Demonkin

by T. Eric Bakutis

  Praise for Glyphbinder

  “...an entertaining debut that avoids many missteps ... the characters are largely engaging, each with his or her own story to tell.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “...a wildly compelling YA paranormal story set in a mysterious world where magic is the ultimate tool of power and blood the currency of the trade ... a mesmerizing setting and compelling characters...”

  —Faridah Nassozi, Reader’s Favorite

  “...what I really enjoyed was Eric’s ability to keep things tight and controlled while still giving each character some time in the spotlight.”

  —Clayton Blanchard, reviewer at The Page Turners

  “...a fantastic story of magic, trust, and perseverance ... by the time the story is done, and you close the final page, you feel like you’re saying goodbye to a set of dear friends.”

  —Lilyn George, reviewer at SciFi and Scary

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is entirely coincidental.

  DEMONKIN

  Copyright @ 2015 by T. Eric Bakutis

  www.tebakutis.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage or retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  Cover artwork by Greg Taylor

  www.GregTaylorArt.com

  Interior Design by Eric Bakutis

  Published Books of T. Eric Bakutis

  (Tales of the Five Provinces)

  Glyphbinder

  Demonkin

  (Short Story Anthologies)

  The Ways of Magic from Deepwood Publishing

  Fairly Wicked Tales from Ragnarok Publications

  Superhero Monster Hunter from Emby Press

  Chapter 1

  Ten Years Ago...

  LITTLE JYLL WHIMPERED as her mother’s strong arms pushed her into the cupboard, pushed her back as far as she could go into the tiny wooden space. The screams outside grew closer. She dropped Dana, her favorite doll, and clutched her mother’s sleeves.

  “Jyll, please!” Yara, her mother, knelt before the cupboard in a brown flour-stained dress. “It’s only for a moment.”

  “No!” Jyll pushed at the back of the cupboard with both feet. “Let’s run! We can still run!”

  Yara flinched as a deafening crack sounded from outside and another shrill scream echoed down the street. Light from distant fires flickered through their home, falling on tall wooden posts supporting cedar panels sealed with clay. Jyll had seen fire through her windows before, but never this much and never this close.

  Her mother stopped pushing and dragged her into a hug. Jyll clutched her mother as Yara stroked her red curls. Her mother wouldn’t let go. She wouldn’t.

  “I love you,” Yara said. “I’ll always love you.” Then Yara let her go, pushing her back toward the cupboard. “I need you to be strong for me. It’s like our game, remember? Your favorite hiding spot.”

  “It’s dark!” Jyll clutched her mother’s sleeve. "There’s roaches."

  Someone rattled the lock on their front door. Yara ripped free of Jyll and hopped up, grabbing a knife off their nocked wooden table. Then the front door burst open and Marel stumbled inside.

  “We lost the gate.” Jyll’s oldest sister wore a boiled leather breastplate with the crest of Talos, their small village. Her cloth pants were torn and her muddy boots had splotches of red splatter all over them, but she still clutched her axe. Gunk matted her tangled red hair.

  Marel shut the door, lugged the heavy wooden bar off the wall, and dropped it into place. “Lehma and Nat are dead.” She stumbled to the table and tossed down the house key. “I couldn’t save them.”

  Jyll gasped. Marel was lying, playing some cruel game. Jyll might only be eight years old — she might still be little — but she knew a cruel game when she heard it. Lehma and Nat weren’t dead. Sisters did not die.

  Yara’s knife clattered to the wooden floor. Her mother stood, silent, and stared at the door. Another scream sounded down the street, several screams, over and over and over.

  Marel propped herself against the table, breathing hard. Then she looked up. “Mother?”

  Jyll only then noticed how pale Marel looked. She only then noticed the red all over her sister, oozing and dripping. Why was there blood on her?

  “I understand.” Yara straightened and clenched her hands. “Is there any way out?”

  “They’ve got both gates. We fight or we die.” Marel pushed off the table and readied her axe. “Get Jyll hidden. Do it now.”

  Yara worked her fingers open. She wound her shoulder-length red hair into a ponytail, cinched it with a cloth wrap, and knelt once more. “Yes, all right.” She turned to Jyll, mouth a flat line.

  Glass shattered outside and horses thundered past their house. Then Yara grabbed Jyll and pushed her into the cupboard, pushed her so hard she could barely breathe. Her mother’s wet eyes were wide, her chest heaving, and Jyll gasped and squirmed as her mother pushed.

  “Don’t,” Yara pleaded. “Don’t fight me.”

  Another crash, another scream. Someone pounding on their door and yelling for help.

  “We need you safe,” Yara said. “We love you and we need you so please, stay in this cupboard and don’t make a sound. It’s only for a moment.”

  Jyll couldn’t breathe. Her mother was crushing her.

  “Everything will be all right.” Her mother took a deep breath and stopped pushing. “We’ll just wait for them to go.” Yara’s voice grew even and calm, a pleasant tone, the way she sounded when she read bedtime stories. “Just be quiet until they leave.”

  Jyll’s lip quivered but she refused to cry. Marel made fun when she cried. “Okay.” She could do this for her mother. She could do this one thing.

  Her mother smiled. She let Jyll go and all at once Yara’s trembling eased. She picked up her knife, her smile spreading across her face. She rose and looked to the door.

  “I’ll see you soon. Not one sound. You promised.” She closed the cupboard and dropped Jyll into darkness.

  Cold and the cupboard pressed in around her. There were bugs coming. Jyll fumbled until she found Dana, swept her dolly up, and stroked its thin straw hair. Dana was afraid too.

  A man screamed outside the door and heavy boots thudded on their porch. The barred door rattled. Then a great crack made Jyllith jump and she smashed her head on the top of the cupboard. That stung but she dared not cry out. She had promised she wouldn’t.

  “They’re coming!” Marel yelled.

  The crack came again, dozens of them. Then heavy metal boots stomped across their hard wooden floor. Jyll heard the ring of steel meeting steel. She hugged Dana and dared not breathe.

  She heard boots scuffing, blades ringing, Marel grunting the way she did when she trained with Lehma. All pretend. She heard a curse, a thump, and then her mother, screaming the way she had when the Mynt dragged Jyll’s father away.

  Jyll’s heart pounded in her ears as tears stung her eyes but she kept quiet, kept her promise to her mother. She had to keep her promise even though she couldn’t breathe.

  Armored boots clanked closer. Her mother’s screaming stopped and someone gurgled then, like when Jyll gargled water. When her throat hurt. Then the armored boots stomped away. Then screaming started down the street.

  Jyll’s breath burst from her lungs. Her eyes watered and her nose ran no matter how often she wiped it. She waited as long as she dared and then pushed against the
cupboard door. It rattled against its thin lock.

  She and her mother and all her sisters would run away now. It was time. Once they ran away they would be safe.

  She pushed again, pushed harder, pushed her feet against the wooden back, and then the door burst open and she tumbled out. That was when little Jyll saw her mother on the floor with her arms and legs splayed out, eyes closed and mouth wide.

  There was no blood. There was no blood on her mother and that meant she was resting, not dead. Just asleep.

  “Wake up.” Jyll scrambled over to her mother and tugged her arm. “Let’s go. You promised.”

  That was when Jyll noticed Marel in the corner. There was blood on Marel, and dirt and gunk and bone, and one eye, Marel’s left eye, had burst open like a grape. Jyll’s own eyes flooded. Once her mother woke up, maybe they could help Marel.

  “Please!” Jyll tugged on Yara’s sleeves, tugged hard. “Wake up!”

  Slats creaked on her front porch. Jyll snatched her mother’s knife. She would protect her mother until she woke up and then they would run, together, with Marel and Lehma and Nat.

  A man stood in her doorway, a big man in thick red robes. He had a bald head, dark eyes, and spiky tattoos that ran from mouth to ears. He was alone.

  “Stay back!” Jyll’s knife shook.

  The man’s dark eyes narrowed as he frowned. Then he knelt and extended a calloused hand, palm first. The tip of one finger slid across her vision as he drew on the air in his own blood.

  “It’s all right, child.” He smiled. “Everything will be all right.”

  “Who are you?” Jyll’s eyes grew heavy and her knife clattered to the floor.

  “My name is Cantrall.”

  “Will you help my mother?”

  “Of course I will.”

  Cool oozed through Jyll’s bones, through all her insides, and it felt very good. It made her feel safe again. Happy.

  “I’m going to take care of you now,” the big man told her as she settled to the floor. “I always will.”

  Jyll smiled.

  Then she went to sleep.

  Chapter 2

  Now...

  JYLLITH MALCONEN WOKE with one cheek pressed on a musty tome. Her jaw hurt. She sat up in a hard wooden chair in darkness and her heart hammered until she remembered where she was.

  Terras. She slept inside Terras, a devastated magic academy in the middle of a lifeless province covered in magical storms. She was searching for a way to stop demons from eating Sera Valence’s soul.

  Jyllith fumbled across the scarred cedar desk until she found the cool metal shaft of a glyph-candle. She pressed two fingers to the base and summoned its warm yellow flame, casting light across dozens of open tomes. Everything beyond remained dark.

  Jyllith pushed aside a plate, stood, and checked Melyssa for any change. Kara’s great-grandmother slept with arms crossed over her plain white dress on a bed of cushions. Her white hair sprawled in curls upon her thin shoulders and she breathed every so often.

  Melyssa had used her blood to heal the others, those injured in the aftermath of their battle with Cantrall at Terras. She had used too much blood. She was dying. They both were.

  It was simply a question of who went first.

  Jyllith brushed reddish hair from her face and stretched. She had slept in her clothes again: leather riding pants, a stained linen shirt, and a fur-lined leather vest. This library was cold, silent, and she wished she had someone to talk to about her dreams, about the books, about anything. Someone human.

  “Melyssa?” she asked softly.

  No answer. The demon now living in her head taunted her with memories of all those she had murdered and damned. Her memories of their twisted, terrified faces waited just beyond the light, but she picked up the glyph-candle and headed for the stacks anyway.

  Jyllith measured each breath and focused on her surroundings. The first stack to her left was massive, eight shelves filled with twenty to thirty ancient tomes apiece, but it held nothing of interest. Neither did the twenty that followed.

  The Terras mages had organized their tomes well. Jyllith focused on that. Book names were written in the Ancient language, glittering white sigils on leather-bound spines of brown or black or green.

  The mages had divided their library into histories, memoirs, and countless other categories, but only the glyphs section interested her. Confining her search to that limited it to thirty stacks. Two hundred forty shelves. Six thousand books.

  She had read one-hundred fifty-six of them.

  The demon whispered louder as she walked. It scratched around inside her head, a gleeful monster that begged her to listen to it. Promising power and joy. Then Cantrall stepped through a stack and into her path. She cried out and backpedaled.

  He couldn’t be real — he must be a hallucination — but he looked real and that had her heart pounding in her chest. His black eyes bored into her as his mouth mimed words she could not hear.

  Jyllith squeezed her eyes shut and willed the hallucination away. If she was hallucinating it must be because she had spent too much blood last night, keeping Melyssa alive, but she needed Melyssa alive. If Melyssa died she would be all alone.

  When Jyllith opened her eyes the man who ruined her life still stood, still stared, and he had no right to stare at her. She stalked closer and clenched her hands as she remembered every last one of his horrible lies.

  “You did this to me. You made me a monster.” She had tortured for a lie, killed for a lie, sold her soul for a lie, and nothing Cantrall did could ever make that right. “Get out of my way!”

  Her shout echoed through the library, echoed off the walls and the ceiling, and Cantrall vanished just like that. Jyllith only then noticed she had reached the glyphs section of the library. Her legs trembled and sweat rolled down her back.

  The echoes of her rationalizations rang hollow, self-righteous excuses and feeble attempts to shift blame. Cantrall had altered her memories, certainly, but he had not made her murder. He had not made her hate. She had done that all by herself.

  The demon in her head whispered platitudes, words she almost understood. She ground her teeth as she forced that demon down, forced it back to sleep. The demon grew stronger each day and soon it would whisper to her whether she allowed it or not.

  Her candle illuminated the stacks as her arm trembled. She was running out of time to save Sera, and hating herself would not make her read any faster. She pressed her finger to the first book in the sixth stack and marked her place.

  Jyllith could read the Ancient language — Cantrall had taught her how — but translation remained slow and headache inducing. Even worse, she had to pull anything promising and peruse it at length. Formless Links and Elements of Heat. Poisons of the Valerun. Secrets of Breath and Land.

  Her finger reached a tome on a lower shelf and slid to an unexpected stop, a feeling not unlike tripping over a root. She read the title twice more before she accepted that the words she had translated were correct.

  Wards Against the Alcedi.

  The title brought a cold sweat to Jyllith’s brow. She knew the name Alcedi because Cantrall had invoked it every time she balked at torture or hesitated at murder. The Alcedi were the endless evil, the storm on the horizon, the harbingers of the apocalypse. They wanted her world and all its souls and only the Mavoureen, an army of demons from beyond her world, could stop them.

  Jyllith set the candle down and tugged on the Alcedi tome with both hands, prying with her fingertips until it slid out enough to offer a grip. It was as thick as her forearm and heavy, heavy enough that her arms shook holding it, but she opened it anyway.

  The first page was blank. The second was illuminated with pictures of tall soldiers in golden armor marching before a bright yellow sun. Around them were complicated glyphs unlike any she had ever seen, rounded and dotted in ways that made no sense.

  The page held a single paragraph written in elegant golden script. The Teranome must never be opened
again. The Alcedi are above and beyond us. To offer one’s prayers to the golden horde is to offer one’s soul.

  Jyllith had convinced herself that Cantrall’s talk of the Alcedi was madness, a lie conjured by the Mavoureen to compel his obedience to them. Yet this book, tangible evidence of the Alcedi’s existence, changed Cantrall’s ravings into something else entirely. It suggested his worries about an Alcedi invasion had been right.

  Jyllith closed the tome with an echoing thump and tucked it under her arm. She needed Melyssa, needed the old woman’s knowledge and counsel. She would have to rouse her even though that meant spending precious blood.

  She hurried back to Melyssa’s cot and set both tome and candle on the scarred desk. She closed her eyes and took the dream world. Cantrall had taught her to do that too, and his lessons were among many wonderful memories of the man who murdered her family.

  In the dream world, jagged brown lines formed the library’s stone floor and straight black lines made stacks, desk, and chair. Melyssa was a luminous orange blob tucked into the winding black lines of blanket and cushion. Jyllith sliced her index finger with the sharpened nail on her thumb and concentrated until she saw the bones and veins inside Melyssa’s frail body.

  Jyllith traced complex glyphs on Melyssa’s chest and arms, enhancing her blood flow. This school of magic was called bloodmending and it had always been her favorite. These glyphs would not heal her permanently — Melyssa’s body had lost the ability to sustain itself — but it would allow Melyssa to wake up.

  Finally, Jyllith ignited her glyphs and gasped as each consumed the blood she’d used to scribe them and more, sliced fingers healing over as they always did. Burning that much blood at once left her dizzy and light-headed, the price the Five demanded to change the world, and when Jyllith opened her eyes her vision swam.