by Julie Hall
Tendrils of apprehension attached themselves to my heart.
“Won’t you get in trouble, too?”
“I didn’t say trouble. I said consequences and reactions. Get on the lit pad and I’ll send you down.”
He hadn’t really answered my question, but the surge of adrenaline at being told I could go down to Earth pushed everything else aside.
I double-checked my gear. Everything was in place. Despite the feeling of unease Joe had planted in my heart, he helped me accomplish what I’d been determined to do. So yes, I was ready.
I stepped onto the pad.
“One more chance to change your mind.”
I placed my hands on my hips, resolute despite the consequences. My loved ones needed me. “I’m not changing my mind.”
The sad look flitting across his face tugged at my heart and caused unexpected tears to threaten my eyes. I didn’t even know who this guy was, but he had a way about him that just got to me.
“Then you’ve chosen the hard way to learn this lesson. I’m sorry for that, Audrey.”
Before I could respond, he hit a button and I was hurled through space.
7
Allies and Enemies
I stood in the street in front of my old home and took in the fragrance of my mother’s beloved hyacinths. I knew what they’d look like without even turning to see them—small clusters of blooms creating a bulbous effect at the top of each stalk. Mom planted all different types of flowers, so it always looked like a candy store had sprouted from the ground in front of our house in the spring.
The smell of flowers shouldn’t have been the first thing I noticed when a battle raged on either side of me, but it was, and the moment of disorientation cost me. A sharp tail caught my midsection and sent me sailing into the neighbor’s tree.
I couldn’t breathe.
I hunched over, clutching my sides. There wasn’t any blood, but I straight-up couldn’t breathe. Panicked, I struggled to take in air. Spots formed in my vision. Right before I was sure to pass out, my back was forcefully slapped.
Sweet air, the true elixir of life, entered my lungs. I straightened, then quickly bent over and threw up.
“What are you doing here?” an angry voice asked.
I looked up. Alrik’s brows where low and pinched. His nose was scrunched up in disgust and his free hand was balled into a fist. He practically vibrated with fury.
Whoa!
I was used to the playful and jovial version of Alrik, never this enraged beast of a man. He was covered in blood, his own and demon. The mixture of red and black created a macabre picture. Combined with his harden features, for the first time, he actually scared me.
“I’m here to help,” I managed to squeeze out of my lungs and vomit-coated throat.
He barked out a harsh laugh. “Help? Once the demons realize who you are, they’re going to swarm you, and that, little one, is something I know you aren’t ready for. Magic weapon or not.”
I reached back and brushed my hand over the hilt of my sword, its flicker a silent reminder of what my magic weapon could do. Anger rose in me, responding to his verbal attack.
“I’m not unprotected,” I challenged him, “and those are my family members.” I jutted my chin toward the house. “Those are the people I love most in the world. And I’m here to protect them.”
Alrik shoved me to the ground as another blackened hunk of flesh swung my way. I watched him fight off the creature from the ground while taking stock of the scene playing out around me.
There were about twenty demons engaged with at least double that number of hunters in various spots around my family’s home. They fought in the streets, on our neighbors’ lawns, and even on a couple of rooftops. My internal demon-radar that no one seemed to understand—the smell that wasn’t a smell—flared, but I’d become somewhat calloused to it.
It wasn’t like I needed it to tell me we had our hands full at the moment.
Although demons didn’t fight with traditional weapons like we did, their bodies were made of sharp edges and pointed appendages they used as weapons. It sounded like metal meeting metal when the hunters’ weapons clashed with the impenetrable parts of the demons’ bodies. Only my sword could slice through certain armor-like parts of a demon’s anatomy. The rest of the hunters were left searching for the vulnerable spots to inflict injury or make a kill. Whatever anyone might say, I was needed.
Alrik landed a wounding blow to the demon he fought as I scrambled to my feet. The creature let out a piercing screech before stumbling away from us.
Alrik squinted at me while tracking the fury around us. “You know the rules. This isn’t where you belong.”
Angry tears stung my eyes. “I don’t care. I’m here, I have my sword, and I’m ready to fight.” I slipped my helmet on and reached for my weapon.
“Don’t do this, little Aud,” Alrik warned. “This isn’t the place for you right now, and once those demons see that sword, they’ll be after more than just your blood.”
Tired of listening to him, I shoved past him. No one had the right to say this wasn’t my fight. I pulled the sword from its casing and it ignited immediately. Red and blue flames hungrily licked the blade as if telling me it was ready for battle. I tightened my grip on the hilt. The holy fire’s heat was intense, but it didn’t burn me. The area around me brightened in the early morning light.
It was as if time stopped. The sounds of fighting quieted momentarily as the warriors from each side fixated on me. And then time sped up and snapped back into place. The demons—every single one—charged me.
Alrik yelled before the first monster reached me, then there were only inhuman screeches that ripped viciously at my eardrums.
The first demon was easily twice my size, yet small for its kind. Completely blackened flesh made it hard to distinguish its features. I adjusted the position of my sword to use its light to my advantage. The brightness reflected off the sharp parts of the misshaped body, letting me know where all the demon’s concealed weapons lay.
It swung at me with a hand—if it could really be called a hand, tipped with serrated claw-like fingers. I ducked and shoved my sword up in a quick motion that brought it straight into the creature’s skull.
The demon ripped at its own head before turning into a pile of ash, but before it even fell away, another was there to replace it. The second and third demons went down similarly and in short order, but my arms began to shake. I couldn’t keep this up.
It was the fourth demon that tackled me to the ground. I managed to drive the blade into the creature’s midsection, but as it screamed, crumbled, and ashed around me causing me to choke on demon remains—gross—I knew I was in trouble.
My fellow hunters blades’ sang a gory tune as they hacked their way through the horde to reach me, but it was too late.
Snapping jaws and drooling jowls surrounded me from every angle. The demons were so frantic to reach me that they hindered each other from doing so. That wouldn’t last.
In that moment, I was pulled back to my last demon encounter. I’d been sent to Earth with a large number of other hunters to help protect a school full of teachers and students from a boy who had fallen under the influence of a demon. The boy had brought a gun to school, with the intent to do damage. My part in the battle had ended with me lying beneath the oppressive weight of a beast while its teeth sank into the soft flesh of my shoulder. The physical pain was bad enough, but the mental anguish of being fed on was beyond excruciating.
I’d been warned about it, but I don’t think it’s something you can fully comprehend unless it happens to you. Everything dark, evil, and sinister from the being latched on to you is shoved into your psyche while it simultaneously feels like your soul is being sucked from your body.
The physical scars from a demon feeding were nothing compared to the mental ones. The demons got a high from feasting on a hunter, which was what kept them coming back for more despite the danger. Right now, they were li
ke sharks fighting over chum.
I was the chum.
I pushed through my fear and swung my blazing sword at whatever was closest to me. The real probability of getting bit again triggered my panic button and caused my aim to be wild and frantic.
Why hadn’t I listened to Alrik?
A jaw snapped at my foot and I kicked out. A claw raked across my armor-clad stomach, causing an involuntary scream to leave my lips. I looked down expecting to see a bloody mess, but the armor had protected me from the claw. The look cost me.
A spiked tail hit me in the head, hard enough to knock my helmet loose and rattle my brain. Black spots danced in my vision.
A horn sounded, loud enough to be heard through the demon screeches and hunters’ shouts. The demons mysteriously, or maybe miraculously, backed away, creating a circle around me. Through the black spots and pain in my head I caught glimpses of the hunters trying to penetrate the circle, but the demons would not be moved. Some turned toward the hunters to fight against them, while others remained fixated on me. When one fell, another stood in its place.
I lay there and waited for the ringing to stop and the hallucination of the demons creating a barrier around me to disappear. Even from the ground I kicked and slashed at the creatures probably still trying to eat me alive. Once the fog in my brain cleared, I was convinced I’d be met with the same scene I’d been battling before.
“Put your sword away!” someone yelled from a distance.
Huh?
“I can’t get to you if your sword isn’t sheathed. You’ll burn through us all!”
Double huh?
I blinked at the air above me. Was there actually a red-scaled fairy-tale dragon hovering above me with a really attractive guy on it yelling down at me?
“I can get you away from all this if you’ll just put your sword away and stand up,” he yelled over the sounds of continued battle.
I quickly—too quickly—sprang up and looked around. A wave of dizziness hit and I struggled to stay on my feet. The lower the dragon hovered, the wider the circle of demons became. They hissed and snarled at both the hunters and my would-be rescuer.
The dragon and its rider landed within the circle. The demons kept at bay. The man, or rather boy—he couldn’t be older than twenty—ran toward me. He took my shoulders in his hands none too gently and gave me a rough shake.
“Sheathe it so I can fly you away!”
The other hunters yelled, but I couldn’t make out what they said. Was this guy a friend or foe? He was a human, so he had to be a friend, right?
A crazed look gleamed in his eye as he frantically scanned the circle, checking the demons with his eyes. They still kept their distance, but some of them seemed to creep closer—getting bolder.
“Our appearance alone won’t keep them away for much longer. We’ve got to go.”
“Our?”
“Yeah. Mostly I mean him.” He jerked his chin toward the dragon. “Come on.”
The young man took my elbow and dragged me toward his beast. The dragon reared up on its hind legs when we approached. “See, you have to put that thing away.” He gestured toward my sword. “It makes him nervous.”
I sheathed my sword, extinguishing the flame in an instant, and the young man heaved a relieved sigh.
“Now up you go.”
The dragon flattened its body as close to the ground as possible. The young man pushed me up on its back and then followed, seating himself directly behind me. He reached around and grabbed golden reins on either side of me, the position more intimate than I expected. I scooted forward to put some space between our bodies, but I was thrown back into his hard chest with the first powerful stroke of the dragon’s red-scaled wings. That one flap lifted us off the ground unexpectedly fast.
I looked back in time to catch Alrik’s frantic gestures, but I couldn’t decipher what they meant. I was just glad to be away from the horde and out of reach of their poison-filled jaws.
The demons on the ground closed the circle under us, shrieking at the sky. The ones that could fly gave chase while many of the others were cut down by hunters. Like dark shadows ascending from the earth, leathery wings unfolded as the demons shot into the air behind us. They looked like harmless figurines a child might play with until they started to gain on us and grow in size. With each flap of their wings, I made out more of their grotesque and distorted features.
I gasped, and my rescuer shouted a curt command to the dragon in a language I didn’t recognize. The dragon turned mid-flight, causing me to yelp as I was almost unseated by the sudden move, but the young man’s arms kept me on the beast. As the demons approached, the dragon opened his jaws and spit a flame at them with an earsplitting roar.
The demons dodged the flame without trouble, but they dropped altitude as they did so, appearing to give up. It was a strange thing to watch. Demons weren’t known for retreating out of fear. They usually attacked with single-minded focus despite the danger. What was this thing I rode that it could cause such a reaction? And if it fought for good, why didn’t we have more of them?
I didn’t let myself dwell on the alternative—that this beast didn’t fight for good and wasn’t on my side at all.
The dragon changed its trajectory for our original course. The cage of the man’s arms once again kept me in place. The flapping of the giant wings became more rapid, and the ground beneath sped by so quickly I lost track of my bearings. The more distance we put between us and the demons, the less my internal demon-radar detected.
“Where are we going?” I yelled over my shoulder.
“Someplace safe,” was his answer.
Trying to have a conversation over the rushing of the wind was fruitless, but my anxiety spiked at his answer. I was already having trust issues, and the vagueness of his answer didn’t help.
Only minutes later, he leaned forward to say in my ear, “We’re almost there.”
Even as he said it, we were slowing down. The ground, which was once again discernible, was completely unfamiliar to me. We flew over a rural setting with splotches of small towns scattered here and there. For all I knew, we could be in a different state by now.
Finally, the dragon started his spiraling descent and I closed my eyes tightly from dizziness. I felt, rather than heard, the deep chuckle behind me.
“It takes some getting used to,” the young man said into my ear right before the impact of landing.
I pried my eyes open one at a time and took in our surroundings. Fields of gold stretched for miles around us, broken up only by lone trees sprinkled here and there. “Are we in Kansas or something?”
“Does that mean you’re feeling like Dorothy?” he asked with another chuckle.
“A little right now. Although I wouldn’t consider this thing Toto.”
The dragon snorted, causing its rider to lean forward and bark a command I didn’t understand. Its jarring irises—slit into two equal halves like a serpent—narrowed further and it shot out a flame too close for comfort. I wondered if that was the creature’s way of putting the rider in his place.
A look of unease flitted across the young man’s face before he turned his back on the beast. The look reminded me to stay on guard.
“I’d like to make the first introduction. I’m Morgan.” He bent low at the waist in way of a greeting.
Much like the dragon, I narrowed my eyes at him. I waited a beat before responding, “I’m Audrey.” I stuck out my hand to shake. I might like to dress like a princess now and then, but I wasn’t the curtseying type.
Rather than shake my hand, he bent low to kiss the top before I could stop him. I yanked my hand back in response. One guy who insisted on hand-kissing was quite enough for me.
“Okay, I appreciate the help back there and all, but I’m not really comfortable with that type of physical contact. I have a, ah, a . . .” What was I about to insinuate? “A person who wouldn’t really appreciate your touchy-feely stuff.”
Morgan tilted his head.
“That is extraordinary.”
Well, that was highly offensive. “What, I’m not pretty enough or something to have a, ah, person? Who are you to talk, bud?”
That was a lame comeback. Insulting his looks would get me nowhere. He was beyond gorgeous. And I would bet he knew it. Tousled black hair, chocolate-colored eyes framed in sooty lashes, and chiseled features. So, I insulted his company instead. “Your best friend is a giant lizard. I’ll bet that has all the ladies flocking your way.”
Of course, I wouldn’t be surprised to hear he was drowning in interested women. Giant lizard or not.
He looked confused for a split-second, then some sort of understanding dawned on him. “I wasn’t speaking of your physical beauty, Audrey. I’m sure you well know you are the height of lovely.”
Oh, well, that was better. What was his “extraordinary” comment about then?
“I was speaking rather of your changing hair color.”
Oh . . . that made a little more sense.
“It was black and fiery red when I picked you up, but it seems to be changing to pink as we speak.” There was laugher in his voice his face refused to show. “I believe it’s what would be considered ‘hot pink’ right now, and getting brighter as I speak.”
Well, of course it was pink. I was beyond embarrassed.
“Can I have a moment?” It came out like a question, but I wasn’t really asking. I twirled my finger to indicate he should turn around.
He shrugged and obliged.
I concentrated, and my normal shade of brown returned. “Thanks.”
He turned back. “Ah, and there’s the real you. Even lovelier.”
My gosh, what was up with being dead? Guys never flirted with me like this when I was alive. Maybe we were all just less encumbered by self-consciousness now. But seriously, didn’t he know flattery would get him anything?
No, no, I mean nowhere! Focus, Audrey, focus. You’ve got a possible case of stranger danger standing right in front of you. “So . . . where are we exactly? Is this an extraction point?”
