WOODBRIDGE: DEMON HUNTER Part 2

 

WOODBRIDGE: DEMON HUNTER Part 2

Chapter 22

2:46pm. The fluorescent lights of the university library hum with the particular frequency of institutional neglect—the kind of buzz that gives you a headache if you think about it too long, which Shane Woodbridge has been doing for approximately four years now. He stands at the reference desk, pretending to shelve a book on 14th-century demonology while actually watching the security camera feed on his phone.

Three months ago, the Boston Demon Hunting Department had seventeen active field agents. Today: nine. Three of those are on medical leave after the incident in Somerville, two are "pending review" for reasons nobody will explain, and one—Shane's former partner, Beaumont—has stopped answering his phone entirely.

The department is falling apart.

Not dramatically, not with explosions or demonic invasions. Just... slowly. The way things always fall apart in institutions. Paperwork piling up. Budget meetings that go nowhere. The creeping sense that everyone is waiting for something—a sign, a miracle, an excuse to finally give up.

Shane pushes his glasses up his nose and checks his watch. 2:47 PM. Laura will be here any minute.

His stomach does that stupid flip it always does when he thinks about her. He's known Laura for eight months—ever since he pulled her out of a burning apartment building in Roxbury, the demon inside her screaming scripture backwards while her body tried to tear itself apart. He held her down while Larson performed the exorcism, her fingernails raking bloody furrows into his arms, her voice cycling through languages that haven't been spoken in millennia.

She thanked him afterward. Cried on his shoulder. Told him he was the first person who'd ever made her feel safe.

Shane has been in love with her ever since.

Not that he'll ever admit it. Not that he'll ever act on it. Laura is off-limits for approximately seventeen different reasons, not least of which being that she now works in the department's administrative wing—which makes her, technically, his supervisor's subordinate.

And his supervisor is Christian.

Shane's jaw tightens at the thought. Christian, the department head. Christian, the dispatcher. Christian, who has a mother complex the size of Massachusetts and the interpersonal skills of a particularly passive-aggressive python.

The elevator chimes.

Shane looks up, heart rate spiking—then immediately crashing when a gangly kid in a janitor's uniform shuffles past, pushing a mop bucket.

Right. 2:48. Laura is never early. Laura is the kind of woman who arrives exactly on time or five minutes late, never earlier, never later, as if punctuality were a moral stance rather than a logistical concern. Shane loves that about her. He loves approximately seven hundred things about her, most of which he's catalogued in a private note on his phone that he's titled "Reasons This Is a Bad Idea" as a form of self-flagellation.

The elevator chimes again.

This time, it's her.

Laura steps into the library's concealed wing—the Demon Hunting Department, officially designated as the "Rare Manuscripts Collection" on all university maps—with the effortless grace of someone who's learned to move through hostile environments. She wears a gray pantsuit that probably costs more than Shane's monthly rent, her dark hair pulled back in a professional twist, her makeup minimal but precise. Her eyes, when they find him, hold the particular warmth of someone who's seen you at your worst and hasn't run away.

"Shane." She smiles, crossing the room toward him. "You look terrible."

"Thanks." He straightens, suddenly aware of how rumpled his tweed jacket is, how his tie hangs slightly askew. "Late night."

"Demon or research?"

"Both." He gestures to the book in his hands. "Found a reference to something called the 'Gut-Binding.' Thought it might explain the uptick in possessions."

Laura's expression flickers—something guarded, something careful. "And did it?"

"No." Shane sets the book down. "It's a dead end. Like everything else lately."

They stand there for a moment, the fluorescent lights humming overhead, the security cameras watching. In the department's main office, visible through a glass partition, a few administrative assistants type at computers with the hollow-eyed stare of people who've seen too much paperwork and not enough sunlight.

"You heard about the triple-decker?" Laura asks quietly.

Shane nods. "Girl started the fire. Possessed. They found her in the basement, trying to burn through the foundation."

"The foundation." Laura's voice goes flat. "Not the building. The foundation."

"That's what the report said."

Laura steps closer, lowering her voice. "Shane, I've been looking into something. The water source in that neighborhood—it came back contaminated. Not with lead or bacteria. With something else. Something the lab couldn't identify."

Shane's brow furrows. "Contaminated how?"

"That's the thing. They don't know. The samples keep coming back 'inconclusive.'" She makes air quotes. "Which is bureaucrat-speak for 'we found something but we're not allowed to say.'"

"And the schools?"

Laura's jaw tightens. "Same thing. The cafeteria food—the stuff they're serving in the affected neighborhoods—it's coming from a distributor that doesn't exist. Bogus LLC, bogus everything. Someone's paying for it. Someone with deep pockets and a lot of influence."

Shane processes this. "You think someone's deliberately targeting these neighborhoods?"

"I think," Laura says carefully, "that someone's running an experiment. And we're the lab rats."

The administrative assistants type on, oblivious. Somewhere in the building, a phone rings—once, twice, then silence.

"Have you told Christian?" Shane asks.

Laura's face does something complicated—a flicker of fear, quickly suppressed, replaced by the careful neutrality she's perfected over months of working in this department. "I've tried."

"And?"

"And he said I was being paranoid. That the water tests were probably just equipment failure. That the food distributor was probably just a clerical error." She laughs, hollow. "He told me to focus on my actual job instead of chasing conspiracy theories."

Shane wants to say something—wants to tell her that Christian is wrong, that her instincts are good, that he believes her. But the words stick in his throat.

Because Christian isn't just wrong. Christian is dangerous.

Shane has seen it—the way Christian speaks to Laura when he thinks no one is listening. The way he stands too close, touches her shoulder for too long, makes comments about her appearance that sound like compliments but feel like violations. The way he subtly undermines her in meetings, making her seem emotional, irrational, unreliable.

And when Laura finally went to HR—when she finally filed a complaint about the "inappropriate workplace behavior"—the whole thing got buried. Witness statements disappeared. Emails got "accidentally" deleted. The HR representative, a woman who'd worked with Christian for fifteen years, gently suggested that Laura might be "misreading the situation" and that perhaps she should "consider whether she was truly a good fit for this department."

The office politics swallowed her complaint whole.

And Shane—brilliant, oblivious, crush-addled Shane—didn't notice any of it until Laura stopped making eye contact with Christian. Until she started flinching whenever he raised his voice. Until she began showing up to work with her shoulders hunched, her smile forced, her spirit slowly crushed under the weight of a system designed to protect abusers.

"You okay?" Shane asks, because he's good at asking the wrong questions.

Laura's smile is thin. "Fine. Just tired."

"You should take a day off."

"I should do a lot of things." She glances toward the office, where Christian's silhouette moves behind frosted glass. "But right now, I need to focus on these reports. Someone has to."

Shane nods, not understanding. Not really.

He'll learn, eventually. He'll learn that the water contamination is real, that the schools are being deliberately poisoned, that women in the affected neighborhoods are four times more likely to experience possessions than men. He'll learn that Laura's investigation had been accurate—and that Christian buried it not because it was wrong, but because finding the truth would require admitting that the department had failed.

But that is later.

Right now, Shane just watches Laura walk toward the office, her shoulders squared, her head high, her spirit bruised but unbroken.

And he thinks: I should tell her how I feel.

He doesn't, of course.

•••

The break room smells of burnt coffee and existential despair—the signature scent of government institutions everywhere. Shane stands by the counter, pouring himself a cup of something that has been brewing since approximately 8 AM, when Marcus Chen—fellow demon hunter, perpetual third wheel, and recent recipient of a psychological evaluation that flagged him for "concerning ideological shifts"—slouches through the door.

Marcus doesn't look good.

His face is pale, his eyes red-rimmed, his hands shaking slightly as he reaches for the coffee pot. He's been like this for weeks—ever since the incident in Charlestown, where he allegedly used excessive force on a possessed teenager.

"Allegedly" being the key word. The department launched an investigation, interviewed witnesses, reviewed body cam footage. And then—surprise, surprise—the whole thing got swept under the rug. Christian's recommendation.

"You look like shit," Shane observes.

Marcus grunts. "Feel like shit." He pours his coffee, adds three sugars, stirs without looking. "You hear about the girl this morning?"

"Which girl?"

"The one in the triple-decker. The one you and Larson handled."

Shane's stomach turns. "She's stable."

"Stable." Marcus laughs—a hollow, bitter sound. "That's what we're calling it now? Stable. Like she's not going to spend the rest of her life in a psychiatric ward, drugged into oblivion because no one wants to admit what really happened."

Shane sets down his coffee. "What are you saying?"

Marcus turns to face him. His eyes hold something that might be desperation, or might be rage, or might be both.

"I'm saying," Marcus says quietly, "that it would have been easier to just kill her."

The words hang in the air.

Shane's hand moves instinctively toward the silver knife sheathed at his hip. "You don't mean that."

"Don't I?" Marcus's voice cracks. "I've been doing this for eight years, Shane. Eight years of exorcisms, of antidotes, of watching people get 'saved' only to kill themselves six months later because they can't live with what they did while they were possessed. Eight years of watching the same patterns repeat over and over, and for what? For a thirty-five percent recovery rate? For a system that's designed to fail?"

Shane says nothing.

Marcus steps closer. "The demon is in the microbiome, Shane. You know that, right? It's not just spiritual. It's biological. Millions of years of evolution, of co-opting, of adaptation. You can't exorcise that. You can't pray it away. It's part of us. It's always been part of us."

"That's not—"

"It's true." Marcus's voice drops to a whisper. "And the sooner we accept it, the sooner we stop pretending we can cure something that's fundamentally incurable, the sooner we start doing what actually works."

"Which is?"

Marcus's smile is thin. "Killing them before they kill someone else."

Shane's hand tightens on his knife. "You're wrong."

"Am I?" Marcus gestures toward the office, toward Christian's silhouette moving behind frosted glass. "Ask your boss. Ask him how many of his 'success stories' are actually successful. Ask him how many people we've 'saved' ended up dead anyway."

Shane opens his mouth to respond—to argue, to defend, to say something—but the words won't come.

Because Marcus isn't entirely wrong.

The department's success rate has been dropping for years. The antidotes work less often. The exorcisms fail more frequently. And the people they "save"—the ones who walk out of the hospital, supposedly cured—they don't always stay cured. Some of them come back. Some of them don't come back at all.

The door opens.

Christian steps into the break room, his presence filling the space like smoke—unobtrusive at first, then suffocating. He is tall, thin, with graying hair and the kind of face that looks simultaneously kind and calculating. His smile, when he offers it, never quite reaches his eyes.

"Gentlemen." His voice is warm, paternal. "I hope I'm not interrupting."

Shane's hand drops from his knife. "We were just—"

"Discussing department policy," Marcus finishes. "The effectiveness of our methods."

Christian's smile doesn't waver. "Ah. That old chestnut." He moves to the coffee pot, pours himself a cup with the practiced ease of someone who's done this a thousand times. "Marcus, I've read your file. I know you have... concerns about our approach. But I want you to understand something."

He turns, cup in hand, his gaze settling on Marcus with the weight of a man who's buried more failures than he'll ever admit.

"Every life we save is a victory. Every demon we banish is a step forward. And yes—sometimes the victory is temporary. Sometimes the step forward is followed by two steps back. But that doesn't mean we stop trying. That doesn't mean we give up."

Marcus's jaw tightens. "And when the trying causes more harm than good?"

Christian's expression flickers—something cold, something dangerous—before smoothing back into paternal warmth. "Then we learn. We adapt. We do better next time."

"Next time," Marcus repeats. "There's always a next time."

"Isn't there?" Christian's smile returns. "Now, Shane—about this morning's mission. I reviewed your report, and I have some questions."

Shane tenses. "Questions?"

"Specifically about your use of the antidote. You administered it before the exorcism was complete. That's... unconventional."

"The girl was dying. I had to stabilize her."

"And you couldn't have used traditional methods? A sedative, perhaps?"

"The sedatives weren't working. The demon was—"

"The demon was what?" Christian's voice is still warm, still paternal, but something underneath has shifted. "Acting outside expected parameters? Displaying unprecedented resistance? Shane, we've been through this. Your tendency to improvise, to deviate from protocol—it's a liability."

Shane's face flushes. "The girl is alive."

"Yes. She is. And I'm sure she's very grateful." Christian sets down his coffee cup. "But gratitude doesn't fill out paperwork. Gratitude doesn't justify the risks you took."

Marcus watches the exchange with hollow eyes.

Shane wants to argue—wants to point out that the protocols are outdated, that the department's methods are failing, that maybe—just maybe—improvising is the only thing keeping people alive.

But he doesn't.

Because Christian has already won. Has already shifted the conversation, the blame, the narrative. Has already made Shane feel foolish for caring too much, for trying too hard, for being too invested in outcomes that are never guaranteed.

"I'll follow protocol next time," Shane says quietly.

Christian's smile widens. "That's all I ask."

He leaves the break room, the door swinging shut behind him.

Marcus laughs—soft, bitter. "You see now? You see what we're dealing with?"

Shane doesn't answer.

He just stares at the door, at the frosted glass, at the silhouette moving behind it.

And thinks: I need to get out of here.

•••

The briefing room is small, cramped, the walls lined with maps and photographs and handwritten notes that have accumulated over decades of demon hunting. Christian stands at the front, his laptop connected to a projector that flickers intermittently.

Shane sits in the back, Marcus beside him, the other remaining agents scattered throughout the room. Laura is there too—not as a participant, but as a note-taker. Her pen moves across the page in precise, efficient strokes.

"A girl has gone missing," Christian begins. "Seventeen years old. Name is Maya Lee. No relation to Marcus." He glances at Marcus, who doesn't react. "She disappeared approximately six hours ago, under circumstances similar to this morning's incident."

The projector clicks. A photograph appears—a teenage girl with dark hair, dark eyes, a smile that seems almost defiant.

"Her house caught fire around 2 AM. Neighbors reported screams, then silence. When firefighters arrived, they found the house empty. No bodies, no signs of struggle—just the fire."

"But," Shane says, "you think it's related to the triple-decker."

Christian nods. "Same neighborhood. Same M.O. And—" another click "—she has two younger sisters. Also missing."

The second photograph shows two younger girls—twins, maybe, with matching braids and matching smiles.

"The sisters were last seen yesterday afternoon. Their school reported them absent. No one thought to check until this morning."

Shane leans forward. "You think someone's targeting families."

"I think," Christian says carefully, "that we're dealing with something methodical. Something that selects specific victims for specific reasons."

"Something demonic?"

Christian's expression is unreadable. "Possibly. But until we have more information, I want you to focus on finding these girls. Bring them in alive if possible. If not—" He spreads his hands. "—do what you have to do."

The room buzzes with quiet murmurs.

Shane catches Laura's eye. She looks away.

"The water supply," Shane says, and everyone turns. "In that neighborhood. Laura—" he catches himself, "—someone mentioned that the water tests came back contaminated. Could that be connected?"

Christian's smile is thin. "The water tests were inconclusive. We're not pursuing that angle."

"But if someone's poisoning the water—"

"No one's poisoning anything." Christian's voice is still warm, still paternal, but his eyes have gone cold. "Focus on the mission, Shane. Find the girls. That's your job."

Shane opens his mouth to argue—but Marcus's hand on his arm stops him.

"Understood," Marcus says.

Christian nods. "Dismissed."

The agents file out, their footsteps echoing in the narrow hallway. Shane lingers, watching as Laura gathers her notes, as Christian approaches her with a smile that doesn't reach his eyes.

"Laura, can I see you in my office?"

"Of course," she says, her voice perfectly neutral.

She doesn't look at Shane as she walks away.

And Shane—oblivious, hopeful, crush-addled Shane—just watches her go.

He'll learn, eventually.

But not today.

ATILA