Sleeping with Monsters (Playing with Monsters Book 2)

by Amelia Hutchins

  Lena’s memories?

  A scene unfolded in front of me. Joshua and Lena playing on the porch; running from each other as great-grandma sewed an old, worn pair of coveralls for great-grandpa. I placed my hands on my head and I turned around in a circle, searching for myself. Why was I seeing it through Lena’s eyes?

  “Kendra?” Kat startled me, placing a hand on my shoulder as she turned back to look at Dexter. “Let’s get inside,” she offered, moving up the stairs. I noted both were armed with razor sharp athames. As Dexter pushed the door open, I walked past them.

  “Hey, we need to check it first,” Dexter cried out.

  I ignored him and glared at the couch, which was empty. My eyes swept the kitchen and found a vision of Lucian in nothing but a towel as he leaned against the kitchen entryway. I swallowed, feeling the heat that pulsed through me at the sight of him. I gazed at the ghostly figure, a memory of Lucian who made himself at home in the little cottage, unabashed to only be dressed in nothing more than a cheap towel, which hugged his hips.

  I shook my head firmly, trying to dispel the image or memory.

  “Are you okay?” Kat murmured, observing me intently as I slowly brought my eyes to meet hers before I answered on a hiss of breath.

  “I’m fine, everything is fine,” I growled angrily.

  I moved into the bedroom, looking at the bed as I made my way to the section of the room I needed. I pulled the bed out and scooted around it, pulled the floorboards up, and set them aside. I reached in and pulled out a few books and the photo albums, and paused as I reached deeper. Beneath the albums were pages upon pages of notes scribbled. I stared at them, knowing them as if I’d written them myself. I withdrew them from the hiding place and set them on the bed. I flipped through the pages, endless scribbles written in the early morning hours that had once been hidden with the sun’s rising rays. I swallowed as pain tore through my head. Memories flashed inside my head and I swallowed the cry that threatened to rip from my lips.

  A cat jumped onto the bed and I paused, observing it as it pushed its head into my chest, demanding I pay attention to it.

  Luna?

  I closed my eyes and swallowed down the fear that pulsed through me. Someone had played with my mind, but they hadn’t made me forget anything. They’d erased me and overwritten me like I was some sort of computer. Anger vibrated through me as I spun around to face Kat.

  She’d been studying me from the doorway, as if she had been expecting this. Tears slid from my eyes as memories flooded back into my mind and were held up to the light of day like treasure. My hands trembled as I tried to work my mouth, but nothing came out as Kat waited and observed me on the edge of a nervous breakdown.

  “Welcome back, Lena,” she said softly. “It’s about fucking time.”

  “You knew?” I demanded.

  “We’ve known for a little while now, but the mind is a tricky thing. You can’t force someone to remember something unless they are ready for it. You know who you are, but the rest…it comes back over time. Mine took a little longer than the others, but you, you took your sweet ass time coming back to us.”

  “Who did this to us?” I asked, watching her as she shrugged.

  “That part remains blank to the entire coven. There hasn’t been any way to identify what happened, not magic or otherwise. Just faceless creatures, but we think Cassidy and Helen had something to do with it, because my memories have those two locking us inside the abbey.”

  “What happened at the abbey?” I started putting the floorboards back into place.

  “You have to remember what happened, we can’t tell you. If we do, it could fracture your mind. Like I said, the brain is tricky.” She scrunched her nose up and leaned against the doorframe. “It will come to you, though hopefully not all at once, because Laura had hers all return at once and she’s…different now.”

  I placed the books, albums, and papers on the bed and began stacking them so I could carry everything easier. “Different how?”

  “She’s straight fucked up. She screams all day and all night. She doesn’t stop, not even when her voice is gone. She sounds like a banshee wailing for the dead coming. Hell, with the gates open, maybe she was trying to warn us of what was happening.”

  “We need to go,” Dexter interrupted as he appeared next to Kat and noted the tears that trailed over my cheeks. “It’s going to be all right, Kendra.”

  “She knows who she is.” Kat patted his shoulder. “Who she really is,” she elaborated.

  “Jesus, took you long enough, girl. Thought I was going to have to start dropping hints everywhere to get you to come out of it.” He hesitated.

  “Who else knows?” I scooped up the stack of books and papers and handed them to Kat, who looked relieved when I took her athame.

  “Pretty much everyone,” he murmured. Dexter glanced around nervously and motioned me towards them. “But really, we got to get the fuck out of here. I heard chants coming from the woods. We don’t have long before the demons are here.”

  “Demons chant?”

  “I guess they do when they are calling for our blood,” he muttered as he moved with us towards the front door. Once there, we ran to the main house, and Dexter threw open the front door. As I moved into the room and found droplets of blood spattering the floor, walls, and furniture, I slowed, and my gaze rose to the stairs.

  “Cover my ass,” I whispered as we moved as one up the stairway. Once we reached the top of the landing, I sniffed the air, smelling the putrid sulfur and the copper tang of blood in the air. There was no noise; nothing. It was eerily silent; my feet made no sound as I approached the first room, peering in. Empty.

  The scent grew stronger at the next door. I peeked into the room, and saw my mother on the floor, crawling towards the door as a tall, emaciated creature with white eyes twirled a dagger in one hand. I looked around the room, noting the others who had been with my mother looked lifeless. The creature looked evil and held a form close to a human, and yet something slithered just over the surface of its skin, shimmering thick black lines of evil that told me he was anything but human. I stepped from the doorway into the room, knowing my mother wouldn’t be able to fight it off, not alone.

  His eyes rose, as if he was assessing how tasty of a meal I might be. Saliva dripped from his lips as he watched me saunter in. “Pretty,” he hissed.

  “Kendra, run,” my mother whimpered.

  “I’m not the running type.” I pulled power to me, sucking it from the air and pulling from the ground as I tapped the nearest leyline. I felt it in my bones, raw, electrical current that threatened to consume me. “Where’s your friends?” I could feel the lightness of the power as it pulsed in my words.

  “They’ll be here soon enough,” he growled, unaware that I’d pulled enough power into my body to light up the entire state of Washington.

  “Pity, they’ll be too late,” I pouted. I brought my hands up to direct the power and let it loose, watching as his eyes widened with the amount of power I shot at him. His body jerked, exploded, and I winced and threw my body over my mother’s as the entire house trembled around us. “I got you.” I winced at the pain that raced through my body and the scratchiness in my throat. When I looked up, there was nothing left of the creature other than black ashes where he once stood.

  We stood up on shaky legs. I hugged my mother’s slight frame tighter as she trembled against me. I’d let loose too much power at once and was in no better shape than she was. I let her hold me for a moment longer before I pulled away.

  “Kendra,” she cried. “You should have run away, you could have been hurt!”

  “I’m not Kendra, Mom. I’m Lena. I’m Magdalena Fitzgerald.” I allowed my name to slip off the tip of my tongue for the first time in a long time, and it felt good.

  “We have to go now.” Her
voice was weak as I supported her until she could get her bearings and stand on her own.

  “Help me with her,” I said, needing to get the others up. Once Dexter had accepted the slight weight of my mother and freed me from keeping her upright, Kat and I made our way to the two still figures lying on the floor. I knelt down, checking for a pulse. “She’s gone,” I murmured as I closed her eyes. I glanced at Kat, who sadly nodded her confirmation that my mother’s other friend was dead as well. I grabbed a blanket from the bed and placed it on the floor, intending to use it as a shroud for their bodies.

  “Lena, no, they’ll awake soon,” she said softly, terror coloring her features. “There were three demons here; two are missing. I think they’re inside Meg and Sheila; I don’t think it’s a good idea to bring them with us.”

  “When we get back to the abbey, we need to look up how to ward ourselves from these things.” Mentally, I had already started flipping through the grimoires, trying to locate what I needed. “I think there are some wards we can use like tattoos that prevent them from getting inside of us, so this sort of shit doesn’t happen,” I muttered. “Let’s go before they wake up.”

  Chapter 18

  Several days later, I found myself sitting in the corner of the great hall of the abbey with my knees against my chest. This room was the gathering center of the coven. Meals and celebrations had taken place here over the years, and now it was our sanctuary.

  I frowned at how quickly the memories were coming back. I had kept most of my memories from being with Lucian, retained from when I’d thought I was my sister. I also had memories from before, which seemed to flow and ebb as they entered my mind. I’d been unable to put all of the memories into a linear direction for the first few days, and then, as time passed, my dreams mixed with what I now knew had been real.

  I was a fucking mess of anger and hurt that I wasn’t able to process. I rested my head on my knees as I watched the young ones mop the floors with holy water as the older kids replaced the salt in the windowsills.

  That was how my grandmother found me when she was finally allowed out of the council chamber with the rest of the coven elders. She sat beside me and patted my leg as she sighed.

  “You’re angry because we didn’t tell you,” she murmured thoughtfully as she rested her hand on mine.

  “I’m angry because I should have known. All of the clues were there, and I ignored them. I really thought I was going insane a few times, when in reality, it was someone fucking with my memories,” I sighed and angled my head so I could see her better. “Grandmother, we’re not strong enough to fight those demons alone.”

  “No, and the Guilds which stood against those who would harm humans can’t help us right now.” She nodded her head in solemn agreement. “But he will fight for you. You’re strong as well.” She patted my hand. “You’re my granddaughter. I know whatever is blocking you is painful, but you’re stronger than you think. Our line has a long history of fighters. You, my sweet Lena, you hold power inside of you, great power. You had him, you can get him again.”

  “Lucian won’t help us now.” I grimaced and focused on my chipped nails. “He thinks I’ve undone some great curse that was cast on him, or cast one on him, who knows what he thinks. He hates me right now.”

  “You cannot remove a curse unless you cast it to begin with,” she said firmly. “Only the witch who cast the curse can remove it; unless you somehow triggered the loophole to his curse, you had nothing to do with it. Every curse has a way to be undone; it’s just a matter of finding and using it.”

  “You think he will believe me? He said some pretty terrible things and acted like he hated me.”

  She smiled knowingly. “I think he hates Kendra. He never seemed to care for her before, and you’re not Kendra anymore. You’re Magdalena Fitzgerald.”

  “You sent me into Hell to get Kendra and didn’t even bother telling me it was her I was saving,” I accused, hating that she’d been the one to give the order. “You didn’t trust me, or you would have confided in me more than you did. Instead, you left me in the dark even after we’d returned. Imagine my surprise when Tiffany’s disguise dropped and I found out she was really my twin sister.

  That was about as surprising and fun as getting hit upside the head with a baseball bat. You also sent me into Hell, which sucked. Did you even know where you were sending me, or were you just willing to sacrifice me for a chance to get her back?” I snapped angrily, hurt that they’d sent me to Lucifer, which could have gone down very differently if Spyder hadn’t been with me. If he hadn’t been there, I could have easily traded places with Kendra.

  “We had to be sure you were on our side. Much has happened since Lucian Blackstone arrived, and he is an unknown to us. However, you are one of us, Magdalena. You always have been; even when you left us you still felt us, just as we felt you. We felt that she was in trouble, but we assumed, as we were meant to believe, that it was you who had been taken. As we planned to retrieve her, things started coming back, and the attack on the abbey surfaced in some of our memories. You were the strongest witch we had when it was attacked, so you were the ideal one to go and get her. She summoned us through the leylines; magical ties don’t end when you leave one world for another. You having a connection to her also made you the perfect one to find her. You couldn’t be fooled by magic, not when the bond you girls share is so much deeper than any magic this world holds. We could only discover the general area of where she was being held, but you, you found her and in much less time than we had hoped for. But no, we didn’t know where we were sending you into, only that her life was hanging in the balance. You freed her, and right now, it’s all that matters. With how many perished in the attack, every witch is needed if we intend to survive this.”

  “Grandmother, the bond hasn’t been the same between Kendra and I since the attack happened.” I gave her a few moments for it to sink in, and when her face crumpled with the magnitude of what could have happened because of their misplaced faith, I knew I had made my point. “Will we run?” I sighed as I leaned my head back against the wall.

  “There is nowhere to run to this time.” She craned her neck, glancing around the hall, and nodded to Alan, who was a little older than I was and had just been awakened with the last group of witches. He grabbed a remote and turned on the big-screen TV.

  All of the channels seemed to only be showing the news. He stopped on one channel, where a reporter was giving a detailed accounting of the unexplained cases of the dead coming back to life inside the morgues, as if a mistake had been made in several parts of the country. Towns had been set ablaze with no explanation, as if riots had happened without rioters. To the outside world, it looked as if hate groups had popped up in sporadic locations and had created chaos. Some cities had countless people who had gone missing. Families held up missing persons posters as the news camera passed by them. Some bodies had been found in strange locales, torn apart in grotesque ways. None of these people had any idea that Hell had been unleashed upon them, and there was no known way to close the gates.

  “Turn it off,” I hissed as I slid my feet to the floor and faced her. “You think he will help us, that he can help us?”

  “The Guild is no more, not in the state of Washington anyway. The nearest one is in California, and they have not responded to any calls for help. It’s possible that it too fell in whatever war they are waging against the Fae. As of right now, we have to assume Lucian isn’t a witch. Whatever he is, he’s deadly.

  “We need to know which side he is on in all of this. From what you told us, he may be able to kill these creatures, like you did. None of the covens we are in contact with have killed a single demon yet. Only you, Lena.” She gave me a weak smirk and patted my hand again thoughtfully.

  “Dark magic.” I hesitated, because I knew what I was about to try and convince her to allow us to use was forbidden in ou
r world. “You fight demons with dark magic, because they are powerful. If we change some of us to dark witches, we could fight them.”

  “But you are light and you’ve killed one already. Who told you of such a thing?” she scoffed. “It’s unheard of to even speak of such a vile thing inside these walls.”

  “No, no, it’s not. We have books about it in the lower levels. I’ve read some of them before. We are not the first witches to face demons, and we won’t be the last, either. There is a book based on the history of the witches of Salem, who faced a situation much like we do now, Grandma. They fought demons, and they won.” I kept my voice low, just in case someone might overhear. “They turned dark to defend the coven, but they remained bound to their coven, and it prevented them from becoming evil. There are runes which can be inked on the witch who turns, ensuring she or he remains one with the coven. I know the rules, but we are fighting for survival, just as those witches had to do back then.”

  “That was a different time, and most of those witches didn’t survive being turned after those events unfolded. Most were sacrificed to save the coven. If we tried and lost more witches, we would be in more danger than we already are. Dark magic is deadly, not only for the witch who uses it, but for those around her. It plays with your mind, and takes a piece of your soul every time you use it. It’s forbidden for a reason.”

  “Grandma, people are dying. There’s no place we can go that we will be safe.” I waved my hand at the great hall and the witches wandering around it, trying to find something to occupy themselves with. “This works for now, but how long will it last? Eventually, they’ll figure out where we are. Human bodies don’t last long; witches are a much better host for them because we live longer than the humans do. Our magic makes them stronger. We aren’t safe, no one is. If we go down, we need to go down fighting.”