by Cooke, CJ
“We fight our way through to the Elites and then help hold the line,” Dom shouted across to me. There were so many demons between them and us. I didn’t think it would be possible, but I tightened my grip on the sword and gave him a firm nod anyway. We were going to do this. We didn’t have any other choice.
“Stay with me; don’t get separated. Concentrate on fighting through. Don’t try to go for a kill shot unless you get an easy strike. We’re just going to try and punch through,” I told him. “Whatever you do, just keep moving and move fast.”
It wasn’t the best strategy. If we even made it halfway to the Elites, we were going to end up surrounded. The only way I could see us getting to them was to cut our way through as fast as we could. Maybe if we kept moving, we could just force our way to the others.
Just as we started to make our advance, a miracle came through in the form of a bat shit crazy, knife-wielding, kitsune. Frannie was here and whether the crazy was lending to her fearlessness, or she was having a moment of clarity, she started cutting down every demon which got in her path. She was like a tornado, reaping destruction to everything in her path. She held a massive knife in each hand, and she clearly knew how to use them. Dom and I pulled in close to her, and we moved as one, pushing through to the line the Elites had formed.
The demons only seemed to have one goal, enter the house. They didn’t pay much attention to us fighting our way through. It was odd. Some of them didn’t even turn around. They were more organised than they’d been at the academy. The academy massacre had been like a free for all. They swarmed the area and tore into anything in their path. Something was different about the demons this time. They almost held their own line. They surged at the Elites together and then retreated as one. They were like waves, battering against the shore and trying to push their way through those standing in their path.
If I was completely honest, Dom and I barely raised our swords as we moved through the horde. Frannie was at the spearhead of our little group, and she hacked away with such efficiency she was landing kill blows on at least half the demons she was moving out of our path.
We fell through the Elites line in no time at all, and I looked around to try and get a read on the situation. I could pick up some whimpers from deep inside the packhouse. The whole pack had been pulled into the house when we’d brought the academy survivors here. It was supposed to be so the pack could be kept safe. Now it just seemed like they were fish in a barrel. Conveniently placed to save the demons time.
“Where are Marcus and Wyatt? Why aren’t the pack guard here?” Dom shouted to no one in particular.
Trent pulled out of the line, and his pack filled his gap. “The pack guard is supposed to be holding the rear entrance. Wyatt went with them. I haven’t seen Marcus,” he told us.
“When did the attack start?” Dom shouted over the noise of the fighting behind us.
“Not long ago. I was out here with my pack training when the first demons broke through. We managed to hold them back and raise the alarm before their full force arrived,” Trent shouted at Dom.
“They didn’t all get here at the same time?” Dom said, tilting his head in confusion. Now did not seem the time to be having this conversation.
“No, only four came at first. When we took two of them down and were holding back the other two, the rest of them arrived,” Trent said. He looked exhausted, but there was a frenzy burning in his eyes that would hopefully get us all through this.
“Something is different about them,” I shouted at Dom. “They’re more organised. It’s like they’re trying to get into the house for something.”
Dom took a moment to watch the demons. They surged forward again, and Trent quickly took his place back in the line. The Elites and Trent’s pack were able to cut a few down before the rest of the horde fell back again.
“Can you hold this line?” Dom shouted at Trent, putting his hand on his shoulder. Trent just gave him a grim nod of his head. “We’re going to check and see what is happening at the rear entrance,” Dom told him, then he turned and ran up the front steps of the packhouse.
I wanted to stay with the Elites; I wanted to help them hold the line. But I couldn’t just let Dom go off on his own. We needed to stay together in case there were any demons left inside. We had enough experience now that we knew it was nearly impossible to survive a fight with them if you were alone. We’d learnt the hard way when we fought our way out of the academy.
Taking a deep breath to try and calm myself, I took off up the steps after Dom. The house was eerily quiet. I was going to take it as a good sign. I couldn’t take the alternative for now. Dom was already out of sight, but I took the quickest route I knew to the back entrance and quickly caught up with him. When we stepped back outside of the house, we were presented with a similar sight as we had at the front. Except, the pack guard was not faring as well as the Elites.
The group of demons at the back of the house was slightly smaller than had collected at the front. Several of the pack guards were already lying dead on the ground. Only eight remained, together with Wyatt. They each held a sword, but they were clearly not familiar with them. The ones who’d already died seemed to have been fighting in shifted form. From experience, I doubted they would have lasted long. The demons had pulled back into a hissing, raging crowd and the pack guard stood braced waiting for them to advance again. Wyatt had pulled one of the fallen guards back to the wall of the house. As we stepped through the door, his head drooped down, and I knew without asking we’d lost another wolf.
Dom walked over to Wyatt and squatted down beside him, placing a hand on his shoulder. “There is no time for grief now,” he whispered to him.
Wyatt just nodded resolutely and stood up. His hand gripped his sword tighter, and he went to step back into the line. Dom took hold of his shoulder, halting him.
“Is this the same as at the front, are they trying to break through to access the house?” Dom asked, just as the wave of demons surged again.
I stepped to the line with the other guards, swinging and slashing. I think I managed to land some heavy blows before the horde fell back again. We hadn’t taken any of them out, but a few of them seemed to fall to the back of the group, and I was hoping it meant they were at least injured. One of the pack guards staggered on his feet, holding his side.
“Are you injured?” I called over to him.
He lifted his hand to check. “It’s not too deep. I can hold on a bit longer,” he gritted out.
“Where is Marcus?” I said, turning back to Wyatt. I couldn’t believe he wasn’t here holding the line with the guard.
Wyatt looked about guiltily. “He’s in the basement, locked in a safe room,” he sighed.
I didn’t even have words. The worst thing was I didn’t even think I was surprised. This was typical Marcus behaviour. “And the rest of the pack? Where are they?”
“The women and children were sent up to the top floor of the house. I sent three guards with them. The men … he ordered the rest of the men …” He trailed off, looking around him.
My heart sank as I realised what Wyatt was trying to say. I took in the bodies around us and remembered those that had littered the front of the house as well. The men had been sent out to fight. The pack was done. Even if we survived this attack, we’d lost too many.
Wyatt and Dom were looking around trying to decide what to do.
“We can’t hold this line indefinitely; we need a plan,” I shouted over to Dom.
He nodded at me, and I saw his eyes squint as he considered an idea I felt I was going to hate. “Maybe we should let one of them through,” he said cautiously.
Wyatt rounded on him, shouting. “Are you crazy?”
“Just hear me out,” Dom said, putting a hand on his shoulder to try and calm him down. Wyatt just shrugged it off and glared down at him. “They are trying to get through to the house for something. If we can find out what it is, maybe we can destroy it, move it, or something! We c
an’t just stand here and wait for them to completely break through,” Dom said, gesturing at the group of demons which was clearly gearing up ready to advance again.
“They’re trying to get into the house to kill everyone inside,” Wyatt shouted.
“This is different,” Dom explained, cautiously watching the demons in front of us. “At the academy, they came intending to kill. And they did. Swiftly and efficiently. It was like a frenzied feeding. They didn’t act like this. There was no reason to what they were doing. It was almost instinctual.”
Wyatt turned to look at the demon horde. They hadn’t surged forward again. It was almost like they were waiting to see what we were going to do.
Dom pulled him to one side and lowered his voice. “We will stay with it. When it becomes obvious where it’s heading, we’ll take it down. This could help us stop the siege now, where it is,” he said lowly, keeping an eye on the demons in front of us. There had to be at least twenty of them.
Wyatt was wavering in his decision. One of the demons stepped forward. It was too freaky to not watch. It cautiously took a few lumbering steps closer. They’d never shown any signs of understanding us before. It was almost like they were evolving. The demon cocked its head at us and took another step closer to the line, almost in question.
Wyatt took a deep breath. I didn’t envy him this decision. If this went wrong, I knew that he would never forgive himself. Shit, I didn’t think I would ever forgive myself anyway. He looked Dom in the eye and nodded once. The demon took another step forward almost in response. The guard braced, confused about what was happening.
“Let it through,” Wyatt said.
The pack guard looked between themselves, doubting the sense of letting the demon in. If I was honest, I doubted it too. But Dom was right. We couldn’t keep this up. We may as well let one through now on our terms and see if we could at least get some of the pack out of this alive. The guard shifted uneasily on their feet.
“As soon as it’s through, close the line and hold it as long as you can,” I told them, stepping to the side. I gripped my sword tighter and braced myself to run. If it were coming through, I would be two steps behind it, and it was going down as soon as we knew what it wanted.
Dom adopted a similar position next to the door to the house.
“On three,” Wyatt shouted. The demon shifted back and forth on its feet. This was going to be race, and it clearly thought it could get the better of us. Except, we had far more to lose, and there was no way we could let it win.
“One.” The pack guard shifted uneasily but seemed resigned to what was about to happen.
“Two.” The demon horde took a step back, almost like they were trying to make it easier for us.
“Three!” Wyatt shouted. The line of the pack guard split and a gap was made in the middle. The lone demon at the front shot off at a run, clearing the gap and heading for the door. The pack guard closed the hole in the line, but the horde was already moving forwards to try and punch through as well.
“We can hold them,” one of the guards shouted.
I turned and took off after the demon. I was sticking close to it. Dom was level with me, and I could hear Wyatt behind us, keeping pace. It was almost like it knew exactly where it was going. It ran at a fast pace down the corridor and straight up the stairs. For a minute, my heart dropped. I thought it was heading for the children. But, as we reached the landing for the first floor, it suddenly veered off the stairs and ran down the corridor. The demon rolled its shoulder as it approached a set of double doors. Lowering one shoulder in front of it and pulling its head down, it started to charge. It clearly intended to smash through the door. The doors that lead to Kyle’s suite.
“Take it down, now,” Wyatt shouted.
I heard Dom whisper an incantation beside me. It wasn’t like him to resort to magic during a fight. He would in exceptional circumstances, but it drained him too quickly. A shot of magic burst out of him and slammed into the demon before it reached the door. Ice quickly formed along the skin of its back, where the magic hit. It was enough to slow it down as the demon stumbled with the impact.
I was only two steps behind it, and it was all the opening I needed. I launched myself at the demon’s back, and it crumbled to the ground below me. The magic must be seriously sapping its strength. We rolled twice, and I pushed the demon off me before we could come to a stop. Regardless of how much strength it had lost, I didn’t want to end up beneath it and an easy target.
I rolled to my feet as the demon skidded along the floor before it slammed into the wall. It tried to stand, but as it pulled itself up on its hands, Wyatt was already there, sword in hand. He shoved the blade through the demon’s chest, and it screeched out its frustration at us. The drooling mass of fangs in its mouth became stained with its blood, as it coughed and growled at us. Wyatt wrenched his sword free and brought it down a final time, hacking into the demon’s neck. It wasn’t quite enough to separate its head from its body, but it still sagged dead beneath him.
We all froze as we looked down at the dead demon. There was a part of me that always expected them to jump back up and gut me. But it was definitely down. Dom turned to look at the doors to Kyle’s suite and cocked his head to the side in consideration.
“Time to see what was so important,” he mumbled and reached for the door.
“Wait!” I said, grabbing his shoulder and pulling him back. “I’ll open the door; you stay behind me. We might need your magic,” I told him, striding forward and taking hold of the door handles.
Wyatt came up on my right and shoved me a step to the side. We took a handle each. This way, we could potentially seek some cover, without me being a sitting duck just standing in the middle. He held up three fingers and counted us down. When he dropped the last finger, we both shouldered the doors open, and all three of us burst inside. Then we stopped dead in our tracks as we took in the sight in front of us. I felt my brain splutter in shock as I took in the vision.
The sitting room's furniture had been shoved aside and in the middle of the room just sat two chairs facing away from each other. Della and Professor Pax were both slumped back in chairs, and their arms were just hanging down towards the ground. Blood ran down, dripping from their fingertips onto the floor. From how they slumped back in their seats, I could see both of their throats were slit. Pax was definitely dead, but Della’s head slowly turned to us, and a serene smile slipped across her mouth. She struggled to breathe, and her life was draining out of her, but she still managed one eerie laugh when she saw us. A spell wheel had been drawn between the two chairs using the spilt blood collecting on the ground. A portal was starting to open in the middle, and Octavia knelt on the floor whispering an incantation over it.
“Death magic,” Dom whispered.
We were all so shocked none of us moved. I wasn’t sure what to do. Octavia. It made no sense. Why would she do this?
“You can’t stop us,” she told us. Her voice was flat and emotionless. She stopped chanting and looked up at us from where she knelt. “We’re only doing what must be done.”
“The Academy …” Dom spluttered. “Please Octavia, tell me that wasn’t you.”
“It was easy,” she shrugged. “You didn’t even see the sacrifices in the carnage of the other bodies.” She gave us a soft smile, and my stomach rolled. This wasn’t the woman I’d come to know, who I’d worked beside for years.
“Why?” Wyatt breathed.
She looked over at him and cocked her head to the side. It was almost like she was listening to another conversation as her eyes became unfocused, and she seemed to zone out for a minute.
“Octavia, why?” Dom shouted at her.
“The realm is out of balance. It must be restored,” she said with a shrug. “The Fae upset the balance after the last war. We have suffered. We have suffered so much. The balance must be restored. She told us, she promised. If we worshipped her, she would show us the way. We spent years on our knees, offering up
our bodies and our souls as a sacrifice. No one else joined us. No one knew of our suffering. But finally, finally, after all of those years, she answered our prayers. She showed us the way.” Her eyes were glazed as she preached at us. She’d clearly lost her mind.
“At what cost?” Dom screamed. “So many Octavia. So many have died already. How many are you willing to sacrifice just so your magic will be stronger?”
“She promised,” she said with a frown on her face. “Our goddess will provide. She showed us the way.”
Wyatt couldn’t take any more, and he sprang forward without saying a word. The anger on his face echoed in his scream of rage. Octavia didn’t move; she didn’t even look surprised. As he ran her through with his sword, she just looked down at her chest at the sword impaling her to the hilt.
“You’ll never stop us,” she quietly, told us before her eyes slid closed and she slumped over.
Frannie scampered into the room, taking us all by surprise. She was dripping in demon blood with her two knives clutched in her hands. She gave a happy little giggle and skipped over to the portal, peering down inside. Suddenly, she swiped a knife forward and cut off one of Octavia’s ears. She grabbed it off the floor and shoved it in her mouth. Chewing carefully and raising an eyebrow in thought, she almost looked like she was trying to savour the flavour.
My stomach rolled, and Wyatt groaned out in disgust. Frannie spat the chewed ear and her blood-tinged saliva into her hand. When she looked down at her hand, she just cackled in glee. Wyatt lost his breakfast over in the corner, while she dropped to her knees and started sketching runes into the spell wheel. Dom and I watched her carefully. She was chattering away to herself, discussing her rune work with herself, laughing and shaking her head. After a few minutes of altering the spell wheel, the portal flickered and then shrank closed.
