The Demon Hunters

The Demon Hunters

Whisperings book two

Linda Welch

Whisperings
: The Demon
Hunters

Linda Welch

This book is a work of fiction. Names,
characters, places and incidents are either products of the
author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance
to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events
or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright
2010
Linda
Welch

All rights reserved.

Except as permitted under the U.S.
Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be
reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means,
or stored in a data base or retrieval system without prior written
permission of the owner of this book.

Please do not participate
in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the
author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

October 2010

Smashwords
Edition

Ghosts are turned flesh, throwing off
the grave’s disguise.

Exhortation: Summer,
1919
– Claude McKay.

Chapter One

“
Are you sure?”

“
Of co . . . not bleeding
sure . . . illy cow! All I said w . . . kitty box . . . effin . . .
bin . . . food . . . Don’t y . . . isten stupid bi. . .
.”

The big old green neon sign was on the
fritz and so was charming Freddie Conroy. As it spluttered and spat
and frizzed on and off, so did Freddie. I could just make out what
he said, although his voice came as a whisper and the Cockney
accent didn’t help.

I did not linger in Fresno to bring
Freddie’s killers to justice; I couldn’t care less about the
disagreeable little man. Anyway, they had already been apprehended
and were doing time in California State Prison. I couldn’t do a
thing for Freddy - not that I’d want to - but he could do plenty
for me.

You would think he’d be glad to
finally have someone to talk to after being stuck up there for
years, but the Brit was as unpleasant in death as in
life.

In May 2000, Freddie’s two business
partners took him on the roof of the pharmacy and shot him in the
back of the head. I doubt they meant to leave him there, but
Freddie uncooperatively pitched over the side of the building and
got hung up on the big neon sign, which is where Fresno PD found
him the next morning.

Unknown to the residents and visitors
to Fresno as they walk the old district, Freddie’s still there, up
above their heads, likely cussing them out.

My demon lover and I stopped in a
downtown café on our way back to Utah, and overheard two elderly
women at the next table. Apparently, their friend Gertrude
Hackenbacher - seriously, it is her name - lost her best friend and
companion of eleven years, her cat Pussywillow. Worse, Pussywillow
didn’t just wander away from home, he was catnapped. My heart
immediately went out to the woman. I’d be devastated if my
black-brindle Scottish terrier MacKlutzy disappeared, and enraged
to the point of committing murder if someone harmed him. Then the
ladies mentioned the magic word: reward.

“
A cat?” Royal said as he
stirred a ton of sugar into his little demitasse coffee cup. I ask
you, why get a seriously potent espresso and make it glutinous with
sugar?

“
I don’t care if it’s a
cat. We’ve had two assignments since we opened the agency. Five
hundred bucks is five hundred bucks,” I reiterated.

Royal sounded bemused. “We use our
powers of deductive reasoning to discover the whereabouts of a
cat?”

I swallowed my mouthful of muffin. “I
don’t mean we spend days here. I just thought, since this
Hackenbacher woman lives nearby, we could take a walk through town,
starting at her place, ask a few passersby if they saw anything
suspicious.”

“
Sweetheart,” Royal said,
reaching for my hand, “who would see anything suspicious in someone
toting a cat kennel?”

Royal is the first and only person to
call me sweetheart, ever. Royal is first with a lot of things. He’s
the first and only demon I’ve ever dated, the first to pick me up
in his arms like I weigh no more than a couple of pounds, my first
partner in my first detective agency. I could go on and on. . .
.

Need I mention he’s
handsome? He’s one of those men to whom every woman’s eyes are
drawn when he walks in the room, and
they
see him as a human male. I see
him as he is. His copper and gold streaked hair reaches his
shoulder blades when unbound, and when he’s excited it swirls and
emits sparks, as if full of electricity. His eyes are deep
copper-brown, like new pennies, and glint when he moves. He has a
demon’s angular face and high cheekbones, his skin the palest
copper, like a nice tan.

Royal is not human, but neither is he
a demon. I just call him that, but not often to his face. I called
his people demons long before I knew their true name. They are
Gelpha, and they inhabit a world parallel to ours, but only the
Gelpha and a few people like me know. They have shared our world
for centuries, blending with the human population, running
businesses, forming relationships, having half-Gelpha, half-human
children.

I knew they existed, but a year ago I
never thought I’d take one as partner and lover. Royal is an
enforcer for the Gelpha High Lord. He keeps an eye on Gelpha
activities here in my world, although he now spends more of his
time keeping an eye on me. When I met Royal, I thought he was my
enemy, but he turned out to be the best friend I ever
had.

I didn’t hold out much hope of
tracking down the cat, but it was worth a try. Royal had plenty of
money, but I insisted on paying my share and could no longer help
pay for advertising, which so far didn’t seem to be doing us any
good, anyway.

We could take a few hours to wander
Fresno and still get back to Clarion in good time. The catnappers
had stuffed Pussywillow into the bright-pink kitten-sized carrier
they found on Gertrude’s porch. Pussywillow had fit it long ago,
but had grown into a massive, overweight, orange ball of long
hair.

I rubbed my thumb over the knuckles of
Royal’s hand, grinning at him. “Well no, a cat in a carrier would
not stand out, but maybe a pink kitty carrier with the orange fur
of a fat enraged cat poking through might grab the
attention.”

And that’s how we came to be watching
an apartment above a small florist in downtown Fresno, and how I
came to be talking to nasty little Freddie Conroy.

***

Freddie was the third dead person I
spoke to in a roughly three-square-mile area. He might be the one
to prove my theory behind opening our detective agency: although
not all our cases would involve a violent death, my ability to talk
to the dead could still be valuable. The dead see a lot, they’ve
nothing else to do but observe the world going on around
them.

But it’s not a good idea to put words
into their mouths, or ideas into their heads. There can’t be many
people like me, who see and talk to the violently slain, and the
odds of a dead person getting to talk to one of the living are
poor. They tend to say what they think I want to hear, just to keep
me there. I had to ask the three in Fresno a particular question
and the first two obliged by sending me off on a wild-goose chase.
But Freddie was mean and irritable and didn’t want me here, so
maybe he would tell the truth to get rid of me. Kind of like
reverse psychology.

“
Shall we?” I asked
Royal.

He led the way across the street to
the shop, the hot California sun beating down on our heads. July,
and Fresno already baked. Next month, the trees lining the streets
of the old part of town would start to look sad and store owners
would have to water their curbside planters daily. The florist shop
had wide, deep awnings along the front to protect the floral
displays clustered at the door.

Royal looked pretty hot too, by which
I mean the way he filled his white T-shirt and worn navy Levis. Mm
mm.

The door in the alley could be a side
entrance to the shop, but I bet it opened to stairs leading to an
apartment. Freddie said he saw the occupants take a bright-pink cat
kennel from their car and through the door. The orange cat inside
was huge, obviously much too big for the little carrier. He also
said in the past three days they’d bought cans of cat food, dry
kibble and milk from the market a block over.

More than one fat orange cat in a pink
kennel would be one hell of a coincidence, but we would be
cautious. Freddie could be lying to me.

Royal gave the door an authoritative
knock. We waited.

Demons have supernatural hearing.
“Someone is in there.” Royal grinned at me. “And so is a
cat.”

I beamed back. “I hope it’s
Pussywillow.”

“
Not to mention we will
feel like idiots if it is not.”

We could see up a staircase through
the narrow window in the door. Nobody appeared, but a male voice
spoke through the intercom: “Yes?”

“
Termite inspection,” Royal
said. “We have a report of termite infestation in this block. We
need to check your building.”

A brief pause, then the man replied:
“Did you speak to our landlord?”

“
I’m on the phone to him
now,” Royal lied.

“
Then you can tell him we
don’t have termites.”

Royal cocked an eyebrow at me. “You
sound positive.”

“
Yes, I do. I’m a
carpenter. I’d know if we had termites. Thank you for calling.
Bye.”

And the intercom clicked
off.

Royal frowned. I heaved a sigh. We
leaned against the wall either side of the door. How were we going
to get in the apartment now?

Why didn’t we call the police? First,
I doubt catnapping placed high on their case list, so response
would be slow. Second, as Royal said, we would feel like idiots if
the cat in the apartment wasn’t Pussywillow - which would not be
the first freak coincidence I’ve run into - and look like idiots to
the local PD. That is bad for publicity. Third, the reward was for
the return of Pussywillow, not for providing information leading to
his return. Maybe Gertrude Hackenbacher would use the technicality
to weasel out of paying us.

Then Royal smiled. “I have a
plan.”

***

“
I don’t like this. He
could take off and get in traffic.”

“
I won’t let him get that
far.”

“
Maybe the guy hates dogs.
What if he hurts Mac?”

“
I won’t let that happen
either, Tiff.”

I squinched up one side of my face. “I
don’t like it, Royal.”

“
So you said. Any
ideas?”

We were in the deeply recessed entry
to the florist shop: me, Royal and Mac. Royal unthinkingly reached
out to touch Mac’s head. Mac’s lips curled off his teeth. Royal
took his hand back. “Nice dog. Nice Mac.” To me, he said, “I’m
going to make him like me if it kills me.”

“
Well good luck with that.
As far as I know, I’m the only person Mac tolerates. I don’t think
he actually
likes
anyone.”

MacKlutzy is the aforementioned
Scottish terrier. He’s a bumbling, crotchety little animal and has
a streak of determination unrivaled in the doggy world. The first
time I left him alone in the house, when he was a puppy, he chewed
a huge chunk off the bottom of the bathroom door, trying to escape.
If I hadn’t come home when I did, he would have done it, too. Royal
thought Mac’s determination could work in our favor.

Now or never! I carried Mac to the
side door, put him down and squatted next to him. I pointed at the
door. “Mac! Cat!”

Mac thinks cats would be tasty treats
if he ever got hold of one, but he didn’t see any cat. He laid his
ears back on his skull and glared at me.

“
Honest! There’s a cat in
there, Mac!”