Shannon O'Reilly was bullied and everything his older sister wasn't. When his sister Sarah gives him a chance to change things through a single wish things don't go as planned.     I Wish: Book 4 Chapter 3 Cat and Mouse By Amethyst

I had cast a shielding spell on Beth, Ellie, and me the moment that I felt Khinara using her magick, but it seemed that we weren’t the target. The lights in the parking lot had all sort of flashed and then gone dark and the few cars leaving or looking for parking spots were stopped in their tracks. “A banquet of hate, anger, and lust?” It only took a fraction of a second for me to figure out that I knew a pretty good candidate for the feast that the Demoness spoke of. “Oh shit! Lisa!” I took off at a run through the now dark parking lot, dodging parked and stalled vehicles as I ran for the place where I had last felt Khinara’s demonic aura before it had vanished.

Beth and Ellie were right on my heels, even if they weren’t completely sure what was going on. They may not have been privy to my conversation with Khinara but Beth could sense my emotions and they both knew that I wouldn’t take off like that without a good reason. In the darkness, I nearly tripped over Sgt. Williams, who was laying on the pavement with another uniformed police officer laying nearby. There was no sign of Lisa or Khinara, but fortunately, it seemed that both officers were merely unconscious. They were a bit bruised and their pulses were slightly erratic, but they were breathing.

I pulled out my phone and, thank Goddess, it was still working. I was afraid that it might have died along with the lights and vehicles. I quickly hit 9-1-1 and almost immediately a woman’s voice answered on the other end. “9-1-1 what is your emergency?”

“Ummm… hello. I’m in the north parking lot of Dufferin Mall. All the lights went out as we were heading to my car and we just found two police officers unconscious.” I talked with her for a few minutes and she informed me that emergency services were on the way. Since none of us knew first aid she advised us to just wait for them to arrive.

We used the flashlight function on our phones to make it easier for emergency services to find us in the middle of the huge parking lot, though it was several minutes before they arrived. The uniformed officers asked us what we saw and we told them honestly that we had just seen the lights in the parking lot flash and go out and then I had nearly tripped over Sgt. Williams in the dark while going in the direction of my car. I also told them that we knew her and why she had been at the mall since there was no harm in giving them information that they probably already had anyway and I didn’t want to look like I was trying to hide anything. There really wasn’t much else that we could do or say, so while Sgt. Williams and the other officer were being loaded into the ambulance we were asked for our phone numbers in case the officer in charge had any further questions for us and then we were allowed to go home.

We were all sitting in my car when Beth asked, “So what do you think that was? I felt some kind of spell being cast and it came from the direction that the Demon aura was in.”

“I know who the Demon was,” I admitted with a sigh. “Her name is Khinara and she claimed to be one of the Demon King’s seven generals. She’s been looking for me, well all of us I guess, since she popped in my head in Haven. She thought that we might live here what with all the Demon ass-kicking that we’ve been doing lately. I guess that we’re making her work more difficult. She was speaking in my head as we left the mall and yeah, she wants to kill us all, but she wants it to be fun and challenging. Before she fired off that spell and vanished she mentioned a ‘banquet of hate, anger, and lust’.”

“And of course you thought of Lisa,” Ellie said with a nod. “Do you think Khinara knows who you are? That could be really bad.”

“I think she’s a Skarik, they really love feasting on lust and strong negative emotions and well, you don’t need to be a Demon to sense those coming from Lisa,” I said with a sigh. Then I shook my head after thinking about my cousin’s question for a moment. “No, she could sense my power, but she was having trouble picking me out of the crowds in the mall. She’s never really seen me and I’m pretty sure that it’s pissing her off that she can’t do anything more than talk in my head. If she could then she’d have tracked me down right after the big fight in Haven. Even if she did physically see me in Haven, she would have only seen me in my White Witch disguise. But she only sensed my presence then too because she wasn’t in Haven, she was holding the dimensional door open for the other Demons from the other side.”

“So, what did she do here then? Some kind of EMP spell?” Beth asked.

“Probably. I think that the spell had concussive properties too, from the bruising on Sgt. Williams and the other officer. We didn’t hear gunshots so I don’t think that they even saw what hit them. Our phones are probably only working because I instinctively covered us with a shield spell when I felt her charging up a spell,” I replied as Beth attempted to start my car.

Thankfully, it started. I had been hoping that it would since it hadn’t been running when that spell hit. We were all quiet as Beth drove us home and I was pretty sure that I wasn’t the only one thinking of Lisa. It was a pretty good bet that Khinara had taken her, though we couldn’t be absolutely certain if it was Lisa. My gut said that it was though and that we needed to do something. If Khinara really was a Skarik then Lisa was in grave danger.

We had killed a Skarik just over a week ago when investigating some people who had seemed to vanish into thin air for Detective Hanson. It was a young Demon and not near as powerful as Khinara, but the mere thought of its victims left me shaking with cold fury. Skariks feed on a person’s emotions, and after a few feedings, the feeling becomes such a rush for their victims that the more they experience it, the more they will do anything to experience it again. It’s like a drug addiction and the victims of repeated feedings become mentally and emotionally unstable and prone to violent outbursts until the Skarik finally drains them completely, leaving the victim a lethargic and broken husk of a human being.

After we had defeated the Skarik we had had to put the more recent and violent victims to sleep because they were too dangerous and unpredictable to safely approach. The rest had been dead or near-dead; starved half to death and laying in their own wastes because they didn’t care enough to move. We had secretly passed on a tip to Detective Hanson so they could be taken to the hospital to get the care they needed, but the long-term victims were little more than vegetables now and the more recent ones required psychiatric care.

As much as I disliked Lisa I was not going to allow that to happen to her if I had any say in the matter. She was a bitch, but she was a person and nobody deserved to have that happen, not even Lisa. Khinara would likely want to savor the meal and take her time, but we needed to find Lisa soon. From the knowledge that Ysuriel had passed on to Sarah about Skariks they liked to give their meals a few days between the first few feedings to let the fear and other negative emotions build up again, but a victim could only take one, possibly two feedings before they began to suffer from the negative effects.

I couldn’t stop thinking about it as we left the parking lot, so I quickly cast my locator spell. I may as well have thrown a stone hoping to get lucky and hit her because I couldn’t sense anything. That left four possibilities. One, she was already dead, which I didn’t want to even consider. Also, it didn’t make sense if Khinara really was a Skarik and planned on enjoying her meal. The second possibility was more likely, that Lisa was out of my range for that spell. I had located people all over the city though, so while it was possible, I felt that it was unlikely with Khinara wanting to make a game of hunting me down. That left the third and fourth and most likely possibilities. She had either taken Lisa to another Plane or wherever she was hiding out was warded to keep her presence hidden and it was blocking my locator spell as well.

I was trying to think of other ways of finding her and was starting to get sick to my stomach when Sarah called. “Hey, Sis is everything okay? Annie said that there was a Demon in your area.”

“Yeah, do you remember that Demoness I told you about after we left Haven, Khinara? She’s been trying to find us and now she wants to make a game of hunting us down. She claims to be one of the seven generals of the Demon King, I’m pretty sure she’s a Skarik, and I think that she snatched Lisa up to be her unhappy meal,” I reported with a sigh. “I tried using my locator spell, but I’m getting nothing.”

“Shit.” Sarah swearing is never a good thing and it was a moment before she spoke again. “The seven generals are Heil’s most powerful Demons, except for the Demon King himself. The Demon King originally appointed them to take down the Seven Sentinels of Haven and win the first war after one of the Sentinels nearly killed him, though Ysuriel’s memory doesn’t have a lot of specifics on that. Ysuriel and the other Sentinels were able to take some of them down but it wasn’t easy, and I imagine that if there’s still seven of them that new ones must have been appointed when others died. Are you sure that she has Lisa?”

As quickly as possible I explained to Sarah everything that had happened at the mall, what Khinara had said, and my suspicions that she had Lisa and might be in town somewhere, but hiding behind wards or on another Plane altogether. I finished by telling her, “It doesn’t even matter if it’s Lisa she has, Sarah. She has somebody and she’s going to make a meal of them.”

I could hear her let out a long sigh on the other end. “You’re right of course, Shannon. We’ll need to look for any Demon presence so we can shake them down and see what they know. We’re on our way to meet Talisha and look at a house, but we’ll come up with a plan of action as soon as we get home. Give Mason and Jennifer a call and let them know what’s up. I love you, Sis. Don’t worry, we’ll find her.”

It was over two hours later that Sarah, Annie, and Talisha returned home. Annie had been pretty much living with us and sleeping in Sarah’s room since we had gotten back from Haven. She claimed it was easier with her spending most of her time working as Sarah’s assistant and the whole Demon hunting thing. They were a cute couple though and Sarah seemed so happy now, even with all of the supernatural crap that we kept getting buried in.

All three of them loved the house that they had looked at, a five-bedroom and two and a half bath with a hot tub and an unfinished basement that was spacious enough for most of it to be made into a training room for Annie to give our martial arts lessons and a possible magick library/workroom as well. It was also just two blocks away from Beth’s place and close to our school. They planned to get an electrician, plumber, and such in there to check for any issues, but if everything checked out then the three of them planned on putting an offer on the house.

While they had been gone we had called Jennifer and Mason to inform them of the situation and I had received a call from Detective Hanson, who was investigating the scene in the parking lot. He had phoned me as soon as he had discovered that Sgt. Williams was involved and read the report that we had given to the uniformed officers. He couldn’t tell me much officially, but he was able to tell me that Sgt. Williams and her partner had only received minor injuries, including a minor concussion. Both were now conscious and would be released from the hospital the next day after a night of observation.

Annie called Detective Hanson once they had gotten home and had been able to get a bit more information out of him, information that she was now sharing with the rest of us. Apparently, neither officer saw what had hit them nor whatever had taken out the lights. Whatever it was had also taken out all the security cameras in the parking lot and the cameras on the officers’ vests as well, so he had no idea what happened at the moment. Sgt. Williams had radioed in just before the incident to say that she was in pursuit of Lisa, and her partner had replied that he had found Lisa’s car and was waiting there to cut her off. After that, they had no information though.

Some of the cars in the area had been damaged, probably from the spell, including Lisa’s. Her purse and keys had been found nearby but so far there was no sign of her. Detective Hanson had just left her house, but she hadn’t been home and her parents hadn’t talked to her since early that morning when she left the house to go ‘look up a friend’. There had been evidence that she had been following me though, including some photos of me in her car and a receipt in her purse for that afternoon from the café around the corner from André’s studio.

“Creepy stalker confirmed,” Ellie spat bitterly. “Do you think that Khinara killed the lights and cameras on purpose, or was it just a side effect of the spell?”

“My gut says that it was deliberate,” Annie replied, “probably to keep her identity secret.”

“I’d want to keep myself off camera too if I were a Skarik, they don’t exactly blend in,” Beth pointed out.

“Yeah,” Sarah agreed, “and I believe that they want to keep the existence of magick a secret from the general population of our world as much as we do. While the true existence of magick is still known to only a very few they can keep working from the shadows and have minimal interference from people like us. A human may not be a match for a Demon normally, but we do have a very large population and some powerful weapons, even if most of the population can’t use magick. They won’t risk revealing themselves to the general population until they’ve established a beachhead and a large military presence.”

“Well, we’re gonna take her down before she can do that. So how do we do find her?” I asked.

Sarah put a hand gently on my shoulder. “Shannon, I know that you want to get on this tonight, but realistically there isn’t a lot that we can do until we can find out where she is or we can draw her out. Tonight all of you need a good night’s sleep because tomorrow while you’re at school Annie and I are going to fly all over the city in our Celestial forms to scan for anywhere that Demons might be hiding out. We can’t do anything more than that in broad daylight, even while invisible to mortal eyes, but the Demons can’t move against us either since they don’t want the existence of magick known publicly any more than we do. We’ll make a note of every hotspot and then tomorrow night after dinner, as soon as it’s dark, we’re going to hit all of them.”