by Oxford, Rain
“He cannot defeat me. I am more powerful than the gods.”
“Really? I think they would take offence to that. Too bad for you, it is me you are facing,” I said, still pacing. Surely he could feel that I was charging my batteries. Sure, I could die, and sure, his power was smothering, but I felt like he was finally in my trap.
He looked startled. “You? How could you possibly compare to the Iadnah? You think because you have some of their powers that you can best me?”
“Oh, yes. All I need is a few powers. You see, the gods are ancient and wise and omnipresent. They have nothing to run from, and nothing to fear. I don’t have a lot of knowledge in spells or non-corporeal beings. I lack common sense sometimes and walk right into danger. I am certainly not wise, either. There isn’t a lot about me that you should feel threatened by.
“What I do have is a mate who is sneaky and manipulative. What I do have is an uncle who has survived more scrapes than anyone. What I do have is a best friend who will tear down any walls that anyone could possibly put up around him. And you know why I will defeat you? I have the answer for you.”
“Why?”
“Because I am always learning to overcome my faults. Mordon, trust me?”
The words I had asked him many times before flashed across his mind and I saw recognition in the blackness of his eyes. “Always,” my friend responded despite the demon.
“Shut it down,” I said.
Before the demon could catch on, Mordon shifted his eyes, teeth, and nails back to normal. The dragon tattoo appeared over his neck, just above the collar of his shirt. I tore into the void, just enough to make a crack. Just a small opening into Hell. Small enough for a demon anyway…
“Kick him out, Rojan.”
The demon was expelled more simply than in the movies, and thankfully nothing like in The Exorcist. It wasn’t really visual. Fortunately, I had a god’s magic and training, because I would have missed it otherwise. I would have been too slow… but I wasn’t.
In the instant that the demon was between my friend’s body and the void, I created a negatively charged time field around the demon and my friend. If anyone else were to stand beside me, anyone who did not control Iadnah energy, they would not have seen those in the field. However, for me, they slowed. That gave me the precious moment that I needed to close the void, which was outside the field. I simultaneously collapsed the time field and created a universal bubble around the demon. The bubble was exactly the same as the bubble I had created around Mordon, Sammy, and myself to transport us through the void, except this was a bubble of universe… inside the universe. Built of raw Iadnah energy and meant to protect the occupants from the destructive void, there was no shattering it.
The bubble filled with smoke and I could see the face, the true form of the demon within. That was a face I would see in my nightmares.
“Creative.” Regivus’s sudden appearance was completely unexpected. The equally sudden appearance of Tiamat, Erono, Enki, Madus, Araxi, and a god I had not yet met, was not. “I have to say you never cease to astonish.”
I shrugged and went to help Mordon off of the ground. He appeared to be in pretty good condition for someone who was just possessed by a demon that burned bodies. If he were anything but a dragon, we would all be dead. My best friend and his dragon would probably never understand just how important they were.
“What do you plan to do with him?” Araxi asked me.
I considered the gods. “Why are you asking me? Isn’t divine punishment better left to the divine?”
“You should probably start considering yourself one of us,” Enki said. I gave him my best look of disbelief, and he smirked. “We know you never wanted to be a god, but you have the power, so you might as well have the guidance.”
“I think he may not need it,” Tiamat said, looking worried over the demon-incasing bubble.
That was the last thing I wanted; for her to feel I had become too powerful.
As the powerful energy stirred inside me, ready for any command, I knew it was too late to restrict it. I was powerful. It was too late to go back, but I would have done anything I could not to lose the goddess that I loved.
I didn’t realize that my chest was hurting, or even that I had turned away from her, until her arms wrapped around me. “I am not upset with you, Dylan, or with how powerful you have become. I am only upset that you were in so much danger.”
“You worried about me being too powerful before,” I argued.
“My brothers didn’t know you and I was afraid they would react worse to your power. I had no idea you could actually get through their hard heads and stubborn stupidness.”
“Do you call everyone stupid?” I asked, shocked. “I thought I was special.”
“You are, my love, in more ways than I can count… unfortunately. I have realized that I cannot always be there to protect you, so you need to be able to defend yourself. As much as I may dislike that you need to be self-reliant, I am glad you can be, which you have proven many times over the last week. Now, as you are the one who trapped the beast, you should decide what to do with him.”
“I want to send him back to the void and make sure he can never return. Is there a demon jail or something?” I asked.
“Not a jail, per se, but a warden. Janus is waiting for your call. However, he cannot take the beast as it is now.”
“It needs a corporeal form,” I concluded.
“Yes, that would be the easiest method, and the one with the least chance of escape. However, if we show you how to do it, you would be able to create people. Can you handle that?” she asked.
It was magic I never intended to use. “Wouldn’t it be better if you did it?”
“Our magic will not go through the barrier, so the spell must be done at the exact instant that you drop it, or the beast will escape,” she said.
“Okay. Tell me how to do it.”
She put her hands on my shoulders. “As a demon, he will try to appear in the most terrifying form he can, so the last thing you want to do is picture someone who terrified you before.” Even as she said it, I pictured my second step-father. “You need to create the image of a new person.”
“I’m not that creative,” I said. She gave me a disbelieving look. “Not with faces, because I don’t really notice faces that much. I couldn’t actually describe Mordon to you without looking at him. I can barely describe myself.”
“Then picture someone you feel deserves to die a horrible and painful death,” she said. I looked over at Regivus, who still resembled Alec, but it was my second step-father, again, that I thought of.
Alec, the first man my mother married, drank too much, swore too much, and beat me too much. He was extremely suspicious and easily angered. If that wasn’t enough, he was stealing from my mother. When I tried to tell her that he was stealing, he shot me right in front of her. I woke up in the hospital and was immediately sent to boarding school. She said that she couldn’t look at me after what I accused her husband of doing.
When she found out that he was in fact, stealing from her and cheating on her with a fifteen-year-old, she left him. Not a month after the divorce was final, she married Harvey.
Harvey was my nightmare. I met him a few months after their wedding for a visit because he said he had wanted to meet me. He didn’t have a beer-belly, he spoke with class, and he wasn’t in a gang. Instead, it was his smile that warned me away.
His smile was not fake… it was worse. My mother had always been of mind that I was useless and dumb, but when he was around, she seemed to despise me. That should have been my first clue, but I just thought she was still mad about what happened with her ex-husband.
He made her bring me home and put me back into public school. I wanted to believe I would finally have a real childhood, but even when he tried to take me fishing or to football games, all that stuff other kids’ parents were doing, it felt wrong. Harvey would stare at me hard enough that I could sense it, even when I sle
pt. He would hug me, not any differently than another parent, but it gave me chills. One time he told me that my mother treated me wrong and that he should take me somewhere away from her. I convinced my mother to send me back to boarding school and I tried to find somewhere else to be during holidays.
One day, after two years, I was called to the headmaster’s office. Harvey was there. He told me he needed to take me home and, having no proper excuse, I went with him. After he made me tell him all about how I was doing in school, I finally got him to tell me what was going on. He said we were moving to a better house in a small town, that I wouldn’t have to be away at school anymore. He went on and on about how great the house was and how many acres there were for hunting.
When we stopped for gas, I went into the bathroom, borrowed a cell phone, and called my mother. It was my aunt who answered and explained to me that my mother was in the hospital after her husband beat her nearly to death and left her bleeding out on the kitchen floor.
I hitched a ride back to Houston and took buses back home. When my mother came home, she was furious that I had managed to ruin two of her marriages. She said I didn’t want her to be happy and she wished she had dropped me off at an orphanage when I was a baby.
“Go with that,” Divina said, having read my mind. “Sending the demon disguised as him to the void should be therapeutic.”
I didn’t actually want to face him again, though. He had never hurt me. I never wanted to see him again, and I hated what he did to my mother, but I didn’t feel the need to seek revenge. I would rather just never see the man again.
Still, it was a face I could clearly picture in my head, a face I watched out for in crowds. I turned back to the fog-filled bubble of trapped demon and focused my mind on Harvey. “Okay, what now?” I asked. I glanced back at her when she didn’t answer and she looked unsure.
“I have never described it before.”
Regivus sighed. “This is why we should all teach him, not just you.”
He approached us and when I turned to him, he put his hand on my forehead. I felt like I was shocked with a high dose of electricity, a drearily familiar sensation. What was left when the feeling faded was new. Divina caught me as I fell, then let me go gently when the static shocked her.
I pulled myself back to my feet before the new knowledge could assimilate in my head, and I wished it never did. To know the human body as a god did was… disappointing. It was so simple, so basic. There was nothing special about it from a god’s view. I understood why Divina couldn’t explain it; no living person should see the human race as the gods did. They thought of humans like we thought of mice… disposable, a little dirty, and good for experimentation.
Creating a human body was no more amazing than picking out a breed of dog; each god had their preferences and needed one that fit their lifestyle. There was nothing sophisticated about using the malleable energy to create flesh and bone. No personal connection.
I collapsed the bubble and created the corporeal body around the demon simultaneously. Instead of making it human-compatible, as Regivus had taught me, I made it heat-resistant. The demon could have lived in it just as long as if he had taken Sammy. And why did I give him everything he wanted? Because I may have forgiven Harvey for causing me the fear he did, but the demon hurt Mordon and scared Sammy. I wanted to hurt him back.
The demon breathed uneasily as he adapted to his new flesh cage that looked so familiar to me. I realized that I had never really gotten over what happened, because I never knew what would have happened when Harvey got me to that house. Divina was right; one way or another, this would be therapeutic.
Divina gaped at me with wide eyes. “What are you trying to do?” she asked me.
I shrugged. “I don’t know yet, I’m just going to go with it.”
“You do that a lot.”
“It always works out,” I answered honestly. More and more since becoming a Guardian, I acted on my plans before I knew what the plan was.
The demon was incredibly powerful, but in the temporary bodies it had to use nominal energy, so I always had the advantage. In this body, the demon was free to use its natural resources; it created energy. It was not nominal or Iadnah energy, so I had to guess that it was demon energy.
As the demon built its magic, I decided to find out for sure; I reached into the demon with my Iadnah energy and forced the new energy out. Stripping him of his power looked like it was extremely painful for the demon. Too bad.
The energy reacted with my magic. While it was more powerful than nominal energy, it was easily overpowered by Iadnah energy, but only because my magic was so well-controlled. I could feel the stares from the gods behind me. To strip any being of magic was a last resort. To actually give the demon back his natural abilities, only to take it away immediately was cruel and unusual punishment.
I helped Mordon to his feet for the second time and pushed him behind Divina. The demon had hurt Mordon and dragged him into the void. He would suffer more before I let him go.
“Why Sammy?” I asked the demon.
Finally he grinned. “He was powerful enough to live in forever, but young enough that I could easily crush his soul. Then you took him and ran and I enjoyed the chase.”
His answer was predictable and his words were steady, but his eyes were lying. Harvey was impossible to read, but looking into the demon’s light brown eyes, I could read him. I created this body just a little less than perfect, and it was paying off.
“That’s not it. You spent weeks searching for him on Earth. I know you said you could smell him, but then why did you not find him sooner?”
His grin faltered. “I was just---”
“You could smell him, I know, and you could track him after you found him. Someone led you to him, and it wasn’t us.” Staring right into his eyes as I said it, I knew I was right. I could feel it. “Who told you about Sammy? Who knew about his power and led you to him?” He turned his eyes to one of the gods behind me and without moving, I sent out a lash of electricity. It was not enough to injure him as a demon, just to regain his attention. “I’m talking to you. Answer me.” I was purposely talking down to him.
He was trying to divert attention, to cause doubt, but the gods who stood behind me would not have led the beast to Sammy. I would have known. If it felt good jerking around the demon who chased Mordon and I across the universe, who looked like the man who beat my mother, I would never say.
“You have to stop with these revelations, it’s making my head hurt,” Divina said. “Nobody can keep anything from you because you will figure it out at the worst possible time.”
“I know how we can both benefit from this.” The demon’s eyes darted from me, to Divina, and back. “You could kill me, send me back to the void, but you could also let me live. Open the gates between the worlds. It is the natural way. The books are unnatural. Open the gates and people could travel freely between the worlds.”
“So could the demons,” Divina said.
He snarled at her. “Janus can keep them in line. And with this body that you gave me, I would never need to hurt anyone.”
“I suppose you would want me to give you back your demon energy, too?” I asked.
Of course he did, but he wanted to live. He gave me his most submissive look and I was glad I did not have a dragon as Mordon did; Mordon’s dragon forgave when his enemy submitted. I forgave until one of my friends was hurt.
“I could live with nominal energy,” he said, unsure. He was not used to acting docile.
“Try it,” I dared. He shook his head. “Use the nominal energy. Now,” I demanded.
Divina took a step back from me, careful to keep Mordon behind her. The demon knew it was a trick, but also knew better than to deny the one holding all of the cards. He drew in the free-flowing, pure nominal energy around him and screamed in agony, then fell to his knees, huffing and puffing.
“Oh, no, did I leave a little of my energy inside you when I took your power away?”
I’ve never heard something so condescending come out of my mouth and I wasn’t about to stop. “I guess you will have to never do any magic again.”
“Why are you doing this? I read in your friend’s mind that you were peaceful and merciful,” the demon cried.
I never knew a demon could beg for mercy. What a disappointment.
I crouched down in front of the demon, eye to eye, and gave him a grin, hidden from the other gods. He tried to look down, but I sunk my fingers into his short hair, damp with sweat, and yanked his head back.
“I was wrong,” he said, realizing that he made a terrible mistake.
“You were.”
“Please let me go. I will never use magic or kill anyone again! I never want to go back to the void. You can understand that.”
“You messed with my family.”
“I am sorry. I did not realize he was so important to you. I just wanted to live.” He was still begging. He was sincere now, and I could have let him go. While the demon would never be a model citizen by anyone’s standards, he would be too afraid of me to kill.
Divina tried to say something, but one of her brothers stopped her.
“You could have your father back,” the demon said. I paused and he took that for an opening. “With the gates open, with the demons free of the void, he could live here with you. The gates will keep the universe in balance and the powers that kept you apart, that took him before you even knew him, would be at peace. Your friend’s dragon… if you open the gates, the dragons can be free again and escape those who hunt them.”
When Nano had told me that there were prophesies about me, I thought I could avoid it. I thought it was blown out of proportion. That I would change the universe? Impossible. But this was the moment that everyone knew was coming, and Divina had known.
Feeling something weird in my free hand, I looked down to see I was clutching sand. Why it bothered me, I didn’t know, but there was something about sand… something just out of reach in my memory. It was like I was trying to remember a dream I had a long time ago, or maybe it was déjà vu.
