Page 5 of Demon Huntress
She put the phone on speaker as she wandered back into her closet, staring at the vast wheel of shades and fabrics she had accumulated over years of climbing the huntress ladder.
“I’ve got a favor to ask of you,” he began. “There’s a friend of mine who's got a poltergeist harassing him, and I think your intervention would do him some good.”
She had both hands on her hips when the request slithered through her like a garden snake. She shot back at the phone, nearly hissing through the narrow space between her lips.
“You must be joking,” she replied. “Greg, that kind of shit is lightyears below my pay grade. You, of all people, should know that.”
“You owe me, Cass,” he said, sounding more confident than usual. “Remember when I helped you do your taxes? You would have been lost without me.”
Cassandra paused at the audacity, half-offended and half-impressed by his bold assertion. She picked up a violet long-sleeve T-shirt and leather pants that made her ass look like a baby pumpkin.
“You have really grown some balls at the most inconvenient time, Greggy boy,” she remarked, laying the clothes out on the bed.
Greg remained silent, not taking the bait of her bullying statement for once. She let out a long, heaving sigh that made her lips vibrate before speaking.
“I have to sleep, Greg,” she said, attempting to keep her tone even and cordial. “This case with Phar-Scape is looking pretty fucking big.”
Greg replied hastily as if the words were vomit pouring out of his mouth. “You have to do it tonight, Cass,” he said. “This one is pretty aggressive, and it needs your expert eye.”
The compliment was like getting your ass smacked by a sexy stranger; at first, you recoil, and then, another part of you is drawn to the delinquency of the act. She let out another sigh blended with a grunt, then asked him to give her the address.
Cassandra wore a comfortable and agile set of clothing that had become her signature go-to outfit. When it came right down to it, Cassandra wasn’t fond of physically fighting demons at all. Even though she was a human with special abilities, she was still human and bled and died like every other human.
So her skills and technique relied utterly on stealth and discrete movements. She would stalk her subjects until they were secluded enough for her to either capture or destroy them in what she hoped would be a single fatal blow. Getting into a skirmish with any of them was her last option, if it was an option at all.
She had been trained in martial arts and military techniques of infiltration and extraction. It was crucial to be able to track a demon without them noticing, and Cassandra was an absolute specialist at it. So it was slightly insulting when Greg had asked her to get rid of a poltergeist for some friend of his. It was far less interesting to Cassandra than the demon hunting she was used to, almost amateurish and suited for people just getting started in the demon hunting game. But he had helped her with something that she had coerced him into doing.
She brooded to herself as she drove through New York in the dead of night, the lights of the city blasting by like streaks of meteorites. She followed the instructions on her GPS into the dim world of the boondocks outside the city and away from the gleam of life.
“Where the fuck are you taking me, Greg?” she whispered to herself.
Cassandra drove along a dirt trail, swallowed in darkness, until she came across a rugged but upscale-looking home. It was entirely made of varnished cherry wood and looked like something a millionaire would choose to seclude themselves away from humanity
It wasn’t the classic distressed cottage type. Whoever was in there obviously had money to get something so lavish and specifically built for them. She scoffed to herself about the boldness of some rich bastards calling her in the middle of the night to get rid of some pithy poltergeist.
But as she got out of the car and walked up to the house, a wash of lights popping along the driveway like a catwalk, she realized the entity wasn’t as weak as she had assumed.
The energy moved through the tips of her fingers like the sensation of pins and needles, then became thick and bulky as it traveled up her limbs and settled in her chest. It was a sensation she was used to and had cultivated since starting her demon hunting career, but something about the poltergeist made her uneasy.
She approached the house with her regular confidence, adjusted her hair into a secure ponytail, then knocked on the door.
She heard a deep, bellowing voice call out to her before the door swung open to reveal a sight that nearly knocked her on her ass.
A man nearly twice her size answered the door in only boxer shorts, showcasing a bulge that Cassandra figured he had difficulty hiding. The muscles of his arms and shoulders were streaked with lovely webs of veins, pulsing and straining as he shoved the door open and slammed it against the wall inside.
She had to squeeze her thighs together at the sight of him and bite her lip, nearly piercing the supple skin.
The man sported disheveled, medium-length black hair with hazel eyes that looked like a painter’s dream. She felt her body throbbing for him for the few seconds that he didn’t speak.
“Who the fuck are you?” he snarled at her.
Cassandra cocked an eyebrow nonchalantly. “You weren’t expecting someone?”
He looked her up and down without any hesitation or subtly. His pink tongue even emerged from his lips as those eyes traced the curve of her ass, the thick solidity of her hips and waist. Her breasts were hidden, of course, but the bra she was wearing outlined them like a flawless silhouette under the glow of the porch lamp.
“Why on earth would a gorgeous piece of ass like you show up on my doorstep?”
His arms dropped down from the doorframe and crossed, then he leaned against the door itself. Cassandra gave him a deep scowl that made her feel like there would be a permanent indentation on her forehead.
