A Demon's Wrath: Part II (Peachville High Demons)

by Cannon, Sarra

  Inside the light, a girl lay suspended in mid-air, her body trembling and naked. She was not grotesque and rotting like the creature who had stood here before. She was beautiful and young and terrified.

  I gasped. I recognized this race. She was human.

  I had heard stories of humans and seen drawings of them in history books, but those same books taught us that the humans were lost to us centuries ago when portal magic was banned by the king. Lea’s grandfather.

  Something told me this group of humans did not care about the rules of our kingdom. They served a much darker purpose. One that was only then becoming clearer to me.

  The chorus of voices continued to chant, but then, a low humming began. More voices? Or was it the sound of the light itself? The green portal grew stronger and brighter.

  The light nearly blinded me, blocking out what little view I had of the room beyond.

  The group around me tensed and I saw Andros reach for his sword.

  This was it. I could feel it in the energy of the air. My muscles froze and tensed as tight as ropes.

  Another scream pierced through the darkness, but this time the sound wasn’t human.

  An Emerald Light

  The demon’s scream was short-lived. Some invisible force silenced her, but her mouth remained open and contorted. Her dark form was drawn to the summoning stone with the terrifying force of a magic I didn’t quite understand.

  This demon, Shyla, must have been dragged from the false safety of her own bed. Somehow, the ritual had summoned her here in an instant when her name was spoken.

  In the bright emerald light her form was a pure black wisp of smoke.

  I watched the others in my group, expecting them to stand and fight. But they didn’t move. They simply watched. And waited.

  Anger rushed through me like a flame. Surely we weren’t just going to sit here and do nothing. We could save her. Why weren’t they even trying?

  I shook my head, trying to make sense of this. A demon was being stolen from our world to who-knows-what kind of torture on the other side. How could we just sit here and watch it happen?

  I moved to stand, but the younger demon next to me grabbed my arm again. She shook her head and threw a glance at the green portal.

  “Don’t,” she whispered. “Not yet.”

  Andros looked back at me, then held up his palm, telling me to be patient.

  “I can’t just sit here,” I said in a harsh whisper. “I’m going to help her.”

  Andros turned and put his hands on my shoulders, holding me down with a greater strength than I’d known he possessed.

  “This is not the time,” he said sharply.

  “From the looks of it, this is the only time,” I said. “They’re taking her.”

  “I know,” Andros said. “And keep your voice down. If they discover you, that hunter will be back in an instant and you can kiss us all goodbye. Do you want to die today?”

  Hunter. Is that what they called the creature in rags?

  I flinched. Every single thread of my being protested against this, but I had to trust him. I knew nothing of the power of this group of humans or their hunter. Well, nothing except the fact that they had been powerful enough to defeat my brother.

  The humming inside the portal stopped and I looked over, feeling more helpless than I ever had in my life as the demon’s form was sucked through the portal to a foreign world.

  I strained to see beyond the light, but I couldn’t make out anything at all. Maybe the form of the girl hovering in the light? The green cloak of the leader?

  We were losing any chance we might have had. “We have to help her,” I said.

  “She’s beyond our help now,” Andros said. “Just watch. I know it’s difficult, but you wanted to know the truth. I’m showing you.”

  I made one last attempt to stand and run after her, believing that if I could get to that green light, maybe I could do something to help.

  But Andros held me to the spot, forcing me down toward the ground.

  Then, a clear voice rang out from the other dimension.

  “Shyla, demon of the Shadow World, we bind you.”

  The demon’s shadow began to seep through the portal to the other side.

  I couldn’t just sit here and watch this happen. I gathered my strength and tore out of Andros’s grasp, rushing from the cover of the tall firegrass and into the clearing.

  Inside the light, the hooded woman turned, her eyes meeting mine just as the green portal collapsed downward toward the stone.

  “No,” I shouted, rushing forward.

  The moment I reached the circle of black roses, a strange energy pulled me forward. I lost control of my own form, the force of this dark magic drawing me into its circle.

  I cried out, fear freezing me as I felt myself being dragged inside the circle.

  The right side of my body crossed into the circle and a great fire sizzled against my flesh, tearing into me like a hot knife. I screamed as several sets of hands grabbed hold of me and pulled me backward.

  I fell back against the burned grass, my vision blurring from the pain.

  “How stupid can you be?” one of the others yelled. “Andros told you not to intervene.”

  I couldn’t speak. My world was upside down and all I could think of was the intense pain that spread from my foot to my shoulder. Lea appeared at my side, gripping my hand tight in her own.

  “You could have gotten us all killed,” the other demon said. She had white eyes the color of snow.

  “We have to get out of here,” Andros said. “The hunter might be on her way back. The prima, did she see your face?”

  I shook my head, not understanding. “I don’t know,” I said. “Who is the prima?”

  “The woman inside the portal. The one with the hooded cloak who was running the ritual. Did she see your face when you stood up?”

  I sucked in a breath, my side on fire. I nodded. “She looked right at me.”

  He cursed. “We have to go. Now.”

  He placed his hand on my shoulder, then shifted, pulling me with him. The world turned and spun in circles as we flew through the air. I had never moved at such speeds. He led us back through the dark forest, over a pathway that looked as though it were made of pure silver, and finally high into the hills near the northern icelands.

  He stopped at the edge of a modest grouping of small huts built out of mud and thick grasses. The remnants of a fire in the center of the space let off a smoldering haze of smoke.

  “Where are we?” I asked.

  He didn’t say anything. He just motioned toward the young demon I’d been next to during the ritual. She laid down a makeshift bed of nettleweeds and willowgrass. Andros set me down on the bed of weeds and I winced at the pain.

  “You should have stayed back like I told you,” Andros said. He paced the area at my feet. “Don’t you think we all wanted to help? Don’t you think we would have helped her if we could have?”

  I sat up, ignoring the pain as best I could. “I honestly don’t know,” I said. “We were feet away from one of our own kind being stolen from us and we did nothing. Six powerful demons against what? A group of humans?”

  Andros’s lips curled up into a grimace of disbelief. “You really are stupid, aren’t you? Do you think a normal group of humans can just conjure a portal and summon a demon into their world?”

  I couldn’t answer. I knew almost nothing of the humans other than what I’d read in storybooks as a child.

  “Humans don’t have magic,” Lea said. “At least that’s what I had always believed.”

  “No, normal humans don’t have magical powers like we do, but centuries ago, when portal magic was first discovered, demons traveled from our world to theirs. Some of those demons even mated with humans,” he explained. “When a child is born from both a demon and a human, they are often born with magical powers. Even humans born several generations later will have these powers. Every single human witch is a descend
ant of a demon. Their magic is supposed to be much weaker than our own, diluted by blood. But somehow these witches—this Order of Shadows—is growing stronger than even we can understand.”

  “The Order of Shadows,” I said, repeating him. “Is that what they are called?”

  “Yes,” the white-eyed demon woman said. “They are a coven of witches with evil intentions. They have been taking demons from our world for years now.”

  “What will they do to her?” I asked, my voice trembling. I thought of my brother. “What will they do to the demon girl who was taken?”

  Andros ran a hand across his face. “We don’t know,” he said. “We can only ever catch glimpses of shadows and figures through the light.”

  “The emerald light,” I said. Something triggered my memory and it hit me so hard I had to lie back for a moment.

  “What is it?” Lea asked, leaning over me, her face etched with worry.

  I closed my eyes, thinking back to the day Aerden was taken. The day of our engagement ceremony. After I passed out, I was taken into the king’s chambers where they asked me to tell them what I’d seen in my vision.

  When I mentioned that I’d seen a portal—a bright light inside the black roses—my mother had asked me if it was an emerald light.

  Hot tears welled up in my eyes. “Andros was telling us the truth,” I said to Lea. I opened my eyes as a tear escaped down the side of my face. I struggled to sit up, then took her hand in mine. “Our parents do know what’s happening here. This is the proof, Lea, don’t you see?”

  She shook her head. “I agree this is a horrible thing, but there’s no proof here that our parents know this is happening. I won’t believe it.”

  “My mother knew,” I said. “When Aerden was taken, it was a blue light I saw, not a green one like tonight. But my mother, don’t you remember? She specifically asked me if I had seen an emerald light.”

  Lea looked away, toward the fresh fire that had been built in the center of the small village. Tears gleamed in her eyes, and I knew she remembered it too.

  “It was them,” Lea said. “That’s what your mother said when you’d finished telling your story.”

  I nodded, the burn of this betrayal more painful that the real physical burn down my side.

  “They’ve known about the Order all along, haven’t they?” she asked, looking up at Andros.

  “Yes,” he said. “I’m sorry to be the one to bring you this pain, but it was a truth you needed to know.”

  “The king has gone to great lengths to suppress the truth of what’s happening in the villages,” the white-eyed demon said. “He has sent guards out to the houses of those who have lost loved ones, demanding their silence in loyalty to the crown.”

  Lea closed her eyes. She looked tired and suddenly older than I remembered, as if she had aged a decade in the blink of an eye.

  “What is your name?” I asked the demon with the white eyes and matching white hair.

  “Ourelia,” she said with a slight bow of her head. “I am sorry we had to meet on such terms.”

  “Me too,” I said. I looked to the younger demon who had been by my side during the ritual.

  She bowed her head. “My name is Azira,” she said. She nodded to a larger demon who was busy putting food out on a roughly made wooden table nearby. “And he is Washan.”

  “Our group is small but we are growing in numbers,” Andros said. “All told, The Resistance boasts about seventy members. Some of us have set up our homes here in this camp near the border of the icelands, while others still choose to live in their own villages for now. Someday we hope to build a city for ourselves where we can train our armies properly.”

  “The king would never allow it,” Lea said.

  “Perhaps not,” Andros said, one eyebrow raised. “But the king does not know everything.”

  Lea narrowed her eyes at him. “What do you do—this army of yours?”

  “We pay attention,” Andros said. “We seek the truth.”

  “But you do not fight,” I said. “Why?”

  “We used to,” Ourelia said, sadness creeping in to her tone. “But the Order is too strong. We have lost many friends to them over the years.”

  “Our goal now is to watch and learn,” Andros said. “We gain power through knowledge. The more we know about the Order of Shadows, the more powerful we become.”

  “And what did you learn tonight?” Lea asked.

  “Every time a portal opens, we see the same things. We hear the same ritual being repeated, but we can’t figure out exactly what they’re doing with the demons they take. And there is always a human girl as well, hovering in the light. She is always young and always afraid.”

  “A sacrifice of some kind?” Lea asked.

  “That would explain her fear,” Ourelia said. “Death can be a powerful thing.”

  “In our world, when one of our elders passes on, it’s a choice,” Azira said softly. “A loving choice that gives us great power. When the energy left behind is poured into a soul stone, it’s strong enough to power an entire city for decades. Centuries even, if the demon’s spirit was strong. That act of self-sacrifice is powerful enough to allow a new life to be born into this world. Maybe it’s similar in the human world in that a sacrifice is a way to gain power.”

  “If that human girl died tonight, it was definitely not her own choice,” I said. “She was terrified.”

  “No, but maybe their ritual is a way of exchanging one life for a greater, more powerful one,” Andros said. “Maybe it is through sacrificing a human life that they are able to summon a demon to take her place?”

  We all thought about it for a moment and the forest grew quiet except for the sound of the nightbirds overhead.

  The fact was that Andros and his friends had no idea what was really going on in that ritual. They were guessing about most of it.

  “How many of these rituals have you witnessed?” I asked.

  “I have seen five,” Ourelia said. “The most of anyone.”

  She moved to sit on a stump near the fire.

  “I was just a child the first time,” she said. “A shadowling of only seven years. I should have been at home in my bed, but on that night there was a starshower unlike any in ages. I left my warm bed and came out to the field to watch the stars. I lay down in the firegrass and stared up at the sky. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen in my young life.”

  She hung her head low so I could no longer see her eyes.

  “I accidentally fell asleep in the grass, but I heard the scream and woke up, scared to death. It was my mother’s voice. A single, terrified scream that rang out and then was cut short, like her throat had been sliced with a dagger. I couldn’t move. I was completely helpless as I watched her writhing there above the summoning stone, a pool of emerald green light growing against the darkness of the night. I heard the human witch call her name. And then she was gone.”

  Ourelia sobbed and Andros joined her on the stump, wrapping his arms around her small frame.

  “I ran to her, just as you did tonight,” she continued. “I tried to figure out where she had gone and what I could do to save her. But the light was gone and I was frightened. I saw the silhouette of the black roses on the ground, but I could feel the strange pull and power of them. I knew they were enchanted somehow, but at the time, I didn’t understand the magic. The very idea of such a dark magic was so foreign to me, I thought maybe I’d been dreaming.

  “And then I heard the hunter approaching. She slithered out of the darkness like a snake, floating just above the ground. I think the hunters are somehow tied to their portals,” she said. “And whenever someone comes near them, they appear in order to protect them. I thought she had come to kill me, and maybe she had, but she laughed when she saw that I was so young. Weak she called me. I wept and she laughed. She told me my mother was lost forever. That she had been taken to a place where her powers would be appreciated.”

  I sucked in a breath. “
That’s what Aerden told me,” I said.

  “Your brother?” Andros asked, surprised. “When?”

  “The day before he disappeared. We had an argument and he told me he was leaving the city,” I said. I looked to Lea, then looked down at my hands. She didn’t know everything I’d talked to Aerden about that day, so I chose my words carefully. “He said he’d met a woman who had told him of a great land where his powers would be appreciated and used. But he’d said she was beautiful. Not a hunter.”

  Andros shook his head. “That doesn’t make sense,” he said. “Usually a demon doesn’t know they are going to be taken. It doesn’t fit somehow. What else do you remember? What did you see when you had your vision of him being taken?”

  “The portal light was blue, not green,” I said. “And he was shackled with spiked cuffs on his wrists and legs.”

  “Strange,” Andros said, standing and stroking his face.

  “It’s late and we’ve talked enough for one night,” Ourelia said, touching his arm gently. “Let’s eat and rest. We’ll have plenty of time to work through the details later.”

  The demons in the camp all moved to gather around the table. Lea helped me stand and I took a seat next to Ourelia.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “About your mother.”

  “I know it is difficult to watch and do nothing. Believe me when I say there is no one here who thirsts for vengeance more than I do,” she said. “If I could, I would kill every hunter in this world and every witch in the next. But we have to be smart. Until we understand them better, their power is too much for us.”

  “Someday, we will have our vengeance,” Andros said, taking Ourelia’s hand in his.

  After that, talk around the table turned to introductions and food and questions about living in the castle, but I focused all my thoughts on that one word left ringing in my ears.

  Vengeance.

  Healer

  I awoke to pain. I hissed in and sat up. Azira knelt beside my bed on the floor, applying some kind of paste to my wounds.

  “I’m sorry I woke you,” she said in a whisper. “My father was a shaman and he taught me how to make a few poultices with herbs common to this area. It took me a few hours to find everything I needed, but I am hoping this will help you.”