My friends. More than that—family. They taught me how to be. How to care. What love meant. They’d showed me what my blood family couldn’t.
They counted on me. Trusted me no matter what kind of magic ate me up inside. No matter what demons threatened to swallow me whole.
I pulled away from the kiss. The control it took to do that—it hurt like hell. Seared my mouth. My throat. I knew the burning was real. Like the punches I took when I tried to control my magic before. But I did it. I peeled Melody’s hands off my skin and held them close in front of me. Pressed them to my heart.
She looked into my eyes. “What’s wrong?”
“Everything,” I said. It hurt to speak. “All of this. But not you.”
“Please don’t say it’s not you, it’s me. If you do, I’ll kill you.”
She meant it. She could probably make it happen.
“I won’t,” I said. “It’s not true.”
She tried to pull her hands away. I held them tight.
“Melody, your stepfather is dying. Maybe he deserves it. Maybe he should rot in jail. I don’t know. I didn’t have to live through what he did to you.”
She peered at me. A deep line furrowed the center of her brow.
“There’s a Demon coming that’s stronger than you or me. Stronger than both of us,” I said. “What makes you think he’ll love you any more than your mother?”
She sucked in a harsh breath. “How can you say that? He’s my father—”
“He’s a Demon, Melody. Let it sink in. What you’ve done to our world. What’s still to come. We’ll all of us burn. Is that what you really want?”
She shrank from me. Folded into herself like a child. Hiding from the world. Hiding from the monsters who hurt her. From the monsters inside her head.
I let go of her. Watched her hands curl into fists that pounded the bloody floor until they were battered and bruised and she’d spent all of her frustration. All of her anger.
Her stepfather drew his last breath. Exhaled with a shudder and died. His soul tried to take flight. I could see it pushing against the barrier of the circle. Struggling to break free.
I heard a sound from the front of the house. The front door slammed open. The knob thumped a hole into the sheetrock. Zach barked outside. They’d left him in the car.
Footfalls on the tile. Headed this way.
“Melody,” I said softly. “They’re here.”
She glanced at me. Fear flowered in her eyes. “So is he.”
The circle began to glow. From black ash to bright orange. From orange to red, fire that burst into licking flame in the blink of an eye. The fire flared. Consumed what remained of her stepfather. Body and soul.
She watched the flames take him, dry-eyed.
The earth beneath the house began to quake. Shook so hard, it knocked me off balance. Melody grabbed my arm to steady me, but couldn’t hold me.
She smacked her head against the floor. Pushed up again. Her legs pinwheeled. Toes dug in for purchase. She lobster-crawled away from the circle as fast as she could.
I crawled with her. Pulled her farther than she could go on her own.
The foundation underneath the circle cracked open wide. Rent the concrete floor and the carpet on top of it. Spilled blood and ash into the hole in the ground.
Sparks flew. Lighted on us. Burnt our skin and clothes.
Kevin slid into the room. His feet slipped out from under him. He went down hard. Buffeted his wings to break his fall. The jar of water sloshed in his hands. The lid held tight. Kept the liquid inside.
Scott ran in, dragging Stacy behind him. She had the jar of living flame. Eyes wide. Mouth open. She sucked air. All her hair stood on end—everyone’s did.
The Demon came.
He rose from the pit under the house like a sword. Sharp edges and force and heat and violence. Piercing the air. Wounding it. His skin, pale. His hair dark.
The Demon looked like me. Like the thing I’d become.
He roared from deep in his throat. His mouth—a gaping maw. He could eat everything. Everyone. He was utterly alien. Except for his eyes.
They were blue. Like Melody’s.
She froze. Stared. Pressed against me so hard she moved me half a foot.
He couldn’t manifest. Not completely. Not without the other components of the spell.
The Singer strode into the room. I tore my gaze away from the Demon because her presence commanded it. Even wholly human, she shone like a star.
She opened her mouth and spoke a single word that hushed every sound in the room.
“Enough.”
The Demon looked at her. He narrowed his eyes.
She began to sing.
She sang of a man who wore suits everywhere he went. Of the childhood he prepared for her. Strolls through the park. Finger paintings. Her first chemistry set. The puppy who grew into a strong dog who became her best and only friend until he turned gray around his whiskers and died of old age. She fell in love. She discovered her own voice.
She sang every night at the club. Musicians joined with her. They became a band. One night a mysterious stranger sat in the front row. He kissed her hand after the set and she began to grow wings.
She lost everything that ever made her human except one. Love. Even when she couldn’t feel it close—even when it felt so far away she thought she might never feel anything again—she kept her faith in it.
Her song became pure then. Ecstasy. Sex. Raw life force that couldn’t be denied. The seed that grew and pushed up through the earth to reach for the sun. The molten fire beneath the earth that burst forth and created new land. The hand of God that touched each newborn thing and gifted a spark of soul.
She never lost her faith in life. In love.
In Kevin.
Who opened the jar of water Amy had filled and spoke a word of power over it so that the liquid glowed the same blue as the living fire. He drew back his arm and threw it full force at the Demon. The glass broke over him, and the living water. He began to rise once again. To manifest.
Stacy handed her living flame to Kevin. When Kevin threw it and the jar broke and the fire touched the Demon’s skin, it sucked half the air in the room. Left us gasping.
The Demon raised his arms above the rim of the pit. Braced to pull himself out. Into the world.
Scott had the earth. He handed it to Kevin as well. Before Kev could toss it, Melody had pushed away from me. Lunged in front of him. She tried to pull the jar from his hand.
He refused to let it go.
Rage rose in me. Scorched me on the inside. Dug spikes of flame into my chest and clawed its way up my throat. The Destroyer in me roared. It wanted to stop all this. To let the Demon come. To let everyone and everything burn down. I saw with whatever last vestige of seer’s power that still lived inside of me what would happen if I gave in to that fiery desire.
My friends—the people I loved—dying in agony. The city I’d sworn to protect razed to the ground. The destruction spread to other towns. Other cities. Other people.
Would anyone stop it? Would anyone be able to take down the Demon with Melody and me at his side?
I could. I could keep it from ever happening. If the seer still lived inside of me, it’d become part of my soul. It refused to let me give up.
I refused.
Melody saw that in my eyes. And I saw in her eyes that some small part of her believed the good in me. Believed in herself. I saw what she meant to do. I started to move—too late.
She wrenched the jar from Kevin’s grasp and launched herself at the Demon. At her father. She smashed it over him with her own two hands. But not before the fire of the circle caught her clothes. Not before she began to burn the same way her stepfather had.
Her father roared again—in fury.
We’d given him everything he needed to enter our world. We’d brought him here. Melody had made it possible.
Melody ended it.
She burned. She had time to make
a small sound—oh!—before the flame turned her to ash. So fast. Here, then gone.
On her father’s taken breath, she blew apart into nothing.
She died.
And because she had been the one to summon the Demon, because the spell had been tied to her, because she died rather than allow him to destroy her or the world that had caused her so much pain, the Demon died, too.
The fire took him whole. One blink. He was gone.
The flames snuffed out all at once.
Left us there in the empty house with empty hearts, breathing in the stench of charred flesh and singed carpet.
The Singer lifted her voice. She sang a wordless song that shone a light into this place of darkness. It swept over me like a tidal wave. Turned my vision gray and sent pain through my body and soul so sharp, I couldn’t endure it without shrieking.
I lost consciousness. I didn’t know for how long.
When I came to, my fingertips burned like crazy. My skin felt warm. I wanted a cigarette. I wept for Melody.
After all the wrong, all the pain, she’d done right in the end.
I hoped that wherever her soul had gone, she’d find some peace. That she’d belong. That she’d be loved. I hoped it more than anything.
The others waited for me outside. Once, somebody checked on me. I couldn’t see who through the rain of my tears. They didn’t try to comfort me—I didn’t want it anyway.
After a while, the tears dried up, but my heart still wept. That was all right. I could live with it.
I lived with it just fine for the few minutes it took to wind my way out of the house. For the dog to leap from the car and run into my arms. For horror to dawn.
The Demon’s death hadn’t fixed the world.
Kevin stood with his wingless back against the Explorer’s passenger door, his face buried in the Singer’s shoulder while she held him, her wings tucked neatly out of the way. Scott and Stacy sat in the grass, holding hands. Shell shocked.
The cops hadn’t come into the house. They’d been left outside in case the Demon had gotten loose. Rear guard. They perched on the hood of the cruiser, fidgeting. Clearly agitated.
The rest of the neighborhood remained just as screwed up as before. No people. Abandoned cars. Flocks of grackles in the trees, their chilly eyes fixed on me. The air smelled like ozone. Fried and filled with static electricity.
I didn’t think I’d ever smell anything else again.
The willow had said that if we finished the spell, if we summoned the Demon and defeated him, we’d have the chance to turn things around.
In my experience, chance meant choice. As in, somebody making one and taking the action necessary to bring the change.
I was the seer here. That somebody would have to be me.
“We need to go,” I said. My voice sounded unnaturally loud. Harsh.
The Singer pulled away from Kevin. “Yes, we need to go. You have your own work to do, seer. But Kevin and I have got to go to Faery. There’s trouble there that whatever you do won’t fix. It’s up to us.”
I walked over to them. “How long will you be gone?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know yet.”
I laid a hand on Kevin’s arm. He looked at me. “Tell my dad. Take care of Amy?”
I nodded. “That’s a promise.”
He reached around and hugged me fiercely. Let go just as fast and followed the Singer over to where Burns and Reid waited.
The four of them joined hands. The Singer spoke an incantation. They sank beneath the street. Beneath the earth. Gone.
I stared at the spot where they’d stood for a long time, until Stacy and Scott walked up behind me. He handed me the keys to the Explorer.
Stacy forced a smile. “Where are we headed?”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Malek refused to leave Amy until Scott and Stacy swore on their lives to stay until he returned.
When he opened the door to the shop, the overhead bell rang and the MP3 player flared to life. Metallica assaulted my eardrums. Kept me from hearing the squeak of my sneakers on the shiny floor and the click of the dog’s nails and rush of my own blood inside my head.
He led me into the back and motioned for me to sit down while he prepped the works. The scent of disinfectant helped me feel clean again. The coolness of the vinyl chair bathed in air conditioning calmed my nerves, but only a little.
The magic we were about to do would change everything.
I didn’t want to watch Malek take the blood from his arm that would make the inks come alive, so I averted my eyes. But I couldn’t help but hear the guttural sounds he made in his throat—the only sounds he could ever make for the rest of his life—while he prayed over the equipment and the colors.
My intuition allowed me to hear the words he would’ve spoken and the low charm of the voice he could no longer use.
What was old, made new again
What came before, brought back again
Never shall the Demon come again
May the Destroyer in human hearts be healed.
I peeled off my shirt. My favorite shirt of all the Hawaiians, caked in blood and I didn’t want to know what else. I balled it up and tossed it in the corner trash can.
Malek took a disposable razor to my back and shaved the fine hairs. Cleared the way for the spell. He wiped the skin down with alcohol and tapped me on the shoulder.
I’m going to draw from memory. The city. The spirit of the city.
No pattern on a sheet of tracing paper. Nothing set in stone. Living spirit couldn’t be quantified.
“Go,” I said. But he had one more thing to tell me.
No charge.
A lie. A great big, whopping one. I’d pay the price every day for the rest of my life.
He pulled on a pair of black gloves and buzzed the needle to life. Dipped it in the jar of black ink. Started the outline. It stung like crazy at first, but I settled into the pain. I fed my intuition into it, let my magic twine with Malek’s and so give the spell greater power. Greater potential.
I poured my love into it.
Malek worked for hours. Sweat ran down his face. He wiped it with a towel, cleaned his hands, and kept going. Not once did I pass out, or run to the bathroom to boot, or complain. Not once did I speak a word.
Not until he finished.
Not until the city had been recreated in all its original spirit. In the form it’d been before Melody’s spell had sent everything spinning sideways.
He sprayed down my back and wiped it clean again. Spread ointment over it with his hands. Covered it in plastic wrap and sealed the sides of the wrap with tape.
He pulled off the gloves and tapped my shoulder.
I turned so I could see him sign.
The ink is on an accelerated timeline. Effective by the time you walk out the door.
Which meant that even as we spoke, the city was putting itself back together again.
“Thanks, dude.”
Anytime. No, I take that back. I don’t want to see you for at least six months.
“Too bad,” I said. “I made a promise to Kev to look after Amy. I know you’re taking that on, but I’m gonna help you with it.”
She’ll heal in time.
I hoped so. “She won’t have to do it alone.”
He nodded. Get out of here. Go home.
He’d be headed over to relieve Scott and Stacy. I trusted him to do that. I trusted him, period.
“See you tomorrow.”
I pushed myself to standing on shaking legs. Whistled for Zach to follow. We stepped out into the morning sun—we’d been at the Snake Bite all night.
The street shone with fresh rain. The smell of salt air blown in from the Gulf filled my lungs. Zach wagged his tail.
A cab drove by. And a line of cars filled with people on the early commute. Men shuffled out of the leather bar across the street, got on their bikes, and roared out of the lot. They looked exhausted. I wondered if they’d sleep for a week. I
realized I had no idea what day it was.
My cell rang. I’d practically forgotten I had a phone.
I pulled it from the cargo pocket of my shorts and answered.
“Rude?” my father asked.
I blew out a breath I’d been holding my whole life. “Who else would it be?”
“You coming home for breakfast?”
“Right now.”
“There’s bacon,” he said, and hung up.
I hit the appropriate button on my keychain with a trembling finger. The Explorer’s door locks flipped up. I put Zach in the passenger seat and climbed in behind the wheel. Started the engine and flicked the turn signal to let the traffic know I planned to join them. To join the rhythm of the city.
The ink on my back writhed in response to my thought. The magic and the city would live with me. Live in me.
As long as I took care of it, it would live.
Turn the page to read Chapter One of the next book in The Faery Chronicles, FAERY.
PROLOGUE
WE’D SAVED THE HUMAN WORLD, not that it showed. The whole city of Houston, Texas: a burnt-out shell of its former self. The office towers downtown looked like a bomb had gone off—steel frames bent and twisted, glass windows shattered all over the streets and sidewalks, concrete crumbled. Most of four-and-a-half-million people vanished without a trace. They were the lucky ones. The ones who remained became everything they feared in their darkest heart of hearts that they might become. They hurt each other. Killed each other, and themselves.
All because of a girl named Melody I went to high school with. She had the kind of family you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy. A drunken stepfather who liked to use his fists and a mother who took his side because she’d rather be bruised and broken—or dead—than alone. Melody discovered one important fact about her real father that she clung to like a lifejacket in a storm at sea. Her real dad was a Demon. She’d inherited his fiery, destructive powers.
She thought that made her special, better than the rest of us. She never understood that better wasn’t the point. Us was. We lived or died together. We had each others’ backs.
Demon (The Faery Chronicles Book 2) Page 17
