by A. Catherine
Her nose crinkled in frustration…and it was adorable.
“You say I’m swinging back and forth, but you are too. Who are you really, Kale? The Heir Inferno, or something more? Make up your mind and then be that.”
I was frozen. Heather finished her rant, and we just stared at each other.
If only she knew how badly I needed to hear someone say what was going through my thoughts each and every day.
And how she did exactly that.
I remained calm, my instincts telling me to slide on that cold-indifferent mask that I wore in hell. But I fought against it.
I was deep in the consciousness of a Nephilim who had just unknowingly laid me bare. A Nephilim whose mind was being attacked by an unknown threat who still hadn’t shown themselves. Now wasn’t the time for me to completely shut her down.
This conversation could continue later.
“As fun as this conversation is, Heather. We’ll have to take a raincheck on it.” I broke contact to look at the gazebo ahead of it. I nodded towards it. “Ever seen that before? In your dreams?” I asked.
She looked at it and tilted her head to the side. “No. I haven’t.”
“What about in real-life?” I asked.
She smirked. “I thought this was real life,” she teased, poking at my earlier statement.
I held back my chuckle. “Focus, human.”
“I’m half-human,” she corrected with a teasing smile.
I snorted, “Right, so what should I call you then?”
She shrugged. “My name would suffice.”
I shook my head. “Nope, I use nicknames.”
“I know, you call Gabriel ‘feathers’ and ‘featherbrain’ all the time.”
We began walking towards the gazebo once more.
“Don’t forget ‘Lancelot’, ‘Buzzard’ and…let’s just say I have infinite names for that arch-asshole.”
Heather surveyed the dead field, some fear returning to her eyes.
“Why do you tease him so much?” she asked, using the casual conversation to distract her from our situation.
“One of these days I’ll tell you all about my first encounters with Gabriel. Then you’ll understand why he’s my favorite plaything,” I replied.
With no more than twenty feet between us and the gazebo, the ground shook. More than just the rumbling that we had been feeling pretty consistently—this time the ground quaked, throwing off our balance slightly.
Heather and I both jutted out our arms to steady ourselves. When the shaking stopped, we both felt it. Our sixth sense telling us that we weren’t alone anymore, and that if we turned around, we would see whatever was causing her catatonic state.
I didn’t turn at first, I kept my eyes on the gazebo.
“Heather, here’s what’s going to happen,” I said low. Quiet enough that only she could hear. “Without looking back, you’re going to run for the gazebo and get as low as you can. Wait there until I tell you otherwise, okay?”
In my peripheral vision I saw Heather nod slightly—taking in a slow deep breath.
Inside her consciousness I didn’t have weapons, and my power wasn’t at full strength. So, I would have to rely on my training and only use my limited power when absolutely necessary. I bent my knees to ground myself and took in a long deep breath.
“Go.”
She bolted and I spun around.
A black shadow, built into a figure stood almost three feet taller than me. The shadows seeped and spread out from the bottom of the figure, whipping around like tentacles. The motion reminded me of the Nuckelavee’s tail.
It was like the shadow read my mind each one of those tentacles’ edges hardened into a sharp barb, rearing up to strike with the speed of a deadly viper.
Ah. Charming. I thought to myself and then quickly lunged to the side when one lashed towards me.
THIRTY-SIX
Heather
“CAN’T YOU JUST ZAP IT or fry it with your powers?” I called out.
Crouching low in the gazebo, I watched Kale dodge each whip of the shadow’s barbed tentacles. What the hell was this thing anyway? And what was it doing in my fucking head?
Kale made a sound that resembled a struggled huff as he lunged away again.
“I’ll remind you that we are in your head! Not the real world,” he responded back.
“You did it the first time!”
He grunted when he had to roll to evade a sharp blow. He crouched no more than ten feet away from the gazebo. The thing was gradually pushing him closer to it and to me.
“Would you like to try?” he teased.
I should just shut up so he could focus. But talking to him was keeping me from trying to help. If I did, I would be a distraction and a burden. Not actually helpful. Staying back was my only option at this point.
When a black tentacle jutted out and hit the gazebo there was a loud smack and then the wood broke, splinters falling to the ground next to me. I yelped reactively and moved away from where it hit.
Kale flung out his hand and a small ball of lightning shot towards it. The tentacle twitched and then retreated.
Kale was panting.
“If I knew what the hell it was, I could fight it better. But it’s too fast for me to anticipate its moves.” He ducked when another shot aimed for his head.
“Can it actually hurt you?” I asked.
He retreated back a step when it came closer. “In theory, no. But even the mind can be damaged. I have no idea what it’s capable of.” He gasped as he barely evaded another shot.
It shot out four of its tentacles this time, two straight for him and the other two slammed into the gazebo again. Breaking one of the columns holding up the frame. I ducked away from the falling wood. Kale grunted as he blocked one and caught the other against his forearm.
Despite its shadowy appearance, its tails were apparently solid. And strong, given that Kale’s muscles were bulging and pushing against the strain it took to hold the sharpened barb away from his face.
A sizzling sound hit my ears before the smell did. Then I saw it, a red and orange glow covered Kale’s arms. They burned through the flesh of the tentacle until the barb fell off it onto the ground with a thud. Kale breathed and backed away, the glow disappearing from his arms.
The fallen tentacle shriveled back and then as it raised again nearer to its wielder, the shadows and liquid formed a sharpened edge once again.
“So much for that,” Kale muttered more to himself.
So his Inferno abilities didn’t do much against a creature that could morph and change at will.
Instead of lunging for Kale again, the shadow creature pulled all of its sharpened tentacles back—standing more than ten feet tall—staring at us.
For a moment it was quiet, unmoving. I didn’t take my eyes off it, and neither did Kale.
“What’s it doing now?” I asked.
Kale was a few steps away from the gazebo, amongst the broken shards of wood that had fallen around its entrance. “I don’t know.”
The son of Lucifer was watching every move and detail of the thing while it was still. His stance balanced, low to the ground, ready to lunge if he needed to.
I sat up further from where I was crouched on my knees. Gripping the railing for support as I got fully onto my feet. As I stared at it, trying to find details in the shadows, a face maybe. I could feel its attention directly on me, and even without a face I still felt like I was looking directly into its eyes.
A minute passed or ten—I couldn’t tell anymore. Eventually the shadow began to move again. Not quickly like before, instead its liquid limbs slowly widened, the airy form spreading outwards until it was wider than the gazebo, and then it began curving inwards.
To completely surround the gazebo.
Kale kept his eyes on it as he closed the distance between us and joined me in the center of the white gazebo.
He gripped my wrist and placed me behind him as the shadows surrounded the front entr
ance and slowly was oozing around the edges.
“The only way we’re getting out of your consciousness is if we can put this thing to sleep or kill it. But I honestly have no idea how,” he whispered to me.
“I feel like I’ve seen this before.”
“In your dreams?” he asked.
I nodded. “That may not be helpful. But if I’ve seen it before…”
“Then it may have been in here all along,” Kale finished my sentence. “And if it changes form like you said, then maybe everything Gabriel and I have seen in your nightmares were all the same thing.”
“I thought you got rid of the first one you encountered,” I said.
I still remembered that day. An all-white room and then a shape that was only barely dark enough to see. The feeling of it when it touched me, the cold mist. And then the reddened, eclipsed landscape that took over when a dark figure with red eyes sent bolts of shocking lightning at it until it disintegrated into nothing.
That dream felt like a lifetime ago. And what I thought had been destroyed that day may very well be what was currently cocooning us in a dome of smoke and shadow.
I swallowed as what little light was already here began to sputter as the shadows and mist closed around us. It wasn’t touching us, more like circling, consuming the gazebo in a globe of shadow.
“Maybe all I did then was put it to sleep. Maybe the wards in the Library woke it up again,” Kale hypothesized.
“I’d really like this thing to be out of my head,” I sighed.
Kale didn’t say anything to that. What could he say? They weren’t sure what it was, so there was no way of knowing if it could be expelled from my consciousness.
“But if that’s not possible, do you think you could put it back to sleep?”
“I could try,” Kale stated.
He tilted his head around to get a full view of what now covered the gazebo in a churning dome.
“The other day I killed an Eriking, that primordial is a purple mist that sucks the air from your body as a means to kill you,” Kale started to explain.
“What a pleasant story, so comforting right now,” I replied.
Kale tightened his grip on my wrist as a way to tell me to listen.
“The only way to kill it was to surround it in my own smoke and cut off its air as well. What gave it life was also its weakness,” he continued. “What this thing is doing right now is looking a lot like what I did to the Eriking.”
I gave a half-hearted laugh. “So what you’re saying is, this thing is about to suffocate us?”
My already jittering nerves and fear were growing in my chest. Suffocation was an awful way to die.
“We’re still in your head, remember? Our bodies shouldn’t be in danger. But that doesn’t mean it can’t convince us that we’re suffocating. We can’t let it make us believe that what is happening in here is also happening in the real world,” Kale amended.
“How do you suggest we do that? This feels very real to me.” I asked, eyeing the swirling shadows that I now noticed also had ribbons of silver, red, and gold in it.
It had gotten so dark that if those shadows weren’t moving, I wouldn’t see anything.
As if reading my thoughts, Kale’s skin began to glow with the same dim orange color of hot coals underneath a campfire.
“I thought your powers were limited here?”
“Are you complaining?” he demanded.
“No,” I said quickly. “I was just wondering if you’re wasting it by giving us light instead of using it against the shadow monster.”
Kale chuckled lightly. “All I’m doing is lessening some of the power I use to reign it in. So actually, I’m conserving energy this way.”
“Reign it in? You make it sound like you could lose control of it at any time.”
“There’s a lot to my power that is difficult to understand.”
I nodded slightly. “Someday you’ll have to explain it to me.”
“Someday if you’re lucky. Just not now.”
Kale still held my wrist, and the temperature of it was distinctly hotter. Nearing on the edge of painful, but I didn’t resist against it. The heat was an anchor for me to stay sane in the moment, even if it made my hand clammy. Even my back was sweating with our backs against each other.
He didn’t seem to notice, still watchfully observing every motion of the shadows—looking anywhere for a potential weakness or threat.
“It’s really taking its time with killing us,” he said.
“Do you have to say it like that?” I begged.
His shoulders shrugged upwards. “Sorry. I’m not a fan of sugar-coating things.”
It was quiet between us for a moment. And, as I watched the shadows relentlessly circle us in our dome-like tomb, I tried to think about other things to keep the terror and helplessness at bay.
“Talk about something, distract me, or I’m going to start freaking out,” I stated.
“I thought my presence was distraction enough,” he replied, I could hear the flirty smirk in his voice.
“You and Seere…what’s the history there?” I asked suddenly.
I felt his back stiffen and then he laughed. The sound was strange in contrast to our current predicament.
“By your tone I’m guessing you mean are Seere and I a couple?”
I didn’t reply, just waited patiently for his answer.
He chuckled once more. “When we first met, I had an interest, but I’m not Seere’s type.”
“I thought demons were all very open.”
Kale huffed, “We are. Doesn’t mean we can’t have preferences. I would think by now you would have seen Seere’s preference,” he said suggestively.
I have. She flirted with Iaoel unabashedly, and Iaoel usually indulged her with equal treatment.
“What is it like to grow up in hell?”
“Exactly as you would imagine, well—actually much worse, but I’m sure your imagination can come up with an answer to that one.”
“Seere’s scars—”
“Now really isn’t the time to talk about that, honey-eyes,” Kale interrupted. The heat of his skin increased slightly.
I took a deep breath, beads of sweat rolled down my face from my forehead. With the shadow closing us off from the outside air, Kale’s heat was making it unbearable.
The shadows around us slowed their circling—drawing my attention. Was this a sign that our end was getting closer?
We both stilled when the shadows started hardening into a solid wall. Soon everywhere around us no longer churned and swirled, instead we were entombed in dark stone.
For a moment all we heard was the sound of our breathing. Then a small tapping started. It was as quiet as a raindrop, then it slowly increased in pace and quantity.
And it was above us.
Both mine and Kale’s head slowly raised to look up towards the ceiling. Something was hitting the top of the gazebo.
Light taps at first, slowly getting stronger. Soon chips of paint and wood crumbled and dropped with each tap, and then the wood splintered and bent inwards against the force.
I gulped. “Kale…”
Kale gripped my arms and shoved me backwards just as a large black glass shard punched through the wood straight down towards our heads. It was so fast it jutted two feet into the floor of the gazebo, barely missing us.
My hands caught the railing behind me, steadying me as I gasped for air from the force of Kale’s shove. The shard was between us now, its material looked like crystal more than glass the more I looked at it.
Kale wasn’t looking at it though, he was looking up at the ceiling where the taps continued.
“Move!” he yelled as more shards crashed through the weakened wood down onto us.
I raised my hands over my head to protect myself and dodged side to side to avoid a direct hit.
It was a miracle that none of the shards hit me, but I knew that luck wasn’t going to last forever. The taps and pounding cha
nged direction, no longer above us but around us. Kale noticed the change as well, looking around to try to pinpoint the loudest taps to anticipate the first shards.
“To your right,” he said.
