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

  I was brand-new to this “Demon-Heart” thing, but I was already having second-thoughts about it.

  ***

  The rattling of my work-issue phone woke me up sometime in the late afternoon. I rolled onto my side and picked the thing up, fumbling with it until I managed to open the black clamshell, and then looked over the screen groggily. There was a text message waiting for me, from Kubo, and it was as curt as I would have expected from a guy like him. No “How are you?” or “Good morning!” Just straight to the business.

  I read it aloud, yawning. “Meeting at Boulder Brewery, 5 PM, sharp.” That last word was written in all-caps. Kubo was certainly the type to value punctuality.

  Boulder Brewery was a bar and grill downtown. It was a little ways from my apartment, but I figured that if I started for it now I could make it there on foot with more than enough time to eat, drink and enjoy myself before getting down to brass tacks with Kubo and the gang. The chief almost certainly wasn't inviting me out for wings and beer, after all.

  I peered through the blinds and found it looked to be a fair day. Pulling on some clothes I washed my face and stepped out the door, but not before queueing up Raw Power on my smartphone and sticking my earbuds in.

  FOURTEEN

  I was into my second listen of Raw Power and crossing Monroe Street when the urge to run came over me. Not for any particular reason. I just plain wanted to sprint.

  You've gotta understand, I've never been the athletic type. From childhood I detested rigorous physical activity, preferring to sit around and have the action come to me. If you ask my mother, she'll dig up a few old photo albums featuring pictures of me during what she affectionately calls my “fluffy phase”. In gym class, I was always the slowest kid to run a mile; hell, I'd cut across the parking lot and hide between the faculty's cars where my teacher couldn't see, and then munch on snack cakes I'd smuggled till the class was almost over and I could jog to the finish line, pretending I'd succeeded. In recent years my tolerance for physical activity, mainly of the ass-kicking type, had grown, but you still weren't going to find me toiling away in a gym.

  But, damn it, I wanted to run.

  And so I did.

  The rampaging guitar in the second half of “Gimme Danger” propelled me down the streets. It was like heroin; even if I'd wanted to stop listening I wouldn't have been able to take the earbuds out. I could feel a fire in my blood, and a satisfying burn wormed its way down my legs as I met the ground with hard, rapid steps. I wished I'd worn something more comfortable for running in, as my Chuck Taylor's weren't really going to cut it, but I ran anyhow.

  In all my years, I couldn't remember enjoying running this much. It felt completely effortless, like I was being propelled by forces outside myself. The burn in my legs faded quickly and I began to give in to the momentum I'd built. Like a practiced sprinter I tore down the sidewalk, bypassing other pedestrians with shopping bags who looked at me like I was insane.

  Actually, that wasn't right. They weren't looking at me like I was crazy. They were staring on in disbelief.

  Because I was going really fucking fast.

  If Usain Bolt could somehow breed with a muscle car, I'd have been their weird, hybridized son. It hadn't registered until the other people on the street took notice, but when I caught microsecond-long glimpses of their mouths hanging agape, I knew it was me. The scenery was passing by so quickly it was dizzying, the buildings zipping by as though I were sticking my head out of the window of a truck going seventy-plus down the road.

  I was at the Boulder Brewery before I knew it, and came to a stop so sharp that the soles of my high tops shed a few layers of rubber in the process. Catching my breath outside the door, I was thankful for the lack of passersby here. It was still early, and the place didn't look particularly crowded. Grinning, I stretched a little, flexing my legs. Maybe I shouldn't have done that. Draws a lot of attention, sprinting around like The Flash. I bet Kubo would be pissed if he saw me doing that out in public.

  The run had increased my already monstrous appetite. Rubbing at my gut, I strolled into the restaurant, and was seated at the bar soon thereafter. The Boulder Brewery, if you've never been there, is one of my favorite restaurants in town. They serve this kick-ass bunless burger, a whole pound of beef, topped in barbecue pulled pork and fried onion strings. Oh, and then there were the endless cheese fries and a selection of craft beer that would give the most hardened beer hipster tingles in all the right places. I didn't come here too often, as the food was a bit pricy, but with my wallet still burgeoning I figured I could afford to splurge.

  I called over the bartender, a sexy cougar with a low-cut white top and a pair of smokey, greenish eyes, and ordered a rum and coke to start with. I hoped Kubo wouldn't mind me imbibing before the job. A short while later she dropped my drink off with a big smile and I took a long sip. It was just after 4 PM. Kubo wasn't planning to meet until 5. That gave me enough time to scarf down a meal and a few more drinks.

  Wonder what Kubo's got for us, I thought. It's probably big, whatever it is. Maybe he knows where the witches have gone. Oh, man... when we find them, I'm going to tear them apart, limb from limb. The more I thought about the coven, about the mission ahead, the more I started itching for a fight. I wasn't just a weak human anymore. I was a demon-hearted, desk-smashing engine of destruction, and when I met those bitches again I was going to make them sorry they'd ever taken up hocus-pocus.

  I centered my drink on the coaster and leaned over the bar, intending to start a little small-talk with the bartender, when I felt a firm bump to my right shoulder. Someone had jostled me, hard, and it was all I could do not to fall off of my stool. I took hold of the counter and remained upright, shooting a dirty glance at the guy who'd bumped me.

  The dude had at least a foot on me and was wearing a black leather jacket. His hair was long, with large swaths shaved out of the sides. I didn't know what to make of that. If this was some new style, then it was the trashiest, stupidest thing I'd ever seen. The guy's gaze darted my way and a sneer drifted across his lips. Putting one of his elbows on the bar next to me, he cast a long shadow and started barking at the staff. He spoke like an idiot, with a deep voice so booming that his words could scarcely be parsed. He said something about whiskey, then sent one of his thick palms against the top of the bar with all the fury of a horse's hoof.

  That was when it happened.

  When the guy jostled the bar with his hand, my rum and coke slowly edged over, falling from the coaster and spilling across the counter.

  Getting bumped by some ruffian at a bar was something I could handle. Whatever. It happens.

  But having my drink spilled?

  That was something I simply couldn't abide.

  Deep within me an intense anger sprang up from seemingly nowhere. I'd been in a great mood up to that point, energetic and pleasant. In the time it took for my spilled drink to reach the edge of his elbow, I'd grown absolutely livid, however. Clearing my throat, I tapped him on the shoulder and leaned in. “You've gone and spilled my drink, mate. I hope you plan on buying me another.”

  The rough in the leather jacket hadn't even noticed the spill, apparently, but turned to face me, the sneer burgeoning across his acne-scarred face once again. “Oh, my bad, bro,” he muttered in that deep voice of his. That he was anything but sorry was clear from the very first syllable. Dipping one of his thick fingers in the puddle of drink, he swirled it around and then flicked a bit of it at me. “Seems to me like your drink's still there, bud. Maybe you just lap it off the bar like a dog, 'stead of leaving a mess for this here pretty lady.” He grinned at the now timid bartender, his yellow choppers looking crooked and stumpy.

  The anger took over.

  Well, not the anger, exactly.

  But something inside of me surged to the fore, eclipsed my consciousness temporarily, just as it had that night when I'd escaped the hospital. It was uncomfortable, a feeling of terrible violation. Som
eone else surfaced while I was simultaneously buried. And yet, in these particular circumstances, I waived my discomfort. I didn't like like the feeling of this emerging presence within me, but I wasn't about to try and bottle it up, either.

  It was the demon.

  I uttered words then that I, personally, had had no intention of speaking. They came from another set of lips entirely, from a second mind caged within my own body, and when they'd been spoken, I sat there, stupefied, my jaw dropping nearly as far as the surly, leather-clad prick's did.

  The exchange went like this.

  “I'm sorry to hear about your grandmother, Eugenia,” I began. Bear in mind that I'd never seen this guy in my life, and that there was no way on Earth I could have possibly known his grandma's first name. “Pancreatic cancer is the silent killer. I'm surprised she lasted as long as she did, to be frank.”

  So, in case you're as lost as I was then, I apparently knew this guy's grandmother's name, and that she'd just recently died after a battle with pancreatic cancer. Don't ask me how I knew that.

  “W-what?” he said, his punchable face contorting into a mess of confusion. “Do I know you?”

  I smirked. The demon was back, and he wasn't through yet. “Eugenia and I went way back. I knew her when she was held up during the firebombing of Hamburg. Very heroic, the way she sucked Allied cock day and night just to get out of that hellhole. You know, your grandmother, that legendary whore, got knocked up by one of the Americans back there and gave birth to your father in '44, when the war was winding down. I was there, too. She sucked a good dick, Eugenia. I wonder if, in the end, she could still remember the taste of my--”

  The bruiser's fist was locked around my collar before I could finish.

  “The fuck did you say?” he demanded. I have to admit, the guy looked more spooked than angry just then. Apparently he really did have a grandmother named Eugenia, who'd died of pancreatic cancer recently, and who'd had a son in 1944 after surviving the Allied firebombing of Hamburg. Though, by the looks of it, he hadn't known about the finer details of his grandmother's wartime exploits.

  Apparently the demon in me wasn't intimidated, because I blew the guy a kiss and continued. “She used to love it when the soldiers gave it to her rough, passing her around like a plaything. A tight little ass on that one, too. Why, your daddy, Richard, didn't include that in the eulogy last Tuesday morning, did he?”

  The guy went mental, tossing me off of my stool. Red-faced and not a little horrified, he pointed to the door and then motioned to a table of scruffy-looking guys in the corner. “Out, now. I'm going to teach you some manners, motherfucker.” He pulled the edge of his jacket aside, revealing the hilt of a big knife. “I'll teach you better than to talk shit about my grandmother, you prick.”

  Just moments ago, I'd been thinking about those witches and burning for a fight.

  Now I had one on my hands.

  Wishes do come true, I thought as I sauntered casually from the bar and started for the main entrance. What few people were in the restaurant looked on nervously. They were probably sure that this gang of thugs would wipe the floor with me, carve me up like a Thanksgiving turkey. I chuckled at the thought. Well, let's see what this demon can really do.

  FIFTEEN

  We were hardly into the alleyway behind the restaurant when the big guy rushed at me.

  The knife was out of his waistband in a flash, and his hulking frame bounded towards me with a clumsiness that was almost endearing. He loosed a growl, looked positively distressed over the shit I'd said about his grandma. Poor guy. He never stood a chance.

  Under ordinary circumstances, I would have been a little nervous about tackling a guy as big as this one head-on. I'm no small-fry, but this dude was big, and in a fight, size does matter. A little bit, at least. This fella had a good deal more weight to throw around, longer reach, more muscle.

  What he didn't have, though, was a demon inside of him.

  I let him get pretty damn close to me with that knife before I reached out and took hold of the offending wrist. With a quick jerk I had him on his knees, the arm bent back in the most uncomfortable configuration possible. The knife fell to the concrete and his buddies all startled for the sound of its clattering. They were gathered around the entrance to the alley, as if to keep me from escaping.

  If they'd had half a brain between the three of them, they'd have taken off right then and there.

  The demon was almost fully in control here. I was hazily aware of what was happening, had about the same level of input that a ringside spectator might have at a professional wrestling match. If I shouted at the guys to throw a folding chair, then maybe they'd listen in such a scenario. It was the same thing with this demon; I could make a suggestion, and the demon could choose whether or not to take me up on it.

  In this case, the demon complied.

  Break his arm, I thought. It seemed like the best way to incapacitate him, and nothing short of a busted limb was going to keep him from taking another shot with that knife.

  Well, with what I can only call elegance, the demon in me gave the hefty guy's arm a little twist and, wouldn't you know, it broke loudly at the elbow. The demon knew just how to move the limb to make it give way, and the joint could be heard to pop as he turned it in his grasp. Er, my grasp. Whatever. You get what I mean.

  I'd just broken this guy's arm.

  With one hand.

  I was barely touching him, really.

  Now, if you've never seen a big man like this one cry, then I highly recommend it. He was on his knees, looking up at me with fear in his eyes and doing this obnoxious, open-mouthed crying I'd only ever seen from kids throwing fits at the grocery store. He writhed a little bit, tried to pull his busted arm from my grasp, but couldn't do it. The demon in me was too strong, would let go of him for nothing.

  “W-what are you?” he managed to gasp between sobs.

  I didn't dignify that with an answer.

  Instead, I continued twisting, till pieces of bone shot out of his skin and a bit of blood was ejected from the wound as if through a spray bottle. He yelped, quivered in my grasp, and then I let him go.

  He didn't dare attack me after that. As best he could, he rose to his feet and started stumbling the opposite way, hoping to escape. I wasn't going to let him do so easily, however. The fight so far had been an unfulfilling test of my new strength. I needed to see what I was really capable of.

  Thankfully, one of the big guy's friends was on his way. He'd fished a length of pipe out of the gutter and was rushing at me now, a mane of unwashed hair flapping in the breeze behind him and a high-pitched shout on his lips. Guy looked like a dirty hippy, something straight out of a Grateful Dead concert. He was my height, but thin as a rail, and I noticed as he rushed me that he was missing several teeth.

  For fun, I let this one hit me with his pipe.

  I didn't block it, didn't make any effort to dodge. I just stood there and took it like a man, right to the side of the head. The demon in me seemed to think it was a good idea.

  And, you know, it didn't kill me.

  But it'd been a stupid fucking idea.

  Tip: Even if you're possessed by a powerful demon, getting smacked upside the head with a length of steel pipe by a grown man hurts like hell.

  Ordinarily a hit like that one would have been sufficient to dash my brains against the ground, but not this time. This time, I staggered back a few paces, then righted myself with a grin. The dirty hippy glanced back at his friends, who were running off without him now, and then nervously weighed the possibility of taking another swing. You could tell by the way he hesitated, by the way his bushy eyebrows trembled in apprehension, that he wanted to run. His was the face of someone who'd just encountered something profoundly powerful, something beyond his feeble understanding. Still, to his credit, he wound up like Mark McGuire and let her rip.

  This time, I didn't stand idly by and allow myself to get hit.
r />   I grasped the edge of the pipe and tore it from his grip before lunging at him and slamming him into the wall. Dust was ejected from the space between the bricks, and he looked stunned for the impact, his eyes going momentarily blank. Tossing him to the ground, I went in for a stomp, but missed.

  In the interim, the crafty hippy had gone for a hail mary.

  He took hold of his buddy's knife and, without warning, plunged it straight into my gut.

  The demon was unseated and, for a minute there, it was just plain, old, frightened Lucian standing in the alley with a knife sticking out of his belly. “Oh, fuck,” I muttered.

  A pipe to the head hadn't done me in, but a knife to the guts was a whole new level of injury.

  The hippy seemed not a little horrified with himself and fell back, doing the crab-walk till he'd built a bit of distance with me. He seemed to want to speak, but his face was pale and he couldn't find the words.

  My stomach burned. Slowly taking hold of the knife handle, I peered narrowly at my gut. It was probably gushing with blood right now. The sight of the blade digging into my entrails was probably going to make me lose it. I was terrified, shaking.

  What I saw next, well, there was no explanation for it.

  The knife, blade, handle and all, was melting.

  Yes, you read that right.

  Melting.

  Like a clock in a Dali painting.

  A wave of heat struck my face as I looked down, and I noticed the weapon becoming bent and distorted. The metal bubbled and began to fall away into a puddle of silvery liquid at my feet. When it'd completely melted, no wound remained. My abdomen looked as pristine as ever. My shirt was a little torn where the knife had gone in, but that was it. I patted my belly incredulously, but failed to find a cut of any kind. It didn't even hurt.

  “Well, look at that,” I said to the guy, laughing heartily. I couldn't believe it.