Chapter 18: The Revenge of the Demon
The silence in the Summoning Chamber thickened, curdling into something dense enough to choke on. The only sounds were JT’s ragged breathing and the slow drip of water from a crack in the ancient ceiling. Marcus Thompson did not look at the silver-smeared evidence of his son’s submission on the stone floor. His eyes, hard as flint, were locked on JT’s face.
“Boy,” Marcus said. The single word was a lash, devoid of warmth, full of a final, terrible judgment.
JT flinched, the old conditioning a phantom pain. But he didn’t drop his gaze. He stood, still bare from the waist down, Kane’s hand a steadying brand on his hip. Something solidified in his gut—a cold, defiant core.
“It’s over, Father,” JT said, his voice surprisingly steady. “Your trap didn’t work.”
“The trap,” Marcus said, taking a slow step forward, his sword held low, “was for the demon. The failure… is yours alone.” He finally shifted his gaze to Kane. “You’ve defiled my blood. You’ve twisted my son into a crouching, hungry thing. I should have put him down the moment I sensed your stain on him.”
Kane’s laughter was a dry, humorless crackle. “You sanctimonious fuck. You felt the bond and saw a weapon. You tried to use it. You used him. And when you couldn’t control it, you decided to burn it all down. You’re not a father. You’re a tactician who made a faulty asset.”
“I am his father!” Marcus roared, the fury breaking through his icy control. “And I will cleanse my line!” He moved.
It was not a reckless charge. It was a executioner’s advance, every step measured, his energy coiling inward, making him a harder target. The air around his silver blade shimmered with heat.
Kane shoved JT back, behind him. “Stay out of the lines.”
The fight was not a duel. It was demolition. Marcus was a master, his style one of brutal efficiency forged in decades of killing things far stronger than men. He didn’t aim to wound. Every slash was aimed to dismember, every thrust to pierce a vital organ. Kane, however, was not just strength. He was preternatural speed and a predator’s instinct. He flowed around the silver arcs, the metal singing as it passed centimeters from his skin.
Kane seized a heavy iron sconce ripped from the wall and used it as a clumsy mace. Marcus parried, the impact jarring up both their arms. Silver scraped against iron, screaming.
“You think he loves you?” Marcus spat, circling. “He’s a child. You’ve given him candy and called it a feast. You’ve made him addicted to his own corruption.”
“He was starving,” Kane snarled, launching a barrage of blows that drove Marcus back a step. “And you were the one holding the empty plate.”
JT watched, pressed against the cold wall, his heart a frantic drum against his ribs. He saw his father’s technique, flawless, deadly. He saw Kane’s raw, adaptive fury. And he saw the moment Marcus’s strategy shifted. The older hunter’s eyes flicked to him, just for a fraction of a second. A calculated risk.
Marcus feinted high, drawing Kane’s guard up, then dropped and swept a leg out. Kane leapt over it, but Marcus was already moving, not toward Kane, but past him. He’d used the demon’s momentum against him, creating an opening. Not to kill Kane.
To reach JT.
Before JT could react, Marcus was on him. A calloused hand grabbed a fistful of his hair, yanking his head back. The cold, sharp kiss of the silver blade pressed against his throat.
“Move, demon, and I open him from ear to ear,” Marcus panted, his breath hot against JT’s ear. “The bond might hurt, but watching him bleed out at your feet… that’ll be a new kind of pain, won’t it?”
Kane froze. Rage vibrated off him in visible, dark waves. The chamber trembled.
“Father…” JT whispered, the metal biting into his skin.
“Be silent,” Marcus hissed. “This is your redemption. Your death will be pure. It will mean something.”
JT felt it then, not through the bond, but through the press of his father’s body against his back. The rigid belief. The utter conviction. In that moment, any last filament of hope for understanding snapped.
“You’d really do it,” JT breathed, not a question. “You’d kill me to win. To be right.”
“To save you,” Marcus corrected, but the blade trembled. Just once.
Kane took a slow step forward. “You lose either way, hunter. You kill him, I rip you apart molecule by molecule. You let him go, and I just kill you quick. There is no outcome where you walk out of this room having saved anything.”
“Then I choose my son’s purity!” Marcus shouted, and his arm tensed to draw the blade across.
JT didn’t think. He bucked backwards, driving his elbow into his father’s ribs. It was a weak move, poorly executed, but it was surprise. Marcus grunted, his grip on JT’s hair loosening for a heartbeat.
A heartbeat was all Kane needed.
He crossed the space in a blur. His hand closed over the blade of the silver sword. Flesh sizzled, the stench of burning meat filling the air, but he didn’t let go. He wrenched the weapon aside just as Marcus, with a roar of fury, sliced forward.
The blade meant for JT’s throat cut a deep, glancing furrow across Kane’s forearm instead. Black blood, hot and smoking, sprayed across JT’s chest.
Kane twisted, his other hand shooting out like a piston. He didn’t punch. He stabbed his fingers, hard as iron spikes, into the joint of Marcus’s sword arm. There was a wet, popping crunch. Marcus’s agonized yell was cut short as Kane’s forehead smashed into his nose, flattening it with a sickening crunch.
Marcus dropped, the sword clattering to the stone. He rolled, clutching his shattered arm, blood streaming down his face. He was still trying to get up, to reach for a dagger at his boot with his good hand, when Kane’s foot came down on his wrist, pinning it.
It was over.
Kane stood over Marcus, his wounded hand dripping, his chest heaving. The demonic light in his eyes was ferocious, but it was a cold fire now. The kill was his. He could end it with a thought.
JT stumbled forward, his legs weak. He looked down at his father. Marcus stared back up, his one clear eye blazing with hatred, with pain, with a devastating, unyielding conviction. He wasn’t begging. He was condemning.
“Do it,” Marcus rasped through broken teeth and blood. “Finish your corruption. Let him see the monster he’s chosen.”
Kane leaned down, his voice a quiet, intimate rumble. “Death is too clean for you. You wanted to purge him. To scour him empty. You don’t get to die a martyr. You get to understand.”
He straightened, looking at JT. “He wanted to erase me from you. To make you believe this,” he gestured between them, “was a sickness.”
JT’s heart was a cold, heavy stone. He looked from his broken father to the demon he was bound to. The man who had raised him, who had just tried to kill him for a principle. And the creature who had fought to claim him, who understood the hungers he’d been forced to deny his entire life.
An idea unfolded in his mind. Not a hot, raging impulse, but a cold, settling certainty. It was cruel. It was perfect. It was the only truth left.
He stepped close to Kane, turning his back on his father. He put his lips to Kane’s ear. The bond hummed, a conduit for the dark, elegant shape of the thought.
Kane listened. A slow, razor-edged smile touched his lips. He gave a single, almost imperceptible nod.
He turned back to Marcus, who glared up from the floor.
“You’re coming with us,” Kane said.
Before Marcus could respond, Kane knocked his boot against the hunter’s temple. Not hard enough to kill. Just enough to plunge him into a silent, drowning dark.