Raven's Rise (World on Fire Book 3)

by Lincoln Cole

  As soon as she grasped the memory of laying strapped to the table as a little girl, she brought herself back to that time. The fear and weakness returned, just as sharp as ever. Panic flooded through her entire body, and she thrashed about, trying to break free.

  Haatim disappeared from view, but she could still feel his hand and his warmth. She clung to it like a beacon, using it to steady herself.

  The echo of Arthur remained there next to her table, though he looked less real now. As Surgat tried to break into the dream, the echo of Arthur weakened.

  She also weakened and didn’t have much time.

  The only other person in the room, the cult leader, looked a bald and disfigured man with scars on his face. Though he seemed out of focus right now, she remembered some of what he used to look like. Ugly and cruel, just seeing him over her brought back all her fear of him.

  “Calm,” Arthur said. “You need to stay calm.”

  She took deep and steadying breaths, fighting down the panic attack and bottling it away. It felt difficult, but Abigail managed to slow her heart rate and regain control over the situation.

  “It all happened here,” Arthur said. “Here, Surgat told you his true name.”

  “I don’t remember,” Abigail said once more, but that proved a lie, she realized.

  She hadn’t remembered any of this before today because she’d buried it in her subconscious. She had locked it away with that part of her identity that wanted to pretend like none of this had ever happened.

  Her life started the day Arthur rescued her. This just made the before of her existence. That had become the lie she told herself to pretend she had more strength than she did. No demonic ritual, no cult, nothing had happened before Arthur pulled her out of that hell where she got tortured and abused.

  Except, she knew, it had.

  A lot had come before Arthur.

  ***

  Abigail remembered the cult leader, distinctly, as a man who took great pleasure from hurting others. As she thought of him, his features came into sharp focus. He smelt terrible like rotten meat. Whenever they met, he barely spoke and always treated her with rough cruelty.

  He acted as the petty tyrant of the cult, demanding obedience and hurting his followers whenever they stepped out of line. Even then, he would make up reasons to punish them for his pleasure. Their obedience to him became complete.

  This man had brought her into this room and tied her to the table. He had whispered things to her, telling her it would be all right and that this would make her better. She had felt too terrified to say anything and simply gone along with it.

  He’d carried a knife, she recalled, but never touched her with it. She had thought, originally, that he would use it to murder her in some ritualistic fashion, but that proved wrong. It remained symbolic and meaningful but never got used to harm her in any way. The cult leader had held onto it lovingly.

  Then a startling realization hit her. Nida had used that same knife since she’d acquired it from the caves below Raven’s Peak. How had it gotten there? Had they planned for her to go to Raven’s Peak even so many years ago?

  The memory continued forward: the rest of the cultists had come filing in only after she got tied down. They hadn’t spoken, but rather, came into the room like ghosts.

  They surrounded her table, blocking out the rest of the area and practically suffocating her when they stood so close. The shadows of their hoods hid their faces, but she could remember their eyes: some filled with hate, others with lust, as they surveyed the little black girl strapped to the table before them. She had felt so scared in this moment that she had nearly blacked out.

  The memory struggled to consume her and bring her back to those feelings. But, now an adult, she no longer remained the helpless child strapped to this table. She had trained to fight. Had learned how to hunt down and kill demons.

  Instead of struggling against the memory, she let it wash over her. The thudding sound as the demon tried to break in continued, but sounded distant now, less clear. The echo of Arthur had gone, too, but she didn’t care: she no longer needed him because she had found the willingness to accept that this only made a part of her, and didn’t represent the whole.

  Arthur—the real Arthur—wouldn’t show up in the memory for a long time, and not until the worst parts had come to pass.

  The ritual began slowly. By the time the cultists stood chanting, the candles had burned down to almost nothing. Hours had passed with Abigail unable to move or get up from the table.

  She remembered almost humorously how badly she’d needed to pee, and how she’d focused on that pain to distract her from what happened around her. No breaks had occurred, and she’d felt afraid she would wet herself while strapped down.

  It left her exhausted, she recalled, feeling terrified for so long but with nothing happening. Her muscles tensed, and sweat coated her, yet everything remained still. She’d wondered if, maybe, this just gave another way to torture her.

  When they’d started chanting, however, everything had changed.

  ***

  The memory grew in intensity and power when the cultists chanted. This came close to that moment, that horrible moment that she dreaded more than anything else in the world.

  She squeezed Haatim’s hand for strength. They had called forth the demon, summoned it to this world with only one purpose in mind. She went back there now, fully immersed in that moment, and the experience felt the same as she’d had as a little girl.

  It built to a slow pressure inside her forehead, an aching headache that pulsed and throbbed and made her cry out in pain and disorientation. She broke out into a cold sweat as soon as the chanting started, and it made her sick to her stomach.

  She’d never remembered this happening, and she understood that this made the pivotal moment that she had blocked out. When she’d told Frieda and the Council about her time spent with The Ninth Circle, this had never come up. The headache had a strong sense to it of something else. Not human and like nothing she’d ever experienced.

  She could feel him inside the swell of pain. Surgat. The demonic presence wormed its way into her existence, filling her but waiting patiently for his moment. He didn’t possess her, not like she’d experienced in Raven’s Peak when the demon took complete control of her body and dominated her. No, this seemed more of a bonding, a gentle caress while he filtered in, meshing their identities. She had thought it would feel a struggle like she faced today as the demon tried to dominate and destroy her.

  Instead, the demon almost attempted to seduce her, like a predator might a young child. Only a little girl, she’d stood no chance at repelling him. The memory disgusted her, and her mind rebelled.

  “Focus,” the echo of Arthur said. “Focus your mind.”

  She did. Abigail didn’t want to remember this, didn’t want to believe that this had ever happened to her, but knew that it had. If she didn’t get what she came for out of this memory, then it would happen again, only this time she would find no way to survive it.

  The demon had slipped inside her, promising to protect and take care of her for her entire life. It promised that they would stay together forever, and that it could save her from the wretched life she’d had before. And she only had to say yes to their joining.

  It had asked for her to invite it in.

  Chapter 38

  Haatim stood over Abigail in the small room where he’d found her. It looked like an underground cavern lit by candlelight, though he could see no candles anywhere. The room remained empty except for himself, and Abigail lying on a large wooden table.

  She had to confront something inside her memories, but wherever she had gone, it proved somewhere that he could not go. He felt alone in this space, and it felt less real and tangible now that she had disappeared mentally.

  He had nothing to do except clutch her hand and pray that she would make it. Fear filled her wide-open eyes, and she saw nothing through them. Wherever she’d gone, the place brou
ght something that had truly terrified her.

  In this place, he didn’t belong. It had seemed as though he had stepped outside himself, and he could feel his spirit weakening while the seconds ticked past. He realized, as he waited alone in the room, that the longer he stayed out of his body, then the more difficult he would find it to go back.

  How long had he been here? Time didn’t make sense in this realm, and it felt like he hovered somewhere between Surgat’s hell and his world. To be honest, he didn’t know if he would manage to go back to his body now because he had no clue how to go about doing so.

  He remained stuck in the chaos that the demon and Abigail had created, and should leave right now and attempt to get back to the safety of his flesh.

  “Hurry up, Abigail,” he said, clenching his teeth. He couldn’t leave Abigail until he knew that she’d reached safety, but that didn’t mean he wanted her to take her time. His hand grew cold where she held it like her skin had become ice. It seemed almost as though she siphoned off his energy.

  A scary thought: he’d barely noticed it at first, but now it felt like a dull and cold ache in his hand, climbing his wrist and into his forearm. It further weakened him, draining what little strength he had left.

  He would tolerate the pain as long as Abigail needed him. To distract himself, he looked at the area around him. Not at the objects in the room, though, but rather at what lay past it. He found that when he focused, he could see through the walls and into the world around them.

  Off in the distance, warmth poured out of an area of pure reddish-light that could only be the portal. Surgat had opened it, and now, brought forth demons.

  Every few seconds, he could sense another presence in the area when something climbed out of hell and made its way to the surface. He could sense the portal as an object of pure evil, abstract and powerful.

  The breach let through demons, he realized, and a lot of them. They didn’t seem to have any sense that he stood here, flitting right past and disappearing as they entered his world. He could still sense them once they got up there, but it proved more difficult. Once they got outside this realm, they spread out, as though this made a funnel through which they entered the Earth realm.

  He hoped his friends remained all right. Dominick and Frieda fought up there alone, facing this horde. Haatim didn’t know how long they would manage to survive, and suspected that things would only get worse once Abigail had finished her fight with the demon.

  No matter which way that fight ended.

  He closed his eyes and thought about that energy portal. If he could block the breach, then he could stop the flood of demons and end whatever Surgat tried to do. It wouldn’t solve all their problems, but it would make a sizable step in the right direction.

  The only problem? … He had no idea how to go about closing the thing.

  Frieda had said something about knocking the energy off balance, but it sounded like a guess as much as anything else. She knew nothing about this realm, or his abilities, and wouldn’t prove of any help with this.

  Still, it made a good a guess and something he felt willing to try. At least, he would attempt it once Abigail had finished with whatever she did inside of that memory.

  ***

  The demon pressed in on Abigail, merging with her identity and becoming one inside her. She could feel every single part of it as though it happened right now, even though it had happened a long time ago. Surgat had entered her and lain dormant, waiting for the ritual to wake him and give him the strength to overcome the weak and fragile little girl.

  The moment had arrived. The moment when the demon had created the bond with her. It didn’t make for a one-way connection, and as Surgat stepped into her existence, so too, did she step into its. That was, after all, why they’d chosen a child; she felt too afraid to fight back and would prove easier for the demon to dominate.

  In her memory, she pushed past the demonic entity. It whispered in her mind, offering soothing words to calm her heart. She pushed back her hatred of the situation, her anger at herself for letting it in, and forced herself just to embrace the moment.

  Embrace the demon and listen to its words.

  The little girl that she had been, on the other hand, gave in. She listened to the soothing words and became unwilling to fight back, retreating into herself and cowering from the presence. The demon, triumphant, realized that it had dominated her, and that the time had come for the final part of its merge.

  That had become the part that hadn’t happened; the part when Arthur had shown up and freed her. The little girl she had been didn’t know that Arthur would come. She’d believed herself alone in the world, uncared for and abandoned.

  That little girl in the memory didn’t want to remember any of this and tried to push out the adult version of her. It attempted to push her away and stop the memory. She had hidden this for a reason, to protect and save her from the pain.

  But Abigail couldn’t stop now. She’d come so close, moments from truly understanding what had happened to her, and needed to see this through to the end, to experience every moment of it, no matter how horrible.

  Outside the memory, she clenched down on Haatim’s hand, using him to steady her. She waited, focusing on the moment, and listened.

  The demon whispered in her ear, offering lies and promised to calm her. Abigail ignored it all, listening as hard as she could for the one thing she truly needed.

  Finally, the demon spoke its name.

  ***

  Abigail’s eyes popped open, and she took a few steadying breaths. She still lay on the table, but no longer tied down. Haatim remained standing next to the table, though he looked considerably worse than when she’d gone into the memory. Other than him, the cult room appeared empty.

  “I have it,” she exclaimed. “I have the demon’s name.”

  “What? Really? That’s amazing! So, it’s over?”

  She hesitated. “Not quite.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She closed her eyes and focused, willing the table away. Her fear gone, she felt more in control of herself. When she opened her eyes, she stood next to Haatim. He had a shocked look on his face while he looked around, realizing that everything had changed all of a sudden.

  “That’s … disorienting.”

  “Sorry.”

  He stepped in and wrapped her in a tight hug, and just like when she’d touched his hand, warmth flowed out of him and into her. It filled her with confidence in herself and a belief that she could overcome this. They could all survive this.

  However, she checked her elation: this remained far from over, and they hadn’t won yet. The demon still lingered outside, banging against the walls and trying to break in, but she felt revitalized now that she had the demon’s true name.

  It had given the name to the little girl as a way to unite them, assuming that once the ritual completed, and he’d dominated her, then Surgat would no longer be exposed and vulnerable. It knew the deadliness if that name got used against it, and so had fought so hard to keep it from her.

  Now, though, she had it. That single piece of information would change the fight utterly.

  “The name gives me power over the demon,” Abigail said. “But I can’t use it to send Surgat home like I could with a normal demon.”

  “What? Why not?”

  “The demon is me, Haatim. The ritual The Ninth Circle performed on me bound us together, and I invited the demon in.”

  He shook his head. “So, just uninvite him.”

  “It isn’t that simple. Our fates have become intertwined. When Surgat returns to hell, I go with him.”

  “So, what do we do?”

  “I need to confront the demon. I have a weapon now, which gives me a chance, but it won’t prove easy and brings no guarantee that I can do this. If I lose …”

  “What?” Haatim paled.

  “If I can’t win the fight, then I have to use the name to kill him.”

  “But you just
said that will kill you, too.”

  Abigail didn’t reply.

  “No.” He shook his head. “No, I won’t allow you to do that. I just got you back for like the fiftieth time. I shan’t let you go.”

  “I don’t intend to lose,” she said. “But I won’t let him stay in control and use me to hurt more people.”

  He stayed silent for a moment, and then nodded. “How can I help?”

  “You have already. You helped me get his name, and it gives me a chance I would never have had otherwise. I have to do this on my own, though. You won’t stand a chance against Surgat.”

  “What if you tell me his name, too? I can help.”

  “It doesn’t work like that. The name is more like a feeling. An idea. It isn’t something I can repeat aloud. Just knowing it gives me power, but I can’t pass it on.”

  Haatim hesitated, and then said, “I can still help.”

  “I won’t risk losing you. You should go back and find the others. Help them, and you’ll help me, too.”

  “No.” Again, he shook his head. “I love you. I refuse to leave you.”

  Abigail stepped forward, wrapped Haatim in a tight hug, and pulled him close. “I know.”

  She forced the memory away, pushing outside of it and heading straight for Surgat. She did it suddenly, forcing herself away and blocking him from following her.

  She left Haatim there in the memory, standing in the empty room, and headed off to confront Surgat.

  ***

  One second, Abigail stood there, and the next, she had gone. Just gone. Haatim had no idea where she went, or how, and now he stood alone in the empty underground room. The walls around him disintegrated, lost their partial reality, now that Abigail had left behind the memory.

  Mentally, he reached out, scanning for her in the surrounding area, but couldn’t find her. She had gone somewhere else, another realm perhaps, to fight Surgat. He had no idea how even to start searching.

  Nor, he realized, did he even have the strength left to make the effort. He felt exhausted, and doing even the smallest things now seemed overwhelming. Abigail had gone to face the demon and intended to do it alone.