Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 92996 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 465(@200wpm)___ 372(@250wpm)___ 310(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 92996 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 465(@200wpm)___ 372(@250wpm)___ 310(@300wpm)
“True. But there are also different kinds of demons, aren’t there? I mean, I’m thinking about them in a fire-and-brimstone, Judeo-Christian kind of way since that’s how I was raised, but that’s not the only kind there are.”
“Absolutely,” I agreed.
“All right, so at the moment to keep us from going down some random rabbit hole of identifying precisely what kind of demon we’re dealing with, let’s use the word demon as a catchall for any malevolent being wanting to do us harm.”
“Yes. Good. Let’s go with that,” I confirmed.
“Does your faith even have demons?” Lorne asked me.
I shook my head. “Not as a pagan…no. I was raised to revere nature, the seasons, and the wheel of the year.”
“But?” he asked, squinting at me, reading my face, having heard the pause in my voice.
“But my family are witches as well, so of course, all my life, I’ve heard about demons.”
“In what way?”
“In the way that you said, that there are malevolent beings that want to do humankind harm.”
“Okay,” Lorne said, exhaling sharply.
“What’s wrong?”
“To me, a demon is scarier than anything else.”
“Same,” Amanda chimed in.
“Because you were both raised with that fire-and-brimstone idea that you were talking about,” I reminded him. “To me a demon is an evil entity that has to be banished and so, as a guardian, it’s my job to figure out how.”
Lorne took hold of my hand. “Well, your friend the nymph said what came through was very powerful.”
“And that’s the part that concerns me,” I confessed, before turning to Amanda. “What made you think demon?”
“Evil, strong, and not anything like the fae, you said. It came through the rift and burned it up, so it’s not something that normally goes back and forth.”
It sounded quite logical when she laid out the facts like that.
“There’s nothing more evil than a demon,” Lorne told me. “You’re talking to an altar boy here. Demons I get.”
“I learn something new about you every day.”
“Yeah, well, you talk to dirt, so…” He shrugged. “Maybe don’t judge.”
“No judgment at all,” I assured him, smiling.
“Okay, so assuming that’s what it is,” Lorne began, “then the demon came through the rift and found Nott, and the first thing it did was kill her. Why?”
“What do you mean why? It was defending itself. Nott immediately attacked because she knew whatever it was, it wasn’t supposed to be on our plane, and since she was there to guard the passageway—it had to go.”
“Okay, so Nott attacked the demon, but you said it didn’t just kill her, that it pulled her apart. And Thero’s assumption was that it wanted information from her.”
“Yes.”
“What kind of information?” Amanda asked.
“We don’t know.”
“But we sort of do,” Lorne countered, “because again, the first thing the demon did when it walked into Osprey was kill Nott. And sure, she attacked it first, but still, the demon saw her as an immediate threat, which was correct, and so dispatched her.”
“But also,” I breathed out, “as they were fighting, the demon had to find out if there were any more like her, things that would hunt and kill it if possible.”
“Yes, so then she probably tried to scare it. I would have,” Lorne rasped. “It was her job to kill it and, barring that, to make it go away.”
“Right. At which point, knowing that the rift burned up behind it, knowing it couldn’t go back the way it came, she did the only thing she could and tried to frighten it into running.”
He nodded. “Yeah. Seems reasonable to me.”
“What does?” Amanda asked.
“That Nott told the demon there were witches in town that could kill it,” Lorne told her. “It’s really smart especially when you consider what she was probably going through at the moment. I mean right up to the end; she was trying to protect the people of this town.”
“It sounds like she was really smart and really brave,” Amanda sighed. “With her last bit of strength, she did the absolute best she could do. I wish you had a way of contacting her friend again so you could tell her that Nott was brave to the end. She didn’t confess anything.”
“This is all supposition on our part,” I stated, though it felt like the truth in my gut.
“No. Think about it logically. After killing Nott, the demon hid for a bit before checking around town for witches.”
“Then why attack Kathy?” Amanda asked. “She wasn’t magic.”
“But the demon didn’t know that,” Lorne explained to her. “All it knew was that there were signs that led it right to her on practically every bench in town.”
“And after it found her store, it was pretty easy to follow her home,” Amanda picked up the thread. “Then in the process of killing her, it figured out that she wasn’t magic at all and therefore a zero threat.”
“Yep.” Lorne shrugged. “And though the demon had to have been feeling pretty confident at that point—I mean, I would be—still, it had to be sure.”