SEDUCTIVE SUPERNATURALS: 12 Tales of Shapeshifters, Vampires & Sexy Spirits (149 page)

I hit the wall switch, looking for light, but the bulb must have been burned out. Perfect. So I went into the living room to open the drapes for some light and carried my supplies with me. Felt good to be working. This I knew. This I was good at. I’d leave the old place so polished, the owner wouldn’t recognize his own home.

I tugged on the cord, the dark blue drapes swept back, sunlight flooded the room and someone behind me SHRIEKED.

“Jesus!” I dropped my supply caddy and spun around, heart in my throat.

A huge guy with bright red eyes and fingernails that were long and curved into claws aimed at my face, raced at me from out of the shadows. Panic reared its ugly head and I bolted to one side, narrowly missing a swipe from those nails of his. His breath sounded loud and strained and my own heartbeat was hammering in my ears.

I jumped over a low coffee table, hit the edge with my toe and sent it flying, scattering ancient magazines in every direction.

Crap, crap, CRAP!

“You will die!” The guy screamed and I was afraid he was right. If my heart beat any faster, I was going to stroke out on the spot.

Blindly, I grabbed the first thing that came to hand. A lamp. I pitched it at him and it bounced off his wide forehead, but didn’t slow him down any. If anything, I think I pissed him off. Well, join the club. Show up to clean a house and get attacked?
So
not right. He lunged again, headed around the edge of the couch. I went the other way and changed directions every time he did. We had an excellent standoff going until he got tired of the game and leaped onto the cushions to make a wild grab for me.

From there on, it’s a blur. I remember running in crazed circles in the little room, picking up everything I could find to throw at the guy—but nothing fazed him. Every time I made a break for the front door, he jumped in front of me. Like he was getting some hard charge out of terrifying me.

And maybe he was. What do I know from demons? Maybe this was like foreplay to him. Oh, EW.

“Look, this doesn’t have to get ugly,” I said and jumped when he lunged at me again.

“You will die, Duster.”

Hey, catch that? I’m famous. Then, his threat kicked in.

“I can’t
die,”
I shouted, hurling a cut glass ashtray that had to weigh ten pounds at him. “I have a
date!”

He laughed and that fried me. A demon didn’t believe I had a date? All of a sudden I remembered what Jasmine had been trying to teach me all week. I wasn’t supposed to run from these guys. I was supposed to be fighting back. Killing ‘em. And damned if this red-eyed claw monster wasn’t asking for it.

He charged me again and this time, I jumped up, hurtling him like an Olympic track star. I landed near the front window, stunned, surprised and yeah, a little proud. I reached into my supply caddy for the demon spray, tossing everything out of my way. Furniture polish, rags, floor and oven cleaner, and I sent them all flying at him like domestic bullets.

Finally though, I found my trusty demon spray and sent a squirt directly at him. It arced through the air, glittering in the hazy sunlight, hit him full in the face and while he was blinded and screaming in fury, I spun half around, kicking his legs out from under him. He went down like a Redwood and kept right on screaming as he clawed at his eyes. But I was done. I whipped out my right hand and it went right through his chest wall like it wasn’t even there and I pulled out his
heart.

He stared up at me in total disbelief then, POOFED.

Yep. Just like on Buffy. He popped apart into a cloud of dust and the heart in my hand disintegrated just as completely.

My knees gave out and I dropped to the floor, landing in a gritty pile of Mr. Harris. Breathing wasn’t coming easy, but just as well, didn’t really want to inhale demon dust. Couldn’t be sanitary. My stomach gave a hideous lurch and for a second there, I really regretted the Big Mac I’d had with Rachel.

“Ohmigod.” I couldn’t believe it. I’d done it. Just the way Jasmine had said I would. I had actually pulled out the guy’s heart.

“Oh, that’s just disgusting.” I looked at my hand and made a mental note to dip it in boiling water as soon as I got home. Then I staggered to my feet, went into the hall closet and looked for a vacuum. When I found it, I plugged it in, sucked up the evidence, then gathered up my supplies and left.

I figured the demon who’d hired me to clean his house wouldn’t really care if I did the windows or not.

More than Fiends: Chapter Eleven

I was still shaky when I got home.

Having a demon dissolve into instant soup mix right in front of you was enough, I think, to make any woman need a quiet moment to hurl in private. But since my Big Mac was staying put, I used that private moment to grab a bag of Hershey’s Kisses and eat my way to peace instead. After the six or seventh foil wrapper hit the coffee table, I felt a little better. Chocolate. The Wonder Drug.

I heard the mail slot open and turned in time to see a piece of paper drop onto the floor. I turned on the couch, grabbed the edge of the curtains and tugged it back, but didn’t see anyone out there. Whoever had dropped the note was either Batman fast or was sneaking away, trying not to be seen and apparently excelled at the job. As soon as I picked up the paper and read it, I understood why.

Back off Demon Duster, or your daughter will be ours.

Okay,
now
I wanted to hurl.

I yanked open the door, raced onto the porch and stared at the familiar, comfy street where I’d grown up, looking for an enemy. But there was no one. The Marchetti boys were in the garage, Bon Jovi blasting from their radio. Our next door neighbor, Harlan Cates, was working in the yard, probably setting bear traps to keep kids off his precious grass.

Everything looked normal. But nothing was.

Not anymore.

I crumpled the note in my hand and thought about the red eyed guy with claws I’d dusted just an hour or so before. Imagining him going after Thea made me so sick I had to bolt for the bathroom. It was one thing to know that one day, she’d be a Duster, too. But she’d be grown up then. Now, she was just a kid. A kid more important to me than my own life.

I just barely made it to the bathroom in time and when the disgusting festivities were over, I stared into the mirror and hardly recognized the pale, wild eyed woman looking back at me.

I gripped the sides of the sink and I’m pretty sure my fingers left indentations in the porcelain. I was so damn mad, so scared, I wanted to rip somebody’s heart out. And hey, now I
could
.

“Okay demons, play time’s over,” I murmured, to the crazed woman in the mirror. “Nobody threatens my baby.”

A half hour later, Thea was home and I only just managed to keep from grabbing hold of her and dragging her into the house where I could keep her locked up until she was 32 and had some demon killing power of her own. Instead, I looked at her, standing next to Jett and a niggling worry began to tug at the edges of my mind.

“Where were you guys?” I asked, stepping back to let both of the teenagers inside.

“God, MOTHER,” Thea said, with an eye roll toward Jett. (This is code for ‘don’t embarrass me in front of a guy’.) “We stopped for a Coke on the way home from school.”

“Uh-huh.” The worry was still there, poking at me, prodding at me to find out for sure if what I was thinking, was true or not. Ordinarily, I was willing to cut Jett a little slack. And up till now, I’d always thought of the kid as just a thorn in my parental paw. But now, I knew there were
demons
out there. Now I knew that someone was threatening my baby.

And, Thea had been just a little too eager to campaign for Demon Rights. If I was right, Thea and I were due for another chat that would make me Public Enemy #1 again.

So when they went into the kitchen, I followed. Grabbing up my trusty spray bottle off the table, I took careful aim and gave the kid a squirt right on top of his nose piercing.

Instantly, smoke curled from his face and Jett screamed like he’d been shot. Which, he had. Thea freaked out, running for a paper towel while shrieking at me and Jett was wiping his face with the sleeves of his ratty flannel shirt. Sugar was howling and I was standing there tapping my foot, waiting for a damn explanation.

When the noise finally faded away, I said, “You’re a demon.”

The kid sniffed, wiped his face with the paper towel Thea was waving at him and said, “Well, yeah.”

“I can’t BELIEVE you did that,” Thea shouted, clearly mortified.

I slanted her a look but kept one wary eye on the little demon in front of me as I asked her, “You knew, didn’t you?”

“Of course I knew Jett’s a demon. It’s not exactly a SECRET.”

“It was to me,” I pointed out, then gave Mr. Piercings my full attention. “What’re you up to?”

“Dude,” Jett said, lifting both hands in an as-innocent-as-he-could-get shrug. Which wasn’t real impressive, considering his head was still smoking and his pants were on their way South. “I’m just chillin’.”

“Uh-huh.” Chilling with
my
daughter.

“Mother, you’re being insulting.”

She says that like it’s a big surprise. I’ve been embarrassing Thea for her whole life. No point in stopping now. “I’m asking questions.”

“Exactly.”

I was still watching Jett, not really sure, but half expecting his eyes to turn bright red like the guy I’d dispatched earlier. A few soft tendrils of smoke were still curling in the air over his head and a part of me was feeling a little guilty about squirting a kid. Still, a demon was a demon. Right?

“Dude,” Jett said, taking a step back, as if reading my mind. “I’m cool, you know. The demon thing? That’s just whatd’yacallit, my
heritage
. I’m not into the whole demon/human war thing, you know? It’s like so over. I’m like into music and doing whatever.”

I blinked, mentally translating lazy teen-speak into English then asked, “What is ‘whatever’ and why’re you doing it with my daughter?”

Jett shrugged again, reached down and tugged his baggy jeans up. They hung on narrow hips briefly and then drooped down to expose way too much of his pale blue boxers.

Thea was actually simmering. I could feel waves of humiliation and fury rippling off of her and didn’t even risk another glance her way. I figured there would be plenty of time for us to get into this later. Right now, I wanted to lay down some ground rules for Hell Spawn Junior.

“Thea’s cool,” he muttered, dipping his still smoking head and looking up at me. “And she’s like pretty and everything. I, you know, like her and everything.”

Thea sighed.

Good God. Demon poet.

“Okay, Jett,” I said, idly shaking my spray bottle. It had his attention. He watched the brown liquid sloshing around with a dread fascination, which cheered me right up. “Some ground rules.”

“That’s cool,” he said, nodding and I figured he’d be willing to agree to just about anything while I was holding that bottle.

“One. You hang around with Thea, you keep your hands to yourself.”

“MOTHER!”

Bigger nod. Gaze still fixed to the demon mixture. “Cool, dude. Cool.”

“Thea,” I said, still watching Jett, “go to the living room.”

“But—“

“Now, please.” I didn’t use the ‘mother’ tone very often, so when I did, it really got results. Thea stomped off into the other room and when we were alone, I leaned into Jett and stared him right in the eye. “Listen up, Jett. I don’t know if the word’s gotten out to all of the demons in town, but do you know who I am?”

He nodded and swallowed hard. “Demon Duster.”

“Right.” I gave him a tight smile that didn’t have a single thing to do with good humor. “But just so you know? The Demon Duster isn’t
half
as scary as Thea’s
mom
. And that’s who’s talking to you right now.”

“Got it.” He nodded so hard, one of his hair spikes fell over.

“Good.” I caressed the trigger of the spray bottle, just to make sure he knew who was in charge around here. Was I enjoying this a little too much? Probably. But give me a break. I’d been putting up with the kid for six months now. There are limits. “I’m glad you get it. Because when you’re with Thea, you’re going to keep your spiny little demon fingers to yourself or I’m going to chop them off for you. At the shoulder.”

He gulped.

I bent down and looked into his eyes. “Then I’m going to beat you to death with the bloody stump. And
then,
I’m going to rip your heart out and store your ashes in Tupperware.”

His eyes went wide and he nodded again.

“Clear?” I asked.

“Dude.”

“Good.”

“We done?”

“For now.”

He scuttled past me for the living room, moving faster than I’d ever seen him move before and I congratulated myself silently on a threat well delivered.

* * *

The minute Jasmine showed up the next day, I hit her with, “Did you know Thea’s boyfriend is a demon?”

She smiled and straightened the collar of her sea green dress. “Of course.”

I saw sparks flying at the edges of my vision and had to blink them away to see her clearly. She looked...smug. God, I hated a smug guide. “And you didn’t think maybe you should
tell
me?”

Jasmine sighed, wandered to the white Adirondack chair in the only shaded spot in the yard. Perching herself daintily on the edge, she looked up at me and said in a
very
patient, (the same tone usually reserved for challenged three year olds), tone, “Jett is harmless.”

“He’s a
demon!”
I waved both arms in the air like I was trying to get her attention. “Hello? Aren’t you spending like every day here trying to teach me to
kill
demons?”

“Cassidy, not all demons are dangerous.”

“They’re demons. Doesn’t dangerous sort of describe them?”

“No.”

“That’s it?” I asked, tapping the toe of my sneaker against the parched by the sun grass. “That’s all I get? NO?”

She gave me a small smile that was anything but kindly. “As you spend more time practicing your duty, you will find that demons, much like people, come in all shapes and sizes.”