Demonsense (Demonsense series Book 1) by Sara DeHaven Read Free Book Online Page B

tense, he still looked drawn. “You know, like I mentioned earlier, I dealt with an Utukku about two months ago. That’s the last exorcism I did. I can’t say I was the happiest camper you’ll ever see before, but things did kind of go downhill for me after that. You guessed right that I was a Keeper, and I’d been at it a long time. That exorcism just seemed like the last one I had in me.”  
    He paused and took a drink of his tea, seemed to consider for a moment, and Bree got the impression that he wasn’t sure how much more personal detail he wanted to disclose. But he seemed to decide it was relevant, because he continued in the same vein. “I knew I was pretty burned out before that. You know, Keepers get trainings on burnout, just like normal cops, but after the Utukku, I just felt done. And I guess that could be significant. Taint can certainly suck the hope right out of you.”
    “But taint can take awhile to manifest to the level where you show significant behavior change, something serious like quitting your job,” Bree argued, hands clutching her cup for warmth. “And the way that thing reacted when my will energy touched it, it seemed more sentient than taint. It felt more like a demon, or rather a demon part that had nearly grown up. And yet I could have sworn you didn’t read as possessed.”
    “I’m not sure I can say the desire to quit as Keeper was exactly sudden,” Daniel said slowly. “But, when I really think about it, I felt pretty, I don’t know, pessimistic right after the exorcism, and for some time after. Well,” he laughed shortly, “more pessimistic than usual. Like you might with taint.”
    “What can you tell me about the Utukku?” Bree asked intently. She was surprised she was asking. Asking for details could start the nightmares again, and they'd just died down a couple of nights ago. They'd been bad since Jeremy's exorcism.
    Daniel leaned back in his chair, teacup cradled against his chest. His eyes narrowed as he thought. Bree registered that the sweater he had put on was blue, as was the blanket draped around her. As had been his sweatshirt jacket and shirt. Keeper blue or something more personally symbolic?  
    “I got called in on the Utukku by a powered woman who thought her husband had been acting weird enough to be possessed.” Impatience crept into his voice. “She’d kept making excuses for him, I think, didn’t want it known he’d been taken, so his case was well advanced. Anyway, there’d been a rash of light powered tending dark in Boston and D.C. in the last year. It really had the M.O. of one demon jumping bodies. Definitely going mostly after prominent powered, but it never seemed to stay long in one body.”
    “So, a smart demon,” Bree mused.
    “Smart demon or Demon Master directing a lesser one,” Daniel replied. “But the pattern was strange. The possessed would get greedy, take up study of dark lore, get ruthless or violent in a minor way in business or personal life for a couple of weeks or months, but none of it seemed to add up to any master plan. No particular business seemed targeted, no one too high in government, normal or powered. So we were thinking free demon rather than mastered demon. Bailey, the Keeper I was working with on the case, helped me corner the demon in the husband. We got it controlled enough to talk to it a little before we exorcised it. We were surprised it was an Utukku. Neither of us had picked up that it was that big. Mostly all it would say were threats, you know, ‘I will eat you,’ ‘I will destroy you, and all your line,’ the usual stuff. But it also said, ‘I am a new kind. No one can find me, no one can master me.’ ”  
    “Did you get its name?”
    “Yeah. Its name was Habakku.”
    “Not one I know.”
    “Me neither. And frankly, I didn’t try to find out more. We had a time of it exorcising the thing. I resigned pretty soon after that, let Bailey close up the case, and started making plans to