The Demon Senders Read Online Free Page A

long and looked like it was recently plucked from whatever kind of bird flies around with five inch, pale colored feathers. Still, seeing the feather sitting on the passenger’s seat gave me a real bad feeling. Not about feathers but about where it came from and what it could have meant.
    I started thinking the old man was weird enough that maybe he carried feathers around in his back pocket and this one just happened to fall out when his face was being slammed against my dashboard. Since I was pretty damn certain he hadn’t farted it out, I settled on believing the feather was an accidental drop off.
    Turns out I was very, very wrong, but I’ll get to that later on. What’s important for you to understand is seeing that feather stressed my already over-stressed nerves. I kept asking myself what the old man meant by me not figuring something out yet and what the hell “arrangements” did he think we had to make? After sitting in my van for those twenty minutes, I noticed my body was shaking from the cold. Weird how you don’t notice things you normally would when your mind is trekking down paths it isn’t used to treading.
    I live alone so I wasn’t concerned about waking up anyone as I trudged up my apartment staircase, banging the narrow walls with my guitar case and, I guess, intentionally making more noise than I normally would have. I knew I dropped the old man off a bunch of very cold miles ago and there was no way he would have been able to get into my apartment before me. But, I was sitting in my driveway for quite a while and, hell, who knows what that creep was capable of.
    Turns out, the only thing my extra noise making did was to wake up my cat, Al. He met me at the door and was quick to display his dissatisfaction over being awoken so late. Al didn’t scratch me but did what cats do when they’re pissed off: He turned his tail and walked back into the bedroom.
    Cats are like that, I guess. They care about their owners just enough to come out to see them but don’t feel compelled to get all goofy, start jumping up and down and demand they stick their tongue up your nose like a dog.  
    I put my guitar in the guest room I converted to a small recording studio, made a quick pass through the kitchen, living room and bathroom just to make sure it was just me and Al in the apartment, then headed into my bedroom. And that’s when I almost pooped in my pants.
    Al was all curled up on his pillow (continuing his decision to ignore me) and next to him, on the other pillow, was the feather. The same damn feather I knew I left sitting in my van was now sitting all pretty as a picture on my pillow. I quickly turned around, ran down the stairs and out to my van. I didn’t bring the car keys but the sodium arc streetlamp across the road gave me just enough light to verify my suspicions: The feather was gone from the passenger’s seat and I was absolutely certain that I left the damn thing where I found it.

CHAPTER FOUR

    Phillip lay flat on his back. The rocky ground beneath offered no comfort, warmth or even the promise of steady support. The ground beneath him was simply there because it had no other place to be. As he lay, too terrified to move or to reveal his return to consciousness, Phillip Holstein could feel only two emotions: Fear and hatred. His fear was targeted at whomever or whatever had left him in the pile of mangled pain he was in and his hatred was desperately seeking a target. A place to call home.
    He knew a roving hatred was like watered down whiskey: It had the right ingredients to deliver a result but was rendered weak by the additional pour. He had to target his hatred or the object of his fear would return to help him boil things down a bit more.
    Henry? No. Henry was not a smart target for hatred. On the other side, Henry was certainly someone deserving of hatred but here, in the foggy, damp and strange realm, Henry was needed.
    His torturers? Phillip could not replace even an ounce of the