The First One's Free (The Summoner Sisters Book 0)

by Allison Hurd

  I turn back to look at her. “What? No. Well, I mean now I am, and thanks for that.”

  “Ha! I knew it!”

  I eye her carefully, trying to see if there’s something else going on. “Wanna tell me what opened your third eye?”

  “I stopped to inspect the flowers on the way up. I uh…managed to ingest some of it. It turns out they’re incredibly potent. And the hallucinations, man. I mean…top notch. I can cross Paris off my bucket list, I know what a brioche is now, and what the Eiffel Tower smells like.”

  “What it smells like, huh?”

  “Yep. Frites and iron. Just a hint of lemon zest.”

  “Good to know,” I chuckle a little. “But why are people getting stoned at a Nalusa Chito’s den? And more specifically, why would you eat a weird flower?”

  My sister gasps and starts to fall, weighing down my left side. Then another scream reverberates through the close, stone space.

  “It’s there,” Lia whispers. I can feel goosebumps on her wrist. I start to pick her up, but she seems to have run out of muscle control for the moment, so I give it up. I ease her down to the floor, ignoring the stabbing pain that returns to my ear. I open the pocket in which she keeps her own headlamp and I set it on her head, turning it on.

  “Hey, chica, easy now,” I say, grabbing her face. “You with me?”

  “Wow, this flower just don’t quit. What the hell is it?” She blinks at me. “Your aura is interesting, Summer. It slinks away like a cat that doesn’t wanna be pet.”

  “Well, I don’t wanna be pet,” I joke, trying not to get nervous. “Focus, Lia. Can you see it?”

  “I can feel it. I can feel it watching. It…just wants to know what I’m thinking.”

  That doesn’t sound safe. “Okay, kiddo. You need to come back to earth, okay?” I reach for the vial of smelling salts that I always keep on my person and hold them under her nose. “Deep breath, please.”

  She does as I say and seems to come back a little. “Saint Joan’s chafed panty line, that does not pair well with the Eiffel Tower,” she curses, rubbing her head. “Ugh, I see now why this drug isn’t popular. The coming down part is faster’n and more furious than anything Vin Diesel ever got to drive.”

  She stands up unsteadily, using the wall to help. “No, stop fussing, Summer. I got this,” she tells me, waving off my hovering hands.

  “Well, stop eating strange plants and I’ll stop fussing,” I say.

  “Me me me moo me,” she mimics me.

  “You’ve got a future as a Muppet, if this vagabond thing don’t take off,” I say dryly, pulling her closer towards the hallway.

  There’s a crunch and the area dims substantially as Lia’s boot grinds out the light I’d brought with me.

  “Shit, I’m so sorry,” she murmurs. I take another deep breath, the cold touch of leathery skin on my neck, caressing me.

  “Pink elephants, pink elephants, pink elephants,” I repeat to myself. Nalusa Chito are terrifying, but they can’t do anything if you don’t let bad thoughts linger. Bad thoughts like what happens if a Nalusa Chito nests in your soul. Stop. “Pink elephants….”

  Lia flashes her light at me and the sensation stops. I can feel the fiend waiting though, circling like a vulture over a dying man.

  “I’m sorry, Summer, let’s get out of here. Come on, we’re so close.”

  In the sudden darkness, I can feel the devil trying to get at me. It pokes and prods at my psyche, searching for a way in. I am assaulted with several of my worst memories: stupid things I said a decade ago, horrific thoughts that I’ve stumbled over, the words I would never use against anyone but myself. It takes all of my willpower just to breathe, to be still.

  “Come on, Summer, just one step. You can do it,” my sister coaxes, her voice distant.

  I swallow noisily, desperately trying to shore up the levies. I know my feet still work, but I just don’t have any energy to spare against the Nalusa Chito’s attack on my mental defenses. My sister pulls insistently at my arm, and I stumble forward blindly a few steps before a white hot pain, worse than being mauled by a manticore, tears through my leg. I cry out and fall to my knees, spinning to put my back defensively against the wall.

  “What! What is it? Summer, please tell me what’s wrong,” my sister pleads. She too puts her back to the wall, and pulls out her own knife, looking for threats.

  “Got you,” I hear a whisper in my mind. I look down at my own foot. It’s like I’m staring at reality through a strobe light. With each flash, my foot changes from mangled to whole. With more effort than I’ve used to outrun a werewolf, I can make things stop moving long enough to be about eighty percent sure that I’m not actually bleeding.

  “Lia, it’s close,” I manage to grate out.

  “If you leave, you know what will happen,” the gravely voice of the Nalusa Chito chuckles. “For it is your darkest thought.”

  “Pink elephants, pink elephants,” I repeat again, running away from the treacherous words. I do know what will happen. It will take out my cowardice on all of the people already caught in its web; the people who don’t know what this heavy weight is on their chest. Then, knowing I could have helped, feeling that I should have been stronger, I will create a new shadow in my heart for the Nalusa Chito to use. And when it is finished harvesting its food from these humans, it will find me by the guilt that will hang over me like a beacon.

  I look up at my kid sister as she stands over me, frantically trying to pierce the darkness and find our foe. But it’s not there. It is every shadow, it is everywhere she can’t look.

  “Lia,” I call out softly. “I…I need you to get the car.” I can hardly move my mouth because every syllable pushes my shields back an inch. Every time I blink I see the Nalusa Chito in front of me, rending the people in these cells until they resemble the very worst deaths—oh, please, not them—I’ve seen in these past five years.

  “Why?” she demands. “It can’t hurt me; you go.”

  “If I go it will…the people,” I manage, forcing back the memory of frozen tears and tiny shoes.

  “It’ll attack the people and then your freakin’ martyr complex will make you a sitting duck,” Lia says, putting the pieces together. “Fuck this thing, seriously. Can we send it back with a Post-It that says ‘Do Not Leave Unattended’ please?”

  I try to laugh, but it turns to a strangled cry as the Nalusa Chito finds darker moments to pull out of my long-term storage.

  “No, it’s okay, Lia,” I say putting up a hand as she moves towards me. “It just found the Freedmans, is all. Wasn’t expecting it.”

  “Jesus.” She shudders at her own memory. “Okay. I’m going now. I’ll be right back, okay? Hang in there, we can do this,” Lia says, gripping my arm for a second before she sprints up the hall and out of my sight.

  I take a deep breath and force myself to stand up. It feels like I’m walking in water with weights on all of my limbs. Everything just takes so much more effort than it ought.

  “Your sister was fast to leave. She knows she’s better off without you,” the Nalusa Chito sneers.

  “Fuck off,” I tell it. Man…I shouldn’t have said that. Encouraged by my reaction, it changes tactics and spends what feels like hours running through terrible things I’ve said or thought about my sister. Believe me, there are a lot. It took three years of shit I don’t wanna think about to find out what I could do to make the faerie leave her alone, and by that point, I was freaked out, too, and hurt, and mad at all of the things I’d had to go through in order to come through for her. Don’t get me wrong. I’m glad I did it, and except for the few times things try to eat me, I love our life. But there is plenty of fodder for my own dismantling in that file, too. It wasn’t what I’d call the highlight of my life.

  “Murderer. Sadist. Waste. Those are the charitable names you have for yourself—and they are charitable,” it whispers. “You would do everyone a favor if you took up less space. Your sister would be free to live the l
ife you know she could have, if it wasn’t for you,” it growls.

  I punch it in the mouth. We’re both surprised that the hit lands. I look down at my scraped knuckles and back up at the sinewy beast, my mouth agape. I didn’t know you could actually punch a shadow monster. But then it smiles, and we realize that the reason it can get hurt is because it can hurt me back. Unlike the Nalusa Chito, however, I am mortal. It backhands me into the cell across the small corridor and my armored back grinds into stone. The impact knocks my breath away and I fall in a pile to the floor next to the woman who keeps screaming. Well, that didn’t go as planned. Now that the monster has found my weak spots, it’s growing harder to think of anything except what it presents to me; the more I fight it, the harder it becomes to fend off. I spasm as I physically try to shake myself of the thoughts, and use the violent energy from that movement to stand back up. I kick the demon that stands before me. It spreads its wings and jumps to the ceiling. The woman screams again.

  “Hey! Leave her alone. Don’t be greedy, butthead,” I tell it. “You still haven’t sampled my tasty, tasty soul.” Saying the words clears my head and I hack the rope tying the woman down before I attack the Nalusa Chito. It’s strong, fast, can fly, and has better low-light vision than I do, so the fight isn’t really fair, but it gives me hope every time I land a hit, and every time I’m able to stand back up after taking one. It means it doesn’t quite have me, yet. I thrust and slice with my blade, I block and brace for the hits. This feels more normal. Physical danger isn’t nearly as troubling to me as the mental kind. Then my knife slides deep into the demon’s pectoral and I stumble, surprised that after several minutes of barely scratching it, I am able to get a solid blow. As I pull away, I see that it is smiling down at me, its fangs glinting in the light of my headlamp. Its wild eyes and grotesque snout chill me to my core and I step back. Something jumps on me from behind and wraps my neck in a choke hold, Instinctively, I slam back into a wall to shake it loose. There’s a soft “oomf” and the weight slides off of me, down to my feet. I spare a look to see what it is. The woman I just freed stands up, the same wildness in her eyes.

  “Aw...man...Not cool,” I say as I back up, blocking as she attacks me again. She claws at me savagely until my back is firmly against another wall and there’s nowhere else to retreat.

  “You see, my worthless meal, she is mine. And with a thought, I send her attacking her own nightmares. Today, those are you,” the demon says in its rasping voice. “Are you willing to die to prove you’re no killer?”

  The attacks become more and more violent. Then, the man threatening death to those who had wronged him joins the fray. I am only just managing to block their attacks, but staying on defense is no way to win a fight. Sooner or later, I’ll falter and go down, and they will kill me. To keep that from happening, I’ll have to attack one of the people I came to save, and in so doing, give the Nalusa Chito the keys to my castle. Even as I think it, the corners of my mouth turn down and I feel the weight of their lives on my conscience. I toy with the idea of letting this be the way I go. It would be for the best, probably. I do worry that I drag my sister down. I do often look inwards, wondering if it’s possible to fight monsters without becoming one, and what I would do if I found out it’s not. Perhaps today I find out.

  But then the woman trips and I see my opening. I grab her and spin her into the man, letting them tumble backwards. The Nalusa Chito stands between me and my exit, so I duck into the cell whose door is unfinished. Though the quarters are cramped, I can hold off attackers for much longer here. I just can’t, you know, get out which is definitely a design flaw. Okay, so I’m not a mastermind, I’m more an apprentice-mind—maybe a journeyman-mind. A wave of terrible thoughts crashes over me again, and I fall back, my head smacking against a protrusion in the wall. I bite back a sob and lean against the stone, willing myself to be numb as the thoughts cut me like my own knife. I can’t imagine dealing with this if I didn’t know what was causing it—or worse, being drugged and not knowing. It’s bad enough when you’ve stuck a knife in the goddamn thing. Unable to see it, unable to tell what’s real? Gitmo never had a torture so invasive.

  I sit there, welts and fresh blood rising through the many scrapes I’ve recently acquired. I allow myself a moment of pity for the hurt, before I spasm again to get past another intrusive thought. Enemies at the gate, enemies in my mind…and where is my sister? Shouldn’t she be back by now?

  “Maybe something happened to her,” the Nalusa Chito says matter-of-factly. That’s it. Those are the words I couldn’t hear, the thoughts I can’t escape. Tears stream down my face as I go over scenarios that may have imperiled her. I need to go find her, which means some morals will have to be compromised. I gear myself up to fight again, and feel my hope ebb away as the Nalusa Chito shows me images of the job if I botch it, the bodies of the people I came to save cold and blue in my headlamp. So I sit back down against the wall, trying to rally around whatever I have left.

  There is one more trick up my sleeve. One I swore to my sister I’d never use. I promised that I wouldn’t make any deals with devils, especially not the devils we know all too well. Indeed, Lia begged me to burn the reagents, but I told her they weren’t for that ritual. And myself? I told myself that they were just for “an emergency.” But it’s kinda funny how many things start looking like emergencies when you’ve got the code to the atomic bomb in your back pocket. We don’t summon things, my sister and I. We’re banishers, which means it’s our job and distinct pleasure to send monsters that make it to our realm back to their own. To summon goes straight in the face of the code we live by. But no one would have to know, and if I’m going to lose my soul, then I’d rather do so knowing she isn’t going to lose hers, too.

  Shuddering uncontrollably as my deepest shame is whispered over and over to me, I pull out the components to summon some extra firepower. I pull out a stone and a dead ember from my spell pouch, and then my fingers grasp a delicate skeleton leaf. Lia found it when we were camping in the Appalachians. We’d decided to take a couple days off, live off the grid for a bit. Holding the frail plant in my fingers, I’m flooded with memories of a different nature than those dislodged by the Nalusa Chito. These are some of the things I cherish most. Memories of sunlight and inside jokes and s’mores we made like we were kids again. It is another agony, but more like the sting of antiseptic than the actual cut. It is a healing pain, and it is the glimmer of hope I need to keep going.

  I put the items away. There will always be an easy button, I suppose, but pushing it would destroy what I love. This sucks, but it’s just a moment, and there will be better moments. I might not have a lot in me, but I know what the problem is, I know that I’d rather keep fighting, and I know I’ve got at least one thing worth struggling for—another adventure with my kid sister. It’s enough.

  “You are a big meanie,” I yell at the Nalusa Chito. It is perhaps not my most scathing insult, but I forgive myself. I pull a pair of handcuffs out of my back pocket and tackle the first person I see outside of my hidey hole. I snap the cuffs on him even as the woman jumps on me again. I spin and take her down.

  “Sorry, sorry,” I whisper to her, choking her with my legs. She stops struggling and I roll her into a recovery position, checking her breath. It’s still there, as is her heartbeat. Good. That’s one weight off. Prepared this time, I advance forward slowly, no weapons out. I meet each person as the Nalusa Chito frees them and I knock them out as humanely as possible. Every time I make contact with one of the victims, they whisper to me. “Thug.” “Psychopath.” “Slut.” “Damaged.” The words all ram right into my tender heart, laid bare as it is by the Nalusa Chito. It hurts more coming from them somehow, even though I know they don’t believe it. It is just the demon parroting my fears, though it uses many mouths. Trying to ignore the barbs, I catch each as they fall, laying them off to the side of my walkway. My knees shake with the effort, the salt from tears I didn’t even realize I was crying burning my
cheeks. My tormenter is now only a few feet away from me, with all of its pawns subdued. As I get closer, the pain increases, and a new level of paranoia joining the self-loathing. So busy am I, thinking of all the ways in which I will ruin this, and all of the ways that I couldn’t possibly win anyways, that I am completely unprepared for its next attack. The devil jumps behind me and pushes me down. I hit the floor so hard that my knees bounce off of the uneven floor. I cry out, feeling the skin split on jagged rocks. I need to get back to the light. Lia will be there, and then we will banish this monster, and maybe things will be okay again.

  I crawl forward, this one thought guiding me. The Nalusa Chito kicks me and I curl in around the bruised ribs. It picks me up and throws me down, my training only just managing to send me into a bone-jarring roll. And there I lay, curled in the fetal position, waiting for the next blow, mental or physical. Just a few more steps. I’d be back on solid ground with just a few more steps. The Nalusa Chito kicks me again as it steps over me, blocking the light and my escape.

  “Back where you belong,” it whispers, kicking me back down the hallway.

  This is quantifiably a bad thing. Like, on the list of “Bad Things,” being beaten back into the darkness by a soul-eating shadow monster is probably just below being forced to attend a Bieber concert. I just don’t know how to stop it.

  Indeed, I just don’t think I can stop it. I tell myself I just need to hang on, that there’s always a way. But how do you shut your own thoughts out of your mind? How do you stop attacks from something in between yourself and your armor? I’ve never been able to solve that puzzle. I have a feeling that if I don’t solve it soon, the Nalusa Chito’s is going to offer a solution to me. A permanent one. Sorry, Lia.

  C HAPTER 4

  “Hey, Meaniepants McTanstoomuch,” says a voice that hits me like a dose of morphine. “You are a very bad Nalusa Chito,” Ophelia chides, my hopes soaring again. When you are as low as you can get, the only place left to go is up. I rally around her strength, and pull out my smelling salts to give myself a burst of focus.