—Lurv a la Mode
“A delightful collaboration of genres including urban fantasy, suspense, romance and police procedural. Debut author Diana Rowland takes everything that I love in a book and puts it all together to write an outstanding novel. Take a dash of Charmed mixed with some Dexter and you have Mark of the Demon.… A breathtaking, heart-stopping, white-knuckler thriller that grabbed me by the throat and didn’t let go!”
—Enchanted by Books
“Excellent … Diana Rowland has hit a home run, not only with urban fantasy fans, but I believe anyone who reads forensic science/police procedure books will enjoy Mark of the Demon as well.”
—Preternatural Reviews
“An imaginative new entry into paranormal fiction, filled with suspense, demonic lore and a touch of spice, and let’s hope there will be more of the same.”
—The Daily Advertiser (LA)
Also by Diana Rowland
MARK OF THE DEMON
To Mom,
for supporting the arts
Acknowledgments
My name might be the only one on the cover, but there’s no way this book would have happened if not for a number of other people.
Therefore, heartfelt thanks go to:
Natasha Poe, Amanda Kleist, and the rest of the St. Tammany Coroner’s Forensic Science Center, for their valiant attempts to help me understand the science behind DNA testing. Any DNA-related errors in this book are completely mine.
Dr. Michael DeFatta, for answering even more forensic pathology questions.
Dr. Peter Galvan, Judge Don Fendlason, Tara Zeller, and District Attorney Walter Reed and his staff, for answering numerous questions concerning campaign financing, public corruption, civil forfeiture, and other legal issues that made my head hurt.
Nicole Peeler, for being a kick-ass critique partner.
My fantastic agent, Matt Bialer, and his awesome and cool assistant, Lindsay Ribar, for everything.
Jamie S. Warren and Juliana Kolesova, for creating such incredibly wonderful covers for my books. I am a lucky, lucky author!
David Pomerico, for continuing to answer my many stupid questions.
My fabulous and gifted editor, Anne Groell, for helping me make this book far better than it was when I first sent it to her.
My sister, Sherry Rowland, for being my biggest non-nerd fan.
And finally, extra special thanks (and hugs and kisses!) to my husband and daughter for being so incredibly patient and supportive this past year. We’re going to Disney World this year. I promise!
THE DEMON WAS LITTLE MORE THAN A MIST OF FOG and teeth, barely visible to normal sight. It coiled in slow undulations in the backseat of my Taurus as I drove through the night, the tires of the car humming on the asphalt in low rhythmic counterpoint to the movement of the demon. The nearly full moon draped my surroundings in silver and shadow, making even this deserted highway running through a rank swamp look beautiful. There were no other headlights along this stretch of road, but this was little surprise since there were no houses or businesses out here—nothing but swamp, marsh, and the occasional patch of dry ground that pretended to be woods.
I could hear the demon murmuring softly to itself in hunger, and I stilled it with a nudge of pressure on the arcane bindings. It would feed soon enough, but I needed it to complete the agreed-upon task first. I’d dealt with this type of demon many times before and knew that the creatures were far less useful after a feed—preferring to coil in sated comfort rather than hunt.
I continued to drive until I felt the change in the demon—a sudden tension as if it had perked up its nonexistent ears. I pulled over to the side of the highway, then walked around to the other side of the car and opened the back door. It felt a bit absurd to cart a demon around in the backseat of my car, but I couldn’t exactly perform a summoning out in the middle of the swamp. I was limited to summoning demons in the prepared diagram in my basement.
Murmuring again, the demon slid out in eager anticipation of a hunt. The demon was an ilius—a third-level demon, about as intelligent as a dog but a thousand times better at tracking. It was little more than a shifting fog, visible in my othersight as a coil of smoke with teeth that flashed and disappeared like a teeming mass of vaporous piranhas. Without othersight—a sense beyond the senses that revealed more than the mundane world most people were able to see—it was essentially invisible, except for the deep feeling of unease it left in those it touched.