With infinite care, Diltraa reached up and touched the front leg of the hulking skeletal frame. Immediately, the child’s body began to convulse. He retched and shuddered, and pieces of skin and dried flesh fell away in great chunks.
Diltraa discarded the dead child’s body and it crumpled to the floor.
Out of the wreckage a slimy, stunted abomination crawled. Spindly and shrunken, it resembled a four-legged spider as it hopped up into the cabinet. Scaling the great skeleton, ribbons of wet flesh flew from the parasite’s back and latched onto the ancient bones. Slowly, the demon lord called Diltraa reclaimed its true form, many years after the torturous event that had robbed it of these very bones.
The creature emitted a shrill cackle that echoed portentously down the wide corridor, and the house itself shuddered.
*
Jessica was sitting on a stone bench in Norlath’s garden when Nicholas found her. She seemed lost in thought, listening to the plants as they rustled their soft whispers.
Only when he was almost upon her did Jessica snap from her reveries and turn to acknowledge him.
“Nicholas,” she said warmly, then frowned. She looked him over, then peered past him at his mother, who lingered behind him. “Nicholas, who is this?”
He answered stonily. “She’s come back,” he said. “She’s told me everything.”
“Whatever do you mean?” Jessica asked, her gaze flitting between the woman and the boy.
Nicholas didn't know why she was acting so confused, surely she knew that one day somebody would come to stop her. To make her pay for what she'd done. The mesh of lies clung to him and he couldn't even feel them.
“What has she told you?” Jessica prompted nervously.
“Everything,” Nicholas replied coldly. “There’s no use pretending anymore. I know what you’ve done.”
His voice didn’t sound like his own, as if somebody was moving his mouth for him.
Jessica took a step toward him, but Nicholas shrank back.
“Stay there,” he warned, and his fist tightened around a dagger. He had retrieved the Drujblade from the entrance hall, where he’d lost it during his confrontation with Snelling. Now he held it fast, knowing what he must do, even if his insides were shuddering. He cast a look back at his mother and Anita nodded encouragingly, her lips pressed together tightly. He drew strength from her.
“Go on, Nicholas,” she said softly. “You know you must.”
Nicholas turned back to Jessica.
“I–” he began, then stopped, realising he had no idea what to say. He just had to take the blade and put it in her throat, like his mother had told him. Why was it so difficult? Something didn’t feel right. But the boy didn’t question his mother’s words; such was his desperation to have her back. He shoved away the doubt, returned to the welcome certainty of his mother’s assurances. He had to do this. Then everything would be okay again. They’d go home and be a family. None of this madness would matter anymore.
Gritting his teeth, the boy seized Jessica by the arm.
“You’ve done terrible things,” he told her, echoing Malika’s words, unaware that they weren’t his own.
Jessica’s eyes grew wide.
“Nicholas, you’re hurting me,” she said, attempting to struggle free. He squeezed tighter still.
Jessica looked at his mother. “What have you done to him?” she cried. Then to Nicholas: “You have to fight it! What you’re doing isn’t right. Listen to yourself. Who do you think she is?”
He ignored her strange behaviour.
“She’s come back for me. Everything’s going to be okay again.”
Jessica looked at him and her expression changed. It flooded with sudden sympathy, though Nicholas didn't know why.
“Your mother,” she whispered. “You think she’s your mother.” Her voice filled with fresh urgency. “She’s not, Nicholas. You have to believe me. Everything she’s said is a lie. Remember what you asked me before? About sensing things? Use that now, free yourself from whatever spell she’s cast over you.”
“What about the people you’ve killed?” Nicholas shouted. His head was pounding. Confusion exploded into anger.
“The village! All those villagers. What did you do to them?”
Jessica’s face hardened.
“No, Nicholas,” she said firmly. “That was nobody’s fault.”
“It was you!” Nicholas bellowed, crushing her arm in his fist. “You killed them all!”
“NO!” Jessica yelled, her eyes glassy with tears.
“What did you do to them?”
“I didn’t do anything,” Jessica persisted, pleading with him now. “Nobody did anything to them. Please stop.”
“Tell me!”
“Nicholas, please,” Jessica begged. Tears streamed down her face, but he didn't care. He was sick of the lies, the deceit. He needed answers, and if this was the only way, so be it.
“What happened in Orville?” Nicholas demanded. He raised the knife and pressed it against her throat. “What killed those people?”
“Not yet,” his mother warned him gently from behind. “Don’t kill her yet. We need her to talk first.”
“What killed those people?” Nicholas repeated, pressing the blade against Jessica’s skin.
As if unable to bear it any longer, Jessica let out a pained shriek.
“You!” she cried. Her shoulders sagged and she stared wildly into his eyes. “You did, Nicholas,” she told him. “You were born there, almost sixteen years ago. And your birth was a beautiful thing. A terrible thing. Such power never comes into the world without a price, and the occupants of Orville paid that price for you with their lives.”
“No,” Nicholas murmured. “I was born in Cambridge. My parents told me.” His hand was shaking, weighed down by the Drujblade. It suddenly felt as heavy as a sledgehammer.
Jessica shook her head. “No,” she whispered. “You were born here and taken away for safety. Such was the force of your entrance into this world that it nearly destroyed the entire village. It became frozen in time, caused a tear in reality, and every soul that lived there was caught like a fly in a web. They’re dead, but they continue to live undead lives, caught there for all eternity.” She grabbed Nicholas’s arms. “It’s not your fault. You’re meant for great things, Nicholas. You’re special.”
Nicholas pushed the woman away, the bitter tang of the truth snapping the chains that had bound him. Gone were the feelings of warmth and comfort. Reality crashed down on him like a freezing wave and he spluttered as if rising from the cold depths of the sea, raw and exhausted. He whirled around, finally seeing the red-haired woman for who she really was.
She was standing right where his mother had been not a moment before.
“You,” he said.
Malika merely smirked.
“A pity,” the woman drawled. “I had hoped you would be the one to kill her. There would have been such poetry to it. You’d have been one of us forever. How we yearned to welcome you into our fold. You have such power at your fingertips. It seems I’ll have to finish the witch myself.”
Nicholas put himself between the two women. “No,” he said.
The red-haired woman laughed and the plants around her shivered. “And they say chivalry is dead,” she teased.
At that moment, a guttural roar blasted into the still garden. The woman's smile widened and she threw a look back at the garden doors.
“Oh dear, Daddy’s woken up,” she smiled. “Doesn’t sound happy, does he?”
Nicholas listened as destructive sounds echoed from within the house, and Jessica flinched beside him. Then the doors were ripped from their frame and hurled high over their heads into the foliage.
Nicholas’s heart leapt into his throat. A hunched, repugnant creature like nothing he had ever seen was revealed in the doorway.
It filled the entire doorframe with its gangling form. Slimy, copper-coloured skin was stretched tight over jutting bones. The monster l
ooked like a giant insect, twice as tall as a man and with elongated limbs that were easily twice as powerful. Bone protuberances stuck out from the creature’s elbows, shoulders and knees, knotted knobs of bone that looked tough and durable. Worst by far, though, was the beast’s countenance. Enormous horns protruded from a high, wide forehead, and it had only slits where the nose should be. At the centre of those craggy features, twin orbs of ice-white burned into Nicholas’s soul and the demon gnashed its enormous, razor-sharp teeth eagerly.
“Nicholassssss,” it hissed.
“It’s the boy,” Nicholas said, recognising the inhuman glow of those terrible eyes. He put an arm out protectively towards Jessica and saw that she was trembling with terror.
“No!” the woman gasped. “NO!” Petrified at the sight of this fresh nightmare, she fell to her knees, clutching her hands together before her.
The beast lumbered over on its awkward, wiry limbs, using its long front legs like an ape might. It shifted its weight skilfully, trampling flowers and bushes, tearing trees from the earth and hurling them out of its path.
Then, finally, it was towering over Nicholas and Jessica, its great shadow falling like a shroud. The fusty stench of charred coals came off the beast and Nicholas had to fight not to gag.
“Jessica,” the demon drooled, its incisor-lined mouth lolling open. Colossal fangs dripped with black saliva and a forked tongue flickered in the air. “How long it’s been. You haven’t aged a day. Tell me, do I look any different?”
Jessica didn’t seem able to answer. Her face was a picture of horror. As Nicholas looked on helplessly, their doom seemed inevitable.
*
18 AUGUST, 1589
As the storm raged outside, Jessica and Isabel sat hand-in-hand. The sapphire portal coiled delicately between them, pulsing with the glow of a thousand stars. The light reflected in Isabel’s many rings and bracelets, and Jessica watched, wide-eyed, as a man’s features strained through the luminescence.
“There is another here…” throbbed the despondent voice of Harold Baxter, the spirit caught within the gateway.
“There are two of you?”
Isabel wasn’t able to conceal her surprise, and Jessica grew nervous.
“I… I don’t know who it is. They wish to speak.”
“There’s somebody with him?” Jessica hazarded quietly.
Isabel squeezed Jessica’s hand reassuringly, which only served to increase the young woman’s alarm – Isabel wasn’t exactly one for offering comfort.
“It can happen on occasion,” the old woman explained. “Brace yourself.” Then, addressing the spirit called Harold, she commanded: “Allow him entrance.”
Immediately the gateway changed. There was blazing red fire. Sheets of heat blasted up the column, choking the pure radiance that had been softly glowing there. Jessica cringed away, her brow immediately prickling with sweat.
“Don’t move,” Isabel ordered her. “This entity bears much anger. Be strong and we shall withstand it.” She addressed the furious wall of fire at the centre of the table. “Tell me your name.”
“Free me.”
The voice made Jessica’s head pound.
“We are here to guide you. Accept our help or leave this place,” Isabel ordered.
Her words went unheeded, for at that moment a feral howl screeched from within the portal, and a form ripped clean through the column of fire.
Slithering from the tabletop onto the floor, the bent, deformed figure spluttered and slowly uncurled itself.
Jessica screamed.
It looked like an emissary of Satan. Long, spindly limbs stretched and unfurled, and thin, copper skin strained over gnarled, bony protuberances. The stench of burning coals was suffocating and the monster filled the corner of the room, its horned head scraping the ceiling.
Jessica wrenched her hands free of Isabel’s. Immediately, the portal sputtered and died, plunging the room into darkness.
“What have we done?” Isabel’s voice croaked.
A spluttering cackle echoed from the corner.
As Jessica’s eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, a cruel mouth filled with razor teeth smirked at her. Bone-white eyes flashed frigidly, scouring the pentagon-shaped parlour, and Jessica shuddered as the creature’s icy stare raked through her.
“The world has changed little,” the fiend rasped. “Still over-pompous mortals meddle in powers too potent for their brittle minds.”
Jessica recoiled. The urge to run threatened to overpower her. Voices of reason toiled sluggishly in the back of her mind. For the first time in her life, Jessica knew that Isabel had no control over what was happening, and she would have fled, but her entire body was frozen in fear.
“Be gone!” Isabel shrieked, rounding on the hulking shape. She seized one of her necklaces and brandished a pentagon star in front of her. “I expel you from this plane! Leave this place!”
A forked tongue lashed at the air.
“Banish me? You believe you possess such power, enervated crone? Many lifetimes has it taken to find a way back into this pitiful world. Do you expect me to cower before your feeble totems?”
“What is it that you want?” Isabel demanded, still clutching the necklace before her.
“Death, agony, chaos,” the demon drooled. “The Dark Prophets will rise, and the Trinity shall be blasted into oblivion. There, they’ll rot until the end of days.”
Isabel was unable to conceal her alarm.
“What are you?” she challenged.
“Diltraa,” the monster spat. Its pointed teeth glinted like metal. “Demon of the Eld Regions.”
“D–demon?”
Jessica couldn’t stop the hoarse whisper escaping her lips. At the sound, Diltraa turned to behold her, and its ugly countenance twisted with maniacal glee.
“A young one! I adore the young ones,” the demon cackled, and hot breath steamed from its viper-like nostrils. The stink of burning flesh overwhelmed the room. “I shall peel the skin from you inch by inch, little one.”
“Leave her be!” Isabel yelled, but the demon ignored her objection. It hobbled across the room on elongated limbs and dragged Jessica from her chair. Screaming, Jessica felt the revolting thing’s abrasive skin graze against her own, and a massive claw clamped around her throat. The stench of burnt cinders flooded her nostrils.
Isabel jumped to her feet, reaching up to her hair and wrenching free a long, mean-looking hairpin.
“Wait,” Diltraa hissed, raising its horned head and sucking in the air through its nostrils. “There is power here.”
The creature scrutinised the room. Its shooting glare saw right through the walls, searching. Then the beast let loose an elated crow.
“Can it be?” it hooted jubilantly. “Can I have breached the very stronghold that so many others have failed to enter?”
The head swivelled to stare at Isabel and the ugly, jutting features appeared to see her in a new light.
“I’d know that stench anywhere,” Diltraa spat. “Sentinel scum. Filthy parasite. What luck this is! When I’m finished with the child, I’ll gladly tear you into a thousand pieces and feed you to the hounds of Hell. This house is the Sentinel keep! It shall be my new fortress and seed evil through the world of Man.”
The fog of fear was smothering Jessica, but then something so unexpected happened that she was jerked back into the present.
Isabel hooted loudly.
“Demon of the Eld Regions, did you say?”
The old woman let out another roar of laughter.
“I heard your kind were all scum-eating, slow-festering maggots! All talk and no spine!”
Diltraa’s eyes blazed at Isabel.
“What say you?” Diltraa snarled. Its teeth gnashed in irritation.
Jessica’s insides felt like they were turning in on themselves. What was Isabel doing? She glared at her guardian, dumbfounded, and saw that a pale confidence had stretched across her mentor’s wrinkled features.
“You are nothing to this world,” Isabel stated matter-of-factly, shrugging her shoulders. “How do you account for your kind’s effortless expulsion from this plane all those centuries ago? Make threats all you want – a hearty laugh would do me a world of good!”
A trembling snarl vibrated from the demon’s throat. Slowly it appeared to be escalating in size. Its eyes raged white fire.
“Your lunacy reveals itself, witch,” the beast rasped. “We were not expelled. There are ways in and out of this world that you could never fathom. How easily I intercepted your gateway, forced my way back into this wretched plane. Others shall do the same, and it will rain blood for a century!”
Jessica was cast aside. She collapsed against the wall.
Diltraa’s lanky frame loomed over Isabel and Jessica watched the old woman become lost in the white pools of the demon’s eyes. The nothingness that filled them seemed to draw her in, mesmerising and murderous. The old woman let out a sudden cry of pain and clutched at her chest, as if an iron fist had clamped around her heart. She let out another strangled cry, collapsing back into the chair.
“Isabel!” Jessica shouted. “No!”
Isabel forced her eyes open and drew a laboured breath.
“Go!” she gasped. Horrendous, cramping pain seemed to have seized her body and she convulsed alarmingly.
“No!” Jessica cried, tears coming. “I won’t leave you!”
In desperation she searched the room for something – anything! – that would help them. Then she saw it. The iron candle holder that had toppled over in a corner of the room. With the demon concentrating on Isabel, Jessica darted over and seized the metal stand. She plucked the candles from their holders, revealing short, vicious-looking spikes.
Diltraa’s pitiless gaze fell down on Isabel and a forked tongue flickered from the fiend’s mouth again, greedily consuming her terror.
“Your fear is glorious,” the demon gurgled.
Anger and loathing like nothing Jessica had ever felt before coursed through her. She gripped the candle holder tight and charged at the demon, plunging the metal stand into its back.
The creature emitted a strangled screech and the teeth of the holder speared clean through it, buckling its back before bursting out the other side.
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