Demonic

Demonic Jeff Strand Contents Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Epilogue Acknowledgments About the Author Other Books By Jeff Strand Demonic copyright 2023 by Jeff Strand Cover art copyright 2023 by Lynne Hansen www.LynneHansenArt.com All rights reserved. This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without written permission from the author. For more information about the author, visit http://www.JeffStrand.com Subscribe to Jeff Strand’s free monthly newsletter (which includes a brand-new original short story in every issue) at http://eepurl.com/bpv5br Chapter One Quinn Fielding didn’t manipulate me into trying to kill her husband. I was sure of it. I’d replayed every relevant conversation in my mind dozens of times, and I was one hundred percent confident that the decision was entirely mine. I wasn’t some lovestruck, gullible idiot. Okay, I was definitely lovestruck, and I’ve been an idiot on many, many occasions. But the way things went wrong—and holy freaking crap did they go wrong—wasn’t something I could’ve ever anticipated. When I knocked on their front door, with a gun in my pocket and a knife strapped to my wrist, I’d planned things out from what I thought was every conceivable angle. The gun was only in case of an emergency. I needed to do this quietly, even if the knife was messier. I wanted to kill her husband long before I planned to kill him, if that makes sense. I’d sit in my cubicle fuming as she came in with a black eye, explaining that she walked into a door. I wanted to ask how you could give yourself a black eye walking into a door, but I didn’t. I never questioned her excuses. If she hadn’t gotten really drunk at the holiday party, and we hadn’t gone outside to get some fresh air, she may never have told me the truth. “Do you need to throw up?” I asked, as we stepped out of the building. She shook her head, though she looked unsure. “It’s okay if you do. I won’t tell anyone.” “I’m fine. I’ll let you know if it changes.” She stuck her tongue out to catch some of the falling snow. I did the same. I was pretty sure Quinn was older than me. I’d just turned thirty-one, and I figured she was mid-thirties. She looked forty, but I was deducting a few years because of her obviously stressful home life. I didn’t mind that she was older than me; my acceptable dating ages ranged from nineteen to Helen Mirren. To be clear, I wasn’t actually trying to hook up with her. She was married and a co-worker. I’ll admit that I’d made an exception for each of those in the past, but Quinn had given absolutely no hints that she was interested, and I certainly wasn’t going to push the issue. I was—how can I best say this?—not lonely. Not a man-whore, but not lonely. I believed very strongly in the idea of “enthusiastic consent,” because I didn’t want anybody waking up next to me thinking, “Oh, Jesus H. Christ, what have I done?” But I didn’t spend my nights wallowing in self-pity, wondering when I would finally know the touch of a woman. I’m not saying this to brag. It’s a fact: I can be a very charming guy. Some people tell me I look like a young George Clooney. Some people tell me I look like a young Christian Slater. The fact that George Clooney looks nothing like Christian Slater doesn’t stop these two comparisons from coming up over and over. I don’t see either of them, to be perfectly honest, but I get it a lot and thus I’m passing that information on to you. Thick black hair. Dark complexion. Crooked smile that I’m told is endearing. Tall, if you consider six-foot-one tall. Not the best body—I need to get more exercise. My relationships were brief and superficial, but I wasn’t the kind of guy who would gaze at the moon and long for something more. Though I figured that a streak of romanticism was coming, I wasn’t there yet. And Quinn, though perfectly nice, was a very professional, all-business, no-gossip type. She was my type, because “my type” cast an extremely wide net, but she wasn’t the kind of person for me to become infatuated with. We’d worked together for three years, and I didn’t picture her naked any more than I did my other co-workers. And then the holiday party happened. Quinn hadn’t attended the previous two. She showed up to this one in a cute red dress and plush reindeer antlers. Those antlers really worked for me. I’m not saying that I want to bang Rudolph—what I’m saying is that I was suddenly very attracted to her, but not in a bestiality way. I think it was more that the antlers seemed to be her way of saying, “Screw it, I’m going to have fun tonight,” and that was a major turn-on. She did have fun. She danced. She laughed. She drank too much. Quinn shivered. “It’s cold.” I would have offered her my jacket, but I wasn’t wearing one. And I wasn’t going to be sleazy by offering to put my arm around her. “We can go back inside,” I said. She shook her head. “Not yet.” “Still think you might puke?” “If I tell you something, would you promise to keep it a secret?” she asked. “Of course.” “I mean it. You can’t tell anybody.” “Not even the FBI?