“What is it?” I asked.
“There’s something I need to show you,” she said. Her voice wasn’t much more than a whisper.
“Is everything okay?” I glanced down the long corridor, wondering if someone had upset her. But the place was empty and quiet, everyone asleep in their rooms.
“Yes,” she said. A tear fell across her cheek. “No. I don’t know.”
I knew I should comfort her. Put my arms around her. But the time for that kind of affection between us had long passed. I didn’t want to be close to her. Or anyone. I just wanted to be left alone.
“Whatever it is, it’s going to be okay,” I said, wondering what had her so upset. “We’ll face it together.”
“Will we?” she asked. A sob escaped her lips and she turned from me, holding her hand up to hide the sound of her cries.
I stepped forward and placed a hand on her shoulders and she jumped in surprise, as if I had burned her. I moved my hand away quickly.
“What did you want to show me?” I asked. “Maybe it will help when I see for myself.”
She shook her head. “It will help you,” she said. “That’s the only reason I’m showing you after all this time. But it will not help me. It will only take you further from me. But I see now that it’s the only way.”
I didn’t understand what she meant at first. Her words were a mystery, but she didn’t say anything more until she had led me down the quiet corridor, through the Grand Hall, and out into the evening air.
We traveled in complete silence, through the Obsidian Forest, along quiet roads and empty fields until we had come to a place near the Black Cliffs. The king’s city rose up against the night sky in the distance on one side while the cliffs gave way to the Sea of Glass on the other.
“Why have you brought me so far out here?” I asked. It had taken hours for us to get here and the moons were very low in the night sky.
Her green eyes darkened and chills swept across my skin.
And I knew without a word from her. She wanted to show me a memory. An important memory.
My hands shook as I reached for her. Sorrow and hope both warred in my heart, squeezing it until I couldn’t take it any longer. I opened my mouth to catch my breath.
She took my hands tentatively at first, only touching her fingertips to mine, as if she were still uncertain. Then, finally, she slid her fingers down the length of my fingers and wrapped them around mine until they were entwined so tightly I could barely tell them apart.
“I hope you’ll forgive me,” she said.
“For what?” I asked. The wind blowing off the cliffs carried my voice away.
“For keeping this from you for so long.” She closed her eyes and took several deep breaths. The sky around us darkened and then disappeared as we shook and tumbled and fell. When everything settled, I opened my eyes and looked around at a familiar scene.
A scene that stopped my heart inside my chest and brought me to my knees.
We were standing inside the memory of the moment Aerden was taken from this world.
My Brother’s Pain
My brother stood in front of me, his eyes unseeing.
I stood and called out his name, but he could not hear me.
Like before, the memory was slightly dull in color, but the vision was clear. I reached out for him, accidentally letting go of Lea’s hands. But somehow, inside the memory itself, it didn’t seem to matter that we weren’t touching.
I reached for my brother, out of my mind with regret and sorrow. I wanted nothing more than to be able to grab onto him and take him from this place. I would have given anything to change the events of that day.
If I could have, I would have traded places with him in an instant. It should have been him standing in the throne room with Lea all those years ago. I should have insisted he tell her the truth so that he could take my place and claim her as his own.
But this was only a memory. I reached for Aerden, but my hands went straight through him as if he were no more than a ghost.
A beautiful human woman with long white-blond hair stood in front of him. She wore a beautiful blue velvet robe adorned with silver embroidery. She smiled at him and ran a hand along his cheek.
“You have no idea how glad I am that you came,” she said. Her voice was muffled inside the memory, but easy to understand. Lea must have done a lot of work on her skill to make the voice as clear as it was. “I know your heart is broken now, but I promise you that you will find a new home in my world. It will be a place where your power and your light will be used in such amazing ways.”
I paced around him, screaming for him to run away, but it was no use. Watching him fall into this trap made me feel weaker and more useless than I’d ever felt in my life.
“I’m ready,” he said.
The woman held her hand out to him. “I have something for you first,” she said. “A gift.”
He opened his hand and returned her smile. I stared down in anticipation, powerless to stop these events from happening. The woman dropped something into his hand and closed his fist around it. At first, I couldn’t quite make out what it was, but I saw its effect immediately.
Aerden’s face tensed and his entire arm shook as the object in his hand paralyzed him. I could feel his intense struggle against the black magic, but it was already too late. His fist was closed around the item, but a silver chain dangled from it—delicate and beautiful.
My brother’s eyes searched the face of the witch, then widened in horror as she transformed from a beautiful young girl to an old woman and then, finally, to an entirely different woman. It was difficult for me to judge age, but this third form seemed to be in the middle of the other two—not too old and not too young. All three of her appearances were similar in their coloring with white hair and the same piercing light blue eyes, almost as if she had cycled through generations of the same family, transforming from younger daughter to grandmother to mother.
Her smile grew dark and twisted as she stared at Aerden’s horror.
“I love this moment,” she said, moving her face so close to him their cheeks were nearly touching. “The moment when a powerful demon like you realizes for the first time that he has made a very terrible mistake.”
Aerden struggled to speak, but it was no use. Whatever was in his hand had him completely trapped for the moment, unable to move or speak or fight.
The witch laughed and the sound tore its way through my soul. She was enjoying this. My brother’s pain was amusing to her.
I curled my hands into claws and ripped at where her heart should be, but my hands only touched air. Nothingness.
“I didn’t lie, you know,” she said. “You were chosen for a very important purpose and your sacrifice here today will never be forgotten. Your power will be used, I promise you. You’re one of the lucky ones, really. You’ll learn to thank me eventually. As the demon of a prima, you’ll live much longer than the others.”
She released his hand, but his fist stayed closed around the object she’d put inside. She walked around him, whispering in his ear.
“But I may have lied about how much you’ll enjoy your time in my world,” she said. “I’m afraid it’s not going to be very pleasant. Especially this next part. The less you struggle against it, the better it will be. Trust me.”
Something shimmered inside her blue robe as she reached her hand inside. I gasped as she pulled out a dagger made of a silver metal that I recognized. A metal that comes from our own world, just like the gemstones she used.
She placed the tip of the blade against Aerden’s back and I cringed, tears flowing down my face. I couldn’t bear to see him hurt. This was torture.
She ran the blade across his flesh, from his back to his shoulder and around to his neck. She cut a very thin slice into his neck and his blood poured from it, black at first, then turning to a deep blue. She quickly pulled a silver cup adorned with blue stones from her robe and collected the blood inside as Aerden struggled t
o pull away. I could see the sheer terror in his eyes.
From the corner of my eye, movement drew my attention. I turned to see a robed figure floating up from the edge of the Black Cliffs. She wore a robe that had been torn into rags. When she lifted her head, I could see that part of her face had begun to decay.
A hunter.
But not so far gone as most of the ones I had seen in the portal rituals I’d witnessed over the years. This was a fresh hunter.
“Yanora,” the witch said. “Are you ready to be bound to this portal?”
The hunter nodded, as if she had a choice, but I knew she had none. Dark magic bound her to obey.
“Yes, Priestess Winter.”
My gaze snapped toward the woman. Priestess Winter, ruler of the blue portals. She had betrayed my brother.
This woman did not look the same as the woman I had seen in the previous memory, when Lea had first taken us into that hallway to watch the hunter being drained with the stone. She did not have the same face, but she had the same name.
Anger surged through me. See? It didn’t matter that the humans were not immortal. They may not live more than a hundred years, but they had powerful traditions. They were passing their knowledge down through the generations, training their daughters and their granddaughters to take over when they died.
The king was ignorant to believe we could outlast them simply because we were immortal.
His ignorance would be the end of us all.
“Bind him,” the priestess commanded.
Yanora the hunter floated toward my brother, then bound his hands and legs in shackles with sharp spikes along the inside. Blue blood ran from his wrists and ankles as she locked them in.
Priestess Winter forced his fist open, revealing to me for the first time a silver pendant with a bright blue stone inside, its chain dangling from his hand. She took it from him and placed it inside the cup of his blood.
With the necklace gone, Aerden regained some small ability to move. He screamed and fought against the shackles, but the pain of the spikes kept him from shifting to smoke. The hunter held fast to his chains and cast something to bind his mouth.
“It isn’t any use struggling,” Priestess Winter told him, her voice harsh. “You belong to me now.”
She lay the items in the grass at his feet. A dagger. A cup. A necklace. A ring. Each with a single blue stone embedded in the silver.
Then, she knelt at his feet and began to chant. She lifted her palms toward the sky and as she spoke, black-thorned vines rose up through the dark rock, shattering it to pieces. The wind carried it away like dust, leaving a small clearing of earth that looked as though it had been burned. The vines grew up in a perfect circle, then stopped. Slowly, the tips grew buds as black as night that blossomed into roses, their petals opening to the stormy sky above.
Priestess Winter continued to chant as the sky cracked with lightning. She looked up, surprised. There was fear in her eyes.
“You should not be able to cast,” she said. She stood and checked the shackles at his wrist. More lightning sounded above, then cracked to earth, a burst of fire erupting where it landed.
“Hurry,” she shouted to Yanora. What was fear at first transformed to excitement and awe. The corners of her mouth curled up into a smile that sent a terrible chill down my spine. “He’s stronger than we ever dreamed.”
The pair of them rushed into place, continuing their chants.
I knew I should pay attention to the ritual, but all I could do was stare at my brother’s face. His pain and terror cut through me. I should have been there to save him. I should have gone looking for him the moment I realized he was gone that morning.
“I’m so sorry,” I shouted to him, even though I knew he couldn’t hear me.
My brother fell to his knees amongst the roses, their thorns tearing into his flesh. He cried out, sobbing with such heart-shattering pain that I almost lost myself to madness.
“No,” I shouted. I threw myself to the ground at his knees, not wanting to see this but knowing I must.
Lea, who had been standing in silence at the edge of the memory, came to sit beside me, her body shaking with tears. She put her hand on my arm as we watched the blue light begin to pool in the center of the circle.
The light nearly blinded me, but I clutched at Aerden’s form, trying desperately to pull him back as he began to shift from solid to smoky blackness.
A disturbance rocked the scene as a demon raced forward. My heart stopped. I had seen this part before.
I forced myself to sit up and watch, wanting to make sense of the pieces of this I had seen on the day Aerden was taken.
The demon rushed forward, sword drawn. He sliced through the black roses at Aerden’s knees and miraculously, the blue light of the portal disappeared. But only for an instant. It was like a flash.
Priestess Winter lost her concentration only for an instant. With a single motion of her wrist, she brought the intruding demon to his knees. She nodded to the hunter, who then took a shiny black soul stone from the pocket of her rags and pressed it to his palm. His body shifted to smoke then was sucked into the stone, screaming as his life force was sucked from his body and locked inside the stone.
I looked away, horrified. This was a process that was sacred in my culture—reserved for the respected passing of an elder. A choice that is made in sacrifice and love. Not a murderous weapon to be used to steal souls. My hatred for this witch and her Order of Shadows grew so great within me that I nearly lost my mind. A fearsome, painful cry ripped from my throat. The Order of Shadows had taken our gems, our silver, our traditions, and turned them against us as weapons of dark magic.
I wanted to make every witch who ever lived pay for this betrayal. This absolute corruption of all I held sacred.
Hatred consumed me.
I watched as the black roses regrew themselves to reform the circle. Priestess Winter resumed her chanting and the blue pool of light formed again.
She stood and stepped through the light, lifting her hood over her face as she moved between worlds.
Just as in the other rituals, the light inside the portal was too bright for me to see everything on the other side. All I could make out was a young girl inside, her hair in braids. Instead of hovering over the light, she was kneeling, a white gown pooling on the floor around her.
She looked up, her brown eyes startled as she saw the demon bound and shackled on the other side. She looked up to question the priestess, but it was too late for questions.
The priestess secured the blue pendant around the girl’s neck.
I turned to my brother. I was beyond tears now, knowing the moment was close. I was destroyed, madness and rage consuming me as I clawed at his ghostly form.
For a moment, he briefly opened his eyes and looked almost straight at me. He seemed to understand something about what was happening to him. Something I had still not grasped. He managed to say one word before his body turned to smoke and was sucked through the portal of blue light.
“Denaer,” he said, then was gone.
Emeralds
The Human World – Present Day
I released my grip on the memory stone, letting it drop to the wooden boards of the front porch.
I leaned forward and dropped my head into my hands, unable to control the flood of tears. These memories were the most difficult, and I knew they would be hard for Harper to see, too. After all, that had been her ancestor sitting on the floor of that ritual room, waiting to become Prima.
I stood and wiped my tears against the sleeve of my white shirt. I walked over to the window and looked inside, careful to stay hidden in the shadows on the porch. I didn’t want anyone to see me like this, but I had to know it was real.
I had to know that my brother was alive and safe.
Aerden stood on the other side of the room. His laughter carried all the way out here and the sound warmed the chill in my heart.
I watched him, still hardly able to believe
we were both here. Both safe after all this time. After all these years of struggle and hopelessness.
I still couldn’t believe Priestess Winter was gone. I’d never hated someone so much, but she had seemed so strong. Untouchable.
But Harper had come along and changed everything. She had shown us that you can’t ever give up, even when there doesn’t seem to be any hope left.
Without her, none of this would have been possible.
But she was right. We still had so much work to do. There were still four more sisters to defeat. Thousands of portals to close.
And we still didn’t know the first thing about the mysterious High Priestess who ruled over them all.
Harper and I, along with the rest of the newly formed Demon Liberation Movement, had spent a lot of time since the defeat of Priestess Winter discussing which sister we would go after next.
We had some information about the priestess who ruled over the red portals, but it was the green portals I wanted next. I didn’t care that we had no real leads or clues as to how to find the priestess who controlled the emerald stones. I just knew that second to blue, green was the one who had hurt the people I loved most.
Andros and I may not have agreed on how to handle the witches of the Order of Shadows, but despite our differences, I owed him this after all he had done for me. Andros and Ourelia had both lost loved ones to emerald portals.
Harper agreed with me about the emeralds. Her friends from Cypress, Prima Sullivan and her daughters Caroline and Meredith, were bound to the Order still. They wanted to be free just as we were now free. And because of what had happened when Harper had saved Caroline from the crow witch, there was a piece of Cypress’s demon locked inside of Harper. She felt a duty to free him.
Lea and Aerden both felt that red was a better target since we knew more about it, but in the end, the decision was Harper’s to make.
A Demon's Wrath: Part II (Peachville High Demons) Page 8
