by K. F. Breene
“You are afraid,” the demon-man said in that strange rasp that made me feel covered in crawling insects. “Are you the one I seek? I feel you.”
“You mentioned that. Didn’t you know it’s not polite to feel people without their permission? You can’t hang around with humans if you don’t play by the rules.” I didn’t let my fear overcome me. Instead, I charged.
A push of air hit me, but I was already swinging my sword. The blade cut through the demon-man’s power, my stored fire power slicing into the hard air around him. I came up, my blade aiming between his legs. He flinched as I cut up his thigh.
“What power is that?” he boomed.
I cut through another attempt to grab me, feeling the sword suck at my power. But all it could reach was the cold. It couldn’t draw on the fire.
Did that matter? Could it channel this new power? I had no idea.
“Show yourself,” the creature yelled. Its feet hit the ground and it waffled before turning to run. It had to be running low on power. That was good news.
“I’m right here. Quit running away, damn you.” I chased it, stumbling when my foot hit a divot in the dirt.
It shoved its hand at me, clearly trying to push me away. I cut through its attempt, ripped out my gun, and fired—all in one smooth movement. Kinda. The bullet punched a hole in its stomach that immediately welled up with blood. It flinched with the knock of impact, but showed no signs of pain.
I aimed for the head this time. The gun roared, but the demon-man jerked away. Fast little sucker.
Another push of its hand, but its power was definitely weakening. I cut through the spell easily, as I had done before.
“The definition of crazy is repeatedly trying the same thing and expecting different results,” I said, readying for another attack. “But can demons really be called sane?”
I rushed at him and slashed, catching his arm. The blade sailed clean through. The demon-man’s flesh sizzled, the wound immediately cauterized.
I’d never seen that happen, not even with vampires.
The human face contorted into something truly heinous before stretching into a non-human, jagged-toothed grin. “Highness.” The human body split down the middle, like a seam that had just been unzipped. Great black wings stretched into the sky as the skin fell away. A strange, trollish face with a protruding snout and inch-long pointed teeth gaped at me. Despite its lack of lips, it was still able to talk. “You have not learned your power. We can help you. Guide you. Prepare you to step into your intended role.”
“No way.” I struggled to bring out the fire, needing a good blast of it to take this thing out. It was hampered by the ever-pounding, throbbing cold seeping through my middle and infecting my limbs.
“Do not be afraid of it,” it said gratingly, making me grind my teeth. “Allow it to overcome you.”
Terrified of the feeling, instinctively knowing I would lose myself if I let the power succeed in overcoming me, I struck forward in terror. My blade jabbed through the demon-man’s middle.
The sound of sizzling grew until it was crackling like a campfire. The creature howled, its face contorted in pain. Three-fingered, clawed hands grabbed the hand on the hilt of my sword, freezing my skin.
A surge of power tore through me. Rocks and debris around me rose into the sky. I followed, levitating, but my inner fire wasn’t giving me the power to do it. The ice had coated me in a sickly way, and like a siphon, I took the demon’s magic into myself. Thoughts around me sparkled to life, but most I couldn’t pinpoint. Someone was afraid that I’d know about the broken second-story window. Another was embarrassed that he’d peed himself. A gun in the car. A feeling of helplessness. Blind terror that I would be lost, and his soul would be lost with me.
The demon howled in my face, a sound that no horror movie about an exorcism could adequately portray. It writhed around my blade. I was killing it, but my power wasn’t draining as it should have. Instead, it swelled, sucking the evil from the demon and ingesting it. As the viciousness took over, my humanity started to erode away.
“No,” I yelled. The word came out sounding like snakes slithering across sand. “No!”
Not thinking, I raked my nails down the oily black feathers on the demon’s chest. Lines like streaks of acid appeared in the wake of my fingers. A clawed hand touched my skin, and I jerked back, abandoning the sword. I needed to kill the demon, but I wouldn’t lose myself to do it.
It yanked the sword from its body and let it drop to the ground. The great black wings beat at the air, taking the creature into the sky. Like a wounded bird, it faltered. Still the wings pumped, taking it higher and higher until it was an absence of light on the dark background of the sky.
I spun around, still floating. Rocks and dirt hovered with me, kept afloat by me, though I didn’t know how. Nor did I know how to stop it.
The demon was gone, but that dark and sticky force I’d sucked up through my sword spread through me inch by inch. Assuming control, like a demon taking over the host body.
Clamping down, I yanked my mind away, separating myself from it. Putting everything on hold.
Fear constricted my chest. Breathing came hard. But I made myself suck in air, keeping hold of the part of me that was definitely human.
“Help me,” I cried weakly. More thoughts came. Bloodied claws trying to rip through an invisible wall. Magic acting strangely. Nullifying. That window still broken. Maybe he should put something in front of it. That girl down there was clearly the one sought by the demon. She would kill, or rule, them all.
“Help,” I said again, my vision changing. Usually I saw items in the darkness like I would in the light, only with lower definition. Slightly fuzzy instead of clear. Now, however, my sight crystalized. I could see better, farther, everything sharp and detailed, with an added element of a heat map.
Two figures stood in the house, standing close together. Three other figures were off to the side, working at a magical divide. Still another sat in leafy plants or bushes out by the property line.
Who was that—
The neighbor.
The knowledge crystalized in my brain before I could finish thinking the question.
He was a male. Shocked as all hell. He’d gotten a girl pregnant accidentally. He half wished the baby would be a superhero like the one he was looking at.
Me.
“Help,” I said for the third time, loud now, looking down at the ground. It took everything I had to ignore the fear and panic that it was too late. That this power, this freezing cold power spreading through me like a disease, was here to stay.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“You must be keeping this wall intact, Reagan,” Callie said. She’s fighting the demon from turning her into one of its kind.
“Please stop thinking,” I called. “I can hear your thoughts. Stop thinking. It’s freaking me out.”
Demons can hear thoughts?
“Yes, Dizzy. And I just said to stop thinking!” I swallowed past the lump in my throat. “Now, who has advice on how I can deal with this?”
“Let us near you,” Darius said in a calm voice. This might’ve been a normal state of affairs for how unaffected he sounded. His fear said otherwise.
The figures in the house ran, moving toward the front. I heard echoes of them being called to aid their master. The demon was too weak to pass to the underworld. It needed more power.
I still had time to kill him, which I relayed to the crew. He couldn’t be allowed to get his message to my father.
Of course, I couldn’t do anything until I got out of my current predicament.
“The demon must’ve transferred its power to you, Reagan,” Callie said, her voice not as calm. Fear tinged every word. “Not the type of power—that is clearly already in you. But its actual power. The life force. You know what I mean.” I did, horrifyingly enough. “You have to fight it. If you fight it, and regain control, you can…regain control.”
“That’s how you’ll
get yourself down,” Dizzy said. “You’ll probably fall down, but that’s good, too.” Hopefully she’ll also stop reading thoughts. Oh no, is she hearing this? Dizzy stared at me, as though expecting an answer.
A thought about calling Vlad for help echoed through Darius’s troubled mind.
“Don’t call Vlad.” I wiped my face. “Whatever you do, don’t call that guy. I don’t need any more turds in my litterbox.”
“That’s graphic,” Dizzy mumbled.
“She has a right to be graphic.” Callie backed away from the others. “She’s stuck in midair, floating in rocks and dirt, and jeopardized by a demon. I can’t believe every other word out of her mouth isn’t a curse word.” There was something in her hand, but I couldn’t get a good look at it.
“When you practiced your new power, what circumvented it?” Darius asked, pacing beside the invisible barrier that apparently I was keeping enacted.
Callie threw a casing. It flashed green before fizzling away. “Dang it,” she mumbled. “Her ability to unweave spells is still working.”
“I’ve never had to circumvent it.” I wiped my face again, getting rid of the moisture. My sudden sweating problem wasn’t from exerting this power. The demon had given me plenty. Too much. No, it was from the increasing difficulty of ignoring my fear. I was stalling. The hovering, the telekinesis, the wall—they were keeping me stagnant, but they were not stopping the icy, corrosive power from spreading. Its progress had slowed, but it kept soaking up my insides, turning me cold.
“Explain it to me,” Darius said in a confident, commanding voice. A thought trailed away, unvoiced. Mon ange.
My angel. That was sweet.
I took a deep breath. “Okay.” I walked him through the various phases, from stumbling upon the new well of power, to actively trying to use it, to the way the two powers had mixed like ink, and finally to the confrontation with the demon-mage and then the demon itself.
“The demon is calling forth this other side of your power,” Callie said. “Like when your mother worked to bring it out in you with your training, they are bringing it to the surface naturally. I did not realize there were two halves to the whole.”
“Surprise.” I moved my hands and feet like a puppet.
She is on a thin rope, Dizzy thought.
He had that right.
Callie dug into her bag. “Stand back, everyone. This spell might explode.”
“Wait.” Darius held his hand out, studying me. “Force the fire, Reagan,” he said in a soft, urgent voice. “Force the fire. Force it to take over. Get me through this barrier and I will help you.”
“How are you going to help her?” Callie asked.
“Blood,” Darius said, the possessiveness back ten-fold. “It helped after she killed the other demon. It has to help this time as well. I will not lose her to the underworld. She is bringing back my humanity—I will not let it take hers.”
“Well, that is unexpected,” Dizzy deadpanned. “But unless you can get her down first, you won’t be able to get blood into her.”
“Force the fire,” Darius urged me.
Yes, that was what I needed to do. Or just force this icy power down. But that meant dunking myself back into the sludge. I was afraid of it. Afraid of losing myself, like Darius had said.
Heat pricked behind my eyes, threatening tears. I’d never been this afraid in my whole life. This wasn’t death. It was a fate worse than death. Until now, I’d thought only prison qualified for that category. The prospect of losing my humanity was so much worse. Becoming a monster.
I stared directly at Darius. “Kill me if it takes over, okay? Don’t try to save me. Kill me.”
His thoughts were in French this time, and his hard face gave nothing away.
“Promise me,” I pushed.
“No. Force the fire, mon ange. Force the fire.”
“Can’t you do what I say for once?” I took a deep breath, struggling for control of my emotions. Then I reconnected with my power, feeling that dark, cold ice spreading within me. I had very little time.
“Force the fire.” His voice wound around me, urging me to obey. I soaked it in, taking courage from his confidence. “Sometimes the only way out is to go through. You can do it.”
I squeezed my eyes shut and searched for the spark. The heat that felt so good when it rolled over my skin.
Darius repeated himself, his voice like that of a commander inspiring valor and true grit in his men before they marched unto the breach.
I could do this. Both powers were my birthright. Both could be controlled, I just had to figure out how to master this new one, and later, how to manage both of them in tandem.
Gritting my teeth, I tapped into the cold power, feeling every rock and speck of dirt circling me. Hearing the excitement of the neighbor’s thoughts, and the awe in Callie and Dizzy. But most importantly, I felt Darius’s raw, unyielding belief that I could do this. That I was more powerful than him, than even Vlad, and if anyone could handle a trivial matter such as a demon overthrowing one’s person, it was me.
Sometimes the only way out was to go through.
Here goes nothing.
I embodied the full force of the icy power, felt it sucking me under and turning everything black. My thoughts rolled and my breath left me. I reveled in the dark majesty of the power thrumming within my veins.
A stray thought wound through my glory.
Make her proud.
Her.
Callie meant my mother.
Emotion surged up in me. And with it, fire.
My mother had always called me her flame. She’d coaxed it out of me. She’d helped me embody it.
Now she would save my life with it.
I yanked it up and wrapped it around the horrible coldness, defusing the edges. Chopping off the seeking arms. I pushed the cold down and packed it into a tight ball, the effect lowering me in the sky, making it harder for me to keep the rocks and dirt up.
But I did.
Balls of flame sprang to life, various colors, various sizes, moving through the debris around me, making the guy hiding in the bushes do a fist pump. I rose back up and drifted forward, feeling all that horrible blackness inside me surrounded by bright light. Ice wrapped in heat.
Fire rolled along my arms and legs, but the cold stayed like a cap on my head. I’d probably still lose my eyebrows, unfortunately. You couldn’t have everything.
The sweet air rushed back into my lungs. My fingers tingled with pins and needles, coming back to life. My heart fluttered, emotion surging back in.
Finally, I pushed it all back down, the fire and ice together, a knot in my stomach now, but the start of something. I’d fuse them together one day.
My feet bumped the ground and the debris in the air slowly fell. The fire winked out. The man in the bushes ran like hell.
“Someone should help him forget,” I said, glancing at his retreating figure. “He was too excited for his own good.”
I felt the others draw near me, but no one spoke. When I turned to them, Callie and Dizzy had their eyebrows up, as if they’d just asked a question.
Another wave of relief flooded me. “If you are thinking things, I thankfully can’t hear them.”
“I’m going to hate myself for saying this, but…not yet.” Callie adjusted her satchel. “You can’t hear them yet. But you will. We’ll work on that power to help you develop it. Then hopefully control it so you don’t do it all the time. I have some pretty stupid thoughts I’d rather keep to myself.”
“Me too,” Dizzy muttered.
Darius was staring at me with his hard face, but he didn’t speak.
“Right, then, one crisis averted. Now for the second.” I started toward the house. “We have to kill that demon before it can get to the underworld.”
“Do we know where the summoning site is yet?” Dizzy asked, hurrying to my side. “That’s probably where they’ll congregate to send the demon back.”
“We came here to find
information, Dizzy,” Callie said, tramping behind us.
“Oh yes, right.”
“Let’s hope there’s a clue in the mage’s house.” The spell from earlier was gone. The mages must’ve taken it down before they left. They had to get through it, too. “I wonder why the demon was randomly hanging out in the yard.”
“Following you, probably.” Darius reached the door first and went to grab the handle. He hesitated. “Would you like to kick this in, Reagan?”
“How thoughtful. But no. Let’s just go inside.”
He opened the door, having already unlocked it.
“Or maybe the demon already knew you would eventually find the mage in charge. It is hard to say.” Darius stepped out of the way so we could enter.
“If he got close enough to you in that ugly man’s body, he could have heard your thoughts,” Dizzy said. “Or my thoughts. Once that door is opened, are there any secrets anymore?”
“My mom came up with a way to block that,” I said to Dizzy as I entered the house. “I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”
“Oh good. Yes. Very clever, your mom.” Dizzy followed closely behind me.
I looked around, not sure where to start. “My only question is, can I actually kill the demon without losing myself?”
“You can. I know you can. When you’ve solved a problem once, that’s it. You have it.” Callie riffled through papers on the counter.
“But we still have all the mages to deal with,” I said.
“We’ll take care of the mages.” Callie pushed an envelope to the side. “I’m nearly positive I finally recruited the little witch. Her mother doesn’t monitor Penny’s texts and calls, thank God. With her power at our backs, those other mages don’t stand a chance.”
“She’s a mage, hon. An untrained mage.” Dizzy yanked two drawers out and dumped them on the ground. “You call her. I’ll help Reagan and Darius look through the house. I have an eye for picking things out of chaos. If there are clues here, we’ll find them.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
“I have a check stub,” Dizzy shouted. “He doesn’t make much at his job.”