Beyond The Darkness: The Shadow Demons Saga, Book 9

by Sarra Cannon

  “And yet you’re still here,” he said. His eyes met mine. “Are you going to kill me?”

  “Not yet,” I said. “I’ll be back.”

  I used my rope magic to cover his mouth again, and I walked back to the cabin.

  I conjured a bright light to illuminate my path, and as I approached the small cabin in the woods, I was again struck by how familiar it seemed. It was almost as if I had been here before, but I couldn’t quite place it.

  Goosebumps rose on my arms as I walked up the steps, avoiding the dead body of the man I’d killed just a few minutes earlier.

  Had I climbed these steps once before?

  I shook off the eerie feeling of familiarity and sent my light into the front room of the cabin. There wasn’t much to this place at all. At least not on the surface. It looked as if there was nothing here beyond a single room with a long counter running along one wall. No kitchen. No furniture. No electricity, even.

  But the detective—James—had said the portal was underneath the house.

  I pulled the strip of fabric off my leg and took the emerald master stone in my left hand. This had to be better than any key.

  I walked around the inside of the small cabin in the woods, holding the emerald in front of me and praying for a miracle. On the first pass, nothing seemed to happen, but the second time I stepped into the center of the room, I noticed a slight sheen on the floor in the shape of a square.

  I squatted and ran my hand along the floor boards. The wood shimmered and faded away, revealing a narrow staircase that led into the basement of the house.

  It was that moment when I finally realized how I knew this place. I had dreamed of it before the emerald priestess first attacked my father’s city.

  In my dreams, there had been a cage here, a strand of emeralds wrapped around a white rose lying inside. Illana’s attempt to warn me after she was captured. This had to be the right place.

  I stood, heart beating faster, and walked down the steps, my orb of light leading the way. I gathered my power in my hands, ready for anyone or anything that might attack as I descended the stairs. But nothing emerged from the shadows.

  I sent the orb around the room, desperately searching for any sign of the portal or a doorway to another room. It just had to be here. I needed for it to be here.

  On the left side of the room, a strange set of markings on the wall caught my eye. I directed my orb to the spot, and as I stood there, staring at the strange oval shape burned into the wood, tears flowed from my eyes.

  There was no mistaking the perfect shape of a portal. I’d seen enough in my short years to know exactly what it should look like.

  But as I placed my hands on the wood, I knew that I had gotten here too late.

  The portal home had already closed.

  So Close Now

  Jackson

  “This is the place,” I said, motioning to the burned skeleton of the house we’d all once called home. “We’ll do it here.”

  “Are you sure?” Rend asked. “Why here?”

  “It just feels right,” I said. “Poetic that this is the place we lure them to. This is where it all began for us, and this is where we’ll make our next move to bring this whole thing to an end. Besides, I know this place like the back of my hand. I lived here for decades. If we run into trouble, I know all the hiding places in the area. It will give us the upper hand if things go south.”

  “They won’t,” Rend said, holding up two large vials filled with a thick silver liquid. “I worked on this all night, and I tested it several times with Azure and Franki. There’s no way the Order is going to be able to detect our presence after we take these potions.”

  “What if one of the witches with them can see through illusions?” I asked.

  He shook his head and smiled. “Not even then,” he said. “If you couldn’t see them earlier when we tested it, no witch will be able to, either. Besides, this isn’t an illusion potion. It’s not even an invisibility potion.”

  “Then what is it?” I asked, taking one of the vials in my hands and turning it upside down. The mixture inside was so thick, it moved slowly toward the cork. “How does it work?”

  “It’s a complete displacement potion,” he said. “I based it off a transmutation spell I’ve been working on for years. It won’t make us invisible or glamour us in any way. It will literally make us disappear completely. We’ll be here, but we also won’t be here in our current form. A witch could walk straight through us and never feel us or sense our presence.”

  I stared at him, mouth open. “I don’t totally understand what you just said about trans-whatever, but if it makes us impossible to detect, I’m glad you’re smart enough to know what it does.”

  Rend laughed. “Let’s just say it will rearrange our matter for about an hour,” he said. “Our consciousness will be here, but our bodies will be spread into a billion tiny particles in the air around the area.”

  I swallowed and stared at the potion again. “And you’re sure that after the hour is up, we’ll come back to normal, right?”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Probably.”

  But when I gave him a frightened look, he smiled and shook his head.

  “I’m just messing with you, Jackson,” he said. “We tested it on Azure’s cat first. Then both Azure and Franki drank the potion. Everyone, including the cat, came back just fine. But we only have an hour. If, for whatever reason, the encounter with whoever comes out of that portal lasts longer than that, we’re screwed.”

  “Can’t we just leave the area?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “Nope. Once we take the potions, we will basically be frozen in place for that entire hour. I didn’t have enough time to try to think of another solution,” he said. “I’m good at what I do, but I’m not capable of miracles.”

  “That’s just going to have to be good enough.”

  I glanced around the area. We needed to find the perfect place to be when we took the potions. The portal would most likely open wherever the fake ritual items were triggered, so that meant we would only have a few seconds to start the ritual, get where we wanted to go, and take the potion before a witch stepped through looking for us.

  Brighton Manor had been reduced to a pile of ash and rubble. All of the second and third floors were completely gone. All that remained were pieces of the foundation and the skeleton of charred boards on the front porch.

  The house that had belonged to Ella Mae, my fake mother during those years when I’d been kept here in Peachville, still stood. So did the shed behind Brighton Manor.

  The garden Zara had worked so hard to restore to its former glory was once again nothing more than a tangled mess of dead vines with an empty stone fountain in the center.

  I pushed back feelings of regret and worry. After hearing Lea’s voice last night, I missed my family more than ever. I just prayed Andros got to them in time. If I didn’t hear from him soon, we would all go after them ourselves.

  “We trigger the items here,” I said, standing in the place beside the rubble where I had stood when I first saw Harper. Her room had been just above here on the second floor, and I’d passed by just as she had stood at the window, staring down. I pointed to Ella Mae’s house. “As soon as we trigger them, we shift and fly to the roof of that house. It’s close enough that we should still be able to hear what they’re saying. But if anything goes wrong, we’ll be close to the woods and have a barrier between us and the witches. They’ll have to run around the house to follow us.”

  “Okay, so we start the ritual right at three. As soon as the items are triggered, we fly up to the roof of the house and down the potions,” Rend said. “Then we watch.”

  I nodded and glanced around the area one last time. It was almost three, and even though I was ready for the next step, I hoped that whatever we found out here would help me find Harper.

  Staring at the remains of Brighton Manor, though, my heart ached for us to all be together again. I had to believe the
time would come. Andros was strong, and I knew the warriors of the Resistance Army were capable of getting into the King’s City with the help of their people hiding on the inside.

  I just had to believe that he would bring Aerden and Lea home soon. Meanwhile, I had to focus on bringing Harper home. The sooner the better, and if we hadn’t heard word from Andros by then, we’d go to the King’s City together. We were so close now. We just had to keep fighting.

  “You ready?” Rend asked. “It’s one minute to three.”

  I nodded and set the ritual items on the ground by the burned house. We didn’t need a pentagram or a ritual room to trigger these items. Since they were fake, the Order couldn’t possibly have tied them to any one coven or portal. No, they would have set them to trigger in the most logical way. With spell words.

  My heart raced as I knelt by the emerald items. I watched Rend’s face as he watched the time on his watch. After a long moment, his eyes met mine and he nodded.

  We each took the corks off our potions. I placed my other hand on the fake ritual items and spoke the first words of the original initiation ritual, only backwards.

  “Cognatus ab adnexus.”

  A light appeared inside the emerald master stone, and I quickly shifted, flying by Rend’s side until we each took human form there on the roof of the house where I used to live. We lifted the potions to our mouths and drank the thick liquid down.

  Our bodies disappeared just as a bright portal opened just above the fake master stone and an army of witches spilled out, hands and weapons raised in attack.

  It Was Too Late

  Jackson

  Witches covered the grass beside the remains of Brighton Manor, spreading out into the garden and the area behind the house.

  “Where are they?” one witch shouted. “They should be here.”

  A tall witch dressed in jeans and a black turtleneck stepped through the portal. In her hand, she carried a ritual dagger, and around her neck, she wore a pendant that looked almost identical to Harper’s mother’s necklace. Identical except that the stone embedded into the silver was an amethyst, not a sapphire.

  A Prima.

  They had sent a Prima here to capture us, and if I had to guess, I would say most of the witches spread across the grounds of Brighton Manor now were part of her coven.

  “Spread out,” she shouted. “They have to be here somewhere. Someone activated these items. Find them.”

  The witches scattered, walking through the rubble, checking the shed, and running into the house. Several witches ran into the woods and others searched the tangled mess of the old garden.

  The Prima gathered a ball of amethyst energy into her hands and closed her eyes. When the light had grown quite large, she tapped it in the center, and the energy spread out in concentric circles across the area.

  She waited, watching everything, a confident expression on her face. But when the light had dissipated, she frowned and set her lips into a thin, tight line.

  She recreated the spell, making the light twice as big this time. She threw the light into the air and tapped it again, sending more concentric circles across the area. This time, the light passed straight through me. I felt a distant chill, but I was disconnected from it, as if it were happening to someone else.

  The witch frowned again and turned in a circle, staring back at the burned house.

  “Check the basement,” she said. “Most Prima houses have basements. See if there’s one here where they’re hiding. Where’s the ritual room in this town? Find it and report back to me. Is this an active coven town? If it is, I want the Prima brought to me immediately. She might be working with the demons.”

  A small group of witches bowed to the Prima and began searching through the rubble for any stairs leading down to a basement. They wouldn’t find anything in this home. Peachville’s home had never had a basement. Only a third floor, like all Prima homes. And that was now gone.

  Another group bowed and ran into the woods in search of the coven’s ritual room. If they did manage to find it, they would find nothing more there than another pile of rubble with a broken sapphire stone.

  Rend and I watched from our perch on top of the house as the witches searched everywhere. Various locating spells went off, but Rend had done his job well. None of their magic could find us.

  The Prima grew more and more frustrated as witches returned to her with bad news. She shouted at the top of her lungs for someone to bring her better news.

  But instead of moving, everyone standing in front of her turned their eyes to the portal and quickly fell to one knee.

  “What are you doing?” the Prima shouted. “I said to keep looking. Get up.”

  “They are simply kneeling out of respect, Alina,” a voice said from the portal’s entrance. I couldn’t quite see the woman from my spot on the roof, but I could feel the fear that rippled through the area.

  “Priestess, forgive me,” the Prima—Alina—said. She turned and knelt with her head bowed. “I didn’t know you would be here today.”

  “I didn’t want to miss the torture of the demons and witches responsible for the deaths of two of my sisters,” the woman said.

  She stepped out of the light of the portal, and a chill went through me.

  The woman was dressed in black leather from head to toe. Her long black hair was pulled back into a long ponytail that fell down to her waist Around her neck, a collar made of pure amethysts sparkled in the sunlight. An amethyst panther pendant hung from the collar.

  The amethyst priestess.

  In all our research, we’d never been able to find out much about the priestess standing in front of me. Now, we knew her spirit animal, and we knew what she looked like. But that collar gave me chills. It was almost exactly like the one Joost had found at the abandoned house. All except for the panther pendant.

  “Where are the traitors?” she asked, glancing around. “Bring them to me.”

  Alina kept her head bowed, and as she spoke, her voice trembled. “We haven’t been able to locate them, Priestess,” she said. “When we came through the portal, they were already gone.”

  The priestess seemed to take in her surroundings for the first time, and a fiery look flashed in her eyes.

  “Where are we?” she asked. “This isn’t an emerald portal.”

  She bent over and took the fake master stone in her hands. She crushed it in her fist, and tiny emerald particles fell to the ground as dust at her feet.

  “Someone triggered these items,” she said. “They can’t be far, and I want them found.”

  “We’ve looked everywhere, Priestess,” a witch near the back said, lifting her head. “They aren’t here.”

  The priestess lifted a finger toward the woman, and she went very still for a moment before falling to the ground. I hadn’t seen any magic pass from the priestess to the woman, but she was motionless on the ground. Had the priestess killed her with a single look?

  A gasp went through the group of witches, and the amethyst priestess raised a hand to smooth her already-perfect hair.

  “Does anyone else care to speak against me?” she asked, her eyes surveying the group. “I didn’t think so. Now, get up and find them.”

  For a moment, no one moved, but then, all at once, the witches stood and started going back over the rubble, the garden, and the buildings.

  “What happened here?” the priestess asked as Alina stood. “Why are we at this place?”

  “I don’t know,” Alina said. “The portal opened as soon as the items were triggered, and we came through immediately, ready to take the demons and witches prisoner and bring them back to your dungeons. But when we came through, there was no sign of them.”

  The priestess looked around, studying the burned house. She bent down and took a handful of ash from the pile. She brought it to her nose and breathed in, her eyes closed.

  When she dropped the ash, she stood and drew her hand into a tight fist.

  “We’re in Peachvil
le,” she said. “This house was burned by emerald fire, one of my sister Hazel’s favorite destruction spells. They brought us here to prove a point.”

  “What point?” Alina asked. “I don’t understand.”

  The priestess’s eyes scanned the entire area. “That they think they’re more powerful than we are,” she said. “That they knew about the trap my sister set for them. They knew we were coming before they triggered the spell that opened the portal.”

  “But why would they do that?” she asked. “Why would they trigger the items and just leave? Why wouldn’t they stay and fight?”

  “Because, you fool, they think we’re going to give them some kind of clue,” she said. She raised her voice, and I knew it was fully for my benefit. The priestess wasn’t dumb. She knew we were listening, even if she couldn’t see us. “I know you’re watching, so listen very closely. You may have managed to save yourself this time, but your precious Harper is on her own. At first, I was content just leaving her in the past. The portal that my sister created has closed. Your Harper has no way home.”

  I listened, unsure whether I should believe a word this priestess was saying. How could she be sure the portal was closed? She could be lying. Harper could still have a way home.

  I refused to believe it was too late.

  “Since you’ve found it necessary to try to make me look like a fool, however, I am going to show you what it means to mess with me,” she said. “I am going to be the one to finally teach you what it feels like to lose someone you love with all your heart. You have taken two of my sisters. Now, I’m going to take Harper from you.”

  I couldn’t move or feel my body in the normal way, but in some distant, disconnected way, I felt my muscles tense. I wished we hadn’t taken these potions. I wished we could fly down there and fight.

  The priestess turned on her heel and walked over to one of the witches standing near the garden.