomorrow?”

The maintenance man frowned. “It’s not a show. He’s saving lives.”

“Of course. What time does the life-saving start tomorrow?”

None of the room’s occupants—none of the human occupants—seemed to like that comment, but finally the first maid spoke. “Eleven. Eleven in the morning, and he won’t leave until everyone is clean.”

“Until they’re all free from the demon scourge,” added the other maid.

Malleus snickered.

Greyson’s lips twitched. “Thank you.”

They barely got the door closed behind them before the demons started giggling. Megan understood their amusement but couldn’t bring herself to share it. “Why couldn’t I feel them?”

Greyson stopped smiling. “Did you try while we were in the room? While they were speaking?”

“No, I—no. I don’t know why.”

He reached for the doorknob. “Do you want to try again?”

“Careful now, Lord Dante.” Malleus had not stopped smiling. He looked like the Joker. “There’s a demon scourge about, there is.”

Maleficarum slapped him on the back. “Aye, there is! Fink we oughter be scared? Nobody’s safe wif demons about.”

For once their humor didn’t go completely over Megan’s head, but for once she didn’t feel at all like laughing. The only people she’d ever failed to read had not been people at all. They’d been demons. But the three inside the Flower Ballroom had most certainly been human. Since Christmas and the consolidation of her powers, she’d been more easily able to tell the difference. Demons had a certain feel to them, a power signature that humans simply didn’t have.

Even as she thought it, though, something else occurred to her. No. There had been another human she couldn’t read. Not a witch either; witches were also difficult to read but had a certain feel to them.