Chapter 9
Julian
Orange light flickeredon the walls of Julian’s living room when he woke. Sitting up and knuckling the sleep from his eyes, he blinked over at the source of the light—the windows. After cleaning up the glass, he’d covered the broken one with a piece of cardboard duct-taped around the edges and moved the couch across the room. It was the best he could do until he could go to the hardware store in the morning.
His brain felt sluggish as he tossed the blankets back and stood on the cool wood floor. What was happening?
He grabbed the cord for the blinds and yanked them up for an uninterrupted view of his front yard. Staked to his lawn was a burning cross. It was at least as tall as he was, and bright orange flames licked up into the sky. He stared at it for a long, uncomprehending moment.
“Oh my God,” he said aloud. His stomach dropped as he lurched into motion.
He didn’t have any real weapons anymore. A couple of pocket knives, a baseball bat, and a crowbar, the latter of which he grabbed from the closet under the stairs. His mind raced as he shoved his bare feet into a pair of sneakers. It had to be the guild. They’d come back.
Light in the opposite direction caught his attention, and he whirled toward the kitchen. More flickering firelight was visible through the back windows. Oh God, his deck was on fire. Were they trying to kill him, or just smoke him out? There was a fire extinguisher under the kitchen sink. He dropped the crowbar as he ran down the hall.
Cleaning supplies spilled out of the cabinet under the sink as he hauled the fire extinguisher out.
He used a kitchen mitt to touch the doorknob, just in case. Flames licked at the outside of the door, and he sprayed quickly to keep it from getting inside the house. Someone had picked up and flipped his grill over the deck railing. The lid looked broken, charcoal scattered through the grass. He was happier than ever that he’d decided against propane. His picnic table was smashed to pieces, and smoldering. He’d deal with the damage after the fires were out.
As soon as the deck was dealt with, he closed and locked the back door. He didn’t want to risk someone sneaking in and coming at him from behind. Then, he headed for the front door, grabbing the crowbar as he went.
Yanking open the front door, he noticed something dark staining the front porch, but he couldn’t tell what it was. The burning cross was even bigger than he thought, maybe eight or nine feet tall. The pungent scent of gasoline reached his nose. They’d doused both it and the grass around it. A warning. An omen.
We’re not done with you, it said. There were no signs of paladins, but they had to be the ones who’d done this.
He saw no sign of the paladins out in the darkness. No telltale SUVs parked down the street or figures moving in the shadows. He couldn’t just leave the cross burning like that, not unless he wanted a whole lot of unwanted attention from his neighbors. But could he risk going out in the darkness alone?
Stuffing a flask of holy water into his pocket and hefting the crowbar with one hand, he hauled the fire extinguisher up and stepped out onto the front porch. He moved quickly, adrenaline burning through him. His spine tingled with awareness, and it was with trepidation that he dropped the crowbar at his feet and aimed the extinguisher’s nozzle at the cross. He circled it once, spraying it as thoroughly as he could, then dropped the canister right there in the front yard and grabbed the crowbar.
In the darkness behind him, an inhuman growl broke the silence. A demon. Drawn by the chaos, or something else?
Julian rushed toward the house, bounding up the steps and slipping in the dark substance that stained the door, walls, and floor. He slammed the door shut behind him and turned the lock, breathing hard.
He turned the living room light on with a shaking hand, and dread settled like a stone in his gut as he lifted his foot to get a look at the fluid on the bottom of his shoe.
He touched it and rubbed his fingers together as quiet horror filled him. It was blood. They’d splashed blood on his house to attract demons to it.
The holy men were using the demons against him.
He didn’t sleep for the rest of the night. With the crowbar in hand and the lights off so he wouldn’t broadcast his position in the house to anyone who might be watching from outside, he paced from room to room, checking each window and door for signs of tampering. This had to be the guild, and that meant they knew he had wards on all the entry points to keep demons out. If they wanted demons to actually get inside and kill him, they would damage the wards in some way so they could get in. If, however, they just wanted to toss blood on the house to attract demons and scare him, he was at least safe for now. But only because they allowed it. That was the real lesson here, hethought. They wanted him to know that they could do whatever they wanted to him at any time.
By the time morning rolled around, he was already exhausted, and he still had a shift at both jobs to contend with.
As he watched the sun rise, he let his mind drift back to the dream.‘My jewel,’Valac had called him right before he woke up. The endearment felt like soda bubbles under his skin, sweet and fizzy. Valac had also called Julianhis, which he was less clear on. He suspected he knew what it meant, and he couldn’t decide how to feel about it. He’d sworn he wouldn’t get involved with demons. That one of them was laying some kind of claim to him would almost certainly complicate his life.
But… it was kind of nice to feel wanted. He thought of Valac’s big hands cradling his face, how protected and cherished he’d felt, even if he didn’t understandwhyValac cared at all.
He shook himself. He was just lonely, that was all. Getting involved with the behemoth would be a monumentally stupid thing to do, especially since the guild was obviously still watching him. They couldn’t know he was seeing a demon in his dreams, but what if that demon returned from Hell and showed up for real? What would the guild do, then?
Right now he had some cleaning up to do and a job to get ready for. Before he was due for work, he needed to get some things to prepare the house later tonight. Just in case they decided to come back and try something else.
The first thingJulian did after the sun rose was take stock of the damage outside. The scorch marks to his back door and deck seemed cosmetic at worst. The wood itself didn’t seem to have burned for long. He’d have to replace some of the boards on thedeck floor, but the awning seemed fine. His grill was broken, the lid bent and the hinges irreparable. He might be able to replace the hinges with some different hardware, but for now it was a low priority. He didn’t expect he’d feel comfortable enough to sit out on his deck and grill any time soon.
He cleaned up the blood on the front porch, hoping his neighbors hadn’t seen it, and swept the broken pieces of the burnt cross into a garbage bag to toss.
With coffee in hand, he took his cheap beater car that barely ran to the hardware store. He needed to be prepared if they planned on coming back to mess with him again, and he couldn’t trust them to stay outside next time. His doors needed to be reinforced, and he needed better wards. They’d broken his warded door once already, and when he painted new wards on his windows in holy water, they’d broken that, too. Maybe it was a coincidence, or maybe they’d been watching him for longer than he realized. A reinforced door would help, since it would be harder to break, but it didn’t feel like enough. He just needed tofindwards that could be placed in a more permanent manner. That would be significantly harder to do without access to the guild’s extensive archives.
He might have to contact the Sentinels for that kind of information, which he was loath to do. He didn’t want to be made into a liar, but the guild wasn’t giving him much of a choice. If they backed him into a corner, he’d do what needed to be done, even if that meant breaking his word.
