Demon Bound: The Camelot Archive - Book One

by R Taylor, Nicole

  “Look at you,” I said, trying to remember the last time I’d seen him. “You’ve gone and grown up.”

  “Physically,” he said with a grin. “Mentally?” He pulled a face. “The jury’s still out on that one.”

  “How’s Kayla?” I quipped, raising an eyebrow. Kayla was the Natural who he’d had the hots for throughout our time at the Academy. Along with being the most popular girl in the place, she was also the school bully who’d made my life a living hell. I’d tried to kill her when I was a mutant demon, which was an annoying recurring theme.

  “Get with the times, Mads,” he proclaimed. “Kayla and I broke up a year ago.”

  I tilted my head to the side. “Still a sore point?”

  “It didn’t work long-term. Shite happens. But I wanna know where you’ve been. You never write or call.”

  “People drift apart after school,” I told him.

  “Humans say those kinds of things. We’re different. War can’t tear us apart, Mads.”

  I shrugged. “Sorry. I’ve never been good with people skills. I don’t think my life is that interesting.”

  “Mads. We were born to be interesting.”

  I pointed my fork at him, secretly glad he was here. After everything that’d happened at the Academy, the senior class and I had all become fast friends, but lost touch after graduation. “You know I don’t like it when you call me Mads.”

  Another tray clattered down next to mine and I looked up to find another familiar face from my tumultuous school days.

  “Crikey,” Maisy declared, sitting down, “if it isn’t Madeleine Greenbriar, come to grace us with her presence.”

  “What kind of word is crikey?” I asked, screwing up my face.

  “I learned it from the Australians,” she replied. “It’s occa for OMG.”

  Trent snorted and leaned back in his chair. “Does it comfort you knowing some things never change, Mads?”

  Maisy had always been on the outer edges of the mean girl trio that ruled the Academy. Kayla was the queen and Maisy and Trisha had been her little worker bees. She’d been part of the bullying, but apologised and make amends after the attack. We’d come together when it’d mattered the most, so I supposed it was progress.

  I narrowed my eyes at Trent. Talking about personal growth—his smart mouth hadn’t progressed with the stubble on his chin. “What’s Kayla doing now?”

  “We don’t talk about her,” Maisy whispered.

  “She knows about the breakup,” Trent said, raising his voice. “No need to whisper. I’m over her.”

  Maisy snorted and rolled her eyes, signalling she thought he wasn’t. Trent always talked a big game.

  I didn’t care to know all the sordid details, so I turned the conversation around. “What about Trisha, then?”

  “She finally got her posting in New York,” Maisy said.

  “She went to America?” I asked. “Why?”

  “After her sister, Alicia, was killed in the Dark Night attacks, she wanted to see where she’d made her life,” Maisy explained. “Alicia was head of some special task force. Pretty covert work, apparently.”

  The Dark Night. It had a dramatic flair to it, but it fit the devastation those few hours, five years ago, had caused. In the weeks before the rift had closed, the demon-hybrid Mordred had led a coordinated attack on Sanctums all over the world. In the aftermath—after we’d won the war—the truth of the devastation had finally been revealed and it was worse than we’d known. New York, Los Angeles, Sydney, Rome, Paris, Cape Town, Lima, Tokyo, and London had fallen. It was the worst loss the Naturals had faced since the cataclysm. Still, the balance had tipped so far into the Light that the Dark barely had any holes left to hide in.

  “Ever heard of the mole people?” Trent asked.

  I frowned. “Mole people?”

  He nodded. “There’s an urban legend amongst the humans about people who live in the underground transit network underneath Manhattan—the subway as they call it there. Demons congregate in piss and shite, but the New York Sanctum believed there was more to the mole people than just myth.”

  “They were mapping the tunnels hidden by Darkness when the Sanctum fell,” Maisy said. “They thought something was buried underneath the city, but never got the chance to find out.”

  “Isn’t this supposed to be covert?” I asked.

  “Not anymore. Word got out in the chaos. It’s public knowledge these days.”

  “So…” Trent leaned his elbows on the table and gave me a fierce look, “why are you here? London get boring or something?”

  I lowered my gaze. “I, uh—”

  “She got into trouble again,” Maisy told him.

  “How do you know?” I demanded.

  She laughed and shook her head. “She’s forgotten how the rumour mill works.”

  I glanced over my shoulder at the surrounding tables. A few heads turned away and a few more wore glares designed especially for me.

  “I haven’t forgotten,” I murmured. “I’m not afforded that luxury.”

  Trent frowned and followed my gaze.

  “They don’t like me being here,” I told him.

  “Screw them,” he declared. “They don’t know you, Madeleine. We do, and it’s their loss.”

  I sighed and speared a potato with my fork. It was far too soggy to be considered roasted and split down the middle.

  “You get that reaction a lot, don’t you?” Maisy asked.

  “Let’s just say, I understand how Wilder felt all those years ago.”

  “He was able to overcome it,” Trent told me.

  Maisy kicked him underneath the table. “Yeah, by becoming Excalibur.”

  “Great.” I rolled my eyes. “All I have to do is save the world from eternal war and I’ll be elevated to normal status. Good to know.”

  “Don’t worry about them, Madeleine,” Maisy said. “Just follow your training and no one can hold anything against you.”

  Easier said than done.

  “Are both of you on security?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” Maisy replied. “I don’t know what people have told you, but it’s not so bad.”

  That surprised me. “I thought it would be dead up here. Pardon the pun.”

  “Now and then we get a lone demon who will lurk around the wall,” Trent told me. “It was their home away from home for a few centuries, so they live in hope, I guess.”

  “Animal instinct,” Maisy said.

  “All the lesser demons are dead,” I reminded her. “You don’t think the ones who are left aren’t at least a little intelligent?”

  “Define intelligent,” Trent replied with a smirk. “Camelot is crawling with Naturals, yet they still try.”

  “Desperate hope,” Maisy said, looking out the clear side of the tent. The tip of the tallest tower of Camelot’s inner bailey was just visible in the fading sunlight.

  “Maybe they left something behind,” Trent mused.

  The undiscovered dangers of Camelot. It reminded me of a trashed council flat after the tenants had moved out and left their rubbish behind. There was no telling what the Dark had discarded in the city. Perhaps it was a dirtier job than I’d first realised.

  “You can hardly blame them for trying to get back in,” Maisy added. “I know I would.”

  Sympathising with a demon. I guess that was one thing that made us different from the Dark—our ability to empathise.

  “Yeah,” I said, ignoring the simmering hostility around me, “maybe you’re right.”

  4

  The night was clear. Stars shone across the sky and the moon illuminated the rolling hills with an eerie silver hue.

  I stood on a hill to the northeast of Camelot, the darkness wrapping around me like a blanket. I’d always preferred dark places—they seemed private in such a busy world. Open spaces unsettled me, as if the breadth of the sky would swallow me whole.

  Patrolling wasn’t so bad. Missions were rigorous and structured, whereas wal
king the streets was more fluid. Anything could happen. Out here though, it was lonely and drab. I wasn’t sure I was cut out for the country lifestyle.

  I’d been paired with Trent, which was both a blessing and a curse. The blessing was that he was familiar. The curse was that he wouldn’t let me get the slip on him. It’d been five years since we’d graduated, but he remembered all my tricks.

  Still, I had to make this work.

  Our path had taken us farther away from Camelot than I imagined it would have. There wasn’t much chance of a wayward hiker stumbling across the ruined castle—the wards and cloaking took care of that—but Thompson wanted us to head off any demon who came prowling. It was a sound plan considering most of the personnel on the dig weren’t trained warriors.

  I looked out over the valley, the lights of the camp hidden behind the crumbling walls. Blinking, I was able to tune out my awareness of the energy hiding the city—one minute it was there, the next it was gone.

  “You should see it in the day time,” Trent said, standing next to me. “From this angle, you can almost see the chasm in the centre of the castle.”

  “Has anyone been there?”

  “Just an exploratory team a few years ago. No one else has been down there since Scarlett and Wilder sealed the rift.”

  I grunted and cast my gaze elsewhere. It was quiet. I was used to the constant noise and movement of London, so the absence of everything but nature was a little jarring.

  “You’re so angry at the world,” Trent said. “Isn’t it exhausting?”

  “You’d think blind hatred is exhausting, but it seems to be a bottomless well of rechargeable energy. If only humans could use it to run their dirty power plants, then they wouldn’t debate the existence of global warming and rising sea levels.”

  “You’re so intense,” he stated. “You exhaust me sometimes.”

  “No,” I said, continuing along the trail, “it’s not exhausting. It’s all I’ve known.”

  He followed me, his boots crunching on loose stone. “That’s a lie. After the attack on the Academy—”

  I spun around. “A fleeting glimpse of something better is not enough to change someone’s life.”

  Trent shook his head, the moonlight glinting off the arondight blade at his waist. “I’m not going to convince you, am I?”

  I knew what I had to do—I had to make peace with the things I’d done in my past, no matter who was to blame for them—I just wasn’t sure how to get there.

  “No one can hold my hand through this,” I told him. “I have to find my own way.”

  He didn’t reply. Instead, we looked out over the valley towards the lights of the human village of Ludlow. They shimmered in the distance, unaware of what was hidden mere miles from their cozy cottages.

  “What’s it like at the London Sanctum?” Trent asked.

  “Frustrating.”

  “I don’t believe you. Being stationed in London wouldn’t be anything close to that.”

  I’d loved to tell him it’d lived up to all my expectations, but things had changed in recent years. If anyone had bothered to ask me, I would have told them that I thought we relied too much on Arondight and Excalibur. That we were making the same mistakes Arthur and Lancelot had. That we’d dropped our guard when we should’ve kept it up.

  The reemergence of a mutated demon-hybrid was proof of that, but for some bizarre reason, I kept that nugget of information to myself.

  I blinked, an image of the man flashing in my mind’s eye. His form melting into the shadows at Adrenaline, the strobe lights masking his appearance. The silver flash of his eyes as I stood before him on that rooftop.

  “Madeleine?”

  I bit my lip and cleared my head. “Don’t you feel like we’ve become complacent?”

  “No. We can relax a little after centuries of fighting. How is that complacent?”

  “The rift is closed but demons still lurk in the world.”

  “Yeah, everyone knows that.”

  “There’s always one last gasp.” I didn’t think he understood what I was getting at. The last gasp was when violence grew as the enemy desperately tried to hang onto any scrap of power it could. “Now is not the time to drop our guard.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Take a beat, Madeline.”

  “They’re evolving, Trent,” I snapped. “You don’t think that poses a threat?”

  He blew a frustrated breath through his lips. “You’re so intense.”

  “And you’re too…” I waved my hands at him, trying to think of a word, “mellow. Babysitting history nerds has made you sloppy.”

  “And your arrogance has blinded you to the fact that someone has been watching us for the past five minutes, so who’s the moron now?”

  I froze, my anger melting away. “Why didn’t you say so?”

  “You should’ve known so.”

  Five shadows oozed from behind the rocks and slunk across the hillside, moving quickly. They bore down on our position and we were forced to draw our arondight blades. Time to stand our ground.

  As they approached, I realised they weren’t just any demons. At least not the ones I’d been expecting.

  They weren’t Infernals possessing the bodies of humans, or the rotting carcasses of lesser creatures. They were actual demons—creatures that’d crawled their way out of the rift over eight hundred years ago, powerful enough to haul their bodies with them.

  Their long arms and legs were tipped with clawed hands and feet that shimmered with Darkness. They’d evolved to appear humanoid, though their size had diminished since their arrival on Earth. Cut off from their master—the One—their power had waned, but they’d learned how to adapt.

  I was entirely sure these things would be able to walk through a shopping mall in broad daylight and look just like everyone else, but to our Natural eyes, they were revealed for what they truly were. Monsters.

  “Did you say something about evolving?” Trent asked, his hand closing around his arondight blade.

  “I’m not so sure about that,” I replied. “They look like they’re the scum-sucking evictees of Camelot.”

  “Well?” Trent asked the demons. “Are you?”

  “Somehow, I don’t think they’re into chatting,” I drawled.

  At the sound of my voice, all five heads turned towards me. Freaky.

  Trent eyed me, flashing me a subtle signal. I spun my arondight blade hand over hand and together, we struck.

  My sword collided with razor-sharp claws, sending sparks of Light across the hillside. Metal dragged along the length before sliding clear. I’d barely finished my stroke before I was forced to twist and block a blow at my back.

  I pirouetted, sent a blast of Light to the side, then kicked at the demon lunging at my front. I was vaguely aware of Trent’s sword sparking as he clashed with a demon father down the trail. Somehow, we’d become separated, the demons worming their way between us until our strength was split in half. Shite on it.

  It wasn’t an easy fight. The demons I’d fought in the city were slow and sluggish or were Infernals who could be pried from the bodies of their hosts. These creatures were stronger, faster, and Darkness seeped into their bones. Their blows struck hard, jarring up my arms, and I barely had enough Light to dodge their menacing claws.

  I cried out as I was backhanded, my head snapping to the side. I slipped on the loose gravel of the trail, almost pitching over the edge and down the ravine.

  Anchoring my heel, I arced my blade towards the closest demon. It wailed as the metal imbedded in its side, the gash spewing black blood and white-hot sparks. The creature’s head lolled back, opening its grotesque mouth, then lowered its dark gaze to mine.

  I tried to wrench my sword free, but it was stuck in the demon’s side. It cackled, wrapping its hands around the blade as two more looked on in devilish amusement as their brother tore itself free and pushed the sword—and me—backwards.

  My foot slipped, then I was falling.

  Tr
ent’s panicked cry echoed somewhere above me. “Madeline!”

  I rolled down the side of the hill, powerless to stop. My Light was just out of reach, my fear blocking the path. I’d have to wait until I hit the bottom—wherever that was. Rocks pummelled my body, the sting of cuts blooming everywhere.

  The night spun around me as I attempted to control my momentum, but by this stage, I was in total free fall.

  As the ground levelled out, I began to slow before I tumbled to a complete stop at the base of the hill. The impact had pushed all the air from my lungs, and I gasped, my chest burning.

  I reached for my Light and a pulse ebbed through my body, dulling the pain. Standing, I realised I wasn’t alone. Three demons had followed my chaotic fall and began to circle my position, surrounding me.

  “She knows it,” one rasped through its thin lips.

  I turned as the demon behind me spoke. “We will take it.”

  My grip tightened around my arondight blade. “Take what?”

  The third demon lifted its heavy arm and sent a pulse of Darkness towards me. There was nothing I could do to stop the wave from hitting me, and when it did, everything changed.

  The unfamiliar spark I’d felt when I landed, flared. It wasn’t the soothing smoothness of Light I was used to. It had a sharp tang that left my skin feeling electrified.

  When I’d been mutated by Human Convergence, I’d always blacked out when the Dark side of my condition came out. Apart from a few fleeting flashes, I never remembered what I’d been doing. If my Light had turned Dark, I had no idea what it looked or felt like.

  Whatever this spark was, it wasn’t anything I’d encountered before. It was dark, intoxicating…demonic.

  Let’s just say I was starting to get why humans dabbled with dark magic. The addiction levels were high.

  I stumbled and my boot caught on the loose rock underfoot. I fell, landing on my arse. My arondight blade slipped from my fingers and clattered across the rocky ground, the blade disappearing into the hilt. I lunged after it, barely avoiding the claws aimed at my chest, and cursed as it fell into a crack in the rock.