The Demon's Apprentice (31 page)

“Chance?” Dr. C said gently, suddenly at my side. “Are you okay?”

Collins came up beside me, his face drawn tight with pain.

“You were right about me, Dr. C,” I whispered. “Dulka turned me into a weapon.”

Collins reached down and picked up the pistol, then wiped it off with his sleeve. He hefted it and gave me long, searching look before he spoke. “Corwin, get the kid outta here before my backup gets here. I got this.” He grimaced as he pulled his shirt free of the Kevlar vest that had saved him, then went to King.

I let Dr. C lead me up the steps, still numb from what I’d just done. Shade and the pack were staring down at me from the edge of the arena, and Lucas and Wanda were peeking up over the edge. What did they think of me now?

“Hey, kid,” Collins called from the bottom. I turned to look at him. “I owe you, big time.”

It took me a moment to find my voice. “No. You don’t.”

Epilogue

~ You can’t judge someone for killing a person. It’s how they react afterward where you see their true character. ~ Thaddeus Bonewitz, Right Hand of Death

              I’d killed a man. How was I supposed to end that day? What kind of person did that make me? My thoughts circled as Shade and I huddled together in the camp’s beat-up chapel, watching the world deal with what I’d done. Further down the hill, we could see the flashing blue and red lights of police cars and ambulances. Dr. C had left with Lucas and Wanda, and the rest of the pack had scattered into the night. Collins was probably lying through his teeth to cover for me with the cops, and my friends had to avoid me so Dr. C could cover for me with the Conclave. I had no idea where Sinbad was, or even when he’d left.

I turned away from the window and walked across the open floor of the chapel. The black case I’d seen the other night was laying open on the ground, with a crumpled piece of paper on the ground next to it. I crouched next to it and picked up the paper. In the moonlight, I could see writing in a flowing, neat hand.

The contents have been relocated for security reasons. Sorry for the inconvenience,

                                                                                                  Sydney Chomsky, Wizard

A tarot card lay under the note, and my fingertips tingled as I flipped it over. The Page of Swords looked up at me with blade in hand. A grim smile spread across my face. Mr. Chomsky hadn’t died for nothing. In the end, he’d beaten King by being smarter. I folded the note and slipped it and the tarot card into my back pocket. Shade stepped in close and put her arms around me.

“King didn’t give you much of a choice, Chance,” she whispered in my ear. She snuggled up closer to me and I felt her lips brush my cheek. “You didn’t go in there intending to kill anyone.”

“Right. I had good intentions,” I said. “I know what the road to Hell is paved with. What I did tonight…was more of the same. I just wish I knew the way back. I don’t even know what that road to redemption looks like.”

She planted a long, slow kiss on me. After we came up for air, she stepped back and gave me a slow smile. Then, she reached down and pulled her shirt over her head, revealing a white satin bra and perfect skin that seemed to glow in the moonlight. With a smile, she reached behind her back for the bra clasp, and I heard the snap of it coming undone.

“Shade, what are you doing?”

She slipped one of the straps off her shoulder. Her eyes slid to me, and I could feel the heat in her gaze. “Saying thank you,” she whispered. She leaned in and kissed me.

Much to my monkey brain’s disappointment, I put my hand on her shoulder and pushed her back. Where she had been pressed against me, warmth was replaced with cold night air. “No, Shade.”

“Why? What’s wrong?” Confusion was plain in her voice. “Don’t you…want me?” Her tone dropped to a seductive purr.

“Hell, yeah! But right now, you think it’s something you owe me.” I slid the strap of her bra back onto her shoulder. She tilted her head to one side as I kissed her gently. “If you’re gonna be with me, it should be because you
want
to, not because you think you
have
to.”

For a long moment, she was silent, and I could feel her body trembling. “No one ever let me say ‘no’ before,” she finally said in a quavering voice. She leaned into me, and I felt hot tears on my skin through my borrowed t-shirt.

As she cried on my shoulder, I realized I
did
know what the road to redemption was paved with: hard choices. We stood there and held onto each other as the shadows made their slow way across the chapel floor, until her tears and silent sobs stopped. Without a word, she looked up at me and gave me a soft, slow kiss.

“Thank you, Chance,” she whispered. I felt my face get hot, and she turned away. She looked over her shoulder at me as she reached behind her back and refastened her bra. In one smooth motion, she bent down and scooped up her top and slipped it on, then headed for the door.

“They’re gone,” she said after a quick look down the hill. I followed her out, and she tossed her helmet to me, then straddled her bike and thumbed the starter.

She took an overgrown maintenance road out to the highway, and as we rode toward town, I found my thoughts going back to the note in the case, and all the things that meant. The Maxilla was still out there, somewhere…wherever Mr. Chomsky had hidden it. The Conclave would think it had been stolen, and Gedeon would think that the Conclave had tricked him. And I was the only person who knew that neither side had it. If it was as powerful and important as Dr. C had said it was, it didn’t take much to imagine how far either side would go if they thought it was still up for grabs.

I sighed and uttered a soft, but heartfelt, curse. All I’d wanted when I got away from Dulka was to have my own life. And when my Mom had walked through the door in the police station, I thought I would get to have something like a normal life.

Normal. Me. I rolled that thought around in my head for a few seconds and tossed it out as a lie. I was a fifteen-year-old warlock, a demon’s runaway slave, a fugitive from the wizard’s Conclave, and I had a man’s life-blood on my hands. I owed a demon lawyer a debt of honor. Oh, yeah: the girl I had the hots for was a werewolf. I barely shared the same
planet
as “normal.”

As we turned down my street, I remembered that I was very late, and my mom would be REALLY pissed. Shade left a gentle kiss on my cheek before she rode off, and I headed for the door, and the inevitable ass-chewing that awaited me. Compared to the last eight days, though, being grounded for a month was almost a blessing. I’d barely survived my first week of freedom, and I could hardly imagine what the next three years were going to be like. I had thought that when I escaped from the demon, my life would be easier. Now I knew that Hell had nothing on high school.

Dear Reader,

Thanks for picking up The Demon’s Apprentice. This book has always been close to my heart because it was my first completed novel. The Demon’s Apprentice was originally published by a small press in 2010, but I recently regained the rights to it. If this is your first time reading this, I hope you enjoyed your first foray into Chance’s world. It can be a dark place sometimes, but it’s never boring. Even I’m surprised by some of the things I find there.

Like any author, my success is in the hands of my readers, and I’m glad you’re along for the ride. I always appreciate honest reviews, and I’d love to hear what you thought of the book. Your feedback is vital to the process of my improvement as a storyteller, and I always want to write better books for you. You can leave a review here.

Chance will return in Page of Swords in February. I’m very excited to have this series out once more, and I hope you’ll join me once again as I return to New Essex and Chance’s adventures. Turn the page to see what awaits in Page of Swords!

Sincerely,

Ben Reeder

Page of Swords

Chapter 1

By eight on Friday night, my weekend was already dying an ugly death. My favorite moping place, the back booth at Dante's, gave me a great view of the dance floor and the stage. It was perfect for those nights when I showed up to Dante’s without Shade. For the fourth week in a row. Suicidal Jester seemed to hover over the crowd as they played one of their own songs, “Maddened Heart,” and Mike Destine was moaning the lyrics into the microphone:

Where are you now? In the middle of the dark,

In my mind's fevered eye, I see you laid down,

In grace pale and stark. My maddened heart watches over you,

And you can't know, you don't know to care, but I don't care!

His voice rose on the last word, and the lead guitar matched him as it launched into a screaming solo. In the crowd, I could see a familiar mane of flame red hair as I found Shade. She had her arms up in the air as her hips writhed like a snake, dancing with her eyes closed to a rhythm it seemed like only she could hear. Shiny black boots flowed up over her knees and clung to her thighs, leaving a few inches of pale white skin showing before a painted-on black leather miniskirt wrapped itself tight around her hips. The top of her skirt disappeared under a black satin corset that was laced up the back; the only color in the outfit came from criss-crossing lines of blood red ribbon cinching her into it. Even though she was dancing by herself, I knew she hadn't come alone, and that twisted the knife in my weekend a little more.

“Dude!” Lucas yelled from across the table. I could barely hear him over the music. “Maybe she brought him here for some kind of Pack business or something!”

He’d taken off his denim trenchcoat, showing off his black t-shirt that read, “I have epiphanies.” Strands of black hair brushed his eyebrows and the tops of his new glasses, narrow-lensed with half rims. He’d gotten titanium frames and high impact lenses after his old pair had been broken for the second time around Yule.

Beside him, Wanda was in a red top with black hearts all over it, wearing a red choker trimmed in black lace and red lace fingerless gloves that hugged her elbows. Her new pentacle, a silver star flanked by crescent moons, rode over her shirt. Her mom had given it to her when she’d started her year-and-a-day training as a Wiccan dedicant, and it never came off, no matter how much crap she caught about it at school. Below the table, she had on a red and black plaid skirt and red lace stockings that matched the gloves. One of her heavy wedge-heeled boots was on the seat beside me, black with red flames coming up off the soles.

“What kind of
business
is she doing in a
mini-skirt?”
I yelled back.

“But Chance, she's so into you!” Wanda said.

She tried to give me a reassuring smile as she brushed a few bright red strands of hair away from her cheek. The red framed her faltering smile and the rest of her hair, cut in a black line that ran just below her ears, swung as she nodded. Always the optimist, Wanda never thought Shade would date anyone else.

But my thoughts always went back to the last kiss Shade and I had shared at Imbolc last month. One of the problems with trying to date a werewolf is the danger of having your face eaten while you're making out, and that had come damn close to happening when we’d tried to move past kissing. But the memory of just kissing Shade made my lips tingle, and reminded me of what I couldn't have. She’d told me after that she needed an alpha. Something I wasn’t, and short of a werewolf bite, I never would be.

“She's here with another guy, and she's dressed to thrill. I'm pretty damn sure she's not here on business, and it looks like she really not that into me. So stop trying to cheer me up, okay? Besides, it's better this way.” I said the last quietly.

I tried to want her to be happy, but it hurt like all the Nine Hells just to see her. I wanted her to be happy with
me
, but that didn’t seem like it could happen. So, I figured the best thing to do was avoid her. Made it easier to keep my hands to myself that way. And, it made it easier for her to find what she needed.

“Yeah,” I lied to myself a little more. “It's better this way.” It was Friday . . . yay. I tried to let the music wash over me and forget everything else.

“Are you the guy who does magick?” a girl asked as I was losing myself in the music. She'd almost had to yell to make herself heard over the pulsing beat of the band.

I tried not to grimace and looked down from the stage show to look her over. She was kinda pretty, I guessed, but I could only see the right side of her face. The left side was covered with a curtain of brown hair streaked with black. Half of an oval face peered at me, the one visible brown eye giving me the same once over I was giving her. I figured she was fifteen, the same age as me, maybe sixteen, probably a sophomore.  A faded peace symbol was stretched across the front of her dark blue t-shirt, tight enough that I could see she had at least one piercing her parents weren't supposed to know about. Her dark gray hoodie hid most of the other side, so I couldn't tell if she had a matched set or not. A pair of tight black jeans rode low on her hips. All this girl lacked to make her a complete Emo chick was the dark eye make up. Her black-tipped fingernails tapped against the tab of her hoodie's zipper as she waited for me to answer.

“What?” I yelled back.

I gave Lucas and Wanda a quick glance across the table in our booth, and caught a nod from Lucas. He seemed to know the girl.

“You're Chance Fortunato, right?” she leaned forward. “You're the guy who does magick!”

The song ended just as she yelled it out, and people around us turned and stared at her while the rest of the crowd cheered. I gave her a glare as Dante's filled with sound. The girl pulled an empty chair up to the end of the table and sat down.

“Do I have a sign over my head that says 'I do magic tricks!' or something?” I asked as the band picked up with cover of Linkin Park's
Shadow of the Day
.

Nobody covered Linkin Park like Jester, and it was one of my favorite songs, which just pissed me off even more. More than the fact that she was right. I did know magick. Lots of it was black sorcery, but I was learning some new stuff. Her being right didn’t piss me off as much as the fact that she was yelling it out in public. I wasn't exactly on the Conclave's good side these days. They didn't care why I’d worked for a demon, just that I had. My demon master had called me his apprentice; I called me his slave. Guess who the guys in white robes believed? Go figure.

“My friend Robbie told me you broke a love spell some psycho bitch cast on him a couple of months ago. You gotta help me out.”

Her story fit, the name was right, and the time was pretty close. I leaned back in the seat and crossed my arms so I could favor her with a glare that should have peeled a couple of layers of skin off her face. As she matched my look, I remembered Dr. Corwyn telling me after the fact that I shouldn't have told the guy I'd broken the spell. It sucked when he was right, especially since that was most of the damned time. My weekend wasn't going to end well.

“And?”

“I need your help. I think . . . someone put a spell on my girlfriend.”