by Stone, Leia
She’s feeding my power.
“Kill them and bring her to me!” the Brimstone demon called out, just as a gigantic smack rippled against my shield, making it flicker for a brief second.
Tiny. Jones. Marek. Jenkins. Nick. Ray. Every single one of my students’ names flickered through my head in that moment, and I knew if this shield dropped, they were dead. They had done great as a group against one Hellhound, but this? This was a massacre waiting to happen.
Emberly too. She was strong and badass, but I wasn’t sure she could withstand the demon army waiting to devour our small group.
A frustrated cry burst from my lips when my arms started to quiver.
No. I wasn’t letting this happen!
With a groan, I pulled deep inside of me, and brought up everything I had. That jellylike plasma substance I used to protect Lincoln and myself from the Succubus in San Francisco made its appearance again. It flowed from my palms and spread out onto the wall I’d created, reinforcing it, making it thicker and stronger.
Take that, you demon motherfuc—
My thought died out as a Snakeroot demon spat acid right at my face, and the fluid began to slowly eat away at my shield.
Oh shit.
“No!” Emberly cried. More blue light erupted from her palms and coated my arm, and the hole from the Snakeroot’s acid started to patch itself together with her help.
Turning, I faced Emberly. “Please take the others and run. I can’t hold this much longer.”
Her eyes were alight, reminding me of the full moon. It was like she was made of light. She shook her head. “They’ll come after us. You just need to push through this. Hold on a little longer. Help is on the way.”
My brow furrowed. It is? How could she—never mind. Tremors shook my arms from the straining pressure of trying to hold up the damn wall. If I weren’t already on one knee, I would have been by now. A deep throbbing pain was working its way into my limbs as exhaustion pulled at me.
“Everything hurts,” I groaned.
“I know pain. We’re friends, pain and I.” The teenager fed more and more blue light into my arms. “It will pass. Just beyond the place where you think you can’t take any more, there is a numbness. You’ll get there, and the pain will be manageable,” she told me sagely.
A whimper caught in my throat as my hands started to involuntarily lower with fatigue.
Emberly’s hands latched onto mine with a viselike grip. “Brielle.” Her voice was low and controlled. “I don’t want to scare you, but there are over a hundred demons on this campus, and they are all headed this way. If you drop the shield, we’re all dead. I can’t fly in this pain, and I can’t fight off that many. You are our only hope.”
Oh God. She had some kind of telepathic ability or something.
Over a hundred?
Mrs. Greely, the injured….
“They got away,” Emberly informed me, but I knew she might lie to keep me sane right now.
Wait. She could read my mind this entire time and didn’t tell me?
“It’s not polite,” she explained.
I was about to retort when, beyond the translucent wall I’d built, I saw blobs of people walking slowly our way. As they neared and their figures became clearer, my stomach dropped.
“What. The hell. Is that?” I gasped.
It was… a pack of three-headed Hellhounds.
Emberly sighed. “New demons. Lucifer is really cranking them out.”
Without a word, one of the Hellhounds slammed into the wall, and it shook. The other demons, encouraged now, began to batter the wall in unison, and my shield flickered. Burning pain laced up my arms and my knee started to wobble, causing me to fall to the side.
Keeping my hands up, I cried out as I slumped down to sit on my heels. A gap formed on the side of my shield, and a Monkshood demon slipped right through before I could close it again.
Emberly jerked in the direction of the Monkshood demon, who was beelining for my students.
“Don’t make eye contact! He can control your mind,” I shouted behind me, trying my best to hold this damn shield. I wanted to give up—my arms were on fire, and my energy was depleted—but I found that space Emberly spoke of, just beyond the pain. It was a numbness, like she’d said, and it spread through my limbs, momentarily giving me a small measure of relief.
There were sounds of fighting behind me, but it was the blue glow that had just walked through the door that had me transfixed.
“Brielle!” Lincoln wailed. Each and every demon ceased its battering on the wall, and spun to look at the small army that had just arrived. It was hard to tell from so far away, but it looked like Michael was with them.
“Emberly!” the Archangel cried out, confirming my assumption as blue shards shot from his weapon, goring some of the demons in attendance.
Thank God, backup had arrived.
“I’m here!” she grunted, followed by the sound of knife hitting flesh. Peering back, I saw that the Monkshood demon was dead.
“Brielle, don’t drop your shield!” Lincoln rumbled, as clangs and growls rang throughout the space.
Easier said than done, husband!
“Die, you demon douchebags!” Shea’s Demon City accent roared from somewhere in the room, bringing a slight smile to my face.
She’s okay.
I couldn’t see much unless someone was really close to the shield or had glowing magic, but I could pick out voices when they yelled around me.
“Whoa, this shield is weird.” Chloe’s voice joined the group.
“Super weird Brielle magic,” Luke agreed, and it brought tears to my eyes to know that when I’d reached out, all of my friends had come back for me.
I was loved. I never wanted to forget that.
“I can’t hold it much longer!” I shouted when my arms shook yet again.
Dizziness threatened to overtake me. I was tired as hell, in pain, anxious, and damn near passing out. How much time had passed already? It felt like hours.
“You have to!” Lincoln shouted, and I peered through the shield to see a streak of dark hair had just entered the room.
“Scarlet?” Catia shouted.
“I’m okay!” Scarlet called out from behind our little pocket of safety.
My arms were quaking like they were holding a jackhammer, and the shield started to flicker.
“Chloe, look out!” Shea cried.
Luke let out a blood-curdling scream. The kind of scream you give when a beloved friend sustains a mortal wound. Under that type of stress, I could no longer hold the shield. The protection crashed to the floor like liquid jelly, leaving a physical mess behind and unveiling the full extent of the war before me.
My eyes scanned the room, horrified to see so much blood, but they only grazed the fight, stopping on Chloe’s limp form.
“No!” I cried, picking up my sword only to have it fall from my fatigued fingers. I was useless. Instead, I burst from the ground and let my wings carry me across the room to where Luke was holding Chloe’s lifeless body, wailing in misery as he rocked back and forth.
Her gut had been ripped half open; there was so much blood, I couldn’t even process what I was seeing. Yet, the blank way her eyes fixated on the corner of the room told me she was dead. I’d seen enough death in my life to know when a soul had left a body.
“Noah!” I roared, calling over the healing Celestial as he battled with a Yew demon. He killed the demon quickly, running to my side where I was already calling up my healing magic. An orange buttery glow left my fatigued hands and coated Chloe’s open guts, only to pass right through her and disappear.
Luke looked up at me in horror. “What does that mean?”
I didn’t know, and I didn’t want to guess. Noah was beside me now, working his own healing magic, brighter and stronger than mine. All around us, demons fought Catia, Shea, Michael and Lincoln to the death. A quick glance at the back of the room showed Emberly was protecting my students.
&nb
sp; I’d messed up. I’d dropped the shield.
Noah’s light surrounded Chloe like a cocoon before dissolving. His hands shook as he set them on his thighs.
“Noah, why are you stopping?” I shook him. “Heal her!”
Noah turned to me with tears lining his eyes. “Bri, I can heal some pretty horrific injuries, but I can’t bring back the dead.”
No.
Luke’s wails twisted the knife in my heart even further.
“Raph?” I asked hopefully. Where the hell was the Archangel of Healing? If anyone could reverse this, he could. Right?
Noah shook his head. “Even he isn’t capable of that.”
“I can’t bring back the dead…” His words formed a crazy idea in my head.
“Luke, can you run with her?” I asked.
The bear shifter swallowed his sob and nodded. “Why?”
“I know someone who can bring back the dead.”
Nine
We burst from the gymnasium, Noah, Shea, and Luke with Chloe in his arms behind me. Noah had wrapped a hoodie around her abdomen to secure her wound.
“Brielle, this is insane!” Noah shouted, following us out into the moon lit night. There were still a few demons on campus, the sirens blaring, but I also made out the shadowy figures of Fallen Army soldiers fighting them. We’d been totally ambushed, but it looked like things were getting under control now.
“If it brings back Chloe, then I’m insane. I don’t care!” I shouted, cutting down a drunken Mugwort demon who lunged from the shadows. Lincoln, Emberly, Catia and Michael were still fighting the demons in the gym, but at better odds now. When I’d shouted to Linc that I was going to see my mom to bring back Chloe, he’d just looked at me like I’d grown two heads, then barked for Noah and Shea to escort me.
We raced across campus, time ticking away as Chloe’s soul detached more and more from her body.
“Chloe, stay here! Stay with us!” I shouted to the night like a madwoman. “We’re going to bring you back.”
Noah and Shea exchanged a look, one that said they might be planning to sedate me. Yet, Luke looked determined, brow furrowed, lips pressed into a thin line, and I knew he would be my partner in crime.
The second we reached my car, I was relieved to see the parking lot was crawling with Fallen Army. They’d just come back from the raid to find their home was also raided. Now they could rid the campus of demons. We gingerly helped Luke in the back, his limp redheaded best friend in his arms.
“Let me close her up quickly, or she’ll lose all her blood,” Noah instructed, pulling a little surgical stapler from his pants pocket—all of the healers and medics carried them in the war zones.
Noah lifted the hoodie to reveal an open abdominal cavity, and both Luke and I looked to the side, unable to see our friend in that condition. The snapping sound of staple after staple set in place, made Luke wince as tears rolled down his cheeks.
Noah was right to do this. If my mom reanimated Chloe without all of her major organs inside of her, she wouldn’t survive. Still, that didn’t make it any easier to see, or hear.
“All right,” Noah announced, chucking the bloodied stapler into the back of the car. We all climbed inside, Noah driving, Shea in the middle row, and me in the passenger seat.
“Drive like hell to my mom’s apartment,” I told Noah, and he obliged, even burning rubber.
I dialed my mom, who picked up on the first ring.
“Tell me you’re safe,” she answered.
“I’m safe, but Chloe’s not. I need you to prepare to reanimate her. You still have your supplies, right?”
My mom gasped. “Chloe? Oh, honey.”
My throat tightened at my mom’s emotional voice. When I’d been taken to Hell, she had started weekly dinners with all my friends. Chloe had become part of the family.
“Mom, do you have your supplies or not!” I snapped.
“Honey, I can’t reanimate her. It’s against Angel City rules.”
Is she serious right now? She’d been dating Raph for all of a month and now she was Miss Rule Follower.
“Mom, it’s only been like seven minutes, eight tops. We can do a soul infusion and—”
“A soul infusion! Where did you learn about that?” she questioned me.
So it is real.
“I overheard Master Burdock saying it when I worked with you at the clinic.”
He’d been talking to a woman on the phone, telling her if they could get the deceased to the clinic within twenty minutes of death, she could undergo a process called a soul infusion, where you called them back from Heaven, Hell, or wherever, and it was like being alive again. I remembered wondering why we hadn’t done that with my dad, but he also mentioned the body needed to be in good shape. Getting hit by a bus did not leave my father in any sort of good shape, and he’d been dead too long when we’d received the call, so I’d never even brought it up to my mom.
I sure as hell was bringing it up now.
“Honey… that’s a taboo process. You’re talking about cheating death here, and you’re asking me to play God.”
Yeah, I was, and I would expect her to do the same for me.
“Mom. It’s Chloe. She looked for me with Shea when Lincoln and Noah couldn’t go into Hell. Would you really deny her this chance at life again?”
Okay, I was being shitty, and totally planned on making her feel bad about it until she said yes. She’d ‘played God’ and reanimated thousands of bodies for Demon City, so how was this different?
She sighed. “I’ll need family consent, and I won’t do it unless I could fully bring her back. Reanimation isn’t—”
“I know, Mom. We’re downstairs. Get ready!” I hung up just as we pulled into the parking space. I knew what reanimation was and wasn’t. I didn’t want a robot Chloe who spaced out every five minutes, and didn’t have the same personality. I wouldn’t do that to her. But if this soul infusion thing was real, then we had to try.
“Luke.” I swallowed hard, hating what I had to ask of him next.
He looked over at me, and the desperation in his gaze gutted me.
“I need you to call Donnie and get him over here. He needs to give consent.”
Luke had to call his own boyfriend and tell him that his beloved sister was dead, and then have Donnie give permission to reanimate her. It was shitty, but I knew Donnie wouldn’t be as receptive to anyone else.
He just nodded.
Jumping out of the car, I opened the back, and lifted my arms for Luke to deposit Chloe into them. I wasn’t certain my arms could take any more trauma after holding that shield for what seemed like hours, but the moment he set Chloe’s body into them, strength pumped through my body as adrenaline flooded my system.
She was so light.
So tiny.
Tiny Chloe with red hair and a vivacious personality. I’d never forget the first day I met her. She’d invited me to her birthday party when I’d had no friends, and she hated Tiffany just as much as I did.
Shea filed in right beside me, hand on my shoulder, running with me. Whether she thought I was crazy or not, didn’t matter. She was in it with me no matter what. My ride or die.
“Hang on, Chloe!” I shouted again, willing her soul to stay earthbound just a little longer.
We took the stairs two at a time, Shea propping me up so I could manage the weight. I was running on pure adrenaline and panic, but it was working so far.
My mom was waiting out in the hallway, the scent of sage wafting out through the open door. The moment her eyes landed on Chloe, she frowned. No one had seen more death than my mother. She’d worked at the reanimation clinic for almost ten years, sometimes reanimating as many as ten bodies a day. Still, nothing prepared you for seeing a dead loved one.
“I’ve run the bath. You know the drill. Is a member of the family coming?” My mom was curt, all business.
I nodded. “Donnie, her older brother.”
My mom nodded. “How many minutes hav
e passed exactly?”
Shit. Maybe ten? Possibly twelve. “Uhh.”
“Roughly eleven minutes.” Luke came up behind me with his phone in hand. “Donnie’s coming.”
My mom pushed me forward. “We have no time to waste. Wash her well, or you know the consequences.”
I did. If even one strand of Shea or an Abrus demon’s hair was on Chloe’s body when my mom started the reanimation process, it could bind that persons soul to her. Shea and I ran into the bathroom, where we quickly stripped her clothes, careful not to touch her hastily stapled wound. We dunked her into the water, and I started to scrub.
“This water’s hot!” Shea hissed, grabbing a wash cloth and helping me scrub Chloe’s feet.
I nodded. “Any DNA that’s not Chloe’s could ruin the whole process,” I told my bestie. Growing up she hadn’t exactly asked my mom about her work. This shit freaked her out.
Shea just bobbed her head and kept scrubbing. I took the most care with washing her hair; I was hurried, yet, I wanted to make sure we did this right. Once we were done, my mom brought freshly bleached towels from her reanimation kit, and we wrapped Chloe like a mummy, only allowing her face to be exposed. As we carried her to the kitchen table, I whimpered when blood started to soak through the white towels. Her wound had opened.
“We’ll worry about it later,” my mom called out as we set her on the table that I knew had been bleached as well. My mother was the best reanimator Demon City had ever seen. It was a shame to see her unemployed like this or working odd-end jobs.
She glanced at her watch. “I need to get started, but I can’t do it without consent.”
Shea frowned. “I’m sure her brother won’t care, just start!”
My mom shook her head. “Shea, you know I have a certain ethical code.” My mom, the only one in Demon City who had morals!
I was about to insist when the apartment door burst open, the faint siren still wailing at Fallen Academy a mile away.
