Everyone’s really loud and drunk tonight. It’s kind of giving me a headache. I’ve been practicing a lot of medium work under Divya’s supervision, and I’ve gotten some useful information from a few different spirits, but Divya was right when she said work as a medium is draining. I’m exhausted. I don’t know if I’m even going to make it until midnight tonight.
“Feeling okay?” Rynne asks me as he sits down beside me.
I take one look at his drink and wonder if it’s beer. It’s the same color. I think. It’s dark in here.
He brings the glass to his lips but doesn’t drink. He lowers the glass and holds it out to me. “Do you want this? You’re staring so intently.”
“I’m just wondering how you can drink that stuff. It smells disgusting.”
“Apple cider?” he asks, his brows slightly raised.
“Oh! It’s… never mind. I thought you were drinking something else.”
“You look tired.”
I rub my eyes in response to that comment. “I think I’m going to head off to bed.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, but you have fun.”
“Okay. See you later then.”
I get up before he does something that makes me want to stay. I want to stay, but I’m seriously not feeling well. I don’t want to make Rynne worry about me. I don’t want to make anyone worry about me.
Once I’ve left the lobby, the world becomes quieter. The pounding in my head lessens some, but I can still hear the hunters’ voices. Now the sound reminds me of the annoying hissing and echoes of words that I always hear when I don’t have my crystals. It grates on my nerves.
I shut my door as soon as I’m inside my room. I sit on my bed and close my eyes as I shift into an easy cross-legged position to meditate. I keep my diamonds safe around my neck so I won’t be visited by any spirits. I need a moment of silence from everything. I need a moment of peace.
I concentrate on my breathing, deepening and elongating each breath I take. All that exists right now is my breathing, the sensation of my soft blankets sitting underneath me, the feeling of my arms resting on my legs… I go back to my breathing, focusing only on the sensations it brings.
Eventually, I start to feel a disconnect. It’s like I’m half-conscious and half asleep. My mind starts wandering to thoughts of Reverie. Specifically, my thoughts go to my home. I see it in my mind’s eye, the way I remember it before it was burned to the ground. I think about Didi and Connor and imagine their house next. I imagine them happy and doing well, wherever they are now. The image of their smiling faces makes me smile in return.
Even though I was only there for a short time, I think about Fiona’s apartment. I think about the blank room I stayed in. I never did personalize that room. My room in the base looks and feels a lot the same. Maybe I should do something about it someday.
My thoughts linger on the base, and all of a sudden I can see myself, meditating on my bed, like I’m watching from above. I phase through the ceiling and continue up until I can see the entire warehouse from a bird’s eye view. My imagination is really going wild now.
I decide to take advantage of the strange waking dream. I float in the sky, picking random directions at first, but then I find myself flying west. I can see Philadelphia and all its magnificent lights reflecting against the snow and ice on this overcast night. The farther I go, the smaller the city gets until I can’t even see it anymore. I end up flying over more cities, all smaller than Philadelphia. Then they disappear altogether. Now I’m flying over forests and rivers. There’s smoke in the distance, a backdrop of the forest.
I focus on the smoke and fly for it. The forest below me starts to thin out, and I can see orange flames clinging to tree trunks, undeterred by the snow and ice. Then I see the fire’s origin: a small town. Every building there is on fire. It’s a town no bigger than Reverie. That’s when the lighthearted whimsy of my dream ends. I can hear screaming. I see people running, trying to avoid the unnatural flames eating their homes.
Others are dead. Blood and immobile bodies are strewn about the fires and melted snow. Wisps of energy are floating away from their bodies and flying away into the night sky. Those still moving try to make it to the forest. A man gets tackled to the ground by a gargoyle. The creature’s stone-like skin and monstrous physique make it hard to miss. I look away before I can see the man get torn to shreds, but I only succeed in seeing another human running for her life. The woman screams when a creature dives at her from the sky, a creature with a woman’s head and the body of a bird. I read about those, too. They’re called sirin. I look away again. I try to close my eyes, but it’s like my eyelids are transparent. I can’t stop seeing.
My ears ring as a rumbling laughter shakes the burning buildings. I can’t believe what I see next. The fires, all of them, slowly twist away from the burning buildings and trees. The flames merge and spin until they encompass the city like a burning cage, trapping the humans that were trying to run into the forest inside of their town under siege.
“Feed!” a voice booms clearly throughout the entire town. “Eat your fill of the food I so graciously provided you.”
I move closer to the voice, not because I want to, but because it grabs my attention and my ethereal body decides that’s reason enough to get closer. I reflexively flinch when I near some embers left behind from the fire enclosure, but I don’t feel the heat. Then the fire starts to fade away, though it’s replaced by the screams of all those poor, tortured souls that fall prey to countless monsters.
I don’t want to see anymore!
My body feels like its slipping back now, like I can wake up from this nightmare if I keep resisting, if I keep telling myself I don’t want to see any more of this.
That’s when I see him, the monster that created the fire tempest. He holds the last flame in his hand before snuffing it out by suffocating it inside his fist. He looks similar to a human, but he’s tall, probably around eight feet. His muscle mass is even more impressive, like he’s made up of an impenetrable wall of roped flesh. He has yellow eyes with slits for pupils like a cat’s. His upper body is bare skin with a blood-red undertone, and his lower body is covered with shaggy brown hair. His feet are hoofed and look like they belong to a yak. Just when I think he couldn’t look any stranger, his body starts morphing further, turning less and less human by the second. A long straight horn like a blade grows and protrudes from his forehead as the rest of his body becomes covered in the same brown fur that only encompassed his lower body before. Now he resembles a yak more than he resembles a human.
I’m stunned. I can’t tear my eyes away from the magnificent monster before me. Unlike the others, he doesn’t pursue any of the humans. He spends a few minutes demolishing the rest of the standing buildings by ramming into them with his huge and powerful skull. Blood coats his fur, so even though I didn’t witness him killing anyone, I know he killed plenty on his own before the other monsters started hunting. He’s the one who started all of this. He’s the one in control.
He lets a low sound escape his lips once the human screams finally stop. I can’t make out the sound at first, but then it grows louder and pitches up a little higher, resembling a horn of some kind.
I look around me to see the monsters scatter once they hear the sound. The leading monster lingers for a moment longer, but then he eventually changes his form again, back into that hybrid-type creature I first saw. The dark and cold chill he produces seems to lessen some. I don’t know why, but I follow him. It’s like I’m too enthralled by this nightmare to wake up. But that’s just it. It feels real, too real to be a nightmare.
He walks leisurely through the forest. He even begins humming to himself, like he couldn’t be happier. How can such a beast exist? I’ve never read about any monsters like this one. Wait. I’m not thinking straight. This creature is far too powerful to be a monster. I know this feeling of fear. I’ve felt it before. In Arsen. This beast is a demon. My fear suddenly turns into determi
nation, and I stay close to the demon. He doesn’t even know I’m here. Or maybe this is all a dream.
I don’t know how long I follow the deranged creature, but I know he passes through many miles of forest. I take notice of all of his surroundings. Even though it might seem like nothing but endless trees, I feel like I can pick out and remember each area I’ve followed him through. My senses are abnormally sharp.
The demon reaches his final destination. A cave as secluded as the rest of this forest. The cave has a large and jagged opening that makes it look like a mouth full of teeth. I follow him inside just to see him recede into the darkness. I blink and it’s as if my eyes have adjusted to the darkness, because now I see the cave as clearly as I see things in the light of day. The cave isn’t very deep, but it’s spacious. I see the demon curl up on the floor and close his eyes. He starts snoring softly within minutes.
He doesn’t move again.
I stay in the cave, unsure of what to do. Why haven’t I woken up yet?
Wake up. Wake up. Wake up.
I chant over and over to myself, and I feel an invisible sensation tugging at me. Unsure of what else to do, I follow the pull. It leads me back through the forest, back to that burned down town, back through the forests, rivers, and cities I passed until I’m once again in Philadelphia. Then I’m hovering over the hunter base. I fall down through the roof and back into my room, where I’m once again reunited with my body.
My eyes flutter open and I gasp. I bring my hands to my face to make sure I’m back in my flesh-and-blood body, to make sure I’m awake. I am. I even pinch my arm. It hurts, so that means I’m awake, right?
What was that?
I crawl under my covers and squeeze my eyes shut. It all felt so real, but it was just a bad dream. I fell asleep meditating. That’s all that happened. That’s all it was. That’s all…
CHAPTER 46
Tasia
I DON’T END UP sleeping very well. I try to forget about everything I saw, but it keeps gnawing at the back of my head. I swear I’ve heard of this before, what happened to me. I think I heard it mentioned in one of the EEA’s classes. I think my parents have mentioned it before, too. It’s something that’s pretty rare. Being a medium is rare, but… astral projection. That’s what it’s called. Astral projecting is even rarer. As soon as I can remember the term, I get out of my bed. It’s 5:00 a.m.
I don’t bother putting on my clothes for the day. I just grab my hoodie and rush out of my room and head straight for the library. I just need to look through the EEA’s database for that monster and astral projection. Then I’ll check the news. That’s how I’ll know for sure if it was more than a dream.
I log on to a computer and search through the database. Since the monster doesn’t show up in any of the demon files inside of the database, I use keywords to search for events that relate to this creature instead. Maybe someone has seen the aftermath of what he’s done before. I look for burning towns, demolished cities, anything that sounds remotely like what I saw in that dream.
I find several accounts of burning buildings and the like, but every article I skim through isn’t the same as what I saw. They aren’t half as destructive. I continue scrolling through the articles until one catches my eye. The picture assigned to this article shows a town broken and pummeled to the ground by fire and force in the dead of winter, a lot like what I saw last night. The more I read, the more I see we don’t have much information aside from this type of thing happening every once in a while, and only to small populations. According to the article, it hasn’t been decided that an evil force is what’s behind this destruction or not. The news wrote these incidents off as some sort of fluke storm, earthquake, a gas leak, something. But they’re wrong. I know the demon who did it.
This isn’t what I wanted to see. That gnawing sensation grows stronger, and I have the sinking feeling that what I saw was indeed very real. It must be astral projection. It has to be. It all started when I was meditating.
I look through the database again. This time I search for astral projection. I skim through every open piece of information the EEA has on it. Astral projection is basically the spirit leaving the body, but unlike in death, the spirit is still tethered to the body. Astral projection allows a living soul into the spirit plane. So those wisps of light I saw before must have been those people’s souls… I shudder at the thought.
According to the EEA’s data, most people can’t accomplish astral projection by chance like I did. It takes many years of practice and concentration, and even then, it’s a rare ability. It also has its dangers. You don’t want to stay away from your body too long or you will die. I shudder again. I definitely need to ask Divya about this. I don’t want to accidentally astral project again and die.
There’s only one thing left to do. I sign out of the database and bring up a web browser. I find a few sites relevant to United-States-related news, and search through some more articles. It doesn’t take long to find the article that confirms my suspicions.
An image of a small town located in the woods on the border of Pennsylvania and Ohio was inexplicably burned to the ground. Coverage on it just barely came out. The police are looking into it now.
I need to find Fiona and Divya.
“Fiona!”
I bang on the door to her room. She was drinking a lot last night, so I wouldn’t be surprised if she has a hangover, but I don’t have time to be delicate. She needs to get up right now.
“Fiona!” I call her name again, and this time she opens the door.
“What the hell, Tasia?” she asks. She’s holding her head like she has a terrible headache.
“Where’s Divya? I need to talk to both of you.”
“About what exactly?”
“I saw something weird last night, and I checked the news this morning, and it’s real!”
Fiona moves her hand away from her head and studies me for a moment. Then she says, “Okay.” She turns around and flips on the lights to her room. “Rise and shine.”
I push on the door so I can see inside. Fiona steps inside to allow me in, and I see Divya on Fiona’s bed. She moans and sits up as she squints at the two of us and rubs her eyes before glancing at the analog clock located on the nightstand. She fixes the large shirt she’s wearing and then brings her eyes back to us.
“Why are we awake so early?” she asks.
I have a question of my own. Why is Divya sleeping in Fiona’s bed? I think about asking, but I explain everything I saw last night instead; it’s much more important right now. I make sure not to spare any details, because I don’t know what aspects of what I saw are important, or if it’s all important. By the time I’m finished telling everything I experienced last night, I have both Fiona and Divya’s full attention. That’s when I go on to tell them about the research I did this morning, and how the town I saw really was brought to the ground.
When I’m finished, there’s silence.
I’m desperate to know what’s going on, so I ask, “I was astral projecting, right?”
Divya glances at Fiona and murmurs, “People don’t usually advance this fast.”
“So this happened because I’m a medium?” I ask. “I looked through the database, but I thought…”
Fiona folds her arms and frowns, while Divya responds. “Not all mediums can astral project. Astral projection is a skill all its own. I didn’t prepare you for it because I didn’t think… we’d be facing a situation like this. It’s a good thing I know how to astral project myself. I can give you a crash course.”
“Please,” I say. “I don’t want to do it on accident and never wake up again.”
“Of course. We’ll take care of it, but first things first.”
“Let’s go to the library and see how well you remember this demon’s location,” Fiona says. “If we can find this cave you mentioned, we’ll hunt it down immediately. Having him alone and asleep is the best we could ask for. I’ve never… heard of anything like what you d
escribed. I’ve never heard of something so powerful either.” She eyes me like she’s hoping I just exaggerated my story. I wish that were true.
“He’s a demon,” I say.
“Maybe Rynne will be able to tell us more,” Fiona says, more to herself than me or Divya.
“Can we even fight something like this?” Divya asks.
Fiona replies, “Of course we can. We’re hunters.”
CHAPTER 47
Arsen
STAYING IN REMOTE LOCATIONS far removed from human inhabitants isn’t usually what I go for. My beast is too tempted to run free when I’m this close to the wild, but I can’t let it. Even though I escaped the oppression of Ilenima, it didn’t change anything for my beast. Angels can find me too easily when I let my beast loose. Even with their weak presence in Terra, weaker since all my killing, it’s never been something I’ve been willing to risk. I keep a low profile for the most part. I suppose being this far out is as safe as I could ever be if I wanted to chance it. Angels tend to stay where humans are present. But that’s not why I’m here.
I need Helena to come to me. She’s more cautious than I could ever fathom being. It’s an ironic sentiment, considering how much power she holds. She could probably mold the world and bend it to her will if she wanted to. Perhaps that’s giving her too much credit, but the things she knows, and the way she eludes every being is fascinating. Still, I suppose being careful is what has allowed her to live this long.
I’ve been on this godforsaken island for a few days now, just waiting for any word from the witch. Visiting Reverie did nothing for me. The old woman I talked to there just solidified things I already knew or suspected. When she said I felt familiar, like a piece of Tasia is inside of me… I don’t know how true that statement is. There is some sort of connection, but what did the old woman mean by a piece of her inside of me? Could she have meant something more than that connection? Is there an actual piece of that girl’s soul inside of mine? I’ve never heard of such a thing.
Demon Snare (These Immortal Vows Book 1) Page 30
