Slowly, she stood. The clearing was empty, the portal glowing behind it. Two steps and she’d be through it. Sera could only hope that it would take her back home. Marcus had said that Jude wanted them to head back to his place after they delivered the Fyre to Azrath, which meant that the portal must be tethered to Silver Lake. At least she hoped it was.
Taking a deep breath, she inched forward one step before a hand wound in her hair and flung her body backward. She crashed to the dirt and pain lanced through her shoulder where she’d hit the ground. Damien leered over her.
“How did you get here? Did you follow us?” he snapped, his breath sour in her face. “Did you?” he repeated. Spit flew from his mouth.
“I didn’t—”
Damien slapped her across the face. “You must have because there’s no way you could get here on your own. I knew you were trouble. Don’t lie to me!” Sera froze as his palm swung toward her again, instinct alone bringing her forearm up to block him. She flung her knee up into his belly and scooted out from under him, scrambling backward.
“You’ll pay for that!” Damien growled. His face twisted with rage as he hunkered over, his body shifting as black leathery wings sprouted from his back and his face transformed into something hideous, pointy and scaled. Sera felt her scream lodge in her throat as he turned toward her.
“Scared, Princess?” Damien taunted. “Now that you’ve seen me, what am I going to do with you?”
Sera’s mind whirled. They were all demons! They worked for Azrath. She stared at the dragon-like creature in front of her. Its tongue snaked from its mouth in a lascivious motion, and she cringed, balling her fingers into fists.
You just escaped the worst Demon Lord in Xibalba and now you’re going to let some pubescent boy-demon get the best of you? she hissed to herself. Get up and defend yourself!
Sera stood, wiping all emotion from her face, despite her hammering heart. “I’m not afraid of you, Damien.”
“You should be. I’ve done far worse things than I am going to do to you.” He uncurled the long black metal whip at his side and flicked it toward her. Sera jumped out of the way, the barbed tip cracking perilously close to her face.
“Jude won’t be happy that you didn’t listen to orders,” Sera said.
“Ah, so you overheard that conversation. Didn’t anyone tell you that eavesdropping is rude?” Damien shrugged. “Whatever. What Jude doesn’t know won’t hurt him. And you’re not going to be able to tell anyone our little secret, are you Sera?” He grinned, baring a row of elongated fangs. “Because you’re going to disappear. Poof! And no one will ever know. But first, you and I are going to have a little fun.”
“Damien, I’m warning you. Stay back. Just let me through the portal, and we can forget this ever happened.”
A long slow laugh emanated from the demon. “You’re warning me? That’s funny. But it’s not that simple, Princess. You’ve seen me.” He advanced toward her. “And the truth is that I don’t want to let you go.”
Damien flung the whip toward her again and she threw herself out of the way. He growled and flung it again.
This time Sera countered instinctively with a flick of her own wrist, and a red-gold thread curled out like liquid flame, catching Damien’s whip in mid-flight. For a second, Sera wondered at its odd color before hurling it to the side as his eyes widened, his weapon ripped from his fingers.
“You’re Daeva?” he snarled. “That’s impossible. No Daeva can wield deifyre here.”
Sera shook her head. “I’m no Daeva,” she said. “I’m something else.”
Damien snarled as he flew toward her and Sera threw the flaming whip toward him, catching him across one of his wings. The stretched black skin of his wing shriveled immediately, and he screamed, falling to the ground.
In a second, he was on his feet, growling. Ifrit were certainly strong, that much she knew. He rolled to the side, grabbed the black whip with the steel barbed tips, and swung it with all his might toward Sera.
She darted to the side and tripped over a branch, the edge of the weapon catching her in her leg. Damien crowed as she went down. Sera stared at the barbs cutting into her skin, a snakelike thread of noxious black poison infecting her flesh, spreading like the lines of a spider’s web. But curiously, Sera felt nothing. She wrenched the barbs out as her blood forced the poisons from the wound and raised calm eyes to Damien, who looked stunned. Confused, he stared at her, his teeth bared.
“I told you I was different,” she said, spinning as she swung the flame of deifyre toward him. “Your toys can’t hurt me.”
The red whip curled around his neck and she yanked backward.
He screamed as it touched his skin and glowed blackly red. Damien dropped to the ground, clawing at the line around his throat. For a second, Sera wondered how easy it would be to kill him, but the thought made her sick, even though he would have killed her without a second thought. But she wasn’t like them. She wasn’t a demon.
Sera crouched down next to him, her words measured. “I will release you if you promise never to tell anyone about this. You do, and I will finish the job I started today. Do you understand?”
His eyes sparkled with red fury and spit coated his black lips. In one motion, Damien swung up and over, his clawed hands grabbing around her neck. “You’ll die with me first!”
Sera felt the air rush out of her lungs and gasped, her hands grabbing at Damian’s rigid fingers. The Ifrit’s talons dug deep into her skin, and instinctively, Sera did the only thing she could. She let her shade fall. In an explosive burst, her entire body became a weapon as blinding light erupted from every part of her, shredding apart the dark creature holding her until its body exploded into nothingness. Black embers rained down on top of her like ash. The air was rank with singed flesh as the deifyre flared once more and then faded—until the clearing was silent and colorless once again.
Sera coughed, pressing her fingers gingerly to her throat. The skin felt raw and wet where Damien’s nails had dug into her flesh. Tired, she crawled over to the blue portal. Without a second thought, Sera hauled herself through it, breathless as it sucked her into its vortex. Strangely, it was not as bad as the other two had been, and Sera wondered at the difference between them as it released her.
She gagged again, her bleary eyes taking in her location. It was the back of Sal’s diner. Sera knew she didn’t have much time before Marcus made his way back or until Jude showed up, and she was too weak to deal with either of them. She pulled her mobile out of her pocket and dialed the first number that she could think of.
“Sera!” Kyle’s voice was sharp. “Are you OK? Where are you?”
“Can you come get me? I’m at Sal’s.”
“Be right there.”
The phone clicked off and Sera stood shakily, pulling her shade together. Her hands and arms were covered in black grime and dirt. She wiped them as best as she could against her sleeves and entered the back door, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible, heading for the tiny bathroom stall in the back of the diner.
In the cracked mirror, she looked far worse than she felt. Underneath all the dirt, her neck was red raw and she had several long gashes against her cheek that were oozing blood. Her shoulder ached, and she pulled her shirt back to see a darkening purple bruise covering half her arm and upper back. She touched it and winced.
Sera washed her face, pressing a paper towel gently against the cuts, and finger-combed her hair so that most of it fell into her face. Her stare slid to the fleshy pads of her palms. She eyed the markings. Dev had called them sigils. Now they looked like actual shapes as opposed to random scars. The raised white one on her left hand was like a crescent with two swirling lines beyond it. The one on her right was neon red against her skin, the reverse to its partner, with three pronged lines going across an inverted crescent. It’d been odd that her right hand had been the one to flare up while she’d been in Xibalba. The recollection made her shiver.
Her phone buzz
ed as a text came through from Kyle.
—Out back.
The minute she saw Kyle, Sera completely lost it, launching herself at him. Her eyes met his, and then her lips found his. The kiss was hot and desperate. Sera crushed herself to Kyle, wanting—needing—to pull every cell of his body into every cell of hers, as if he were some kind of absolution from what she’d endured. She ground her fingers into his shoulders and her lips into his mouth, taking what he offered until she sagged against him. His strength was real. Regardless of his secrets, that would never change.
TRUTH
Sera sat in her living room. She’d just finished telling her parents, Kyle, and the newcomer, Micah, what had happened from the minute she’d gone through the first portal up to when she’d ended up at Sal’s. Her mother’s face was the most shocked, and Kyle looked like he’d eaten something rotten and was about to throw up.
“Did Azrath see you?” her father asked.
Sera shook her head. “No, only when I wore the nekomata shade, and even then he barely gave me a second glance. Ra’al did, though. I couldn’t hold the shade; he was too strong. I barely got out of there with my life.”
Her father’s face was troubled. “Did Ra’al and Azrath say anything?”
“They kept talking about some portal being ready,” Sera said and then frowned. “But Dad, didn’t you say that Azrath was banished from the Mortal Realm for the last time he tried this?”
“He is,” Micah responded. “He cannot open any portals to this realm, unless he has found some other way.”
“I think he might have,” Kyle volunteered slowly. “When I saw him via the portal, I thought it was in this realm, but I know now it must have been in his netherworld. The Ifrit can travel back and forth to him, but he cannot pass through the portal to this world because of the wards that bind him. I think he’s working on something to break those wards.”
“That’s impossible,” Sera’s mother said. “The binding seals are unbreakable.”
But Sera shook her head slowly as she met Kyle’s eyes. “No, Mom, Kyle’s right. I mean, you’re right, too. The seals are unbreakable because they’re celestial wards. But what if Azrath used something to bend the rules so that he could pass through the portal?” She paused. “Like Fyre.”
Her mother flew up out of her seat, her hand clapped to her mouth. “You can’t mean—”
“Yes, I know I’m right about this.”
“That makes sense,” Micah agreed. “Otherwise, why would so many Daeva have been stripped and killed? He’s been planning this for years.”
“So, are you saying he’s been infusing himself with deifyre?” Her father’s voice was dubious. “He is Azura. That’s impossible. It would kill him.”
A small voice interrupted them as Nate’s blond head popped around the door. “Actually, in small doses over a very long period of time, Azrath would be able to withstand the toxins enough to control the effects.”
“Nathaniel Caelum—” her mother began, and Nate started backing out of the room.
Kyle jerked to his feet. “No, wait, Sera’s right. Nate, too. I thought I was imagining things or maybe I was confused, but when I saw Azrath, I sensed something else. I’d felt Daeva energy, but I thought that I couldn’t possibly be right. I’d just been through the portal, and I was disoriented. But I wasn’t wrong. It was Daeva energy, from Fyre inside of him.”
“What do you mean you sensed energy?” Sera demanded.
“That’s what I was trying to tell you before you went through the portal. Sometimes I can feel different things from people.” Kyle stared at the floor, as if embarrassed.
Sera frowned, but glanced back to Nate, who stood silent in the doorway before turning to her mother. “Mom, I know you want to protect Nate, but he really knows more about this stuff than even I do. It was because of him that I knew where I was when I ended up in Xibalba. If he knows something, it can probably help us.”
“You were in Xibalba?” Nate shrieked. “I knew it was real. I just knew it. Sweet!” His eyes widened. “Wow, no wonder you were so worried about my project,” he stage-whispered to Sera.
“What project?” Sophia frowned and moved toward her son, but Sam held her arm.
“Sweetheart, it’s OK,” he soothed. “Nate’s a part of this family, too, and we can only protect each other if we don’t have any more secrets. Let’s hear what he has to say.”
Nate cleared his throat. “So, I was going to the bathroom the other day and overheard Mom talking about Fyre.” He flushed at his confession. “I’d never heard about it, so I looked it up. Took me a while but there’s stuff out there if you know where to look. I didn’t really believe it all at first, but then Sera tried so hard to get me to drop the whole thing that it only made me want to find out more. And then I overheard you two talking to Sera about Azrath.” He turned to Sera. “Remember I thought they said rat? So when I heard you guys talking about the deaths of all the Daeva and Fyre—”
“You were eavesdropping?” Sophia interrupted furiously, and Nate flushed.
“Sorry, Mom, I’m ten,” he apologized. “It’s not like I can help myself when you’re all in the living room like secret agents whispering about this stuff. Anyway, so I started thinking about what I’d found about Fyre, and that it’s a live godly essence. When someone mentioned just before that Rat was infusing himself with Fyre, it made sense. I mean a guy like that doesn’t just give up, you know. It’s like a movie. The bad guys always keep coming back until they can’t anymore. I read somewhere that people used to use Fyre as a drug but it was really dangerous because the effects didn’t wear off.” He paused, his face animated. “That’s when it clicked—the effects don’t wear off. So someone immortal like Rat could infuse Fyre in small doses over time and it would just build and build.” Nate took a breath. “That would be my guess, anyway.”
Sera looked at everyone, who held expressions of dumbfounded amazement. What Nate said had an unlikely plausibility.
“One question,” Kyle said. “What do you mean it doesn’t wear off?”
“I read that regular people who ingested it died. You can’t get off it because it’s a live thing. It doesn’t go away, it just … stays inside you. So those people crave more and, well, human bodies aren’t meant to sustain that kind of energy, so they die.” His voice faded.
“I can see how that would work,” Micah said after several minutes of tense silence. “But I can only imagine that it would be incredibly painful even to Azrath.”
“Nothing will stop my brother from getting what he wants,” Sam said, his face grim. “Still, even if he were able to pass through a portal to the Mortal Realm, I don’t know what he has agreed to with Ra’al. There’s something missing that I can’t figure out.”
“Sam,” Sophia said, resting her hand across his arm. “Micah wants to call for the rest of the Sanrak to come together. We have to protect Sera at any cost. If Azrath, or any of the other Demon Lords, gets his hands on her, they’ll use her to breach the Mortal Realm.” Sera’s eyes shot to her mother, who wouldn’t meet her gaze. “She needs to return to Illysia.”
“No way! Why would I leave when everyone I love is here?” Sera’s voice rose with each word.
“Sera, you were only meant to be here up until your sixteenth birthday,” her mother said calmly. “That was the agreement that was made with the Trimurtas after your birth. You will be safer in Illysia.”
“That was months ago, and I’m still here.”
Her mother smiled a sad smile. “It was my mistake—my selfishness to keep you here with me. I should have taken you back the day you turned sixteen.”
Sera’s face was resolute. “I am not going anywhere.”
“Sera,” Sam began, “you must know what is at stake here. If we cannot protect you, all will be lost.”
“But Mom’s Sanrak, and Micah’s here—”
“They still couldn’t protect you from what happened today with the portal,” her father said harshly
. “Or from the demon that attacked you.”
“That demon was there for Kyle, not for me!” she argued.
Everyone grew quiet, and Kyle flushed. “She’s right,” he agreed. “I think Azrath must have sent it to spy on me.”
“No, Kyle,” Sera snapped, her voice still heated. “I don’t think it was Azrath who sent it. When I was in the seventh dimension, one of the demons asked whether I’d found the boy.” She stared at him with narrowed eyes. “I think they meant you.”
“Could have meant anyone,” Kyle shot back defensively.
Sera stared at her parents in stony silence. She felt as if they all—even Kyle—were against her. She looked over to Kyle, who was avoiding her gaze, and it bothered her more than ever. He’d lied to her about his strange sensing ability. He’d lied about Jude. And he certainly was lying now. Her anger soared. She started pacing, hot sweat running down her back and arms. It felt like fire—hot fiery lava under her skin scalding her veins, hotter than anything she’d ever felt. Every second made the burn—and her anger—worse. White spots danced before her eyes.
She heard her father’s voice as if from within dense fog.
“Sera, you have to control it!”
“Control what?” Sera gasped. The living room felt as if it were spinning into blinding white circles, the floor beneath her feet slippery. She felt suffocated by the heat.
“The part of you that is Azura,” her father said gently. “That’s what you are feeling right now, that fury taking over everything inside of you.” He put a hand on her shoulder and Sera flinched away from his touch. He stayed with her. “Breathe, sweetheart. Don’t give in to it, that’s what it wants.”
“You make it sound like it’s alive.”
“It is.”
“What’s wrong with her?” she heard Kyle whisper to Micah.
“The Dark Realms, I would expect,” Micah said. “Going there always leaves its mark, even on the innocent. She breathed its air, saw its monstrosities. I can’t imagine how she wouldn’t be unaffected.”
Alpha Goddess Page 15
