Born Again: Demon Hunter Book 2 Read online

  Born Again

  Book 2

  Adam Dark

  Matthew Thrush

  Copyright © 2019 by Adam Dark & Matthew Thrush

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Your nightmares are only imaginary until you set them free…

  Contents

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  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

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  1

  Ben Robinson, Demon Hunter, was starting to think he’d jumped the gun with that self-proclaimed job title. Sure, the hunting part was easy enough. His friend Ian had been more than helpful with that, though Ben had known he would be. Most of that probably had to do with the fact that Ian, who really looked no different in the spirit realm than the twelve-year-old boy he’d been eleven years ago, now shared Ben’s mind and body. To their mutual benefit, of course. Ben shied away from the term possession, and they’d agreed not to use it. It was all just a matter of perspective.

  Ian had grown almost as powerful as the last demon they’d dealt with, having not lived and not died for thousands of years in the spirit realm while Ben slowly blossomed from adolescence into adulthood. Yeah, right. More like he’d been dropped into adulthood as a timed bomb without being able to see the countdown.

  So when this demon shimmering in front of them had first caught Ian’s attention, he was quick to draw Ben right back into the drama of dealing with another powerful force of the spirit realm in an attempt to save some innocent lives. For this, Ben had been and still was eternally grateful. Beyond the opportunity to prove himself and level-up his skills, after what Ian and Ben had been through—after what had been done to them—all Ben really wanted these days was to kick some serious demon ass. Great intentions right out of the gate. Easier said than done, apparently.

  The sheer volume of the endless shriek filling the second-floor apartment just at the edge of Back Bay made Ben grit his teeth. That wasn’t the demon. No, that was the spirit of the woman who had refused this real jerk of an evil presence her eternal companionship. Ben really didn’t have a clue what that kind of offer might have looked like, though as the marked, semi-hybrid living person who could enter the spirit realm at will—visitors, beware—he’d heard the woman’s detailed description of the horrendous things said demon threatened to do if she told it no. Which she had. And the scorned demon had made good on its promises.

  Ben preferred to think of a demon as it until the thing chose to take on a more human-like form, complete with gender-like qualities. Some of them did, like Ebra—the lesser demon Ben and his still-very-much-alive friend Peter had chosen to summon as a basic test run, using homemade ink, rooster feathers, a really expensive leather messenger bag, and an actual Fifteenth-Century guidebook on who to draw from the spirit realm, how to do it, and what one might achieve when successful. For all intents and purposes, they’d found Demon Summoning for Dummies.

  The last demon they’d encountered, however, had used an old man’s flesh-and-blood body as a morbid shell and called itself Constantine. When the Guardian had emerged from that empty bag of skin in an attempt to imprison Ben, Peter, and April—Ben’s girlfriend-not-girlfriend—it had been nothing more than a roiling cloud of pure evil, furious, malicious, and nearly unstoppable. Who knew what the Guardian would have made itself look like after that. But Ian, with his aggravating tendency to do the impossible first and ask permission later, had taken over Ben’s body to banish the mega-demon long enough for them to at least escape the abandoned orphanage and burn it to the ground. That had been fun. Not. Ian was, though, the only one of them who could have ever done it, seeing as he’d spent centuries in the spirit realm as both the Guardian’s prisoner and apprentice.

  So Ben had full control of his body now, he was quick to remind himself. And before he’d ever agree to let Ian take the controls again, he wanted to do everything he could to put this new demon plaguing the dead woman’s spirit—and her living children—back where it belonged. Which definitely wasn’t here.

  ‘You need to focus, Ben,’ Ian said, sounding more like a frustrated parent in Ben’s head than a super powerful undead spirit existing forever inside him.

  “I’m focused,” Ben grunted through clenched teeth. The dead woman’s wailing was really messing with his head.

  “Good for you,” Peter shouted beside him over the awful noise.

  Ben wanted to punch himself for letting that slip; Peter and April knew they’d helped free Ian from the Guardian’s clutches. They still didn’t know that the only way to keep Ian from blinking out of existence entirely was to let him share Ben’s body for the rest of his life. Ian didn’t have his own anymore. The Guardian had used it all up and left nothing behind.

  “No magic spells this time?” Peter added, looking briefly away from the writhing, bubbling black mass threatening to crush the people who lived here into dust. Or blood splatter.

  ‘Well, I do know a—’

  “Open the box,” Ben said, tuning Ian out completely. He had no desire to feel his silent passenger—well, silent to everyone else—taking control of him again to recite another incantation with Ben’s own voice. That had been necessary to banish the Guardian, where Ben would have otherwise run away screaming and most likely been devoured with his friends. But as far as he was concerned, he’d been caught off guard, and that was a one-time deal. They had to do this the old-fashioned way first—with cabalistic symbols and Peter’s engineering science.

  “Yep.” Peter lunged forward and set the small metallic box on the carpeted floor in front of him. He pressed the top, which instantly retracted, and the box’s four sides sprang open like a reverse trap. Clamped in the center was the lumpy, cloudy crystal Peter had taken it upon himself to find after their last one had funneled the Guardian inside itself and turned the color of pluff mud. Obviously, they’d left that one in the old house they’d burned down. The thin etches of the ancient ritual designs they’d copied from The Lesser Key of Solomon glinted in the low light of the single lamp in the living room, and Peter stepped back beside Ben. “Does it have a name?”

  Ben paused. Yea
h, they’d summoned and bound Ebra this way before Peter had this box built, but the name had been in the book.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Ian said in his mind. ‘We should hurry. Repeat after me.’

  Ben wanted to roll his eyes, but mimicking the echo of his friend’s voice was a hell of a lot better than Ian speaking through the mouth that didn’t belong to him. So he did what Ian said. “I see you, eternal spirit.” Oddly enough, he sounded a lot more confident than he felt. “By the old laws and their memory carved around the stone before you, I forbid you to turn your back on me.”

  For the first time since Ben, Peter, and April had entered that apartment, the quivering black mass halted, as if just now noticing they’d arrived. Beside them, a gurgling choke cut through the air, almost as loud as the persistent wailing from the dead woman’s spirit—which none of them could see despite Ben knowing she was there with them. He’d been trying to ignore the two men in their twenties, probably not much older than he was, suspended in midair on the other side of the room. Now, it was impossible.

  This was how Ben and his friends had found them, their bodies contorted at excruciating angles, their mouths frozen open in terror and agony. They were brothers, the dead woman’s sons, and the victims of this nasty demon’s vengeful rage.

  Then the demon’s apparent surprise faded, and its dark mass burst outward with a deafening roar before re-absorbing itself and tightening its grip on its victims. One of the men choked again, which ended in a strangled gurgle. Then both brothers’ eyes bulged and flashed that unnatural shade of the spirit realm’s eerie green.

  April took a sharp breath beside Ben. “Jesus,” she whispered.

  “Well, that’s new,” Peter muttered.

  ‘Keep going,’ Ian urged and picked up where they’d left off.

  “These souls do not belong to you,” Ben told the demon, yelling now because the woman’s spirit still hadn’t brought down the level of her forsaken wailing. “You made no pact with the object of your desires, written neither in blood nor ritual.” The brothers’ eyes looked as if they might pop at any second, the veins in their foreheads pulsing thickly and almost … were their veins turning green? Ben had to look away to focus on repeating after Ian. “But the symbols and this crystal before you were carved into the seal binding you from this world. Your pact is now with me, and I command you to the stone.”

  For a minute, nothing happened. Peter shot Ben a reprimanding glance that almost said, ‘Quit messing around already and stick to the plan.’ Only they hadn’t had a plan. Not really. Not much past opening Peter’s metal box when they finally found and confronted the demon.

  Then the demon’s amorphous mass expanded, growing larger and darker while it howled its defiant fury. At the same time, the woman’s spirit turned her shrieking up by a few notches too, and Ben thought his head might explode. The demon’s darkness consumed the entire living room, somehow making the apartment around them tremble. Glasses fell from the kitchen cabinets and shattered. The bookshelf rocked to the side, sending a clatter of books sprawling across the ground. The one lightbulb burst with a pop, and then they really couldn’t see a thing.

  “Ben?” Peter shouted above the impenetrable noise.

  ‘Raise your hands toward it,’ Ian said in Ben’s mind. Man, the guy sounded calm. ‘Tell the thing it’s finished.’

  What other choice did Ben have? Yes, he trusted Ian, and the last time he’d trusted Ian, he’d woken up in the hospital. But Ben raised his hands toward where the demon’s charred cloud had moments before settled, and he shouted, “It’s finished!” Ian let out something like a moan in his mind. Ben’s palms grew warm.

  ‘Uh, this is gonna hurt. Probably,’ Ian said.

  “What?” Ben hoped his friends—especially April—couldn’t hear his voice crack at that above the demon’s bellows.

  ‘Just don’t put your hands down yet.’

  Easy thing for a disembodied spirit to say when Ian couldn’t actually feel this. The warmth grew to a searing heat in Ben’s hands, bringing with it the memory of that night not too long ago when his hands had done something else rather extraordinary. That had been with Ian at the helm, though. Ben was in complete control for this one. He hoped.

  “Dude,” Peter muttered.

  Ben stared at the green glow coming from his palms, gritting his teeth against the burning in his hands and hissing through the pain. “Why isn’t this working?” It was meant more for Ian than anyone else, though Ben couldn’t think nearly straight enough now to try asking the question in his own mind. But it seemed to draw some attention to their issue. The demon wasn’t being banished, punished, destroyed, or whatever it was they’d meant to do to it.

  A gust of freezing air whipped through the apartment and nearly knocked Ben off his feet. Peter staggered beside him as the unnatural wind ripped the pages out of the spilled-open books and scattered them about the living room. Then Ben felt all the air being sucked out of the room—and his lungs—as if the demon had stuck a straw through the ceiling to now empty it out with one long, whistling sip. Ben’s vision darkened around the edges, and the pain in his hands dulled.

  ‘I don’t get it,’ Ian said, sounding more confused in his vast knowledge than he should have been. ‘That was all we needed.’

  Ben didn’t even have the strength to shout that this demon obviously wasn’t what Ian had said it was, Guardian’s Acolyte or not.

  “What—” April started, then moved so quickly, Ben almost didn’t see her. The next second, she was standing in front of where Peter had opened his inscribed metal box, only now there was a gray pillow there instead. April launched the pillow across the room with one swift kick, where it just barely missed the brothers still suspended in mid-air. Somehow, she managed not to send the metal box beneath it skittering down the hallway too.

  As soon as the stone surrounded by Peter’s copies of the ancient runes was unburied, the air dropped back into the apartment as if it were a crate of rocks. Ben nearly sighed in relief, only a little worried that he’d been about to pass out; the flaring pain in his palms returned with full force. His friends gasped for air beside him. Then the demonic darkness shuddered, recoiled, and bucked a few times like a worm exposed to the sun. And it did what they’d meant it to do. It obeyed.

  With a final growl of fury, the demon shrank, siphoning into the lumpy crystal even while it struggled toward freedom. A dark tendril uncoiled from the disappearing mass and lashed out toward the suspended brothers, whose eyes no longer glowed but who definitely looked like they needed to breathe in the next few seconds if they were going to survive this. Then the last particle of inky presence slipped into the crystal, and Peter pounced on the box.

  The wind stopped. The book pages fluttered to the ground. While Peter focused on lifting the box’s side panels to seal it again with the stone—and demon—inside, two bodies thumped to the ground, startlingly loud in the sudden silence and the dark. The glow in Ben’s hands had disappeared, but the pain was still very much there.

  ‘You can put your hands down now,’ Ian said.

  Ben sucked in a breath and tried to shake the pain out of his palms. Yeah, like that would help. “Seriously? A pillow?”

  ‘I was looking at the demon, okay? Not trying to protect a box.’

  At the same time as Ian’s defensive outburst, Peter shouted, “How was I supposed to know that would happen? It’s not like I put it here.”

  It took Ben a few seconds to mentally separate his friends’ simultaneous reactions, then he shook his head and decided he could only afford not to reply to one of them. “Sorry, Pete. My hands are killing me.”

  ‘Oh, yeah. Sure,’ Ian muttered. ‘He gets an apology.’ Ben ignored him.

  It was too dark to see Peter’s expression, though Ben guessed the guy was either rolling his eyes or sitting back on his heels, trying to figure out if he really wanted to touch the closed box again. Probably both.

  “Yeah, what was that?” Peter asked. A
light switch flipped on, making him and Ben flinch against the sudden glare.

  April stepped out of the hallway beside the switch and went immediately to the brothers, who had both been released from the demon’s hold only to have been dropped to the floor beside each other. “Come on, guys,” she said, nodding toward the brothers before kneeling beside them. “Can we talk about Ben’s hand tricks later?” Peter stood and went to join her.

  ‘That’s a missed opportunity,’ Ian said.

  Ben took a deep breath. For what? he thought back.

  ‘Really? I was twelve when I lost my body, Ben. Not six. Centuries in the spirit realm, remember? I know inuendo when I hear it.’

  Yeah, keep cracking jokes, Ben told him. You can’t feel my hands right now, can you?

  ‘Definitely not.’

  Ben had to ignore him if he didn’t want to blow their little secret right then and there by screaming at Ian to shut up. That had been the hardest part after the night they’d burned down the abandoned orphanage, even harder than none of them really having a clue what they were getting into when they found whatever dark presence they’d been hunting. Not telling April and Peter that Ian was actually sharing his body had been relatively easy. Just keep quiet. And until a little over two years ago, Ben had had plenty of practice hearing voices in his own head—which he’d only just recently discovered were more spirits of the dead trying to get through to him—and pretending he didn’t. Even then, he’d known he wasn’t crazy. Now, though, he was absolutely certain that the voice in his head was Ian’s bodiless spirit, not dead but definitely not alive, and Ben had willingly let him in. Forever. How was he supposed to fully accept that fact if he had to keep hiding it behind ambiguous phrases and one-sided conversations in front of Peter and April?