“Andy,” Zen growled as he ran to my side, “take her.” He scooped Petal up and laid her over my shoulder. “She won’t make it much longer. You must go—do you have the Demonheart?”
“Yes—”
A huge stone careened into Zen’s back, knocking him past me and pinning him to the ground. Xandros stalked toward us, literal fire burning in his eyes. “You’re not going anywhere!” he yelled as he approached, while Zen struggled to stand. I wondered if Petal would survive long enough for us to kill the demon headed toward us, or if we were all doomed to die in that demonic wasteland.
Zen’s eyes turned to the heart of my father burning in my palm; then he whispered quiet words that ripped me from my morbid ruminations. “Oleander Nightshade,” he said, forcing himself to his feet, “I release you from our bond.” Terror ripped through me as the consequences of breaking the bond raced through my mind. But I didn’t die. “I was wrong, Andy. You don’t need me...I understand that now. Go…help Petal. I’ll hold him off as long as I can.” Panic gripped me as I realized what he was doing. “And know that, no matter what you think of me, I never wanted to hurt you…”
Zen’s hand wrapped around my leg, and that sensation of falling rippled through me again.
“No, you bastard! I’m not done with you yet!”
He looked at me, sadness permeating the depths of his demon eyes. “I’m afraid you have to be.”
As Xandros launched himself across the divide at Zen, the demon who’d just released me from our bond sent me through whatever invisible portal he’d called. Fear flooded my senses as I fell backward through the darkness, scrambling to reach him, until I landed on the floor of the Lilies’ lair with Petal in my arms, screaming Zen’s name.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Before I could move, Ivy whisked Petal from my arms and rushed her over to the chaise behind me. Hazel hauled me to my feet and dragged me over to where Willow crouched next to her dear, dying friend, hands splayed across her wounds. Once again, the flow of blood reversed, but so much had already been spilled.
“She needs more!” Willow hissed in a voice not entirely her own. “She’s lost too much blood!”
“Here!” Hazel shouted, ripping up her sleeve as she fell to her knees next to Petal’s limp body. “I’m a universal donor…take mine.”
Though her strange words didn’t make sense, Willow wasted no time. She drew a blade across the earth witch’s skin and squeezed the wound, forcing the blood to pour more freely. I watched in awe and horror as the fingers on Willow’s other hand wiggled above the wound, calling forth the bright red liquid in a mesmerizing pattern. It bobbed and weaved as her hands drew the blood to her, floating through the air like a ribbon in the wind. Sweat dampening her brow as she concentrated, Willow funneled Hazel’s offering into the gaping wound of our youngest sister, pushing it into her veins with exacting precision. One mistake and that which could save her would end her life.
The rest of us watched with bated breath.
Murmured spells filled the impaling silence, and with every passing word, Petal’s skin flushed, her shallow breaths strengthened, and her eyelids began to flutter.
“Petal,” I whispered, taking her hand in mine gently. “Petal, I’m so sorry—this is all my fault. Please…please come back to us.”
“Tell me what happened,” Ivy said as she stared me down from behind the chaise. “Now. And don’t you dare leave anything out. Your omissions nearly got her killed—”
“I know—and I’m so sorry,” I replied with tears in my eyes. “I should have trusted you, but I—” My words cut short as I choked back a sob. “I was too blinded by vengeance to realize what my secret could cost us.”
Her anger bled to disappointment, then pity. “We are family, Oleander…there is nothing you cannot tell us.”
Before I could even attempt a response, Petal blinked a few times, drawing our collective attention. Then her eyes flew open, and she gasped for air as she shot up on the chaise, panic twisting her delicate features. “Oleander,” she said between greedy breaths, “you must listen to me—”
“Rest now, Petal,” Ivy said, shushing the poor girl as she pushed her back down, careful not to strain the wounds still healing on her abdomen.
“No!” Petal argued, shoving Ivy’s hands away. Struggling against the pain to rise, she finally stood before me, eyes full of figurative fire. “You must go after him.”
“You’re safe now, Petal,” I said, hugging her tightly. “That’s all that matters—”
“No, you don’t understand—” She shook her head and brushed off the others as they fussed over her. “You can stop Xandros.” Everyone in the room went still except for Petal, who grabbed my face in her hands and held it with a force that surprised me. “I saw what’s in Zen’s mind, Oleander. Your bond to him allowed me to, and I needed to know the truth before I died—”
“What did you see?” Fear crept up my spine, though I tried hard to force it down.
“He did mislead you, but not for the reasons you imagine. And his feelings were real. He does care for you, Oleander, and that’s why he sent you back here—why he sacrificed himself to save us both.”
I tried to push the image of Zen disappearing from sight as Xandros attacked from my mind and failed. Petal’s imminent death had proven distraction enough when we’d arrived, but with her standing before me, telling me the innermost thoughts of that very demon, there was no more escaping the reality: Zen sending us back had been an act of atonement. Because while what Xandros had said was true, what Zen had said was equally so.
He did care for me.
The Demonheart burned in my hand as I thought of Zen perishing on my behalf.
“While Xandros held me hostage, I probed Zen’s mind. I watched as he realized that he’d been wrong about how to stop Xandros.”
“But how?” Ivy asked.
Petal’s gaze drifted to the heart of my father clutched in my hand. “With that.”
A demon—that was what the grimoire had said. Clearly, I had not been enough on my own, but with the essence of the former king—my father—in my possession, perhaps I would be.
“I have to go back,” I shouted, pacing the room like a caged animal.
“After what he did to you—”
“I would have died without Zen,” I said to Ivy. “And he may have lied, but so did I. Would you sentence me to death for that same sin?”
Her silence was answer enough.
“I don’t want to be insensitive, but what if he’s already gone?” Hazel asked, her voice so quiet I barely heard her over my pounding heartbeat.
My pacing stopped. “If he were dead, Xandros would have already returned for me. I need to find a way back before that happens.”
“Zen has gone against the demon before,” Petal said, her confidence an attempt to inspire my own, “but you already know this, Oleander. You just don’t remember.”
“What are you saying?”
“Your dream,” Ivy said, drawing my attention. “The hole in your memory…”
Death’s icy finger scraped across the back of my neck as Petal nodded at her. “Our call for you that night might have drawn you to us, but we alone were not responsible for your return.” Her fierce eyes cut back to me and held me in place as my knees threatened to buckle. “Your demon helped.”
I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to remember, but found nothing but the gaping hole in my memory there to greet me.
“Sweet baby Jesus,” Hazel gasped before she grabbed me and spun me around to look at her. “You need to go after him, Oleander—I mean Andy—I like that a lot more, actually.” She ran to the bookshelf and rifled through a book until she found what she’d been looking for. “Here,” she said, pointing to a spell in Latin, “this is a reversal spell. Maybe if we use this to reverse our summoning chant, we can somehow send you back—”
“Wait!” I said, an idea striking me so hard that I nearly fell backward. His name. He’d said he�
�d always come if I called his name. “Zenophrotesian Nexus! Zenophrotesian Nexus!” I screamed it over and over again until my voice grew hoarse.
But he never appeared, and fear that I couldn’t bear permeated every fiber of my being. “He’s dead,” I whispered, my body numb, my voice hollow. “I’m too late…”
“He isn’t. And you’re not.” A familiar male voice cut through the somber room like a blade through flesh, and I wheeled around to find Grisholm standing just inside the door—the one I hadn’t even heard open. “But that does not mean you have time to lose.”
As always, our enigmatic and mysterious benefactor seemed to know something I didn’t. “He said he’d come when I called him using his full name,” I argued, my fear and frustration boiling over to anger, ”but he didn’t.”
“Because you’ve called him before, I imagine.” The set of his brow dared me to challenge his assessment. “You get to play that card one time only, Oleander.”
“How do you—”
“We can discuss my knowledge of demonic names and their power, or we can figure out how to right this mess you’ve made.” With bold strides, he stormed toward me, his long wool coat fanning out behind him. “Do you still have the Demonheart?” he asked as he loomed above me, his aura of magic pressing down upon me. The object in question flared to life in my palm, and I held it out to him. His eyes went wide at the sight. “Good. Then all is not lost. But we must hurry—”
“Grisholm?” Ivy called, confusion in her tone. “Did you know?”
The empty look he gave her seemed to say everything and nothing at all. “Oleander, clutch the Demonheart to your chest and call the demon again. Think of him. See him. He is your connection to that realm and your only way back.” He dared a look at the others in the room. “We will help channel that energy until it works.”
“And if it doesn’t?” I asked.
His dour expression fell further. “Then the one who claimed your soul will return for the Demonheart soon enough…and you won’t be able to stop him. You must go back.”
Ivy reached over and squeezed my hand tightly before she stepped back and held her arms out at her sides. Hazel stepped to her right and took one hand; Petal took the other. Willow filled in behind me and completed the circle, closing me in.
“Send her home,” Grisholm said as he stared me down from outside the circle. “It will be up to her to make sure she returns—”
“She will return,” Ivy said, voice full of a fire all her own. “She is one of us—a witch. We are her family. And this is her home.”
Without pause, the Lilies began chanting ‘home’, their voices low and steady at first, but with every passing heartbeat, the intensity grew. The Demonheart burned as I pressed it to my chest, and smoke billowed around me as I thought of Zen. Fire rose within me, and before I realized it, that fire surrounded me in the center of the circle.
“Zenophrotesian Nexus,” I murmured under my breath as the flames grew high around me and the floor beneath me seemed to falter.
“Louder!” Grisholm shouted at us, and our voices swelled in response. “Louder!”
I screamed Zen’s name, using the desperation I felt to fuel my words, until my voice cracked, the fire consumed me, and the wails of my sisters faded away in a ripple of darkness. I fell through the nothingness into another realm—my realm.
Because I was a half-blooded demon princess.
And I wouldn’t let Xandros take another person I loved from me.
I stormed across ground carved by lava-filled rivers as far as the eye could see toward the demons in the distance, still fighting to the death. There were no caves or craggy outcroppings, nothing to hide my approach; just flat black rock, molten rivers, and Xandros looming over Zen with an obsidian blade as long as I was tall, poised to drive it through the fallen demon. The Demonheart blazed like the sun in my hand as I screamed Zen’s name.
His head lolled to face me, his black eyes staring at me. Warning me.
Saying goodbye.
“Looks like you’re just in time,” Xandros boomed. Before I could even move, he drove that blade through Zen’s gut, impaling him. Zen’s body jerked with the blow, lurching upward, then collapsing back to the ground. Viscous black liquid pooled beneath him at an alarming rate.
A hideous, desperate sound fueled by rage and grief escaped me, a war cry that rent the air as thunder shook, lightning struck, and a spike of something dark and evil surged up my arm, screaming through my veins like a tormented soul being released. Immobilized by the rush of furious power, I crashed to my knees, my limbs failing me as they had the day after I’d spilled my potion on the floor. I wondered for a fleeting moment if I was dying—if somehow Zen and I were still bound and his death would mean my own.
I looked down to see an inky substance as black as Zen’s blood swirling beneath my skin as a feeling of wrongness grew and grew until it warred within me, slowly tearing me apart. And all the while, Xandros watched in delight.
The Demonheart—and the throne—would soon be his.
I opened my hand to look at his coveted prize. “You are the essence of my father—you drew me to you,” I whispered. “Help me defeat him. Let my final act be to defeat the one who betrayed you, too.”
The Demonheart blazed white and seared my palm, but I held on as it burned as hot as the sun itself, then turned to ash. The remains of my father’s heart—his power—slowly burrowed beneath my flesh and joined the swirling black that my being had initially rejected but now embraced, as though it had belonged there all along. The pain abated and my strength returned, as did my resolve. I stood to face my enemy as the embers of my father’s dark power coursed through me.
“Xandros!” I roared, my voice not fully my own. The beast that had always lurked in the shadows of my mind had been freed. “This ends now.”
He stepped away from Zen, blade raised against me as he closed the distance between us with massive strides. “This ends when you give me what you stole!” he yelled in reply, drawing his weapon back to strike.
Feet rooted in place, I reached down into the coal-black stone beneath me and called forth the magic buried deep within. Fire the shade of blood shot up around me like flaming spires, and the currents of molten flame flowing past my feet rose up to take the shape of a demon—one that awaited my command.
“Kill him,” I whispered to it, my voice quiet but threatening. Obeying my command, the lava golem melted back into the river, its head floating atop it as it drifted toward the demon.
“You should be dying,” he growled, his irritation plain, “just as your precious Zen is.”
“He severed our bond before he rudely sent me back to my world—an act he and I will be discussing at length once you’re dead.” With a flick of my wrist, the flowing river shot up, forming a wave of lava about to crash down upon him just as he swung his blade. I ducked underneath the blow and rolled past him, the tip of his weapon scraping over my magically-imbued coat as though it were made of steel.
He turned to strike again, but before he could, the lava golem wrapped its arms around him and ripped him from the ground. I sprinted to Zen, whose body stirred on the ground at my feet. A quick assessment told me just how little time he had. Thick black blood streamed from his demon face and torso, including the gut wound that should have ended him, and yet somehow, he still lived. I knew it wasn’t my power keeping him alive.
I could not help but wonder what was.
“Zen,” I called, shaking him lightly. “Zen, it’s me."
“Andy my dear…” he said, his deep, demon voice so weak it shocked me. “Did Petal—”
“She’s alive—and she told me everything. And I would love to discuss that with you at length, but right now, I need you to tell me how to stop—”
Another howl from Xandros drew my attention. The golem that had been holding him was no longer there; Xandros had somehow shrugged out of its grip and was racing toward us. I shot to my feet above Zen and instinctively con
jured a fire shield in an attempt to keep Xandros back—one I used all the time on Earth. He crashed through it as though it were nothing and knocked me away from Zen. I hit the ground hard and scraped across the rock as I slid toward another river of lava.
Anger— at both Xandros and myself—drove me to my feet, and with another flick of my wrist, I called the golem back. It caught Xandros’ arm just before he could finish Zen off with his blade. With him held in place, I pulled from the well of power beneath me once again and called for more and more golems to come. The energy it took to do so was draining, but I held fast as they surrounded Xandros, securing him in place in a ring of fire as I struggled to stand and direct the creatures.
“Give me the Demonheart!” Xandros bellowed as he pried two golems off of him. But they had left their mark, his thick hide melted away in parts, dark blood seeping from the wounds. He managed a step toward us as the remaining golems held fast, chipping away at his strength. But it wasn’t just his that wavered, and I buckled under the magical strain.
As I crashed to my knees, something caught me around the waist, stopping me before I hit the ground. Zen pulled me back against him and whispered in my ear. “Whatever happens, Andy, do not stop until he’s dead…”
He began chanting in his demonic tongue, as he had in the Lilies’ lair, as I held Xandros steady with the golems. Those words soon flowed from my mouth as well, my tongue wrapping around them as though they weren’t foreign at all. Xandros’ fiery eyes went wide with fear as he realized what was happening. With no Petal to hide behind, his fate was sealed. His power visibly weakened and waned with every passing second, until he collapsed to his knees under the weight of the spell and the golems.
“He will find a way to betray you,” Xandros yelled, seething with anger at his imminent death. His rage fueled my own, and I stepped away from Zen. I wanted to watch the life leave Xandros’ eyes; I wished I could pull it out with my bare hands, as he had mine. But seeing him perish would suffice, as would the knowledge that he would never hurt another as he’d hurt me.
A Curse of Nightshade (Witches of the Gilded Lilies Book 1) Page 25
