Raw Power: An Urban Fantasy Novel (Demon-Hearted Book 1) Read online

  Ah, yeah.

  I'd gotten the crap beaten out of me by a coven of hateful witches.

  Wait, what?

  I opened my eyes. Blinking till the blurriness went, I took a long, hard look at the room I was now in. It was a hospital room, a nice one, outfitted with an expensive-looking flat-screen TV, and an impressive array of machines. The place was crammed with HGTV-worthy fixtures and flourishes, and done up in a carefully coordinated color palate comprised of soothing blues and eggshell. An interior designer's wet dream.

  The first thing I noticed when I found my neck capable of sustained movement was the fellow smiling at me from the plush recliner across the room.

  Amundsen.

  I was never happier to see a familiar face and would have hopped out of bed to kiss his feet if only my body would have cooperated. The drugs, or something else they'd given me, hadn't completely worn off yet, though. I felt weighed down, sluggish. Parts of my body were waking up while others were still in a deep sleep. I returned his smile as best I could and laid my head back.

  This was a kick-ass hospital. Even the pillows were comfy.

  “So glad to see you awake,” said Amundsen with a faint titter. The noise was uncharacteristic of him, but hey, the guy was excited to see me pulling through. At least, that's what I figured. “First off, I want to sincerely apologize.” He came over and I felt him lay his hand on mine. My arms were still pins and needles in their entirety, but I could more or less process the sensation. “I want to apologize for sending you on a mission that was very clearly out of the norm. It was far too dangerous and you didn't have the proper training to deal with something like that. I thought for sure that the place would be abandoned and that you would meet no resistance, but it seems my intel was wrong. And I gave you precious little information before setting off, too. Rest assured that I accept all of the blame, and that everything will be taken care of.”

  This came as a huge relief. I sighed, smiling afresh, and turned to him. “Can't believe I'm still around,” I managed to mutter. My mouth felt like it'd been stuffed full of cotton and I couldn't speak loudly, but the words still crept out. I was out of it, not really putting a whole lot of thought into the maniac scene that'd laid me up to begin with. “So, what, you pay for a heart transplant or something? Get me to the top of a transplant list with your connections?” I snickered dreamily.

  Amundsen's smile intensified, if anything, and with this sharpening came an added degree of what my dizzy brain could only guess was amusement. “Something like that.” He patted the back of my hand condescendingly, but under the circumstances it didn't bother me very much. I noticed he was still wearing that weird, gaudy pendant of his. My vision was a little blurry, so I couldn't get a great look, but it was shaped like a many-pointed star, covered in writing. There was something in the middle of it, too. Looked like a rough, dark streak across the center of the piece.

  Ah, there it was. My memory and cognition were marching back into service now. I gulped, but there wasn't any spit there. After spending a few moments wrestling with a dry boulder of air in my throat, I finally choked out, “So, what exactly happened back there? Were those, like, legitimate witches? I mean, they must've been, right? Since...” I lowered my chin so that it was pointing down at my heart. “Hell of a night.”

  The hand-patting continued. “Oh, Lucian, I wouldn't worry about that. It'll all be clear soon enough. You'll have all the answers you require, and perhaps more, very soon now.”

  Huh, more answers than I require? That seemed unlikely, since I had a metric ton of questions I wanted answers to.

  “Well anyhow, thanks for saving me,” I said, raising my head and sporting a sleepy grin.

  “No problem, Lucian.” He returned to his seat across the room.

  And that was the moment I first noticed I was shackled to the bed with manacles of remarkable thickness.

  My gaze narrowed. I gave my arms a little shake, listening to the jingle-jangle of the chains as they were made to rattle. I laid back, closed my eyes, and then looked down at my arms again.

  Yup.

  Still chained up.

  “What the fuck?” I muttered, feeling my pulse quicken for the first time since I'd been struck down in that yard.

  Amundsen gave a sympathetic nod and motioned to the manacles with two fingers like he was tapping the keys of a tiny piano. “As for those, well, I think you ought to wait for Dr. Sargasso to come in and explain.”

  FIVE

  Dr. Sargasso walked in as if on cue. He was in a pair of green surgical scrubs, had a white surgical mask pulled down below his chin and some tight-fitting head covering made of the same papery material. He smiled at me warmly, glancing down at his wristwatch and then making a few brief marks on a clipboard.

  I didn't even give him a chance to introduce himself before I sat up in bed and shook my chains. “What the fuck, man?”

  I lacked experience with hospitals. I'd gotten my tonsils out at eleven, though, and felt pretty confident that medieval-looking shackles weren't a part of post-operative care. My folks had let me eat as much butter pecan as I could stomach, but they hadn't chained me up like a hostage. Somehow, I didn't think I'd be able to crack open any peer-reviewed journal of medicine and find a good study describing the benefits of holding a patient prisoner. Emerging from my drug-induced haze, I wanted some fucking answers, and I wanted them right away.

  With an understanding nod, Dr. Sargasso looked over at Mr. Amundsen and donned a slight grin. The bastard almost looked amused at my annoyance. He cleared his throat and held the clipboard behind his back, approaching my bedside and knitting his gray, fluffy eyebrows. “Mr. Lucian Colt, I was the one who performed the operation on you. I was in just a few hours ago to assess you, and I have to say that you've healed remarkably. Though, it comes as no surprise, really. You're the first subject to have undergone this procedure to my knowledge, at least since the Middle Ages, but it all seemed like solid theory on paper.”

  My head was spinning. My chest ached dully the more he spoke; either the pain meds were wearing off or hearing him talk vaguely about the procedure was inciting my incision to burn. Maybe it was both. The bruises on my body made themselves known every time I shifted around in bed, but I did my best to ignore the pain.

  “Anyway, those restraints will only be in place a short while longer, I promise you. Just until we know you're stable.” His voice was so calm, so breezy, that I almost wanted to believe him.

  “Restraints.” What a pretty euphemism that was. Yeah, sure, buddy. These are just plain old hospital restraints. I bet Spanish Inquisitors used to tell their victims the same thing before yanking out their fingernails.

  I leaned back in bed and grit my teeth so hard that I could hear them straining in their sockets. I wanted out of this place, and my heart was doing something crazy, something I'd never felt it do before. It was only natural, I reckoned, after sustaining such a terrible injury, but the way it was beating-- no, thundering-- along, made me kind of nervous, even as I felt my anger mounting.

  “How are you feeling?” asked the doctor, patting my knee. “How is your pain? We can get you something to take the edge off if you like.”

  I wasn't listening. My whole body felt tense and rigid. Something was wrong, but I couldn't for the sake of me put my finger on it. I had a jackhammer in my chest, and at any moment I thought it might break free. I dug my heels into the mattress and took a deep breath.

  “When you arrived,” continued the doctor, “you were practically dead. In fact, if you want to get into the logistics of it, you were completely gone by the time I arrived on the scene and got you transported here. A typical heart transplant wasn't an option-- the pericardial tissues, for one, were too far gone already. It would have been a waste of a donor heart.”

  “What the hell are you driving at, then?” I spat. There was a heart thumping in my chest like a locomotive screaming down the rails, sure as shit. My face f
elt flush, my vision blurred just a little. “So, what, you stick a robot heart, a piston or something in there? Feels like I've got a horse kicking me in the tit, man.” I patted the left side of my chest as best I could, the heavy manacle clanking against the bed railing.

  Mr. Amundsen chuckled, crossing his legs and appraising me with the sort of child-like interest I'd only ever seen in him while discussing artwork.

  “It's not funny,” said I. “How in the hell did you save me, then? You said that this little operation of yours hasn't been done since... the Middle Ages?”

  Dr. Sargasso nodded. “That's right. It's experimental, a little... fringe, really. I've only ever read of it. The materials, you understand, are hard to come by, so it isn't as though this procedure can be implemented on a regular basis. I drew my inspiration from a medieval text, actually, a work by a little-known doctor penned in the early days of the Holy Roman Empire.”

  I had no idea what the fuck any of that was supposed to mean. I even chuckled a little, thinking that I must be hallucinating. This dude was talking about old, esoteric books, and from where I was standing we were in the hospital, in the twenty-first century. What was he going on about? What did it have to do with me? I'm no expert on books, but I figured that most texts out of that era were filled with religious ideas and philosophy. Nothing whatsoever, save for barbarous, obsolete techniques, could possibly be gleaned from any medical text that old. Right?

  “So... you put a pig's heart in me?” I scoffed. “A cow's? You use alchemy or something to forge one out of gold? What is it?”

  Dr. Sargasso licked his lips. “Tell me, Mr. Colt, are you a religious man?”

  I shook my head.

  With a great deal of relief, the man's stance loosened and he gave a hearty laugh. Amundsen, too, could be heard to chuckle. “Thank goodness for that,” continued the doctor. “News like this might've been a little difficult for you to handle if that were the case. I probably should have asked you before you went under the knife, but you scarcely had the energy to give me your consent then.”

  I stared at him blankly, my heart quaking and quivering. No, this wasn't an artificial heart or a transplanted organ at all. It felt like he'd opened up my chest and let a wild animal loose inside of me. I grimaced as the thumping increased and tried to sit up, my entire chest tightening in the process.

  “The heart we gave you, Lucian, belonged to a demon,” the doctor said, the amusement disappearing from his features forthwith. He leaned in, repeating, “a demon,” in case I hadn't heard.

  Oh, I'd heard him the first time.

  Not that I believed a fucking word.

  “A demon's heart?” Through the discomfort, I cocked my head to the side and looked at the two of them in turn. “A demon's heart?” I forced a laugh. “Whew, good one. You got me. Now, what did you do to me, really?”

  If those guys were kidding around, then they had perfect poker faces and were willing to take their jokes further than anyone I knew.

  “Well?” I asked through a wince.

  “A demon's heart,” repeated the doctor.

  SIX

  I like to think of myself as an open-minded guy. I listen to experimental jazz, enjoy art of all kinds and would be considered rather worldly by all of my friends. And, hell, I've been known to enjoy a good spooky story from time to time. Horror films, too.

  But this?

  These two stone-faced jokesters weren't willing to budge, and even after a five-minute silence on my part, where I stared them down and grew even more displeased with their assertion that the heart in my chest was a “demon's”, they refused to say otherwise.

  Almost as if they weren't lying.

  I'd seen some shit before going down at that Witch's Sabbath. A bunch of sexy women had transformed into hags before my very eyes, and one had even turned her hand into a goddamn knife-- an incredible illusion if I've ever seen one. Then again, I guess it hadn't been an illusion after all, because the bitch had run that blade straight through me.

  So, witches were real.

  OK.

  I was kind of coming to terms with that fact.

  I was hesitant to accept it, still searching for alternative explanations, but knew that I'd experienced things at that Witch's Sabbath I'd never be able to explain rationally.

  But, demons?

  “You guys are fucking serious, aren't you? Demons... demons don't exist, though,” I said, my eyes softening just a touch. I looked down at my chest, wondering for the first time if something truly infernal was what was keeping me alive. I prodded the flesh gently, and as if in response, there came a grotesque lurching from beneath the skin, meeting my fingertips and causing me to recoil awfully. I tried to pull the gown away, to look at my breast and find the incision the surgeon had left behind.

  There was none.

  No scar, no bandages covering a fresh incision. The skin was pristine.

  My heart flopped over in my chest like a dog rolling onto its belly, causing my breast to contract and roil.

  Well, shit. My old heart never did that kind of thing.

  “A demon,” the doctor uttered for perhaps the thousandth time. “The heart you now possess was taken from a demon's body. And don't bother looking for a surgical incision. We made one, but it's long since healed.” He took a phone from his pocket and dialed in a short number. With his back to me, he spoke in hushed tones to someone on the other end before promptly hanging up. “Just a moment, and I'll prove it to you.” He stole a narrow glance at Amundsen, who was standing beside him now. “I'd hoped you'd just take me at my word, Lucian, but I can prove it to you if you insist.”

  I didn't know what he meant. What, was he going to drag some demon's corpse into the room?

  There was a knock at the door. A young woman in an old-fashioned nurse's outfit-- white cap and all-- wheeled in something that was covered in a white sheet.

  “Thank you,” said the doctor, taking it from her and setting it in front of the bed. He grabbed the edge of the sheet and then nodded to the nurse. “You might want to look away for a moment, miss.” Then, returning to me, he said, “Look here, Lucian.”

  He whipped the sheet away, revealing a tall mirror. It was a beautiful thing, intricately worked with no shortage of artistic flourishes along its metal frame. It was also crystal clear, the clearest-looking mirror I'd ever seen. Probably made with real silver. It was an antique, no doubt, but the mirror's excellent condition made it difficult for me to say with any certainty how old it was and, besides, the overall design of the thing didn't belong to any established style that I was aware of.

  But ultimately, I didn't really give a shit about the mirror or its craftsmanship, because what I saw in it arrested my attention and put such a scare in me that I thought I'd lose my mind.

  Sitting up in bed, staring back at me, was a hideous creature. It occupied the same space in the reflection where I should have been, and it looked exactly like me in every capacity, except that its face was all wrong. Warped, oil-colored skin, piercing yellow eyes and a mouth, all teeth, opened in a silent shout.

  I didn't know what demons looked like, but “demon” seemed a fine label for this monstrosity that stared back at me from the mirror with wide eyes.

  Watching me sink into the bed, pale and enfeebled by terror, the doctor draped the sheet back over the mirror and handed it off to the nurse. “Please return the Astral Mirror. I don't think we'll be needing it anymore.”

  The nurse took it back into the hall and closed the door softly behind her.

  In the meantime, I pawed impotently at my face, finding my long, familiar nose, my strong jaw, my brow, eyes and ears. Everything was in its proper place, felt just like I remembered it. I glanced up at the doctor, shaking all over.

  “Don't worry,” said Dr. Sargasso, dropping to one knee and taking one of my hands in his. “The Astral Mirror is a tool that we use to see what lurks inside of a person-- your outsides, however, are very
much unchanged.”

  Oh, boy. What a goddamned relief that was. The hideous monster I'd seen in the mirror was inside of my body, but at least no one would be able to see it on the outside. Was he fucking around with me, or did he really think that was a good thing?

  I clawed at my covers, breaking into a cold sweat and canvassing the ceiling. My heart hadn't quit, it was still pounding and pounding. My chest had gotten sore for all its stirring, in fact.

  “Are you all right, Lucian?” chanced Mr. Amundsen, coming up to the other side of the bed.

  I was a lot of things just then, but I sure as hell wasn't OK.

  My heart jumped up into my throat. Literally.

  And then everything went fuzzy.

  ***

  When I regained control and found myself sitting up in the hospital bed, the first thing I noticed was that my right hand was no longer weighed down. I was still wearing the manacles, but something had changed.

  Craning my neck around the edge of the bed, I saw that the chain had been pulled out of its anchor in the wall. Scraps of drywall littered the floor and the end of my chain scraped the dusty tiles. I then looked at the other side of the bed, where I found Mr. Amundsen tucked into a fearful crouch and Dr. Sargasso on the floor, beside him, rubbing at his face and cursing.

  The doctor had a wicked cut on his face, and the very edges of it were reddened in a vaguely chain-link pattern.

  Putting two and two together, I realized what must've happened. “Oh, shit... are you OK?” I gulped. “Did I do that?”

  Rising to his feet, the doctor walked around to the other side of the bed, took up the slack chain that trailed from my right arm, and then hastily tied it around the bottom wheel of my bed. He was some time in composing himself, but when he finally replied, his calm tone had mostly returned. “As I said, those shackles are on for a reason, Lucian. Until we know for certain the transplant has succeeded, we need to keep... everyone in this building safe. You'll stabilize soon enough.” He patted at his cheek, a palm's worth of blood dribbling down onto his scrubs. He grimaced. “I need to take care of this.” The doctor gave Amundsen a look before ambling unsteadily into the hallway.