DEMON SENSE (Completed)

Chapter 9

                       DEMON SENSE

                           Chapter 9

It was just Larson and me, since Nathan had decided to go sulk somewhere else. It was a wise decision on his part, since I was about ready to punch him in the throat.

“Well, off to the basement with you,” Larson ordered.

“Huh?” I’d been so busy fuming in my head, I didn’t hear him.

“We sure aren’t going to go at it in here, love. I wouldn’t want you to break something of Nethaneel’s. He would surely throw a fit more arduous than the last.”

At the moment, I didn’t care if I broke his crap. Granted, Nathan would probably tack on the cost of damages to my growing IOU. Added fees I couldn’t afford. I needed to vent. Now.

I followed Larson through the house, to a door beyond the kitchen. When we reached it, he opened the door, revealing a dark stairway that was the epitome of creepy.

I grew a little uneasy as we began the decent. Twenty-two, and I was afraid of the dark. Nothing to be embarrassed about, I tried to convince myself. Yeah, right. The worst kind of monsters liked the dark. Like demons…and roaches.

I shivered. “Isn’t there a light switch you could flip?”

“Yes.”

“So, we’re walking down these narrow, concrete steps in the dark because…” I asked, annoyance tingeing my tone. It wasn’t just my fear of the dark that made me edgy. Attempting to walk down a cement staircase with little to no visibility wasn’t exactly the smartest or safest thing a girl in wedge sandals could do.

Sensing my concerns, the vampire took my hand. His fingers were slightly cool to the touch, not ice-cold as I’d imagined they would be. “The switch is at the base of these stairs.”

I rolled my eyes. “High five to the guy who set that one up,” I replied sarcastically. “Just genius”

Larson was a few steps ahead of me, but looked up to watch me in the dark. He apparently didn’t need to see where he was going. I wondered how he did it. Maybe Larson navigated by sonar like bats.

“Completely,” he said, just as we reached the bottom of the staircase. There was a soft click as he flipped the light switch and the basement was awash in a pure white glow.

“Whoa.” What I saw pleasantly surprised me.

When I thought of basements, I had a tendency to associate them with rats and cockroaches, and many other unpleasant things. This room was nothing like that. Nathan’s basement was clean and fresh, like right out of a Febreze commercial. Plush, off-white carpet extended from wall to wall in the substantial basement space. A cream-colored couch sat against a wall at one end of the room. The wall perpendicular to the couch was home to a bookcase that ran all the way across a good fifty feet or so. Other than that, there was nothing else in the room. The whole center space was empty, providing the ideal amount of space for learning self-defense.

“It’s perfect.”

Larson kicked off his expensive-looking running shoes, and got straight down to business. “I suggest you do the same.”

Without hesitation, I stepped out of my sandals and tossed them to the side of the room. After which, I joined Larson at the center of the space where he stood, feet shoulder width apart and his arms poised at his side.