by Sarra Cannon
The man on his knees in the clearing was Bates.
“I assume he’s refusing to cooperate,” Martin said as we joined the others in the clearing.
“We’re getting nowhere with this guy,” Darius said. “Let me take him back to the house, Martin. I’ll question him with a truth potion, if you have all of the ingredients. Then we’ll have the answers we need.”
“I have everything you’ll need,” Martin said. “But I will be returning to the house with you both. I have a few things I need to research before it gets too late. Gowan, you’re in charge here. Keep Lenny’s training going for as long as she can stand it. Then, come home for a nice dinner at the house.”
Gowan smiled at me, his eyes full of mischief. “Will do, sir,” he said. “But I won’t go easy on her just because she’s a Thorne.”
“Of course. I would expect no less from you,” Martin said.
I tried to act like I wasn’t scared, but inside, I was trembling. How much more of this could I take?
“I’m going to head back into town, too,” Kai said. “I have to get ready for work. I’ll come back out as soon as I get a chance, though.”
I was definitely sad to see him go. Could I handle this all by myself? Today had already proved just how little I really knew.
Gianna and Gowan stayed with me in the woods, drilling me on what they called the fundamentals for more than two hours, before I finally begged for a break and sat down.
My body ached, and as I sat there drinking water, I dreamed about looking through Mom’s spell books for some kind of bath bomb that would cure aching muscles. I closed my eyes, daydreaming about the warmth of the bath and the comfort of my bed.
My eyes snapped open, though, when I heard Gowan scratching in the dirt at the center of the clearing. He was using a stick to draw a circle with a pentagram and other symbols inside it.
“Trying to catch a demon?” I asked, almost laughing. I had never seen anyone draw this particular symbol in the dirt, but I’d seen it in some textbooks that used to be in Dad’s library.
My parents had used it once, too. But only once.
“Exactly,” Gowan said.
I stood and watched him more carefully.
“I didn’t think anyone used these types of Demon Circles, anymore,” I said. “Mom told me they were so ancient and simple that they hardly ever worked compared to some of the more advanced techniques Slayers have now.”
Gowan made a guttural sound and cursed under his breath.
“I take it you disagree?” I said, laughing.
“This is no laughing matter, Lenny. Your mom was right about this being a more ancient technique, but it was good enough for Slayers for centuries before the coven developed those so-called modern techniques,” Gowan explained as he finished off the circle. “In my experience, a well-placed Demon Circle is much more effective and reliable than many of the newer approaches. A Demon Circle never fails.”
“Yeah, as long as you can trick the demon into stepping into one,” Gianna said, stepping out from behind a tree.
She had a small brown bunny in her hands, and I suddenly felt a bit sick to my stomach.
“What are you doing with the bunny?” I asked.
Gowan suppressed a smile as he took the rabbit from her and ran his hand across its back a couple of times.
“If you’re clever enough, it’s not that difficult to trick a demon into a circle trap like this,” he said. “The biggest limitation is that a Slayer doesn’t always have time to draw and activate it before the fight begins. Still, it’s important for modern Slayers to understand why this simple magic works so effectively. Sometimes, I think the Council would rather we all turn only to modern magic, but if we abandon our old ways completely, the knowledge and understanding of the fundamentals will eventually be lost.”
“And the bunny?” I asked again, chewing on my bottom lip.
“An exercise in your dedication to the cause,” he said. “Since we don’t have a demon handy, I want you to practice on this, instead.”
I groaned. I did not want to do this.
“Lenny, you stand back about six more feet toward the trees.” He turned and counted out fifteen feet back from the opposite side of the Demon Circle.
When he turned back toward me, he leaned his head toward the bunny and whispered a few words I couldn’t hear. Above the rabbit’s head, a small mirror image of the Demon Circle appeared, marking the bunny.
I’d never seen that particular spell cast before, but I understood immediately that it meant the circle would trap the bunny the same way it would trap a demon.
Hopefully, all he’d ask me to do was trap it. If he asked me to kill that bunny, I was going to have a serious problem.
“Okay, Lenny, see if you can trick the rabbit into the circle,” Gowan said, setting the rabbit down in the pine needles. “Don’t see it as a rabbit. See it as the demon you’re trying to banish.”
I took a deep breath. It was hard to pretend an adorable little bunny was a killer demon, but okay. I wanted to get better, and I trusted that Gowan knew what he was doing.
I tried a variety of things to convince the rabbit to cross into that circle, but if I tried to go anywhere near it, the bunny hopped away. Gowan had created some kind of barrier around the clearing so that the bunny couldn’t completely hop into the woods to get away, but for about five minutes, all I’d managed to do was move it from one outer part of the clearing to another.
“If something isn’t working, try something different,” Gowan said. “If you want to be an effective Slayer, you have to think fast and innovate. You have to use everything around you. What else can you do here?”
I cleared my mind and tried to see past the frustration of feeling like a complete failure out here. What else could I use? If I was a bunny, what would trick me into following a human?
The image of a carrot immediately popped into my mind, and I felt a simple rush of exhilaration as I remember my training with Martin just after I’d gotten my key back.
I reached down and grabbed a handful of dirt. I knew if this was a real-life situation, I wouldn’t have much time to turn this into an acceptable replica of a carrot, so I allowed my mind to forget everything else but that handful of dirt and what I wanted it to become.
Instantly, my hand began to hum with the power of my own intention. I cleared my mind and imagined a carrot. We hadn’t gotten advanced enough to talk about color shifting and making things look realistic, but right now, this was the best idea I had at my disposal.
I glanced at Gianna, and she nodded.
That simple encouragement was all I needed. I poured my pure intentions into the handful of earth and smiled when it formed into a passable carrot shape with a slightly orange tint. Not perfect, but it was a good start.
But would it be enough?
I leaned down and held the carrot toward the bunny.
“Come on, little one,” I said in a soft voice. “Are you hungry?”
That got its attention. The bunny sniffed along the ground and took a few hops toward me.
“That’s it,” I said, backing up into the circle just a couple of steps. “Come on.”
As the bunny moved toward me, I kept backing up further into the circle, enticing it to keep moving. When his first little bunny foot crossed into the circle, nausea rolled through me.
Was this going to kill the poor little guy?
I glanced at Gowan, but his face was a blank slate.
I sighed and backed up again. “Come on, little bunny. That’s it. Get your carrot,” I said, teasing him toward me.
I kept my eyes trained on the bunny’s feet, and I gasped the second he fully crossed into the circle. The area all around us pulsed with a new kind of energy, and I could just make out the faintest outline of the circle’s barrier all around us.
Dang. Would I be able to step out of it now? Or was I trapped, too?
I quickly stood and took one tentative step out of the circle, the
n sighed in relief. Okay, I wasn’t stuck at least. But what was going to happen to this little rabbit?
He tried to hop toward me, but it seemed like he was stuck in molasses. He could move, but his movements were slow and labored as he crossed the circle. When he reached the barrier near me, he pushed against it, but he couldn’t cross over it.
The bunny was officially trapped and alive.
I relaxed my shoulders and smiled up at Gowan. “There,” I said. “I did it.”
“Very good,” he said. “Not bad for your first try, although you realize if this was a real demon, you would have lost him by now. In order to use a Demon’s Circle, you have to be witty. Clever. It’s very different from the brute-force magic the Council trains its Slayers with now, but it works. You’ve also expended very little energy to get to this point.”
I nodded. He was right. It was a lot more work fighting off the demons at the Peterson house this morning.
“Now, for the second part of your test,” he said. “It’s great that you were able to get the demon into the circle, but once it's there, you need to banish or contain it in some way. This takes quite a bit more power. Even willpower, sometimes, especially if you stop to think about what you’re doing.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, not sure I understood what he meant about willpower.
“Once trapped, a demon knows it has limited options, so it will often go right for your weakest spot. For a lot of Slayers, our weak point is our emotions,” Gowan explained. “In my experience, most demons who get snared in a trap like this will immediately shift into the human form and begin to beg for mercy. Even though you know there’s a demon inside that person, it can be very difficult to do what needs to be done.”
I swallowed hard and stared at the circle. He was going to make me kill this bunny, wasn’t he?
“So, now that we know you can use your wits to get the demon into the circle, we need to practice what you’ll do once he’s there.” He took a mirror from his pocket and tossed it to me.
It was just one of those handheld compact mirrors that a lot of women carried in their purse. I opened it.
“Do you know how to use that?” he asked. “Have you ever trapped a demon inside a mirror or object before?”
I shook my head. “I’ve seen it done a couple of times before, but I’ve never done it myself.”
“Well, today’s your lucky day,” he said. “All you have to do is point the mirror toward the demon and say the incantation. In Quod Relego.”
“And if I do that to the bunny, what happens?” I asked. “He’s not really a demon, so it won’t hurt him, right?”
“It’s likely to kill it, but what’s one bunny sacrificed compared to a demon going free? Or worse, you losing your life because you didn’t have the courage to go through with it?” Gowan asked, moving around the circle to stand next to me. “It’s time now, Lenny. Say the incantation.”
I shook my head. I couldn’t do that.
I mean, I was all for practicing, but what had this bunny ever done to anyone?
“You must,” Gowan said, standing so close to me now, it felt like he was practically breathing down my neck.
“I can’t do it,” I said, my heart racing. “Just let me practice without the bunny.”
“No, you have to know that you can do it no matter who or what is inside that circle,” Gowan said. “What if there really was a demon inside of that rabbit? Would you be too much of a coward to follow through because it was too cute?”
“No, of course not,” I said. I wanted to just drop the mirror and walk away, but there was also a piece of me that knew he was right.
Being a Slayer was not easy, and sometimes you had to make really difficult decisions.
“Do it,” he said. “Your time is running out. Do it now, Lenny.”
With trembling hands, I pointed the mirror toward the bunny. Everything inside me protested, though. It just looked so cute and innocent. A few minutes ago, he was hopping through the woods, minding his own business. He didn’t deserve this.
“You’ve got five seconds,” Gowan said. “Five seconds or you fail the test and you might as well go home and forget all of this. You can’t do this, maybe your friend dies.”
My entire body tensed, and a tear rolled down my cheek. I didn’t want to do this.
I took a deep breath, then opened my mouth and tried to force the words out. I tried to make myself say them as Gowan began counting down.
“Five. Four. Three.”
I shook my head. “I can’t,” I shouted.
“Do it,” Gianna said.
“Two…”
I looked down at the bunny. It was just staring up at me, its big brown eyes full of fear and confusion.
“One…”
I tried to imagine there was a demon hidden inside that bunny’s body, but I just couldn’t force myself to say the words.
Instead, I closed the mirror and handed it back to Gowan. “I can’t do it,” I said, trying to hold back tears. “Maybe I’m just not cut out for this.”
“Fine, I’ll do it,” Gowan said, opening the mirror and pointing it toward the bunny.
“No, don’t,” I said.
“In Quod Relego.”
I couldn’t watch. I turned away as he said the words. I walked over to a nearby tree and leaned against it.
I didn’t want to see the dead bunny, but I also knew I had failed. We were running out of time, and I was too weak to even hurt a bunny.
“Lenny, turn around,” Gianna said.
“I don’t want to,” I said, tears coming now. Maybe I was just too tired. Too worn out after a full day of training. I couldn’t force myself to turn.
Gowan placed his hand on my shoulder.
“Turn around, Lenny.”
His voice was so soft and understanding, which wasn’t at all what I’d been expecting. I expected him to be angry with me.
I turned, meeting his eye as I wiped the tears from my face.
Gowan stood there, the bunny in his hands. Perfectly alive and happily chewing on an actual piece of bright, orange carrot.
I wasn’t sure if I wanted to laugh or punch him in the arm.
“But you said it would kill the bunny,” I said. “I would have done it if I’d known it wasn’t going to hurt him.”
Gowan passed the bunny and the carrot to me, and I stroked its soft coat and nuzzled my nose against it.
“It’s a hard lesson to learn, but I wanted to illustrate a point, Lenora. When you’re up against a demon like Algrath, he could look like anyone,” Gowan said. “He could look like me or even Martin. If it ever comes to that, you need to know you can do what has to be done. Do you understand me? If you want to be a Slayer and truly rid the world of evil, you have to be strong. You have to be able to make tough decisions.”
He took the bunny from me and set him down on the ground. We all watched as the poor little guy hopped away.
“And sometimes,” Gowan said, putting his hand on my shoulder, “you may have to kill or hurt someone you thought you loved. Or the image of someone you loved. With tricksters and mimic demons, you have to be stronger than you realize. You can’t have any blind spots or weaknesses when you’re a Slayer. Not if you want to survive. I’m sorry I was so harsh, but I needed you to understand what it might be like tomorrow.”
I nodded, letting his words really sink in. We still didn’t know who Algrath was pretending to be. He could be anyone.
As I followed them to the car to head home for an early dinner, I felt true fear deep down in my gut for the first time since all of this started. Who was Algrath? And when the time came, if he looked like someone I loved, would I be able to do what needed to be done?
All I could do the whole way home was stare out the window and pray that whatever happened, it wouldn’t come to that.
Who To Trust
“Pass the pasta,” Britta said. “And another piece of that homemade bread. Martin, I have no idea where you find th
e time.”
Martin smiled and passed a bowl of handmade pasta to Britta.
“When you’re retired, you will understand,” he said. “It’s been a challenge to keep my mind and hands occupied since I left my position with the coven.”
“Well, I don’t ever plan on retiring, thank you very much,” Gowan said as he stood and reached all the way over the table to load his plate with meatballs from the serving tray. “I still don’t understand why you gave it up.”
Martin didn’t say a word. He simply took a sip of his pinot noir.
“He’ll never tell us,” Asher said with a sigh. “I’ve been trying to get it out of him for a while now. But we all know Martin. A man of many secrets.”
I leaned back in my chair, almost too tired to eat, but so happy at the same time.
It was such a strange thing to feel so many conflicting emotions all at once. I was terrified for what might happen tomorrow and what I might have to face. Would we all survive? Would I have to fight?
But I was also sad for my new friend and the other girls whose lives were on the line. They had to be so scared. Did they know what was about to happen? Had Algrath prepared them in some way for the ritual? What conditions were they being held in?
At the same time, I was also angry at the Council for not stepping up and taking care of this a long time ago. This was their main job, and it shouldn’t have taken a group of Slayers going rogue to come deal with this demon.
Finally, though, as strange as it seemed, I was also happy and grateful. Watching Slayers my parents had cared about so much, who had been part of my life for as long as I could remember, sharing stories around this cozy table made me feel warm inside.
Martin had kept me alive through my grief this past summer, but I’d also spent a lot of lonely nights crying and wondering what would become of my life now without them.
Tonight, though, I felt whole again, despite my fear.
It felt like together, we could take on anything.
“What do you say, Lenny?” Gianna asked.
I hadn’t been listening, and I blushed.
“I’m sorry. What did you say?”
Asher smiled. “See, I told you she was zoning out. You exhausted her.”