by Kiki Howell
That one night, Jacob had known, as soon as he saw the demons, what Andrew would want him to do: pull back and call for back-up. But that had been right before they’d hired Vinnie. The only other back-up fighters available were Andrew and Nicholas, and they were both exhausted after a week of nightly attacks. That was the very reason why Jacob had insisted to come on his own, and he’d even had to guilt-trip Andrew into it.
Jacob had made the decision to fight on his own in no longer than it took for his heart to beat twice; he’d attacked before it beat twice more.
Tonight, however, was different. Tonight, Kirsten was with him, and as soon as he realized there were two demons opposite them his first thought was that he couldn’t fight two and be certain to keep her safe. Never mind the spell, never mind the demons; she was his priority.
“Go back!” he told her, standing between her and the demons and raising his sword. “Get back to the car. And call my dads.”
He added that last part as an afterthought; he’d probably have killed both demons by the time back-up arrived. He only needed to be sure she’d stay out of the way.
Kirsten’s answer was a single word.
“No.”
Jacob’s hands tightened over the hilt of his sword. He glanced back just long enough to glare at her, but the look was lost on her. She had her mixer in one hand and was pouring in the content of one glass vial.
“Not now!” he hissed, returning his eyes to the demons. “There’s two of them, we agreed—”
“I already started. I can’t stop now.”
Just five, maybe six yards away, the two demons had stopped, their weapons still raised menacingly. They were sniffing the air and grunting at each other. Jacob was used to that behavior; about half the demons he fought seemed to smell him before they attacked. Even more troubling, half of those grunted at him in what he supposed were attempts at communicating.
As far as he knew, no demon had ever tried to communicate with anyone else; there had been attempts by authorities to capture and study demons, and no communication had ever been reported. He’d always been afraid of what it meant—afraid that the demons seemed to view him differently from every other fighter they encountered. Afraid, mostly, that someone might notice, and wonder what made him so different.
He couldn’t wait until they got too close to Kirsten. If her spell didn’t work, she’d need to run, and it would be good for her to have a bit of a head start. He advanced toward the demons, adjusting his grip on the hilt of his sword.
“If it doesn’t work,” he said without looking back, “don’t wait. Run back to the car.”
“It is going to work,” she muttered. “I know it will.”
The demons didn’t wait for Jacob to reach them. The biggest one was tall even by demon standards, over nine feet high, with bony spikes arranged in clusters of three or four on its forearms and torso. Most demons wore some kind of tunic, and some even wore armor, but this one only wore a band of leather across its chest with the familiar insignia near its shoulder. No one had ever figured out what the dozen different designs meant; Jacob’s theory, shared by many others, was that they marked the demons as members of a particular tribe or fighting group.
The second demon wore the same design on its chest. It carried an ax rather than a sword. Because it was shorter, Jacob went for it first.
Ax against sword could be tricky, but Jacob had had a lot of practice over the past few years. He stepped to the side, getting away from the tallest demon to have a clear shot at its companion, without leaving the way to Kirsten too open, he hoped.
“How long?” he called out as he first swung his sword at the demon. The high blow rang like a gong when ax and sword met; sparks flew, bright in the darkness of the woods.
Rather than the answer he had expected, Kirsten let out a quiet curse. Jacob glanced toward her as he broke away from the demon. She was crouching on the leaves-strewn ground, one hand still holding the metal mixer, the other patting the ground as though looking for something.
“What happened?” he shouted, ducking low to avoid whistling steel. The tallest demon had just hacked his sword at him, with no finesse but enough force that it made itself stumble.
“What do you think happened?” She sounded annoyed; better that than scared, Jacob supposed. “I dropped the damn vial, that’s what.”
Jacob had to pinch his lips tightly together to hold back words that would have helped nothing. It wasn’t as though she had dropped that thing on purpose. If he’d only been able to break away, he could have helped her find that vial faster. To him, the lack of light didn’t matter, but how much of a hindrance would the darkness be for her?
While he was low, he jabbed his sword at Shorty’s leg, cutting its thigh deeply before pulling back. The demon’s scream, high pitched and primal, resonated throughout the woods. It was answered by the second demon’s deep, guttural growl.
“Yes!” Kirsten exclaimed behind him.
Without thinking, Jacob glanced back at her. Big mistake. The tallest demon swung again, and with too little warning Jacob didn’t have time to parry or duck completely out of harm’s way. He ended up doing a mix of the two, moving sideways even as he thrust his sword forward. He slashed at the demon’s arm but not before its sword had started digging into Jacob’s bicep.
The demon howled as several bony protuberances splintered under the force of Jacob’s blow; Jacob’s own shout was almost as loud. Pain radiated through him like fire, blinding him for a second as he stumbled back several steps.
“Jacob!”
Kirsten’s voice was full of a fear he’d never heard before. It was also closer than it should have been. The next thing he knew, her hand was touching his arm just below the cut, where his blood flowed freely. He hissed and pulled away, keeping his eyes on the demons. Both of them were eyeing Jacob warily and growling at each other, as though deciding whether to attack again or let him come to them.
“How badly are you hurt?”
“Never mind that. Do your spell.”
The truth was, he didn’t want to think about his wound. The cut was deep, but right now it didn’t matter. He could contain the pain. He could ignore it until he’d finished dealing with the demons. But if Kirsten didn’t end up doing the spell they had come here for, it would all have been for nothing.
“Just another few seconds,” she breathed.
From the corner of his eye, he saw her covering the opening of the mixer with her hand and shaking it hard so that whatever was inside rattled against the sides.
“Stay close to me, and when the light starts becoming really bright make sure you look away so it doesn’t blind you.”
Looking away while confronting demons was not such a good idea, as the pain pulsing through Jacob’s arm made all too obvious. It seemed useless to say anything now, though, not when Kirsten was already reciting a few strange words that sounded almost but not quite like what Jacob remembered from his years of studying French. She was holding out the mixer at arm’s length in front of her, the open end tilted toward the demons. They had taken two steps forward during Jacob and Kirsten’s exchange, but they stopped again when light started emanating from the steel cup.
Nothing resembled a grunt more than another grunt, but Jacob could have sworn they sounded worried, now. Or maybe it was nothing more than wishful thinking on his part.
Kirsten said one last word, a little louder than the rest, and somehow it seemed to echo around them, as though imbued with power. At the same instant, the light coming out of the shaker changed. So far, it had been like a flashlight beam, fairly narrow right at the rim of the shaker then wider but fainter as it shot forward. Now, it was like a cascade of light pouring forward, white and blinding.
Jacob abruptly remembered her warning to look away. He started averting his eyes, but it was useless. The light was still spreading and enveloping all of them. The demons took shuffling steps back—or at least, Jacob assumed they did. He could only hear them, no
t see them anymore. Their frantic grunts certainly seemed to come from farther away. The spell was working, all right, but it would need some fine tuning. Jacob wouldn’t be able to defend or fight, or do anything really, when he couldn’t see a thing. Still, the simple fact that it worked, that it had some effect on the demons, was good news.
Or so Jacob thought until Kirsten let out a strident, “Something’s going wrong!”
He turned to her, but even as close as she was he could barely guess her shape in the midst of all that bright light. He wanted to ask what she meant, but he didn’t have a chance to say another word. All of a sudden, the light changed, and everything turned a red as bright as fresh blood. Kirsten dropped the cup and said something, though Jacob couldn’t make out her words. The wind had picked up and was howling at them, but for some strange reason it came up from under them. Blindly, he reached for Kirsten’s arm. She covered his hand with her own and held on tight.
A thought flitted through his mind, incongruous yet irrepressible: it had been years since she’d clung to him like this. He’d missed it.
In a blink, it was over. The light and wind disappeared. Jacob’s vision cleared, and he could see that the demons had disappeared.
So had the woods.
NICHOLAS’ LEG KEPT bouncing up and down. He tried to keep it still, but every time he forced himself to stop he’d start again in only moments.
It was a testament to how worried Andrew was that he hadn’t commented on Nicholas’ frayed nerves so far. His gaze was on the television, but Nicholas doubted Andrew was even aware that they were watching the same sci-fi show that always caused him to frown and ask unending questions. In truth, Nicholas himself couldn’t have said what this episode was about, and this despite having seen the series from beginning to end multiple times.
How could either of them have focused on make-believe aliens when their son was out fighting very real demons?
Usually, Nicholas wasn’t all that worried about Jacob. They’d trained together long enough that Nicholas had full confidence in his abilities.
No, the problem wasn’t about Jacob being out fighting demons without back-up.
The problem wasn’t even that he was out there with the one person who could distract him better than anything else in the world.
The problem was that they’d been gone for three hours.
Three hours for one demon... That wasn’t good. That wasn’t good at all. Had Kirsten’s spell failed? Had it caused some mishap, maybe? Perhaps accidentally hurt her and Jacob somehow? Left them unable to defend themselves and at the mercy of this lone demon? And maybe it was more than one demon. Maybe—
Nicholas couldn’t bear to wait any longer. He had to know, and if Jacob rolled his eyes the way he always did when Andrew was overprotective, Nicholas could live with that.
“All right, let’s go.”
He jumped to his feet, energy coursing through him, scaring off Trixie who had been dozing at his feet.
Andrew blinked up at him, looking startled. “Go where?”
“Go where?” Nicholas scoffed. “Where do you think! To the woods. To find them. Something’s gone wrong. It’s taking them too long.”
The idiot continued to stare at Nicholas. He still wasn’t moving.
“But the spell,” he started. “Sunlight. It’d burn us.”
“You think she hasn’t done it by now?” Nicholas threw his hands in the air. “Oh, the hell with you! Stay here if you want. Wait all night long. I’m going.”
He started for the door. Before he had reached it, Andrew was only a step behind him. They grabbed their coats, swords, the car keys, and were out of the house before a minute had passed. Andrew drove but for once he didn’t strictly adhere to the speed limit. They reached the woods in moments that felt like entire decades, and parked right next to Jacob’s car.
No one had ever been able to explain why the demons always appeared in the same places. All over the world, it was the same thing: when a demon was spotted somewhere, more demons would appear around the same place. If per chance a lone demon was spotted in a different part of the same area, it only meant that it had traveled there undetected from the usual spot.
It had happened in town, years earlier, and for a long time the park where the demon had finally been killed had remained under close watch at night. These days, wireless cameras were used to monitor the woods, and while they warned of the presence of demons before they could do much damage, they had yet to give any clue as to where the demons came from.
If it had been up to Nicholas, the entire area would have been bulldozed, leaving empty fields where it would be easier to see and fight demons. Barring that, it might also have helped to completely block the access to the woods. All the authorities had done, however, was post signs and warn the public to stay away at night.
“They’re afraid,” Andrew had once said, incensed after coming back from a town hall meeting where he had given testimony. “Not afraid of the demons. Afraid of what it’d do to the town’s reputation if they admit the demon problem is serious. People have been fleeing every other town where a demon danger zone has formally been created. They think that if they pretend things aren’t too bad here, businesses will keep coming.”
The best person to play whistleblower would of course have been Andrew, but he’d never wanted to attract attention to himself, worried that someone would come ask how and why two vampires had raised a child.
Nicholas shook off his mental ramblings as he joined Andrew out of the car. Neither of them said a word, nor did they need to speak once they stepped into the woods, each of them with a sword in hand. They followed the scent trail left by Jacob and Kirsten, walking quietly on the uneven terrain, attentive to all the sounds around them. It wasn’t long before they could hear something, and not much longer after that when they found the two demons.
Of Jacob and Kirsten, however, there was no trace.
Chapter Twelve
KIRSTEN’S STOMACH HEAVED and she covered her mouth, fighting back the nausea that was shaking her. She could taste bile at the back of her throat and it was all she could do not to retch.
She didn’t want to die impaled on a demon sword, but dying while emptying her stomach felt completely undignified.
However, when she managed to look up and around her, the demons were gone. So were the woods. And the night, for that matter. In their place, a few dry, brittle-looking shrubs peppered a desolate landscape. The sun looked odd, low over a hill some distance away. It seemed bigger than it ought to be, its color more orange than yellow.
As for her nausea... She tried to calm her furious heartbeat. It wasn’t a smell on the air, more like a taste, although that didn’t make much sense. She could breathe, there was oxygen in the air, it just took more work to get to it than she was used to and her stomach churned at the effort.
“Kirsten?”
Still gasping, she turned to Jacob. He clutched her arm, his expression as worried as his voice.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. “Can’t you breathe?”
She shook her head. “The air... it’s... weird. Makes me nauseous.”
Her heartbeat was slowly calming down as she began to adjust, and while she still felt sick she didn’t think she’d vomit. Jacob didn’t answer, but he continued to observe her worriedly. He didn’t seem to have any trouble breathing.
“You... you okay?”
He nodded and looked away from her. She knew that shifty look. She hadn’t seen it all that often along the years they dated, but that was how he always looked, before he’d told her his fathers were vampires. In fact, it was the same look every time he had to lie to her about something vampire related. She’d realized as much afterward.
Was that what it was now, too? Some ability given to him by his less-than-common genetics? She decided not to prod. There were more important things at the moment. Starting with—
“Where the hell are we?”
She started looking around again,
searching for some point of reference. She couldn’t see much more than those weird shrubs, boulders as high as she or Jacob, and hills that just about surrounded them.
“I don’t know.” Jacob sounded troubled. “There doesn’t seem to be any demons around, at least.”
“Yeah, that’s...”
The words died in her throat when she watched him set his sword down and shrug out of his jacket. She’d forgotten for a moment that he’d been hurt. Now that she saw his bicep, the same fear she always felt at the thought of Jacob being hurt rose again inside her, like more bile at the back of her throat.
She set down the drink mixer she still clutched in her hand on the ground, as well as her messenger bag. She crouched next to it and dug in. She had bandages in there. She pulled them out with shaking hands.
“Do you have anything to disinfect the wound?” Jacob asked.
She shook her head. “Antiseptic isn’t high on my list of magical supplies. But at least we can clean it.”
Standing up again, she showed him the bottle of water she always carried around. He eyed it, then their surroundings again.
“I don’t know. Maybe we should conserve the water. This place doesn’t seem to have much of it.”
“So?” She frowned at him. “It’s not like we’re going to stay here.”
He met her gaze. In the odd light that bathed them, his eyes were paler than usual, like discolored grass.
“Tell me something. How did we get here?”
A pang ran through her. She had no answer. Jacob nodded.
“So if we don’t know how we got here, or where ‘here’ is exactly, how are we going to go back to Earth?”
Now, she openly gaped at him. She had to try twice before she found her voice again.
“Back... Back to Earth? What do you mean? Where do you think we are?”
JACOB WINCED AT THE note of hysteria creeping up in Kirsten’s words. Was she growing paler or was it only an effect of the strange ambient light in this place? He hadn’t meant to let it slip so abruptly. She had to know, though. She had to understand where they were if she was going to figure out a way to get them home. But she still didn’t need to know everything—like how Jacob had figured it out.
