by Lan Chan
Raucous laughter erupted around Max again because Astrid had just tossed another audacious she-wolf aside. “Urgh,” Gwen complained. “You owe me bigtime.”
When she was gone, I wrapped an arm around Sophie. “You okay?”
She bit her lip and shuddered. “I have to be.”
“I don’t get the two of you at all,” Diana huffed.
“You wouldn’t,” Sophie snapped. “You’re not human.”
Diana stuck her tongue out. “And thank goodness for that. Being human sucks. How did it go today, by the way?” She was referring to the tattooing. Sophie’s dark features stilled.
I scratched at me cheek. “Ummm...there may have been a slight mishap.”
“A mishap?” Sophie said.
My recounting of what happened was light on details. It didn’t need to be spelled out, though. Sophie’s lips pressed together. “Why?...How?”
Suddenly her back was to me and she was weaving through the crowd. Max went preternaturally still when he sensed her close by. We couldn’t hear what they were saying but Max detached from his friends and was looming over Sophie, his head bent low.
“Wooo,” Trey teased. “That can’t be good.” He pointed. Against the reflection of the fire, dozens of night-glow shifter eyes sparked to life. All female.
Somebody tapped me on the shoulder. I turned and my good humour fled. “Go away, Andrei.”
It really pissed me off that only a week after Kai had beat him up, he was looking almost healthy again. “Just give me a minute,” he said.
Trey eyed the vamp warily. “She said she doesn’t want to talk to you.”
“Since when does she need you to be her mouthpiece?”
The shifter loomed. I stepped in front of Trey, blocking him from moving forward. “It’s okay,” I told my friends, “I’ll just be a minute.”
Sighing, I pointed back towards the edge of the treeline. When we were far enough away that the revelry around the fire was only a slight hum in the background, I turned to face Andrei.
“What?”
He rubbed at the back of his neck, eyeing the crowd still visible. “Can we go for a walk?”
“Are you kidding? You’re worried about what they might think?”
His top lip curled, revealing sharpened canines. “I don’t want them getting the wrong impression.”
“And what impression is that? Or are you worried about Kai nailing you to another cross? Don’t be. If anyone is going to kick your ass tonight, it’ll be me.”
He kept staring off into the trees. “What’s your problem?” I asked.
He muttered something. “Sorry, I’m human. I can’t hear you.”
Scowling, he added volume to his words. “I’m meant to be patrolling the perimeter. If Dorian finds me away from my post, I’ll get in trouble.”
Not one of those words made a lick of sense. “Since when do you care what Dorian thinks? Actually, why are you even bothering to go along with this charade? You hate the elite guard. You hate guards, period. Why would you follow their orders?”
The wrenching of his face told me he hadn’t chosen anything. “What did Kai say to you?” I guessed. Kai could be persuasive when he wanted. If charm didn’t work, he was more than happy to employ threats as well.
“Nothing.” He ran his hand through his hair. Moonlight glinted off the side of his face. It was paler than usual with an almost waxy complexion.
Andrei turned his body towards the trees and made a walking motion. Exasperated, I followed along beside him.
“I can’t be away long. The ceremonial part is starting soon.”
He groaned in disgust. “You’re not missing out on anything but a lot of grunting and chest beating.”
“Maybe. But I still want to be there for Max.”
He grew quiet. We reached the other side of the sentinel of trees to come up on a wide track that bled into a wilder part of the Reserve.
The trees here spoke louder than their civilized counterparts. They were also more insistent with their images, clamouring to show me a fissure checkpoint and the guards in the trees surrounding it. Some of them were shifters. Others were human, with the occasional mate from another species. There were a few vamps and Fae who were mated to shifters, but they were rare. Out here, the guards in the trees all seemed to be in their human forms. They wore camouflage clothing and sported human weapons strapped to their backs.
That struck me as odd. “Do they train with guns in the Reserve?” I asked.
Andrei laced his hands behind his back. “They didn’t before that Sisterhood chick assassinated one of their guards. Now they’ve upped their level of paranoia into the stratosphere.”
So would I, if I were honest. He was silent for a second. “Surprised I knew that?” he asked tentatively.
“You’re not stupid, Andrei. That’s part of the problem. I know you understand and have thought about the consequences of what you do. Whether you care is the question.”
“I...”
An eternity might not be long enough to receive an apology.
“It doesn’t matter anymore.” I tried to go back.
“C’mon, squirt.”
“No. You of all people should understand what it’s like for me. But all you can think about is your one-track mission. If you’re after job completion, that’s fine. I’ll still help you figure out what happened with your family. I just don’t want to socialise with you.”
He grabbed my arm when I tried to turn away. “Wait.”
His lips moved but I couldn’t hear what he was saying. My attention was dragged inward by the rustle of the trees. They painted a stark picture where there were too many guards in this sector all of a sudden. The image was hazy because it came to me in patterns of vibrations. Shaking Andrei off, I pulled the Ley dimension around me and inspected the scene.
My heart palpated. The forest was awash with unnatural energy that resonated on a different frequency to the earth dimension. Up ahead in the copse of redwoods, a guard crouched in the bracket created by a tree branch. His aura was a sickly, metallic red interspersed with brown. Demon.
“Lex?” Ignoring Andrei, I cut a path towards the fissure. My feet moved as though magnetised by the throbbing that was growing steadily louder.
Andrei yanked me back, dislodging the Ley sight just as we reached the open path that led to the fissure. A black-and-grey circle had been drawn around the fissure that sparked in mid-air. Inside the base of the circle sat a frail human female with her legs drawn up against her chest. She wore a threadbare grey sheath that I had hoped never to encounter again: the uniform provided by a psychiatric hospital. Cuts on her arms had healed into raised pink sores that looked like they had been reopened repeatedly. Her hair was a tangle that hung limp around her shoulders.
Three men in military gear stood at equal distance on the outside of the circle. They held rifles in their arms, their eyes glowing red. A fourth man in a thick black cloak knelt at the head of the five-pointed star inside the circle, chanting in a dead language. He made a long incision with a jagged knife on his left palm. His hands were adorned with claws the size of my finger. More demons.
I glanced up through the canopy. The sky was pitch black. The Reserve lived up to its name. It was a place with no human electronics that favoured nature. One of the things I loved most was sitting up on the balcony of Basil’s house and staring up at the blanket of stars. At the moment, not a single one of them could be seen.
Dropping into the Ley dimension once again, I tried to call out to Morning Star with little hope. As suspected, I couldn’t even feel the tug of it where I had left it under my bed. Just to try my luck, I attempted to call the heavenly blade. Also no go. It was a long shot anyway.
With its bleeding hand, the demon dropped blood on to the death circle. It sizzled as it hit the circle and spread out infecting the circle with red. The demon latched its bleeding paw around the women’s throat. It stood, dragging her up until her feet were no longer tou
ching the ground. Her eyes were opaque.
I stared, dumbfounded as the demon dropped the knife, slapped his hand on her forehead and spoke in a guttural language that I couldn’t understand. I had, however, heard that speech before from the demon who had attacked Terran Hospital. Just like that time, the woman’s head snapped back like she was suddenly electrocuted. Mouth gaping wide open, her soul rattled inside her. In contrast to the muddy colour of the demon circle, her soul blazed with light that lit her up from the inside. It matched the colour of the fissure.
Faster than I could draw a circle to stop it, the demon ripped the woman’s soul from her body. Unlike what Giselle has taught me, the demon didn’t care about being careful with the release of energy surrounding the extraction of a soul. The crude tearing shot rays of lightning from the woman’s body that barrelled into the trees and scorched them into matchsticks. My circle tried to create a barrier around the fissure, but the demon had already begun its transfer.
As soon as the energy from the woman’s soul touched the fissure, it exploded in a wave of power that rocked the sector. I turned my back futilely as though that would shield me from the explosion. Instinct kicked in, making me withdraw into the bond where I screamed in panic, hoping that Kai could hear me, that he was somewhere safe, and that similar scenes weren’t occurring at every other fissure around the Reserve.
Andrei pushed me to the ground and threw himself on top of me. I had just enough time to draw a circle around us before everything in the world turned to fire.
38
A blanket of white light flashed around us. It cast a net about a hundred metres wide and scraped against my magic like the dredging of the ocean bed. Ghostly claws raked at my mind until keeping my eyes shut no longer protected my sight from the white tendrils of lightning. I opened them to find light blooming across my eyes like I was being bombarded with flash photography.
In the aftermath of the flashes came the trail of pain. Soon, my head felt like someone was taking a pickaxe to it. Blood trickled down my left nostril. My circle faded.
Andrei slumped on top of me, his dead weight pressing me into the ground. He had been wearing a utility belt with a spare light amulet and some knives that were now digging into my hip. If I had half a brain, I would have pretended to be crushed and knocked out. Instead, I tried to wriggle out from underneath him, alerting the demon that I was still conscious.
The bomb had shredding its cloak. It now lay like a discarded skin around the thing’s feet, along with the three guards.
Without the terrible disguise, the beast was still mostly human except for an overly large chest protected by what looked like glittering black scales. The same beaded skin raced up its left arm. Unlike any other demon I had seen, this thing’s eyes were darkness itself. Most demons I’d come into contact with had coal black or glowing red eyes. When you stared into them, horror reflected back at you. There was nothing staring back at me in the eyes of this demon. The emptiness frightened me more than anything.
As the demon reached down to grab hold of me, I frantically scrounged around for one of Andrei’s knives. My fingers grazed the blade, cutting my skin as the demon jerked me out from underneath him. I came away empty-handed and now also bleeding. The demon lifted me up. Its face was deceptively human. Its smile was almost pleasant.
“What have we got here?” it said. My breath hitched. Most demons found it difficult to produce human speech. Their languages were so diverse from ours that it was a rare demon that could communicate without telepathy or mind control. “Curious, little girl? Want to know how I can talk? I wasn’t always this way.”
It pressed a clawed finger to my temple. I whined as it exerted just the tiniest bit of pressure. Pain wasn’t the thing that had me trying to squirm away. It was the feeling of having my chest compressed because I was so miserable death seemed like the only real option. The demon imparted its memories on me.
In my mind, I was sitting on a milk crate, in a small room with no furniture or heating. A thin mattress that might as well have just been a sheet was crumpled up in the corner. Yellow and russet stains decorated the once-white foam. The door to the room opened. My fear was blunted by sheer exhaustion. The silhouette of two men filled the door. The one on the left puffed out smoke from a cigarette. “You got half an hour with him.”
He shut the door with an ominous click. A grubby, sweaty hand clamped around the back of my neck, pushing my face down into the sweat-soaked mattress. When it constricted, I felt it through the demon’s grip. The screams from his memory imparted onto me, his utter helplessness making my eyes water.
In the present, the demon didn’t care for my empathy. He had once been human. But on a night when he might have ended it, a night months ago when Jonah Rhee had released the demons from the Dominion prison, a demon had offered him a deal. His human body for the chance to not be helpless anymore. Since then it had twisted him and contorted his body into something monstrous. My throat locked.
“I’m sorry,” I tried to say. Scaly skin crinkled around those soulless eyes.
“Don’t be. I’m free. Soon, you will be too.”
We spoke words at the same time. The demon uttered that same spell it had used to rip the woman’s soul from her body. I attempted some words of light. They cancelled each other out even though my pronunciation was nothing more than a butchering of syllables. Thwarted, it slammed my back against the nearest tree. Shock jarred my spine, the impact scraping off a layer of skin.
I winced as the thing came in close, its face pressed right up to mine. It had no pupils. Still it stared as though trying to look right into my soul. Whatever it saw seemed to please it. “So, you’re the one the master is looking for.”
How come I couldn’t cross paths with a demon who just wanted to blend in and live a hassle-free existence? My life could be a buddy comedy. Fate was a bitch and it loved watching me squirm. I did so as the demon tried to burrow its thumb into my temple once more.
Out of options, I used my blood-soaked hand to trace a word on its shoulder. I’d already practiced the word once tonight. Might as well make it a double feature. The demon opened its mouth. Thoughts were much faster than actions.
Mawatah, I screamed in my head.
The demon choked on air, letting me go as it stumbled backwards. The thing clutched at its own throat before cracks began appearing in its skin. Light just like the human soul threaded through with brown shone through the cracks. It gave a shudder and then the demon exploded in a belching of dust. I threw my arms up over my head but there wasn’t enough left of its human body to warrant concern.
My victory was short-lived. Weak from the explosion, there hadn’t been much power in my Angelical command. Dizziness still made the world turn upside down. Bile rose up my throat, but when I coughed, it was blood that spilled over my lips. Without the demon threat to focus on, the flickers of pain were back with a vengeance.
My hands shook, no longer steady. My hands. Gabriel’s Key glowed in the afterlight of the explosion. I crawled to where Andrei lay and held on to his arm. For some reason, the first thing I tried to do was teleport out of the Reserve. My flight response had never been strong, but something kept urging me to stay as far away as possible. Leaving turned out to be a failure. And a relief. I could never forgive myself for running if my friends didn’t make it out alive.
Unsure why leaving had even entered my mind, I decided that maybe teleporting within the Reserve was still possible. Thankful that the ring worked on its own without the need to drain my power, I focused on the clearing outside the convention centre. My smile was deranged as we slipped through the dimensional barriers within the Reserve. The magic was unstable from the explosions and spells the demons had used to lock the place down. We crash landed on the trodden turf at the edge of the clearing.
Demons crawled all over the place, clashing in battles with the supernaturals who hadn’t been knocked unconscious by the soul bombs. Massive sinkholes had been carved into the p
erimeter, fallen trees layering over them. Andrei was one unconscious supernatural in a sea of limp bodies.
Portals spat demons into the Reserve. They organised themselves into a demonic ring around the perimeter, cutting off any route of escape except a teleport. The problem was, shifters didn’t have that power.
A roar went up in the clearing behind my back, but I couldn’t tell who had made it. Between the supernaturals and me was a flurry of demons. Throwing a circle around Andrei was the only thing I could do for him now. We were overwhelmed.
Like vultures, the demons slowed their stampede when they realised there was human flesh in their midst. I couldn’t take my eyes off the hulking puce-green demon scampering my way. It was bottom-heavy, shaking the ground as it ran awkwardly in a zigzag line towards me. Grappling for one of Andrei’s knives, I managed to roll away just as the demon stamped one of its clawed feet where my head has been.
Shuffling backwards so the demon wouldn’t trample on Andrei, I flicked my wrist and repositioned the short blade. When the demon charged again, I whipped the blade at its chest. The knife sailed through the air and embedded into bulbous flesh. It oozed a thick brown pus that reeked of rotten egg. Ignoring my gag reflex, I raced after it, jumping up and planting my feet on the demon’s thighs. Using the protruding blade for purchase, I twined the fingers of my left hand into the demon’s hair and gripped tight. With my right, I yanked the knife from the demon’s chest and stabbed it through the eye. The thing gave a short, brutal yell before it keeled over. I didn’t stop stabbing until it was crumpled on the ground.
I had a second to survey the scene around me before a pair of demons picked me as easy prey. Drawing in a slow breath, I pretended that this was just another training session inside Ravenhall. The two demons tag-teamed me, trying to go for my feet to trip me up. Their claws were shorter than their teeth. It told me that they were probably throat rippers.
The first one jumped at me, trying to grab onto my sleeve so it could throw off my balance. I pivoted out of the way as it leaped, trying to keep my eyes on them as they attacked. Low demons weren’t smart or too strong. They thrived on outnumbering their prey. Two to one weren’t great odds, and for once, I was bigger. The next time the one on my left leaped, I jumped too and booted it in the gut from mid-air. We landed together, me in a crouch, the demon in a slump of broken ribs. Its friend hissed, a forked tongue shooting out between its sharp teeth. The thing came running towards me. I flattened myself to the grass as it jumped and rolled as it sailed overhead. When it landed, I snapped my leg out and sent it tumbling head over heels away from Andrei.
