A Demon's Wrath: Part II (Peachville High Demons) (14 page)

But for most demons who are taken, all the hunter
needs is to have seen them at least once and to know their name. When
a ceremony is near and a demon is chosen, the hunter returns to the
ring of black roses around the portal. She places a summoning stone
inside the ring and chants the name of the chosen demon until the
stone begins to glow.

That is how The Resistance has been able to
observe so many rituals. Once the hunter has been seen, there are
exactly three days before the portal will be opened and the demon
will be taken.

I hated to think that we would have to wait for a
demon to be taken before we could act against the Order, but there
was no other way. We were at the mercy of time.

Someone kept watch on the portal day and night,
ready to call us in if there was any activity.

Jericho took the first shift, setting up camp on a
hill overlooking the portal. We found the perfect place where he
could look down on the portal, but where it would be hard for anyone
standing down there to see him or the camp.

He barely slept for days, keeping watch through
the night. When Azira came to take his place several days later, he
handed her a red communication stone that would allow her to alert us
if the hunter appeared. We cycled through several shifts like this,
each of us taking a few days at a time.

I grew restless. Lea conjured more and more
complex illusions in the training rooms to help me keep my mind off
the task ahead, but I lived on the edge, knowing that the call could
come at any moment.

When it finally did come, I was in the middle of
drawing one of my visions. A new one. I had tossed and turned in my
bed for hours before finally getting up and when I switched on the
light, a brief vision appeared to me. It was gone as quickly as it
had come, and it was only a fraction of a second, but something about
it hit me hard.

Something about her.

Because the vision had been so short, I didn’t
have a clear picture of it in my head. I could only draw out parts of
it, but I sat there for a long while, taking care with each detail.

I was standing beneath the window of a large white
house, looking up at a human girl. She had long hair and the most
beautiful face, but it was her eyes that I remembered. It was her
eyes that had pierced through me.

I was drawing this girl when the red communication
stone began to glow.

I stopped breathing. My pencil fell from my hand.

This was it. This was the moment that would change
my life forever, one way or another.

The hunter had returned to the portal.

I sat on a stone at the edge of the camp, looking
down at the large expanse of black rock that led all the way out to
the cliffs.

At most we had a few hours before the hunter would
return and the portal to the human world would open.

What would I find on the other side?

I closed my eyes and pictured Aerden’s face.
Was he really still alive? Could these visions of mine really be
trusted?

The plan was clear. I would only have a short time
to try to find Aerden on the other side of the portal. If I didn’t
see him or find any answers there, I would have to make a choice.
Come home. Or stay.

I stared down at the portal, knowing everything
was about to change.

Lea sat down beside me. “You’re very
brave for going after him.”

Was I brave? Or crazy? Maybe there’s always
a little bit of crazy inside moments of bravery.

“I love him,” I said. “I owe
him.”

She lowered her head. “When Aerden brought
me that key, I knew something strange was going on with him,”
she said. “He’d been acting strange for months. I think
the idea of our engagement had him spooked. Maybe he felt that since
it had always been the three of us, we were abandoning him by pairing
off. I think he felt like he didn’t have a place anymore.”

I didn’t say anything in response. She
understood part of what Aerden was feeling, but there was no way she
could know the whole truth. I wanted to tell her. If I walked through
that portal and didn’t return, she would never know she was
still loved and that the bright light in that heart stone still
shined for her.

But I couldn’t tell her. I couldn’t
find the words to explain it.

After all this time, suddenly, we had none left.
There was no time now for all the secret aches and sins we’d
kept inside to protect the other’s heart.

“Sometimes I think about the way things
might have been if he’d never left,” she said. “If
he’d never been taken.”

I cut my eyes toward her. The suns had long
disappeared, but she was beautiful even in darkness. Despite the mask
she’d begun to wear all the time to hide her emotions, I still
saw her as the girl I’d grown up with. Strong and soft at the
same time. Capable of so much love, yet never truly understanding
what love was. Would I ever see her again after tonight?

She turned her head slightly and our eyes met. She
smiled softly. “It would have been a good life.”

I reached for her hand and we sat there together,
sharing my last moments in the shadow world in silence, thinking of
how things might have been different.

Wondering if they would ever again be the same.

When the time came to move down toward the portal,
the five of us shifted into shadow and made our way down to the field
of black rock. We kept low to the ground, moving slowly in the dark
of night.

We got as close as we could to the clearing.

My heart pounded in my chest and I felt as if I
couldn’t catch my breath. I had waited so long for this moment,
and now that it was really here, I had no idea what to expect or how
to feel. I think even then, in that moment, I knew it was too much to
hope for that Aerden would be on the other side to greet me. I knew I
wouldn’t be coming back with him.

But I had to try. Going through the portal was my
destiny.

In the distance, I saw the hunter approaching long
before anyone else could. She rose up, her decaying form silhouetted
against the light of the moons, then flew down toward the clearing.

Yanora. The years had not been kind to her rotting
flesh.

The witch on the other side of the portal called
out to her, commanding the hunter to give her the name of the demon
marked for their dark purpose.

But tonight, there would be more than one demon
coming through the portal. Tonight, they would know that the shadow
demons were not all like the King of the North. Some of us were
willing to risk our lives to fight for those we loved.

My body was tense and ready, my hand closed around
the handle of my brother’s axe.

I listened as the demon’s name was called,
their smoky form appearing above the summoning stone, helpless to
protest their fate. We all breathed a sigh of relief as the hunter,
Yanora, was dismissed. She bowed and took her leave.

We knew she would be back as soon as the ritual
was disrupted, but her distance would give us time.

On the other side, witches began to chant. I
leaned forward, my hands cold as ice.

The familiar blue light pooled on the ground in
the center of the roses, then rose up, the doorway between our worlds
opening. My stomach twisted as the young girl trembled inside the
light.

Then, the demon was called forth, summoned through
the portal into slavery.

I took a deep breath in, then rushed forward with
a terrible cry. The blade of my axe sliced through the roses, closing
the portal for an instant, but allowing me a brief moment to pass
into the circle without being harmed. I pushed through, the roses
growing back almost immediately. A terrible heat burned through my
left arm just as I pulled it across the circle. I ignored the pain,
concentrating only on the job at hand.

I knew I only had a few moments. I had to make
every single one count.

As the roses grew back, I saw the others take
their places on the outside of the circle of roses, waiting for the
hunter. Ready to fight her if that’s what it came down to.

Around me, the blue light of the portal rose up
again, repairing itself and reopening.

I had no time to doubt my choices or hesitate.
With all that was left of hope, I charged through the portal, leaving
the shadow world and stepping into the ritual room of a small town in
Georgia called Peachville.

I stepped into the ritual room for only a moment
before the horror began.

There were more than a dozen witches lined up
along the walls of the circular room. Five more stood at the points
of a star carved into the stone floor. At the head of the star, near
a large blue stone, stood a woman in a blue velvet robe with silver
embroidery.

That was all I saw before I was forced into a
tight rope of shadowy smoke. I couldn’t breath or control my
own body. I heard my axe fall to the floor with a loud clang, my new
form unable to hold onto the weapon.

I was pulled with great force toward the body of
the teenage girl hovering above the blue light.

I didn’t understand it at first, but I
couldn’t protest or cry out. No matter how hard I struggled, I
couldn’t regain control. Panic seized me as my smoke snaked
around her body, encircling her arms and chest and finally, being
pulled straight into her open mouth.

Inside, there was only darkness.

A terrible weight compressed me into a thin ribbon
of smoke as the girl inhaled me. The pain of being squeezed so thin
and tight nearly knocked me unconscious, but I pushed to stay awake.
To hold on.

Then, everything stopped.

Everything except the beating of a human heart.

I could hear the blood rushing through her body. I
could feel the pull of her magic as she began to siphon my power to
make her own stronger.

That’s when the horror of it all sank in.

These witches weren’t just using demons as
slaves and stealing their power through the use of soul stones. They
were consuming us. Eating us and forcing us to live inside their
bodies without sight or will.

It was unthinkable.

It was evil beyond anything I’d ever known
or dreamed.

I would not be held captive inside this girl.

Rage and madness overcame me. I felt the human
body surrounding me begin to convulse and shake as I ripped my way
through her heart, through her veins, and straight through her chest.
Screams rang out through the small ritual room as the girl’s
lifeless body fell to the floor with a thud.

Two witches rushed forward toward the body and I
sent tendrils of smoke toward them, wrapping my power around their
throats and squeezing life from them until blood poured from their
eyes and mouths.

I knew nothing in those moments but hatred. It
tore through my soul the way I’d torn through that poor girl’s
helpless body. I wanted nothing but destruction and vengeance. I
wanted blood.

Every witch who tried to cast a spell my way or
flea from the room was brought down by my wrath.

Six witches died, their blood running through the
grooves in the five-pointed star, pooling near the blue light of the
still-open portal.

And when I turned to face the next witch, the
necklace she wore caught the light and I stopped.

Even in my madness, I recognized that necklace. It
was a blue pendant on a delicate silver chain and the last time I saw
it, it was clutched tight in my brother’s hands and then thrown
into a cup of his own blood.

I looked up at the witch. She was not the same
girl with braids I had seen on the floor of this room on the day
Aerden was taken, but I knew she was the prima. I knew that my
brother was enslaved inside her heart, powering her magic.

I pointed my fingers toward the ground, reaching
deep inside the earth where I could feel water flowing. I summoned it
up through the roots and dirt and through the stone floor of the
portal room. I pushed it forward toward the prima and it froze, a
river of ice along the floor between us.

I intended to encase her in ice, but the moment
the ice touched her foot, a terrible fire broke out along the floor,
melting every inch of ice I’d created in the room.

Confused, I cast again, this time pulling daggers
of ice from the water and hurling them toward her at impossible
speeds. I would kill her if that’s what it took.

Only, the ice daggers never reached her.

Instead, a dark shadow formed in front of me. A
recreation of the vision I’d had of him. This was the moment
I’d been waiting for—dreaming of—for months. And it
had turned out to be nothing but a nightmare.

There, in front of me, stood my brother. Half
smoke. Half demon.

Protecting the witch who stood behind him.

Aerden’s eyes met mine.

Tortured.

Broken.

Helpless to do anything but protect the prima from
harm. He raised his hands against my ice daggers, stopping them from
hitting their mark. His fire destroyed my ice.

And I knew that if I lashed out against her again,
he would kill me.

Not out of choice.

But out of duty.

He belonged to her now and there was nothing I
could do about it.

I stood, stunned. Unable to move or cast or cry.
The worst of my nightmares had not even touched the horror of this
truth.

In that moment, I wanted to die. I couldn’t
fight anymore.

On the other side of the portal, Lea screamed my
name. I turned my head to see her standing there, bathed in blue
light, her hand reaching out toward me. Her eyes panicked.

Behind her, I saw Andros and Ourelia raise their
swords against the hunter, Yanora.

I was out of time.

This was the moment I knew would come. The moment
where I would have to choose. Stay or go.