I watched them untie the ropes, hoist her up, and carry her limp body from the room.
Caleb gave me an odd look and said in a quiet voice, “What happened?”
“You don’t remember?”
A look of pain filled his eyes. He raised a trembling hand to his temple.
“Something took you over,” I said.
A murderous look shot into his eyes. He grabbed me by the shoulders and gave me a hard shake. “What do you mean?”
“I meant exactly what I said: something possessed you.” Everyone had the same wild glow to their eyes as they stared transfixed at the ceremony, but Caleb had spoken to me. He’d experienced something different. Why did he look so scared, so shaken up? Was what happened not a normal part of the ceremony? Did that mean he was like Wendy? Did that mean that at the next ceremony, his butt would be tied to the chair? If Caleb was a reader, Wendy would have mentioned it. If he wasn't one, how did the demon control him?
If I wasn’t so terrified by what I’d just witnessed, I might have enjoyed his discomfort. “Your eyes, your voice… Something controlled you.” It wasn’t a spirit. It was something far more wicked, far more evil.
Caleb shook me hard again. “Tell me everything that happened.”
So I told him. I told him how something—a demon, a spirit, I don’t know what—had been inside him. How something spoke to me through his lips.
Caleb’s expression grew cold, and for a moment doubt seemed to war with his well-established anger. But then the crisis passed. He looked directly at me and I could hatred shining from his eyes. “Nice try, but I’m not buying it.” He gave me an amused smile. “Come on, little bird, let’s get you back to your cage for the night.” He strode away, leaving me no choice but to follow.
* * *
When I got back to the house, I rushed to Wendy’s room, hoping she would be there. She was. Sonja told me Wendy would be okay, but I didn’t believe it. Wendy lay on the bed, her breathing shallow. Her skin was cold to the touch.
I leaned over her. “Wendy? Can you hear me?”
A soft groan escaped her lips and her eyes fluttered open, but they held only confusion. “Wendy? It’s me, Colina.” I put my hand gently on her forehead.
Her eyes focused on my face. “Colina,” she whispered.
“I’m here. It’s all right.”
Wendy began to cry.
I waited for her to stop, but she didn’t. I lay down next to her on the bed and wrapped my arms around her. We lay that way for a while, and the whole time I could feel her body shaking against mine. Sobs ripped through her until, finally, she was still. After a few minutes of silence, she began to squirm a bit in my embrace and I let her go.
She scooted away from me and sat up. “I…I’m all right,” she said in a shaky voice.
She was obviously not fine. But I gave her a smile and nodded.
I remembered what it felt like when Wanda took over my body so long ago, during the second death dealer ritual. I would never forget the small, dark place I’d been forced to take shelter in, as if my very core had been entombed. I vividly recalled Wanda speaking through my lips and how I’d been helpless to do anything to stop it.
Wendy looked over at me, her eyes wide. “It’s not supposed to be like that…like what happened. Readers aren’t death dealers. We can’t hear the dead. We aren’t supposed to be in contact with spirits.” A sob escaped her lips. “We aren’t mediums, we can’t become possessed by spirits like your kind can.”
“Then how—”
Her face filled with anger, and she cut me off. “I don’t know.” She shook her head, her hair flying back and forth wildly. When she looked back at me, there was a haunted expression in her eyes. “I saw… There was a darkness before me. Things called out to me.”
The dark abyss. I’d often heard voices calling my name while standing in front of that darkness and heard the unearthly growls from within. I still dreamed of red eyes moving toward me.
Her hand fluttered in the air. “I was in front of this big pool of darkness and then this thing…this creature…crawled out of it and lunged at me. I-I couldn’t stop it.” She sobbed. “Th-then the thing was inside me. Evil. An unimaginable evil shot through me and filled every inch of me…like a bolt of electricity.”
Was it a demon? One that somehow bridged the gap between this world and hell by using her body? Whatever possessed her, it had clearly done so to commune with Gage. The spell they used must have been powerful since the rest of the crowd was also affected.
I once watched Macaven use a spell that bound all his people to his will. His followers had swayed back and forth with glazed eyes during the ritual. At the time, Macaven had been using his follower’s collective magic to power his spell. That must have been what Gage was doing, but Caleb had been surprised and shaken up by what I told him. Whatever Gage was doing, he was doing it to his followers without their consent.
That would explain why Caleb was totally freaked out by what transpired during the ceremony. Was it all part of the spell? It was like the second ritual, but Wendy was possessed by a demon instead of a spirit. A powerful demon. My mind shot back to the images of the demon I’d raised tearing up Macaven’s men.
Tying Wendy to a chair didn’t seem to be much of a precaution.
What if somehow my being there had changed things? I could open the veil between this world and the next. I had magics never seen before. What if my very presence somehow weakened the veil and made it easier for the demons to make contact?
I looked back at Wendy. “Are you conscious of what’s going on when that thing is inside you?”
She looked away.
“When Wanda took over my body, I could hear the words she spoke. And Luke—he can hear what’s going on when Dean’s conscious. A part of you has to be able to hear what’s going on.” Wendy didn’t say a word. It didn’t take a mind reader to realize she wanted me to stop drilling her.
Frustration filled me. For a moment, the fact that she was a victim in this whole situation didn’t matter anymore. I grabbed her by the shoulders and gave her a hard shake. “Tell me what you heard. Tell me what that thing said to Gage.”
Wendy’s face turned up to me. Gone was the scared, timid girl who had been my companion in the asylum. The girl staring back at me had darkness in her eyes. Anger contorted her face until there was nothing left but pure rage.
“Take your hands off me!” she shouted, giving me a shove backward. I flew off the bed and slammed against the wall across the room. I slumped to the floor, dazed. My first clear thought—how did such a slight girl have the strength to fling me across the room? Logically, I knew that she didn’t.
But something else did.
Wendy sat motionless on the bed. The anger had drained from her face, but she didn’t seem concerned for my well-being. She didn’t cry out apologies for tossing me across the room. Instead, she watched me with cold indifference.
I forced myself to my feet. “Wendy?” I wondered, Which voice will answer? Wendy’s, or the creature I heard while she sat in the chair?
“What do you want from me?”
It’s Wendy. Her voice, her eyes. But…
The doubt rang through my brain. Gage forced Wendy into the possession ritual not once, but a few times—exactly how many, I wasn’t sure. I knew how the anger and darkness filled me and almost overwhelmed me when possessed by a spirit. What have the demons done to Wendy? How have they changed her?
“I need to know what Gage is up to.” My voice was soft. I didn’t dare touch her again. I felt as if I were facing down some wild beast that might charge me with teeth bared at any moment.
“I don’t know,” she said, her eyes wide with fear.
It’s definitely Wendy now. At least, I thought it was.
“I-I don’t know what’s going on,” she whispered. Her eyes begged me to believe her.
I desperately wanted to—but I wasn’t sure.
* * *
The next
morning Sonja showed up followed by a different young girl carrying a tray full of food. I watched the young girl put the tray down, then look up and give me a smile. She didn’t look scared. Does she know what happened to her companion last night? Does she realize the man she follows is a vicious killer? He slashed a young girl’s throat with no hesitation or remorse. The image of the girl writhing in pain on the floor, blood gushing from her wounds, filled my mind. I could still hear her screams of terror. Gage killed her as a sacrifice—the same way Macaven killed my family.
Sonja turned to Wendy and said, “If you need anything, ring the bell.”
Wendy nodded, but didn’t answer.
I wasn’t up to bickering with Sonja this morning, and it looked like she felt the same. There were black circles under her eyes and her eyelids were heavy. She looked exhausted and left without a glance or word my way.
A few minutes later, Dean joined us. He was the only one in the room who looked well rested. Wendy had barely spoken since waking up. I’d spent most of the night tossing and turning, my head filled with nightmares of Macaven and Weatherton. In my dreams, they were circling me, taunting me. Gage was there. He stood off in the shadows, watching us in silence, an evil smile on his face.
It was an awful nightmare. Macaven, Weatherton, Gage. I wasn’t sure which one filled me with more fear. Macaven had been a man bent on gaining power. Weatherton had been a mad killer. What was Gage? Gage wanted power—he’d made that clear. I wanted to think Gage was mad, but everything he did seemed to have clear, thought-out purpose. An evil purpose that led to the deaths of others. And when he looked upon the dead, he seemed to have no feelings toward them. He seemed to feel no remorse. And, alternatively, no glee. He killed because he wanted power and chaos, but he seemed to get no pleasure from the killing. In my mind, that made him more dangerous than the other two. A killer with no remorse. An intelligent, gregarious…what? Maniac? Sociopath?
I forced my thoughts from Gage and directed them to Dean. He was relieved to see that Wendy and I were both in one piece. I expected him to ask a zillion questions about what happened the previous night, but he didn’t. He gave me a hug and then looked over at Wendy, watching her for a long moment in silence before making a beeline for the food. He ate with gusto, finishing off a large portion of scrambled eggs and a pile of toast in record time. Wendy didn’t touch the food, and I only nibbled on a piece of toast.
When he finished eating, Dean leaned back in his chair and let out a sound of contentment. He watched Wendy for a moment before looking over at me and raising his eyebrows in a questioning way.
I shrugged and looked away. I hadn’t seen Luke during the possession. If Luke wasn’t there, neither was Dean. I wanted to tell Dean what happened, but I couldn’t do it now—not with Wendy in the room.
My mind drifted to the ritual. How many times has she been forced to be a vessel for a demon? What did Gage say to it? The last words I heard from Wendy’s mouth were that the sacrifice was acceptable. After Gage killed that poor girl.
“The chickens weren’t enough,” Wendy said in a quiet voice.
“Chickens?” Dean asked, his eyes darting between the two of us.
Wendy turned and faced us both. There was more pain and anguish in her eyes than I’d ever seen.
“He killed her,” she whispered.
I closed my eyes, trying to block out the image of the young girl laying on the floor, blood gushing from the nasty gash across her neck.
“Who?” Dean demanded, rising to his feet.
Wendy’s voice was emotionless. “The girl that brought us breakfast yesterday. Gage slit her throat. He killed her to…appease the beast.”
Dean gaped at Wendy in shock.
Her hands trembled, and she raised them up as if in surrender. “I don’t remember any of it. Gage took great delight in telling me all about it after…after…”
Dean moved to stand between us. His head whipped back and forth from Wendy to me. “What the hell are you talking about?”
Wendy gave me a sour half smile. “Go ahead and tell him. You know you want to. Tell him how they tied me to a chair and forced a demon to come through me. Tell him how the creature possessed me. How I felt it crawl inside me.” Her voice was getting hysterical. “I still feel the evil from it—all through my body, all through my soul. I’m unclean. I’m cursed.” Her eyes changed—anger blazed through them. She screamed out, “It’s all your fault!”
I didn’t have time to react. One minute she was sitting on the piano bench, and the next she was lunging at me. She was on me in no time, her fingers reaching out, her nails poised to scratch my face.
I put my hands up in defense, but there wasn’t much I could do. Even though she was small, her full bodyweight bearing down on mine kept me from escaping.
I covered my hands over my head as she whaled on me. Her fists knocked against my cheeks and her fingers tore at my hair.
And then she was gone.
When I looked up, I saw Dean holding her around the waist. She kicked and screamed as he pulled her back. After a moment, she abruptly stopped. There was silence.
“Are you…all right?” Dean asked. He was breathing heavily. There was a scratch by his right eye. She must have gotten him as he pulled her off me.
“I’m fine,” I said. I was bruised and my cheek stung, but she hadn’t done any real damage.
Wendy went limp like a rag doll in Dean’s arms.
“Is she okay?” I got to my feet and cautiously moved toward her, worried she might go ballistic again.
“What the hell happened last night?” he asked, awkwardly shifting her body in his arms.
“A demon possessed her.” I pushed Wendy’s hair out of her face. She was breathing slowly, her eyes closed. She was unconscious.
Dean gently lowered her to the ground. “And the girl. Do you think she’s telling the truth about the girl?”
“She is. They sacrificed chickens, but it wasn’t enough.”
“Did you see it?”
Our eyes met. “Yes,” I said. “It was a ceremony like the second death dealer ritual. They tied Wendy to a chair with rope. There were symbols and candles and they cast a spell.”
His eyes went wide with surprise.
“They scarified two chickens and poured their blood on the symbols, but the demon wasn’t happy. Then Gage killed—” I looked away before continuing. “He slashed the throat of that little girl who brought us food yesterday. He killed her and her blood powered the symbols in some way.”
“Did Gage release a demon?”
“No, but the entire crowd was in a trance. Maybe possessed. Something took Caleb over, too. It spoke to me.”
“Some spirit possessed Caleb and talked to you?”
“Not a spirit. A demon. It said its name was Legion.” I couldn’t tell him the rest. The creature said I would release more demons. It couldn’t be true. I’d never do such a thing.
But you have done it once already. You released a demon that also called itself Legion.
I cast my eyes away, looking for anywhere to focus but on him. Dean didn’t know I was responsible for releasing the evil beast. If he knew I was the cause of the unrest toward his people, he would never forgive me.
“Legion. Like the story in the Bible?” Dean knelt down over Wendy and brushed her hair from her pale face. “How does that verse go? ‘For he had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man. For it had seized him many times, and he was bound with chains and shackles and kept under guard, and yet he would break his bonds and be driven by the demons into the desert. And Jesus asked him, What is thy name? And he said, Legion; for many demons were entered into him. They begged him that he would not command them to go into the abyss.’”
I’ve heard that passage. My mother read the Bible to us sometimes at night in front of the fire.
Dean gave me a half smile. “My grandmother was a bit of a Bible-thumper.”
“A death dealer Bible-thumper?”
“Must have been an interesting marriage.” I moved next to him and put my hand against Wendy’s cheek. She felt so cold.
“It was a rocky one,” he answered.
I felt the pulse at Wendy’s neck. Her heart was beating strongly. Her breathing was normal. She looked peaceful, as though she was asleep.
“Do you think she’s okay?” Dean asked.
“I don’t know. She seems to be…changing.”
“That thing possessed her like a spirit?”
“Yeah. She told me she felt an evil inside her.”
Dean was silent for so long that when he spoke again, I almost jumped out of my skin. “When you went through the second ritual, they forced the spirit out, right?” His fingers reached out, and he touched the recent scars still visible on Wendy’s arm.
“Yes. The spirit’s name was Wanda. She wasn’t eager to go.”
Dean nodded. “I couldn’t get whatever took me over out. By the time my family gathered enough power to drive it out, it had done a lot of damage.”
I remembered Dean’s mother telling me how the spirit stayed inside him and waited, then fooled his family into thinking nothing was wrong. And then it had murdered.
“Do you think a demon took you over? Not a spirit?” I whispered.
“Why would you say that?”
He doesn’t know he killed those girls, I reminded myself. “Just…something your mother said. It made me wonder if more than a spirit possessed you.”
“What did she say?”
He deserves to know. I opened my mouth, ready to confess everything, when Wendy let out a loud moan.
Her eyes fluttered open. “What happened?”
I looked down at her. “You attacked me.”
She sat up. “I what?”
I showed her the scratch marks on my skin. “You came at me like a wild animal.”
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