Double Down on Demons (Pandora's Pride Book 1) Read online

  “A nasty underworld spirit,” Purvis said. “I fought a few myself back in the day.”

  It was hard to tell what ‘back in the day’ meant to the werewolf. He wasn’t immortal like Ingemar and Emil, but some werewolves could live a long time before showing signs of age.

  “And they’re really made of iron? Nothing apparitional about that.” I flavored my meat with a generous portion of salt, which resulted in a subtle snarl from the vampire.

  “How do you know your food needs more salt if you haven’t tasted it yet?” Ingemar asked.

  “Because food always needs more salt,” I said.

  “So you always over salt your food?” the vampire asked.

  “Why did you decide to attack him?” Emil asked.

  “Because he claimed I over salted my food.” Although I kept my gaze on Emil, I sensed the vampire’s good-natured glare. For an ancient vampire, he had a ready sense of humor.

  “Callie,” Abra prompted. She reminded me of an impatient teacher that desperately wanted you to get the right answer so that she could feel a surge of pride on your behalf.

  “He was tossing around very heavy slot machines, so I judged him to be a threat. Where I come from, you eliminate threats as quickly as possible. Kill or be killed and all that fun stuff.”

  “And where do you come from?” Emil asked.

  I sat in silence for a prolonged moment. I felt like I was giving too much away too soon. I didn’t want to show my hand, as the players here would say.

  “Out west,” I said.

  The fae smiled. “How vague and unhelpful.”

  I leaned back in my seat. “Look, if you’re trying to take the measure of me, don’t bother. I’m only here to find out who’s responsible for my father’s death. As soon as I have that information, I’ll be on my merry way.”

  “Funny, you don’t look much like an elf,” Ingemar said.

  “And you don’t look much like an investigative mastermind, yet here we are.” I leaned forward and speared a chunk of meat. I could be annoyed and still devour my food. No shame in that.

  “I watched the security footage of your brief encounter,” Purvis said.

  I swallowed my mouthful. “That sounds way sexier than it should.”

  The werewolf didn’t smile. “Are you always like this?”

  “I had very few friends growing up.” I attacked the roasted potatoes with vigor. Carbs were my weakness.

  Abra observed me with curiosity. “Would you say your father was overprotective?”

  I nearly spit out my potatoes. “That’s putting it mildly. To be fair, we lived alone in the mountains. We had to be careful. If eight-year-old me wandered off, I could’ve easily been torn apart by a passing feral vampire.” I flicked a glance at Ingemar. “No offense.”

  “As I am far from feral, none taken.”

  Purvis disguised a laugh as a cough.

  “What are your abilities, Callie?” Emil asked. “Ingemar says you’re a mage.”

  “Yes, like my father.”

  “And your mother?” Abra asked.

  “Human.”

  Ingemar stabbed a fork into one of his perfect squares. “Your strength and speed were impressive for a mage.”

  “I thought the same,” Purvis said.

  “It’s one of the reasons I contacted you,” the vampire said, looking at Abra.

  “Yes, a good decision,” Abra said. “As it happens, Callie, we’re currently down an agent and could use an extra pair of capable hands. How would you like to return to our headquarters with us? We’d like to assess your abilities to see whether you’d make a good candidate for our organization.”

  I fell back against my chair. “All because I kicked the cyclops in the gonads?”

  “An Abaasy weighs six hundred pounds,” Emil pointed out. “And you hurt him. You can see it on the security footage.”

  “You’re what? Five feet, maybe eight inches? A hundred and thirty pounds soaking wet?” Purvis asked.

  “Are you taking my stats, Purv?”

  The werewolf stuffed a forkful of meat into his mouth. “Purvis,” he said.

  “Perhaps you used magic?” Abra asked.

  I stared at my plate. “No.” I’d always been strong because I had to be. My dad said it was a result of growing up in the mountains and fending for ourselves. Building campsites, hunting, and hiking every day. Our training exercises. He said he grew stronger the moment he left the East Coast.

  “Only the strong survive in a place like the mountains, I imagine,” Ingemar said.

  “It helps.” I washed down the potatoes with water.

  “You have experience fighting,” Purvis said, more of a statement than a question.

  “I have experience surviving,” I corrected him.

  “Even better,” Purvis said. “That means it’s instinctual.” He looked at Abra. “She could be a temporary replacement for Evadne. There’s a lot going on right now. We can’t afford to be shorthanded.”

  “On that, we’re in agreement,” Abra replied.

  “Anything I should be aware of?” the vampire asked. Apparently, he was on a need-to-know basis.

  “Not at present.” Abra set down her fork. “A lovely meal, as always. Thank you for inviting us, Ingemar.”

  “You’re quite welcome,” the vampire said. “I trust my instincts weren’t misguided.”

  “Not at all,” the witch said. “This could work out quite well for everyone.”

  I looked sideways at Ingemar. “I thought you wanted me to work for you.”

  “Don’t let him fool you,” the witch said. “A favor for us is a favor for him in the long run. It all evens out in the end.”

  “Tell me more about this Pride,” I said. “I’m not going to say yes to anything without knowing a hell of a lot more.”

  Emil guzzled down his wine. “The full name of our organization is Pandora’s Pride,” the fae said.

  Abra wiped her thin lips with a linen napkin. “And we can do much better than tell you about it,” she said. “We can show you.”

  Chapter Five

  Pandora’s Pride headquarters was located only a few blocks from the restaurant in the supposedly abandoned towering casino that faced the bay. Abra placed her hand flat on a sealed metal door and the panel slid smoothly aside to let us pass. She crossed the small entryway and stepped onto a tall escalator that spanned several floors. I was too busy ogling the inside to notice Purvis motioning for me to go next. He finally maneuvered in front of me, standing backward on the escalator with a broad smile.

  “Welcome to Pandora’s Pride.”

  “This place used to be a casino, huh?”

  Purvis followed my gaze to the enormous light fixture that dangled from the high ceiling. Even to my amateur eyes, it looked like a pre-Plague holdover. “Once upon a time,” he said.

  It felt strange to suddenly spend so much time indoors. When winters were particularly bad in the mountains, my dad and I would seek refuge in a lodge and binge television shows and movies. Some of my favorite childhood memories involved snuggling together to watch a show and overdosing on popcorn. For me, popcorn had been a luxury item. Basically, anything that wasn’t hunted or roasted over a campfire was considered a luxury item.

  As I eased off the escalator and entered the lobby, I marveled at the difference between the gloomy, downtrodden outside and the classy inside. The gleaming white and silver lobby actually hurt my eyes until they adjusted to the shine. The interior reminded of pictures I’d seen of space stations, not that any country had a space program anymore. The humans destroyed their rockets at the start of the Plague because they feared the demons and monsters spreading throughout the universe like the virus they appeared to be.

  “Looks like you blew your budget on the interior,” I said.

  “We glamour the exterior to keep visitors away,” Abra said.

  “What about the homeless or criminal elements? Don’t they try to break in, thinking that it’s unoc
cupied?”

  “No,” she said simply and kept walking.

  We swept past the unmanned front desk and continued to a bank of elevators. As we approached, the doors to the nearest car opened and we filed inside.

  “So this place is basically a spy network?” I asked.

  “Spies?” Abra pulled a face. “No. Certainly not.”

  I squinted at Emil. “Is ‘spy’ some kind of insult?” I thought spies were supposed to be cool.

  “Hold off on your questions for now,” Emil said. “Abra dislikes talking in an elevator.” The hint of a smirk followed his statement.

  The witch glared at him. “These elevators are extremely fast. There’s no need to use up oxygen for the minute it takes to change floors.”

  On cue, the doors opened and she continued her purposeful strides toward an open doorway. I entered the room sandwiched between Emil and Purvis and spotted two others already seated at a large, circular table. They stood in greeting at the sight of us. The angel was tall with white wings tucked against his back and a thick head of golden hair. He wore a houndstooth jacket and a collared shirt that would’ve been more suitable on a librarian or someone with a penchant for fireside chats and hot cocoa. The fanged woman beside him…Badass didn’t begin to describe her. The vampire looked like she’d stoke your fire, steal your tiny marshmallows, and then burn your house to the ground for funsies. Thick lashes. Heavy liquid liner. Eyelids painted in bold shades of turquoise and purple. Her brown skin glowed with cool, silver undertones beneath a shimmering silver halter top that showed off her toned shoulders. She wore her long hair in a combination of black and brown twists.

  “Calandra Wendell, I’d like you to meet the two other members of our management team,” Abra said. “Doran and Natasha.”

  “Have a seat,” Doran said and pulled out a chair for me. “Would you like anything to eat or drink?” His tone was as kind as his houndstooth jacket suggested he’d be.

  “I’m stuffed from dinner, thanks.” I dropped into the swivel chair. “There are five of you?”

  “On the management team, yes,” Emil said.

  “And what is it that you manage?” I asked.

  Doran fixed his kind eyes on me. They were a hazy blue color with flecks of gold around the iris. “I’m told that you’re a mage with a fierce kick and excellent aim.”

  “Sounds about right.”

  “And what do they teach mages about the Plague these days?” he asked. “You look too young to have been alive at the start.”

  “I’m twenty-five.” I thought about the conversations I’d had with my father over the years and those I’d overheard between others. “Centuries ago, the gods sealed off the worst of the worst in a pocket dimension. Thirty years ago, they escaped and hundreds of deadly demons and other monsters invaded our world. It became a literal Hell on earth. They spread like locusts and forced supernaturals who’d previously lived in the shadows to step up and try to fight back, which triggered the humans’ Awakening.”

  “Don’t forget the rank and file demons that saw an opportunity and came up from the underworld to join the party,” Natasha said. “They’re easier to kill, but they cost us time and resources we can’t afford.”

  “We call those nuisance demons,” Emil added.

  Doran’s wings ruffled slightly and I wondered whether he found the conversation distressing as someone who lived through it. “With the major deities long gone, supernaturals like us are all that’s left to fight them.”

  “Our organization was created to track down the monsters and demons that emerged during the Plague and eliminate the threat one by one,” Natasha said.

  “By ‘eliminate,’ you mean you kill them,” I said.

  “Sometimes death is necessary, yes.” Abra’s dispassionate tone made me curious as to how many times she’d killed another living creature and how many times it had pained her to do so. “We don’t have the ability to reseal the pocket dimension, even if we could successfully capture each creature that escaped.”

  “The more powerful ones are incredibly difficult to kill,” Emil said.

  Natasha’s dramatic eyes blazed with anger. “Not for lack of trying either.”

  And here I was only concerned with feral beasts for the past twenty-five years. I mean, I knew there were worse threats beyond our mountain borders, but I didn’t realize how dire the situation truly was. No wonder Atlantica City looked as shoddy as it did, even with vampire protection.

  “If there’s a disease on the rise, we look to see whether its origin is natural or supernatural,” Emil said.

  “Right now we have a team hunting a demon in Russia that’s been spreading a pox,” Natasha said. “The world can develop a vaccine, quarantine people, the works—but if we don’t eliminate the source, those efforts are in vain. We’ll track this demon until we’ve exhausted every agent in our arsenal if we have to.”

  A memory stirred. “What kind of pox?”

  “One we haven’t seen in large numbers before,” Abra said. “We think the demon’s been in hibernation until recently. It produces welts that makes it appear that the victim’s been beaten.”

  “That sounds awful.” And if the reality was anything like what I’d glimpsed in my nightmare, I knew exactly how awful it really was.

  “When the Plague began, the world was in absolute chaos,” Doran said. “A comet may as well have hit the earth.”

  Natasha’s face hardened at the memory. “The world was on fire with no way of extinguishing the flames and we’ve been working to stamp it out ever since.”

  “It wasn’t all bad though, right? My father told me that the Plague had the unintended consequence of uniting everyone.”

  “I don’t know that the humans would agree,” Abra said. “They basically lost the only world they knew.”

  “I’m not talking about the Awakening. I’m talking about the supernatural factions banding together.” He’d told me that prior to the Plague, that the fae kept only to themselves and that vampires and werewolves had been deadly enemies. Packs would hunt down vampire nests for the pure joy of ripping them apart and vice versa. “According to him, an organization like this would never have existed, with all the different species working side by side, let alone out in the open in full view of humans.”

  Abra clasped her hands in front of her. “Quite true. There was a lot of distrust between species, especially in the beginning, but we knew the only way to defeat the new threat was to pull together and pool our resources.”

  “And how’s that working out for you?” I asked. It sounded as though they were still struggling, despite their fancy headquarters.

  “Every day is another step forward,” Doran said. “There have been setbacks along the way, of course.” His gaze shifted briefly to Abra and back to me. “But we persevere.”

  “This group has become like family,” Purvis said. “And, believe me, I never thought I’d say that about anybody outside my pack.”

  “Do you even have a pack anymore?” I asked. Packs were few and far between where I lived, at least in the traditional sense. They tended to rely as much on outsiders as the rest of us, a natural consequence of the Plague.

  Purvis clapped Doran’s back between his white wings. “This is my pack now.”

  “Is this the only base you have?” I asked.

  “We have satellite offices around the world,” Abra said. “This is home though.”

  I thought about snippets of conversations about world affairs I’d heard over the years, from travelers we escorted and bars we frequented. “What else do the demons do aside from spread disease?”

  Purvis didn’t hesitate. “War, famine, mass murder. Think of a horrible event that impacts hundreds and thousands and there’s a good chance there’s a demon or other monster from the Plague behind it.”

  No wonder my father was so determined to train me from an early age. He knew what was out there waiting for me.

  “I hate to be the one to break th
e news, but it sounds like they’ve been winning.” Silence blanketed the room and I sensed that I’d hit a nerve.

  Natasha’s nostrils flared. “You have no idea the lengths we’ve gone to…”

  Abra cut her off. “Miss Wendell is quite correct. We have been losing this war since it began, which is why we’d like to cultivate all the talent we can find.”

  “Why me?”

  “You displayed the type of skill and bravery that we’re desperately in need of at the moment,” Doran said. “You see, we’re currently down an agent and could use more talent to fill the gap.”

  “We’ll need to asses you and make certain that you’re as qualified as we think,” Emil said. “We take risks, but we’re not irresponsible.”

  “There’s a particular threat we’ve been tracking and we anticipate a breakthrough any day now.” The witch leaned forward with a hard stare worthy of a vampire. “When that happens, we’d like to be ready with a full team.”

  I started to weigh the risks and quickly realized that I didn’t care. This organization had resources I couldn’t gain access to on my own. It would be worth whatever danger I encountered to find my father’s killer.

  “I’ll work for you on one condition.” They fell silent, seemingly eager to hear my hard bargain. “I’ll stick around until your current threat has been…eliminated and then I’m heading back to the mountains where I belong.”

  “And in exchange?” Abra prompted.

  “I want you to help me find the one responsible for ordering a hit on my father. I know the type of demon hired as the assassin and I have a piece of evidence from the crime scene that might help. With your extensive network and fancy headquarters, I expect it will be a cakewalk for you.”

  Purvis was the first to speak. “Some boxes are best left sealed shut. Are you certain you want to open this one?”

  It seemed a strange thing to say.

  Doran silenced his colleague with a look. “What Purvis means is that perhaps your father has a past that he purposefully never revealed to you and he would be upset to know that you’d discovered his dirty little secret.”

  “If that dirty little secret leads me to his killer, then I’m willing to risk his ashes being upset with me.” I folded my arms across my chest to punctuate my declaration. “My dad believed that dead was dead. That when he died, I wasn’t to go in search of him like some modern-day Orpheus. He wanted me to live my life.”