Marked

by Jasmine Derriman

  I realised now that above me the lights were flickering. I turned my head I saw the light fixtures on the ceiling were slowly springing to life as they turned on. The hall was now a white dull glow from the light and for some reason it sent a shiver down my spine. I heard a noise in front of me and my head snapped towards the sound, and it was now I realised that I was not alone.

  I expected to see a demon standing in my path, but instead I found something that this time, actually stopped me from functioning. I struggled to breathe as my head started to spin. I couldn’t even believe what I saw in front of my eyes. They couldn’t be standing there, they just couldn’t be, it was impossible.

  “Lily!”

  I heard Hadley’s voice behind me in the distant, but I didn’t react to her, not even a little. I couldn’t tear my head away from what was in front of me. I couldn’t breathe properly and I was frozen in place. I didn’t know what to do or what to think because what I saw standing before…was my mother.

  Chapter Twenty

  I was still completely frozen in place as I felt someone’s hands touch my arms and they tried to force me to move. I couldn’t move though, it just felt impossible at that moment. What I knew of my mother wasn’t much, well not as much as a normal person might know about their mother. My memories of her were so vague, and right now I wasn’t even sure how I recognised her in that moment.

  My uncle often told me I reminded me so much of my mother at times, but standing in front of her now, I didn’t understand why he said that about me. Unlike me, my mother had short straight blonde hair, like platinum blonde. Her face was thinner than mine, her cheek bones not as noticeable either, and her eyes were a deep brown, very unlike mine. She was shorter than I thought, smaller than I thought. She wasn’t like the woman I expected.

  “Lily, listen to me. Listen, please.”

  Hadley’s voice increased and I heard her voice resinate through my ears. I slowly recognised what she was saying and turned my head slightly to see her panicked face trying to grab my attention. It was also then I started to realise that something wasn’t right. I realised my mother hadn’t moved a muscle and she was almost more frozen than I was, if that was even possible, but it couldn’t be, could it? I could just tell something wasn’t right

  “It’s not real, Lily,” Hadley said frantically. “Whoever she is, it’s not real. It’s a demon, Lily.”

  I turned back to my mother and I felt my bones creak as I started to loosen up. It was a demon? How could my mother be demon? I knew the answer to that though, and that was because she wasn’t my mother. I knew this couldn’t be real. I knew it. My mother was dead. My mother died. This wasn’t real. None of this is real.

  It was like the moment I allowed those thoughts to enter my head the whole room started to change. The lights started to fade into a duller grey colour and I saw my mother’s body kind of twist and break into something different. Her head tilted to the side and as she blinked I saw her eyes change colour, and they suddenly turned completely black.

  It was then I finally sprang into action and my whole body sprang back to life with me. A lot of things happened in the next few seconds. The windows beside us crashed into a million pieces and I did my best to shield my body, but there wasn’t so much I could do. I felt the stinging pain of glass being stuck in my body but I couldn’t let it control me or weaken me, I didn’t have time to anyway. Once the windows were broken, at least three demons found their way through the broken windows and into my path.

  Hadley again reacted faster than I thought she would and she jumped in front of me. I didn’t have enough time to work out what these demons were, and only managed to glance at three demons shaped similarly to the air demons. That wasn’t my problem right now though. I knew I had to focus on the demon that was my mother. She was put here for me to fight, not for Hadley, and I knew it

  I started to run and my hand tightened around the telum in my grip and as I run I swung the telum above my head and aim for my mother’s head. She tried to duck but it missed most of her head only grazing across her hair, but slightly cutting into her skull. She swung around to face me and pushed her teeth together and then let’s out a loud shriek that made me want to cover me head and shrink to the ground, the scream was not human. She definitely wasn’t my mother.

  She used her arm to take a swing at me, aiming for my head as I did for hers. I ducked quicker though but I felt the air from her arm move the loose strands of my hair. She tried again but I ducked again just as quickly as last time and I used my telum this time to bat her arm away. Just the touch of the crystal onto her skin looked like it burnt as she screamed again and pushed the telum away. I knew right now my telum really was my best weapon against any of these demons.

  I had definitely frustrated this demon with a cut to her head and a burn to her arm, but I had also made her angry. She looked more like a zombie now as she ran towards me and as she did, I felt Hadley’s training click in. I waited until she was close enough before I jumped out of the way. I used my advantage of being small and fast and used my chance to cut across her back with the telum. Demons didn’t bleed, and this cut was just hollow.

  She didn’t scream this time, instead she turned around to me faster than I predicted and as she did she managed to grab hold of my wrist, and it was the same wrist that held onto my telum. I struggled against her killer grip and used my leg to kick her in the stomach. To my surprise it worked quite well but as she was forced to let go of my wrist I felt her nails claw into my skin.

  I yelled a little at the pain and my grip completely loosened from the pain and my telum dropped through my fingers and to the floor. I turned to look down at it but instead I just saw blood dripping from my wrist. The demon suddenly realised the advantage it had created, and it took its chance. It charged to towards me and I felt panic spread through my body, but it also helped another instinct inside me kick in. My telum wasn’t just a weapon, I was too.

  I outstretched my arm and the moment I did I felt the force of the fire leave my hand. It jetted towards the demon, completely pushing it back until it hit the wall. I heard it scream and cry, but its cry never really sounded like it was pain, it was beyond me how a demon felt pain.

  The fire stopped as I let myself calm down, the more intense my fear was, the more intense the fire would burn as I had learnt my emotions could control my marks, and it was evident now looking at this demon. It lied on the floor, twitching a little, but I realised it looked nearly what any human might look like after walking into a burning building. Its body was completely black and its skin pulsed. I used my left hand now to pick up the telum off the floor. I had weakened the demon so that it could no longer fight but it wasn’t dead…yet. I held the telum close to me and I turned my head to look at its face. It no longer resembled my mother; it barely resembled anything anymore, but the cold heartless demon that it truly was. I plunged the telum deep into the demon’s chest and with one last cry and burst of light it completely disappeared into thin air, as all demons do when they die.

  I had no time to reflect on anything as I whipped around to see Hadley now facing only two demons, she seemed to have gotten rid of one, but she also seemed to be doing okay. I felt the need to press on, I knew she could handle it, but I couldn’t leave Hadley just because I needed to save Isaac, that wasn’t fair to anyone, really.

  Both demons had their eyes set on Hadley and they didn’t focus on me, I knew this was my advantage. I waited for my moment as Hadley swiped at one with her telum and air kicked the other. One demon fell, the one that had been swiped with the telum, and I broke into a run immediately and pulled my telum in the air as ran. The demon didn’t have enough time to react and I reached it and pushed my telum into its heart. It screamed louder than the last demon did as it disappeared into a ball of light. I turned myself back around to see Hadley plunge her telum into the other’s demons heart and watch it die.

  Hadley breathed heavily once both demons were dead and I found myself d
oing exactly the same. It would be a lie to say that that fighting hadn’t exhausted me, but I couldn’t let that get to me.

  “What…what was that thing?” I asked Hadley as her eyes met mine.

  “A…shape shifting demon,” she answered, still breathing heavily. “They can get into your mind…find someone you love, that you could never hurt and make themselves look like them. They… they are only hard kill because you have to realise they aren’t real….and you…I’ve never seen anyone realise so quickly.”

  I shook my head a little as I hung my head too. “My mother is dead… I knew it wasn’t real.”

  Hadley’s eyes met mine again as I looked up. Unless Isaac had shared that information with her earlier, it was news to her, and judging by the look on her face, he hadn’t told her. She opened her mouth to speak but as she did we hear a sound from the hallway. Both our heads turned immediately towards the sound and we were both alert again.

  “You go ahead, we find him, and we got out, okay?”

  What Hadley said was simple enough to say, but it wouldn’t be as simple to do, I knew that. Our footsteps again echoed as we started to walk again but now I had a really uneasy feeling in my stomach. They knew we were here, they had to be watching us, and of course they were, and they didn’t want us to get Isaac back.

  I heard the sound of glass breaking, and then the sound of a louder footstep, and then the lights started to flicker again, the white lights that never ended up turning off. Both Hadley and I felt it at the same time, I could tell by the way her body stiffened that she felt it too. We both slowly let ourselves turn around and I immediately felt myself swallow.

  There were more demons standing behind us then before. There were nearly ten, there had to be. I wanted to run and scream, I wanted to flee, but I couldn’t. Hadley stepped in front of me and held her telum up at one of the demons in the front, one that resembled a monster, like the boogie man, started to advance towards us.

  “Go,” I heard Hadley hiss suddenly, but as I didn’t move her voice becomes louder. “RUN!”

  I did exactly as she said then. My feet started to carry me at her words, I was more than happy to get out of there, but I really had no idea where I was going. I knew that not all the demons were fighting Hadley; I could hear her fighting as I ran, and I knew they were following me also, but I just kept running.

  I decided to turn and pushed my way through two of the doors they both opened together as I charged through them, but I immediately came to a stop when I entered the room. The room was just a room; it was a dead end, not a hallway. I turned myself around and looked at the door. In that moment I panicked and I decided the only thing I could do was barricade the door. I ran forward and grabbed the filing cabinet next to it and pushed it down in front of the door with all the strength I could. I realised that the cabinet probably wouldn’t hold the door forever but it might give me enough time to figure out what I could do.

  I turned back around to look through the room. I seemed to be in some sort of office or something, I could just tell it wasn’t a hospital room. I moved around the room and realised the room was full of filling cabinets and what appeared to be old hospital files. The windows were completely boarded up, I couldn’t get out through them, I wouldn’t’ be able to pull them off myself. Looking at the windows though I noticed something else instead.

  It was a picture hanging up on the wall. It was old and black with dusty, mostly covering the girl in the picture, but that wasn’t the part I had noticed. I had noticed the engraving plate on the bottom of the photo instead. I pushed my finger over to move dust away to make sure I was reading it correctly, but I realised I was.

  “Annabeth,” I whispered her name as I read it.

  I spun back around. She used to be in this office, maybe this was her office, either way at some point in her life she had been in this room. I felt something surge through me, a real warmth, like electricity, and I knew exactly what I feeling it. It was the same pull I felt when I had walked into the hospital, the same feeling that had been drawing me to the dagger the whole time, and I realised I didn’t just walk into this room by mistake. The dagger was in here somewhere.

  I started to search frantically as I had no idea where to really start looking. I put my telum down on the desk and I started to tear the desk apart first, pulling the draws out and emptying them of the dusty paper they contained. When I found nothing in or on the desk I moved the filling cabinets, pulling them open. They were just full of papers though, they were basically full of nothing.

  There was a suddenly a loud bang on the door and I froze. There was another bang and the filing cabinet I had barricading jolted. I felt my stomach flip and as I realised I was running out of time; the demons were going to get through. I realised this method of searching wasn’t going to work, but I knew I had to find it, and that’s when I realised I could.

  I was drawn to the dagger, which was something I was sure of, so I just had to focus on that. I breathed in out and slowly, trying to steady myself. I shut my eyes as I tried to focus on the warmth, on the hold the dagger over me. I felt the warmth grow, but I realised it wasn’t growing in me but growing towards one of the corners of the room. I couldn’t pin point it exactly, but in the end I didn’t need to. I saw a flash of something come towards me, and my eyes snapped open when I realised I had seen it before.

  My feeling at shown me Annabeth’s picture, it had brought me back to the corner of the room. I knew it couldn’t be in the photo, but it was close by. I frowned as I decided to pull the picture off the wall. There was just a solid white wall behind, but never the less I placed the palm of my hand against the wall and to my surprise the wall felt like it was burning hot.

  I jumped back and grabbed my telum. I turned it around to use holder end of it, and I smashed it against the wall. The wall broke slightly, and as I repeated this a few times the wall started to break away, and eventually I was able to peel the wall away and get through, and when I did I couldn’t believe my eyes.

  There it was. Just sitting upright in the wall as it might’ve been for a few hundred years. Annabeth had hid it here, and I had found it. I hesitate to put my hands on it, but I grip on to it anyway and yank it from the wall. As I look at it, it’s exactly as I had pictured it. It was silver, but completely polished and shiny, despite spending so long in a wall. The handle had incite work of silver wrapping around silver in a pattern, and at the bottom of it a large red ruby which unnaturally shone at my touch.

  The sound at the door was much louder and I turned around with a gasp. The filing cabinet had slid across the floor and the door was now inching open. I felt my fear take over me, but not because of the demons, because I thought they might try take the dagger from me. I quickly tucked it into my pants and pulled my shirt over it and held my telum ready for them.

  The footsteps of the first demon that stepped in, were heavy, and the demon itself was large. It resembled something like an ox, but it stood on two legs, and its horns were black. The demon next to it skin glowed slightly. It kind of simmered around its shapeless type of body and I realised it’s was a shield, similar to the one that had been around the possessed man. The other three demons collided behind the others and one looked a man, but completely white from head to toe, only with eyes which were as dark as the night. The other had a least three heads that just seemed to be attached to its body by smoke but all their teeth were razor sharp, and the last was small, again with sharp teeth and eyes near the top of its narrow head.

  I stood no chance against any of these, and I knew that. I started to back away slowly, not knowing how that was going to help but they all just advanced on me, even glided slowly towards me. I could just try fight; fight until I either win or they kill me. Would they kill me though? They couldn’t get the dagger if I was dead and whilst it would make sense for the demons to want me to dead so the dagger couldn’t be found, so far I believed they were doing the exact opposite. They wanted me alive.

  I held
my telum up and realised I had no choice but to fight. My right wrist burned and I didn’t know how well my left hand would go but I didn’t think it would be great, but I didn’t have a choice. I was ready now as I focused on them but they have all stopped and I had no clue why.

  I decided not the question and I started to advance with telum at the ready. The ox like demon ran towards me and my hand swiped out immediately, using the telum to cut across its chest. It sliced through and I kept moving. The white human like demon plunged at me, but I stuck the telum into its stomach, and that became my first mistake.

  It got stuck inside the demon and I tried force it out but the demon’s hands gripped to it. I could see it burn the demon but it held on anyway and I tired with all my might to pull it out. I suddenly felt it budge, before I was ready and with telum in my hand I fell back onto the floor.

  My head hit the tiles and I tried to get up, but they were already closing in on me, by the time I stood up it would be too late. As an instinct I held up my right hand and I tried to use my fire, but instead, something else happened. I felt a pulse leave my hand and I felt the pulse surge through me. I breathed out heavily as the pulse felt like a force, but the force didn’t do anything to me, instead it pushed the demons back, away from me and across the room.