Raw Power: An Urban Fantasy Novel (Demon-Hearted Book 1) Read Free Page A

lower-story windows, unsure of what I might see.
      Amundsen had assured me that there would be no one here. All I needed to do was poke around in this creepy house till I found his box and then beat it. Something about that wasn't adding up, though. The air was heavy. I didn't feel alone here.
    I stuck my head just inside the window like a thief in search of a freshly-baked pie and caught only the faintest glimmers of orange cast onto a wall in some adjacent room.
    Sure as shit, this was the place.
    And something was going on inside.
      I thought he said the place was going to be empty. Damn it... I didn't have any reservations about roughing up a bunch of Harry Potter wannabes, but the fact that the house wasn't completely abandoned only ramped up my nerves and made my stomach stir up the dregs of those god-awful cheeseburgers.
      Gulping down the dread that was quickly welling up in me, I did my best to ignore the subtle, breathy chanting I could hear issuing from deeper in the ruined domicile. Yeah, full-on chanting, like the kind you might hear in some voodoo orgy. I didn't know a whole lot about that kind of thing back then and have never been a religious person, but I knew enough to know that ritualistic chanting rarely ends well. In the movies, people or animals are brutally sacrificed, or demons are conjured up from the bowels of Hell.
      Not that I believed in any of that. But knowing that I was about to barge into a room full of people who did believe brought an apprehension over me that was difficult to describe and even more difficult to dispel.
    I edged my way around the house, my hands pressed to the cool siding, and sought out another window.
    The chanting was getting a little louder with every step. Female voices, all of them. Couldn't hear a deep note in the entire chorus, and I stood by to listen for quite some time. I had no idea what they were looking to do, or why the smells of roasting meat entered the sensory equation a few steps later.
    As I crept around the property trying to get a peek and establish the best entry point, I felt like a camera guy who makes nature documentaries for TV. Though, instead of wandering through the jungle to watch a couple of rare animals fuck, I was trying to sneak up on a little black box full of ashes.
    I seriously doubt that any of those documentarians have ever been so utterly thrown off balance by what they've discovered, though.
    Very carefully, and only after taking hold of a two-by-four I'd found on the lawn, I looked around a corner and found the sort of entrance I'd been looking for. Except, rather than pounce out and start pounding heads, I froze in place and tried to take it all in.
    I'd been right about one thing; there was nothing but women in the place, all of them standing in a circle, hands joined and chanting.
    A detail that was not lost on me, however, was that a scrap of clothing did not exist among the lot of them.
    There must have been ten or fifteen nubile young things standing there, all of their good bits in view despite the wind's chill, chanting in some guttural language whose like I've never heard. I can't recall specifically how many there were; counting is not my strong suit when I've got an erection.
    Watching the spectacle for a long while, I realized that this was some sort of Witch's Sabbath. I can't take credit for that revelation; I'd seen more than a couple paintings from fellows like Goya depicting such things. The whole scene was rendered almost as darkly by the flickering firelight, but was a good deal easier on the eyes than any of those pieces had ever been. Young, sexy witches? If not for the fact that I had a job to do, I might've joined in.
      The scene was on the lawn. The back of the house had crumbled away, and the hollows were lit up by the firelight like a massive jack-o-lantern. The congregants were standing in the grass, and on a spit positioned just above their bonfire was a hunk of meat. What kind was hard to say.