I holstered the axe and turned to the second witch, shifting to smoke as she set her eyes on me and cast a spell that would have paralyzed me. I snaked around the edges of the room, finding a stretch of shadows to hide inside before coming around behind her. I reformed before she even had time to turn toward me, then placed both of my hands on her shoulders. As a human, she had no ability to shift and slip from my grip.
I took a deep breath in, gathering hatred from my heart before blowing the air back out toward the back of her head. She only had time to slightly angle her head toward me before her body froze, ice crystals forming on her pale skin. I moved around in front of her, then clenched my hand into a fist. With all my strength, I punched her in the center of her stomach. A loud crack echoed in the training room as I hit my mark perfectly. Tiny cracks spread out from the larger one where my fist had hit.
I flipped around, kicking my foot into her side. The witch shattered into a thousand pieces that scattered across the floor.
The final two witches sent their assaults toward me, one sending a ball of fire toward my head while the other attempted to bring the ceiling down on top of me. Focused on vengeance, I shifted easily, moving out of the way as a large chunk of rock fell where I had been standing.
I became a black shadow racing between them, forming thin ropes of smoke that extended from my hands and snaked around the feet of the witches on either side. I reformed my body, then yanked the ropes fast, pulling their feet out from under them. The witches fell face-first toward the ground. I pulled my brother’s axe from the holster and brought it down on them one at a time, slicing through their necks with such force, I cracked the stone floor beneath them.
With all four witches dead in a matter of seconds, I fell to my knees in the center of the training room, letting the axe fall from my hand.
Despair and anger surged through me and I let my head fall back as I cried out. Tears fell across my face, freezing before they dropped to the floor and shattered. I wanted revenge. I deserved vengeance.
But more than anything, I wanted my brother back by my side.
Worth Fighting For
The door to the training room opened and Andros walked through, his blue eyes dark and worried.
I looked away from him, not wanting to see him or hear his excuses right now.
“You don’t need to be here right now,” I said, reaching for the fallen axe. “I’m not in a mood to be reasoned with.”
He didn’t leave. Instead, he leaned against the wall by the door, watching me.
“You have grown so much these past few years,” he said. “You’re a great warrior when you have something in front of you worth fighting for.”
I gripped the handle of the axe so tight my hand hurt from the pressure of it.
“But even a great warrior cannot defeat an entire coven of witches alone,” he said. “These witches you killed here were just illusions. They are programmed to fight a certain way, but as long as we don’t fully understand the power and magic behind the witches of the Order of Shadows, they are going to remain unpredictable.”
“If you came here to talk me out of going after my brother, you can leave right now.”
“I came here to let you know that I want to be there by your side when you go after him,” he said.
I turned, studying his face. “But Lea said the council decided against going through the portal.”
“For now,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t go in a year or two.”
I slung the axe over my shoulder. Of course. He didn’t want to stand with me now. He wanted to put off the fight for as long as possible. In a year, he would say we should wait just one more year.
“It will never be enough,” I said, my jaw tight. “We will never understand them completely without facing them in battle. It’s the only way to know their strengths and discover their weaknesses. And you will never have the courage to fight them.”
“I have fought them,” he said, moving off the wall to step closer to me. “In the beginning of The Resistance, we all fought them. We did exactly what you’re trying to do now. We rushed in, like fools, thinking we could kill them with our anger and rage. I watched some of my best friends die in the blink of an eye. So don’t tell me I have no courage.”
He rarely spoke of those times when they lost so much.
“Fighting them didn’t teach us anything back then,” he said. “All we learned was that they cast their magic so fast, we were helpless against them.”
“There has to be a way,” I said. “We’ve been studying them for years. We know so much more now than you did back then. We’ve been training harder. We can defeat them, I know we can.”
“You’re a fool if you think you can go through that portal and ever come home again,” he said.
I swallowed and turned away from him. “What choice do I have?” I asked. “Aerden means everything to me. He’s like a part of my own soul. Without him, I don’t even know who I am anymore.”
“I understand, but—”
“How could you possibly understand?” I asked. “You don’t know what it’s like to have a twin. It’s different from just having a brother. Together, we were stronger.”
“I remember,” he said, raising an eyebrow.
I narrowed my eyes at him. “What do you mean you remember?” I asked. “You never even met me until Aerden was gone.”
He shook his head, the corners of his mouth turning up into a smile. “That’s not true,” he said. “All this time together and you really don’t remember me?”
I lowered the axe, staring at his face.
He shrugged. “I wasn’t particularly memorable as a shadowling,” he said. “But I remember the two of you. I envied you. When you were together, it was like you could read each other’s minds. You played off each other like you were one person, but twice as strong and twice as cunning.”
“You knew us as shadowlings?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said. “My mother worked in the castle as one of the queen’s handmaidens. I grew up right there alongside you and Aerden and the princess. I watched you, mostly, but there were a few times we actually played together.”
I shook my head, not remembering him at all. But then, at the edge of my memory, I did remember a boy. Shy and quiet. Always following us around. “There was one boy I remember playing with, but his name was—”
“Dragon,” he said, laughing.
My eyes widened. “Yes,” I said, remembering now.
He pointed to the red dragon on his armband. “A nickname,” he said. “Me, my father, my grandfather. For generations, we have passed down this unique ability to breathe red fire. We are also immune to any type of fire magic. For centuries, our family has been called dragons. When I was a shadowling, my mother called me Dragon because I reminded her so much of my father.”
From conversations we’d had in the past, I knew that Andros had lost his father to the Order of Shadows when he was very young. Andros believed he had been taken through an emerald portal near the village of Dumar where he was born.
“I had no idea that was you,” I said. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
He smiled. “I kind of liked having it as my little secret,” he said. “I was so shy as a shadowling, always watching you but never dreaming I could be as strong or have a friend I loved so much. But I do remember how special the bond between you was, even back then. I remember how much he meant to you.”
“How can you know that and still expect me to stay?”
Andros moved to stand in front of me. “I don’t,” he said. “But you can’t expect me to come with you when it would put everything I’ve worked for in danger.”
“I have to go,” I said.
He put his hand on my shoulder. “I know, my friend. I know.”
H closed his eyes, thinking. Finally, he opened tear-filled eyes and nodded. “Okay. I will help you for as long as I can,” he said. “Lea, Azira, Ourelia and I will come with you to the portal
. We’ll hold it open and clear for you for as long as possible, but we won’t go through with you. Denaer, I need for you to understand that if the witches attempt to send anyone through to this side to fight or if the hunter comes back for us, we will go. We will leave you there if we have to.”
“I understand.” I clapped my hand on his neck and smiled. “Thank you, friend.”
Relief flooded through me. They would come with me as far as the portal, but once it was open, I would have to decide to go through on my own. If I was going to save Aerden, that part I would have to do alone.
There was no way to know if I would cross through and ever be able to get home to the shadow world again. All I knew for sure was that I had to try.
I owed my brother that much after all he’d been willing to sacrifice for me.
At The Mercy Of Time
Over the next few weeks, I lived on high alert.
We had a plan in place, but in order to get through to the human world, we needed the portal to be opened.
And that meant we needed the Order of Shadows to open it. We knew from watching other portals that sometimes it could be months between rituals, while at some portals the rituals would happen nearly back-to-back. There seemed to be no set time of year or predictable space apart.
So we watched and waited.
We understood from other portal rituals and the books we had taken from the hunter’s den that a demon was marked simply by saying their name. Aerden had been different since he was a prima. He had to be there before the ritual even began and he had to be lured out from the king’s city. They had needed his power to create the portal.
But for most demons who are taken, all the hunter needs is to have seen them at least once and to know their name. When a ceremony is near and a demon is chosen, the hunter returns to the ring of black roses around the portal. She places a summoning stone inside the ring and chants the name of the chosen demon until the stone begins to glow.
That is how The Resistance has been able to observe so many rituals. Once the hunter has been seen, there are exactly three days before the portal will be opened and the demon will be taken.
I hated to think that we would have to wait for a demon to be taken before we could act against the Order, but there was no other way. We were at the mercy of time.
Someone kept watch on the portal day and night, ready to call us in if there was any activity.
Jericho took the first shift, setting up camp on a hill overlooking the portal. We found the perfect place where he could look down on the portal, but where it would be hard for anyone standing down there to see him or the camp.
He barely slept for days, keeping watch through the night. When Azira came to take his place several days later, he handed her a red communication stone that would allow her to alert us if the hunter appeared. We cycled through several shifts like this, each of us taking a few days at a time.
I grew restless. Lea conjured more and more complex illusions in the training rooms to help me keep my mind off the task ahead, but I lived on the edge, knowing that the call could come at any moment.
When it finally did come, I was in the middle of drawing one of my visions. A new one. I had tossed and turned in my bed for hours before finally getting up and when I switched on the light, a brief vision appeared to me. It was gone as quickly as it had come, and it was only a fraction of a second, but something about it hit me hard.
Something about her.
Because the vision had been so short, I didn’t have a clear picture of it in my head. I could only draw out parts of it, but I sat there for a long while, taking care with each detail.
I was standing beneath the window of a large white house, looking up at a human girl. She had long hair and the most beautiful face, but it was her eyes that I remembered. It was her eyes that had pierced through me.
I was drawing this girl when the red communication stone began to glow.
I stopped breathing. My pencil fell from my hand.
This was it. This was the moment that would change my life forever, one way or another.
The hunter had returned to the portal.
Moments of Bravery
I sat on a stone at the edge of the camp, looking down at the large expanse of black rock that led all the way out to the cliffs.
At most we had a few hours before the hunter would return and the portal to the human world would open.
What would I find on the other side?
I closed my eyes and pictured Aerden’s face. Was he really still alive? Could these visions of mine really be trusted?
The plan was clear. I would only have a short time to try to find Aerden on the other side of the portal. If I didn’t see him or find any answers there, I would have to make a choice. Come home. Or stay.
I stared down at the portal, knowing everything was about to change.
Lea sat down beside me. “You’re very brave for going after him.”
Was I brave? Or crazy? Maybe there’s always a little bit of crazy inside moments of bravery.
“I love him,” I said. “I owe him.”
She lowered her head. “When Aerden brought me that key, I knew something strange was going on with him,” she said. “He’d been acting strange for months. I think the idea of our engagement had him spooked. Maybe he felt that since it had always been the three of us, we were abandoning him by pairing off. I think he felt like he didn’t have a place anymore.”
I didn’t say anything in response. She understood part of what Aerden was feeling, but there was no way she could know the whole truth. I wanted to tell her. If I walked through that portal and didn’t return, she would never know she was still loved and that the bright light in that heart stone still shined for her.
But I couldn’t tell her. I couldn’t find the words to explain it.
After all this time, suddenly, we had none left. There was no time now for all the secret aches and sins we’d kept inside to protect the other’s heart.
“Sometimes I think about the way things might have been if he’d never left,” she said. “If he’d never been taken.”
I cut my eyes toward her. The suns had long disappeared, but she was beautiful even in darkness. Despite the mask she’d begun to wear all the time to hide her emotions, I still saw her as the girl I’d grown up with. Strong and soft at the same time. Capable of so much love, yet never truly understanding what love was. Would I ever see her again after tonight?
She turned her head slightly and our eyes met. She smiled softly. “It would have been a good life.”
I reached for her hand and we sat there together, sharing my last moments in the shadow world in silence, thinking of how things might have been different.
Wondering if they would ever again be the same.
Peachville
When the time came to move down toward the portal, the five of us shifted into shadow and made our way down to the field of black rock. We kept low to the ground, moving slowly in the dark of night.
We got as close as we could to the clearing.
My heart pounded in my chest and I felt as if I couldn’t catch my breath. I had waited so long for this moment, and now that it was really here, I had no idea what to expect or how to feel. I think even then, in that moment, I knew it was too much to hope for that Aerden would be on the other side to greet me. I knew I wouldn’t be coming back with him.
But I had to try. Going through the portal was my destiny.
In the distance, I saw the hunter approaching long before anyone else could. She rose up, her decaying form silhouetted against the light of the moons, then flew down toward the clearing.
Yanora. The years had not been kind to her rotting flesh.
The witch on the other side of the portal called out to her, commanding the hunter to give her the name of the demon marked for their dark purpose.
But tonight, there would be more than one demon coming through the portal. Tonight, they would know that the shadow demons were not a
ll like the King of the North. Some of us were willing to risk our lives to fight for those we loved.
My body was tense and ready, my hand closed around the handle of my brother’s axe.
I listened as the demon’s name was called, their smoky form appearing above the summoning stone, helpless to protest their fate. We all breathed a sigh of relief as the hunter, Yanora, was dismissed. She bowed and took her leave.
We knew she would be back as soon as the ritual was disrupted, but her distance would give us time.
On the other side, witches began to chant. I leaned forward, my hands cold as ice.
The familiar blue light pooled on the ground in the center of the roses, then rose up, the doorway between our worlds opening. My stomach twisted as the young girl trembled inside the light.
Then, the demon was called forth, summoned through the portal into slavery.
I took a deep breath in, then rushed forward with a terrible cry. The blade of my axe sliced through the roses, closing the portal for an instant, but allowing me a brief moment to pass into the circle without being harmed. I pushed through, the roses growing back almost immediately. A terrible heat burned through my left arm just as I pulled it across the circle. I ignored the pain, concentrating only on the job at hand.
I knew I only had a few moments. I had to make every single one count.
As the roses grew back, I saw the others take their places on the outside of the circle of roses, waiting for the hunter. Ready to fight her if that’s what it came down to.
Around me, the blue light of the portal rose up again, repairing itself and reopening.
I had no time to doubt my choices or hesitate. With all that was left of hope, I charged through the portal, leaving the shadow world and stepping into the ritual room of a small town in Georgia called Peachville.
A Demon's Wrath: Part II (Peachville High Demons) Page 10
