by Lan Chan
Without saying a word, Max and I started out for the portal field. The cauldron sloshed water on my hands. I didn’t need much of it, but I didn’t want to lose too much either. There was evidence of demon rampage on either side as we passed the kitchen garden. As the antithesis of nature, demons had a low tolerance for plants. The fig trees that stood outside the kitchen garden had had their canopies sheared right off.
I didn’t try to suppress the bubbling rage in me at the sight. Anger helped to keep the horror at bay. All of that horror came slamming back when we reached the edge of the portal field and saw why the demons were no longer swarming the rest of the Academy.
The portal was gone. It had served its purpose. The demon had transgressed into the Earth dimension and now had physical bodies. Evidence of its existence presented itself in the enormous ring of scorched earth where the portal had been. Beside the desecrated ground, our professors were being marched in front of a line of what I could only describe as Nephilim executioners. Jacqueline was at the head of the procession.
Until now, Max’s composure had been rock solid. A low rumble ignited in his chest.
“Max,” I hissed. But then I caught the line of his sight and saw a sandy-haired head in the middle of the procession. I dug my nails into Max’s forearm so hard it drew blood. He didn’t turn to me but his golden eyes glanced to the side.
“Nephilim,” I said. “I need one of them. Don’t care which one.”
There was no time to get closer. Max broke into a full-pelted run, changing in mid-air. I dropped to my knees and fished a packet of salt out of my pocket. Max’s gravelly roar tore into the revered silence. The low demons answered his call. I had seconds to draw the circle around me.
The circle in my mind solidified first. Then I sprinkled a thick circle of salt to signify the physical barrier. I placed candles all around and lit them using magic. For twenty full seconds, no demons noticed me in the corner by the grevillea bushes. My luck ran out soon enough as I heard the baying draw closer. I set the cauldron on the ground wishing like hell I had Charming with me. Using my magic to light the fire would dig into my reserves.
The fire lit the base of the cauldron at the same time the first demon slammed into the barrier of the circle. The world rippled around me but the candlelight held strong. Seconds later, a lion’s paw struck the demon aside. Max sailed over the top of me. In his shifted form, his ability to leap was tremendous.
I dragged my attention away from him to concentrate on the task in front of me. Inside the dorms I’d talked a big game about making the elixir. Now that I was here, the thought unnerved me. I knew the ingredients by heart. That wasn’t the issue. Sixteen years of beaten-down spirit was the problem. As was the end game for me.
Sixteen years of being told not to reveal the true nature of my power in case it made me a target. I heard laughter in my head. It wrapped my heart in ice.
Soon, the demon said. Come to me willingly and I might not bleed the lion dry.
My head snapped up to where at least six popobawa were crawling on Max. They tried to get at him from all angles. He allowed them to get close enough to make contact and then rolled. They didn’t have enough time to dislodge before he rolled over them, his body weight fatally crushing. When he got to his feet, Max turned to face me. He opened his mouth and roared. Startled from my icy stupor, I tossed salt into the boiling water.
“Come at me,” I spoke to nobody but knew full well the demon could hear me. “There’s murder in my blood.”
As I said the words, I sliced my pointer finger with a paring knife I’d picked up in my room. I winced as the first drop of blood coloured the water pink. The second and third drops deepened the brew.
I closed my eyes and thought of each of the ingredients of the Elixir of Life: Unicorn’s tears, the wind from a snow-capped mountain, the laugher of a newborn baby, ambergris from a rainbow whale, the first yawn after a good night’s sleep. One by one I imagined everything I knew of the potion. I directed my thoughts into the brew then stirred it with a wooden spoon made of hawthorn wood. Grammy had bought me the spoon on my fourteenth birthday. The tree was from Seraphina.
A thump by my right had my eyes peeling open. My jaw dropped. The world around me had turned into a canvas of popobawa bodies. They scratched and kicked at the circle, trying to stop me from completing the spell. Overhead, three winged shadows glided. I had a feeling they would have swooped had it not been for Max who was gouging his way through the pile of popobawa. Every now and then, Max would leap up in an attempt to catch hold of one of the Nephilim. I didn’t dare entertain the thought of what would happen if Max went down.
I lowered my eyes back to the potion in front of me before my mind could settle on the deep crimson gash along his right side.
I stared into the liquid to find the potion was no longer pink. Instead, it sparkled like a pearl. Smiling, I brushed my hand over the steam and repeated the ingredients once more. I had all but the last two. One of them I had to rely on Max to retrieve. He was doing a good job of crushing popobawa in his wake but getting close to the Nephilim was going to be an issue.
Let’s see if I can get a sample of that blood you offered, the demon cooed in my head. Around me, the popobawa scratched and bit the air in a frenzy. The circle sputtered. Even with the salt reinforcement, it wasn’t going to hold much longer.
The earth beneath me vibrated with the stampede of demon feet. Interspersed with that was the heavy thump Max made each time he brought his paws down. Over in the far side of the field, a light flashed. It was followed by the unmistakable tearing sound of another portal opening. The demon was calling for reinforcements.
Max swiped his paw at a cluster of popobawa to my left. A slash of blood dripped down his left brow. It soaked into his mane making it difficult for him to see. Sweat clung to his pelt. He would fight until his body gave out. Meanwhile, I was sitting in this damned circle like some kind of caged pet.
I shuddered when a foot broached the circle and connected with my hip bone. The breach started a cascade. Holes opened up all over the circle. Max roared again in such terrible fury it made the popobawa still for a millisecond. In that moment, Curtis swooped.
The popobawa scattered as the Nephilim came hurtling down towards me. Max’s hind legs lowered. He sprang just as Curtis attempted to cleave a chunk of my face off. Nephilim and shifters were equally strong, but Max had the weight advantage. Curtis also wasn’t in control of his own body. The demon was like a baby, trying to get used to its physical confines. That made it slow and gave Max the opportunity to sink his teeth into Curtis’s side.
A single bite from a lion shifter could tear a body in two. In his rage, Max could have done that easily. Any shifter in this situation could be forgiven for going a step too far. But the gene that marked him as an alpha stopped him from snapping Curtis in half. Max’s head latched onto the Nephilim’s side for a long second.
He did something no lion wanted to ever do and let go of his prey. Max bounded back to me and spat Nephilim blood into the cauldron. I looked up into golden eyes bleeding into red. Any more of this and he was going to go rogue. It hadn’t occurred to me that the demon would try to take over his mind.
My hand reached out to stroke his mane at the same time a shadow passed too close to us. Frost brushed the outside of the circle in my thoughts. I was leaping before I knew what was happening. There was no way I could push Max aside. Instead, I was real stupid and threw my body between his and the angel blade that was heading straight for his heart.
Pain erupted under my ribs. Max roared in such agony I thought I’d failed to protect him. Bran’s familiar copper eyes crinkled at me. He pushed the sword deeper as Max shifted and slammed his human fist into the side of Bran’s head. I fell to my knees beside the cauldron. Last ingredient: A life sacrificed in honour.
19
An angel blade wasn’t supposed to be able to hurt a human. It had been created solely to vanquish demons. But like most weapons f
rom the angel realm, it all had to do with the intent of the bearer. Blood gurgled over my lips. The burning pain dulled as my body went into shock.
Max roared out of human vocal chords. He clutched at my body and lowered me to the ground. “No,” I sputtered. “Help me up.”
Everything around me blurred into a prism of grey. I wasn’t able to move past a kneeling position and that was only because Max was propping me up. “Sophie,” he said. “Don’t.”
But I was already stirring the elixir. It hurt like hell to move, but I wasn’t going to stop. Not when I had so little time left. The demon inside Marshall’s body circled around us.
So long, Sophie Mwansa.
The potion popped as it came to fruition. Blinding light burst from the cauldron. I grinned. My lips were slick with blood. The metallic smell made me want to hurl. Pink blanketed my palms as I drew the liquid from the cauldron and encircled it in magic. Max gripped my side, balancing the sword in my ribs so it wouldn’t do any further damage.
“See you in hell!” I snarled.
I turned the liquid into a fireball and launched it with all my might. The ball went wide as the demon Nephilim flew to avoid it. At the same time, Max picked up Curtis’s blade and whipped it into the air. As the demon tried to avoid it, I redirected the fireball at it. It struck the demon right in the chest. Through the force of my ebbing will, I made the liquid crawl into the demon’s nose and mouth.
Marshall screamed. My heart spasmed. Max’s hand gripped me tight as I tried to mentally separate Marshall’s voice from the demon that was actually in pain. Further and further I pushed the essence of the elixir. The demon clutched at Marshall’s face in pain. I could feel it trying to throw fear and uncertainty at me. I brushed it off. I had met my quota of pain. Death would be coming for me soon. Fear was a thing of the past. I fused the essence of the demon into the elixir. Everywhere it touched, the elixir purged the demon from Marshall’s mind.
My breath caught when I met with a barrier. When I brushed up against it, Marshall opened his eyes. They were a deep, brown instead of red. Purple light blazed from his blade. Whipping the hilt around, Marshall impaled himself with the blade. A roar like the sound of a train inside a tunnel filled my ears. A thousand anguished screams followed it until there was a crescendo of grief. The demon gushed out of Marshall’s mouth to form a dense cloud of black and red. It hung suspended for a second, encased in the pearly essence of the elixir. Caged, the demon had no place to go. A portal opened right beside it. The mouth of the portal sucked the demon back in. I heard footsteps running and Professor Mortimer’s voice, but it sounded so far away.
My legs buckled. “Sophie!” Max screamed.
I looked up into his face. “Thank you.”
My eyes closed and the darkness took me.
I knew nothing for an age but pain. Death was supposed to be silent, wasn’t it? This wasn’t silent at all. I heard raised voices, the snap of metal, a woman weeping and then a lion roaring. A soft green glow lit up my closed eyelids. The hurt in my side flared for a second before warmth blanketed me. The pain eased considerably.
I must have made a sound because somebody’s cool, scaly hand pressed down on my forehead. And then, finally, blessed silence.
20
Somebody’s weave tickled my arm. My eyelids scraped open to find Mama snoring in the chair beside my bed. Her head was rested where she was holding my hand.
“Dad,” I croaked. “She’s cutting off my circulation.”
My dad leaped up from the couch across the room. “Sophie!”
Mama snapped upright like a soldier. “Oh Gaia!” she wailed. “You gave us such a scare. Don’t you ever do anything like that again. Do you know how worried we were?” She burst into tears. Dad wrapped his arms around her and held her.
I pleaded with him with tired eyes. “Maybe you should get some sleep, Nora.” Mama tried to wrestle with him.
“I’m okay, Mama.”
“You bet your butt you’re okay,” she said. “And I’m not going anywhere.”
Somebody cleared their throat. Doctor Thorne was standing at the crack of the opened door. It was only then I noticed I was in the Academy infirmary. Any notions of being dead were dispelled. No way would I have come back to the Academy if I died.
“Mrs Mwansa,” Doctor Thorne said. “The headmistress would like to speak to you.”
Mama’s back went stiff. “There are a few things I’d like to say to her too!”
Despite what she’d said earlier, my mother marched off to give someone else grief. Dad looked at me for permission. “Go,” I said. “Don’t let her get me expelled.”
He gave me a shaky grin and squeezed my hand. Doctor Thorne slid inside when they were gone. I thought he might check up on me but the first thing he did was use the mirror. Jacqueline’s face appeared.
“My apologies, Jacqueline,” he said. “I may have told a little fib just now. The Mwansas are coming to see you. They are under the impression that you wish to discuss something with them.”
Jacqueline sighed. Behind her in her office, I could see Professors McKenna and Mortimer sitting there. “Message received,” she said. “Oh and Sophie? I’ll need to speak to you when you’re ready.”
The message disconnected. Doctor Thorne huffed. “It might be a while until you’re ready,” he said absently. Then he made me drink something I was sure would burn my insides. I gagged.
When he was done torturing me, Doctor Thorne inspected my side. Where the angel blade had been stuck inside me, my skin was now a smooth, dark brown again. “How?”
“Malachi.”
“Oh. I thought he was away.”
“Max ordered him back. There was quite a lot of roaring and commotion.”
A stone lodged in my throat at the thought of Max. “How is he?”
Doctor Thorne waved a hand. “Oh, you know how these shifters are. Always snapping and snarling like they don’t need any help. He was in here for two hours and then he stormed out.”
“So back to normal again,” I said. Doctor Thorne smiled. If I wasn’t used to the animation of his reptilian features, I probably would have been freaked out.“What about the rest of the Academy?”
“Everyone has been treated. The wood nymphs even gave up some of their precious Arcana fruit to help with the efforts. There’s a lot of memory loss. Most of the younger kids still think they’ve been asleep this whole time. Jacqueline has decided it would be best if there was no mention of them being used to help bring a demon into the dimension.”
So effectively, I had almost died to save the school and only a handful of people knew about it. I was back to square one again. Figures.
My eyes grew heavy. When I slept, it was dreamless and voiceless. I woke up feeling completely refreshed. That feeling lasted for an hour while one of the goblins assisted me to shower. I came back into the room to find Jacqueline and Professor Mortimer waiting for me. My parents were beside them. Mama’s expression told me all I needed to know about the situation.
“The Council want to see me, don’t they?” The whole time I’d been awake, I’d had my fingers crossed that the deputy headmaster wouldn’t remember that I had my great-grandfather’s diary. Stupid vampire. Why couldn’t he have lost his memory like everyone else?
“This is ridiculous!” Mama snapped. “If it wasn’t for Sophie, the whole school would be demon chowder.”
“I understand how you feel,” Jacqueline said. “But Dmitri has invoked their jurisdiction, and protocol has to be followed.”
I thought I heard my dad mutter something about a stake through the heart, but Professor Mortimer was trying to get my attention. “Kitchen transmutation,” he said. I tried to make my features as neutral as possible. “Interesting. We’ll have to discuss it sometime soon.”
I didn’t think it was all that interesting. It sucked as an offensive magic. I could do small spells like the one with the wolfsbane, but nobody had the time to brew an entire potion in the middle o
f a fight. I wouldn’t always have Max to protect me.
“I don’t see why this can’t wait until Sophie is stronger,” Doctor Thorne said.
Jacqueline smiled in a very shifter way. “I believe the answer to that question is fear.” She signalled for one of the Nephilim guards standing by to teleport us. I had a second to be apprehensive before we landed in a room that looked very much like the human courtrooms.
A dozen or so faces stared at me from a long, raised bench. Our group stood in front of a double set of pews. The floor was dark grey cement with traces of brimstone clinging to it.
Brimstone was the supernatural equivalent to sulphur. It was used both as a base and a cleanser. I tried not to imagine the kind of magic that would be required inside the Council chambers.
At the centre of the raised bench was a wizened vampire woman with steel-grey hair. They were all there. The representatives from the Fae, shifters, each of the seraphim bloodlines, the para-humans and the mages. There was an empty chair at the edge of the bench. I’d learned all the names of the Council members from my first year at the Academy. Right now, I was struggling to remember any of them.
“Sophie Mwansa,” the vampire said. I nodded. “Do you know why you’ve been summoned?” I nodded again. “She can talk, can’t she?”
“Yes,” Mama hissed. “But she’s been through a lot so I’ll thank you to tone it back, Victoria.”
There was a collective rumble of dissent. My mama crossed her arms over her chest. Yeah, she liked to think she and Grammy were complete opposites, but at times like this, I couldn’t tell them apart. I wrapped my arm around her waist. She hugged me back.
To her credit, Victoria’s pruned lips puckered but she didn’t give me more grief. Instead, she produced great-grandfather’s diary from below the bench. She lifted it high enough so that everyone in the room could see it.
