The Company of Shadows by Lisa Olsen

Author:Lisa Olsen [Olsen, Lisa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BluA
Published: 2014-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-One

“Crazy,” she repeated. “Well, in that case, if you’re about to blow my mind, we might as well get comfortable. Let’s go sit on the couch. Unless what you’re about to tell me involves any more bloodshed?”

“Hopefully not,” he deadpanned, and it took her a moment to realize he was kidding. Instead of heading straight for the couch, she went to the fridge and got herself a diet soda, holding up a can of regular soda to him.

“I’ll just have some water, thanks.”

Drinks in hand and comfortably ensconced on the sofa, Cady tucked her foot under her knee and turned to face him expectantly. “Okay, go ahead, get as crazy as you want. I’m ready.”

Ethan drained half of his water, frowning into the glass. “I don’t know where to start.”

“Well… how about you start with why you keep stabbing yourself in the hand and go from there.”

“Just, jump right in, huh?”

“That’s the general idea, yes.” She waited patiently as he drank the rest of the water, his words tumbling out fast when he was done, as if he had to get them all out at once.

“Stabbing myself in the hand with the dague is part of the binding ritual.”

“The binding ritual?” she repeated, remembering the foreign chanting. “Is that some kind of witchcraft? To bind him from doing harm?” In the movies they always used a picture of the person to do something like that. She’d never heard of having to stab both the intended person and yourself in the hand before. Not that she knew much about the stuff.

“No, it’s not witchcraft, or I guess you could think of it that way.” His forehead puckered as he puzzled through it. “It’s more than binding him from doing harm, it’s binding the subject to me. That’s what I do. I hunt down those who are possessed and I bind the evil to me.”

“Why would you want to do that? Then you’d be walking around with an angry spirit inside you.”

“It’s not walking around, it’s bound to me. And it’s not an angry spirit like a ghost, these are demons. They’re summoned here from another plane, often killing whoever was stupid enough to call upon them and escaping into our world. I pull the demon out of the host body and draw him into me instead, then it’s neutralized. I can harness the demon’s power and strength, but I’m in control.”

He was right, it did sound crazy. “So, you’re saying the guy who attacked me, Claudio, he was a demon, not a member of a crazy cult.”

“That’s right.”

“And this other guy, the one from the Laundromat…”

“Same demon, different body.”

“Demons,” she repeated, still trying to wrap her head around it. A couple of weeks ago she would have laughed at him. “And would he really have killed me then, or was that bullshit too?”

“No, he would’ve most likely tortured and killed you. It’s part of his profile.”

“You say that like you’ve got a file on him.”

“I do,” he admitted readily. “Subject

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