Demon Divine

John Conroe

This book is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Copyright © 2019 John Conroe

Smashwords edition.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.

The Demon Accords:

God Touched

Demon Driven

Brutal Asset

Black Frost

Duel Nature

Fallen Stars

Executable

Forced Ascent

College Arcane

God Hammer

Rogues

Snake Eyes

Winterfall

Summer Reign

The Demon Accords Compendium, Volume 1

The Demon Accords Compendium, Volume 2

Demon Divine

C.A.E.C.O. (Summer, 2019)

The Zone War series:

Zone War

Borough of Bones (coming Spring, 2019)

Web of Extinction (coming Fall, 2019)

Cover art by Gareth Otton.

Prologue

The dentist’s office, being the place of business for one Dr. Gary Reynolds, DDS, occupied what had once been a single-family ranch-style house, one that had seen better days. Located right on the border between Burlington’s commercial and residential neighborhoods, it suffered from the beginnings of neglect. None of the deferred maintenance had yet reached a truly extensive level, mostly consisting of peeling paint, degrading roof shingles, and weatherproofing that was beginning to be less proof and more weathered.

The dark of deep night hid most of the negligence; not even the light from the rear employees’ bathroom illuminated more than a few peels of loose paint. As the night concealed the damage on the outside, so too did the closed doors and unlit rooms of the building, at least for a few hours, cover the damage strewn about the inside.

A shower ran in the little three-quarters bath, the sounds of contented humming interwoven into the splash and trickle of running water. In the rest of the office, other liquids and some semi-solids ran down walls and over almost every available surface. Concentrated mostly in the reception area and examination room Number Two, the fluids were almost uniformly blackish in the dark gloom of the unlit office. But here and there, in those places touched ever so slightly by the meager illumination that managed to make its way from the open bathroom doorway, the fluid was more of a deep, dark red. The tiny, feminine-sized footprints of fluid in the carpet just outside the bathroom were as red as they were small. Their trail ran backward to the exam room and, curiously, their size increased the farther back the trail led. In fact, the very shape of the footprints changed from a dainty size five by the bathroom to a long, reptilian three-toed structure larger than that of an average NBA shoe coming out of E2.