Hunter Academy - Book 1

LEARNING

JESSICA

After we ate, we piled back into the Jeep. Leo tried again to get me to sit in the front, but I wasn't doing it.

"Dude, no. You are too freaking tall to be sitting in the back seat." I tell him with a smile. His smile in return set my heart pounding. We ride the next two hours just chit chatting. Sam eventually pulls up to a very nondescript building. It's just a brown square building. No windows and only one door that I can see.

"So, we're meeting a guy named Stefan Obermeyer. He's a religious historian whose focus is on demonology. Supposedly he can tell us anything we need to know about Fovos. I'm hoping he can tell us a way to defeat her." Dane says as we walk up to the building. Sam reaches forward and presses the bell. We only have to wait a moment before we hear the locks disengage, and the door opens. To say the man looks like what you would picture a religious historian to look like would be an understatement. He's around five foot five, brown hair, brown eyes, and a pair of black, round-framed glasses sits on his nose. A smile lights his face when he sees us. He opens the door wide and motions for us to come inside.

"Come in, come in! I'm so glad you're here." We file inside. When I walk through the door, the smell of dusty books is all I can smell. We make our introductions after he closes and locks the door behind us. "So, you all want to know about a demon named Fovos. Well, follow me back to conference room. I have some books and things back here to show you." No nonsense and to the point. I like him already.

He leads us back to the conference room, where he has books and papers strewn out all over the table. A lot of the stuff was old, the pages yellowing over time. The guys all take a seat and I follow suit, settling into a comfy office chair.

"So Fovos is one of the old ones, and it doesn't bode well for us if she's managed to escape her banishment. She's impossible to kill, which is why she was banished to begin with."

"What do you mean, old ones?" I ask.

"Okay, I'm going to give you a little history about the creation of demons. In the early days of mankind, there weren't any demons, but after wandering around hell for a few millennia, Lucifer decided he would exact his revenge on God by creating demons. He went to the one truly evil human that existed and struck a deal with her. In exchange of an immortal existence, she would help him create a set of beings that would wreak havoc on the earth." He paused a moment.

"Who was this person?"

"Lillith. She was a powerful witch. The first of her kind. With her supernatural powers, combined with the angelic powers of Lucifer, they created around two hundred demons. Fovos, or Fear, was the most powerful of them all, because as she used her powers the fear of her victims fed her and made her stronger. She eventually made more and more demons herself with the aid of Lillith. Right now, I imagine, she's still weak from her banishment, which is good for the time being, but if she ever manages to get to full strength again, we're in deep trouble."

"Does she have any weaknesses?" The normally quiet Leo asks.

"None that are known. She's weak right now, after thousands of years of not feeding, but the more she kills, the stronger she gets."

"Well, that's reassuring." Leo says sarcastically. I just arch an eyebrow at him.

"Now, I have all the books and papers I could find on her. You are more than welcome to peruse through them at your leisure. I have some things I need to get done, so I'll just leave you here to go through it all." With that said, he leaves us alone in the room.

"Well, let's get started." I say, as I grab the book closest to me.

"Look at her being all cute with her take charge attitude." Dane says next to me, as he also grabs a book, a smile on his face as he looks at me. We read in silence for about an hour, when Leo starts muttering under his breath. We all look at him, trying to decipher what it is he's saying.

"Leo, man, did you find something?" Sam asks him, with a gentle nudge on his shoulder. Leo looks up and looks at us.

"So, it says here that the Catholic church, in it's early days were only able to banish them. They used Pagan magic to do it. They banished them to a different plane. They didn't even try to bother to know what was already on that plane. It literally says that they chose to banish the demons wherever they could get them to go, and as long as they weren't on Earth, harming humans, they didn't care where they went. What kind of messed up shit is that? Not only did they use borrowed magic, that they condemned as evil and burned witches for using, but they had no idea where they sent these demons. They could have condemned another world to a very bad fate."

"Wait. There are other planes of existence?" I ask, bewildered.

"Yeah. Millions of them. Some of them have nothing on them, some of them actually have peaceful beings. Some are evil. They should have figured out where they were sending them. They were essing around with magic they had no idea how to really use." He shakes his head. We all continue to read.

"Wait. I might have found something. A way to possibly stop her." I say after a little while.

"What is it?" Dane asks me, moving closer to take a look. I move the book closer to him and point out what I read. "African Dream Root. It says it allows the person who takes it to walk in other's dreams and manipulate them. We don't know anything about this, and the book doesn't give any more information about it. We'd have to do some more research about it before trying anything like this. It sounds dangerous."

"It's the first thing we've come across that might actually help. She can only attack me in my dreams. Right now, I'm taking that other stuff so I don't dream, what if I took this instead and was able to control what happens in my dreams and actually kill her?"

"Nope. Not going to happen. Like I said, we don't know anything about this stuff. Let us do some more research on it first. Let us find out how it works. You never know what you're getting when it comes to magical things. That's the bottom line."

"Look at him being all cute with his take charge attitude." I reply. There's no smile his time. I don't like being told what to do. I'll bide my time, though. He does have a point. We have don't have any other information about this stuff. I'm sure with a little thorough Google search, I can uncover some, though. I have a feeling things are about to get really interesting.

A/N: I'm terribly sorry. For those of you who follow me, you got a message Friday telling you my laptop crapped out on me, but that I would have an update for you yesterday. Life happened, and the update didn't. I apologize. For those who don't follow me and just read my story, things are about to get fast and furious for our little group of hunters, so I actually sat down and wrote out the plot line, as I didn't want to leave any plot holes or anything. Thank every one of you for reading, voting, and commenting. It all means the world to me.