Demon Hunter (The Collegium Book 1) Read online

Her shoulders tensed despite herself. The frightening reality was that she didn’t know the source of her fear. Dread had become a constant companion, and it screamed at her when she stepped inside the Collegium. She couldn’t even blame the demon because she’d felt like this before answering Steve’s call of a demon on the loose.

  The elevator doors chimed open, allowing in a swirl of warm, perfumed air.

  Fay shifted from introspection to combat alertness. That scent, expensive and cloying, had always meant battle. She strode out, broadcasting confidence.

  “Ms. Olwen,” Nancy Yu said. It was a naming, not a greeting.

  Nancy was Richard’s secretary and mistress, and Fay was the child of his failed marriage. Fay’s mother had rejected everything Nancy had never been offered. But a three year old child doesn’t understand the reason for an adult’s hatred. A seven year old child learns to protect herself.

  As an adult, Fay fought back, with politeness. “Good morning, Nancy.” For all the emotion in her voice, she could have been addressing office furniture. If others saw that self-protective distancing as arrogance, let them. Nancy should never have taken out her anger on a child.

  Richard should have stopped the behavior for both their sakes.

  Fay paused and looked around. The outer office had been redecorated, again.

  It was Nancy’s lair, and designed to provide a suitable backdrop for her rigorously maintained beauty. Hints of peacock blue in the Persian carpet were picked up and repeated in an accent wall and in a large glass vase that sat on a low table. Fronds of exotic grass extended from it, head high, dead and dried. A bronze sun disk flared across the wall behind Nancy, its rays giving the impression that she wore a crown.

  Queen Bitch. Her own burst of bitterness shocked Fay. Nancy wasn’t worth such hate; wasn’t powerful enough for Fay to attack. Then again, there were forms of power other than magic.

  “Richard is expecting you.” Nancy’s cool voice accused Fay of sloppy time-keeping. Her scornful gaze scanned Fay’s travel-mussed blonde braid, the crumpled collar of her unbelted coat and the worn jeans beneath it with their faded spots where bleach had taken out blood stains. Apparently her sturdy boots were a final insult, because Nancy reared back in her seat. Her own feet were delicately clad in lethal high heels.

  The derogatory appraisal sourly amused Fay. “If I wore high heels, I’d be taller than Dad. He’d hate it.”

  Startled, Nancy met her eyes, and the two women in his life shared a unique moment of understanding: the President hid a dangerous insecurity.

  And why has it taken me this long to acknowledge it? Fay dropped her bag, letting the thump of it distract them both.

  “May I leave this, here?” When she looked at Nancy, they were back in their familiar roles of wary duelists.

  “If you must.” Nancy granted grudging permission for the scruffy bag to temporarily contaminate her elegant setting.

  Fay knocked and entered her father’s office.

  One step took her from a feminine domain to a masculine den. Her father’s office smelled of expensive cologne, leather and the ozone of strong magic. Richard believed in wards and spent most of his minor magic on them. He wasn’t a powerful mage, but had achieved his eminent position in the Collegium by relentless ambition. That drive for power disciplined his life—and had defined Fay’s.

  “Good morning, Dad.”

  “Do you have the demon?”

  The typical exchange provoked an unhappy smile from her. There she was observing the courtesies, while Richard made his demands. But perhaps he didn’t need to use careful politeness as a protection against others’ expectations and envy? His shield was arrogance.

  She fished the silver disk from her jeans pocket and stared at it as it lay in her palm. It felt light. “I nearly died for this.”

  “Problems?” Richard raised an interrogative eyebrow and leaned back. Now that he’d seen the amulet, he could adopt his usual pose of detachment. Fifty eight years old and still physically strong, he’d drilled a generation of guardians into respecting and fearing him.

  “It was the strongest demon, yet.” Fay sat, uninvited. She let the familiar routine of reporting steady her. “Steve was right. The whole village called the demon. I felt age and youth, not many men. A survivors’ village.” The sort of place that appeared and disappeared in a long-running civil war. The people ran from one atrocity, only to be caught in the next. These people had decided to stop running. “They must have been so scared.”

  Great pride could contemplate calling a demon. So could anger. But fear was the most desperate reason—and in the end, it always hurt worst.

  The demon summoned and bound by the villagers’ blood broke its binding and entered a new host, the warlord Leo. He was why Steve called her.

  People do evil things, but demons laugh at the atrocities. Once heard, demon laughter is never forgotten. Steve and Fay had fought a demon before and Steve had invited her back to do so again.

  They returned to the original village because it was marginally easier to exorcise a demon if you acted at the site of its release. The rupture in reality could be torn again to return the demon to hell. Fay had hoped it would also aid the demon’s transference and capture in the amulet.

  “We returned to the village and everyone was dead. Trees, huts, people, everything hacked down by machete. Something hadn’t wanted to waste bullets. Or it had wanted the greater bloodshed.”

  In the village of the dead, chickens pecked among the corpses. The jungle animals had stayed clear of the evil. Steve’s eyes had flared to yellow and his upper lip pulled back in a silent snarl, but he ruled his instincts and not vice versa. He’d prowled the perimeter, then entered.

  “The demon responded to my summoning, coming in the body of the warlord. We fought.” Magic against magic, until the demon closed with her, raking her body with unnatural claws.

  When she thought back, it must have required enormous self-control for Steve to stand out of the fight. He had trusted her and her judgment.

  “I won in the end.”

  The vicious wounds pulsed a moment in memory. She’d lain on the ground, too raw for touch, her breath bubbling as she called magic to heal the unnatural violence. Ants ran over the drying puddle of her blood. She met her father’s pale blue eyes and mentioned none of the fight or its aftermath.

  “The warlord died and I drove the demon into the amulet. It’s double-warded.” She looked down at the silver disc. It sat in her palm, warm with blood heat. “Do you want to call a researcher to come and claim it?”

  “Don’t you trust me with it?” The thin smile said Richard was pleased and risking a rare joke.

  Fay’s fingers closed about the disc. Her phantom wounds throbbed again. Here was the problem, the source and power of her disintegration. She just hadn’t wanted to see it. “No, I don’t trust you.”

  The challenge jerked him straight in his executive chair.

  “Fay.” Part protest, part scold. Richard eased back, gathering the power of his position. “If you’ve warded the amulet correctly my lesser,” he emphasized the word with acid. “My lesser power won’t matter. The demon will remain bound.”

  Once again, any blame was deflected and became Fay’s. She identified the ploy with weary clarity. Her greater power as a mage was Richard’s weapon in so many ways.

  She placed the silver disk on the mahogany desk. It gleamed against the polished surface.

  “You can have the amulet, Dad.” There was little relief in relinquishing the demon. “You know, the Collegium has always watched to see if I get special treatment, being your daughter. They’ve been watching for the wrong thing. When you can’t get me to do something because I’m a guardian, you ask me as your daughter, and it’s the same in reverse. The person being used, here, is me.”

  She stood. “I don’t trust you because I can’t.” And so she balanced on jagged glass. “You ask too much and you take too much. I don’t know why it’s taken me so long t
o see it.”

  Because I love you. Because I want you to love me.

  “I tried to tell you I’m burning out, but you gave me the spiel, all about service to the Collegium.” She could hear the echo of the cold words in the heavy air of the office.

  Her father’s voice in her memory, calm, measured and distant. “It’s battle fatigue, Fay. I know it feels like you can’t go any further. All powerful guardians go through this stage. Fieldwork is the answer. Aggression will channel your fear and anger. Fight through it and you’ll be tempered steel, pure warrior. Nothing will touch you.”

  “I gave you good advice,” he said now.

  “Did you? You gave me words and orders to hone me as a weapon. Another demon fight, and another. Harpies, rogue mages.” Her breath shuddered. The pain of betrayal was no less acute for being belatedly recognized. “You don’t care about my feelings, my empty life.”

  “I advised you to take Lewis Bennett as a partner. He shares the guardian life.”

  “And has a ruined marriage and burnt-out powers, but he’s loyal. My father, the pimp.”

  “That’s enough.” Richard roared to his feet.

  “Yes. It’s enough.” Her lungs were crushed with the ashes of her old life, the ruin of the world she’d been trained to serve. Once she opened her eyes and looked, it was all too much. Intolerable. She had bled agony for the Collegium, and for what? Her father’s ambition? “I resign.”

  “You can’t.”

  The simple, satisfied certainty in his voice shattered the last of Fay’s control. As President of the Collegium, Richard thought he owned her oath to it. He was wrong.

  Her misery translated into power. Raw magic tore through the room. It hunted down the oath ties and drilled loyalties that bound her to the Collegium. They ripped from her father’s grasp and incinerated.

  “I resign.” She met his glare. Collegium training had given her one gift: despite the wounds that bled and shivered inside her, she gave no physical sign. Training gave her the strength to walk out with dignity.

  “You’re no longer my daughter.” He followed her to shout it from his office door.

  Nancy stared, wide-eyed. The large glass vase lay in shards on the coffee table.

  Fay scooped up her bag and kept walking. Mouth set in a grim line, chin up, shoulders straight. Her boots sank in the deep carpet, then struck the wooden flooring of the corridor.

  Collegium staff, drawn by her storm of power, watched from office doorways. Fay ignored the elevator and clattered down the stairs. More staring eyes waited in the foyer. Some among them would have felt the snap of her ties of belonging. Any number would have heard Richard’s shout.

  And not one was a friend to offer sympathy or a farewell. Rage stirred because they had all used her power. She was the mage without limits on the magic she could call and control. Theodore Coomb’s bloodline had triumphed in her. Richard’s gamble in marrying Yolanthe, Theodore’s granddaughter, had paid off.

  Until now.

  She refused to play to the gallery. She ignored the curious stares and murmur of speculation that ran behind her. But the internal tremors were worsening. She would not fall apart in the Collegium.

  She hit the outer doors at a near run. Despite herself, she looked for Steve.

  “Stupid.” She’d made herself clear and what man would wade through rejection for her? She was a bad risk.

  “No.” She widened her eyes, defying the rare tears to fall. One spilled. “Hell.”

  She ran down the steps. Her apartment was close by, but it was a Collegium rental and the thought of staying there sent a shiver along her spine. She took it as a warning and instead plunged downtown. Her father’s revenge would be unpredictable. Without her, his position in the Collegium might be challenged. Despite his repudiation of their relationship, he’d send someone after her.

  Training made it instinctive to use the confusion of public transport to avoid pursuit. She moved carelessly through the subway crowd, her bag making her just another traveler and one uncertain of her direction. A pickpocket veered towards her, mistaking her for a tourist.

  She caught the teenager’s wrist and her fingers curved around unexpected fragility. She could break the thin bones without magic.

  He stared at her, frozen, as predator became prey.

  “How old are you?”

  “Fourteen.”

  God, it tore her heart.

  He used her momentary distraction to pull away. He ran through the crowd, the slap of his sneakers lost in the noise of a train’s arrival.

  Fay rubbed her eyes. So many kids out there, lost, homeless, victims in waiting. What would she have done if she hadn’t lost the kid? Bought him a meal? Given money? Walked on and forgotten him?

  She sighed, spine slumping, as she boarded a train. At least she had money, experience and the dubious advantage of adulthood. Whatever happened, she’d survive. But she and the boy had something in common: if they survived, they survived alone.

  By the time she reached one of the cramped, down-at-heels hotels that accepted cash and asked no questions, she was out on her feet. The bed had clean sheets and she crashed, letting the tiredness of the journey from Africa carry her beyond thought and into welcome darkness.

  She had found the source of her fear and it wore her father’s face.

  Chapter 3

  Fay stared at the ceiling. A crazed plaster crack ran across the left corner.

  You’re no longer my daughter.

  She needed—craved—sleep to restore the energy she’d lost in Africa, but the relentless clamor of New York rasped against her nerves like an enemy bombardment, growing louder as evening turned to night. And deeper, within her, was a vibrating rawness where she’d torn away her binding to the Collegium. She had been its creature all her life.

  Now she was her own.

  “I do not serve.”

  Panic spiked through her and she flung herself out of bed. Her isolation in the Collegium had been underpinned by the bedrock of duty. Without it she had nothing. No purpose, no direction, no structure to her life. Hell, she had no life.

  She couldn’t lie there any longer, trying to sleep. Instead, she stripped and showered, tilting her face to the sting of cold water, smelling the rust in it. She rinsed her hair and braided it wet, tightly confining the strands.

  The hollow feeling in her stomach could be ascribed to hunger and she welcomed the physical need. It was something she could deal with, something to get her out of the room and away from her thoughts. She laced her boots, checking the steel-sharp ironwood knife tucked in the ankle sheath.

  Her hand hesitated on the haft. But Collegium training held. Habit was strong when you felt vulnerable, so she faced the world armed.

  The hotel corridor smelled of bathroom cleaner and room deodorizer. The elevator stunk of cigarettes. Fay held her breath, exhaling as the elevator doors opened at the first floor. She took a deep breath of the cleaner air, itself heavy with city fumes.

  “Faith?” A small, blonde woman rose from the stained sofa in the hotel’s foyer.

  Blood pounded against Fay’s temples. Blackness sparked with lightning darkened the edge of her vision. She stopped, afraid she’d fall or vomit.

  The stranger rushed forward, hands out to help.

  Fay retreated. Her ungraceful stagger bumped her into a wall and she stayed there, letting its support steady her as the world reeled.

  “Faith, I’m sorry.” The woman’s hands gripped and twisted each other. “I didn’t think you’d recognize me. I thought Richard would have destroyed all the photos.”

  “He did.”

  Richard had a way of disowning his failures. You’re no longer my daughter.

  Fay looked into her mother’s face and couldn’t say how she recognized her. They looked nothing alike. Fay’s oval face was strong-boned, a match to her body, while the older woman was rounded, snub nosed and frankly plain. Only their tawny blonde hair suggested a likeness, and her mother’s w
as silvering

  Perhaps it was the tentative eagerness of the woman’s expression that had sparked Fay’s instincts. The fact that this stranger truly looked at her, as if Fay and not her magic, was important. As if there were no ulterior motives in this meeting.

  “But you know me?” Strain drew deep lines from the woman’s nose to her mouth. Her make up stood out clownish as the blood receded from her face and left her pale. “Richard would say blood called to blood. He was obsessed with bloodlines.”

  “Yes.” Fay had pieced together the story of her parents’ ill-fated marriage from chance-heard gossip and Nancy’s spite. She knew Richard’s obsession wasn’t with bloodlines. It was with power.

  Magic increased and dropped away in four generations. A strong grandmother had a weak daughter, a slightly stronger granddaughter and a powerful great-granddaughter. It didn’t always happen that way, but often enough to be a general rule.

  Arguably the inheritance effect protected the world from a magical family’s dictatorship.

  Richard Olwen married Yolanthe Cage because her grandparents had been powerful mages, founding and presiding over the Collegium. Richard’s ambition outstripped his powers, but he had the intelligence and arrogance to push beyond those limits. And what he couldn’t be, his child would achieve.

  Yolanthe was the weakest generation of her family, raising the odds that her child would be powerful. Richard gambled with fate and won. Fay was born with all the magic of her mother’s family and something all of her own.

  However, at Fay’s birth, Yolanthe discovered why Richard had married her. Perhaps if she hadn’t loved him, the betrayal would have been less. As it was, she ran. She would not grant him another child by her.

  But he kept Fay.

  “Why now?” The question burst from Fay. Her chest ached. She flattened her hands against the wall, ignoring the desk clerk’s interested stare. Much more pressure and she’d break apart. She had lived years without as much emotion as this one day held.

  “Because the warding against me broke a few hours ago. Suddenly, I could sense where you were. I could make contact. Faith, I came as soon as I could.”