In the center of the spacious room was a cluster of people—Demons, mostly—all crowded around the same thing. Some were laughing quietly, and most were sipping champagne from tall glasses. Graceful strains of classical music drifted from invisible speakers, filling the huge room with light background noise to accompany the conversation. It sounded like Mozart, but I couldn't have named the familiar song right now.
I was so taken aback by this unexpected place that I know I was gaping. I couldn't help myself. The bright, open space was so un-Demon-like.
Our shoes tapped against the stone floor, and the group of standing Demons finally noticed our presence. The laughter died, though amused murmuring continued. I felt like we were walking in on some sort of celebration among diplomats, and seeing all the well-dressed people around us made me feel as if I were a bum off the street.
The crowd of Demons parted as we approached, and I finally saw what they had been gathered around.
Or rather, who.
The Demon Lord was almost as out of place in my mind as his lair was. He had a kind smile, for one thing, and he was extremely good-looking. Tall, dark, and handsome, he was the epitome of debonair. He had tanned skin, but it was a healthy compliment to his vivid green eyes. He looked like a prince from a foreign country or a famous movie star. And he was a lot younger than I expected him to be. He was probably only forty—he couldn't have been older, but I might have believed he was younger. He had light crinkles around his eyes, as if he laughed a lot, and his square jaw was perfectly sculpted.
He was wearing a white button-up shirt and black slacks. A dark-blue tie was loosened around his neck, and he was holding his wine-glass in one hand. His posture was perfect, his presence commanding.
But his good looks and unexpected youth were not what had me unable to look away in this moment. No, it was his aura that had me completely speechless—entirely disbelieving. Even though I knew this was the Demon Lord, his aura wasn't right. Because he wasn't a Demon. He wasn't surrounded in a thread of blackness. He wasn't even a Guardian. He was outlined in gold, and colors swirled obviously around him.
The Demon Lord was human.
I didn't realize that he was looking right at me until those thick lips parted and he spoke my name. “Kate Bennett, we've been expecting you. How was your drive? Uneventful, I hope.”
I just stared at him, unable to find my voice.
The Demon Lord gave me a kind smile, as if he understood—as if he was used to this reaction from every new Seer he met—and so he turned his bright eyes to my Guardian. “And you must be Patrick O'Donnell. You look younger than I imagined you'd be.”
I was finally able to tear my eyes away from the Demon Lord so I could see Patrick's reaction. Obviously he couldn't see auras, but he still looked surprised by the Demon Lord's appearance.
I opened my mouth to tell Patrick the startling truth about the Demon Lord but couldn't force any words out.
The Demon Lord chuckled lightly, both slender hands fingering his tall glass of champagne. “Oh dear. I am sorry, Patrick. I seem to have stunned your Seer. It happens frequently, I assure you…”
Patrick's head twisted away from the Demon Lord so he could face me. His aura grew worried when he saw the astounded look on my face. “Kate?” he asked, voice fragile. “What's wrong?”
I couldn't answer him, only stare at the self-declared king of the Demons.
The Demon Lord started to move in our direction, his dress shoes clapping loudly against the floor. “Please, Patrick, allow me to explain. Your aura tells me that you need to calm down—you're going to overwhelm yourself…”
Patrick glanced at the Demon Lord, not realizing the significance of his words in the first few seconds. His eyes widened suddenly as understanding dawned. “You're… a Seer?” he breathed dimly.
The Demon Lord smiled, a concerned edge to the action. “Yes. I admit, it generally thrills me when people put it together for the first time, but…” he tilted his head to the side to better take in our expressions. “Patrick, you look absolutely awful. I hardly take any pleasure in your amazement. Can I get you a tissue?”
Patrick didn't answer, didn't move. Traces of blood remained on his face, and his sleeve was stained, but the actual bleeding had stopped back in the elevator.
The Demon Lord fretted by clicking his tongue. “I'm sure we can find you a new shirt once we're done here.” He nodded suddenly to the two Dmitriev brothers. “Viktor, Yuri, our guests look a little tired. Would you please bring them some chairs?”
The Russians released us, but we didn't move—not even closer to each other. We were both staring at the Demon Lord, who was glancing over his shoulder at all his Demon friends. “If you would excuse us, please. We have things to discuss.”
They all responded to the dismissal immediately, except for the Chinese woman and the other Demons that had brought us here.
One older woman—a Demon who looked to be in her seven-ties—held out her wrinkled hand to the Demon Lord, who graciously took it up and laid a light kiss against her skin. “Thank you, Lady Rovella. I hope you will join me for dinner this evening?”
“Of course, my lord,” the woman returned, her voice stronger than I expected for an old lady.
He murmured an attentive good-bye and politely called out a few more direct farewells to the already retreating figures.
Soon all the well-dressed Demons and their accompanying Seers were gone, and the Demon Lord focused back on us. “Would you like something to drink? We have more champagne. We were celebrating a new alliance with the powerful Demon, Lady Rovella. She will be a great asset to the cause.”
I finally managed to form words, but they weren't very loud. “You can't be the Demon Lord. You're not even a Demon.”
“Ah, but you're jumping to conclusions.” He nodded to something behind us, and we both turned to see the Dmitriev brothers, each setting down an old-style cushioned chair. “Please, have a seat,” the Demon Lord urged.
He waited for us to lower ourselves onto the hard chairs, and then he continued in his velvety voice. “I'm not a Demon, Kate, but I am Lord of the Demons. If you think about it, the title still works quite nicely.”
Patrick's voice was strained. “But if you're the Demon Lord… and you're human… how have you been building power and fear for the past couple hundred years?”
The Demon Lord took a generous sip of the bubbly drink and gave me an easy smile. “I believe Kate could explain that to you.”
I nodded slowly, successively putting the pieces together. “You're a Special Seer. Like me. You've been going back in time.”
He gazed at me like a proud parent. “Exactly right. I've lived for years in the past, if one added up all the time—not that it aged me here, of course.” He glanced at Patrick, looking slightly regretful. “You don't seem too surprised by all this.”
Patrick was staring at some point past the Demon Lord, his mind trying to grasp this rapid change of balance. “Kate has mentioned this ability before. I never imagined that you…”
The Demon Lord was back to smiling. He reveled in our shock. “I know. Dastardly, isn't it? But we Seers are more capable than you Guardians—or the Demons—ever dreamed. And much more powerful.” He shot Takao a look, and the Japanese Seer hurried to find his master a chair.
“This doesn't make sense,” I mumbled, almost to myself. “If you're a Special Seer… what do you need me for? What do you need any of us for?” Terence's theory that the Demon Lord was gathering special Seers for traveling through time seemed a little redundant now. He could do that on his own. He had done it on his own.
The Demon Lord answered my question easily. “Really, it's not that difficult a concept. The more Special Seers I can get my hands on, the more of a force I can build. Demons are handy—imperative, actually—but I need Seers that can help me keep time in order. I can't effectively be in two places at once, and when I return to the present I'm unconscious for hours after traveling. It gets a litt
le annoying.”
Patrick's next words were touched with fear. “That's how you can be so manipulative. So powerful. You change the past. Or you threaten to change it. That's why Demons follow you.”
He tipped his head and motioned for Takao to place the chair in front of us. He sat down, and Takao and the Chinese Demon took up positions around him. The Dmitriev brothers were hovering behind us, but they were easy to ignore during such mind-boggling revelations.
“The one who can manipulate time is the one who will reign,” he said simply. “It's an easy enough concept. I've been able to create some of my best Demons by going back—some of my best Seers too. Like Takao Kiyota here and Mei Li.” The Chinese woman gave me a slitted look, and I made a mental note not to ever make her angry.
The Demon Lord shrugged and leaned back in his chair, completely at ease. “I've even changed the fates of a few of my… how shall I put it?… my least favorite Guardians.”
Patrick swallowed hard, receiving the thinly veiled threat.
I was getting over my shock—I was getting angry. “But you aren't a Demon—why do you want to do any of this?”
“What a rudimentary question.” He laughed, and the sound echoed around the room. “I crave the power, obviously. Darwin knew what he was talking about. The survival of the fittest. The strongest beings always rise to the top. They command fear and respect. The Special Seers… we're the master race, Kate. Surely you can see that.”
“When did you become a Seer?” I asked, curious despite my feelings of disgust.
He blew out his breath and tapped his fingertips against his glass. “Oh heavens, it was… almost twenty-eight years ago now. I was seven years old.” He paused, but when I didn't lift my stare he sighed. “You want the story in its entirety? Very well. There's not much to it, really. I was shot on Christmas Eve by my mother's new boyfriend. This was in Chicago in 1971. My mother and my little sister—they were both killed during his drunken rage, but he didn't realize that the bullet hadn't pierced my heart. I waited until he passed out, and then I managed to call the police. I was barely alive when the ambulance came, but after a long surgery and an even longer recovery, I managed to heal. And of course I saw strange colors, though no one believed me then.”
He spoke so calmly, it was hard to imagine he was telling his own tragic life story. His aura was a myriad of colors—I couldn't begin to guess what he was really feeling.
“I was placed in an orphanage—I had no remaining family. My new Sight alienated me from the other children, and no potential parent was interested in me.” For the first time, his handsome smile was forced. “And then the Guardians found me. There were two of them, but their names are unimportant to the story. At first I was thrilled. Finally my new Sight made sense. I had a place to go. I was nearly ten at this time, but I felt much older. I wanted to help fight the Demons, because in my mind they were everything my mother's boyfriend had been. But the Guardians were reluctant to let me do anything. They raised me but kept me in the background. When I finally learned that I was special, I couldn't wait to test my abilities. I received special permission from the Guardian Council, and I was soon their most knowledgeable Seer. I recruited other Special Seers, and together we pressed our limits, continuing our research to understand how our gifts were used. Through our experiments, my partner and best friend helped me reach a marvelous conclusion: we could use time traveling as a weapon. We could destroy our enemies before they had a chance to become Demons.
“But the Guardian Council didn't like our reasoning. They thought it wrong and dangerous. I was about sixteen when they shut down our research. I began to fulfill other Seer duties—the regular ones. The Guardians ordered me to abandon my special abilities, but I knew that I was right. Utilizing these powers would be the only way to stop the Demons from corrupting the humans.
“My friend agreed with me but came to enhance my thinking. Why should we be slaves to the Guardians or the Demons? Why should it be our design to help the humans? They were all inferior to us—no match for our special talents.
“The Guardians tried to have us killed, of course. Anything to keep us quiet. But we eluded them, and together we began to build this glorious empire. The Demons help me willingly, and together we will crush the Guardians. We, the Seers, will rule with complete power with Demons as our effectual slaves.”
It was probably the longest monologue I'd ever heard in my life. It was certainly the most chilling. I felt I was in the presence of a madman, yet he sounded completely sane. That was the worst part of all. He truly believed in what he was saying—what he was doing.
Patrick was silent beside me, but I knew he was thinking something similar.
The Demon Lord suddenly straightened in his chair, a grin twisting his face. “Enough about that. We have so many other things to discuss. First of all, Kate, I need to explain to you why you're here.”
“I'm special, I get it,” I snapped, wishing he'd stop smiling and Mozart would stop playing. Both were getting on my nerves.
Mei Li, the kung fu expert, glared at me, but the Demon Lord just tilted his head, allowing my tone. “Yes, Kate. You are special. But more so than you realize. It's true that I've been gathering every Special Seer I could—in many different times, for many similar reasons—but you are even more unique than you know.”
He took another sip of champagne, then continued quickly—deftly changing the subject. “Patrick, I assume you are also aware that—in addition to the ability to travel through emotions—Special Seers See more colors than regular Seers.”
My Guardian nodded once, stiffly.
The Demon Lord took yet another sip. I wondered if he was nervous but decided he was probably more excited than anything else. But excited about what? “Well, I mentioned my Seer friend before, the one who shared my vision. Sadly, he passed away, back in the past. It was an accident, but he managed to share a bit of his research with me before he died. We'd long known that auras—or rather, emotions—held great power. My friend was a scientist, a biochemist. He'd searched long and hard to find a flaw in the Guardians—a way to kill them. But the only imperfection he could find was that many suffered from depression. Some cases were quite severe, actually. But what good would that do us?”
Another sip, the pause longer this time. Then his green eyes focused on me. “And then he pieced everything together. You've heard the saying that a happy person is a healthy person? Well, his research was centered around this adage, and he soon learned that the proverb was quite correct. Our emotions act as a sort of immune system. The happier we are, the healthier we are—quite literally. We learned through trial and error that the Guardians are not exempt from this. The darker a Guardian's aura is, the more susceptible he is to depression, which leads to a darker aura, which in turn weakens him. Some simple chemistry that I don't care to bore you with solved the rest, and suddenly we had a virus that could kill a Guardian. Only a depressed one, but it's a work in progress. All the sickness needs is the smallest cloud of a second thought, a small seed of a regret, and… poof.”
He smiled at Patrick. “I sent Takao here to be sure you would be susceptible before I had Far Darrig put that infected Guardian in your path. I hope there are no hard feelings, of course, but all this was necessary to get Kate here.”
“Why?” I fairly whispered. “Why would you do all of this? Just for me? How did you even know about me in the first place?”
“We didn't, originally,” he admitted. “I'd sent Far Darrig to go after your grandfather, actually. I knew he was a Special Seer, because I was so involved with the research the Guardians had conducted that I knew almost every name they had at the time. All Special Seers were put on a list back then, for tracking reasons. He was a little older than I wanted to enlist, but Special Seers are rare, and Guardians are struggling to protect them more and more.”
“So you didn't even know I was a Seer? Let alone special?”
“I didn't know you even existed, Kate. I sent Far D
arrig, as I always do for these special cases. And while he scouted out the area, he discovered you.” I tried to ignore the tingle that ran up my spine, but it was difficult. His words were just so ominous.
“He realized you were a Seer. Far Darrig has always had a sense for that. Since the gene that makes Seers special is passed down through family, it only made sense to change our attentions to you—the younger, healthier option. And then he realized something.”
The Demon Lord paused, taking another sip of champagne to build up the excitement. Then his eyes bored into mine, and for really the first time he seemed dangerous.
“He knew you. He recognized your face.”
Every muscle in my body tensed, and my breathing became sharper.
I knew we were coming to a climax—I could feel it in the air, see it in his messed up aura. We were coming to that moment when our stomachs would drop. Our lives would spin out of control, and things would never be the same again.
Knowing this didn't keep my heart from pounding painfully against my chest while I waited for his words. Even though I already knew what he was going to say, I needed to hear him confirm my growing fear.
Finally he said, smooth and deep, “He knew your face, for he'd seen it before. Long ago, yes—but memories are funny things. Sometimes the mind clings to the most trivial moments and images. He'd seen you once before—briefly. But it was your drawing that lingered in his mind. The drawing done by his brother.”
Patrick was no longer breathing beside me. He was staring at the Demon Lord, utterly pale and completely unperceiving.
I heard a door open from across the room, and I turned to face the sound; tearing my eyes off Patrick's silent face to see our newest enemy who was coming out, right on cue.
I watched the figure emerge from one of the back rooms, from a single door set in the wall near the gigantic fireplace. His face was partially in shadow because he walked with his head ducked. I seemed to take in everything at once. His black aura, his light-brown hair that fell across his cheekbones. He was tall and muscular. He wasn't wearing a suit, like most every other Demon here. Just dark blue jeans—a little baggy—and a black button-up shirt, sleeves rolled to the elbows.
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