Protect Her: Part 2 Read online

  Protect Her: Part Two

  By Ivy Sinclair

  Copyright 2014 Smith Sinclair Publishing

  ebook Edition

  Cover Design by Indie Author Services

  ebook Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to the online retailer of your choice and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  CHAPTER ONE – RILEY

  Nobody grows up saying “I want to be a Necromancer.” I certainly didn’t, but fate or destiny or whatever you want to call it had other plans for me. That’s why I was making my way through the tall grass of an empty lot next to Briar Cemetery in the middle of the night looking for a demon trap. The plan was to interrogate the dead demon caught up inside of it. But I had a lot on my mind at the moment that had nothing to do with the upcoming interrogation, and it all started and ended with Paige Matthews.

  Necromancy required total focus because it was all too easy to lose control. If I lost focus for even a moment during a demon interrogation, the results would be disastrous for me. Demon interrogation can turn into demon possession in a heartbeat. That was the reason that most of those unfortunate bastards like me who ended up inheriting the dark gift of necromancy met untimely and horrible ends.

  I was one of the lucky ones, though. My mother inadvertently brought me to someone who recognized what was happening to me early on, and my mentor guided me carefully into the new realm where I now lived my life. I owed my mentor a lot, regardless of the fact that she disapproved of my decision to capitalize and profit on my skills.

  The last time I saw her, she said one day I’d wind up dead because I stuck my nose in the wrong business. I hoped that my current entanglement with Paige wouldn’t prove her prediction correct.

  A very real image of being physically tangled up with Paige popped into my mind. Our limbs intertwined as we rolled across my bed. I caught glimpses of her perfect skin beneath my hands as they roamed the curves of her lithe body. I imagined that I could feel her rapid heartbeat as my fingertips brushed across the soft swell of her breasts, teasing her but never quite touching her even as she pressed herself up against me, arching her back in a silent offering.

  I shook my head to dismiss those thoughts, but that did nothing for the tightness of my pants. Dammit. I offered to help Paige get out of a potentially messy situation, and yet ever since I met her, I couldn’t help but think about getting her into my bed. She had called me her hero. If she only knew what I was actually thinking about her, she’d know I was nothing of the sort.

  I crisscrossed the empty lot several times trying to stay focused on the task at hand. Demon traps were relatively easy to spot if you knew what to look for. It was harder out in the open because the required anagrams would draw attention even from the most unsuspecting normal folk, the lucky bastards who had no idea how closely their world co-existed with a far darker one. That meant that the traps were usually hidden from view by simple, undetectable spells that bent the eye around them keeping them from view. Still, there was an unnatural energy, almost like a hum that emanated from a demon trap when there was something caught inside of it. That’s what I was listening for considering the darkness of the night that surrounded me.

  The demon traps on Calamata Island were a special variety because of the island’s strict no-demon policy. The archangel in charge, Benjamin, therefore, had no problems decimating any demon that dared set foot on the island. Benjamin had the Wiccans jury-rig the ordinary demon trap to burn to dust any demon dumb enough to brave the bay crossing to Calamata Island and land a toe into one of the traps.

  That’s where I came in. Dead demons can’t spill any details on why they would risk life and limb to enter a no-demon zone unless they were talking to someone like me. I was hired to find out what they were doing here, because it had to be something pretty big. After interrogating three demons in the last week, I uncovered that they were after a woman living on the island. That woman was no other than the star of my horny sex daydreams, and I still wasn’t sure what to call my decision to get involved after I figured that out.

  I desired her, no doubt about it, but I had lusted after other women in the past. I was definitely intrigued by her. What secrets did she have that would be worth the risk of a demon-angel skirmish? After I had saved her life from a demon sent to kidnap her, I found out that she had amnesia. She didn’t even know that demons existed until the Tiphon demon attacked her in the very same cemetery next to the vacant lot I was currently prowling. It was a shitty way to find out that the world wasn’t what you thought it was.

  Lust. Curiosity. Pity. None of them should have been cause enough for me to risk my neck to protect her, yet that was exactly what I had been doing for the last twenty-four hours. I hadn't told the ones who hired me that it was Paige the demons were after. They only knew that the demons had a picture, but no name. The fact that I found her at all was a complete coincidence. Ever since then, I'd been wrestling with what to do with that information.

  Ultimately though, I knew that I had already made my decision. As soon as I finished interrogating this next demon, which was going to be nothing but subterfuge to throw off my client, I was off of Calamata Island. I’d take Paige with me and find a safe place to hide her until I figured something else out.

  I made one more sweep of the lot and then pulled out my phone to check the coordinates that Sheriff Halpren sent to me. I frowned as I reread them. I was in the right place, which meant that something else was wrong.

  I hit Halpren’s number on my cell and heard the ringing dial tone just as the sound of a cell phone ringing hit my ears in stereo. I whirled around and found Halpren standing there smiling like a Cheshire cat as he emerged from the cemetery gates walking toward me. It was the first time I had seen the man since I arrived on the island as he preferred to keep our communication to phone, text, or email. I figured it was because even the humans who straddled both worlds didn’t like being seen with me. Necromancers were universally despised.

  Halpren was what I considered an old-fashioned sheriff. He was tall but fleshy with a full head of silver hair. He wore his standard issue uniform with a wide-brimmed hat that he now poked up with a finger so that I could fully see his face. I was fairly certain that before the last week, the most action he saw was from rowdy tourists who rebelled against the idea that the whole island basically shut down at 6pm. In addition to no demons, Calamata Island was also a dry island. Halpren’s boss, Benjamin, who was the archangel in charge, wasn’t big on alcohol either.

  The fact that Calamata’s main tourist draw was the million plus population of gravestones made the whole place more than a little creepy.

  “What’s with the wild goose chase?” I said, dropping the phone back into my pocket. “You said you had a demon for me to interrogate.”

  “Your services are no longer required,” Halpren said with a small smirk. He rested his hands on his hips, but the casual stance didn’t fool me, especially when his fingertips rested on the butt of his gun. “Benjamin sends his regards. Your fee has been wired to your bank account as agreed. We’ve arranged transport for you back to the mainland. It leaves in thirty minutes.”

  I almost had to chuckle at the man’s arrogance. He might have fifty pounds on me, but it was all flabby fat. He’d be no match for me in a physical contest, and we both knew it. “What’s the rush?” I didn’t need an answer to my casual question. It was obvious. Ha
lpren, and thus Benjamin, somehow had learned about Paige. And I had left her alone and defenseless at a coffee shop in the middle of the night. I wanted to curse at how easily they had sidestepped me in the process of retrieving her.

  “We’ve got what we need. Job’s done. Time for you to go.” Halpren pointed at my rented SUV. “I’ll follow you down to the marina and one of my deputies can return that for you. I’m sure you’re eager to get out of here. Not quite your scene, is it?”

  It almost amused me how well the Sheriff thought that he knew me. If nothing else, it assured me that my carefully crafted public image that I cared for little else but money was solidly intact. Of course, it wasn't all that far from the truth in reality. I considered my options. I needed to get back to Paige before they found her if they hadn’t already.

  “I just need to stop back at the motel and pick up a few things,” I said. “No escort needed, Sheriff. I’m sure you have other things to do tonight.” I wondered how much he knew, and how much he thought I knew. I wasn’t about to give him any further clues. I grabbed my kit and hauled it over my shoulder, heading toward my SUV. I cut a few feet further into the deserted lot, doing a quick mental scan of the earth looking for what I wanted, and when I found it, I had to hide my smile.

  “I insist,” Halpren said.

  I looked back over my shoulder and saw that Halpren had moved off the sidewalk and into the lot. I wasn’t sure if he intended to follow me to my SUV or just give the further impression that he was in charge of the situation. Either way, it didn’t matter. As I hoped, he had played right into my hands.

  “Somehow I thought you might,” I said under my breath. I focused all of my thoughts on one idea. “Nafasterone.”

  The ground at Halpren’s feet exploded as two pairs of bony hands burst through the dirt and latched onto his ankles, pulling him downwards. The Sheriff let out a short yell before he commenced trying to beat the hands away. His eyes met mine in the darkness.

  “Call them off!” He yelled at me. “You’ll regret this, Stone!”

  I walked back to him and easily batted his hands away as I grabbed the phone out of his hands and the radio off his belt. I threw them to the ground just out of Halpren’s reach. I stared at him coldly. “I appreciate the business, Sheriff. Just as a note, I don’t take kindly to threats. My friends here will just ensure that you stay out of my hair for the next few hours or so. They won’t hurt you. Per your suggestion though, I do think I’ll take my leave of the island. Don’t worry. I’ll assume you’ll find someone else for all future business transactions. No hard feelings.”

  Then I quickly made my way to the SUV and slid inside. As I pulled away from the curb, I glanced once in the rearview mirror. The hands had pulled the Sheriff waist deep into the ground. They belonged to two men who were hung sixty years ago for grave robbing and buried unceremoniously in an unmarked grave outside the cemetery gates. Those two were no friends to the law.

  I had to shake my head. People always assumed that the dead only existed beneath the soil of graveyards. I rarely found a tract of land that didn’t contain the remains of some poor slob. The dead were everywhere beneath our feet. That came in handy for somebody like me.

  The summoning spell I just used on Halpren wasn’t intended for any serious chaos or destruction. I hated to use reanimation spells for that purpose at all because it disrupted the peaceful slumber of the dead that I called into action. At least, that’s the philosophy that my mentor drilled into me. If I had done things her way, I’d probably be some average Joe struggling to pay the bills and forget a far darker world co-existed with mine. Instead, I used my knowledge and skills to get rich, and lost everything I held dear to me in the process. My mentor never outright said ‘I told you so’ but I felt the weight of that judgment whenever I saw her. That was a big part of the reason I cut off contact with her five years ago.

  Bringing my thoughts back to the task at hand, I knew that I was in it now whether I liked it or not. By taking action against Halpren, no matter how ultimately benign it was, I kicked up what could prove to be one hell of a mess with Benjamin. Archangels were territorial and took great offense to anyone challenging their authority and not playing by their rules.

  I wasn’t unfamiliar with sticky situations with high-ranking angels or demons. There was no way to survive, much less thrive, in my line of work without walking a fine line with all of them. But at the end of the day, I was human, and they were not. They could rip out my guts in my sleep if they wanted too, and I spent entirely too much time over the course of the last ten years attempting to stay mostly in their good graces. For those that had it out for me, I just made sure I had enough dirt on them to keep them at bay.

  Detaining Halpren would put me on Benjamin’s shit list, but I had one advantage going for me. I heard through the grapevine that the archangel didn’t like to travel far afield of his favored territory. I was about to test that theory.

  My goal now was to get Paige and get the hell off of Calamata Island as quickly as possible. Once we were back on the mainland, I had more strings to pull that would keep us both safe and hopefully out of range of Benjamin’s wrath.

  I drove the SUV at the speed limit even though every fiber of my being wanted to press the accelerator to the floorboard. It was the middle of the night in the small town that took up a large chunk of the island. I didn’t need to draw any further attention to myself by running into one of Halpren’s deputies.

  I saw the sign for Java Joe’s and breathed a slight sigh of relief. Glancing at my watch, I saw that it had been just over an hour since I left Paige there. As long as she had followed my instructions, everything should be all right. As I turned off the engine, it hit me. I didn’t care about the money sitting in my bank account, even though it was enough to keep me comfortable for several months. Benjamin could have it back. I only cared about making sure that Paige was okay.

  In less than twenty-four hours, Paige Matthews turned my world upside down. I couldn’t fight the feeling that I was supposed to watch over her and protect her. It seemed stupid of me to even bother trying. There was something else afoot, something bigger than both of us. It was something important, and it revolved around her. Nothing else mattered to me but keeping her out of harm’s way.

  I approached the shop slowly, glancing around to detect if there was anything amiss. Just as it had been an hour earlier, the street was quiet, but that was to be expected in the middle of the night in a town that essentially shut down at dusk. I found it amusing that Benjamin seemed to be more than okay with feeding the tourists' caffeine addiction. Considering the place was one of the few establishments on the island open twenty-four seven, the place probably made a mint.

  My eyes went directly to the table I pointed out to Paige earlier as a suggestion of where she should set up until I got back. It was empty. As I looked around, I saw that the entire place was empty. The two teenage employees who had been behind the counter earlier when I dropped Paige off were nowhere to be seen.

  My stomach dropped. This was bad. Here I thought that I was clever in my plan, and now I had a sense that I dropped Paige right into a trap that I never saw coming. I forced myself to be calm and think. I was a private investigator first, necromancer second. I needed to start with some clues.

  I made my way over to the table. There was an empty coffee cup sitting there, and the chair pushed out into the room as if someone had moved from it in a hurry. I sat down in it and stared at the cup. I caught the barest hint of the soap that I knew she used to get cleaned up in my motel room hours earlier. She had been sitting here not that long ago. I looked around the room again. There were no apparent signs of a struggle.

  I reviewed what I knew about her from our short time together. She was scared when I dropped her off, but seemed to accept everything I had told her so far. After being attacked twice by demons in the last twenty-four hours, it didn't seem feasible that she would have wandered off on her own. I was certain of that. Paige wou
ldn’t have left the coffee shop willingly with a demon. But she would have left with a friend.

  “Dammit,” I swore under my breath. In the few short hours in my company, the only weakness I saw that she possessed was her concern for her friend and roommate, a man named Christopher. She promised me that she wasn’t going to risk her safety or his by calling him again once I left, but I couldn’t think of any other reason that she would have disappeared from the shop without trying to reach me.

  She didn’t know me from Adam. I might have saved her life, but what I represented was a scary world where creatures from nightmares were trying to harm her. If she doubted me at all, there was a good chance she’d inadvertently put herself in harm’s way by reaching out to someone safe from the “normal” side of her life.

  I needed to find her before something awful happened to her. Then I realized I had been looking at the whole situation wrong. It wasn’t what was left sitting there on the table that I needed to be looking for, but what wasn’t sitting there that would help me now. I had given Paige my tablet when I left, and as long as it was with her and on, I could find her.

  Pulling my phone out of my pocket, I pulled up the location app to track the tablet’s current location. A few seconds later, I had an address. I recognized it and sighed with a shake of my head.

  As I pushed up to my feet, I saw one of the dopey employees from earlier emerge from the back. He had lipstick on the side of his neck. He opened his mouth to say something to me, but I was already out the door. I knew what I should do. I should leave the island before Halpren or worse, Benjamin, caught up with me.

  But as usual, what I should do and what I was going to do were two different things.

  CHAPTER TWO- PAIGE

  As I sat in the car next to the man that I had lived and worked with for the last three years, I wondered if I was still asleep in bed having some horrible nightmare. Nothing in my life was what it seemed anymore. Nothing was real. It was all one big lie, and I wished that I could understand why. Who had I been before the accident in the bay that took my memories? Would I ever retrieve them from the damaged areas of my mind?