by Ember Hollis
Thanks to Bane tutoring me, I’ve learned enough about magic to know how to contribute my energy to a spell, if nothing else. Carefully, taking great care not to marr the other marks on the ground, I pick my way to sit behind the two girls beside the spell circle. I focus on the chant the others are murmuring, then use a finger to trace a small circle on the ground around myself, before sealing and connecting it to the larger circle with a glyph at the juncture. My smaller circle sparks into flame as the magic ignites, and the glyph I traced begins to glow.
Immediately, I feel a pulling sensation deep within me as my magic is drawn out to help with the spell. I start to repeat the chant, mouthing only the words I know, so as not to mess anything up with mispronounced words. I get so caught up in the spell, I ignore everything else. I don’t even notice when my wings retract back into my body as I funnel energy away from them, nor do I so much as blink when another Abyss Worm explodes out of the portal, coiling in the air overhead only to be carved up by the Horsemen into a disgusting mass that splashes all over us.
The only thing that matters to me is that I keep feeding my magic into the circle, and that the portal continues to close, inch by crawling inch.
That is, until I hear someone’s voice, faint and thready under the roar of the wind, as they call my name from beyond the portal.
Chapter 3: Heaven
“Hea—ven… hea—ven…”
At first the voice is too soft for me to hear, and I think I’m imagining it. But when even Amelie starts to frown and look over her shoulder at me, I know I’m right. Someone in there is calling for me. Which can only mean one thing.
“Mom? MOM!”
I jump to my feet and dash forward, bowling over Meg and several other spell casters. The air over the whole circle quivers in a wave from my position, and several of the spell casters cry out and clutch at their heads, while others stutter while they keep chanting. My spell circle immediately sparks, and a wave of energy ricochets from the larger circle to me, knocking me to the ground. Blood spurts from my mouth and a dull ache throbs deep in my chest.
At the same time, the portal yawns three feet wider and a larger than usual pack of hellspawn leaps out. Bane moves to bury them, but even as they descend, scimitars swish through the air.
Someone screams and the portal widens even further.
I hesitate, unsure if I dare go. But I can still hear that voice, louder now and more urgent.
“Heaven… please…. come…”
That voice!
I ignore the pain and make myself stand, wiping at the blood trickling from my mouth. With energy I didn’t know I still possess, I dart right up to the front, zigzagging through the fighters.
The voice sounds louder from here, and the ache in my chest tightens. I’m almost there. So close I can almost touch the portal. Then, the ground beneath me cracks and thick, rocky soil engulfs my feet, stopping me in my tracks.
“No!” I yell. “Mom!”
I bend down, about to trace a glyphs for Breaking, when I catch sight of Madam Wilkins. She’s standing at her place close to the middle of the circle, her eyes round with fear and rage as she seals the gap I’d made in the larger spell circle. When she’s done, she swings an arm at me, telekinetically shoving me away from the portal.
“How dare you!” she cries. “You would risk us all?”
“I-I no, I…” I splutter, shocked. I only meant to risk myself.
But when I look around, I see that scimitars are embedded in the abdomens of three spell casters, who are already being enveloped into yellow cocoons. The others have sweat on their brows and white lips, their faces straining with the effort of maintaining the spell after I’d broken my circle.
I shake my head, horrified at what I’d done.
Madam Wilkins looks behind my shoulders with a panic-stricken look and immediately sits down to re-take her place in the circle. I turn to see what she had seen and release a shaky gasp. The portal is opening wider now instead of closing, and another Abyss Worm, as well as a pack of at least thirty hellspawn approach on the other side of the portal.
At the sight of them, Bane steps towards the spell circle, while Christian, Knox and Malek take their places right in front of the portal in front of him.
The Horseman of Death traces his own spell circle to merge with the larger one, while Malek darts forward into the thick of the hellspawn just as they emerge. With an impossibly high leap, Knox slices open a shadow portal right in the path of the Abyss Worm as it emerges from the breach, still suspended in the denser air on the other side of the portal. He waits until its crashing down into the shadowy gap, then darts out of the way to join Malek against the hellspawn, his sickles flashing from the darkest shadows as he transports from place to place.
Meanwhile, with practiced synchrony, Christian reaches a hand out to touch the Worm as it soars from one portal to the other. When it’s expelled from another one of Knox’s shadow portals a short while later, its completely shriveled and blackened. Though his face looks pinched with strain, Christian also joins the other Horsemen, using just his touch as a weapon in the midst of all the flashing metal.
“Heaven…”
The danger is averted and the portal is closing now, much faster than before, thanks to Bane’s energy coursing through the spell circle in purple trails of energy. But even so, a sinking feeling sweeps through me.
What if Mom really did go to hell after she died? What if someone is torturing her? What if this is my very last chance to save her?
Guilt, pain, fear, and hope are tearing at me in equal measure, and my heart pounds so hard in my chest it feels like its exploding. The portal is almost closed, but the heat is still so intense, it feels like my skin is peeling. Stepping into it would probably feel like leaping into an oven. And yet… I can’t not go.
“Stay back, angel!”
I struggle against Malek’s grip as muddled thoughts run through my mind. Without realizing it, I’ve approached the portal again. It looms in front of me, tall and fiery like the eye of Sauron from the Lord of the Rings.
“Let go of me, I have to get to her!” I screech, using my heel to stamp on Malek’s foot.
Malek’s grip only tightens. He raises his sword and slashes, causing me to cringe in terror. A moment later, hot blood spurts down my neck, and I look behind me to see a newly emerged hellspawn from the portal collapse like a marionette cut from its strings. The Horseman swings me out of the way and throws me to the side like I weigh nothing, all the while glaring at me a furiously.
“Are you insane?” he yells, sweeping his sword through another hellspawn. “That’s hell on the other side!”
“No, that’s my Mom!” I scramble back to my feet, determined to reach her. “She’s in there!”
“Even if she is, she’s dead,” Knox tells me, his brow deeply furrowed. “You don’t want to see her like that.”
“No, I don’t care!” I try to barge past the Horsemen, but Christian grabs me as I pass him, then shoves me back again. This time, Bane summons metal bands that emerge and chain me to the ground, even as sweat runs down his brow from the strain of closing the portal.
I sob, cry, beg, and threaten the Four of them, the teachers, and the other spell casters to help me. I even call Amelie and Meg by name, entreating them to prove their friendship by helping me to get to the portal to reach my mom.
But no one budges from their seats, and they ignore me, aside from some sympathetic or furious looks.
In what seems like no time at all, the portal finally seals, the bloody cracks that hang in the air disappearing as if they’d never been. The howling, searing wind that had blanketed the circle dies down, leaving behind a heavy silence.
The loss of the portal feels like the final nail being hammered into my coffin, and I curl up on the ground to sob bitter tears. I’ve abandoned my Mom yet again, this time to what might very well be an eternity of suffering.
After a moment, a hand touches me on the shoulder.
I shrug it off roughly.
“Go away!” I croak.
“Miss Ramsey,” Madam Wilkin’s voice is tired and soft, a sharp contrast from the look of fury that had crossed her face when she’d shoved me. “I know you think you heard something in there but… there’s no way to tell if that really was your mother. There are demons in hell that prey on people’s emotions. Sometimes, they pretend to be the ones we love. Many supernaturals older and wiser than you have been fooled.”
“But you heard her too,” I shake my head, still not looking up. “You heard her! I didn’t imagine it!”
“It’s true that we heard someone calling your name, Heaven,” Pandora says softly, surprising me. I hadn’t noticed the diminutive Headmistress among the spell casters in the circle, but of course she would have been there. “But like Madam Wilkins says, it’s not likely to have been your real mother. The dead aren’t allowed to wander the Underworld freely. Plus, you are part-angel. There’s nothing demons love more than taunting your kind with the suffering of your loved ones. Your mother may not even be in hell.”
I slowly unfold to look at her. “Really?”
“If she were truly dead and near the portal, I would have sensed it,” Bane adds wearily. “But all I felt on the other side were hellspawn and the Damned.”
I glance at him gratefully, my heart lightening slightly. If Bane is sure, then I have to believe him. He is the Horseman of Death after all.
“I’m sorry for interrupting the spell circle,” I say finally. “I really thought it was her… I was just so sure.”
“Well, nobody died… yet,” Madam Wilkins says gravely, with pinched lips. “And the worst is over, but there’s still a lot to do if we’re going to save all the injured.”
She nods primly and moves to attend to the other spell casters who are clearing up the spell circle, while Pandora wanders off with her secretary, and Amelie and Meg give me tight hugs. I hug them back, feeling slightly embarrassed at how I’ve behaved. I hadn’t actually shared what had happened to my Mom with any of my friends here at Pandorax. But now there’s no hiding it.
“I’m so sorry about your Mom,” Amelie says.
“Me too,” Meg adds. “And I know how you feel. I lost both my parents when I was young. If I’d thought there was a chance they were in there, I’m not sure I wouldn’t have done the exact same thing. Even if it almost ruined our spell.”
Meg’s matter-of-fact tone belies the sorrowful way she looks at where the portal stood. And though her words sting a little, I decide to let it go.
“Let’s help with the clean up,” I say. Keeping busy will keep my mind off my troubles at least.
Meg heads off to help with cleaning up the spell circle, while Amelie and I team up to search the area for hellspawn and survivors.
“Oh no, not Professor Hinako too,” Amelie sinks to her knees sometime later.
I sigh and make my way to her side, following the glow of the tracing spell we’d used to find bodies. Lying in a hollow tree, half concealed by bushes is a familiar gray-haired woman, her slight body curled into a tight ball. I frown as I bend down to look at her face, recognizing the gentle Professor who’d assigned Bane to me as my tutor. Her skin looks more wrinkled than usual, and her eyes stare glassily into thin air in a look of disbelieving horror. “What killed her?”
“I don’t know…” Amelie says tearfully. “Oh, this is terrible! I absolutely loved learning magic from her.”
I hug Amelie again, and together, we pull the Professor’s body from the tree. I cringe at the feel of her husk-like body, already so light and fragile, as if all the substance had fled from it when her soul had departed.
“No mark on her,” I frown. “And her wand’s still in its pouch by her side.”
Amelie shakes her head. “She looks terrified… and look, there’s an incomplete concealing glyph on the wood here. Maybe she tried to hide but died of a heart attack. She was such a gentle soul and so old. Even with her knowledge of magic, I doubt she could have stood up to a hellspawn for long. There’s only so much magic one can sustain at her age.”
I sigh and trace a transport glyph on her forehead with my finger.
Thankfully, the majority of the bodies we find are dead or injured hellspawn. We burn all remains of the former and restrain the latter to be dealt with later. Occasionally, we come across the bodies of Pandorax students and teachers who have been slain. These, we take back to the castle for proper funerals, along with the survivors in the forest who are already in yellow stasis cocoons.
By the time the sun rises, we’ve determined that around five percent of the student body have been killed, with another forty percent seriously injured either from the attack or from activities during Bacchadelia. Two teachers, including Professor Hinako have died too. Though it could have been worse, it’s a grievous blow to the school, and the atmosphere that descends upon the castle is depressingly dark and gloomy.
After a long night and morning spent helping to comb through the forests and transport the bodies and cocoons, I finally arrive back at my dorm room so exhausted, I can barely put one foot in front of the other. Without even bothering to bathe, I collapse into my bed, immediately falling into a deep sleep that is only interrupted when I slowly become aware of arms curled gently around me.
Chapter 4: Heaven
At first, I’m sure I’m still dreaming. Then, when a familiar scent of musk and bourbon drifts to my nose, I realize I’m not.
“What are you doing in my room?” I mumble. After waking up, my voice is softer than I expect it to be, and the way it hangs in the air between us is strangely intimate.
Christian shifts on the narrow slice of bed behind me, his long frame almost pushing me off the edge. “Half your dorm is empty.”
“There’s still half left,” I sigh. “Or you could go to your own room for once.” I say that, but the fact that he’d come here… well… that and the way he’d been holding me… it just strikes a note in my heart. After the night I’d had, curling up with someone feels awfully good. But I can’t let him know that, of course.
I hear a soft scoff escape his lips. “Where’s the fun in that, little lamb?”
“Don’t call me that.” I shove his arm off my waist and sit up.
When I turn, I see Christian, lounging on my bed like he owns it. His shirt is unbuttoned at his throat, revealing a tempting triangle of sculpted muscle and perfectly shaped collarbones. His lips are curled in a slight smile, and his arms are crossed over the back of his head, as if he’s modeling for a photo shoot. But though his expression and pose is as sexy as they come, his eyes study me with a serious air.
“What?” I roll my eyes. “Did you expect something better than bed hair and smudged makeup?”
My self-consciousness makes me sound insolent, but I have to struggle not to wince when I glimpse my reflection in the mirror. I hadn’t even bothered to wash up or change clothes, and my skin is still coated with blood and dirt in places. I look I’ve been fighting and rolling around in the mud, which actually, is pretty close to the truth.
“Would you really have walked into that portal to find your mother if we hadn’t stopped you?” Christian asks out of the blue, completely dropping all efforts at a smile.
“I… yeah,” I nod, startled into honesty. Christian’s forehead furrows and I shrug, feeling the need to explain. “I know there was no way to tell if it was really her, and knowing what I know now about how demons imitate people, I might hesitate in the future. But at the time… yeah, I would absolutely have gone in.”
His eyes tighten as he stares at me, and I raise a brow at him.
“You’re a real idiot, aren’t you?” he says finally. “Like a lamb to slaughter, you just head blindly into trouble even though you can’t handle it. You think that just because you’re an angel-blood, you can walk straight into hell?”
My breath catches in my throat. Up till now, I’d felt comforted, almost pleased, to to find him here. He’d held me so ge
ntly after all, and he’d chosen my room, when he could have chosen any girls’ to bunk in.
But now, anger bubbles up within me, washing away the last of my drowsiness. There’s no one like Christian for making me feel stupid and worthless. From the very moment we’d met, he’d made it clear I was nothing but a plaything. I thought things had changed once I’d gotten back my wings… that he’d start to see me for myself, and not just a part-angel virgin. But he clearly doesn’t.
“It’s nothing to do with my intelligence or what I am,” I say, practically spitting out the words. “It’s what anyone would do if they loved someone enough! Obviously, I don’t expect someone like you to understand.”
Christian rears up so suddenly, I flinch back against the wall.
“You keep saying that, but you have no idea what it’s like to be me,” he growls in a low, dangerous voice that I haven’t heard from him before. “What gives you the right to judge me?”
“I know enough,” I say coldly, keeping my face tense so I won’t show any fear, though I’m quaking deep inside. Knox took my wings and Malek tried to kill me. But of the Four, Christian is the one I’m most wary of. And there’s no one else in the room to stop him if he decides to attack me. “After all, there’s only one reason why you’d come here. Unfortunately, you’ll just have to find some other girl to fuck you, because I—”
“Because you went and handed your virginity over to Bane and Knox, didn’t you?” Christian lunges forward and slams me down onto the bed. I release a short cry, unable to hold my fear back any longer. “What, did you think that sleeping with him would get us to cut you some slack? Did you do it just so you could get rid of me?”
I bite my lip as Christian hovers over me, his whole body consuming my field of view. I never think it when I look at him, but he’s actually just as well-built as Malek, just lankier, and better at hiding it under his well-cut clothes. Except that now, with his shirt gaping open and his arms tensed above me, I see corded muscles and washboard abs that make my mouth run dry, even as alarm bells start ringing in my head. My skin tingles at the feel of his body over mine, and in some screwed up way, I can’t help but still want him, even though he’s selfish and dangerous, a womanizer with no sense of boundaries.