Free InsistentHunger by Lyn Gala

that didn’t come
from hearing someone describe it to you. “You’ve seen the ceremony,” Paige
guessed.
    “Yeah.” Jim gave a humorless laugh. “Most hunters have.
Hell, most of us have done more than just see it.”
    “But why aren’t you one of—”
    “I was tied up waiting for my turn in the circle when a
hunter took out the vamps. Hunters get into this game by escaping a ceremony or
losing someone to one.” Jim looked at her with sharp eyes and Paige knew he
wondered if she would turn to hunting after losing her partner. Right now, she
needed information, not vengeance. However, that would be hard to explain to a
man who’d made killing vampires his life’s work.
    “So, it’s not the bite; it’s the ceremony?”
    Turning to look at her, Jim said, “This isn’t some virus.
This is pure demonic evil and a demonic ceremony is the only way to make that
happen. Sometimes if you have low-level vamps in the room—the really young or
really stupid ones—the demons that come through the rift will try to steal
their bodies. It’s like watching rabid dogs fight over a bone, but humanity is
the bone. Maybe now you see that you really are in over your head, Silver. Go
home. Go home and grieve for your partner, but don’t get in the middle of a war
you don’t understand.”
    “If the demons can force each other, that means there is a
way to get this demon out of my friend.” Paige could feel hope like the tiniest
flicker.
    “None that I know.”
    “Then I’ll find one.”
    Paige headed for the door, a nascent hope growing in her
heart; however, Jim darted forward and grabbed her arm. “You aren’t going to
have the chance. First, if you find him, he’ll try to kill you. Second, when
the demon moves in, the soul moves out.”
    Paige shook her head. “You can’t know that for sure.”
    “That the soul moves out? Yes, I can. I remember detaching
from my body, the slow slide toward some distant place. I remember that. And if
the ceremony had been completed, I wouldn’t be in this body at all. I would
have drifted off and left a demon in control here. And I know that when you
stake a vamp, you immediately know how old they were. You catch one a few days
after the ceremony and you’ll have a rotting corpse a few days old. Catch a
vamp with a few years behind him and you’ll be left with bones. But if you
catch a vamp that’s older than sixty or seventy, they turn to mist like the one
you saw. They’re dead. They died the second the soul moved out and the demon
moved in, and if you drive the demon out of your friend, then his body is going
to suddenly remember that it’s dead.”
    Still shaking her head, Paige refused to believe any of
that. “There has to be—”
    “There isn’t. Do you think you’re the first one to lose
someone to a vamp?” he demanded, fury in his eyes. “Do you think other people
haven’t tried or are you just so arrogant that you’re convinced you’re going to
succeed where the rest of the known world has failed?”
    “I never said that.”
    “No, but you’re acting like it. Do you want to know what
your friend is right now? If they attracted a low-level demon, he’s a big,
stupid walking corpse. He has practically no mind at all. I’d call it a zombie,
only those low-level vamps aren’t big on eating brains. Actually, they aren’t
big on drinking blood either. They’re idiots that bigger and badder vamps use
as guard dogs and cannon fodder. They’re dangerous only in that it takes a Mack
truck to stop them, but if you’re driving a Mack truck right at one, it will
stand there and stare at you stupidly.
    “If you walked up to your friend with one of those low-level
vamps in residence, he would never stop until he trapped you, crushed you
against some wall or laid on you and slowly soaked up all your life force while
feeling the texture of your hair between his fingers. You’ll scream and claw
and beg for mercy, but he won’t even notice.” Jim spat the