by Kiki Howell
When he brandished his sword and took a few steps forward, Kirsten’s stomach plummeted.
“Don’t!” she asked, unsure whether she was afraid for him or uneasy at the thought of him attacking what they’d agreed was nothing more than a child. If he heard her, Jacob didn’t show it.
“Enough, Gertruh!” he repeated. “We’re not your enemies and neither is magic.”
The demon hissed, maybe recognizing the last word, and finally hurled the stone it held at Jacob. He slashed at it with his sword, and sparks flew with the blade struck the bit of rock.
“Enough!” Jacob cried out again, and again he advanced on Gertruh. For a second, the demon looked as though it would retreat, but then it drew itself to all its height and charged Jacob with a roar.
Kirsten closed her fists tightly and focused as hard as she could. The shield spell wasn’t a difficult one as far as magic went; to someone with her skill, it required only strength of will, focus, and raw energy. But as winded as she was, she couldn’t manage to gather magic, couldn’t do anything to help. She could only watch.
JACOB HAD MEANT TO scare Gertruh off and stop her from throwing rocks at them. He hadn’t meant to actually fight with her. When she charged him, his first instinct was to lower his sword and retreat. Had he been alone, he might have done just that. But he had Kirsten to think of. She was still panting hard, and asking her to run up to their camp would probably result in another fall. What would Jacob do if she was injured? His knowledge of first aid was good enough to help while waiting for an ambulance but little more.
So no, he couldn’t retreat. He had to confront Gertruh. He had to find a way to stop her senseless attacks. And he had to do that without hurting her.
Between the moment Gertruh shouted and leapt forward and the moment Jacob made the decision to drop his sword to the ground behind him, no more than a second passed. He just had enough time left to widen his stance, brace his legs, raise both arms, and already Gertruh was there, slamming into him.
After years of playing hockey and years of fighting demons, hard contact was hardly anything new, and neither was the pain shooting through him. Jacob embraced it all, letting the force of Gertruh’s attack push them to the ground and using the momentum to roll over her.
All this time, he’d been thinking of Gertruh as a little girl, but as she screamed and slashed at him with wickedly sharp claws, ripping the fabric of his clothes and drawing blood, he had to quickly revise his mental image.
She wasn’t small, she was compact. She wasn’t weak, she was as strong as any human he’d ever spared with. Most importantly, she was not harmless, and could very well kill him with nothing more than her hands. And lastly, he couldn’t reason with her. He had a feeling that, even if he’d been fluent in the demon language, she would have refused to listen to a word he said.
Later, he’d wonder why demons had such an ardent hate for all things magical. At the moment, he was too busy trying to hold off Gertruh to worry all that much about reasons.
He jumped back to his feet and moved back, shooting a glance at Kirsten where she’d retreated a few yards away.
“Go up to the camp,” he told her. “I’ll join you soon.”
Already, Gertruh was standing again.
“No way!” Kirsten snapped. “I’m not leaving you here alone. Just give me a minute to focus and I’ll—”
“No more magic!” he cut in.
Before he could explain why this felt like a terrible idea, Gertruh turned to Kirsten and hissed at her. The next second, she was rushing to Kirsten, who shrieked and stumbled a few steps back. She raised her hands in front of her, her brow furrowing as she focused, but whatever magic she was trying to summon did not come forward.
Jacob could see the scene unfold as though in slow motion and realized two things at the same time: it had been a grave mistake to discard his sword, and there was no way he could reach Gertruh before she got to Kirsten and hurt her.
The sword was at his feet. He picked it up with barely a thought, and threw it more as a reflex than a conscious decision. The metal whistled as it flew through the air. The blade struck high on Gertruh’s side, embedding itself halfway through her body.
Gertruh’s cry of pain pierced Jacob’s mind, and the world ceased to turn in slow motion, resuming its proper speed as the small demon turned to Jacob and gave him what he imagined to be a betrayed look. Blood was trickling from the corner of her mouth. She fell down. A pool of dark blood was already stretching beneath her. She didn’t move again.
Jacob’s stomach abruptly revolted. He bent at the waist and dry-heaved, his eyes prickling, bile burning the back of his throat.
“Jacob?” Kirsten’s voice was little more than a murmur. “Are you all right?”
She started coming to him. He raised a hand palm out to her, hoping to stop her, but she kept on. When he straightened again and wiped his mouth with his forearm, she was only inches away. She didn’t say another word but threw her arms around his neck and drew him to her. His mind blank and his body numb, Jacob let her hold him, never even thinking as far as to hold her back. He couldn’t take his eyes off Gertruh. She’d never seemed so small.
“Jacob—”
“Don’t.” He didn’t even recognize his voice. “Don’t tell me I had to. I know that. But she was just a kid.”
“She was,” Kirsten breathed against his ear. “And I’m sorry you had to do that. But... Jacob... there’s more demons coming.”
He pulled out of her arms and turned around to see what she was looking at. Two silhouettes were approaching, fast enough that Jacob knew they were running. One was small, the other much larger. It seemed Taleeh had gone to get reinforcements.
“Please go up to the camp,” he said, and again his voice, icy and unfeeling, was a shock even to him, even through the numbness that had wrapped around him. “I can’t fight two of them and protect you. Kirsten, please.”
She left, but not before she’d pressed her lips against his and whispered, “Please be safe. I can’t lose you.”
Jacob didn’t watch her go. He drew the sword out of Gertruh’s body, fighting another dry-heave, and turned to the approaching demons.
ANDREW HAD LONG AGO grown used to the restrictions being a vampire imposed on him. Over the past couple of centuries, he’d only regretted being unable to go into the sunlight when his son, too young still to understand, had asked to go outside during the daytime.
At that moment, however, Andrew would have given anything to be able to withstand sunlight. He didn’t want to go out into the sunlight per se, but getting away would have been great. Instead, all he could do was retreat as far away from the conversation as he could, which was how he found himself in the training room.
He didn’t want to talk about Cara’s diaries with Kirsten; talking about them with Jacob had been difficult enough.
He wanted even less to show those diaries to the mage, and he knew the request would come. It was obvious her not-so-innocent question about whether he’d shown the diaries to Julie was only a first step.
Kirsten had a point, he couldn’t deny that. The key to closing the door to the demon invasion might indeed be in those pages of neat, round handwriting in blue ink. It seemed even more likely if the revelation of Jacob’s origin had somehow allowed Kirsten to figure out how to bring them back to this world. However, that knowledge comforted Andrew in his decision not to show the diaries to anyone.
If his son’s life was tied to the demon invasion, putting an end to the invasion might forfeit Jacob’s life. Andrew knew it was beyond selfish for him to put the life of his son before the lives of all those who had died and would die under a demon’s weapon. He knew it, and he would try to make up for it by fighting as long as he was able to. But he refused to risk Jacob’s very existence. Nothing anyone could say would change his mind. And when Nicholas joined him in the training room, Andrew couldn’t say it fast enough.
“She’s not reading those diaries. I don’
t care what she says, no mage is ever laying eyes on those things.”
The extent of Nicholas’ answer was to raise an eyebrow and gently touch his coffee mug to Andrew’s blood-filled one as though in a toast.
“Cheers,” he said, and, when Andrew stared at him, added, “What? Did you actually think I’d argue with you on that?”
Andrew blinked. It felt as though his worldview had shifted by a few degrees, not really enough to make anything different, but enough to be noticeable.
“I did, yes,” he admitted. “You’ve been telling me for twenty years that there’s no proof that Jacob’s birth and the demon invasion are linked.”
“And I still say there is no proof. But just because there’s no proof doesn’t mean it’s not true. And if there’s the slightest chance that it might be true, then the last thing we’re doing is letting the girl poke at that magic and try to unravel it. Agreed?”
Having lived with Nicholas for decades, having known him for much longer than that, Andrew had long since grown used to the regular feeling of utter surprise Nicholas was so adept at creating in him. Rarely had the surprise been mixed with such complete gratefulness.
“Agreed,” he repeated, and, curling a hand to the back of Nicholas’ head, drew him in for a kiss.
They pulled apart when their son’s voice rose from the entrance to the room.
“Well, I don’t agree. And seeing how I’m the main person concerned here, I think we should at least talk about it.”
As they stood shoulder to shoulder and faced Jacob, Andrew could only curse himself for never managing to destroy the diaries. He’d thought about it many times, but never gone through with it. Seeing the determination on Jacob’s face now, it certainly felt like it’d have been easier that way.
Chapter Twenty-One
LEAVING JACOB BEHIND and going up the hill by herself was the hardest thing Kirsten had ever done in her life, harder even than breaking up with him had been. That time, she’d known it was for the best. Today, she couldn’t think of any good reason at all for her to walk away.
That was what he’d asked of her though, so how could she refuse? Arguing with him would only put his life in jeopardy. He was in enough danger already without Kirsten adding to it. And she couldn’t help, however much she wished she could.
She wanted to look back. She wanted to turn and check that he was all right more than she’d ever wanted anything else in her life—anything except getting out of this place and going home. Going home with Jacob.
But what if he was dead, or dying? What if the demons had killed him and were now rushing up the hill after her? What if she could have helped him survive, what if she had managed to summon enough magic to help him, to save him, what if—
She realized she was starting to hyperventilate and forced herself to stop thinking by reciting to herself the ingredients of her botched spell, the one that had brought them here. She’d been thinking about it day after day, dreaming about it every night, thinking back of everything she’d done, everything she’d said, everything that had happened, but she was still no closer to finding an explanation, let alone a solution. She had to, though. Jacob was counting on her. Jacob had faith in her. She’d already broken his trust too often as it was.
With a new determination coursing through her, she managed to reach the plateau and cave where they’d made their camp. Once she stood there, in the opening between two tall boulders, she forced herself to take five slow breaths and finally turned around.
Distance was always difficult to judge in this place. The lake down in the valley was only twenty minutes away when going downhill, a little longer when climbing up, but it seemed much farther than that. With the sun almost directly across from her, she was blinded for a moment, and had to blink a few times to clear her vision.
The first thing she saw was a silhouette moving up the hill toward her. Something gleamed at its side. A sword. Jacob. Her vision blurred again, this time with tears, and it was all she could do not to let herself collapse to her knees or rush back down the hill toward him.
She needed to do something, anything to occupy her hands and mind; she worked on restarting their small fire, which had died down to embers with no one to tend it. By the time Jacob finally reached the camp, the flames were high, warming the chill that had settled down to the core of Kirsten’s bones. She took one look at him, and the resolve she’d clung to since coming back to work with him and his fathers crumbled, leaving nothing in its wake but regrets.
Her mind as blank as his eyes and her heart aching for him, she approached him and gently tugged the sword from his hand. She set it down on the ground, and threw her arms around him, holding him as close to her as she used to, back in those simpler days when she’d been happy to call him her boyfriend.
For long, interminable seconds, Jacob remained still against her, his arms hanging at his sides. Suddenly, he seemed to pull out of a daze and wrapped his arms around her, crushing her to him. Maybe at another time she would have protested it was too tight, but right now, as he dropped his face to the crook of her neck and shook lightly against her, she really couldn’t have cared less.
Holding him close with one hand, she swept the other up and down his back in long movements, hoping to soothe him. She didn’t ask if he was all right; she knew already that he wasn’t, and she knew why. He’d befriended those demons, and seen them as kids more than anything else. Of course he’d be distraught after killing them. But what other option did he have, really? Did he understand that?
“You had no choice,” she said quietly, now running her fingers through his hair. “If you hadn’t done it, they’d have killed us. It’s not as though you attacked first.”
“No.” Jacob’s voice was hollow. “They wouldn’t have killed us. They’d have killed you.”
His arms tightened a little more around Kirsten’s waist and this time it was too much. She couldn’t help but let out a quiet “Oof” as all the air rushed from her lungs. Immediately, Jacob pulled back.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”
His cheeks were dry, but his eyes were bloodshot, and suddenly Kirsten couldn’t bear to hear another pain-filled word from him. Not when she’d been so scared to lose Jacob for good, not when he had done this, broken his own soul to pieces, to keep her safe. She stopped him mid-word the best way she knew, by pressing her mouth against his.
It had been years. It had felt like a lifetime. But kissing him was still the most natural thing in the world.
JACOB HAD HAD THIS dream before. Many times.
He’d dreamed Kirsten had come back to town, come back into his life, and that she’d claimed him as hers again. And so, it was easy to fall back into that dream, easy to close his eyes, tilt his head, and deepen the kiss. Easy to forget everything that wasn’t them, and simply focus on the softness of her lips against his, the tentative touch of her tongue to the seam of his mouth, until he welcomed her in and tried to say without a word that he’d been waiting for this moment since the minute she’d told him they were over.
But like all dreams, it couldn’t last forever, and it was much too soon when she broke the kiss. She didn’t release him, didn’t pull out of his embrace, but she did move back enough that he could see her flushed cheeks and darkened eyes. For a long moment, neither of them said anything. Jacob caught himself holding his breath in fear that the smallest noise, the smallest movement would send Kirsten right out of his arms. She was the one to break the silence, and she did so in the worst possible way.
“I’m sorry, I...” She pulled out of his reach and he let her go. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”
At any other time, under any other set of circumstances, Jacob would have taken his cue from her and backpedaled, even if it meant lying and pretending this hadn’t meant anything to him. But this wasn’t any random moment. His heart still ached from what he’d needed to do, and he couldn’t bear to put up a front, not this time, and the consequences be damned.
“Well, I’m not sorry,” he said, keeping his eyes locked with Kirsten’s. “And I know exactly what I was thinking. I was thinking it’s been much too long. I was thinking I killed three demons, two of them kids, because the mere thought that anything could hurt you drives me out of my mind. And I was thinking even after all this time I still don’t understand why you broke up with me and it fucking hurts, Kirsten.”
Kirsten’s blush darkened a little more. She crossed her arms over her chest. Of all things, she looked angry, though Jacob couldn’t fathom why. She was the one who had kissed him.
“I told you why,” she said, her voice wavering slightly. “I don’t feel that way anymore.”
It was the fact that she wouldn’t look him in the eyes that did it. Years ago, he’d let this very thing pass, thinking she might be sad or guilty to be breaking his heart. Now, though, he recognized the avoidance for the sign that it was.
“Liar,” he said calmly. “If you didn’t feel anything for me anymore, you wouldn’t have kissed me. You wouldn’t have been so jealous when I spent some time with Rachel—”
“I wasn’t jealous!” she tried to object, but Jacob continued right over her.
“—and you wouldn’t have come back to town to work for my father to begin with. Mages as strong as you are in demand everywhere. You could have worked anywhere in the world, for anyone you pleased, and for more money than what Andrew pays you. So how about you tell me what that was really about? If I’m going to die here, I’d like to know that much.”
Her gaze snapped back to his, the anger fiercer than before.
“You think I’m going to let you die?”
He shrugged.
“I think you won’t have much of a choice. I just killed three demons. Odds are, someone will notice. Someone will come looking for them. I won’t be able to kill every single demon that comes our way.”
