AllFreeNovel
Share Us
We demons didn’t take our bonds lightly. When one of our own was summoned and held captive by some wretched human magician, we didn’t simply abandon them. Leon and I had sworn our bonds to each other centuries ago, and that bond had never broken. It never would. We may not have been lovers as we once were, but relationships that lasted through hundreds of years had to eb and flow like the tides.
“That fucking hurts,” Leon hissed, baring his sharp teeth as I cleaned the burns across his shoulders. I didn’t know why his summoner had punished him this time. Leon was volatile, and I couldn’t blame him for that. He’d always been unlucky, and getting summoned and kept captive by that wretched family — the Hadleighs — was just the latest in his string of terrible circumstances.
“You don’t need to clean it,” he grumbled. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It matters.” I shoved his head back down when he tried to raise it to stand up. Even his blond hair was burned. His summoner wielded brutality like a weapon, using pain to force obedience. “I know you’ll heal, Leon, but you can’t pretend this physical body doesn’t need to be cared for. You’ll heal faster if it’s clean.”
“Fucking Kent,” he muttered. “I swear I’ll kill him. I swear it.”
Kent Hadleigh — a man whom God had given knowledge, magic, and religion. A dangerous trifecta, leading to a man who fancied himself untouchable.
“What was it for this time?” I tossed the bloodied rag away. I returned to Abelaum so often that I’d gotten a house here, and it was useful even outside of giving Leon a place to recover. Humans were far more likely to trust you if you had a house, a car, the illusion of money and grandeur. As a soul hunter, gaining humans’ trust was part of my job.
“The girl,” Leon said. “They let her out today. Three years later, and Kent’s still furious she ever got away. Told me to find her...fuck him. Fuck his orders. She can run for all I care. He can break every bone in my body, but it won’t bring her back.” He chuckled bitterly.
The girl.I knew the story, only because Leon had told it to me: how Kent had his daughter lure the girl into the woods, how he and his followers had gathered in the old church, how they’d cut the girl before they’d thrown her down into the mine.
Their first sacrifice to their wicked God.
But the girl escaped and ran, and not even Leon had been able to catch her.
How the hell a fifteen-year-old mortal girl had managed to escape from Leon, I’d likely never know. How she’d endured her escape through the woods — bleeding, lost, and drugged — made no sense.
“Why did they lock her up?” I said. “Last I heard, the police were all over her case.”
“She tried to kill Victoria Hadleigh.” Leon leaned his head back on the couch, closing his golden eyes. “Kent has the cops under his thumb. Fucking humans. So goddamn easy to corrupt.” He sighed. “They locked the girl up in some hospital, called her delusional. I don’t think she was too upset about it. Kept her safe for the last three years. But now...she’s out on her own.” His voice was getting softer, weaker as sleep took over. Demons didn’t sleep often, but when we did, it was because it was desperately needed. “The God has her scent. It’ll keep hunting her. She’s in for one hell of a wild ride out there.” He yawned. “Going to rest my eyes. Just for a minute. Just a minute...”
He was out cold.
From cursed places come cursed humans. I was fascinated with them: humans who had been broken and survived; humans who had just turned outwrong. I liked to hunt oddities, souls with a heavy history and heavier scars. They fought the hardest, and that made it even sweeter when they eventually became mine.
This girl, the one who had escaped from Kent Hadleigh’s cult — she was an oddity, certainly. But if being outcast from society didn’t kill her, then the monsters hunting her certainly would. I could smell them lurking in the trees — the Eldbeasts. They’d be lured to the magic lingering around her, hungry for a taste.
She likely wouldn’t even survive the night.
Since Leon was resting, I wandered. There was too much energy in the air, a tingling at the back of my head that warned me things were shifting. The boundary between Earth, Hell, and all the numerous other realms, felt thin. That boundary waxed and waned like the moon, and some thought it would eventually disappear altogether, plunging reality into chaos.
I didn’t know if I believed all that, but I did believe there were other demons in Abelaum, demons that hadn’t been here only a few days ago. It was their scent I followed curiously through the night.
It led me to an old diner perched at the water’s edge, its blinking neon sign advertising that they were open 24/7. I lit up a joint in the parking lot, trying to get a good look inside through the windows. Three demons sat within, all apart from each other. Two I recognized as soul hunters, so I could only guess the third was the same. They knew I was there, shooting me wary glances out the window as they sipped their coffees and poked at plates of food they had no interest in eating.
What the hell were they here for?
As I smoked, the wind shifted. The skunky, herbaceous odor of weed was wafted away from me, replaced instead with a sharp scent of iron and rot. I turned toward the trees, staring back into the shadows. Deep in the darkness, a howl pierced the night; the kind of wretched animal scream that sounded almost human. I took a long drag, exhaling slowly. First demons, and now the beasts...all gathering here.
I wandered inside, and the other demons quickly put their heads down. I’d been around long enough to have made a name for myself, and I’d taken enough souls to have earned a reputation as a hunter not to be trifled with. These demons were young, inexperienced. Eager for their first soul, perhaps, but whose?
I went up to the counter, tapping it to get the nervous waiter’s attention. His eyes were wide, his fingers twitching. He didn’t know the guests gathered in his restaurant were all unearthly creatures, but his primal instinct knew and would be warning him of the danger.
“Coffee, no cream,” I said, and watched his hand shake as he filled a mug from the coffee pot. “Slow night?”
He shrugged. “Weird night. Something’s not right about it.” He glared out the windows as he handed me the cup. “Did you hear those howls out there? We don’t usually get wolves around here.”
“It wasn’t wolves,” I said. I could hear someone sprinting outside, distant but coming closer. Bad night to be out for a run. “Make sure you don’t walk to your car alone.”
“The hell is that supposed to mean?” he said. Suddenly his eyes widened even further, staring behind me. “What the fuck?”
The sprinting feet were coming closer, closer —
