Howling dreadful, p.1
Howling Dreadful, page 1
HOWLING DREADFUL
KAT SIMONS
CONTENTS
Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Thank You
Bone Lantern Witch
Excerpt
Books By Kat Simons
About the Author
A demon plague is not a fun meet cute…
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Angie Jordan, powerful witch and psychic, should be focused on midterms and getting through college. Not hunting demons. That’s a demon hunter’s job. But when the hunter who saved her life as a child returns and asks a favor, Angie can’t refuse.
When that hunter brings her protégé, and he’s gorgeous and has a sexy English accent… Well, that’s just rude.
Angie knows more about the demon realms than any witch should. Stopping those who would unleash a plague on her world is a calling she must answer. Even if that means doing a job she’s not meant to do. She can’t afford the distraction of a sexy accent and gorgeous eyes. Not if she wants to survive.
Failure means the devastation and destruction of everything she holds dear.
But success could cost her her soul.
HOWLING DREADFUL
Copyright © 2022 by Katrina Tipton
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Cover design: © 2022 T&D Publishing
Cover Art: © Ilkin Guliyev | © Oleg Gekman | Dreamstime.com
Published by: T&D Publishing
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T&D Publishing: https://www.tanddpublishing.com
Kat Simons Website: https://www.katsimons.com
Kat Simons Newsletter: https://bit.ly/KatSimonsNewsletter
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All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
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This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously, and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.
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eBooks are not transferable.
They cannot be sold, shared or given away as it is an infringement on the copyright of this work.
To my beloved husband. For everything.
CHAPTER ONE
Angela Jordan knew, since the age of five, that she had a unique gift. A gift that wasn’t her witchy magic. A gift she wouldn’t exactly call a “gift.”
The demon hunter who’d rescued her that first time in the church parking lot, Aidan, called it a gift. Angie thought her ancestors had done something millennia ago to piss off a druid and all these centuries later, she got stuck with the curse.
Trees. Trees were the problem.
And at that moment, she was surrounding by them.
On purpose. Because Aidan had asked.
She was not a happy woman right now.
“I am not a happy woman right now,” she muttered.
“So you’ve said,” Aidan said quietly. “A few times.”
A small snort from Aidan’s protégé, Sebastian, didn’t help.
Angie was trying very hard not to think too much about the demon hunter’s protégé.
Sebastian was… Well, he should have been one of the most ordinary people she’d ever seen. Aidan was. Aidan had ordinary brown hair, currently pulled into an ordinary braid. She had an ordinary build. Was an ordinary average height. Had an ordinary pale complexion with no distinguishing facial marks like freckles or moles. Had an ordinary average face. She wasn’t too attractive or too unattractive to draw attention. She wasn’t too tall or too short. Her ordinary brown hair brushed her shoulders, when it was loose, always in a non-descript hairstyle. She didn’t have any obvious scars, tics, disabilities, or extraordinary attributes. She didn’t dress to stand out in a crowd. She didn’t draw attention to herself in any way.
The demon hunter was as unremarkable, as easy to overlook, as any person Angie had ever met.
Until, of course, you looked into her eyes.
And really, unless you knew what you were looking at, it was pretty easy to dismiss that flash of red in the brown depths as a trick of the light.
Sebastian, on the other hand, was not easy to overlook. He was as tall as, maybe taller than, Angie’s six-foot height, with wide shoulders, a lean, athletic frame, and a ridiculously handsome face. Really ridiculous. Men weren’t this handsome in real life. Movie stars were this handsome. Soap stars were this handsome. But not men you met through an old acquaintance.
His dark brown hair was cut short and tight to his head, his dark brown skin was smooth and ageless, his jaw clean shaven. He was dressed simply enough in a black t-shirt and dark colored jeans, but he filled out the jeans and t-shirt in ways that was impossible to ignore and that did funny, fluttery things to her stomach. He moved with an easy, lethal grace that reminded her of a predator. One of the big lazy ones. One of the cats—a lion or a jaguar. The ones you could fool yourself into thinking were just soft, snuggly animals. Right before they ripped your throat out.
She’d have thought that edge of danger would have her thoroughly on guard with him, not in any way distracted by the subtle spice of his scent. And she would have been wrong.
The red flash in the depths of his dark brown eyes was a little fainter than Aidan’s. Easier to dismiss. Easier to pretend it wasn’t there. But unlike Aidan, he didn’t blend in to his surroundings. He stood out. A beacon call of handsomeness that demanded she look and appreciate and dwell on.
It was infuriating.
She tried not to study him. Tried to keep her attention on the situation at hand—demon had broken loose, they needed her to ensure it went back to a demon realm, lots of dangerous stuff about to happen. But she kept…staring at Sebastian. Getting caught in the way his mouth quirked when he was amused. The way he let his gaze linger on her. The way he moved.
She jerked her gaze away from him. Again.
He was almost as dangerous to look at as the surrounding trees.
“Something funny?” she asked, her tone as brittle as she could make it while her heart was pounding so hard.
“Nothing at all,” he said, his voice low.
To add insult to injury, the man had a deep, smoky voice and an English accent that danced like little sparks of fire down her spine. Just…unfair!
“This is a serious situation,” she said, her tone harsh because she was embarrassed and disoriented. “One I shouldn’t be involved in.” This last she directed to Aidan.
“You’ll be fine,” Aidan said. “You’ve been working with Esmerelda.”
“On my magic,” she said. “Not…this.”
Well, not this in a while. Esmerelda was her first magical mentor, and still one of her most influential. She’d known Esmerelda since she was five years old. After her mother—the only moderately magical person in her immediate family—had approved the pairing. Aidan had brought Esmerelda into her life, something Angie would be forever grateful for.
And so, yes, she did feel like she owed Aidan. Help at least. Since Aidan had helped her. But this wasn’t…
She’d have preferred using her ordinary witch magic. The magic she was called to. Spells, harnessing the elements, even her touch psychic skills… Anything but this.
“I have midterms next week. I should be studying for those.” She was in her senior year at University of New Mexico. She was due to graduate this spring with her Bachelors in Psychology—if she didn’t fail her fall classes because she got sucked into helping Aidan with demons.
“What classes? Maybe I can help,” Sebastian said.
She tried to ignore the way her toes curled at the sound of his voice. “No.” She couldn’t imagine trying to study with him around. She couldn’t imagine trying to think with him too close.
And why was he letting her see him like this? Hmm? He was a demon hunter. He could ensure she saw him in any way he wanted, with just his will. It was one of their best tricks, blending in, fading into the background, looking harmless and ordinary. She had no idea if Aidan really looked so ordinary. But she knew Sebastian could make himself look ordinary and harmless or he wouldn’t have been able to do this job for very long. Didn’t do to stand out to the humans who summoned demons. They might remember you later. Demon hunters didn’t want to be remembered. If someone remembered them, they might think to call a demon and target them. Demon hunters had to be forgettable.
Angie could never easily forget Sebastian.
He had to be doing this on purpose. He had to be. And that was what pissed her off so much.
They moved as quietly through the woods as the crunchy fall undergrowth allowed, which, given they were hunters and she was a witch with ties to the elements, meant they managed it better than the humans in the distance. The men were making enough noise to cover any approach anyway, but demons had better hearing than humans so it was safer to be cautious.
When she finally got a look at the spot in the woods the humans had staked out—so to speak—for their demon summoning, Angie frowned. They’d cleared a space in an open patch of ground, pushing away all the leaf and twig detritus until there was only smooth, dark dirt. And then they’d formed a circle using rocks. A good, sturdy base. As good as chal
There were candles dotted around the circle, just outside the rocks, illuminated the scene in wobbly orange light and filling the clearing with the waxy scent of candle fire. Angie looked at the dried leaves at the outer edge of the clearing and shook her head. Fire hazard this time of year, having unguarded candles. Even if they’d cleared space for it. Sparks flew off candles, especially during ceremonies when elements like wind could kick up more.
The little flickering flames danced in a gentle breeze, as if in answer to her thought. But so far, no sparks had jumped. One less thing to worry about immediately.
Despite Aidan’s warning, though, it was obvious the demon hadn’t escaped the circle yet. It was still firmly inside the stones as the three human men who’d summoned it danced around the circle, making whooping noises and chanting something Angie couldn’t make out. Most of her focus was on the demon.
She hadn’t seen one like this in… Maybe ever. Not outside their own realms. Except that one time. But never like this. Though technically, being inside the circle linked them to their realms and ensured they weren’t fully in the human realm. Even then, she wasn’t a hunter so she didn’t run around the world stopping idiots who summoned demons, which meant she didn’t see these demon summoning ceremonies.
Her history with demons was…different.
This wasn’t a demon species she’d encountered before either. Was that good or bad? It was squat and wide and blue-colored, with four leg-like, short, stubby limbs tipped with wickedly long claws. There were tentacles along its back that waved around its blobbish body. Its head was another blob on a blob, though with four glowing red eyes in the center, a set of wicked looking horns curving from its blob head, and a mouth too wide for the round face, filled with an awful lot of sharp teeth.
There was a kind of fog covering the ground inside the circle. Angie couldn’t tell if that meant the demon was one of the ones that issued cold rather than heat, or whether it was just part of the summoning.
She hoped it wasn’t the cold kind. She couldn’t look into those realms, didn’t risk it. And if a cold bastard got out, they’d all freeze instantly before they could do anything to stop it.
Despite her curse-gift, she was not a demon expert. She didn’t want to be a demon expert. That was a demon hunter’s job. And she left it to them. Or at least, she’d tried.
“It hasn’t escaped,” she murmured to Aidan as they stood just inside the treeline, in the shadows outside the uneven candlelight. There wasn’t much of a moon overhead. And they’d turned off their flashlights back a ways so the humans didn’t notice them approaching. The deep shadows would keep them hidden from the three men dancing around the circle. But even if the darkness hadn’t helped, Aidan could will the humans not to see them.
“Actually,” Aidan said, her voice trailing off as she stared at the circle.
Angie glanced between the hunter and Sebastian. “Well?” she mouthed to him.
He was frowning, his gaze moving between Aidan and the dancing humans. He ignored her question.
She tried really hard not to huff out her irritation. She must not have succeeded though, because his gaze flashed to her and he smiled, very faintly and lethally.
She forgot what she’d asked.
Damn it. This was no time to be distracted. There was a demon right there. And she didn’t know what it could do. Aidan looked…intent, which probably wasn’t a good sign. The dancing men seemed to be chanting louder. The fog inside the containment circle was swirling. And if this was a cold beast instead of a hot one, they might all freeze if it escaped.
But one smile from the absurdly handsome Sebastian and her brain frizzled.
Because she needed the comfort, she rubbed the little pentagram hanging from the beaded bracelet around her wrist. It was a ward, an…aide that helped bring her back from the brink if she accidentally looked into the naturally formed V of a tree. The bracelet was a gift, from Esmerelda, and it helped a lot to keep her focused and harness her reserves when she got sucked into her other gift-curse. Reminded her she was a witch, not a hunter. Reminder her she was in control.
She didn’t feel in control right now. She felt wildly out of her depth. She hated that feeling with a deep and abiding passion.
Control was extremely important for her—controlling her magic, controlling her touch psychic skill so she didn’t accidentally read every little thing she touched—and feeling out of balance was dangerous.
She pressed the little silver pentagram between her fingers, hard, letting the metal dig into her skin, reminding her who she was. What she was.
Then she started to murmur a little spell. Nothing that would interfere with Aidan and Sebastian’s efforts to banish the demon. Just a little something to…help.
She released the pentagram to form the finger gestures necessary to setting the spell, keeping her gaze on the containment circle, the dancing men, the demon, but her mental focus wasn’t on her surroundings. It was on calling forth her real power. Her magic tingled in her blood and rose through her feet as she grounded in the earth. Elements were her domain. Not the demon realms.
Not the demon realms.
A snap from the clearing made her heart beat harder. She got her spell to the trigger point then held it in a waiting pattern. One last word and hand gesture would set it into motion. But she wasn’t quite ready for it yet.
Neither Aidan nor Sebastian had moved. They stood as still as the surrounding trees. Still enough that if she wasn’t hyper aware of Sebastian next to her, she might be under the illusion they’d left.
That was a demon hunter’s power. That was their will.
She searched the clearing for the source of the sound that had almost brought her out of her conjuring. The dark woods beyond the clearing were deeply shadowed. She couldn’t afford to look too closely, so she kept her gaze angled toward the ground at the base of the trees, looking for movement in the darkness.
There could be more humans out there. Aidan hadn’t told her how many were involved in this. Aidan might not even know. Though Angie had a feeling she did. The hunter always seemed to know more than she said.
What she had said to Angie was that a demon had escaped and they wanted her help returning it to a demon realm.
They didn’t need her help, strictly speaking. Since people with her skill were…well, generationally rare. One every four hundred years, if that. Or so Aidan had told her. The demon hunters couldn’t rely on someone like Angie to send back escaped demons. They used their skills, knowledge, and most of all their will to do that. Most of the time.
But a freed demon was always more dangerous. They were fully in this realm at that stage. Not linked to their own. And while they sacrificed power to get here, even a weak demon was a deadly demon.
But that was as much about the situation as she knew.
“You said it was free,” Angie murmured very quietly to Aidan. “Is there more than one?”
The words left her mouth as the thought occurred to her. The rightness of the question appalled her.
“There is, isn’t there?” she asked.
There was more than one. There had to be. That was why Sebastian was here. That was why they’d called her for help. Aidan could handle a demon on her own or she wouldn’t still be alive. Aidan could handle more than one demon on her own or she wouldn’t still be alive.
Terror caught Angie’s throat.
What had to be happening that Aidan brought backup?
“How many are there?” she whispered, swallowing hard. Her heartbeat pounded like a drum, loud enough she was sure the demon in the circle would hear it. She searched the shadowed ground beyond the containment circle again even as the hairs on the back of her neck prickled.
