Things That Go Bump At Night Part 10

"Okay. What you saw tonight was a kind of..." He seemed to be searching for a word he could work with, I waited. "Demon." He finally said. I looked at him blandly. What was I supposed to say? To think? I was expecting some kind of tale about some rare mountain animal that had accidentally found its way down into the woods around our little town. I was not expecting the word demon to be thrown out there like it was an everyday occurrence. Hey, no big deal, right? WRONG!

"A demon?" I asked; not that I thought he'd lie to me...but maybe he was the one off his rocker. "Like, from h.e.l.l?"

"No. Demon isn't actually the right word for it either, but it's a simple one, so we use it. It's a sort of an evil ent.i.ty...though it's not really a spirit either. It's been around since man, but it's not a heaven or h.e.l.l, or a G.o.d or a Devil thing. It's just something that's been here since time, and man has been fighting it since time. There are groups of us called hunters, we seek them out and destroy them. We were alerted to a concentrated number of them here in Webber last year, and that's why we're here."

I looked around the room at everyone, they seemed to be watching me intently.

"Mmmhmm." I said, my eyes found their way back to Jake. Of course, I finally get a boyfriend, and a really hot one at that, and he turns out to be completely loony-toons. "And, everyone in this room is a hunter?" When he nodded, I went on. "And what exactly is it that these demons do? I mean, why do you need to be hunting them?"

"Well, they kill. Innocent people."

"Really? So why have I never heard of a single news report of demons attacking and killing people?"

"You have, you just don't know you have. Over half the deaths you hear about are caused by demons. Car accidents where only one car is involved. Drownings, people falling down stairs or getting lost in the woods, things of that nature. Even some deaths deemed to be caused by natural causes, like heart attacks, strokes, brain aneurisms; etcetera."

"Wow." I needed to find a way to escape, these people were nuts. "Well, if they're such powerful demons that need hunters to track them and kill them, why do they resort to sneaky tricks, like disguised car accidents, to kill people?" Yeah, answer that one fruit loop.

"Because most people can't see them."

I laughed then. Oh lord. I couldn't help it. This was insane, and I didn't want to partic.i.p.ate anymore. I took a step away from Jake.

"Remi?" He asked and took a step towards me. I held up my hand to hold him off.

"Please, just stay there. I don't even know what I am supposed to say right now." I took several more steps back, and Jake didn't follow. I knew it was because I asked him not too, it made me almost sad. He was so gorgeous, and he'd taken Bob out for me. He kissed like it was the end of the world and it was the one thing he wanted to go out doing. Why did he have to end up being certifiably insane? Because that was just my freaking luck, wasn't it? I was destined to always be either disappointed or underwhelmed. I turned and ran. I ripped open the front door and had only taken one step out when I heard Jake call out my name.

And I screamed.

I was not a screamer by nature, even when Bob was playing bongos on my ribs I always managed to use my inside voice. But if a girl was going to scream, then seeing a long line of big, horned, red eyed demons standing at the end of your boyfriend's driveway was a pretty good reason to start using your outside voice.

"Remi!" Jake grabbed me around the waist and swung me behind him, he scanned the area quick and shoved me back inside. "Get inside!" He ordered to everyone else. He slammed the door shut and gathered me up in his arms. I buried my face in his chest and cried "oh my G.o.d" over and over again.

"Well, I think she believes us now." Mr. Wagner said and patted my back. "I'll go call Mick's team, he can make a patrol through here when he's done in town."

"We'll be in the kitchen." I felt Jakes voice rumble through his chest and felt intensely bad for thinking him crazy. Or if he was crazy, then I was too. "Come on." He said gently to me and led me down the hall. He set me on a bar stool at the island and poured me a gla.s.s of water, I drank a little while I tried to wrap my brain around what I saw. A thought occurred to me and I nearly jumped from my chair.

"Can they get in here?"

"No." Jake took the seat next to me, while everyone else either occupied the other seats around the island or stood around it. "We have protections we use on our boarders. So far they haven't been able to cross them."

"So far?" I asked and took another sip of water. It was cold and felt good on my throat.

"Well, over the years they've been developing a tolerance, if you will, to our protections, so we're constantly changing them. So far this one is holding up. Unfortunately though, it does mess with our resources, so we can't protect everyone. Just homes, borders. If someone leaves their house at night or their neighborhood in some cases...there's not much we can do for them. Our teams are small, so we can't go out and keep an eye on each and every individual person."

"Your teams?"

"Yes, there are groups of us scattered around every city in the country that has an infestation. It helps to have more than one team for each city, that way while one group is hunting, the other can rest, or mend if their fight has been particularly bad."

I took that in. The bandage on his wrist? I bet that wasn't a football injury. But I asked instead; "You're protections...is there one around my neighborhood?" Jake nodded. "My house?" I knew I shouldn't worry about Bob...but I couldn't help it.

"Yes." Jake said, seeing where my mind was, even though I'm sure he didn't think I should worry about Bob either. "Your house had its own protection, I put it there myself. We try to restrict the beings to woods as much as possible. It keeps them away from the human population and it's safer to hunt and to fight if we know we don't have to go through buildings or around people."

"Kendra?" I whispered. Jake nodded.

I ran my hands through my hair. I had roughly two million more questions, but I was already having a hard time wrapping my head around what I'd already been told. I just couldn't seem to process it; but I still had to know more.

"You said, not everyone can see them. Why can I? Why can you?"

Jake shook his head. "I don't know. We haven't really been able to figure out why some of us can see them but so many others can't."

"So, since I can, does that mean I have to become a hunter?"

"That's entirely up to you."

Mr. Wagner stepped into the kitchen.

"They're gone, back into the woods. But Mick's going to do a scout out this way a bit later." Jake frowned and looked at his father.

"Any idea why they'd line up at the border like that?" He asked.

Mr. Wagner shook his head then looked to me.

"You alright?"

"No." I answered simply and honestly. Jake smiled and took my hand, I held his tightly. I still had more questions.

"So, if my home had extra protections, how were they able to get into my dreams? I mean, do the protections not guard against that?"

Every single pair of eyes in the room rocketed in on me, Jake's grip on my hand tightened until I almost winced.

"What? What is it?" I was already bracing myself for another shock. Those looks couldn't mean good things.

"What kind of dreams?" He asked me.

"I don't know, it was of them. I mean, at the time I didn't know it was them, I had never actually seen one, just shadows and eyes in between trees; but the things I saw out there tonight, that was what I saw in my dream. How could I have known what they looked like before I'd ever actually seen one?"

There were swear words murmured all around.

"Oh, G.o.d. What? You're freaking me out, and I'm already freaked out to the max here people!"

"She's the one?" Ana muttered.

"They were lined at our border for her." Quinn said.

That did not sound good.

"Why for me? Jake?" Jake shook his head, he brought my hand to his lips, kissed it and then held it there, like he didn't want to be the one to tell me this part.

"There's a legend." Mr. Wagner finally said, stepping closer to his son's side. "I don't know all the details because it only happens once every few hundred years, and it's not happened in my time. Although, before I explain, I think you should know how these beings work first. They feed off human spirits or souls. It makes them strong and if they can consume enough spirits, they're able to multiply, or split off from themselves. Say for example, a being consumes ten human spirits, or souls or auras, whatever we chose to call them, we all have one, and when a demon is able to consume these ten spirits, it becomes strong enough to split itself into two beings. That number is just an example, we don't actually know how many spirits they have to consume to split. It may take ten, it may take twenty; it may take a hundred."

I nodded to let him know I was following. So he continued.

"But as the legend goes, there is a rare human spirit that has the ability to split demons by the hundreds or maybe even the thousands, so if a demon was to feed off this human spirit there's a possibility that it would have the ability to create thousands of new demons, but again, those numbers are just an example."

"But what does that have to do with my dream?"

"This spirit is a warrior. No demon has ever been able to consume this particular human spirit. This spirit is strong and probably has its own defenses so they will try anything to weaken the spirit in the hopes of consuming it. One of those ways is to attack this human in his or her dreams."

I frowned.

"Well, why don't they attack and weaken all hunters that way?" I asked. "What makes my dream so special?"

"Because forcing themselves into a human's dream weakens them as well. They'll only do it if the reward is worth it. Say a reward of thousands more of their kind in just one kill."

"So, I'm going to have more of these dreams?"

"No, there are other protections we can give you." Jake finally spoke.

"Okay. So, how do we make me not the one? Is there some kind of protection for that?"

"No." Mr. Wagner said. "We just keep fighting them, keep picking them off one by one."

"Holy h.e.l.l." I said on a breath. "So I'm going to have demons hunting me for the rest of my life?"

"That's a.s.suming you are actually the one." Ana said. Did she seem jealous? Seriously? I turned to her.

"Well, like you Ana, I hope I am not."

"That must be why you finally started seeing them." Ryan finally spoke up. "Because they figured it out too."

Ana scoffed again and moved away from our little group.

"Can they come out during the day?" I asked.

"No." Jake shook his head. "They can't exist in the sunlight."

"Where do they go?"

"We don't know."

"What do I do now? I mean, do I just hide away forever?"

"You can learn to fight with us." Mr. Wagner suggested. Silence greeted that for a time.

"Let's not talk about that right now." Jake eventually said, standing. "I think maybe we should give her some time."

6.

I stepped out of the shower, my head was still pounding and I had a little niggle of fear in the pit of my stomach that I suspected would be there for a very long time.

I gasped and grabbed for the towel that hung on the shower door. Jake grinned at my reflection in the mirror.

"I'm not looking." Then he turned his head and looked at me over his shoulder. "Well, I might have looked a little."

I smiled shyly and wrapped the towel around me. Jake stood at the sink, in a pair of boxer shorts and s.h.i.+rtless. The tattoos that had peeked out from his s.h.i.+rt sleeve actually covered most of his back and over his shoulders to his pecks, and down as far as his biceps. There was a bandage at his lower back that he was working to peel off.

"Here, let me." I said stepping up behind him. I gently pulled at the tape and looked at the gash; it was at least three inches long and jagged. "What happened?"

He looked at me in the mirror again and handed back a small gla.s.s jar of something white.

"Here put this on it."

He had avoided my question, and I wasn't going to press, I was pretty sure I knew the answer anyway.

"What do your tattoos mean?" I asked and gently applied whatever the white substance was, then reached around him and grabbed the new bandage.

"My family is descendant from Vikings; most of its Old Norse. It's battle protection, symbolically anyway."

"It's s.e.xy. Symbolically anyway."

He chuckled. I finished taping the bandage and stepped back. I looked at the symbols covering his back, shoulders and upper arms, and the front of his chest when he turned to face me. There was also what looked to be some kind of serpent coming up out of water over his left ribs, the tail end of it disappeared down into his boxers and I found myself wondering where it ended. Stop that Remi! I hollered at myself and took another step back.

"Can you get out now, so I can get dressed?"

"Oh come on." He pouted like a little kid. "Can I stay, pretty please?"

"No. I'd like to keep some surprises for later. How boring am I going to get if you see everything within the first day?"

"I don't find that boring at all." He grinned.

"Jake. Out." I pointed to the door.

"Fine. Make sure you drink that." He motioned to the shot gla.s.s on the counter then exaggerated his lonely walk to the door, he looked back at me once with a pout. I just raised my eyebrows at him, but smiled as soon as he was out. Funny, after everything I learned tonight and I could still smile.

I looked at the bruise on my face in the mirror and sighed. And again, with everything I'd just found out, a simple bruise didn't seem like such a big deal anymore. I sighed again at myself and reached out for the pajamas I'd laid on the edge of the sink. Oh, Kendra. These were not my normal flannel pants and baggy t-s.h.i.+rt, but at least she hadn't forced some lacey see through lingerie on me. Still...the little white tank and the boy shorts would fit me like a glove.

At least they covered all the important parts.

I snapped the bathroom light off and stepped in the hall and froze; it was dark. Super, now I had developed a fear of the dark. I hugged the wall and hurried down the hall to Jake's room, I dashed in and closed the door behind me and leaned against it. I was going to have to get a handle on this situation or I really would go nuts. Jake's room wasn't entirely dark, one of his bedside lamps was on, but seeing him there, lying against the headboard still s.h.i.+rtless I might add- his arms behind his head, my fear subsided.

"You okay?" He asked.

"Not really." I still hadn't left the door. Jake smiled at that. He pulled the covers back and patted the bed next to him. His eyes tracked me through the room as I came to crawl into bed, but I didn't lay down, I sat on my knees. "I still have more questions."