Demon Slayer

by Linsey Hall

  I darted toward him, staying low to the ground and keeping my eye on the charm around his neck. Movement inside the sarcophagus caught my eye, but footsteps sounding from behind me drew my attention.

  I whirled, confronting half a dozen skeletons who charged right for me.

  Shit, they were fast. And apparently they could sense me, even though I was invisible.

  I drew my mace and swung hard for the skeleton nearest me. He wore only a velvet green robe trimmed in ratty fur, so it was easy to smash him through the middle. He collapsed in a clatter of bones.

  I spun to face the others, spotting a blast of heavenly fire headed straight for the demon. It bounced off him again. His face contorted with agony and he grunted, but he was still standing. And the figure inside the coffin was rising as well.

  The skeleton nearest me reached out with a bony hand, swiping for my face. I darted back and swung my mace, crushing his hand. All the while, my attention was divided between the fight for my life and the necromancer demon. All of this was about the dude in the coffin. The demon needed him for something, and he was successfully raising him from the dead while the skeletons held us off.

  All around, the battle raged. We hacked our way through skeleton after skeleton, trying to reach the demon. The corpses were fast, and some were armed. Damn the tradition of burying warriors with their weapons. It was a nightmare when a necromancer came to town. Several landed cuts to my body, but all were shallow enough that I could keep fighting. Hell, I’d have tried to keep fighting with both my legs chopped off.

  I’d nearly hacked my way to the necromancer when the body that he was reanimating stood up fully. Flesh filled out its skeletal form, making it look weirdly reanimated.

  He definitely wasn’t totally alive again—but it was more alive, if that made any sense.

  I expected him to step out of the coffin any minute now.

  Instead, the necromancer demon raised a hand, and his claws popped out. He swiped them across the figure’s neck, beheading him in one motion.

  Shock lanced me.

  I had not seen that coming.

  The head toppled off, and the demon caught it. The body fell backward, useless now.

  “No!” I lunged for him, sensing what was coming next.

  As expected, he reached into his pocket and withdrew something. He hurled it to the ground, then stepped into the cloud of gray smoke, disappearing.

  Scraping noises sounded from behind me.

  “Shit.” I spun in a circle, sweeping my mace in a wide motion.

  I smashed two skeletons at the waist right as they all collapsed to the ground.

  With the demon gone, they were no longer animated.

  I stood, panting.

  The hellcat was gone. Declan, Mari, and Michael all scowled, their gazes searching the crypt.

  Shit, I was still invisible.

  I stashed my mace in the ether and darted behind a huge column, then removed the hood of my ghost suit, fully reappearing. I stepped out from behind the column, frustration vibrating inside me. I ignored Declan’s questioning gaze as I approached the sarcophagus with the now headless body.

  Though it was massive and ornately decorated, there was no name. Which meant no clue.

  I turned to Michael, who approached from behind. “Any idea who this guy was?”

  Michael shook his head. “He’s been there over a thousand years. No one knows who he was, but he was powerful. Really powerful.”

  Declan crouched down and studied the body. “Which means he probably still has magic in his bones.”

  Mari, who leaned against one of the huge stone columns, scowled. “We lost the demon, and he’s left no clues to track.” She thumped her head back against the column. “We failed.”

  I shook my head, my mind spinning. There was a way to fix this. There had to be. Hope flared in my chest. “We didn’t fail.” I looked at Mari. “Can you take us home? We have work to do.”

  She grinned. “I like that look on your face. It’s your I have a plan expression.”

  I nodded, hoping it would work.

  I looked at Declan, part of me wanting to ditch him here.

  But I couldn’t. This thing was so big—and this demon so dangerous—that I’d take any help I could get at this point. We had to succeed, even if that meant me hunting down Declan and the demon if the fallen angel tried to steal him.

  Anyway, we were partners.

  Fates, look at me, evolving. Working with someone besides Mari.

  I met Declan’s gaze. “You coming?”

  He nodded.

  “Thanks for the visit.” Michael looked around at the bones scattering the grounds. “It was a delight. Please, never come back.”

  Declan grimaced. “Sorry, man.”

  Michael shook his head. “Don’t worry about it. It was the demon’s fault.”

  “And we need to stop whatever he’s doing, so come on,” I said. “Let’s get a move on.”

  Declan joined us. Mari gripped our hands, and a moment later, the ether sucked us in. We appeared in our main foyer in Darklane.

  “You have a plan,” Declan said.

  “I do.” My voice was confident, but it was partially a show. I didn’t even want to contemplate failure, so I was going with confidence. “We have two new pieces of info—the picture that Mari took of the astronomical clock’s projection, and the four ingredients that the demon has collected. Four.”

  “And that’s special, why?” Declan asked.

  “Four is a lot. It’s enough that I can possibly reverse engineer whatever spell he is using. A lot of spells use the first three ingredients—Velochia blood, Merilorca root, and an obsidian athame. The athame is a bit rare, but not like the damned head.”

  Declan nodded. “So we’ll do a spell that will determine what his end goal is. At least, what the spell is.”

  “Exactly.” I nodded. “We know he plans to raise the dead. But when? Where? How many and to what purpose? There are all different kinds and strengths of necromancy, and this will tell us.”

  “And perhaps the star map indicates a location,” Declan said.

  “I’m going to send it out to all our friends, see if anyone recognizes it or something.” Mari grinned. “Aethelred will get a real kick out of it. Maybe it will trigger a vision.”

  “If we’re lucky.” I staggered back toward the workshop while Mari worked on sending the image out. It was a long shot, but we had two real clues, and I’d focus on that.

  Declan joined me, wrapping an arm around my waist so it was easier to walk.

  I stiffened, about to pull away, but it really was easier to walk like this. My legs ached from the zombie blows. And he was keeping his hand away from any of my more interesting bits.

  “Thanks.” I shot a glance up at him. “Heavenly fire, huh?”

  He nodded. “I use it rarely, though. Too much energy.”

  “Yeah.” I could only imagine.

  The workshop was dark as I stepped in, but I had the lights on and the fire going in no time. I staggered to the shelf where I kept the healing potions and swigged one down. The aches were replaced by blissful nothing.

  I looked at Declan. He had quite a few cuts himself. “Want one? You can save your energy by not healing yourself.”

  “Thanks, that’d be good.”

  I strode to him, walking easier now, and handed off a small vial of healing potion. I left him to drink it, my heart thundering as I moved around the room, gathering ingredients for the spell we were about to do.

  “You have the power of invisibility,” Declan said.

  I scowled, annoyed. I’d hoped to keep that on the down low, but no such luck. “It’s my suit, actually. Not me.” I met his gaze. “But keep it to yourself, if you don’t mind. I like being able to sneak around.”

  He nodded. “Sure.”

  I let my gaze linger on him, wondering if I trusted him.

  I did, I thought.

  And it was weird.

 
Mari joined us a moment later, her gaze roving over the collection of ingredients on the table. She got to work gathering the others.

  “I sure hope this works,” she muttered.

  “Me too. Because I’ve got no other ideas.” We had no other lead on him, no idea where he was or what he was doing.

  “Can I help?” Declan asked.

  “No thanks.” I went to our bookshelf and took down a massive old leather-bound spell book.

  Quickly, I flipped through the familiar pages, searching for the spell that would reveal what the four ingredients could be used for. I had it mostly memorized, but mostly was dangerous in spell work. This one was a spell based partially on knowledge and intuition, so Mari and I would be vital parts of it. Finally, I found the right page and consulted the list of ingredients with what we’d found on our shelves.

  “We forgot the wormwood,” I said.

  Mari snapped her fingers. “That was it.”

  She collected it off the shelf, then returned to our stash on the table. I set the book down next to the small silver cauldron and joined her, starting to uncork the vials as she did the same. I worked my way down the ingredients list, she worked her way up, and soon, we had a cauldron bubbling with purple potion. Smoke wafted up, smelling of sage and an autumn breeze.

  I looked at Mari, and she nodded.

  We both stuck our right hands in the cauldron, nicking our fingers so a drop of blood fell onto the bubbling liquid. It hissed and spat, the smoke coming more fiercely. Magic filled the room, and I hovered my hand flat over the liquid. Mari laid her hand on top of mine.

  Together, we fed our magic into the potion. I found every square inch of magic in my body and funneled it into my hand, envisioning pouring it into the liquid. Our hands glowed with white and black light, and I imagined the demon.

  Then I began to chant. “Velochia blood, Merilorca root, an obsidian athame, and an ancient head.”

  Mari joined me, and I pictured each ingredient as I spoke its name. Slowly, the smoke began to curl and solidify, forming words. It would write out whichever spells used those ingredients. Because of the head, there wouldn’t be many. Even the darkest magic rarely used heads.

  I squinted at the letters as they curled on the air. “Time turning.”

  I met Mari’s gaze, and she frowned. “He’ll go back in time?”

  “No, I think it means he can turn back time in a particular place.”

  The smoke twisted again, forming different words. “Reanima.”

  “I have no idea what that is,” Mari said.

  “Declan, get the small black spell book off the shelf,” I said.

  He was quick, following orders as the smoke twisted to form more letters. The third word was, “Oblivia Mass Incantada.”

  “That’s a massive memory loss spell,” Mari said.

  I shivered. Losing my mind was one of my worst fears.

  Declan flipped through the pages of the small black book and then finally stopped. He read for a few seconds, then looked up. “The head he took from Exeter was probably the first necromancer. Reanima is the most dangerous form of necromancy. It reanimates the dead—forever.”

  My skin chilled. “Even after the demon leaves? The dead will keep walking?”

  “Walking, talking. They’ll be totally independent of the necromancer—meaning they won’t collapse when he disappears—but they’ll follow his orders. And they’re violent. They can kill with a bite.”

  “Oh, shit,” Mari breathed.

  Necromancers were terrifying because they could raise the dead. But normally the dead went right back to being dead as soon as the necromancer stopped doing the spell or left the area—like what had happened today in the Exeter Cathedral.

  But this…

  The demon could awaken every corpse in the world, if he worked at it long enough. He could go from cemetery to cemetery, creating armies of the dead. And they killed with a bite. We were screwed.

  It was every shitty human zombie movie—but real.

  The smoke had stopped twisting over the cauldron. There were no more possible spells.

  Double shit.

  He was doing the Reanima spell.

  A pounding sounded at the door, and I jumped. My gaze flashed to Mari, and we sprinted toward the door.

  She swung it open, and Aethelred stumbled in. The old seer had a long white beard and sported a blue velour tracksuit. Gandalf going to exercise class, basically.

  And he was panting as if he’d just run miles. His wide eyes met ours. “He’s doing it now. The demon. I know where he is, and he’s raising the dead right now.”

  15

  “Where is he?” I demanded. “And what exactly is he doing?”

  “He’s in the Darklane cemetery.” He pointed out the door. “Just down the road. I saw it in the stars.”

  Mari’s photo of the astronomical clock’s projection. And he was so close to home.

  “And he’s just started some kind of spell,” Aethelred said. “He’s raising them.”

  “Raising them for good,” Mari said. “He’s doing the Reanima spell.”

  Aethelred gasped. “That’s the bad one, isn’t it?” He shook his head. “I didn’t see that. Oh fates, how didn’t I see that?”

  “We have to go,” Declan said.

  I was already turning toward Mari. She held out her hand, and I gripped it. Declan took her other hand. The ether sucked us in a moment later, spitting us out at the high cemetery wall. We couldn’t transport directly inside, but this would do.

  “I’m calling backup,” Mari whispered.

  “Do it. We’ll need it.” I looked up at the wall. We were at the exact same place where I’d climbed in the first day I’d seen Declan.

  I jumped up and grabbed the edge, then scrambled over. Declan moved just as quickly, landing at the same time I did.

  The same twisting fog curled over the grass, snaking around the headstones. Yellow lamps shed a sickly glow over the scene, and I could already smell the demon’s magic.

  Together, we moved silently across the grass, weaving through the headstones.

  “We made a deal, remember,” Declan murmured.

  “Yep.” I remembered the deal all right. And that I would break it.

  A moment later, we spotted the demon. He stood within a clearing between the graves, his arms raised to the sky. The ingredients were laid out at the compass points surrounding him, with the head pointing north.

  Dark magic filled the air, prickling sharply against my skin. The stench was foul, enough to turn my stomach and make my eyes water. All around the demon, the earth rumbled. Dirt shifted as hands shot up from deep within the ground.

  The dead are rising.

  I spotted the charm around the demon’s neck. “He’s still wearing it.”

  “I’m trying anyway,” Declan said.

  I nodded. If anything had a chance of taking out the demon, it was heavenly fire. Declan raised his hand, his palm glowing white. He hurled it toward the demon, but the fire flew too low. He was going to miss.

  The fire plowed into the severed head sitting at the demon’s feet.

  Oh, smart angel.

  He didn’t miss.

  The head flew away, totally immolated, and I waited, breath held.

  But the zombies kept rising.

  Damn. The spell was already in effect. The demon no longer needed the head.

  Soon, there were two dozen zombies all the way out of their graves.

  “Thanks for the invite.” Claire’s voice sounded from beside me.

  I looked over, spotting her in her fighting leathers with her sword drawn. Her left hand glowed with red flame. “You know how I hate to miss a party.”

  “This looks like it will be a good one.” Connor grinned. Claire’s brother stood next to her, a sack of potion bombs hanging over his shoulder. His messy hair was speckled with flour, and his T-shirt read Alanis Morissette.

  “Thanks for coming.” I grinned at them.


  A half second later, Mari raced up, the three FireSouls at her side. The three were best friends, though they’d been together so long that they might as well have been sisters. Cass looked exactly the same as she always did since she rarely deviated from her usual uniform.

  Next to her, Del Bellator was already in her Phantom form, pale blue and transparent. The dark-haired FireSoul was half Phantom, one of the most terrifying types of supernatural creatures in the world. They fed off your misery and fear.

  Fortunately, Del was a pretty cool chick who had no interest in my deepest misery and fear. But she did like to fight in her Phantom form, since no one could land a blow when she went all ghosty.

  Nix, the third FireSoul, grinned widely. She wore a T-shirt with a cartoon cat riding a rainbow Pop-Tart and motorcycle boots. She was a conjurer with some bad-ass life magic—totally the opposite of the necromancer, and probably really handy in a situation like this.

  “Let’s do this,” Nix said.

  We turned to face the demon, who was still chanting. Every second, another zombie rose.

  We sprinted forward, heading directly toward death. I called upon my mace, hefting the chain and spiked ball.

  Connor dug into his potion bag and hurled a sparkling green bomb. It smashed into a walking corpse, immediately melting its face in a blast of acid. Claire hurled firebombs, aiming directly for the heads as well. Skulls exploded, partially decayed brain matter flying through the air.

  The zombies flew backward and landed hard on their backs.

  Then they rose, staggering forward, headless.

  “Tear them apart!” Cass shouted. Magic swirled around her, and she sprouted massive black wings from her back.

  “Where the hell did you get those?” I demanded, swinging my mace at the nearest reanimated corpse and cutting him off at the middle. I’d never seen her with wings like that.

  She grinned and pointed at Declan. “From the fallen angel. Always wanted to try out wings and heavenly fire.”

  Ah, right. She was a mirror mage, and could mimic the magic of nearby supernaturals.

  Cass launched herself into the air and began to hurl blasts of white fire at the zombies, destroying them in flashes of flame. Nix leapt on top of a mausoleum and raised her hands, her magic flaring bright. It rolled over me like a cleansing breeze.