A Halloween party...that was perfect.
“Wouldn’t miss it!” I gave her a thumbs-up, just in case my words were too muffled by the cake in my mouth. Leon had mentioned Kent having artifacts, and some kind of protective charm — if I could use the cover of the party to do a little snooping, maybe I could find something to protect me. It was risky, but if anything Leon had told me about the Hadleighs was true, then asking them for help was out of the question.
We ate and chatted, and for a couple hours, I almost forgot about the monsters in the woods and the demon on my couch. But when we got up to leave, Victoria said suddenly, “Oh, by the way, if you could give me or Jeremiah a call if you see Everly, that would great.”
“If we see her?” I said. “Why? Is something wrong?”
Victoria rolled her eyes. “She…left. It’s been a while now and daddy is…concerned.” She smiled tightly. “She’s not right in the head, you know? Who knows what kind of trouble she could get into? Keep an eye out for her. We’re just worried sick.”
We parted ways, and as I walked back to my car, my food churned in my stomach. Something told me Victoria wasn’t worried about Everly.
Something told me that if Everly had left home, she had a damn good reason.
There was no sign that Leon had stirred at all while I’d been gone. I dared to nudge down his shirt for a peek at his injury, and was shocked to find that nothing remained of it but a splotchy scar gashed through his tattoos. Not even my touch woke him; he gave a little sigh at the brush of my fingers, but nothing more.
I wouldn’t have expected demons to be such deep sleepers, but I wasn’t complaining. If he was there, I was safe. My touch may not have woken him, but I had a feeling a monster would.
But once he woke up, I didn’t think he’d be sticking around. I hadn’t taken his deal, and he was still fixated on finding the grimoire. I planned to hunt for something to protect myself with at the Hadleighs’, but the party was weeks away. I needed just a little more time with him here.
A few minutes of intensely browsing the internet offered a solution.
The website I’d stumbled across looked sketchy, haphazardly thrown together by someone whose knowledge of coding had stopped in the late 90s, but the information was good. How to Bind and Command a Demon to your Will looked like something straight off the cover of The National Enquirer, but at this point I wasn’t going to turn up my nose at anything.
Speak clearly and boldly.
Make your commands as straight-forward and detailed as possible.
Keep the demon confined to a binding circle, whereby it can only leave at your explicit command.
A binding circle. I could remember reading about that in the grimoire. That was what I needed.
I’d somehow managed to conjure up enough magic with some old markings and strange words to make a demon appear at my command. So why couldn’t I make him do other things at my command? Like stay and protect me, for a start.
The sketchy website, luckily, provided instructions for drawing a binding circle. With my laptop in one hand and some white chalk in the other, I crept downstairs to confine my demon.
I wasn’t about to let myself consider how furious he’d be. This was a matter of life and death, and I had to survive. I nudged the rug out of the way, and painstakingly drew a circle on the floorboards around the couch. I marked down the runes, checking and rechecking every part until I was confident I’d replicated it perfectly.
All that was left to do now was wait. If he woke up and couldn’t leave, then the ball was back in my court. I could command him to protect me until I could either get away from Abelaum or until the monsters lost interest.
If the binding circle didn’t work, well, it would be fairly obvious what I’d tried to do. Leon’s prior threats to spank me would likely seem meek in comparison to whatever vengeance he’d think up for daring to try to trap him.
I had other problems to deal with until my captive demon awakened, namely, disguising the garish severed heads I had staked around my yard.
It was a fifteen-minute drive to the nearest Target. I headed straight for their Halloween section, snatching up strands of black lights, faux headstones, a couple plastic skeletons, and some boxes of fake cobwebs. I figured the best course of action would be to hide the monster heads in plain sight. No one would think twice that they weren’t just part of the decor.
It was this, or avoid having anyone come near my house for the indefinite future. I was still trying to live a normal life despite being hunted by deranged monsters, damn it.
It was evening by the time I got home, and Leon was still asleep. But he’d changed position, so that at least told me he was beginning to move. Nervousness coiled in my stomach at the thought of him waking, and I rechecked my work on the circle for what was likely the dozenth time.
It would work. It had to work. He’d be trapped and he’d have no choice but to obey.
He’d be pissed.
I wasn’t pleased about doing it. But I was going to survive this.
While I still had daylight, I coiled the strands of blacklights around the stakes holding the severed heads to make them look a little more festive. I’d have to get some pumpkins and carve them, but that part could wait a few days. As I tested out posing my plastic skeletons around the yard in various provocative positions, I decided it was time to call the one person I knew besides the Hadleighs who might have the slightest inkling about all the weird shit happening in Abelaum.
My dad.
“Hey, sweet-pea,” he answered, using the nickname he’d given me as a baby. It occurred to me that it was probably a lot later in Spain than I had considered, but Dad had always been a night owl. “Decide to come join us yet?”
Dad hadn’t been particularly fond of me choosing to move back to the town he’d grown up in rather than go with them to Spain, and I was beginning to suspect he had a damn good reason for that. But I couldn’t exactly just blurt out to him that I was being hunted by monsters and was trying my hand at mastering a demon.
“The offer is tempting, but I think I’ve got it under control here,” I said, smiling despite the fact that it was an utter lie. I didn’t have it under control. Not in the least. “Just wanted to give you a call, see how it’s going. How’s the weather over there?”
Dad loved to talk once he got going; he told me all about their house, promising me that Mom would email me photos of the place soon. Their drives into town consisted of exploring the coastline, trying tiny cafes, and falling in love with Spanish coffee houses. I continued decorating as he talked, letting him ramble despite the growing anxiety in my stomach. His voice was a comfort — a tiny piece of home, of normalcy.
But nothing was normal anymore.
“Made any new friends up there?” I finally was given the space to get a word in, but I still stuttered for a moment before I answered.
“Uh...I, uhm...yeah. Yeah, everyone is really friendly up here.”
Dad chuckled. “Those small towns can either be real friendly, or real off-putting. Folks gotta welcome you in.”
“They’ve been really welcoming,” I stood back, surveying the skeletons’ newest position, with one bent over in front of the other over a log. It made me snicker, so I decided to keep it. “Actually, I met someone who says they went to high school with you. Kent. Kent Hadleigh? Sound familiar?”
There was a long pause. For a second, I thought the line had gotten disconnected.
“Hadleigh,” Dad said slowly. “Yes. Yes, I remember Kent. Wealthy family. Big house...up off of uh…” I heard him snapping his fingers in thought. “Off Water Crest Drive. How’d you run into him?”
“Art Festival in town. I went with his kids, they’ve been really cool to me.” Why did it make me so nervous to ask this? What was I so afraid of hearing? “Did you know Kent very well? Were you friends?”
He chuckled. “I wouldn’t say we were friends, no. We ran with different crowds. His family was, uh, well...bit o
f an odd bunch, the Hadleighs.”
“Really? How’s that?” Odd like, eccentric? Or odd, like, I-run-an-evil-death-cult?
“It’s just those small towns,” Dad muttered, and I could practically hear him shake his head. “Gossip goes around, people get all kinds of strange ideas. Superstitions and such, you know. The kind of stuff you like, I guess, but they really take it seriously. The Hadleighs have lived in Abelaum a long time. One of the founding families, as I recall.”
“Our family was up here a long time too, weren’t they?”
“Oh yes, your great-great grandfather, Titus Lawson, moved over there when it was still just the mining operation. There was always a Lawson in Abelaum, up until us and your grandmother moved.” He paused. “And, well, now there’s a Lawson there again. I suppose that place just draws us back, eh?”
“I guess so,” I felt a bizarre mixture of relief and disappointment. Relief, because my father hadn’t immediately reacted in horror to the Hadleigh name. But now I had even more questions than answers. “How is Grams, anyway? What is she —”
“RAELYNN!”
The voice boomed from the house like thunder, making me shriek and nearly drop my phone. Birds took flight from the trees, flocking away in terror. Something prickled up my back, like nails frantically grasping, trying and failing to get a hold on me.
“Rae? Raelynn? What in hell was that?” Dad sounded alarmed, and I hurriedly tried to calm him.
“Oh, uh, it’s nothing. Everything is fine, Dad. I turned on the TV and it was uh...really loud —”
“WHAT THE FUCK, RAELYNN!”
Shit. Shit, shit, shit.
“I’ve gotta go, Dad, sorry, my uh, my friend just got here.”
Hanging up the phone felt like setting the first nail in my own coffin. I tucked it into my pocket, my fingers suddenly painfully cold, and turned back toward the house.
Leon was awake.
I wasn’t going to kill her.
I wasn’t going to kill her, goddamn it.
But, oh, I was going to make her fucking regret this.
I should have known. I should have stuck to my instincts. Humans weren’t to be trusted. Humans were selfish, advantageous, conniving things that would take advantage of you the moment they had the chance. Her sweet touches, her absolutely irresistible body and tempting wickedness — it had gone to my head and I’d let my guard down. I’d been so eager for a safe place to sleep, to just finally have a moment to rest.
I’d never considered Raelynn would pull off a binding circle after the absolute mess she made of summoning me in St. Thaddeus. I’d been foolish. I’d been weak. Lesson fucking learned.
The cat was staring at me with his ears plastered against his head in alarm and his tail puffed. I paced the circle, which encompassed the couch and coffee table, looking for the slightest error, for even a single missed mark or break in the lines, but no luck. It was constructed perfectly. Impenetrable. A boundary of primitive magic, simple but effective.
What the bloody hell she thought she was going to get out of this, I couldn’t even guess. She’d trapped me, but controlling me was another matter entirely. Unless she’d figured out a way to magically inflict pain, she’d have to keep me in that circle until I rotted, because she couldn’t make me obey.
Stubborn girl. Foolish girl.
There was a soft step and I whirled around, to find that she’d crept in the front door. Her hair was disheveled from the breeze, the round tip of her nose was pink with cold and her freckled cheeks were flushed. She pushed her glass up her nose, nervous fingers twitching before she shoved them into the pockets of her jacket in an effort to look tough.
I jabbed my finger at the floor. “What the fucking hell is this?”
She gulped. Her heart rate sped up. Her fear tasted sweet on the air, but it would be even sweeter when I had her pinned underneath me for a proper punishment. She fidgeted, withdrawing her hands from her pockets again, and said, “A binding circle. If you want to leave it, you have to do what I say.”
If I’d widened my eyes any further, my eyebrows would have flown off my head and speared through the ceiling. “Oh, is that what it is? Oh my, thank you ever so much for explaining, I’ve certainly never encountered a goddamn BINDING CIRCLE.”
The house creaked as my voice rose, and Rae shuddered but her jaw tightened, and her brown eyes hardened as she looked at me. “I didn’t want to, Leon. But I need your help and —”
“I OFFERED YOU MY GODDAMN HELP!” I was certain I heard one of the windows crack. The cat was looking perpetually more alarmed, and Rae was coiling up like a spring, steeling herself against my fury. “Your soul in exchange for protection. It’s an easy bargain, Raelynn.”
She was shaking her head. “That’s not easy, Leon. That’s eternity. I can’t...I can’t just…”
I scoffed, pacing again, barely able to reign in my anger to even talk properly. I wanted to rip up the goddamn floorboards. I wanted to yell until every window cracked and the foundations shook. That crushing, sickening, smothering entrapment was bearing down on me. I thought of Kent’s concrete prison, the hours alone in the dark, the years of choosing between pain and obedience.
No. Not ever again. Not even for her.
“I just need you to protect me,” Raelynn babbled on, as if she thought her words would calm me. “Just for a little while, not forever. Just until I —”
“Until you, what?” I sneered. “Until you manage to move away from here? Until you run far enough away that maybe the monsters won’t track you down again?” I laughed bitterly. “Goddamn it, Rae, don’t you get it? It’s you. They’re after you. They’ll keep coming. I told you.”
She frowned. “What...what do you —”
“I told you the real reason the Hadleighs are so goddamn friendly to you,” I snapped. “They’ll keep coming after you no matter how far you go from this town.” I let her tension build. I wanted it to seethe. I wanted her terrified, as she should be. “You’re meant for their God, Raelynn. You’re their sacrifice.”
Her hands were clenched at her sides. “Why me?”
“Three survivors of the disaster in 1899.” I held up three fingers. “Three who ate the flesh of their fellow men. Three who were chosen by the Deep One. Three lives spared, but the God does not spare for nothing. In return, someday, those lives must be given back.”
She had gone pale. She was shaking her head. I stuck in the knife a little deeper, and twisted it.
“Some old relative of yours survived that mine, Raelynn,” I said, my toes pressed right up against the boundary of the circle. “The God let him survive. In exchange, It demands a life back: yours.”
She looked as if she’d seen a ghost. Her voice shook. “No. You’re a liar. You’re just trying to get me to —”
“I haven’t told you a single goddamn lie, Raelynn! Not one!” I growled so loudly that she stumbled back a pace and clutched onto the kitchen counter. I knew I was looking truly beastly at that point. Every muscle was taut, my claws fully distended, my teeth sharp enough that I couldn’t fully close my mouth. “Fuck, I’ve been more honest with you than any human I’ve crossed paths with in four hundred years! And I’ve been more kind, more merciful, than I have with anyone who has dared summon me.”
I wanted to hold her pinned against that countertop. I wanted to run my claws along her neck and sink my teeth into her and make her scream — but hell, even now, even now, I didn’t want to harm her. The thought of causing her unwilling agony was vile.
I hated it. I just absolutely hated it.
“Why do you think they call me Killer, Rae?” I hissed. “Did you think it was because I’m a guardian, killing the enemies of my master? Because I’m a fucking guard dog who only bites those who trespass?” She looked like she wanted to run — but where could she go? If she wanted to keep me trapped here, I wasn’t about to make it easy for her. “I’ve killed every single summoner who’s ever called me. Every single one, and I was glad to do it. Y
ou humans think you can just use whatever you want for your own gain. As if I’m a tool to be maneuvered and locked away and worked until I break. Fuck that. Any summoner who calls up my name has been made an example to those who would dare consider it after. Look it up. Paris, 1848. London in ‘41. Istanbul the year before. Want a real pretty picture of my work? Cairo, 1771. They still tell legends of it. My best kill, honestly.”
She looked sickened, as if she’d finally realized exactly what she’d gotten herself into. It was difficult to do it from a binding circle, but I still managed to nudge a little something into her mind: an image of that kill I was so proud of, of the three summoners I’d ripped to shreds after they dared try to make me obey.
“Stop!” She clutched her head, casting off my influence easier than shooing away a fly. “I get it, you’re pissed! I just...I don’t know what to do...I…”
“Erase the circle, Rae,” I said. “Now.”
She frantically shook her head. “No. No way. I can’t let you go. Not yet. Just...just give me some time…”
“Raelynn. Now.”
More head-shaking. More clenched fists. Fucking brat. Then my eyes fell on Cheesecake, that chubby, far-too-curious cat.
Of course. A cat was far easier to influence than a human.
I nudged his mind, and he came meandering over. He’d gotten right to the edge of the circle when Raelynn realized some hint of what was happening, and began desperately clicking her tongue and hissing, “Oh, no, no, no...kitty, here kitty, kitty…”
Cheesecake flopped down and began to roll. He rolled his fluffy fur all over the chalk, and I felt the magic binding me shudder, then drip away like water through a leak. The cat kept rolling, enthusiastically rubbing his face along the chalk and catching it up onto his fur.
Raelynn’s hands covered her mouth in horror. Poor little thing, watching her plans fall to ruin — ha! I clasped my hands behind my back, smiled, and stepped over the cat and out of the trap she’d set for me.
“Oh, Rae. You just couldn’t resist finding out what happens when you piss off a demon, could you?”
Her Soul to Take (Souls Trilogy) Page 18
