A Demon's Duty (The Demon Guardian Trilogy Book 1) Read online

  A Demon’s Duty

  Katherine Kim

  A

  Demon’s Duty © 2016 Katherine Kim. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means without written permission from the publisher, except for brief quotations in a review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, or events is entirely coincidental.

  Follow me on Twitter @katherineukim

  Cover by Britomarte Van Horn

  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  To my parents, who raised me on words.

  CHAPTER ONE

  A dark figure stumbled over a chunk of debris as he hurried to the corner of the building. He caught his balance and leaned against the bricks as he surveyed the disaster in front of him. Yesterday morning this area had been a park, a place where families picnicked and played by the river in the cheerful city sunshine, joggers and dog walkers and cyclists passed each other in a long and wordless debate over right of way. One of the more popular green areas of the city, it was now dominated by the still form of a huge, monstrous thing piled on the turf in the deep darkness of night. His inhuman eyes skimmed the scene, noting several strange details. Oily black and brown skin slumped towards the ground showing vividly the marks of the battle that had destroyed the park. Other forms also lay scattered around, smaller versions of the great beast, some of them missing a wing or a limb or a head. The coldness of despair lay heavily on the scene as shadows dripped from the creatures’ wounds.

  Close to the remains of the monster, he saw two motionless human bodies near the figure of a woman. Still slim with youth, she rested on her hands and knees, trembling with exhaustion and shock. Her t-shirt was streaked with blood- hers, the creatures’, and her companions’- and she was clearly trying not to move her left arm much. Hopefully just broken and not worse, thought the dark man. From the scene before him she was lucky to be alive at all, the single visible injury was almost a relief to his mind, but there could be worse hidden by distance. He started forward, stepping out of the modest cover of the building.

  He called out as one of the smaller monsters rippled in movement behind her. “May!” She just sat back on her heels, staring sightlessly at the nearest body, tears streaming down her grimy face. The beastling shook itself like a dog and crouched, snarling, before shattering into tiny slivers of darkness. The man lowered his hand and frowned as the woman didn’t react, merely continued to cry.

  “Demon.”

  The dark man turned to find that he’d stopped beside one more body, this man alive enough to call out though his legs disappeared under part of what had once been a charming fountain much closer to the riverbank. He lay still, not bothering to wipe the filth off his own face, dust and blood staining his blonde hair dark grey and smudging across his shoulder to obscure the Mark of his duty where his shredded t-shirt no longer could.

  “Guardian.” The dark man frowned slightly, as if puzzled. “You seem to have fulfilled your role well today. I’m sure the priestess will thank you.” The guardian narrowed his eyes.

  “You know I only have a few more minutes at best. Those things have killed us.”

  “True.”

  “I saw what you did just now. I’ve seen a number of similar moments as well. It’s interesting how being so near death makes you see patterns that you would never recognize otherwise.” He tried to sigh, but winced with pain instead. “I won’t waste time. Do you plan to return to your clan? Regain your place there?”

  The demon laughed once, softly. “We both know that I have no clan and no place. Why spend your last moments trading foolish questions? Shouldn’t you be cursing my very existence instead, seeing what my kind have done to you?” He glanced over at the woman. “Shall I bring her? To say goodbye?”

  “No. I don’t want her to see me like this. I’d rather she remember me as my gloriously handsome self.” The guardian grinned weakly. “You have been a puzzle to me for years, you know. From our first meeting, you have done nothing but help us whenever we’ve crossed paths. Strange behavior from a High Demon, to say the least, but think I understand now.”

  The demon sighed and looked at the woman who still stared sightlessly at the scene in front of her. The creatures around her had been dissolving into shadows, and now even the huge form of the great beast was beginning to shrink. He idly wondered how the authorities would explain this away. This side of the world remained hidden from most people who thought of magic as something to be used for small everyday things, and the battle between the light and the dark as a fine fable learned in childhood but not the stuff of adult life. Gas line explosions were always a popular choice these days, or perhaps the conveniently generic terrorist plot. He heard, far in the distance, sirens start to sound.

  “You say you have no place,” the guardian recaptured his attention, “I believe I can give you one. With her. My own, in fact”

  The demon blinked and returned his gaze to the dying man, frowning again.

  “You have reached the delusional stage, I see. You recall that, clanless or not, relatively inoffensive or not, I am still a demon. Your enemy. Your prey.”

  “It has been a long time since I felt that darkness from you. I don’t actually recall ever sensing it, in fact. You at least are no kin to things like those beasts, and I don’t believe that you are our enemy, at least.” The guardian met the demon’s eyes. “She can’t be left alone. Please. Take my place, become her Guardian.” The demon’s eyes widened in surprise.

  “That ability is granted after long trial, by those that do not look kindly upon demons to put it mildly. And it is intrinsic to you; you can’t simply decide to pass the role on.” He crouched beside the dying man and reached out to brush his fingertips over the faintly glowing lines on the dying man’s left shoulder, the visible mark of his destiny as decided by powers greater than either of them. “Besides which, she will be cared for by your colleagues at the Temple. I am a demon. It is not my place.”

  “It is because you are a demon that I believe you can take it from me. She would be alone at the Temple, even surrounded by people. If this link is broken it could break her. Please.” The Guardian closed his eyes. “I don’t have much time left. I know that my power is entwined with my soul. I know that you have the power to consume that, make it your own. Clanless or not, you are still a demon. My spirit will rest easy as long as she isn’t left alone. Even if it is in your stomach, or however it is that it works.” His voice was becoming softer, the sirens gaining strength.

  “I prefer sushi frankly, there are reasons I was driven out.” He crouched in the rubble beside the dying man. “Countless Guardians have been consumed by demons before, and I can’t think
of any acquiring their power. I’m sure I would have heard about that, even since my banishment.”

  “There’s a difference between having a thing stolen and giving it willingly and I have no doubt that I’m the first to make such an offer. Please, Michael. Try. I’m begging you.” The Guardian whispered raggedly. The demon glanced over at May just as the emergency team reached her. She responded mechanically to their questions and didn’t even blink as they decided she could be moved, and led her to the side of the field near their vehicles. There was nothing left of the creatures— not even the great beast— but some ash and a cold that froze the spirit rather than the flesh. The demon swore under his breath and nodded once.

  “Very well, James.” He turned back to the man on the ground. “Though she may never forgive me for this.” A ripple passed over his body like the heat shimmer off a road and the demon’s face no longer looked human in a way that was difficult to define in the grey of dawn. His features were too sharp somehow, his eyes black and cold and too large in his face. He reached a hand out to hover over the guardian’s chest. He closed his eyes, searching for a moment with other senses, then he lowered his hand, brushing past the bloody tatters of the James’ shirt and sinking in past cloth and flesh. The Guardian trembled.

  “Cold.” He breathed.

  “I’m sorry. I am being as gentle as I can.” Said the demon. “I believe I’ve almost... Now perhaps if…” The demon’s breath hissed through his teeth and he slowly withdrew his hand. “There. It’s done. You were right, though I’ll admit I didn’t expect it.” He said, rubbing his left shoulder where it burned.

  “Thank you, Demon. Brother.”

  “Rest well. You have more than earned it. I swear to you, I will watch over May from here on. You can watch over both of us from the afterlife.” He rested his hand on the dying man’s shoulder over the mark they now shared as the man relaxed into his death, then watched for another moment, his demon’s eyes noting the shimmer of a soul passing into its next journey. Well, enough of one to matter I hope. Human souls were remarkably resilient— even after death, he suspected. Michael let out the breath that he’d held, hoping he’d done the right thing. The irony of the whole situation was not lost on him, but he put it aside for later.

  “Over here! There’s more victims!” A shout behind him brought him back to the moment. His body rippling slightly as he turned to find a fireman approaching. “Sir, are you injured?”

  “No. I got here too late.”

  “The man behind you, I’ll call for help.”

  “No need for haste, there is nothing more you can do for him now. Is May injured badly?” He nodded towards the woman, wrapped in a blanket and being cleaned up by the medical team.

  “You know her? And this man?” The fireman asked.

  “Yes. His name is James Davis. One of the others will be his brother Pike, I don’t know the third man. Perhaps, if I’d been here sooner…” He let his voice trail off. “I’m sure you have many questions, and I will help you as much as I can, but I have sworn an oath and my first priority is May.” He stood and turned to step away from the body.

  “I’ll take you over. My condolences, sir.”

  “Michael. Michael Gilbert.” He rubbed his shoulder again as he approached May. She suddenly straightened and looked up.

  “James!” She started to reach out before confusion and shock flooded her eyes. “M… Michael? But I thought… I felt…”

  “There will be time to talk about everything later. Right now, I only ask that you trust me to take care of this. You’ve fought hard enough for one day.” He sat down and stretched an arm out, hesitating for a moment before wrapping it around her shoulders. Humans, he knew, often sought comfort in each other.

  “James is dead too, isn’t he?” She looked into his face, her hazel eyes full of questions, the shock and confusion in them complicating her grief. Michael just nodded. May buried her head in his shoulder and sobbed for her fallen friends. He sighed and rubbed her back, watching the emergency teams start to remove the Guardian’s bodies in the grey beginnings of dawn.

  CHAPTER TWO

  A small woman stood in the front of the crowd, just behind the barriers that had been hastily set up around the destroyed park. Huge gouges furrowed across the earth and trees, statues, and the large fountain had all been torn down violently and lay scattered across the scene like so much litter in the cheerful spring sunshine. She was livid, her petite frame almost vibrating with rage though she kept her face carefully blank, and the people near her carefully left her plenty of room to rage in solitude sensing somehow that it would be wise to keep their distance.

  That idiot, useless lump of a human servant. She couldn’t wait till she was done here, this scummy, backwards place was absolutely infested with humans. It made her skin crawl. And she had to hide herself amongst them so word didn’t somehow get back to the clan about what she was doing.

  Oh, she longed to return home, where she would be surrounded by her own kind. But home she would return to wasn’t the same as the one she had grown to adulthood in. Simply because her cretinous father had chosen to ally himself with the wrong people and with his actions and death had brought her so low that she’d scarcely known how to live. Her beautiful chambers taken from her! Her servants, gone! Her position of prestige, snatched from her grasp even as she was just reaching out for it! That imbecile Uruk had led her father to ruin and death and had managed to drag her into the gutter on their way down to hell. She almost smiled to remember the expression on his face when the Great Warlord himself delivered the killing blow. Death was no more than he deserved, the fool, and her father alongside him.

  But she was strong and clever, and she had a plan. She was going to go home triumphant when that plan matured to readiness, but she had to find Gibil first. It was absolutely vital. The hounds would be a good start, but she needed to prove her worth to the clan and delivering the lost lamb back to the bosom of the clan was the best way to secure her future. She couldn’t return without the whole of her plan completed, and that meant she needed to find him; and she desperately wanted to go home. Her true home. Back to where she belonged amongst those in the Court. Perhaps even made a general, herself! She could easily imagine taking command of an army, and then let some fool like her father try to cast her down again!

  She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, concentrating for a moment, trying to rein in her rage, focus it in a productive manner. If that moron of a human servant had done his job adequately her hounds wouldn’t have been hungry enough to break out of their kennel and now all that hard work was lost. She could feel the residue of her hounds; poor things dead before their time. She’d had such great hopes for this pack, and the matriarch had grown so beautifully! So much better than she could have hoped for! It almost felt like she was near to her own kind here. There was something, just a whisper of a familiar power. She had to focus, find it’s source.

  There was something significant there. Besides the hound’s ghosts, and the wisps from the humans’ battle spells. Something much more familiar to her, she just had to concentrate to separate it out. There! One single shining spell trace. And what else was that? The same energy but not in the battle, on the edge somewhere. Something else happened, and she followed the elusive whisper of power to the edge of the barricade, near some rubble from a building.

  A human soul had been touched here. Consumed!

  The woman almost crowed out loud. She had to stop herself from bouncing with it, native caution telling her that it was entirely possible for there to be more than just two demons in the human realm. This city was so near a gate, after all, and there was nothing really to stop her people from crossing over aside from complete indifference. The one who had been here could have come from anywhere.

  But no, that trace was unmistakably from her own clan, and powerful. It was him! It must have been him!

  She spun on her heel and hurried out of the crowd of gawkers and away from the battlef
ield. The loss of her pack was a severe disappointment, but perhaps it hadn’t been too bad a setback after all! The loss of the hounds still hurt, but there was some good to come from it in the end. She wove her way out of the crowd, ducking around shoulders and backpacks till she was free of the human mess and headed for her base. She still had one pack left, at the warehouse on the older end of town. She had found it wise to keep each pack entirely separate from the others, as the hounds had a tendency to be territorial. Her first experiments had ended because the two packs had scented each other. A shame, but she had learned.

  She dashed into the brick building and went first to check on her remaining hounds. She was so excited that she almost pranced into the open aisle down the center of the large space, thick brick walls lined with cages on one side, crates and supplies on the other.

  “How are they today?”

  “Hungry.” Answered the ratty man sorting through some papers on top of a crate. “They ate all the goats we had left. Gonna need more.”

  “Well get them then. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?” She smiled at him and he shivered.

  “Sure. I’ll go take care of it now.” He scuffed out of the warehouse as fast as he could while trying to look like he was running away. The hound nearest the woman started to growl, a low warning to her that if it were free she could be its next meal.

  “Behave.” She snarled back, flooding her voice with power. The hound backed deeper into its cage, but the growl still rumbled through the open room.

  The woman smiled again. Oh they were growing so well. And she had found him, before she had even looked! In this very town! Now she just had to snare him and her future would be set! She turned and climbed the creaky wooden stairs up to the balcony that ran along the end of the warehouse and stepped through the ill-hung door in the middle of the wall, and into her personal chamber.