Free Damoren by Seth Skorkowsky

With what?”
    “ Vampires. Werebeasts. The occult. I started courses on folklore. Spent more and more time practicing my swordsmanship. It began dominating my dreams. I was obsessed.”
    Matt gave an understanding nod. “She bonded with you.”
    “ Yeah.” Allan let out a long sigh. The sound of it whooshed in Matt’s headphones. “It was like puberty, but instead of discovering my cock and girls, all I wanted to do was kill a monster with Ibenus.”
    Matt laughed. “Dämoren did the same thing with me. She was Clay’s, but I was completely enthralled with her. Learned pretty quick not to let him catch on. Like you said, it’d be like cheating on him with his wife.”
    The Englishman turned his head, his brow creased. “She bonded with you while still with Clay?”
    “ Uh-huh. Why?”
    “ Just never heard of that before. The weapons are very committed to their owners.”
    “ Nothing happened,” Matt said with a dismissive wave. “Maybe she was just flirting me up, letting me see what my future held. Kinda like the bright spot ahead. One day, she’d be mine, and I’d kill every damn demon there was with her.” He licked his lips. “So you telling me my gun’s got a wandering eye?”
    “ No,” he laughed, turning back to the controls. “Every weapon is unique. Not just their form, or powers they might have, but...personalities. I just find it fascinating.”
    “ So you think they’re alive?”
    “ Well, alive-ish maybe. I mean, why not? You refer to Dämoren as a she. You know they can bond with people. That’s intelligence isn’t it? I think, therefore I am.”
    “ I’ve called my car a she before, too.”
    “ True but...” Allan bit his lip. “But with Dämoren you mean it.”
    Matt nodded. “Yeah. Clay used to say she had a soul. An angel that lived within her. That true?”
    “ Don’t know. There’s a lot of different theories.”
    “ Like what?”
    “ Well, some believe that the power comes from pure faith. Like when they made the weapon, they had so much faith in it, that the blacksmith maybe put some of himself in there. Or maybe the power of God. But not all weapons that were intended to be holy weapons are. It isn’t that easy. There’s a lot of gilded and jeweled blades which were utter disappointments.”
    The plane shuddered and Matt gripped the armrest. “Have you tried?” he asked, his lips barely moving.
    “ Not me personally, but Valducans have tried several times over the years. I’ve found record of over seventy attempts. In all those times, we’ve made two. Two in eight hundred years. However, other people have made holy blades in that time, people that didn’t know any of the prayers and techniques that had worked before. They just made them. And if asked to do it again, they couldn’t.”
    “ Any ideas why it doesn’t work?”
    Allan shook his head.
    They flew in silence for several minutes. The engines’ drone wormed back into Matt’s consciousness. He looked out the window again. A few stars glinted through the darkness, not as many as he’d hoped. Matt leaned closer to the glass, looking down. A path of silver moonlight reflected off the black ocean below, stretched out like some endless marble floor.
    “ You never finished your story,” Matt said, settling back into his seat. “So how’d you get involved with the Valducans?”
    “ When I was twenty, farmers had reported a monster lurking outside Greasby, killing their sheep. They described a huge black dog, like the Black Shuck or something. Press called it the Beast of Wirral, but no one paid it much mind. Then the body of a girl was found in a bog. Some animal had attacked her. Of course some blamed the Beast of Wirral, but not many.”
    “ So you went looking for it?”
    Allan nodded. “Yeah. Armed with a flashlight, a motorcycle jacket, and Ibenus in a beat-up DJ case I found in pawn, I spent two weeks creeping around farms and moorland. I started missing lectures, my marks were plummeting.