by Laken Cane
God, how she loved him.
They’d waited until a call came in reporting a sighting of Vogdris, then they rushed to that part of town and Talon began to concentrate on building the trap.
“Okay,” Krista said, once he started. “I’ll go attempt to lure the soul-stealer.”
“Alone?” Barbie asked.
“I’ll be with her,” Luke said. “Just not where Vogdris can see me.”
Neither Barbie nor Talon asked how she was going to attract his attention. They knew he was near, and they knew he was interested in getting his big hands on her. The rest, they likely believed, was up to fate.
She and Luke jogged toward the house where the demon lord had been spotted. He hadn’t gone in. The children inside were untouched. But he’d been there.
Before they reached it, Luke shot out a hand and stopped her. When she looked at him, he put his finger to his lips, then pointed.
She jerked her head around and saw the soul-stealer lurking at the edge of the yard across the street. He crept forward, walking between a tricycle and an overturned, plastic wading pool, two sure signs that a small child lived inside that house.
Luke put his lips to her ear. “Be careful.”
She nodded, and he slid into the shadows, leaving her to it. With Vogdris near enough to hear her, she didn’t have to test her power to attract a demon. She simply raced toward him—close enough to hit him with her power—then shot him with a streak of blood-colored magic.
She couldn’t help but gasp when he turned toward her with a roar of surprised anger. He was no longer the demon lord he’d been the first time she’d seen him. He’d become twisted into a huge, monstrous mutant. She couldn’t have said what he was waiting on. Surely he was powerful enough to go back to the red-dark and face whatever awaited him there.
The souls, golden and sparkly like tiny fairies, swirled around his head. They would expand every few seconds, enlarging into those horrifying screaming faces.
He stomped toward her, eagerly, and she turned to run for Talon. If he hadn’t created the circle, they’d simply fight the soul-stealer and hope to damage him before he either killed them or escaped.
As she ran she caught sight of a blur of blackness in the shadows and knew without really seeing him that Rafael followed her. Perhaps if she could steal his power…
Even though that thought wasn’t fully formed, it sickened her. It frightened her. She was better than the evil she fought. She had to be.
Vogdris’ bulk slowed him down, else he would have caught her. She was fast, but she would not have been able to outrun him if he hadn’t been so weighted down with unnatural, bulging muscle.
Even so, he nearly caught her as she zigzagged through the night, trying to make sure that whatever power he sent didn’t trip, trap, or bind her.
He breathed like a bellows, and she felt the heat of those exhalations at her back. She’d never been so terrified of a demon in her life—and that made her even faster.
She spotted the chalky outline of Talon’s circle and raced toward it, her heart in her throat. Please let it work.
But he was so very enormous and his power was strong. She couldn’t imagine how a delicate power circle could possibly hold him.
She leaped into the circle, slowed, and turned. He was right behind her. He shot a blast of power at her feet, tangling them up in magic. He jerked his hand into the air and like a puppet master working a puppet, he yanked her into the air with a single abrupt gesture.
“Shit,” she cried, as the power burned into her ankles. She hung upside down, eight feet in the air, terrified he was going to dash her brains all over the pavement.
Then she gathered herself and filled her hands with power, then shot the glowing rope around her ankles. Her blood magic sped around the demon lord’s power, and then she shot a glop of blood at Vogdris’ eyes.
He ducked to the side, ready for her, but as he began to pull her toward him, the rope around her ankles broke.
She slammed to the ground and Vogdris roared and jumped, determined to snatch her off the ground and take her once and for all.
He landed in the center of the circle.
For a second, no one moved.
He stood there, confused. “Huh,” he said, his voice a cross between a trumpet and a blast of static. “Huh.”
Asa was suddenly there, helping her to her feet as the slayers rushed from the shadows, shouting, eager, angry, joining their power, putting absolutely everything they had into the fight.
Only Luke hesitated, and she knew why. But his hesitation was brief, and in the end, he shot his power out with such force it blew her hair and sizzled along her body, and the slayers of Edgefield began to blast the soul-stealer in a desperate, last-ditch attempt to end him and the horror he’d brought to their city.
People watched from safe distances, silent and hopeful. Caught in the bubble of magic, Krista heard nothing but the rush of power.
Stuck in the middle of all that magic, unable to leave Talon’s trap of lines, the soul-stealer’s massive body jerked and twitched violently, his head thrown back, mouth wide.
She began to believe they might actually succeed in killing him. If he concentrated on combating the slayers, his hold on the souls would slip. They would race back to their bodies. They would never be the same, but they would live.
One broke off, then another, then another.
Barbie sent a rope of fire into the ring, slinging it around the demon lord’s massive fists.
Another soul broke away.
With every soul he lost, Vogdris weakened. If not for the souls, her world would have taken all his power early on. With the souls gone, he would revert to a powerless, weak demon and he would die beneath the force of their raging magic.
Another three souls blinked out, leaving perhaps a dozen careening about his twitching head. Leaving him with a small fraction of the power he’d had only a few minutes earlier.
With his hands caught in Barbie’s fiery net, Vogdris opened his mouth wide, impossibly wide, and he vomited a river of pulsating power. It splashed onto Krista, burning her chest like acid, eating through her clothes, her boots, even the pavement around her.
She screamed and her grip on the power circle loosened, and that was all the edge Vogdris needed. He broke free of Barbie’s fire, lifted his fist, and slammed it down on a section of Talon’s weakening lines.
He broke free. Taking the few souls he’d managed to hold on to, he shot a torrent of power at the scattering slayers, and then he ran.
Covered in oozing cuts, burns, and blood, unimaginably broken and crippled with massive injuries, he gathered his remaining strength and scurried off to hide. To heal.
He would absolutely return, but he’d wait until he’d absorbed the remaining souls. It might take him one day or it might take three days, but he would return with souls embedded, souls they could not take from him. Power they could not take from him.
Krista lost her breath as she lay stretched out on the pavement, drowning in agony. Her people swarmed around her as the soul-stealer’s power ate through her flesh, and no one knew what to do.
She would have screamed, but the pain was too big for screams.
“Don’t touch her,” Barbie yelled, as Asa knelt beside her. “The acid will kill you!”
Asa didn’t give a fuck. He slid his hands beneath her and lifted her to his chest. Luke grabbed her hand, and Talon laid his fingers on her forehead. “Sleep,” he whispered.
She sank immediately into the blissful dark arms of a sleep so deep it was almost death. For only in that soothing darkness could she survive such immense pain.
Only in that darkness could she unconsciously take something that Vogdris had never meant to give her.
Something she was never meant to have.
18
Talon’s influence might have lasted for hours had Rafael not taken her away from him. She awakened on fire, unspeakable pain her entire world. The angel pulled her into
his arms and the men let her go, because what else could they do?
“Can you fix her?” Asa yelled. “Can you?”
And even then, there was a sneer in Rafael’s voice. “Of course I can.”
Rafael rushed her away and then took flight, but she saw no wings. She thought she heard them, though; vast, invisible wings beating the air.
“How,” she whispered, through her agony.
He glanced down at her, his lips pressed into a straight line. “I will fight power with power. And my power will win.”
He took her somewhere else. Somewhere…away. His world. He didn’t have to tell her for her to know. It was white and silver, icy and pure. The sky, the ground, the beautiful silver trees with their still, white owls and frozen silver leaves. The silver slice of moon, the silver stars. White mountains in the distance, soft, fat flakes of snow, enormous, shaggy white wolves loping across the land.
It was so indescribably beautiful that she forgot her pain. Its beauty broke her heart because she knew she would have to leave it.
“Let me stay,” she begged him.
For one second his face softened and there was warmth in his eyes as he watched her. “What do you see?”
“Everything,” she said. “It is everything. Perfection. Purity. It is unspeakably beautiful.”
He put his finger to her cheek and gathered a teardrop on its tip, then turned his hand over and allowed the tear to dangle. “There is a world inside this tear.”
Then he pressed his wet finger to her chest and power sped over her body, over her burns, cooling them, repairing her ravaged flesh.
“You are not the same.” He gestured at the surrounding world and she suddenly realized she was standing. She had no memory of him releasing her. “You are this.” His face changed as he took her shoulders and turned her around. “But you are also this.”
She recoiled and pressed back against him, unable to look away from the ugliness on the other side. No, not ugliness.
The other side was…dark. Grim blacks and soft grays in varying shades, austere and sharp and gleaming. The trees were gnarled and guarded, and behind them marched a forbidding line of jagged mountains. The shiny lake was a still and glossy black, and glittery black lightning streaked across the dark gray sky, chasing enormous, shaggy black crows.
She realized the dark side was just as beautiful as the light. “Stunning,” she whispered.
“You’re healed,” he told her.
She glanced down at her body. “You said you couldn’t interfere.”
He pulled her into his arms. “Time to go.”
Something was different between them after that. Not only had he saved her life, but he’d shown her something…human inside him. He wasn’t all cold. And he was worried. His anxiety swirled around him, and she couldn’t help but wonder if he’d get trouble from his superiors for saving her, or if his worry was about something completely different.
“Thank you,” she murmured, but he was gone. Still, she thought maybe he’d heard her. He’d returned her to the exact spot from which he’d plucked her, and Asa, Luke, Talon, and Barbie were still waiting.
“He healed you,” Asa said, pulling her gingerly against him.
“And in a few seconds,” Luke said, touching her face. “How do you feel?”
“I feel good.” Then, “Seconds? What do you mean?”
“He took you up, then he brought you down,” Barbie said.
“I was in his world.” But she shook her head. “Wasn’t I?”
“Now is the time to find Vogdris,” Talon said. “We can kill him while he’s so weak and injured.”
Luke nodded. “Finding him won’t be easy.”
Asa kissed Krista’s forehead. “Can I take you home?”
“No, I’m good.” The remembered pain of Vogdris’ attack lingered. She told herself it wasn’t real, but she couldn’t forget it. It had seeped into her body and settled into her bones, and though the pain was no longer real, she couldn’t forget how it had felt when it was.
It made her afraid to face the soul-stealer, which pissed her off.
She took a step away from Asa. “Vogdris is bleeding. There may be a trail.”
“He lost a lot of souls,” Luke said. “He will go on a rampage to refill as soon as he’s able.”
“It would be a great time for Triganoth to show himself,” Barbie said. “Why did he pick now to disappear?”
Krista’s stomach gave a painful lurch. “He’d be here if he could.”
Barbie shrugged. “Or maybe he’s done with us and this world.”
“He’s not done with me,” Krista snarled. “He’s not here because he can’t be here.”
Barbie raised her eyebrows and lifted her hands. “Sorry, Krista. Either way, there’s nothing we can do about it.”
“Yeah,” Talon said. “The angel won’t help and the demon can’t. We’re on our own.”
“We’re slayers,” Luke said. “We’ve always been on our own. Let’s go track that son of a bitch.”
But they lost Vogdris’ trail in the first ten minutes. It was as though he’d simply disappeared. “Maybe he went back to the red-dark,” Krista said.
They stared at each other. Could it be true? Could he have been forced back to his world to recharge? She doubted it. He’d been staying away from the red-dark for a reason. He wasn’t going to face it when it was too injured to defend himself.
“We need to find his summoner,” Barbie said. “If he went back to his world and we kill his summoner, he can’t come back, can he?”
“He can if he manages to mark a human without killing her. But finding a summoner is next to impossible. Stella is on it but I doubt even she can help us this time.”
“What if his summoner is hiding him?” Talon asked.
Krista rubbed the phantom pain on her chest. “We don’t know much of anything, do we?”
“We’re all tired,” Luke said. “And it’s almost dawn. Let’s go get some sleep.”
The next day the humans, sick of the slayers’ inability to kill the demon lord, began to organize search teams. They planned to comb the city, armed with shotguns, rifles, and other weapons they were more likely to kill each other with than Vogdris, and each team assigned a person to call Krista should they sight him. But they would absolutely attack him if they saw him. They were going to die.
City officials created stations—in schools, mostly—for parents to bring their children. And as though they were hiding from a looming tornado, people began grabbing supplies and grouping their children into the assigned buildings.
“You’re making a mistake,” Krista had said, when she finally got to talk to the mayor. “You’re making it easy for Vogdris. He’ll get into one of those so-called safe houses, and he will tear through those kids before your guards can kill each other with their own guns.”
“I think we know what’s best for our children, Ms. Lennox. You and your people aren’t doing the job, so we have no choice.”
The slayers had never been able to track the demon lord. His injuries hadn’t changed that. And for the next three days, they saw not a single sign of him.
Some parents had refused to take their children to the “secured” places. At least those kids had a chance, Krista thought.
She’d tried drawing Vogdris to her, but it didn’t work.
She and the other slayers were on constant alert, waiting for the alarm. Waiting for the soul-stealer to recover enough to attack one of the pens, as Luke called them, and get his fill of helpless, conveniently corralled children.
On the third day of silence, she started to think that maybe Vogdris really had gone back to the red-dark. Maybe he hadn’t been strong enough to resist when his master called to him. Maybe he’d crawled into a hole and died.
Maggie wanted to come home, but Krista asked her to stay at Grandma and Grandpa’s for just a couple more days until they were a little surer that Vogdris was gone for good.
“There’s always
something dangerous going on. I can’t go away every time. Let me come home.”
“They can bring you for dinner tomorrow,” Krista told her. “Then we’ll see.”
“I know what “we’ll see” means,” Maggie grumbled.
“I need to be careful with you, Mags. If something happened to you, I couldn’t bear it. I would lose my mind.”
Maggie sighed. “I know, Ma. I’ll see you tomorrow.” Someone said something in the background and Maggie laughed. “Grandma and Grandpa are arguing over which of their picks would win a fistfight.”
“Oh my God.” Krista shook her head. “Those two are like a couple of ridiculous ten-year-olds.”
“I heard that,” John shouted.
“You’re on speaker,” Maggie told her cheerfully.
“Oops. I have to go, Mags. Love you.”
“Love you too,” Maggie said, still laughing as she ended the call.
Krista stared out the window after she hung up, thinking about how quiet the city seemed. Heavy and grim, as though it waited for Vogdris to make his move.
A low-level anxiety sloshed in her stomach because she waited, too. And not just for Vogdris. She waited for Triganoth. But he wasn’t coming. Something was wrong, and her very bones vibrated with the pain of it. The dread.
Most of all, the urgency—but what the hell could she do about it? Nothing, that was what.
Then Stella called and took her mind off her helplessness. “Come see me. I have something.”
“On my way,” Krista told her, and with excitement replacing the worry, she sped all the way to Blizzard Hill.
Stella never called with useless information. Whenever she called, it was because she’d found some really good shit.
Krista was counting on it.
19
Henry was once again absent when Krista arrived at Stella’s house. Disappointed, she gave the bag of hamburgers to Rachel, who never failed to answer the door whenever Krista visited.
Rachel didn’t take her to the garden room, where Stella usually received her. Instead, Krista followed her to the third floor. “Where are we going, Rachel?”