Beyond The Darkness: The Shadow Demons Saga, Book 9

by Sarra Cannon

  “It’s time,” she said. “Summon the fairy.”

  The woman—a younger woman with nearly white-blonde hair and bright blue eyes—shook her head. “I can’t do that,” she said. “She’ll be furious with me if I summon her like this.”

  The priestess slapped the woman across the face, leaving a bright red mark that the woman ran her hand across as tears spilled across her cheeks.

  “Don’t make me ask you again,” the priestess said. “I can make you hurt a lot more than this, and you know it.”

  The woman fell to her knees, trembling.

  She pulled something from her pocket and held it tightly in her palm. “I’m begging you, Priestess Black. Please at least tell her you commanded me to do this,” she said.

  The priestess pointed a finger at the woman, and for a moment, I held my breath, waiting for the woman to fall to the ground like the other woman had done. But the girl simply closed her eyes and lifted the gemstone she held in her hand up into the air.

  “Sabine. Sister. I call to you,” she said. She turned her palm downward and pressed the gemstone into the ground. “I summon you to this place.”

  The stone erupted in a bright, white light, and both the priestess and the woman stepped away from the light.

  The woman who had held the gemstone ran into the ruined garden, hiding her face behind a dead dogwood tree. As she ran, I could swear I caught sight of a pair of iridescent wings twitching across her back, but when she stepped behind the tree and out of the sunlight, the wings seemed to disappear.

  Movement caught my eye at the edge of the bright light, and I turned my focus to the small woman stepping out of the new portal.

  She Sees Me

  Jackson

  Long, white hair fell to her waist, and she wore a gown that appeared to be made entirely of dark green vines. She was barefoot and had a wildness about her. Shimmering iridescent wings fluttered behind her as she stepped forward, her eyes narrowed toward the amethyst priestess.

  Unlike the hiding woman, there was no mistaking this woman’s wings. I knew there were fae who walked this earth, but I had never seen one who radiated such raw power.

  “What is the meaning of this?” she asked, her voice a strangely dissonant mixture of tinkling bells and pure rage. “Why have you summoned me from my home?”

  The amethyst priestess bowed her head low. “Forgive me, Sabine,” she said. “But you do owe me a favor, do you not? And you of all people understand what it means to owe someone a favor.”

  Sabine walked around the priestess, her eyes taking in the surroundings. When she looked up toward the roof where Rend and I stood, I could have sworn her eyes met mine directly. A slow smile tickled the edge of her mouth, and she spun around to face the priestess.

  “What is this favor you ask of me?” she asked. “Let’s get on with it, as you know I don’t like to be away from my home for long.”

  “Of course,” Priestess Black said, lifting her head. “You have no doubt heard of my sister’s death?”

  “Eloisa?” Sabine asked. “Such a tragedy. She was a powerful witch.”

  “No,” the priestess said. “My sister, Hazel, has also been murdered by the same witch.”

  Sabine turned her back to the priestess, a smile definitely playing at her lips as she glanced directly at me. “Oh my goodness,” she said. “I had no idea. You must be utterly distraught.”

  The priestess cleared her throat. “We are furious,” she said. “My sister, misguided as she was, used her time manipulation talents to open a portal into the past where she could take a handful of girls in order to rehabilitate them.”

  “A handful?” Sabine said, narrowing her gaze as she turned back to the amethyst priestess. “From what I have heard, it was a lot more than a handful, Gladys.”

  “Well, let’s not get into numbers here,” the priestess said. “The point is that Hazel kidnapped Harper, the same girl who murdered Eloisa. She took her to the institute she’d set up in the 1950’s and attempted to destroy the girl’s mind.”

  “Quite the risky move,” Sabine said, shaking her head. She stepped over toward a cluster of vines at the edge of the garden and placed her hand on them. A line of bright green flowed through the vines as they came back to life. Beneath them, tulips in half a dozen different colors grew up from the ground.

  She glanced up at me again and nodded.

  She sees me.

  Not only did Sabine somehow know I was here, she could see me clearly. And she was trying to send me a message. The way she’d touched those flowers reminded me so much of Zara that it made my heart hurt. But Zara was not fae. She couldn’t have been. She was the daughter of the sapphire priestess. A witch who was purely human.

  And Zara had only had wings when she’d shifted into the form of a blue butterfly. Wings, yes, but not the same fae wings that Sabine had.

  What was she trying to tell me?

  “My sister’s stupid quest to turn witches into her brainwashed daughters is not my concern right now,” Priestess Black said. “Harper, however, is of grave concern to all of us.”

  “Oh?” Sabine asked, tilting her head. “How is that? I thought you said the poor girl was trapped in the past.”

  “Exactly,” Priestess Black said. “She’s in the past where she’s capable of altering the timeline. Her actions there could have devastating results for us all.”

  “But they don’t,” Sabine said simply.

  “What do you mean?” Priestess Black asked. “How could you possibly know that?”

  “Because you’re still standing here,” Sabine said, smiling as she touched another set of vines and the right half of the garden burst into bloom. “If Harper had somehow altered the timeline or caused some sort of catastrophic change in events, you would most certainly know it.”

  Priestess Black shifted her weight. “It’s possible she hasn’t done anything yet to change the timeline. That doesn’t mean that she won’t.”

  Sabine laughed, and the sound rang out like windchimes. “Silly, Gladys. That’s not how time travel works,” she said. “But I didn’t come here to explain these things to you. Tell me what this favor is, and let me be on my way.”

  “I want Harper dead,” she said, her voice tense.

  “So kill her,” Sabine said with a shrug. “What do I have to do with any of this?”

  “The portal back to the past has closed,” Priestess Black said. “I need for you to open it again.”

  Sabine sighed. “Is that all?” she asked. “You pulled me from my home for such a trivial task?”

  She threw a nasty glance toward the woman hiding behind the tree.

  “Marta, you should be ashamed of yourself,” she said, bending down to retrieve the stone the woman had used to summon her. Sabine tossed it into the air, and as it caught the light, I realized it was an opal, multicolored and shimmering like the fairy’s wings. “You may be distant family, but that doesn’t mean I will forgive you for this. You owe me now, girl.”

  Marta clapped a hand over her mouth and slid down the tree, her entire body trembling. I wondered what it meant to owe a favor to this fairy. Obviously, it wasn’t always a bucket of rainbows, or Marta wouldn’t be acting like she was about to throw up.

  “Can you do it or not?” Priestess Black asked.

  “Of course I can,” Sabine said, waving her hand in the air. She passed beside the priestess and looked straight up at me as she spoke. “For me, opening a portal into the past is child’s play. It takes almost nothing. I won’t be able to reopen an older portal, but I know where the girl is. I can open a portal straight to the house where she’s living in the past.”

  Even though my body was separated into billions of tiny particles, I could feel my own heart beating a million miles a minute.

  “So, will you do it?” the priestess asked, tapping her boot against the hard ground.

  “Are you certain this is how you would choose to spend your one favor?” Sabine asked. “Because after
this, I will owe the Order nothing. I want to be sure that’s absolutely clear. I don’t care if the Hall of Doorways itself is destroyed. After this, I will do nothing to help you again.”

  “Yes, I’m certain,” Priestess Black said. “I wouldn’t have summoned you here if I wasn’t sure.”

  Sabine shrugged. “Okay, so let’s get started.”

  Priestess Black grabbed the fairy’s arm, but immediately stepped away when Sabine gave her a look of pure death, her eyes turning instantly black as coal.

  “I’m sorry,” Priestess Black said, bowing her head again. “I forgot myself for a moment. I don’t want you to cast the portal here. If you would, please accompany me back to my dungeons. We’ll open the portal there, and I will send five of my best assassins through to the find the girl. I imagine she’ll be dead by nightfall.”

  “Don’t forget yourself again,” Sabine said. “Put your hands on me one more time, and the Order will lose another priestess, I assure you.”

  “Of course,” Priestess Black said. “I apologize.”

  Sabine lifted her chin. “I will go with you to your dungeons,” she said. “But after this, any debts I had to the Order are paid.”

  “Agreed,” the priestess said. “Follow me. I’m anxious to get started. The sooner the girl is dead, the sooner we can turn our focus to rebuilding what we’ve lost.”

  The priestess motioned for her witches to go through the portal ahead of her. Sabine appeared to wait patiently as the crowd cleared out, each witch disappearing through the portal in turn.

  She turned her attention toward me once again.

  “What are you looking at?” Priestess Black asked when she was the only witch left at Brighton Manor. She squinted up at us, holding a hand to block the sun.

  “Nothing,” Sabine said. “Come. Let’s get this over with so I can go home.”

  The priestess nodded and walked with Sabine toward the portal. In seconds, they crossed over the portal’s barrier, and the light disappeared entirely, leaving Brighton Manor just as we had found it.

  Everything was the same, except for the flourishing garden near the fountain.

  The Demon Inside Her

  Harper

  I emerged from the cabin in the woods as the light of another day rose on the horizon. The storm I’d started had long since calmed, but the ground was still soaked, and so were my clothes.

  I needed to do something about these bodies. I couldn’t very well have the police or some random hunter stumbling across this scene and tying it back to me. The last thing I needed was to get locked up here and have to find a way to break free and disappear.

  My exhaustion was bone-deep, and I just wanted to lie down on the grass and go to sleep for twelve hours. But there was still work to be done. Even if the portal was closed, I refused to give up hope. Even if it took ten years, Brooke and I would find someone else who could manipulate time. We would find someone who could send us home.

  In the end, I decided to bury the bodies in the basement of the cabin. It was the safest place I could think of, and with the portal now closed, no one should be coming through here any time soon.

  It took time to lift each of the bodies up with my telekinetic power and float them down the steps and into the basement. I piled the ten of them up in one corner, trying not to look at their faces as I dropped them there and turned to leave.

  But there was still one more person to deal with.

  I trudged through the woods to find the detective sleeping against the tree. I laughed. How the heck could he sleep tied to a tree like this? He was still breathing, so I knew he wasn’t dead, but he was completely out cold.

  I clapped my hands twice, and he didn’t even move.

  I thought about just putting an end to him right now. He had, after all, been the leader of this group. If I left him alive, there was a good chance he would come after me again. I had no idea how many of the Others lived in the area, but if they had planned to face the emerald priestess or her daughter, surely they would have brought everyone at once.

  I knew I was taking a risk in keeping him alive, but since he was the only one besides the nurses who knew the truth about the emerald priestess, I hoped he would still have some usefulness. Besides, I might need help getting in to see the girls so I could give them the memory potions Rend had made for them.

  I just had to hope that last night’s events would help convince him to leave me the hell alone.

  “Detective,” I said loudly. “James.”

  He stirred, a string of drool coming from his mouth.

  He swallowed and opened his eyes slowly. Then, he quickly became alert, snapping his eyes to mine.

  “What happened?” he asked. “What time is it?”

  I glanced up at the sun coming through the trees. “I’m not sure what time it is,” I said. “Still somewhat early if you’re worried about making it to work on time.”

  He shook his head. “That’s the least of my worries right now,” he said. “The portal?”

  “It’s closed,” I said. “We got here too late.”

  He slumped against the ropes that still tied him to the tree.

  “What are you going to do now? Are you going to kill me?”

  “I should probably put this dagger through your heart for what you did last night,” I said. “But I’m hoping you can still help me. If you agree not to attack me again or get any of the Others to come after me, I promise you that if you help me free the girls from the hospital and find a way home, I’ll let you come back home with me.”

  “I’ll do whatever you ask,” he said. “I swear it.”

  “I don’t trust easily, but right now, I really want to believe you, James. I’ll tell you right now that if you so much as think about betraying me again, I’ll kill you without hesitation.”

  “I won’t,” he said. “Not after what you did last night. Those were our best people across five states. The leaders of the Others won’t be happy when they find out what happened, though. They’ll be expecting a report this morning.”

  “Then you’ll give them one,” I said. “Do they know you were trying to kill me? Or did they still believe you were going to be fighting the emerald priestess and the doctor?”

  “The doctor,” he said. “They knew about the fire and that the priestess was nowhere to be found, but I told them we would take care of the doctor.”

  “Okay, good. So tell them the good doctor is dead,” I said. “That won’t be a lie, so you should be able to convince them relatively easily.”

  “What do I say about the rest of the group, though? They’re going to notice when none of them check in or show up at home today.”

  “Stall for time,” I said. “Tell them the doctor is dead, but you have suspicions that the priestess is still alive and in hiding. Say that the group agreed to stick around until you find her.”

  “Okay,” he said. “That should buy a few days at best, though. If none of the others check in with their group leaders, someone is bound to come looking for them.”

  “Then we need to make sure we’re long gone by then,” I said. “I’m going to let you go now, okay? You don’t breathe a word of what happened here to anyone, you understand?”

  “I won’t,” he said. “I want to go home just as badly as you do.”

  I shook my head. “You know, it’s entirely possible that portal was open when we first got here last night. If you hadn’t wasted my time by trying to kill me, we might have been able to go home.”

  “Would you have, though?” he asked. “Would you have left those girls here?”

  I sighed. “No. I wouldn’t have left them here,” I said.

  “I didn’t think so,” he said. “The way you talk about them, it’s like you feel responsible for them, even though you weren’t the one who brought them here. If you hadn’t been here, though, most of those girls would have been dead in a few months, anyway.”

  “Thanks in part to you,” I said. “Why were you working for
the emerald priestess, anyway? What did she have on you?”

  “Let me go,” James said. “I’ll tell you on the drive home. It’s a long story.”

  I released the ropes that surrounded him, and he stepped away from the tree and stretched. His face twisted in pain as he moved his body around and worked out all the kinks from being in one position for so long.

  I half expected him to pull out a second gun and try to come after me, but he didn’t. He simply walked back down the path through the woods and out to his car.

  I followed behind him and listened as he started telling his story.

  “When I first met the emerald priestess, I was only twenty-years-old,” he said. “I had just been admitted into the police academy. My mother was a single parent, and I still lived at home with her and my younger sister, Amanda.”

  We reached the police cruiser and climbed inside. He fished his keys out of his pocket and started the car up. He backed down the rough path slowly as he spoke.

  “Amanda was only thirteen when she was recruited to join the local cheerleading team.”

  I groaned. I had a feeling I knew exactly where this was going.

  James laughed, but there was no joy in the sound. “I see you already know what the local cheerleaders were up to,” he said. “But I had no idea what was really going on at that school. I thought cheerleading was a stupid waste of time for someone as smart as Amanda, but I didn’t think it was dangerous by any means.”

  “When did you find out the truth?” I asked.

  “About six months after she first joined the squad, our mother got sick,” he said. “Cancer. It was bad, and it spread fast. I tried to be there for her as much as I could, but I had a rough schedule back then, and I knew we would need my income to get by since Mom had to stop working. Amanda wanted to drop out of school for a semester to help out at home, and even though I hated the idea of her missing some of her work, I didn’t see much choice. We couldn’t afford a full-time nurse at the time, and there was just no way for me to be home every day.”