Demon Master (Demonsense series Book 2) (44 page)

“Okay, I guess this is it. Let’s go,” Bree told Kevin. As they approached Westlake Center, they could see some people clutching signs hurrying away, frightened looks on their faces.
 

 
“Those are the smart ones,” Kevin said, voice tight with repressed tension.
 
Bree’s nerves ratcheted up another notch. It all sounded so logical. Just get in, interrupt the violence, and get out. But she knew now, from experience, that it probably wouldn’t be that easy. She linked arms with Kevin, seeking some sense of courage, and the look he gave her when she did told her he was rather hoping to get courage from her as well. There were already a lot of police in riot gear, transparent plastic shields of some kind held in front of them, helmets on their heads. The ones Bree saw looked tense.
 
There were a lot of people with signs, declaring things like, “Due process is an American right!” “No curfew!” and “We are not a Fascist State!” There were also some counter protesters, their signs more along the lines of “Law and Order now!” and “We support our police officers!” It was clearly not a purely peaceful protest at this point, but neither did things look or feel fully out of control to Bree. She could see that some people were in each other’s faces, shouting and angry, and there was some chanting of political slogans, but so far, no overt violence that she could see.
 

But the closer she got, the more her Demonsense throbbed through her. There were possessed here, definitely a lot of possessed. She tried to pinpoint their location, and she was able to identify a few. She pointed them out to Kevin as they slowly and cautiously made their way around the outer edges of the crowd.

Bree should have been reassured by the lack of overt violence so far, but she wasn’t. The crowd felt to her like a big, grumbling, sleepy bear, ready to leap into snarling action if disturbed. With so many possessed, things wouldn’t stay calm for long. She found that she longed for Daniel. She wanted his confidence, his battle readiness beside her. And just as much, she wished she had Gelsenim on board, as much as it chagrined her to admit it. She’d never imagined she’d think such a thought in her life, that she actually wanted a demon possession.
 

She and Kevin slowly made a complete circuit of the outside edges of the crowd, continuing to take note of those Bree thought were possessed, particularly those she read as powered. “There are probably more powered that I’m not able to sense,” Bree told Kevin as the passed their starting point at the west side of the plaza and continued on around again. “My Demonsense has more range than my Reader sense.” She had to lean into him and talk into his ear as the crowd noises were getting louder. Kevin only nodded in reply. She could feel a sparkling sense of barely leased Warder power all around him.
 
He was poised to throw up a ward at a moment’s notice.
 

Bree wished that whatever bad thing was going to happen would get started already. Kevin was going to wear himself out holding himself ready like that, and her fear was growing with their watchful inaction. She was beginning to regret the coffee she’d downed. The caffeine buzz just seemed to be adding to an overall sense of nervousness. If this continued on much longer, she knew her courage would desert her completely.
 

Quite suddenly, a monster stab of adrenaline went straight into her heart, lighting up her body with an electric fight or flight response, and it took a few moments for her brain to catch up with the cause. There, ahead and to her right, she saw the crisp profile of a tall woman, long, curly dark hair pulled back into a ponytail. Was it? Could it be? “Kevin,” she hissed, “over there, to the right. Is that Franchesca Gambrini?”

Kevin’s head swiveled as he tried to see where Bree was pointing. He stopped abruptly as he caught sight of her. “Holy shit, that’s her,” he confirmed. Kevin had known Franchesca as long as he’d known Daniel. Back when they were all in school together, they had, in a sense, been rivals for Daniel’s affection. Kevin had had a world-class crush on Daniel, and Franchesca was Daniel’s girlfriend. She’d also alienated Kevin by torturing Daniel with her need to constantly prove to herself that Daniel loved her. She would flirt with others to get a rise out of Daniel, would pick fights in order get to the passionate reconciliation. She’d left Daniel several times before the final break up, when she’d moved away from Massachusetts to join the New York Keltoi clan her mother had been a part of. Bree had heard the whole story, from both Kevin and Daniel, and had witnessed for herself the hostile dynamic between Franchesca and Kevin, not to mention the more twisted one between Franchesca and Daniel, last fall.
 

Bree realized with shame that she was afraid of Franchesca. She’d bested the demon burned harpy last year with Daniel’s and Gelsenim’s help, but it had been a very near thing. Franchesca was a high power Caster, Reader and Demon Master, and she was frigging crazy.
 

She was clearly trying to blend in with the crowd. She’d forsaken her usual East coast, urban glamour for a more casual look of black jeans and a lamb’s wool lined green corduroy coat. Dressing down took nothing away from her beauty, Bree noted with huge annoyance. She appeared to be alone.

Kevin dragged Bree back a few steps, making sure there was a group of people between Franchesca’s line of sight and them. “This is not a good sign,” Kevin was saying. “If she’s here, there’s a chance the L.A. Keltoi have sent reinforcements.”

“Which probably means a whole hell of a lot of demons will be called,” Bree replied grimly.

“Not to mention what Franchesca can do on her own with Casting. She’s a nasty fighter.”

“As I have reason to know,” Bree confirmed, glancing around nervously.

“We should inform one of the Keepers.”

“Agreed. But I’m afraid to lose sight of her. If we go looking for a Keeper, she might move.”
 

Kevin rubbed his nose in frustration. Then he straightened his glasses and his shoulders. “Yeah, but I don’t think it would be good if she saw us, either. She'd probably go ballistic. We can’t stay right on top of her like this. How about we stay in this general area, but out of her sight, and keep an eye out for any passing Keeper.”
 

“We could also grab any of the other powered we see and send them after a Keeper.”

“Good idea.”
 

Now, Bree reflected, she was glad Daniel wasn’t here. Franchesca really got to Daniel, in ways Bree could understand but resented.
 

Of course, Daniel also got to Franchesca. He’d come close a couple of times to convincing his ex to leave the Keltoi, but in Bree’s opinion, the woman was too far gone in Demon Master instability to be salvageable. Of course, maybe she wanted to believe that. Her gut reaction to Franchesca’s presence was, unfortunately, pretty revealing of where her feelings for Daniel stood. She wanted Franchesca gone, out of town, away from Daniel. There was a fierce chant going in the back of her mind.
He’s mine, you can’t have him.
 

Bree rolled her shoulders, trying to rid herself of accumulated tension, then staggered against Kevin as someone was pushed into her.
Oh lord, here we go,
she had time to think before it happened again.
 

Kevin pulled her away from the two women who were engaged in a pushing match. As Bree shook herself out of her preoccupation with Franchesca and cast an eye over the crowd as a whole, she could see that some fights were starting to break out. The volume of the crowd noise went up along with it. She was torn between wanting to keep an eye on Franchesca and wanting to focus on her original assignment. If she was smart, she’d make sure Franchesca didn’t see her. The woman wanted Bree dead, and she had the powered chops to see it done, and quickly. Bree knew a moment’s intense temptation to call Gelsenim, but she squashed it. She and Kevin moved back a few more steps toward the crowd’s edge, still scanning for a Keeper to set on Franchesca as well as trying to pinpoint any trouble spots with which they might help.

As they moved further out of direct sight of Franchesca, anger overtook her fear. It really pissed her off to be running away from that woman. The surge of anger helped harden her toward action, which was a great help when she spotted a possessed young woman in the crowd knock down and straddle a young man, slapping him.
 

She signaled to Kevin, and they moved together towards the conflict. Bree gathered her will and base energy and formulated her easiest offensive spell, then flung it at the young woman. The woman, with magenta dyed hair in pigtails, paused in her attack as she listed to the side with dizziness. The young man underneath her managed to wiggle out from under her, swearing, “Bitch, what is wrong with you?”
 
To Bree’s relief, one of the young man’s friends grabbed him and pulled him away, preventing him from responding with further violence. The woman got to her feet, a confused look on her face. But as they watched, her expression twisted into one of rage.
 

“Uh oh,” Bree had time to say before the woman’s eyes fastened on Bree, and she charged. With a rush, Kevin threw up a heavy duty ward, and the woman smashed into it hard enough to knock her on her ass. Bree readied a freeze spell. It had thus far been hard for her to succeed at a full body freeze. She was fairly good at freezing particular body parts as it took less juice to do it. She opted to focus on legs in hopes of keeping the possessed woman out of action for a while. “Okay, drop it!” she shouted to Kevin.
 

Bree threw the spell at the woman with a discrete underhanded, softball pitching motion the minute Kevin’s ward dissolved, and she watched with satisfaction as the woman went down, then tried and failed to get back to her feet.
 

Kevin grabbed Bree’s arm and pulled her back to the outside edge of the crowd. His eyes were glittering with a mixture of tension and excitement. “That was good,” he told Bree. “That’s just the sort of quick strike I was thinking about. If you could do more of that freeze the legs spell on possessed, that should keep the damage they can do to a minimum.”
 

“I’m worried about people getting trampled if they can’t get up,” Bree admitted. She was scanning the crowd again for Franchesca.
 

“Damn, that’s a good point,” Kevin conceded. “How about if you save that for people who are being actively violent? In those cases, it could be the lesser of two evils.” As he spoke, Bree read the movement of the crowd. Much like her experience at Pioneer Square, she could perceive a pattern in the growing chaos, and a sharp, metallic feel of rage was building up in the energy field all around. Her Demonsense was telling her more demons were present now than had been at her first arrival.

 
She suddenly got why that might be. In order for the riot to seem natural, the Demon Masters had to call in demons gradually, had to build the tension over time. Well, it sure as hell was working. She spotted a nexus of demonic activity near at hand, and pulled Kevin in that direction. They started to get jostled as they wove their way into the crowd, and Kevin moved in front of her to protect her with his greater bulk. He kept hold of her hand, and she could feel through his touch how close to the surface his Warder magic remained. It reassured her.
 

They arrived at the focus of the trouble. There were two groups of protesters facing off, yelling at one another, and just as they arrived, one of the men shoved an opponent hard with his sign. There was a roar of outrage from the other side, and more shoving and pushing broke out. The possessed man, who was in a Mariner’s baseball cap and had the look of a friendly blue-collar guy from the corner tavern, gave Bree a very unfriendly look. Even at that distance, Bree could see the orange spark of the demon’s presence in the man’s eyes. This demon must be strong enough to perceive her as powered, and maybe even as an Exorcist.
 

The man’s focus on her was broken when someone threw a punch at him. Rather than looking shocked or upset at the impact, he looked gleeful as his head snapped back around after the punch, mouth bloody, smile fixed. He returned the blow with interest, and the man across from him reeled back into his buddies behind him. The possessed man immediately followed, aiming another punch. Bree quickly cast a freeze spell on his punching arm. He staggered a little as his muscles failed to respond to his half thrown jab. Immediately, he turned to face Bree.
 

She felt Kevin’s magic surging, and she shouted, “No, wait!” and cast another spell. She went for the legs again, and the possessed man toppled. Bree winced as someone tripped over him, then saw one of his companions reach down to try to pull the man to his feet.
 

Satisfied, she started backing away from the scene, but found her way blocked. Kevin was pressed in front of her, and another person close behind her. She was hemmed in on all sides now and was starting to feel claustrophobic. She could just make out more violent activity over Kevin’s shoulder. There was a full out fistfight going on. As the crowd around them shifted, a small opening emerged to her left, and she took it, grabbing for Kevin’s hand and weaseling through. She could feel the push/pull on Kevin through their grip as he tried to follow her through spaces too small for him. She heard him apologizing as they went.
 

Bree felt a growing sensation of frustration as the energy of the crowd continued to worsen. They were able to do so little. Sure, disabling the two possessed probably helped some, for a brief time at least. She couldn’t help but think how much more good she could be doing if she could simply order all the demons she encountered out. As they broke through again to the less dense outer part of the crowd, she remembered how well Gelsenim had been doing lately on masking his demonic energy signature. If he were able to keep it that muted, might she be able to utilize his help with fairly minimal risk of getting caught?