Demon of Death Read online

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  There are lots of ways to fight eBook piracy, reporting the site even if you’re not the copyright holder is always a good option. If you want to help in the fight, Google it and you can see there are many ways.

  Soraya Devil is the Enchantress, one of the most powerful magics in the world… But she’s so much more than that, and everyone’s constantly attempting to unravel her past and secrets. She’s not worried though, as many have tried and never find out the truth.

  It’s safer for everyone that way.

  The owner of Paranormal Investigations—among other companies—she has her own answers to find. Though she’s continuously pulled in too many directions, she always answers the calls that make even her magic tingle in warning at the danger.

  When a sprite begins killing people in Chicago, she has to team up with SPU—Supernatural Police Unit—to figure out who summoned the demon and why before more die. While that’s enough of a challenge, the main hurdle is the team lead on the case who loathes all magics. But when he can’t seem to get past his hate and do his job, can Soraya make an ally from an enemy, or will the evil unleashed in the city she loves win the day?

  Note to the Reader:

  For those of you who don’t know my M/M books, I have a series called The Enchanter. One of the original ideas when I started that series was he would find a version of his soul in another dimension, sort of a comment on no matter how screwed up our families are, we’re not as alone as we feel. The plan was for Soraya to interact in that series, become a reoccurring ally… Until the CW started doing every friggin’ show with interdimensional buddies and just about every crossover there can be.

  I remember during a Supergirl commercial break walking over to the stack of outlining notebooks I have for when I need to get stuff out of my head and finding the one of The Enchanter and ripping out that outline. Instead of that plot, I veered way left and the ending of Venice happened.

  But that meant ignoring poor Soraya, and the idea of her hasn’t ever left me. Honestly, she’s been a bit disruptive now and again, demanding attention and risking some of the outlines I have for Seraphine later on or sounding too much like her at times. So after sitting down and outlining the paths with some more detail, I was confident everyone was on their own plotline and Soraya could get her own series.

  There is some crossover in this book with The Enchanter to set it up and honestly how the whole concept came about, but there won’t be any interdimensional travel. It’s more a shout out to Dorian who was the start of it all and again, that belief that we’re not alone, and maybe somewhere else far, far away is a version of our families where things go better like we deserve.

  There will be some crossover in spells or her attitude as… Well, that’s spoilers, so you’ll get it when you keep reading. I pretty much hate dream sequences where they go through this whole thing and then oh, it’s a dream and let’s do it all over again as reality but different, ha ha, fooled you. Yeah, I hate that. This is not like that where I just slapped Dorian in as the dream and ha ha, Soraya is the reality.

  No, it’s… Different, yeah, and I think seriously fun because I kept thinking how different I might have been if I was about a mile from the original path of me. So I hope this book and series give you pause like that because I had several moments where I sat back and thought “what were some of the defining moments that made me me?” And that’s not a bad thing to look at, in my opinion at least.

  And yes, it’s in Chicago. I know, I know, only Karma Bakery is not in Chicago, but honestly as much as I love that series, I wish I had put it there. Big cities are their own beasts, and I know Chicago. It’s my hometown and my first love. Boston is great and I have family there, but I spend so much time researching how life is there or specifics so I never offend any East Coaster that I work myself into a tizzy. So Chicago it is.

  I hope you all love Soraya as much as I do, and if you feel the need to call her a slut, go look in the mirror and call yourself a prude and stop judging women that way. It might not be your cup of tea, but to put labels on each other like that does nothing but tear us all down and show men it’s okay to do also. Which it’s not. It’s never okay.

  All my love,

  Erin

  1

  I snuggled down on my lush sofa and tapped the right charm in the line of them I kept on the end table as most people did their TV remotes. That sort of technology wasn’t needed when one had magic, plus this wasn’t something people could find on any channel or streaming service.

  Viewing into other dimensions was a bit more complicated than plugging in some cables. I doubted anyone else had figured out how or had the power to.

  “Hello, little brother,” I greeted when Dorian appeared on the projection I had set up to play on the massive theater style television. As much as technology made me leery, even I had to admit some of the marvels that had been developed for viewing any of the dimensions I kept watch on were much better this way than on the wall as I used to.

  I reached over and picked up my glass of wine, excitement thrumming through me as I watched him and his people line up for battle. It was more than that as there was a healthy dose of family pride.

  Though he wasn’t my brother. Technically he was me, or how my soul had been born in that dimension. Obviously we weren’t the same, as I was female and he was male, but the soul was the same. People tended to think of dimensions as they would other worlds, but the idea was vastly different and more complicated. I tended to explain it in terms of doppelgangers, as that was a well-known mythology.

  But, again, the truth was exceedingly more complicated.

  When stories are told in Hollywood or in books, it’s always some duplicate copy across dimensions, which is fun for entertainment but ridiculous when you bring in logic. How could the same person be born in the same way, the same everything when their universe and world were shifted? It wasn’t logical.

  Souls however were a different story. That was a matter of energy and fate, and they would not be the same but how a universe brought the energy to life. Meaning Dorian was the same energy as I was, our different universes having different forces and dominoes knocked over to have different, but strangely similar results in many ways.

  Just as the first shots were fired and the battle began in the never-ending war of good versus evil, I felt the familiar tingle travel up my spine. I paused the feed, swearing up a storm as I reached for my phone, it ringing the moment I touched it.

  “Night. Off,” I growled. “I have been waiting for this for months and months.”

  “I apologize, boss, but it’s a bad call and the one on duty is newer,” the vice president of my company and the closest thing I had to a friend, Helen informed me. “It also fits the parameters
of when you should be notified even if it wasn’t out of his league.”

  “Where?” I sighed, setting down my wine and getting to my feet.

  “It’s local. Millennium Park,” she muttered, probably reading over the initial report and notes she took calling in for help. “Chicago SPU is on the scene and asking for expedited everything—”

  “They always do,” I drawled, rolling my eyes. Any SPU—Supernatural Police Unit—always did, and Chicago was no different and had less patience than most. Every major police department had a SPU unit, as was federal law in the US and many other countries.

  And while they had been scrambling to figure it all out and get their shit together years ago, I had formed a well timed company specializing in supernatural crimes, investigations, and just about everything else that smart people would want. Granted, governments could be very stupid at times, but when the results were undeniable and helped keep the general public safe, they would go with the results.

  Even if our rates weren’t particularly cheap. We did however get the results worth them.

  “Who was assigned?” I asked as I flicked my wrist and changed my clothes, grabbing my bag from just off the entryway that I kept for when I was called in on cases.

  “Mitch.”

  “Got it. I’ll handle it.”

  “You always do, boss, you always do,” she chuckled as we hung up.

  I reached out with my power and felt where one of our newest investigators and supernatural experts, Mitch, was. I popped over to him, biting back a smile when he immediately hurried to me, dipping his head in respect.

  “Helen said you have need of me?”

  “Yes, please follow me,” he said, turning to lead me to the crime scene.

  I pulled out my ID and handed it to the officer guarding the perimeter. “I’m the Enchantress.”

  “I know who you are, Ms. Devil,” he replied, raising the police tape. “Thank you for coming so fast so I might have a chance not to freeze in this weather.”

  “You poor thing,” I cooed, leaning in and kissing his cheek, letting my power envelope him in a nice, warm cocoon when I did. I gave him a wink and followed after Mitch, hiding a flinch when I felt the power and evil surrounding the body. “It’s malevolent.”

  “Yes, very,” he agreed, shivering. “I’ve never felt this level of evil stain and in such a wide birth.”

  “You’re young,” I chuckled bitterly.

  “Why is she here?” someone growled from my right, and I swallowed a sigh.

  “This was supposed to be my night off,” I muttered under my breath before turning and meeting eyes full of hate. “Hello, Detective, so good to see you again. Are you in good health?”

  A soft growl slipped past the werewolf’s lips as his piercing blue eyes narrowed at me. “I knew you did something. It was you? You used your power on a police officer.”

  I gave him my most innocent expression as I blinked at him. “I would never. It is quite customary to ask about one’s health, especially when it’s still cold and flu season. I’m sorry my genuine concern for a colleague—”

  “I’m not colleagues with any of you. I’m a cop, not a fucking witch,” he snapped.

  I smirked at him. “Oh, that’s not the word you wanted to use, is it? And the term is enchanter or enchantress. Do you need me to spell it for you?” I cooled off when Mitch snorted at my sass. “The owner gets to be lippy, not the investigators.”

  “Of course,” he said, accepting my warning.

  I still enjoyed hearing Detective Remy Hunt, one of the unit leads and new transfer from New York, grumble and bitch about what I’d done to him. There was a lot of mystery about him being transferred and an exceptional amount of darkness in his aura, which made me not care about the rumors or have any desire to unravel his past.

  “A rash, the bitch gave me a rash after the last case she worked on,” he said with a growl, answering someone when they asked.

  To be more exact, I’d given him crabs. I’d gotten so fed up with his unprofessional attitude and very pointed comments about me, not even trying to hide he hated everyone with magic, I’d lost my temper and given him a nice case of crabs even if werewolves couldn’t get STDs.

  “Bad attitudes bring bad karma,” I sang, throwing fuel on his fire. Asshole. I stopped progressing towards the body when I felt the darkest energy. “You did not leave a clean trail.”

  “No, I used a bubble to protect myself,” Mitch said, giving me a worried look.

  I shoved down my annoyance and made a mental note to talk to his trainer. “When it’s any crime with the stain of evil, not simply the energy of evil certain acts of violence leave, but the stain of evil that is left by the presence of true evil, a bubble isn’t procedure. The bubble protects you but no one else and stains—as in laundry—can transfer. We protect all involved, not just ourselves.”

  “Yes, of course, I apologize.”

  And he also didn’t know how to do what was needed, I saw that in his head. “Feel my energy.” I called over to a few people and told them to move back and how far. Then I waited until Mitch was reading me and threw out my power, putting a magical container on the energy. Sort of like a pot lid to keep the heat and not lose moisture of what was cooking. In this instance, it was so the evil didn’t spread.

  “I understand,” Mitch confirmed when I glanced at him. “And now you build the pathway?”

  “Yes, good, you have at least read up on the subject. You have to think of what I just did as what a HAZMAT team would, and as they put in their point of entry with their decontamination chamber in it, so will we. But the area is never square—”

  “But circular as energy always ripples.”

  “Yes, good. If you think of cutting out a piece of pie as the visual, it helps. However, instead of taking the knife and slicing through the crust to then pick up the piece, you do not want to remove it. You are shoveling the snow of energy, pushing it to either side of the path but not letting it out or dispersing it.” I waited until he nodded and pushed the containment with my power, spreading the curtains in a way but also cleaning the ground and area.

  “It’s cumulative,” he muttered when I finished.

  “Yes, as there is more of the snow the further you shovel. It’s helpful to always have the right visual.” I snapped my attention to someone working with the SPU. “Do not walk there. It’s why I made the containment clearly visible.”

  The guy frowned. “We have to be able to get to the body.”

  I swallowed a nasty reply. “Of course you do, which is why we just made a safe path.”

  “Why is that needed?” Detective Hunt asked from right behind us, and I pushed aside my reaction, which amused him from the twitch of his lips when I glanced back at him.

  “What is my rule about crowding us? I believe I’ve been very clear in educating your ignorance about how bad things can go if you crowd us when we’re using power.”

  He raised an eyebrow at me. “He’s touching you.”

  “He’s reading my energy so I can teach him just as you teach your newer people.” I held up my hand to stop whatever snippy comeback was on his tongue. “You can ask me the list of questions you undoubtedly have, and I will answer as I did last time. But until I finish, back off, Detective. I need your hovering and energy not to be close to me while we’re working.”

  “What the fuck does that mean?” he growled.

  I huffed. “For as much as you clearly hate any magic wielders, you don’t know much about us.”

  He snorted. “Enough to know there’s a valid reason to not trust any of you.”

  “No, there is not. And your personal feelings aside, you interfere with the work we’re trying to do, so please back up your hate-filled, dark aura and let us do our jobs.”

  He blinked at me in shock at how loud I’d gotten and gave a nod before taking several steps away.

  I set my bag down behind me as I squatted next to the body, pulling back the sheet. No matter h
ow many dead bodies I’d seen over my centuries, I still felt a wave of grief at the loss of life, nature’s cry at the death of the life it had created. Especially when it was a violent death as this one had been, a large pool of blood under the torn apart body that I could see way too much of the inside of.

  “One of the keys for telling when there isn’t simply evil from the murder, but a truly evil being is the changing of auras,” I explained to Mitch. “You see the lingering aura of the soul that departed?”

  “Yes, it’s pretty clean, clear colors that are bright and not much darkness at all, but that’s changing.”

  “That’s the evil seeping. The soul—thankfully—has passed on, but the mark it left as we all do is being taken over by the lingering evil. That’s the difference between a stain and a mark.”

  “I understand.”

  “What else do you see?” I asked, biting back a smile when I saw in his mind that his answer was fairly sarcastic about all the blood and guts. “What do you see with the energy?”

  “Pain. A lot of pain,” he whispered. “This was done while alive.”

  “Yes. What else?” I gave him a bit, but when he didn’t answer, I pushed him like a bird would a baby out of the nest. “There is no other energy as knives or nonorganic items leave when used in violence.”

  “So shifter or vamp?”

  “No, vampires wouldn’t waste this much blood,” I reminded him. “Shifters are incapable of this level of evil unless they’ve spilled massive amounts of blood. And I do mean massive amounts, and not in war or for justice but pure evil.”

  “A malevolent spirit or ghost?”

  “Yes, a sprite,” I muttered, leaning in closer. “A very old one which is truly rare.”

  “So it was feeding?” he checked. He sighed when I nodded. “Then the kidneys will be missing.”

  “And why is that?” I asked as I stood back up, taking my bag with me.

  “The kidneys pull toxins from the body, and that is what evil is—toxins of energy.”