The Demon Accords Compendium, Volume III

Contents
The Demon Accords Compendium,
Two Natures
Threefold
Herding Wolves
The Webs We Weave
The King’s Daughter
Parabellum
Author’s Notes:


The Demon Accords Compendium,
Volume III
By
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 © 2020 John Conroe
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 series:
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.
Darkkin Queen
The Demon Accords Compendium, Volume 3 
The Zone War series:
Zone War
Borough of Bones
Web of Extinction
The Shadows of Montshire series:
A Murder of Shadows
A Flight of Ravens (Late Fall 2020)
A Mischief of Rats (Spring 2021)
Cover art by Gareth Otton.


Two Natures
This story takes place after the events of Darkkin Queen and shows a little portion of some of my favorite side characters’ lives.
Marika Kelly started to wonder if she’d made a mistake.  Taking the Cross-Town trail to get from the center of Cape to Robinson Woods, and from there to her favorite bakery, had seemed like an easy way to fill a May Saturday afternoon in Maine.  Taking the pleasant little woods hike from a church parking lot to the two-hundred-plus acre Land Trust parcel near the shore side of Cape would shave probably two miles off her walk, plus the woods were sunny and pleasant, the air smelling of springtime growth and the end of a long, tedious winter.  It was a warm day, in the lower sixties, and she’d worn gym shorts in celebration of the end of her least favorite season.
But now the pretty brunette was starting to regret a number of choices she’d made.  Staying to chat with a high school friend at the bakery had left her with a rapidly setting sun that made the woods a much less friendly place than even an hour earlier.  Going alone was also maybe not her best choice.  A girl should always be able to wear what she wanted, but the reality was that the light gym shorts that had made her feel energized now left her feeling vulnerable when she passed the group of juniors, all boys, on her way back.  The stares, the whispered comments, and subsequent laughter had sent a chill up her back.  And then there was the matter of her friend, Kristin Vilhelmsdottir, who’d gone missing from Cape a month ago.
Now halfway down the trail on her way home, only the fact that she’d passed a middle-aged couple heading the other way made her feel better.  They should now be between her and the boys who had begun to follow her.  Perhaps the sight of adults would slow them, she thought, picking up her own pace to almost a jog.
She pulled out her phone and tapped a friend from a long list and listened through her Bluetooth earbuds for the call to go through.  It didn’t dial, and when she glanced at her signal bars, she found there was no service listed in their place.
That’s about the time she heard the snap of a stick breaking in the woods behind her.  Screw it.  Time to jog.  She moved easily into a ground-eating pace, trusting her cross country training to get her out of the woods and into the center of her supposedly safe little town. None of the three boys, and she knew who each of them was, played any sports, so she doubted their conditioning.
Cape, as it was known to its inhabitants, occupied almost fifty square miles of promontory that poked out into the Atlantic Ocean just a few miles southeast of Portland.  A combination of historic agricultural plots mixed with protected community forests and mostly private shoreline, Cape had a per capita income well above the national average.  The wealth of its inhabitants gave it the luxury of excellent government services, a nationally ranked school system, and a fairly low crime rate.  That’s partly why the news of her missing friend had made the big news networks in New York City.
Another stick snapped, just as close as the first, and Marika started to feel the beginnings of true panic set in.  Her feet picked up their pace, her eyes picking out the roots and rocks in the well-tramped trail even in the shadows of the rapidly dimming daylight.  To calm herself, she tried to remember everything she had learned in the community center’s women’s self-defense class her parents had made her attend.
The rustle of something big moving through leaf litter shattered her thoughts, her heart almost freezing up at the nearness of the sound. She glanced behind and saw a darkness between the thick-set trees that had nothing to do with afternoon shadows or maybe even teenaged boys.
Now almost at a dead run, Marika could see the gaps in the forest ahead that would open out into the church parking lot.  A collection of log seats appeared, used for outdoor church services, which told her she was just a football field from safety.  Opening up into a full sprint, she raced from the rapidly darkening woods and out onto the open asphalt of the parking lot.  The main road through town was just ahead and she didn’t slow for a moment, crossing the open lot in seconds.  Only when she reached the sidewalk just up from the municipal building and attendant police department did she slow to a walk. She glanced behind her but saw only shadows and trees at the trail’s opening.
But while she couldn’t see into the thick forest, a set of yellow eyes could easily see her, even across several hundred yards, and they watched her as she moved rapidly away.  The girl gone, the eyes turned away, looking at the trail behind.
Almost a mile and a half away, Lucas Downing, Ren