Demonosity

by Amanda Ashby

  “Cass, you know I love it when you turn all alpha on me,” Reuben slurred as he tried to wink at her. Cassidy ignored him.

  “Okay, I need you to stay with Nash until I come back. Do you understand?”

  “What?” Reuben blinked, obviously not quite getting the response that he was after.

  “Stay. With. Nash,” Cassidy repeated with a growl. “As in, don’t leave his side, even for a second. And if you do desert him, then I’ll tell everyone what I caught you doing that time at—”

  “Hey, whoa. No need to go there. I’m in, okay? I’ll stay with Nash until you get back,” Reuben interrupted. Cassidy didn’t even bother to look at him. Instead, she crouched next to Nash, pushed his white wig back off his damp forehead, and squeezed his hands.

  “I’ll be back soon. I promise.” She gave him one final nod and then got to her feet and ran.

  ELEVEN

  Branches scraped and prickled against her arms, but Cassidy hardly noticed as she went flying into the woods. Thankfully, she had decided to wear her Dr. Martens instead of the high heels that her mom had suggested.

  “Thomas,” she called out, her eyes frantically searching for any sign of the bird, but there was only darkness and trees and the sound of her own heart hammering frantically in her chest. “Thomas,” she repeated, but there was still no answer, and Cassidy felt her annoyance grow as she finally stumbled into a small clearing.

  It was dark with only thin slivers of moonlight pushing down through the canopy of the overhanging trees. She had no idea where she was, but for some reason it felt like the place she should stop. Anger pounded in her veins as she fumbled around in the pocket of Nash’s jacket until she found his ever-present Zippo lighter. Never had she been so thankful to see the stupid thing. She quickly held it up to give herself a better idea of where she was.

  “Thomas,” she called again. “I know you’re here somewhere. I can feel it. I want answers. Was this your doing? Was it?”

  Silence answered, and she was about to start retracing her steps back down the trail when there was a rustle of feathers and the owl appeared, its sleek feathers casting a radiant light.

  “Ah, so you’re finally ready to show yourself,” Cassidy snapped, her annoyance lending her strength. “Did you make that thing attack my best friend and terrify all of those other people? Well? Did you? Thomas, answer me.”

  “Non.” The owl disappeared, and Thomas was once again standing before her. Tonight his coarse brown shirt was covered in heavy chain mail that glinted and gleamed from the moonlight and only served to make his angry red scar stand out even more against his pale, sullen face. He didn’t exactly look happy to see her.

  “And why should I believe you?” She started to pace around the small clearing, suddenly conscious of the fact that she was out in the middle of the woods with only a Zippo to protect her. “How do I know you’re telling me the truth? Just because you say you’re a knight doesn’t mean that you’re honorable.”

  “Honor?” Thomas spat in disgust, his words a disturbing contrast to the mail he wore. “There’s no such thing as honor. There is only duty. However, in this case I do not mislead you. That attack was not of my doing.”

  For a moment Cassidy blinked, taken aback by his response. “Yes, well, why did that . . . did that—”

  “Demon,” Thomas supplied in his cool, blunt voice as he folded his arms tightly in front of his chain mail. His jawline was taut and grim, reminding Cassidy just how infuriating it was to try to talk to him. “It was a demon.”

  Cassidy glared at him. “So why did this demon come into a Halloween party and attack so many people? Including my friend. What did it want?”

  “It wants what we all want. The Black Rose.”

  “Are you seriously telling me that some virginal vessel was at Cade Taylor’s Halloween party? So who was it?”

  “I-I don’t know who it was.” A flicker of frustration crossed his face, as if it pained him to admit any weakness. “Being in this world . . . drains me. All my strength went toward trying to stop the demon.”

  “That was you?” Some of the fight drained away from her as she realized that while the demon had tried to kill Nash, it was Thomas who had saved him. “How?”

  “How is not important now.” His voice was still tight. “What matters is that it will keep happening. The demons will come after you, your family, your friends, and they won’t stop until they get what they want. No one will be safe. Now do you see why I need your help?”

  “My family?” The words caught in her throat. “Wh-why would the demons come after them?”

  “Because you are the guardian, and the grimoire leads a trail that ends at your door. The demons will follow it, and they won’t let anything stand in their way.” Despite the darkness, his mismatched eyes were blazing with such intensity that Cassidy struggled to believe he wasn’t really standing next to her.

  Her throat tightened.

  What if the demon she had just seen tried to attack her father?

  What if Thomas wasn’t there to stop it like he had done this time? It had been easy to refuse him the first time. But now that she knew what it was capable of, knew what it had done to Nash and might do to her family, saying no wasn’t quite as simple.

  Indecision clawed at her chest. Then she remembered something else.

  “Please don’t get mad, but there’s something I need to tell you. About the grimoire. I sort of destroyed it,” she confessed, not quite looking at him.

  “One mortal cannot destroy the grimoire,” he corrected. “You only tried to destroy it. Look in the sack on your shoulder, and you will find it there.”

  “What?” Cassidy stared at him for a moment before she fumbled with the top of her purse and opened it up. Indeed, in among the clutter she could clearly see the corner of the leather-bound book. Her hands shook as she inspected it, but its faded leather showed no signs of being hacked into small pieces, nor did it smell of garbage or Dumpster. It was as it had always been.

  Then she felt a tingling sensation on her arm, and she pushed back her sleeve to discover two black roses, their stems twisting and twining up her skin, exactly where the temporary tattoo had been before she had scrubbed it away.

  “How is any of this possible?” Her voice little above a whisper.

  “You are the guardian. The mark of the Brotherhood belongs on your arm and the grimoire belongs in your possession,” Thomas informed her, sending a chilly wave of panic down her spine as the truth of it hit home.

  It was real. All of it was freaking real. The owl. Thomas. The demon that had just attacked an entire party of people looking for the essence of eternal life, and somehow she had managed to get stuck in the middle of it all. Somehow she was meant to stop it?

  Then the book began to glow, and Cassidy dropped it in horror. “Why’s it doing that?”

  Thomas’s face darkened. “The demon is returning. If I could fight it, I would. But I can’t. I”—he paused for a moment and gritted his teeth—“please, I need your help.”

  She stared at the fake zombie blood, which was now smeared on her fingers. If she didn’t do anything, the blood might soon be real. And not just hers. Nash, her dad, even her mom were all at risk. She swallowed her indecision and nodded.

  “Tell me what to do.”

  “Open up the grimoire to the middle page,” Thomas instructed, and without questioning him Cassidy dropped to her knees and picked up the book. Despite the glowing light, it was cool to her touch, and she felt the tattoo on her arm burn and tingle. “Lay it flat on the ground and press both of your hands into the pages, palms down. Good. Now repeat after me: ‘I pledge myself to protecting the Black Rose.’ You need to say it three times.”

  What? Half of her wanted to protest that this was the most ridiculous thing she’d ever heard of, but her fears were waylaid by the thunderous sound of the demon knight as it charged through the trees, obviously indifferent to pain and obstructions. Judging by the way the cricke
ts and other nocturnal sounds of the woods had faded away into unearthly silence, she knew there wasn’t much time.

  She took a deep breath and did as Thomas instructed. The tattoo on her arm tingled as a surge of white light came racing up from the page and through her fingers, consuming her whole body with energy and vibrating atoms. It was. It was—

  “Prepare,” Thomas said, his voice blunt as the demon knight burst into the clearing where she was still kneeling. Instinct made her gather up the grimoire and place it by the base of a tree just as the demon let out a bloodcurdling wail. It was the sound of despair. The sound of victory. The sound of death. Cassidy suddenly felt her will slipping away from her as she fumbled around for Nash’s Zippo.

  She flipped it open, the flame only serving to show her just how truly hideous the demon was. Fear rose in her chest as it lunged at her, and it took all of Cassidy’s willpower not to scream. Instead, she threw the Zippo over to one side, managing to distract the creature long enough to dart out of its way.

  She heard the demon’s blade slice through the bark of a tree like it was butter, and panic surged up in her again. The creature spun around, the huge muscles on its neck bulging with annoyance. She scanned around, looking for some kind of weapon, while trying not to regret her decision to wear the Audrey Hepburn dress instead of the Lara Croft, which had a weapon—even if it was a fake one. However, all she had was a tiara, which she whipped from her head and threw at him.

  It bounced off his chest like a fly, and Cassidy turned and darted out of its way again onto a pile of stones that crunched under her boots. Stones. Definitely not her first choice, but since that was all she could think of, she quickly dropped to her knees and grabbed a handful as the creature once again came charging at her. The smell of blood and herbs and decomposition caught in her nostrils, but she ignored it as she took aim and threw the small stones into the gleaming amber eyes before once again darting out of the way.

  “Non, non, non! Do you have a death wish?” Thomas gave a savage snarl.

  “Yes,” she snapped as rage and fear simultaneously welled up inside her. “Death wishes are my favorite pastime, didn’t you know?”

  “Then your wish is about to be fulfilled,” Thomas retorted coolly. The creature let out a howl, which Cassidy reasoned had more to do with the appearance of Thomas than with her feeble attempt to throw stones at it. “Take the sword.”

  There was a sword? What sword?

  Cassidy blinked as a long, gleaming sword suddenly appeared at her feet. The creature saw it at the same time and increased its pace. Fear drenched her, and she found herself helpless to do anything other than just stand there and wait for—

  “You need to thrust upward, directly under his ribs. The sword will do the rest,” Thomas hissed, his fury so palpable that it had the power to snap her out of her daze, forcing her to drop to her knees and grab the weapon.

  The handle felt warm and familiar in her hands, and her fingers wrapped around it as if it were an Xbox controller. She used both hands to lift the sword vertically and thrust it under the creature’s ribs, ripping through its flesh until there was a painful scraping of bone. The creature let out a curdled wail, and Cassidy only just managed to roll out of the way before it went crashing forward, impaling itself completely on the sword. Then everything was silent.

  TWELVE

  “Is it dead?” The stench was making her head spin, while unwanted adrenaline coursed through her body until she was unsure whether she should be laughing, crying, or collapsing into a heap.

  “It is, but it won’t stay that way for long unless we burn it. And since I doubt you’ll be so lucky the next time you fight, we need to act with haste.”

  “Lucky?” she spluttered, as the horrors of what had just happened started to catch up with her. Her shoulders ached from holding the sword, her dress was ripped, and she was pretty sure that the dark stuff on her arm was demon ooze. “You call this lucky? That thing tried to kill me. Like, for real.” But when he didn’t answer, she just let out a sigh. “Okay, fine. I’m acting with haste.”

  She bit back her nausea and grabbed one of the arms of the dead demon so that she could roll it over, but the thing weighed a ton, and it wasn’t until her third attempt that she managed finally to half push, half pull it onto its back.

  Her muscles screamed with pain at the exertion, but she knew better than to complain to Thomas. Up close the demon was even more hideous, almost like it was standing in a distorted mirror at the fair, with grotesque muscles making the reddish-black, decaying skin bulge like they had outgrown the body in which they were meant to serve. Then she caught Thomas’s impatient look, and she reached for the sword, which was still buried deep in the demon’s chest. Her fingers curled around the hilt and . . . ouch.

  Pain enveloped her skull, and she instantly released her grip on the sword, clutching her ears as she dropped to her knees. But nothing could stop the vision of chaos that suddenly slammed through her mind.

  A thousand screams.

  House after house was burning. Person after person was bleeding. Crying, terrified, dead. And above them all was one person. Its face distorted, eyes filled with madness. And in the distance was a voice calling out to her: Pick me. Pick me.

  “Cassidy.” Thomas’s voice dragged her out of the terrifying abyss, and she turned, surprised to see that his whole expression had softened so that even the angry scar didn’t seem quite so red. “You saw it, didn’t you?”

  “I-I don’t know,” Cassidy said in a shaky breath as the tattoo on her arm prickled her skin. “I saw something. There was blood. So much blood. Wh-what was it?”

  “Paris. The year 1151,” he said, the words sounding flat and dull as he uttered them. “A returning Crusader brought home something that he shouldn’t have. The Black Rose. He pulled it away from its guardians, and once he discovered its secrets, he inhaled the essence to become immortal. The guardians followed him, but they were too late and he killed them and almost destroyed Paris, which, as you saw, became ash and blood.”

  “That was real? It happened?” Cassidy was overwhelmed with horror. “How did I see it?”

  For a moment Thomas was silent; he clicked his jaw several times before he finally spoke. “I don’t know. I-I get visions. Some of them are what’s happened in the past. Some are what might happen in the future. All of them have the potential to be real. I didn’t expect you to get them as well,” he added before he once again stiffened. “Please. Our time is short. You must retrieve the sword, cleanse the blade, and burn the demon. Now.”

  Cassidy was too perturbed by the vision to protest. Instead, she got to her feet and gingerly reached for the sword. She caught her breath as her fingers wrapped around the hilt, but this time there was nothing but the feel of rough, bound leather that had been crudely wrapped around the handle. Relief flooded through her, but after catching Thomas’s glare she refocused and used all of her strength to pull it out through the demon’s thick skin.

  Once it was free, she threw it down to one side before she reluctantly searched for Nash’s lighter. Thankfully, the silver casing made it easy to find, and she walked back to the corpse, getting just close enough to set it alight. Then she waited until the flames danced and licked their way along the hideous body. She watched as they sparked higher and higher into the night sky, her eyes trapped like a hypnotic lure.

  She wasn’t sure how long she had been standing there when the flickering fire suddenly sucked back in on itself, like a DVD being played in reverse. Then both body and fire were gone, as if they had never existed.

  “And now the blade. You must run the fire along the blade to cleanse it of the demon filth,” Thomas said in a tight voice.

  Of course she must. However, she couldn’t be bothered to argue, so she merely held the lighter up to the metal blade and watched as the flame went racing along the steel, turning a violent green color before disappearing. Leaving behind a blade that was clean of the blood that had been covering
it only seconds earlier.

  “Someone comes.” Thomas broke the reverie, and Cassidy once again held the sword up in the air just as Nash came crashing through the trees, holding a flashlight, his annoyance highlighted by the beam of light. She quickly lowered the blade before he noticed it.

  “Cass, where the hell have you been?” he demanded. “Are you insane to go racing off after a freaking demon?”

  “You shouldn’t be here.” She shielded her eyes from the flashlight to stop it from blinding her. “I told Reuben to keep an eye on you.”

  “Yeah, well, Reuben’s a douche. Now come on, we need to get out of here . . . and what’s that smell? Have you been burning something?”

  “Um.” She looked at him helplessly before turning to Thomas, who was still standing there, his impassive gaze as unflinching as ever.

  “Do not say anything,” the knight warned.

  “Who said that?” Nash waved the flashlight around the clearing, but despite the fact the beam landed directly on Thomas, he didn’t even blink. Then he turned back to Cassidy, confusion written all over his face. “Cass, seriously, what’s going on? Is Thomas here? Is that who was just speaking?”

  “You can hear him?” Cassidy asked in surprise as she once again turned to Thomas. “How is that possible? My dad looked straight through you the other night and couldn’t hear you at all, so why can Nash?”

  “He shouldn’t be able to.” Thomas folded his arms, looking dangerous. “The only way it is possible is if he’s touched the—”

  “The grimoire,” Nash finished off, as his flashlight focused on the discarded book. He hurried toward it and bundled it up as if it was a small child. “It’s here. It’s not destroyed?”

  “He knows about the grimoire?” Thomas hissed. “You have allowed a nobody to touch our most ancient relic?”