Demon Mine Read online

  DEMON MINE

  By Marina Simcoe

  Copyright © 2017 Marina Simcoe

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non commercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, please contact the author.

  Marina Simcoe

  [email protected]

  Facebook/Marina Simcoe Author

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions or locales is completely coincidental.

  Cover Original Art and Design © 2017 Marina Thompson

  Marinathompson.deviantart.com

  Proofreading by Cecily Tartaglione, September 2017

  Warning: Demon Mine is a paranormal romance that contains sexual situations and graphic descriptions of intimacy. Intended for mature readers.

  To my Captain

  And to Readers

  Thank You for Being Kind to my Demons

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One. The Captive.

  Chapter Two. The Feeding.

  Chapter Three. Then.

  Chapter Four. Hope.

  Chapter Five. Hi, I’m Alyssa.

  Chapter Six. Wilson.

  Chapter Seven. The Beginning.

  Chapter Eight. The Handler.

  Chapter Nine. Sytrius.

  Chapter Ten. The Last Feeding.

  Chapter Eleven. Leaving.

  Chapter Twelve. Awakening.

  Chapter Thirteen. Incubus.

  Chapter Fourteen. On The Run.

  Chapter Fifteen. The Farmhouse.

  Chapter Sixteen. Ivarr.

  Chapter Seventeen. Face to Face.

  Chapter Eighteen. Family.

  Chapter Nineteen. Sharing.

  Chapter Twenty. In The Motel.

  Chapter Twenty One. The Dream.

  Chapter Twenty Two. The Legend.

  Chapter Twenty Three. Plans.

  Chapter Twenty Four. Toronto.

  Chapter Twenty Five. Demon Unleashed.

  Chapter Twenty Six. The Attack.

  Chapter Twenty Seven. The Amulet.

  Chapter Twenty Eight. Succubus.

  Chapter Twenty Nine. The Flight.

  Chapter Thirty. Munich.

  Chapter Thirty One. Dinner With Incubi.

  Chapter Thirty Two. Lucius.

  Chapter Thirty Three. Run, Alyssa!

  Chapter Thirty Four. Andras.

  Chapter Thirty Five. Natasha.

  Chapter Thirty Six. Demons Feeding.

  Chapter Thirty Seven. The Nightclub.

  Chapter Thirty Eight. The Travels.

  Chapter Thirty Nine. I Love You.

  Chapter Forty. The Summons.

  Chapter Forty One. Belarus.

  Chapter Forty Two. Another Feeding.

  Chapter Forty Three. The Hearing.

  Chapter Forty Four. The Forgiven.

  Chapter Forty Five. The Aftermath.

  EPILOGUE

  Coming Soon

  About The Author

  Chapter One. The Captive.

  I could hear them coming. Their footsteps echoed in the empty hallways and reverberated through the concrete floors. I’d been here long enough to know that they could be extremely stealthy, but they didn’t care about being quiet right now. I scurried to the opposite side of the ratty mattress on the floor until my back hit the wall and I curled into a ball. Not that it mattered; they’d get me anyway. I couldn’t fight them. I’d tried. They were much stronger than me, much stronger than any human.

  I wasn’t sure how long I had been here. I did make marks on the wall of my cell with a spoon every day to keep track. I didn’t start doing it until I had been here for at least a few days… or weeks… And I wasn’t sure how accurate I had been lately, either. Things had been rather blurry in my mind for the past few weeks or so. In any case, I never got to count all the marks on the wall and had no way of knowing how long it had been since they brought me here. I just knew it felt like forever.

  Sometimes, in the rare moments of clarity, I was wondering if that was what it felt like to lose your mind. Days and weeks would disappear unaccounted for until all of what you were would vanish into a thick fog, never to be found again…

  The door to my cell slid open, and they walked in. Calm, cold and silent. Always silent.

  There were usually three of them at night. All dressed the same, in grey uniforms made of thick fabric-like material, covered with several hard plastic or metal plates on their chests, shoulders, forearms and legs, with matching grey helmets that fully covered their heads, including faces, with just two slit-openings for the eyes. Grey leather gloves and heavy boots of the same charcoal grey completed their outfits.

  One of them stepped forward while the other two stood on each side of the door. They expected me to get up and walk out of the cell. I knew that’s what they wanted, but I wasn’t moving. I just curled more into myself and shut my eyes, willing them to disappear. Shouldn’t all nightmares disappear eventually?

  Then I heard the first of the three take a few more determined steps towards me, and I lost it!

  “No!” I shrieked hysterically. “Don’t touch me! Keep you disgusting gloves away from me!”

  I jumped as he reached for me and ducked under his arm, surprising myself with the agility of my movements. I knew they were incredibly strong. As far as I could tell, though, they moved with a more reasonable, human speed. A crazy idea sprung into my feverish brain: I could outrun him! I just needed to run for it very, very fast…

  I made it all the way to the door before the two others grabbed me. With those two there, I never had a chance in the first place, and deep inside I knew it. It’s not like it was a solid plan on my part anyway, more like an act of desperation spurred by increasing insanity.

  Panic exploded hot inside of my brain. They each held one of my arms with ease, and I kicked the air between them, twisted in their grip with the risk of dislocating my own shoulders and screamed, and screamed, and screamed… Screamed with abandon until my lungs burned and my voice came out in a raspy croak, no longer resembling any noise made by a human.

  Through the black fog of panic, I barely registered another pair of arms coming across my midsection. The hard chest plates of the first guy pressed into my back as he tackled me from behind.

  I finally got a target for my feet now, furiously kicking him in the shins and slamming my heels into his boots. The two guys holding my arms let go of me, and with my arms now free, I immediately slammed my fists into his forearms at my front, repeatedly.

  Unsurprisingly, he remained unfazed by all of it. If I had a sliver of common sense left, I would have realized that I was just hurting myself on the hard bracers of his armor without causing him any harm whatsoever.

  As it was though, I had no common sense left. And that was my biggest problem. After who knew how much time being locked up in isolation with not one single word spoken to me all this time by anyone, with not a single friendly face in sight, I finally lost it. Who could blame me? It was a miracle that I’d lasted as long as I did…

  Blind rage and all-encompassing terror were all I felt at that moment. I was going to keep screaming until my voice was gone completely, and I was going to keep hitting anything and everything until my last breath escaped me. They would not do anything to me anymore! They would not force me to do anything for
them, either! At this point they could only kill me, and I would not even care if they did… At least it would be the end of this…

  …And then it stopped! The desperate rage, the hopeless terror ebbed suddenly. The feverish flame of panic that consumed me from inside out cooled almost instantly. The sensation of calm numbness was so unexpected that I looked around, half expecting to see a discarded syringe somewhere with some king of a fast-acting sedative, although I was positive I didn’t feel any needle’s sting for this explanation to be valid.

  The side effect of my newly found calmness was the lack of any feelings whatsoever. I just suddenly didn’t care about anything, not even about why and how it happened. I stopped thrashing, and the arms holding me released me almost instantly.

  He scanned the Source for emotions as he entered the cell. She was curled on the mattress with her back pressed into the wall, as if she wanted to push herself into the wall and disappear.

  Her hair was tangled, matted and of the same dirty-grey colour as the surrounding walls, and her eyes were wide and unhinged when she looked up. He couldn’t even tell what colour her irises were because of how wide her pupils had dilated. Her eyes just looked black now, with a wild glossy shine in them.

  He reached inside her mind, and a messy powerful hurricane of her emotions assaulted him. The impact felt almost physical, and he braced himself, digging the heels of his boots into the concrete floor to avoid being knocked over.

  Horror, anger, hate and fear raged in the black pool of pure panic.

  The realization came to him with a crystal clear clarity: it was not going to happen tonight. There was no way she could go through the Feeding in this state. She could not be presented to the Council like this at all or she’d be drained immediately. It was his first day on the job as a fully trained Handler, and she was his very first Source. He had spent three months in training to become her Handler, and he was failing already.

  He knew everything he was allowed to know about her from her file that he’d studied during his last days of training.

  She was taken by the Council just over a year ago and had been used for regular nightly Feedings with mixed success. The past several weeks, she had been getting worse. She had become aggressive and was no longer cooperating.

  He also knew something that was not in the file. The average length of time a Source was useful was for about a year at best, and it looked like her time was up. Her past Handlers got all they could from her, and by now, she could be drained anytime. The Council gave her to him in one final attempt to see if he could extend her useful life; however, nobody would blame him if he didn’t.

  He looked at her again. Scared and shaking, she was too thin and filthy, which only proved that she no longer cared about either her hygiene or her appearance. She was most likely skipping meals too. Janitors were required to bring highly nutritious meals to the Sources regularly; however, whether or not she actually ate them was entirely up to her. By the looks of her, she hadn’t touched her meals in a while.

  Well familiar himself with pangs of hunger, he wondered why anyone would decline food when it was readily available.

  He searched for the light of her life force inside of her and found it enclosed in the dark shell of her current emotions. Deep in the black churning mud of them, her life force was still burning bright and pure, just a tiny sliver of beauty struggling to stay lit. It looked so fragile, so helpless…

  A strong, long forgotten urge to protect rose deep inside him. He felt a need to do something. Anything. He could at least try.

  Without any clear plan in mind, he stepped forward and reached for her. The gesture was not intended to intimidate her; neither was he trying to comfort her in any way. He just wanted to get a reaction, any reaction, out of her. Was she still lucid at all?

  Suddenly, she shrieked and dashed past him in a crouch, with the speed and purpose he did not expect from her. He was startled, but not worried; the Janitors by the door would stop her. That’s what they where there for.

  He heard a loud growl and turned around to see that they had indeed caught her and now held her by the arms as she struggled in their grip like a trapped animal. The frustrated growl was coming out of her throat, turning into a deafening screech a second later, mixed with incoherent yelling and swearing.

  He couldn’t stand it any longer. He didn’t need to scan her feelings to see that she was suffering. His concern about the Council melted into the background, and the overwhelming desire to calm her took over. Just to make her torment stop at any cost!

  A thought came through the ever-present fog of his hunger: he could help her. He could easily stop her sufferings and ease the pain, if only temporarily.

  He didn’t fight the notion and didn’t analyze it. He acted on impulse when he stepped forward and folded his both arms around her middle, pressing her back to his chest, then motioned to the Janitors to let her go.

  The rain of her kicks and punches landed on his legs and arms immediately, but he did not care. She had no strength to hurt him.

  To help her, he needed to touch her skin-to-skin. Unfortunately, his clothes were designed specifically to prevent any skin-to-skin contact between a Handler and a Source. He had no time to think it through. He moved one of his hands under her arm, simultaneously turning her slightly away from the Janitors’ view. They would report him immediately if they only suspected what he was up to, and then he would be punished severely. The thought only flickered in the back of his mind for a fraction of a second before disappearing almost instantly. Even the threat of punishment did not intimidate him enough to stop now.

  Still holding her from behind with one of his hands trapped under her arm, he pulled his hand out a little. The glove slid from his hand, exposing a narrow strip of his skin between the edge of the glove and the bracer of the uniform, and he bent his wrist to feel the bare skin of her underarm. She continued to thrash desperately in his arms and didn’t even notice the touch.

  For a moment, he was afraid he forgot how to do it. It had been so long since he touched anyone like that. So long that he wasn’t even sure if it ever happened at all. He closed his eyes, reached into the toxic pit of her dark emotions, and drank...

  His constantly starving demonic essence opened up hungrily, ready to swallow any nourishment, not caring if it was poison. He drank and drank greedily, reeling from the false sense of fullness, knowing it would not truly sate him, knowing it would only hurt him in the end...

  Yet, he took everything – the acrid horror, the foul anger and the putrid-tasting fear. He stopped only when he reached the sweet fragrance of her life essence. The toxic cocktail of her emotions filled his mind, clamped his brain in a vise of pain and twisted his insides. Bile hit the back of his throat instantly, and he was glad it had been days since he last consumed any human food. Otherwise, he would have vomited it onto the concrete floor of the cell.

  He bent over in pain, still holding his arms around her, hoping he could pretend that he was still restraining her while he struggled to remain upright. He needed just a second to let the poison settle a little in order for him to get his bearings for now. He would have to deal with the consequences later, though, as he would still have to pay the full price for foolishly consuming toxic negative emotions from a human.

  She no longer fought in his arms, he noticed belatedly. He straightened and released his grip on her. She stood upright with her back turned to him, her shoulders relaxed. Slowly, she took a long breath in, as if waking from a long sleep – or more likely a nightmare – then raised her head.

  He scanned her emotions carefully, trying to focus through the pounding ache in his head.

  Nothing. There was nothing there, just a blank empty space. Was it enough to go ahead with the Feeding? Should he take her to the Council now? She seemed to have made the decision for him, as she calmly walked towards the door. He made a sign to the Janitors to let her pass and followed the required three paces behind her, trying not to stumble w
ith pain and keep his pace steady in front of the Janitors behind him.

  He knew the pain would be getting worse and worse gradually, reaching unbearable levels by morning before it would finally decrease and dissipate. He just needed to make it through the Feeding…

  Chapter Two. The Feeding.

  I walked along the concrete corridor illuminated by the dim light coming from the bare bulbs attached to the low ceiling, with exposed electrical cords that stretched along the walls between them. I turned around the corner and followed the familiar route – the only route I was ever allowed to walk when I could leave my cell – as I listened distractedly to the footsteps of the guards behind me.

  Some of the fear, anger, frustration and desperation that disappeared in my cell had returned eventually. They simmered low somewhere in the background, but I tried to suppress them for as long as I could. The unexpected numbness that came to me in the cell felt almost blissful, and I clung to it like a drowning woman to a piece of driftwood.

  For the first time in what felt like forever, I didn’t care about what was happening to me and didn’t think about any consequences. I walked along the corridor because that’s what they wanted me to do, and because I didn’t want to make any decisions on my own at the moment. Following the will of someone else felt so much simpler and required less effort.

  I followed another turn of the corridor and saw the impossibly bright light coming from the arched opening to the arena. I named the room arena because nobody bothered to actually give me a tour of the place when they first brought me here, and no one told me what the name of the room was. I chose to call it an arena in my mind because they did things to me here in front of an audience, which made me feel not unlike an animal in a twisted kind of circus.

  I faced the doorway and stopped a step away from the threshold. The unnaturally bright light blinded me for a second, and I lowered my eyes to the floor. One of the guards stepped directly behind me. I wasn’t sure if he was one of the three who was in my cell tonight or if he was waiting by the entrance to the arena when I got here. I could never tell them apart. They all looked the same to me in their armored uniforms and helmets with masks. To make things even more confusing, they all were similarly built as well – tall with broad shoulders – and I wasn’t perceptive enough to pick out any slighter differences, like any variations in height, gait or posture. Not that I ever had been focused and collected enough to notice any specific details in here anyway.