Demon 04 - Deja Demon Read Online Free PDF

he just shook his head. “ Now . Or I put a hole in that eye the size of California.”

    I heard a muffled word as the demon tried to respond from behind the ball I’d shoved in his mouth. “Dammit,” I muttered. Whatever secrets this demon had would go unspoken until I removed the gag. But at the moment, freeing his mouth meant letting go of his arms or moving the spike away from his eye. Neither a desirable option.

    So I punted. “Shut up and move,” I insisted. “Once you’re tied up all nice and cozy, you can talk all you want.”

    I shoved his wrists upward and felt the demon cringe in response to the pain that had to be shooting up his arms. Still, though, he didn’t move other than to kick out, sending a spray of gravel shooting forward in the same direction from which I heard a familiar squeal of alarm.

    Instinctively, I looked that way, then stiffened, terrorized by what I saw in the dim light of the moon— Allie , struggling against a demon who held her from behind, pinning her arms down at her sides. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, as the cold hand of fear caught me around the heart and squeezed.

     

Two

    Allie. I hesitated only a split second, but that was enough. The demon took the advantage, slamming its head back into my forehead, then dropping down. I dropped with it, then rolled clear, my concern no longer extracting information, but getting to my daughter. My demon, however, wasn’t letting me go to her. It grabbed my legs and pulled me back.

    I tucked in my legs and thrust out, managing to catch him in the gut as he was climbing to his feet. I glanced back over my shoulder, and the fear on Allie’s face—not to mention her useless attempts to break free—bolstered me.

    From my position on the ground, I propped myself up on one hand, kicked out a leg, and swung it into a crescent. I caught the demon midshin, sending him toppling. In seconds, I was on him, Timmy’s shovel at the ready.

    “Sorry, buddy,” I said as I plunged the plastic into his eye. “Better luck next time.”

    I turned to race back to Allie, pulling the demon’s knife out as I sprinted toward my daughter. The demon holding her didn’t appear to have a weapon, and for that I was grateful. But Allie had been training diligently for the last two months, and I knew that if the creature had managed to get her in a stranglehold, he’d not only caught her by surprise, he was pretty damn strong.

    He looked it, actually. Dressed like a ninja, he was clothed in black from head to foot. Even his face was covered, with slits only for his deep-set eyes, eerie in the weak moonlight.

    I considered my options as I ran, not even conscious of what I was doing. I wanted to tackle them both, knocking Allie free and leaving me alone to pummel the demon. Normally I’d need a backup plan, as demons tend not to leave themselves open for direct attacks. This beast, however, seemed willing to do exactly that.

    I kept expecting a change in his position. An arm moving to catch Allie around her neck. A knife displayed out of nowhere. Even a low voice sprouting some incoherent prophecy about swords and Hunters and the end of life as we know it.

    I got none of that. Just my daughter looking scared and the demon looking . . . well, looking blank.

    I lunged, then slammed the demon’s blade straight into his buddy’s eyeball, noting with some alarm how easily the blade went in, as if through nothing more substantial than pudding. With my other arm, I grabbed Allie by the shoulders and pulled her roughly out of the beast’s grasp. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” she said as she crouched to one side.

    I left the knife lodged in his eye, then leaped back, breathing hard and anticipating that little shimmer of demonic essence as the body sagged to the ground.

    Too bad for me it didn’t work that way.

    Instead, jamming a sharp piece of metal through its eye only seemed to piss the creature off, a conclusion I very cleverly reached