by Lan Chan
“Everything alright?” she asked.
Giselle snapped her teeth. “It is if you’re happy to live in a bubble.”
“Maybe that’s what we want to do at the moment,” Nanna said. She passed me over some seeds. “There’s nothing wrong with taking time off to heal.”
I thought the vein in Giselle’s eye was going to burst. She turned on her heel and stalked away. “I didn’t know the Sisterhood was welcome in Ravenhall,” I asked Eugenia.
She shrugged. “We don’t make a habit of judging people by their past misdeeds,” she said.
I huffed. “You mean you’re a haven for criminals and degenerates.”
This made her chuckle. “Some of those degenerates are my best friends.”
“I’ll bet.”
She leaned over and tapped me lightly on the nose. “Heal well, witchling,” she said. “Something is coming. I know you feel it too. We could use a monster on our side.”
After she left, Nanna and I went about sowing another batch of spring seeds for the greenhouse. Neither of us spoke. In fact, she had spoken very little since we moved to this place. Ravenhall was all about freedom. Some parts of it were even hauntingly beautiful. The Great Hall was situated within a lovely dense forest. Of course, unspeakable things lurked in that forest and you couldn’t go out there without an armoury of weapons strapped to your back. On days where the wind shifted, the stench from the fens lingered in the air. I would never get used to the rotten-egg smell as long as I lived.
And then there was the black market. Nobody spoke of it but there was a general understanding that objects of ill repute could be acquired there. The Council knew about it apparently, but they either didn’t or couldn’t do a thing about it because Ravenhall was a law unto its own. Unless they did something particularly heinous, they were left to their own devices.
This was all well and good except Nanna and I were sitting ducks. Every time Nanna went anywhere, she would have to wait until Basil was free to escort her. And then he would have to set up all kinds of wards and enchantments around the house to make sure nobody came in and murdered me while he was gone. I was allowed to stay here, but I wasn’t universally loved. At the end of the day, I was Lucifer’s scion. Existing was possible, but that didn’t constitute a life.
“What’s Basil doing?” I asked Nanna.
She tamped down some soil over the tomato seeds. “He’s speaking to Odette, I think.”
“Oh.”
That was another thing that I had messed up. Odette wasn’t allowed in Ravenhall on account of being excommunicated for daring to break free and moving to Rivia. That was the problem with the Ravenhall sorceresses. They were eccentric but also emotionally fragile. It was a dangerous combination. You could slight them just by looking at them the wrong way and then you would be on the receiving end of a lifetime vendetta.
I slumped where I sat on the edge of the raised bed. “Do you think we could make it here without him?” I asked.
Nanna placed her dirt-caked hand over mine. “He wouldn’t go even if you forced him.” Neither would she. I had brought it up once that I was the one who was demon catnip. They didn’t have to suffer because of me. That suggestion went down like a lead balloon. There was no way they would leave me here to rot. But every day I knew they worried that I was just this sloth who walked around like my soul have been sucked from me.
For my sake, they were giving up their freedom. For their sake, I was being a sad sack. Nanna petted my hand.
I gripped her fingers and thought of those long seven years. Not for a second did she stop fighting even though she was completely human. She’s been possessed by a demon who could have crushed her will at any time and she had fought. I didn’t have a right to do anything less.
“It’s time,” I said.
Nanna exhaled. “Yep.”
I stuck my own trowel in the dirt and went back into the house to get Morning Star.
40
The Great Hall was surprisingly well-kept. Everything about Ravenhall had a sinister aura to it. By rights, I should have fit well in this place. But for some reason, it gave me the creeps.
“You’ve been at Bloodline for too long,” Eugenia commented when I jumped at movement along the ground. Whatever it was darted into the bushes. “That place is so sterile.”
“Yeah, I guess. If you call clean and great-smelling sterile.”
She gave me a sharp-toothed smile. Giselle sniffed at both of us. The Great Hall belonged to the whole town. There was no booking timetable or anything as mundane as that. Somehow it always seemed to have a room or a facility that was free. I suspected it was like the illusion training room at Bloodline.
We walked into one such stark white room. It wasn’t anything flashy like in Seraphina. Even with the seal, I felt the hairs on the back of my neck standing up. The ceiling was high. The floor was a polished stone with flecks in an irregular pattern on it. I didn’t know what we were doing here, but it certainly wasn’t to bake a cake.
I gripped Morning Star’s hilt where it sat on my back. I’d taken to keeping the sword with me and sleeping with it beside my bed. Not that I would know what to do with it if something were to happen. I guess that was precisely Giselle’s point.
“By rights,” she said, “you’ve been methodically trained to use that stick. But for some reason, you’ve resisted all of that training so far.”
“I think the reason is that I’m five foot nothing and sixty kilos at best,” I muttered.
The look she gave me could have boiled me alive. She took it as a personal insult that I wasn’t a better Sisterhood candidate. I think she would have preferred it if I was a fire-breathing spawn of Satan. At least then she could say I’d kicked her ass one time because I was a badass.
“How am I supposed to defend myself at this point?” I said.
“Let’s see, shall we?” Eugenia said.
She grabbed Morning Star’s hilt, unsheathed it, and they promptly left the room. I heard the lock click. “What the?” Not this again. I tried for the door. Yep, locked.
“Hey!” I called out. “This isn’t funny!”
The laughter that I heard coming from behind me certainly held no mirth. Every cell in my body froze. I closed my eyes, but no matter how hard I shut them, the sound of his slimy chuckle wouldn’t go away. “Seriously,” I called out. “Quit it.”
The door wouldn’t open. There was nothing to do but turn around. He looked exactly as he had when I was twelve and the Human Services woman had dumped me on his doorstep.
Denis was above-average height and blessed with male pattern baldness. Like many men, he tried to compensate for that by growing a wiry beard. It just made his head look lopsided. In his youth, he might have been built, but as age weathered him, the muscle had turned into fat. It gave him the appearance of softness where he had none. I remember sitting there on the couch while he laughed with the social worker. I just stared at the soccer trophy on the mantle thinking that I would use it as a weapon if he made a move.
To the outside world, he and his wife Marsha were the perfect, loving couple. They lived in a neat little redbrick place with five bedrooms and a big backyard where they kept a sensible border collie. Marsha was a nurse and Denis worked in some backwater government department.
I couldn’t eat for a week after being settled with them. Somehow, I knew something bad was going to happen. For two weeks, nothing did. I would sit outside on even the coldest days and play with the dog. The backyard was the farthest place I could be from them. To settle my nerves, I started weeding the garden.
Marsha found me out there one day. I’d nursed a dying geranium back to life. “You like gardening?” she said. The interest in her voice had my alarm bells flaring. Two days later, we drove into the garage of the clubhouse.
For the next six months, I spent my afternoons tending to the marijuana plants growing under lights in a nondescript warehouse that I was driven to blindfolded. My ability with plants was probab
ly the only reason why the adults put up with me. Every time they did something to piss me off, I would think of ways to get them back. Short of alerting the cops which would have gotten me dead real fast.
One day Denis sucker-punched me as I walked into the house. His fist hit me right in my cheekbone. If I hadn’t suspected it was coming, I would have been knocked out cold. But that’s what you got for putting laxatives in other people’s food.
He hated me because I refused to go down easily. But they had messed up and I had become valuable to the gang’s business. It was a bad idea to give a kid like me a bit of rope.
The Denis in my memory had tried to take another swing at me. The one in front of me stroked his hideous beard.
“Hey!” I screamed. “This is seriously not funny! What are you trying to play at?”
Denis reached me. He swung his meaty fist in my face. I ducked instinctively. “Giselle!” I screamed. But there wasn’t time to convince that psychopath to stop this illusion. Denis ambled forward. I had a feeling that whatever this was, it would prove to be real enough if he happened to make contact with me.
Denis had always been a bruiser. He liked to intimidate through sheer size. To a twelve-year-old kid, he seemed like a giant. Today he swung at me in rhythmic hits that I both anticipated and evaded. His fist feathered too close to my face. I ducked and smashed my foot into his solar plexus.
The hit sent a jarring pain up my leg. I catalogued it for later and rolled to avoid another swing. Denis roared as he stomped the ground. I waited until he was within reaching distance and swept his legs from underneath him. He grunted and fell on his back but flipped into a crouch with the ease of an acrobat.
Okay, real Denis had never been able to do that. He staggered towards me. I sidestepped as he reached out. This time, I wasn’t fast enough. He caught hold of my sleeve and yanked me forward. I latched onto his wrist just in time to stop the forward momentum of the punch. Grabbing his middle finger, I wrenched it back until I heard a snap. He roared and charged forward. The room flew by and then pain exploded along my spine. He smashed my back onto the wall. Just before he could press him weight on me, I curled my legs and planted my feet on his chest.
His left hand came out and winched around my throat. It held me in place as he drew his fist back. I jammed the heel of my foot into his face. It did nothing but push him slightly off-kilter. Either he was getting stronger or my technique was much worse than I had feared.
In my memory, this was the point when Marsha had grabbed me by the shoulders. She held me in place so that Denis could punch me in the stomach. In reality, I dropped my legs. The full weight of him sandwiched me against the wall. Instead of punching me, he pressed my forehead back with his palm. With his other hand, he stroked my jaw. His breath was no less putrid than the smell of the fens. Nausea ripped through me.
“Look at those big, pretty, blue eyes,” he said. “Wonder what they’ll look like if I pop them right out of your head.”
The hand around my throat constricted. I gasped for breath. A red haze speckled my vision. Only then did it hit me what those flecks of colour on the floor were. Blood. Darkness flooded my vision.
I lashed out and jammed my finger into his left eye. The resounding pop was like music to my ears. The sticky feeling against my thumb made me want to upchuck. Denis roared. He staggered backwards and clutched at his weeping eye. I charged him and pushed him backwards until he tripped over his own feet. As soon as he was on the ground, I laid into him. I kicked him repeatedly in the head and tried to crush his windpipe with my foot.
I was screaming when he finally stopped moving. Back then I hadn’t stopped screaming until I’d blacked out. Today he was the one who didn’t get up.
I was on my knees, gasping for breath, when the door opened. My heart felt like it was going to jump right out of my chest. Giselle and Eugenia walked unhurriedly towards me. Denis’s body didn’t disappear. When she was close, Giselle couched down. She poked at the corpse.
“Out of curiosity,” she said, “how did this turn out?”
I stared at her, my expression blank. My pulse was thrumming in my ears. “I torched his house.”
For the first time ever, her chilling smile warmed me. Like I had just confirmed her suspicions that underneath the placid facade, I was just as nuts as she was. I had made it. Back then and now. I would make it.
Eugenia clapped. “Excellent.” She handed me back Morning Star. “Great trial run. Now let’s see if you can deal with the real thing.”
“Say what?”
Giselle grabbed my shoulder hard. “There’s nobody watching you now. They already think you’re a monster. Time to stop playing nice.”
They promptly left the room. Denis’s body finally dissipated. I stood there with my gaze locked on the splatters of blood. I thought they would materialise another fake foe, but to my horror, a spark burst open in the air. A portal’s wide mouth gaped.
Something thundered in the parallel dimension. I planted my legs on either side of me, raised Morning Star, and waited for the demons to come crawling out.
41
Three weeks later, I came home from a training session to find Sophie and her parents in our living room. For a second, I thought I was hallucination from being kicked in the head too many times. It was only after Sophie squeaked and came screaming at me that I knew it was her. I hugged her back, taking in the soft sugar scent of her. Tears pricked my eyes.
“How?” I said.
“Mama got special permission,” she said. I refused to let her go. We’d spoken on the MirrorNet almost every night, but it wasn’t the same. I missed her so badly something in my chest felt like it was going to crack.
Mani had to pry us apart so he could give me a hug too. “You’ve lost weight,” he said disapprovingly as he held me at arm’s length to inspect me.
“It’s the stink,” I said. “It’s not really that appetizing.”
Nora clutched me to her chest for almost as long as Sophie. “How are you holding up?” she asked. I had to talk into her shoulder.
“I’m holding.”
She made a soft sound like she was trying to contain a sob. I sniffed. Nanna cleared her throat. “Why don’t we all sit down and have a cup of tea?”
I was grateful for the change of subject. It wasn’t until I was out of Nora’s hold that I saw we weren’t alone. Declan stepped up to the table.
My eyes went wide. I looked to Sophie for an explanation, but she and Basil were engaged in frantic conversation like they hadn’t just spoken over the mirror last night.
Mani pulled out a chair for me. He sat himself in between Declan and me. I couldn’t help smiling at the dad gesture. Tears threatened to come out again. I wrapped my hands around the teacup for something to do. It scalded but at least that meant I wasn’t on the verge of bawling.
Nanna sat to my left which put Nora directly in my eye line. I gave a small nod in Declan’s direction. She acknowledged it with a grimace but didn’t say anything. Unfortunately, I had lost the ability to be polite.
I turned towards Declan over Mani’s leaning figure. “So what are you doing here?” I asked. Sophie coughed.
Declan actually laughed. “I didn’t think you could get any more forthright,” Declan said.
Jabber. Jabber. Jabber. When I didn’t speak, he massaged the back of his neck. “The Unity Games are happening tomorrow.”
“Are they?” I sipped my tea. “I had completely forgotten.”
If there were a bullshit thermometer in the room, it would have cracked. I thought I spoke with enough calm to convey nonchalance even if I was lying through my teeth. It was impossible not to get caught up in all the games hysteria. Thanks to the jerks that lived around me, I knew that with Evan and me out of the running, Kai was back in the line-up for Obsidian House. There was much speculation about whether he would annul the blood vow if he won or if he had given that up on account of a broken heart. All of this was said very publicly several times
a day within earshot of me.
It may or may not have been the reason why I was so emphatic as I decapitated the demons in training last week.
“I know you won’t be competing,” Declan continued, “but as a valued member of the human population, The Human League would really appreciate your presence as a spectator.”
“What the hell for?”
“We’re already outnumbered,” Declan said. “We can’t let them see that we’re so easily broken.”
“Then you go and be a stoic mountain,” I said. “Why are you trying to drag me into this?”
“Because for better or worse, when the supernaturals think of humans, they think of Alessia Hastings. Right now, they think that if they have a hissy fit, we’ll be content to exile ourselves while they pretend to live their lives like they always have. If we have any hope of asserting ourselves, we need to show them that we are stronger than this.”
I laced my hands together in front of me and took in a long and calming breath. Okay, it was a long breath. Calming didn’t seem to be sticking.
“Look,” I said. “Did you ever think that I don’t want to be in the limelight? I haven’t been walking around with a neon sign around my neck to get attention. I’m stuck here. As far as exile goes, it could be worse. I just want to stay here and not have the whole supernatural community inspect me under a magnifying glass. Frankly, I would have thought me being out of the picture would have made the lives of the other humans easier.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I watched Sophie wince. “What?”
She didn’t say a word. I turned to Nora. She gripped her cup and closed her eyes for a second. “It’s not widely known yet, but the Nephilim Council are gearing up to call for all humans to be expelled from supernatural society. They want to cut us off entirely. Tiberius wants to call the Human League’s bluff. He says if humans don’t want supernatural protection, then they can deal with the forces of Hell on their own.”
