by Kara Silver
“Roll. No, from the shoulder. It absorbs the momentum and impact.” Aeth demonstrated. “Practice now, so you can do it when you jump to the ground.”
“Yeahno.” But it was some of the most fun she’d had since she’d got there and she was sad to reach Heylel and its familiar buildings. “Don’t want to,” she muttered. “Why can’t I just watch TV? Or go and get drunk? Now it’s over?”
“I don’t need to remind you he was a minor player. There are other demons more dark and dangerous, and you need to be ready. You’re—”
“A guardian too. With a different responsibility.”
“Yes.” She’d surprised him again, she saw. She liked doing that.
“Thank you. For this evening. It was fun.” He was trying, she knew, to make things…the least awful they could be. “I’ll try too. I really will.”
“I know.”
For a second, neither spoke, the silence stretching, warm, somehow, and shared. Kennedy was the first to look away.
“I’ll see you later.” Aeth pointed to the museum, in the distance.
Alone, she detoured to get her bag and books. If she was staying, she needed to study. Look things up. Things like… At the statue, she slowed to a stop, making a mad grab for her phone and googling not Rush or Russia but Obrussa. Latin. Which in English meant test.
“I could have told you that!” she called out to the empty quad. Empty of a shadow mage, anyway, although his words lingered. She bent to see the inscription, as she had before. Dominus qui sunt eius. The Lord knows who are his. She squinted. The motto…started a little too far to the right, didn’t it? That space to its left…as if extra words should be there?
Bending lower still, she laid a hand over the space and her breath caught as two more words appeared, slowly, as if with reluctance.
Caedite eos.
This time she had no need for a translation app on her phone. Not when the letters sank a little then re-emerged, this time, in English. Kill them all. As she stared, the rest of the phrase re-arranged itself: For the Lord knows those that are his own. Unable to remain upright, she sank to her knees.
“You have no idea what you’ve done, do you? No idea what you’ve disturbed.”
“Oh, shut up,” she muttered to the mocking echoes of the shadow mage’s words.
“You don’t have a clue how long it’s been going. Or for who.”
“I’ll find out,” Kennedy Smith promised whoever was listening or watching. “All of it. Who I am, why I’m here—everything. And when I do, every single one of you will pay for everything you’ve done.”
Book Two, Demon Shade, is available for preorder now
Book Three, Demon Gift, releases March 2019
Book Four, Demon Mage, releases June 2019
