by Juliet Boyd
A raging fire of light hit the demon straight on, bathing its wispy self in a heat so intense that it would’ve melted the flesh off a regular body. She had no idea what kind of effect it would have on this form, but it didn’t seem to be able to disperse. No strands had floated off. She wasn’t sure if it could utter a sound as it was. It had no mouth, no face, no limbs. Her resolve began to weaken a little. Killing was a part of their remit, if they could provide evidence, but they hadn’t agreed to that. Ellie wanted to return the creatures to the Overlord so that the onus was on her to do whatever she wanted to them. So that their consciences were clean-ish. This wasn’t in any way clean.
She downgraded the intensity of the flames a little to see if she could determine the state of the creature. Evidence. How did a wraith demon die?
She hated herself sometimes. Too much doubt.
The creature lurched out from the flames and swiped across her face. She felt a trickle of liquid run down her cheek. She wasn’t sure if it was blood, or simple wet from the mist. But it hurt. She didn’t often feel pain these days, but it sliced at her flesh and burned like blazing fire.
Her thoughts focussed on that for a moment. Fire. Had it taken her energy and thrown it back at her? Was that even possible?
Chapter 8
Bones sat on one of the hay bales Rag had dragged across the barn for him. It gave little relief. There was no comfortable position, but plenty of extreme frustration. “What are we going to do with it? I can’t keep holding it like this forever.” And that wasn’t the only issue. He was concerned he might change, and then he wouldn’t be able to hold it. But there was no possibility of transferring to one of the others. Too much risk. The concentration was almost overwhelming.
The little creature was a wriggler. It didn’t seem to rest for a moment as it tried to free itself. And with the effort expended, it was getting smaller. There was no doubt about that. Every time it moved, he had to grip a little tighter. If you followed that logically to its conclusion, it would eventually disappear from normal vision, even though their normal vision would keep it in sight longer, he imagined. The Incredible Shrinking Man didn’t seem quite so far-fetched now.
“Well, we can’t walk along the street carrying it. We need some kind of container, preferably magical, and not metal. And we have no car, because it ate it. I have no idea,” Ellie said, the final phrase punctuated by a sigh.
She looked at the door, partially shattered from where Flynn had blasted through it.
They had no magic. And there was no way they were going to be able to stay there.
Rag screwed up his face. “I say we wait until it’s small enough to fit in a jar and put it inside.” He walked over to the other side of the barn and picked up a jar that looked like it had been used for some noxious substance in the past.
“No. That will kill it,” Ellie grabbed it off him. “It won’t be able to breathe.”
“It wouldn’t work,” Bones said. Rag shrugged. “We need another car. And quickly. If we don’t get back to Midbury in the next few hours, we’re going to lose it.”
And as if to prove his point, he felt another shift of size downward as the creature writhed in his hands.
###
The farmhouse seemed quiet from the outside, but Rag knew full well that didn’t mean there was no one about. Farmers were always up early, doing farmer things. He’d never understood their obsession with working from dawn until dusk. Seemed like way too much commitment to him. Even a nine-to-five job filled him with dread.
Anyway, so much for them saving their tablets.
There was one car out front and two other vehicles he assumed were some kind of crop-gathering contraptions. Both far too big for what they needed, and a little too obvious to trundle along the road in.
He hadn’t a clue how to hot-wire a car, so he needed the keys, and probably an instruction manual. Trying to work out which levers and buttons did which thing was a nightmare of epic proportions in his brain. Why couldn’t all cars be the same? That would be too much to ask.
He could probably only hope for the keys.
He knocked on the door, because there was no way he was going to be able to get into a place of residence without being invited, especially without Flynn around. He pushed back his hair into some semblance of propriety and waited. A middle-aged woman answered the door, her smiley face warm and inviting in itself.
“Yes, my dear?”
He didn’t speak. Well, not with his mouth. He immediately locked onto her eyes and stole her gaze. She walked over to the kitchen table and picked up the keys and then he told her to forget everything that happened from when he knocked on the door until half an hour afterwards. That ought to give him enough time to grind gears and work out how to stop the windscreen wipers from going. And advance compelling was much easier than repairing the damage after the fact, because the latter would likely involve getting out of the car and chasing after people — and destroying their mobile phones.
The car chuntered into life. It wasn’t a new model — nothing unusual there. He proceeded to press buttons until he was sure he could manage to get the vehicle off the property, and to where Ellie and Bones would hopefully be waiting by the time he got there. Then, she’d be able to take over.
It was a shame she still hadn’t mastered compelling with any level of accuracy. It would make life so much easier.
Chapter 9
In her life before changing, Flynn had never really understood the term battle to the death. It had always seemed so strange that you wouldn’t stop before that point. That you wouldn’t admit defeat, when seeing yourself beaten.
Her first taste of it had been when all the creatures were released upon Midbury. It was kill or be killed. There had been many individual death-battles that made up the whole. Sickening was a mild word for the devastation.
This, she believed to be her next encounter of that kind. Except, this time she had no back-up. She had no friends around her to cheer her on. She’d told them not to interfere, and they’d taken her at her word.
So, it was down to her to decide what was best and to implement it, and she was all out of ideas. She’d tried everything she could think of. And she’d thought of a lot. She remembered the day when Arthur had told her she only needed to focus her mind on something and it would happen. That she didn’t really need spells, as such, incantations, words of any sort. She also remembered him saying that resources were finite. She had taken that part to heart. She always tried to be what might be considered magically environmentally-friendly with her spells.
Not this time. If she needed it, she would ask for it.
Shards of glass. Bolts of lightning. Noxious gases. Quakes. Never-ending voids. Space.
Space.
Before she had time to contemplate the consequences of that, she and the creature were floating above the Earth’s atmosphere. The suddenness of it made her queasy. There was no up, or down. Except a dirty great planet over to the right. She tried to tell herself that she didn’t need to breathe, again, but panic began to fill her like she’d never felt before. Was her body going to explode? Rip apart and be spread across the vastness of space? Or would she just be sucked into oblivion? The wraith demon took advantage of her hesitation, and tried to strangle her head off her again. The lack of any atmosphere didn’t seem to bother it. That knocked some sense into her. She knew the right spell. She immediately transported only herself back down to the ground. Leaving the battle wasn’t cheating. You didn’t always have to have a bloody fight.
She landed unceremoniously, mud being the main component of the surface beneath her.
She waited for an attack.
Nothing.
Really?
Her brain luxuriated in a wave of relief that it didn’t have to work so hard anymore. She looked around. She had no idea where she was. She tried transporting herself back to the barn, but the will, and the strength, wasn’t there.
She lay back on the ground and wai
ted for everything to be all right again.
As all right as it would ever be.
Chapter 10
Bones turned to Ellie. His voice was mildly stressed. “We need to go faster.”
She knew what that meant, that the creature was now so small he could hardly hold onto it. Still, she was glad they hadn’t gone for the jam jar option. She would not have that on her conscience.
“It’s not far. We’ll be in Midbury in ten minutes.”
“That’s a good twenty before we’re underground.”
“I can’t go any faster. It would draw attention. And this car is, well, lacking in oomph.” It really was. It had seen many better days and had been driven into the ground by farm life. Every turn brought a creak of the steering wheel, or a jolt of the suspension — or lack of it.
The traffic in Midbury was slow. A new set of traffic lights had been installed and instead of quickening the flow, it had stopped it dead. She saw Bones clamp his hands together so hard his knuckles were white. “This is crap,” he said.
She had to agree. She thumped the horn in frustration.
Twenty-five minutes later, they parked up in the car park and ran across to the standing stones. Luckily, no tourists were about. They didn’t even have to walk through the portal, even though they could, they were immediately transported down into the depths of the Overlord’s lair. Although, they’d been told to call it an office, because, ‘That’s what it is. I’m no slacker like the last resident. This will be an efficient operation.’
The Overlord waited at the end of the tunnel, hands on hips.
“The metal-eating thingy,” Rag said.
The Overlord nodded.
“I’m not sure if it’s still in my hands.” Bones held up his clamped fists.
“It is.” The Overlord nodded to the containment room.
Clearly she had some sense, or sensor, that told her things that couldn’t be seen.
“You need to go in there as well,” she said to Bones.
“But—”
“You will not be contained.”
His face went white.
There was no choice.
The Overlord closed the door behind him.
The containment room wasn’t somewhere they’d discovered on their visits before becoming hunters. It was one of those cold, clinical rooms, with white walls and … it reminded her of Roger and Bristol and … bad times.
“Open your hands and let it free,” the Overlord said through a microphone embedded into the control panel on the wall.
Bones did so, which they could see through the screen.
“Shake it off. It’s clinging to you.”
He shook his hands as vigorously as anyone could.
“Damn. Keep shaking. It can’t hold on indefinitely.”
But it could. And it did. Being microscopic had its advantages.
Bones slammed his hand against the wall. He was getting angry. Before anyone could say anything, his body began to contort. His shirt and jacket ripped and, shortly after, his jeans. Ellie snorted when she saw the Lycra shorts, but quickly put her hand across her mouth. They didn’t rip. She almost fist-pumped. Again, she restrained herself.
“Ha!” The Overlord grinned. “Should have done that before. Got it.”
There were no flashing lights, or beams, or anything to indicate the creature had been removed and deposited in its cell. They took that on trust. It was about the only thing Ellie trusted about the Overlord. Friends, they were not, and would never be.
“Right, off with you. And tell Flynn she did well. Trapping creatures outside the Earth’s atmosphere works for me. Puts them in someone else’s territory.” The Overlord waggled an eyebrow, which looked very odd on her severe rhino-skin face.
“Any chance you can tell us where she is?”
“Oh, Shetland Isles. Not far.”
“Huh?” Rag said. “Even I know that’s out in the sea somewhere.” He waved in a vaguely northerly direction.
“I wouldn’t worry,” Ellie said. “She’ll find her way back to us. We just need to get to somewhere near the barn, so we’re around when she returns. Don’t want her thinking we’ve abandoned her, or that something worse has happened.”
“No,” Rag said, unconvincingly.
Chapter 10
Staring up at the night sky, watching a wraith demon fling itself against the Earth’s atmosphere was an amusing pastime. Rag had spent many a night doing just that. It was almost hypnotic to watch. Although, Ellie had said that, one day, it would have to run out of energy. That might be true, who could say until it happened, but it had certainly caused a stir on the news, and the Internet had gone wild. He’d even logged onto one site and posted the truth as speculation, and had been knocked down from a great height by all the derogatory comments. Their loss.
Conspire all you want, he mused, but when a vampire tells you the truth, you should always listen.
Dear Reader
Thank you so much for reading this book. I hope you enjoyed it. I certainly enjoyed writing it.
I know your time is valuable, but if you have a spare moment, I’d really appreciate it if you could write an honest review on the website where you purchased it, so that other readers can get a better idea of whether it is the right book for them.
Happy reading. Hope to see you again soon.
Juliet Boyd
About the Author
I’m a British author and I live in the county of Somerset, which is in the south-west of England.
My main writing interests are fantasy, science fiction, weird fiction and horror, with a little humour thrown in for good measure.
You can find me online at:
Website: www.julietboyd.com
Instagram: www.instagram.com/julietboydauthor/
Facebook: www.facebook.com/JulietBoyd.Writer
Pinterest: uk.pinterest.com/julietboyd/
Some of my other works are listed below.
The Midgard Born Series
Beyond the Third End
In Search of Hidden Gods
The Threshold of Truth
Ruled by Choices (Summer 2017)
Glamoured
The Survival Project Duology
Rifter
Traitor
In a Realm of Memories
The Rag & Bones Vampire Series
Trapped
Concealed
Secrets
Kindred
Death
Allies
Conflict
Chaos
Flash-Fiction Collections
Random
Random Two
Random Three
Crescendo
Grandma’s Eyes
The Perfect Colour
Acknowledgements
Thank you to Pete Linforth on Pixabay for the monster image used on the cover, and to pydubrequcq for the male silhouette and liftarn for the female silhouette, from openclipart.org. Thanks also go to Sinister Fonts on 1001fonts.com for the Gypsy Curse Font.
