by Teresa Roman
I wondered if my mother was wrong about me being powerful. If I had an ability, I had yet to discover it. I tried convincing Devin to teach me about spellcasting and potion making, hoping that might kick-start things. He only chuckled at my impatience.
“We were only in the Wilds for a short time,” he said. “Now hush, before someone hears us talking.”
By the time we clocked out at the end of our shift, it was dark outside. Ominous, gray clouds filled the sky as Devin and I got in my car. Ever since our return, he’d been spending nights at my house, keeping the promise he’d made to my mother to watch out for me. I didn’t particularly care for being made to feel like a helpless little girl. Perhaps it would have bothered me more if didn’t enjoy falling asleep in Devin’s arms.
As I walked up to my front door I tried to brush off an uneasy feeling that came over me. I never did like it when the weather was gloomy. A lifetime of living in Crescent City, and I still hadn’t gotten used to it.
Before I could turn my key in the lock, the front door opened on its own. Maybe I’d forgotten to lock it in the morning. It was only at Devin’s insistence that I’d started doing it in the first place. Even though Crescent City was crawling with meth heads my house was secluded enough that my father had never worried about intruders. I was glad Devin didn’t notice that my door was unlocked, knowing that I’d never hear the end of it.
Devin followed me inside and took a seat on the couch. “Are you hungry?” I called out as I made my way to the kitchen. I didn’t register his answer because something caught my eye. The door to my dad’s office was open. I hadn’t been in there since he died. I couldn’t face walking into his office and not seeing him sitting behind his messy desk.
If something had been stolen from my dad’s office, I was going to be pissed. After walking over to his desk, I opened the drawers, not really sure what he normally kept in them, but figuring that I’d know if someone had been rummaging around looking for something valuable. After a cursory search, I was satisfied that nothing was missing.
Heading for the door, I realized that something was, in fact, gone. I turned to look at my dad’s desk again. There was a faint line where dust had settled around the spot a picture frame had once stood. Aunt Katy had given my dad the frame as a present. She’d bought it at a flea market. My father said it was perfect for my graduation photo. Maybe Katy had taken it with her after the funeral, I reasoned. After all, who would break into my house and steal a photo?
I let out a startled scream as I turned and collided with Devin.
“Holy crap, you scared me.”
“Sorry. What are you doing in here? I thought you were going to the kitchen.”
“I was, but . . .” I stopped myself before saying anything that I knew would wind up freaking him out.
“But what?”
“Nothing. I just. I miss my dad, that’s all.”
Devin’s lips brushed my forehead. He took my hand and led me out of Dad’s office to the kitchen. I pushed thoughts of my missing picture out of my head, vowing to call Katy in the morning to ask her about it.
A few hours later, Devin and I went upstairs. We got ready for bed, and then lay beside each other in the dark. The way he brushed his fingers through my hair as I lay in his arms sent shivers through me. I thought back to the night we spent together in the Wilds when I wore nothing but a shirt and underwear. Devin had seemed so nervous then. Given the circumstances, I understood why. What I didn’t get was what held him back now.
I looked up at him and reached around the nape of his neck, pulling him into a kiss before swinging my body on top of his. The warmth and strength of his body beneath mine made me feel feverish with need. His hands moved to my back, then my hips. I traced the line of his jaw with my lips first, then my tongue. Devin slid one of his hands under my shirt. It felt like silk on my skin, causing a breathy moan to escape from my lips. Just as it did, Devin snatched his hand away and twisted his body so that the two of us lay side by side.
“Lilli,” he whispered.
“What’s wrong?”
He stared at me for a moment and then tucked a few strands of hair behind my ear before replying, “Nothing.”
It was obvious he didn’t want to go beyond kissing and nuzzling. But why? He seemed almost afraid, like he might hurt me somehow, but that didn’t make any sense. I was far too embarrassed to ask. We hadn’t been together that long, so maybe stopping things from going further was Devin’s way of being a gentleman.
He pulled me back into his arms. “So, you never did tell me what you thought about the Wilds.”
“The little I saw was beautiful. I wish we could’ve stayed longer.”
“One day we will.”
“Tell me more about what it’s like over there,” I said.
“Hmmm.” After a long pause, he continued, “I should tell you about the griffins.”
“Griffins?”
“They’re huge, powerful creatures with the head and wings of an eagle and the body of a lion.” I listened with fascination as Devin described not only griffins but other mythical creatures that lived in the Wilds. Some of them sounded familiar from the dreams I’d had.
After talking well into the night I could no longer keep my eyes open and eventually fell asleep with images of winged beasts running through my head.
Some time later I woke to Devin’s gentle nudging.
“What’s wrong?” I asked him sleepily.
“There’s someone downstairs.”
“What?” I sat up, listening for the sounds an intruder would make, but the only noise I heard was the sound of my own breathing. “How do you know?”
“I can hear it.” Devin’s voice pitched lower. “And smell it.”
“It?”
“Stay here.” Devin crept out of bed without explaining.
I whispered his name, but he ignored me on his way out of the room. I prayed that he was wrong. Intruders usually carried guns with them. The thought sent me into panic mode. I tried reassuring myself of the fact that I’d lived in the same house my entire life and it had never been broken into.
A few seconds passed, and then I heard a loud thud. Devin wanted me to stay put, but I had to make sure he was okay. I got up and tiptoed down the dark hallway until I reached the staircase. Somehow I made my way down the steps without falling and breaking my neck. I felt for the light switch and flicked it on in time to catch Devin, straddling a man—no, not a man—a demon who was dressed entirely in black. As I gaped at the two of them, Devin plunged a small dagger into its chest. I screamed as the demon turned into a pile of ash. It was like one of my nightmares had come to life.
The smell of burnt paper filled the air as Devin lifted his pants leg and shoved the small gold handled dagger back into a sheath I never even knew he wore around his lower leg. He ran over to me and grabbed me by my arm. “Didn’t I tell you to stay put?” he said, pulling me up the stairs.
“What the hell just happened?”
“I’ll explain later.” He yanked my closet door open, found a duffle bag and tossed it to me. “First, you need to pack.”
“It’s three o’clock in the morning,” I said.
“Lilli, please,” Devin pleaded. “We need to get far away from Crescent City as quickly as we can. That means we have to leave now.”
The panic in Devin’s voice was all it took to convince me. I filled my bag with clothes and a stack of pictures and important papers I kept in my desk drawer. Devin and I practically flew downstairs. He grabbed his backpack from the couch where he’d left it earlier, and the two of us ran outside toward my car.
“We’re driving?”
“Yes,” Devin replied in that firm voice he used when he made up his mind about something.
I unlocked the car doors remotely. “Maybe I should drive,” Devin said as he saw me heading for the driver’s side. “I’m a lot faster than you are.”
“Speed isn’t going to do us any good if we get pulled over.�
��
He gave me a wry smile. “Bewitching us out of a ticket is the least of our problems right now.”
“Yeah, well, according to my mother it won’t be a problem for me either, and you don’t know your way around like I do,” I said.
Devin didn’t argue.
There was only one major road to take if you were trying to head out of Crescent City in any type of hurry, so I headed towards the 101. We drove in silence until I made it to the highway.
“That thing in my house, it was a demon wasn’t it?”
Devin only nodded.
“What did you do to it?” I asked, trying to subdue the panic in my voice. The image of Devin straddled over that monster with a dagger in his hands was burned into my brain.
“It wasn’t just any old demon, Lilli, it was a tracker demon, and I killed him.”
I waited for him to elaborate. Instead he sat stone-faced, staring through the windshield as if he expected something to jump in front of the car.
“What the hell is a tracker demon?” I finally asked, pretty sure I already knew.
“It’s exactly what it sounds like, Lilli. They’re sent to track people down and bring them back to whoever it was that sent them in the first place.”
“What was one doing in my house?”
“Zoran. He knows about you somehow. He’s the one that sent it.”
I gulped back the knot that grew in my throat. “You don’t know that for sure.”
Devin’s head whipped around in my direction. “Yes, I do. There’s no one else that would have a reason to send a tracker demon after you.”
“But he doesn’t even know I exist.”
“I never should have agreed to take you to the Wilds,” Devin muttered.
“Nobody saw us. You said so yourself,” I said, trying to quell the dread rising inside me.
“Well, I was wrong. You don’t get it, Lilli. Tracker demons don’t just show up in someone’s house for no reason.”
“But I thought demons and witches were enemies. Why would one be helping Zoran?”
“They’re only enemies until one needs something from the other. Witches and demons ally with each other when both think they’ll benefit. If Zoran has turned to demons for help that means there’s something bigger going on.”
Before I could ask what, Devin pounded his fist against the dashboard of my car. I lifted a hand off the steering wheel and touched his arm. He turned to look at me. “I’m sorry. I know this is all my fault,” I said.
“No. It’s my job to protect you.”
“There’s something I should’ve told you, something I noticed when we came home from work earlier.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The front door was unlocked . . .”
“Why are you only telling me this now?” Devin interrupted.
“Because I didn’t think it was important. I thought I just forgot to lock the door, until I noticed that the door to my dad’s office was open. But nothing was missing except my graduation picture, and I just figured Aunt Katy must have taken it before she went back to Eureka.”
“So you’re telling me someone broke into your house and stole a picture of you, and this is the first I’m hearing about it?” Anger simmered beneath Devin’s controlled façade. I didn’t know what to say. “What were you thinking?”
“I didn’t want to worry you for nothing.”
“Lilli, this can’t happen again. You have to tell me everything, no matter how minor it may seem to you. You have no idea what we’re up against.”
I nodded and gripped the steering wheel tighter, frustrated with myself for not listening to the little voice in my head that warned me something was off. “I . . . I’m sorry.”
A heavy silence fell. I wanted to apologize again, but instead I kept quiet to give Devin time to sort through his anger.
Driving on an empty highway in the dead of night was eerie enough without worrying about why we were doing it in the first place. In the dark, the enormous trees that flanked both sides of the road seemed like giant ominous monsters. At daybreak, we passed a sign indicating the exit to the Avenue of Giants, a scenic highway that ran through the Humboldt Redwoods State Park. I’d always wanted to visit, but I doubted Devin was in the mood for sightseeing.
“Where exactly are we going?” I asked, stifling a yawn. “And why couldn’t we just teleport there?”
“Teleporting will make it easier for Zoran to find us with a locater spell because it leaves a magical trace. Besides, I figured having a car would come in handy.” Devin put his hand over mine. “Pull over at the next exit. I can tell you’re getting tired. It’s my turn to drive.”
It was too much of a struggle to keep my eyes open, so I didn’t argue. A few minutes after Devin got back on the highway, I drifted off to sleep. By the time I opened my eyes again we were passing through Cloverdale. As we put more distance between us and Crescent City I grew weary of the endless stretch of asphalt. We made a quick stop for food. I used the restroom and stretched my legs before the two of us made our way back on the road again.
“By now Zoran will be wondering why the tracker demon he sent hasn’t returned with you. He’ll send someone else or maybe even come after you himself. If we’re lucky, it’ll take some time for him to realize you’re no longer in Crescent City. That’s when he’ll try and figure out where you went.”
“And how long do you suppose that will take?”
“We’re at an advantage here. You know this part of the world; Zoran doesn’t.”
It didn’t feel like much of an advantage when I had demons and powerful witches hunting me down, but I kept my pessimism to myself. “Do all demons go up in smoke when you kill them?”
“Yes, but only if you attack them in the right spot—right through the middle of their chest.”
“Like a vampire?”
“Vampires don’t exist.” Devin replied, as if I was silly for even mentioning it. “Although I suppose there are quite a few similarities between them and demons. Perhaps that’s where the lore comes from. They’re immortals. They both prefer the dark, and a blade to the chest is usually what kills them, although greater demons are more of a challenge. Demons don’t feed on blood though. They feed on souls.”
“What exactly do you mean by that?”
“Demons are pure evil. They know that all creatures have a dark side, and so they tempt us to give in to it by promising to grant us our deepest desires. That’s how they come to own a person, because a demon doesn’t do a favor for anyone without wanting something in return. Every bit of dark magic a witch uses, every evil thing one does under a demon’s influence, causes the darkness inside them to spread like a cancer until it takes complete control.”
“Why would anyone have anything to do with a demon if they know what it will cost them?”
“The answer is different for humans than it is for witches. Humans aren’t truly even aware of their existence, because demons use glamour to disguise themselves. It makes it easier for them to influence humans to do what they want them to. But human souls don’t satisfy a demon’s hunger the way a witch’s does,” Devin explained. “Witches, on the other hand, are fully aware of when they are in the presence of a demon. Sometimes they even seek them out, because demons know all about dark magic and how to use it, and dark magic has always been tempting to our kind. Its power is alluring, and a person might fool himself into thinking they are stronger, that they won’t let themselves be taken over, that they won’t truly lose their soul, or if they do, they can simply get it back after.”
Even though I was still tired, I couldn’t fall asleep again. After another two hours of driving we got stuck in the most maddening traffic as we passed through San Francisco. It felt like it took forever, but eventually we were able to leave the city behind, and I took over behind the wheel again. The drive became unbearably boring, but Devin insisted that we keep going. We stopped in Bakersfield to eat and refuel. The air reeked of manure,
and I marveled at how different it looked compared to Crescent City. Everything was brown, with only small patches of green scattered here and there, and an occasional palm tree. I wasn’t used to seeing those.
By the time the sky started to darken, Devin was back in the driver’s seat and I managed to take another short nap. I woke up as we drove past the bright lights of Los Angeles. When we reached San Diego, I insisted we stop.
“In another hour we’ll be in Mexico,” I said.
“Is something wrong with that?”
“It’s another country, Devin.” He didn’t seem to be getting my point. “They speak Spanish there, and we don’t.”
“Fine. We’ll stop here then.”
I reached into my back pocket to grab my phone. With the help of Google we were able to navigate our way through the city streets until we found a hotel. Warm, pleasant summer air swirled around me as I waited for Devin to retrieve our things from the trunk of the car. We walked inside the lobby of the hotel and up to the clerk behind the check-in desk.
“How may I help you?” he asked.
“Do you have any rooms left?”
He started clicking away at his computer and a moment later he replied. “Sure, we have a few.”
I handed him my credit card pretending not to notice the curious look he was giving me and Devin. After a few more clicks on his computer, he handed me two key cards.
Devin and I made our way into the elevator and up to the third floor, where our room was. He laid our bags down on the dresser and started unzipping mine, but I was too tired to change into pajamas. The two of us had been driving almost sixteen hours with only a handful of short breaks. It wasn’t even ten o’clock yet, but I was exhausted. I took my shoes off and laid down on the bed without even bothering to pull the covers over myself. I could hear Devin’s voice, but I was too groggy to make out what he was saying. In a matter of minutes I was out cold.
