But none of that was enough.
I tried to act patient, but at night after Lea had fallen asleep, I often stayed up and read through the notes Andros had taken about the Order of Shadows. I learned everything I could about them and how their magic worked. I spent a lot of time drawing pictures of the portal rituals, trying to make sense of what was happening. I looked for any kind of clue that might show a weakness or an opportunity to defeat them. I became obsessed.
What was the significance of the circle of black roses? How were the demons summoned to the portal? Were they marked and chosen beforehand? Or did the hunter only need to know their name in order to summon them?
And why was it different when Aerden was taken?
Was he still alive somewhere? Would I ever see him again?
The questions in my head haunted me at night when I let them rule my mind. Some nights I felt like my head would split apart from all the unanswered questions inside. I just wanted to know the truth. I needed answers.
Answers that weren’t coming fast enough.
We studied the portals, the stones, the roses. We listened to those who would talk.
But I wanted more.
In my mind, I had started to formulate a plan. If I could just find the portal Aerden was taken through, maybe I could go through long enough to find him and bring him home.
Only, finding the specific blue portal he’d been taken through was harder than it sounded. Some days I felt like I was going to lose my mind if we didn’t find it soon.
Then, one day when we were rebuilding some of the houses in Sapuran, we got our first real breakthrough in a decade.
Lea and I were working on the roof of one of the homes when the commotion began. We exchanged worried glances, then got down and rushed to the other side of the village where a group of demons had gathered around Andros and Ourelia.
We pushed through the crowd of worried faces. “What is it?” I asked.
He looked at me with such intensity, my heart nearly stopped. “A new portal has been found,” he said.
“What color stones?” I asked, barely able to breathe.
“Blue.”
“Show me.”
The demon who had found the blue portal took us to a location deep inside the caves of Muro, carved into the side of the Black Cliffs. My heart sank when he brought us to the mouth of the cave.
This couldn’t be the place where my brother disappeared. In my vision when he was taken, he had been in an open field, much like the one near Klashok.
Still, finding any portal was a victory.
“How did you find this?” I asked.
The young demon’s name was Jericho and he was relatively new to our group. “I grew up near these caves and like to come here sometimes when I want to be alone to think,” he said. “So when Andros told us to start looking for signs of portals, I thought maybe this would be a good place to hide one.”
“Good job,” Andros said. “I had no idea the roses could even grow this deep in the rock.”
“The area here looks abandoned,” I said. “Is it possible this portal hasn’t been used in a long time?”
“Anything is possible,” Andros said. He walked around the small circular area here at the end of the cave that housed the portal.
“Do you feel it?” he asked. “Any type of pull toward these roses?”
I moved closer to the circle of black and shook my head. “Not even the slightest bit of magic. And look.” I pointed where our footprints had disturbed the dust covering the rocks. “No one has been for a very long time. Years. Maybe decades.”
“Why would the Order abandon a portal?” Andros asked.
I knew he didn’t expect an answer, but it brought up all kinds of questions in my mind. Had something happened to the witches on the other side? Or maybe the hunter who was supposed to be protecting it? Without the hunter, maybe the portals went inactive?
Frustration ate at my insides. I was so tired of only having these tiny little pieces to the puzzle. We’d been searching for so long. Where were all the answers? What were we missing?
When Andros had said a blue portal had been found, I’d gotten my hopes up, thinking maybe we had found something that would make a difference. Maybe I had finally found Aerden’s portal.
But what good was an abandoned portal? An inactive portal was nothing to us. We might never know why the Order abandoned this place.
I paced the area, my anger building with each step. The power inside of me roared to life and I felt like I was on the edge of losing control. I’d been so patient for so long, but at this rate, we might never find the truth about my brother. I couldn’t take it anymore. I was so tired of disappointment.
Ice gathered on my fingertips and even though I tried to push it down, it continued to grow until my entire fist was covered with frost.
“Denaer, it’s going to be okay,” Lea said, touching my shoulder. “We’re going to find it.”
“When?” I shouted. I pulled away from her, nearly knocking her backward. “When will we find the answers? It’s been twenty-five years since Aerden was taken and we’re no closer to finding him than we were back then.”
In my frustration, I slammed my icy fist against the back wall of the cave, putting more strength into it than I intended to.
The blow thundered through the corridor as my hand punctured the molten rock. Ice spread in a circle around my fist, the rock crackling and splitting as it froze.
I pulled my hand away and backed up, watching as large cracks tore through the icy walls, then shattered like glass.
For a moment, I was afraid the whole place would come down on top of us, burying us inside this cave like a tomb.
But only the back wall tumbled to the ground. A thick spray of fog rose up from the remains of the wall as the warm air in the cave began to melt the ice-encased rock.
I stared ahead, shocked by my own strength.
“Let’s get out of here before the whole place caves in,” Andros said.
“Wait,” I said, just making out the image of something glowing beyond the debris.
I lifted my arm to shield my face and stepped forward, stepping carefully over the rubble.
“What is it?” Lea asked, coming up behind me.
“Do you see it?” I asked. “That blue glow?”
“I do,” Jericho, the demon who brought us here, said. “What is it?”
“I don’t know.” I made my way through the cool misty fog. The wall I’d brought down had been several feet thick, but once I got through the worst of the debris, the corridor opened up into a small room about a quarter of the size of the portal room we’d been standing in.
It was a den of some sort. Rags lay in a pile on the floor at my feet like a nest.
But it wasn’t an animal or beast who lived here.
Along the far wall of the space was a bookcase of dusty tomes.
As I stepped forward, something cracked beneath my feet. I looked down and gasped at a scattered collection of human bones.
These rags were not a bed. They were the clothes this creature had been wearing when it died.
“What is it?” Lea asked, finally reaching this side of the fallen wall.
I crouched down. This was exactly the kind of break I’d been waiting for.
I picked up a bone and lifted it into the air.
“It’s a dead hunter.”
A Hidden Power
Andros pushed forward into the small room. “A dead hunter?” His voice was soft, almost reverent.
He studied the bones and the rags.
“This means they can be killed,” he said. “What if the hunter’s death is what closed the portal?”
He crossed toward the piles of books and trinkets along the far wall. His hand trembled as he picked up the tattered tome at the top of the stack. He blew a puff of air across the spine and dust flew out from it, hovering in the air for a long moment before fluttering down to join the long-settled decades of dust on th
e ground.
He crouched low and opened the book, his eyes glued to the pages. His lips parted as he read, his hand slowly rising to his mouth.
“What is it?” Lea asked.
Tension gathered in the room as we waited for him to answer. We’d never found a hunter’s den before. We’d never even seen or heard of a dead hunter or known if they were immortal. The true impact of this find hadn’t even sunk in yet, but we all understood the importance these books and belongings might have if they contained any kind of information or clues about the Order of Shadows.
The look in Andros’s eyes when he turned said it all. Heat spread across my skin and I fell back against the broken wall of the cave.
“I’ve never seen anything like this before,” Andros said. He turned the page and scanned the contents, his breath coming faster. “There are spells in here. I can’t understand all of it, but some things are familiar. And there are diagrams. Maps.”
“Maps?” I asked, my heart squeezing. “What kind of maps?”
“I’m not sure,” he said. “I think they might be maps of the human world.”
“What about the other books there?” I asked.
Andros set the first book down and Lea and I joined him near the wall to look through the other items. Ourelia and Jericho searched the rest of the small room.
“Look at this,” Lea said. She sat down in the dust and reached out for a faintly-glowing stone half-covered in dirt and grime.
The moment her fingers touched the stone, her eyes went wide and all the breath was pushed from her chest. She looked at me, terror darkening her eyes as they clouded from green to black. She reached for me, clutching my wrist.
In an instant, the ground fell out from underneath us. The world spun in circles and I had to fight to stay upright. I was blinded for a moment, unable to tell where we were or what had happened.
But then, we landed in a new time and place. When my sight returned to me, we were standing in the hallway of a strange building.
I had no idea how we’d gotten there, but something was definitely off about the whole thing.
Two human women stood in front of us talking, but neither of them seemed to have even noticed our presence. The color of this place was off, too, as if we were in a faded version of reality, the edges of every surface slightly blurred and muted.
As if we were caught in a dream.
“What’s happening?” I whispered, backing away from the women.
“I have no idea,” Lea said. She looked down at the small round stone in her palm. “Somehow this stone brought us here, but I have no idea where here is.”
“Why haven’t they even turned to look at us?” I asked.
Lea studied the women. Carefully, she stepped forward, walking around them and even between them. She lifted her hand up in front of one of the women’s faces, but the woman continued her conversation without so much as blinking.
“They can’t see us,” she said.
Behind me, Andros suddenly appeared in the hallway. It took him a moment to catch his breath, but when he did, he was actually smiling.
“Do you understand what’s happening?” I asked him.
“As if it wasn’t enough for us to discover a dead hunter and her spell books today, we’ve also discovered a hidden power of Lea’s.”
“I did this?” she asked. She put her hand straight through one of the women’s bodies, as if we were merely watching an apparition or a memory.
“I’ve heard of this ability but never actually known anyone who could do it,” he said. “When you touched that stone, it somehow triggered a memory. But not one of your memories. One of the stone’s memories.”
She shook her head. “A stone can have memories?”
“Yes,” he said. “Everything has memories. Demons, places, objects. Something about this stone held a memory so strong it triggered your ability to see this memory. And in fact, not just see the memory, but also to relive it.”
“So what we’re seeing here is a memory?”
“Yes,” he said. “We’re inside the stone’s memory. Look.”
He pointed to the two human women. The taller one, an older woman with white hair, took out a small box and presented it to the younger woman.
“Why can’t we hear what they’re saying?” I asked.
Andros shook his head. “I’m not sure,” he said. “It could be that this is a new power and Lea will need to work to gain more control over it, or it could be that her powers don’t manifest sound at all. Only time will tell just how strong of an ability this will be for her.”
The younger woman opened the box, tears in her eyes. She gasped at the blue stone inside, happiness and gratitude in her expression.
But as the older woman took the stone from the box, something about the memory darkened. My stomach twisted as she grabbed the younger woman’s hand and forced the stone against her skin.
The young girl’s mouth curled into a painful grimace and her legs gave out from under her. She fell to the ground, but the older woman never let go. Instead, she slowly couched to the floor, keeping the stone pressed firmly against the other woman’s palm. She was saying something furiously and as she spoke, the younger woman’s skin began to wrinkle and dry, as if sucking the life directly out of her body. Her hair began to fall out in patches and her eyes dulled.
When the spell was complete, the older woman smiled and stood. She straightened the skirts of her gown and tossed the blue stone at the younger woman’s broken body.
She wasn’t dead, but she was changed. She was turning into a hunter. I don’t know how I knew it, but I was sure that was what we had just witnessed.
Then, as suddenly as we’d appeared in that place, we left it again, sucked back through time and space until we stood, once again, firmly on the dusty floor of the forgotten cave.
Memory Keeper
I stumbled when we reappeared inside the cave, falling against the crumbling wall. My stomach lurched and I leaned forward, feeling like I was going to throw up.
“What the hell just happened?” Ourelia asked.
Andros and Lea took a moment to catch their breath and regain their footing before either of them answered her.
“Lea’s a memory keeper,” he said.
Ourelia’s eyes grew wide and her mouth fell open in awe.
“I never knew I could do that,” Lea said. “That was insane.”
She laughed, but then almost collapsed. I stepped forward and caught her before she hit the ground.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
Her eyes fluttered open and she gave me a weak smile. “I think so,” she said. “I think I just need a few minutes to recover. That was amazing.”
“It’s more than amazing,” Andros said. “It’s a rare and very important gift. I have heard rumors that your father, the king, also possesses this gift, but I never believed it was true until this moment.”
Lea looked up at him with questions in her eyes. “My father has this memory gift? I’ve never heard anyone speak of it my entire life,” she said.
“I honestly thought it was just a rumor, but now that I’ve seen you with the same gift, I feel certain your father must also posses this same power.”
“Why would he keep it hidden?” she asked. She tried to stand, but was still too weak. I let her lean against me.
“I am not sure,” he said. “Either he has a good reason to believe the rest of the kingdom does not need to know about this power or…”
His voice trailed off and he turned away.
“Or what?” I asked.
He rubbed his hand across his cheek, thinking. “Rare abilities like this are often passed down to the next generation,” he said. “Maybe your father never told you about this because he was afraid you might also have the same ability.”
Lea shook her head. “Why would he be afraid of that? Why wouldn’t he want to help me discover all of my abilities so that I could be the strongest leader I could be someday?”
<
br /> Andros paced in front of us. “A memory keeper can be very dangerous to someone who is trying to keep secrets,” he said. “Like I told you before, everything has memory. Even places. If you had stumbled upon this ability in the middle of the throne room, for example, just think of what you might have been able to learn. You could have used your ability to uncover all of his secrets.”
Lea fell back against my chest.
What Andros was saying made perfect sense. If a young Lazalea had been encouraged to develop this power, she might have wanted to practice throughout the castle. She might have discovered some secret conversations or touched an item that held an important memory he didn’t want her to know about.
Considering how far he’d gone to keep the Order of Shadows a secret, I didn’t doubt that he’d kept this power from Lea on purpose.
“If you hadn’t touched an item with such a strong memory that had been locked away for so long, it might have been decades before you even realized you had this power. If ever.”
“So what makes this stone so special?” she asked.
“I think I can answer that,” I said. “I think we were watching that older witch turn the younger one into a hunter.” I nodded toward the pile of bones and rags. “This hunter.”
“I think you’re right,” Andros said. “The stone must have been imbued with a very dark spell that somehow enabled the transition.”
“What I don’t understand is why I got to see the memory, too,” I said.
“Because Lea touched you,” Andros said. “And once I realized, or guessed, what was happening, I grabbed Lea’s arm to join the two of you inside the memory.”
“Wait, you touched me after the memory began? Lea asked. “So our bodies didn’t actually go anywhere?”
Andros shook his head. “No, you were here the entire time.”
She looked around the cave with wonder. “It really felt like we had traveled.”
“You did in a way,” he said. “Just not in a traditional sense.”
“It’s been a big day,” I said, watching Lea once again fall back against me when she tried to stand. “I think we should think about heading back to the village for now.”
A Demon's Wrath: Part II (Peachville High Demons) Page 6
