Trial by Fire (Covencraft Book 1)

by Margarita Gakis

  Jesus, if she could just hang on long enough for Paris to get here. Surely someone had heard all the ruckus, or Callie and Henri would figure she should be back and would call him. She wasn’t above needing a rescue, she could admit that much and keep her individuality.

  The silver demon pulled and she shrieked. Holy God, her fingers were starting to slip as they cramped and popped. She just couldn’t gain enough leverage.

  “Are you sure?” Seth asked, crouching even closer, putting his face in front of her.

  She didn’t get the chance to curse at him before her hands gave out and she slid hard across the floor, being dragged mercilessly by the demon. Jade yelped, clawing at the ground, becoming more frantic in her movements, kicking, thrashing, twisting. She managed to break free for a moment and scramble to her feet only to feel arms wrap around her waist and pick her up off her feet and carry her backward toward the mirror. She was screaming, frantic, loud, wordless screams but she still couldn’t say the words Seth needed to hear. Even in all the chaos, she had this sense that if she agreed, if she said yes to him, it would somehow end up worse than this. Seth’s smile and his eyes were so much more horrifying than the faceless demon because Seth looked human but wasn’t.

  The silver, faceless demon may overpower her but Seth… Seth could outsmart her and she had no idea what she would be getting into.

  Her hands pinwheeled out, trying to grab onto something, anything. She heard an awful, sick, sucking sound behind her and then her hands collided with something and she realized it was the frame of the mirror. The demon had already stepped in and was trying to pull her in with him. She felt the mirror at her back, felt its resistance and remembered what Paris said about having an anchor on this side, something that was keeping her here. She thought it might be her secret, the one she would carry for life, Lily, but she couldn't be certain.

  Lily was dead.

  She grabbed at the edges with clawed hands, her fingers feeling stuck permanently in place. She kicked out with her legs and managed to find the outside of the mirror with them and wrapped her ankles around the frame.

  She felt pressure around her chest, under her ribs, demon-strong arms pulling at her, trying to yank her backward.

  “Possum, come now,” Seth said, standing in front of her. “Valiant effort, but one word and I can help you out here. Just say it. ‘Deal.’ That’s it. So easy. Everyone deals. I’ll keep you from crossing over, and I’ll even take care of him for you.” Seth jerked his head toward Matthew and Jade’s eyes flickered over.

  He was still on the floor - his shirt a charred mess, sticking to his burned flesh where her fire-spell had caught him. He was clutching the obelisk in his hands and…

  He was still spell-casting.

  There was another solid heave and she felt something cold and sharp pierce under her ribcage, stealing her breath. Pain radiated out from her body and she looked down and saw blood blossoming out from her shirt.

  “Or if he can’t get you all the way over, I suppose he can just take your heart like this,” Seth said easily with a shrug, staring at the red liquid pooling from where a silver prong had pierced her. “I still don’t think it will work. Either you’ll be dead or you’ll be powerless. I’m betting on dead.” He leaned in closer, his lips almost touching hers, so close that she had to go a bit cross-eyed to keep looking at him. She gasped in pain as a second spike started punching its way through her skin.

  “Say the word, possum. Seal our deal.”

  Jade turned her head and focused instead on Matthew. The squirrely HR stooge was clutching that obelisk like his life depended on it.

  Matthew who, according to Seth, was controlling the demon.

  She’d been fighting the wrong thing. Stop Matthew and she’d stop the demon. She’d been focused on the demon because it was horrific, it was big, it was powerful.

  But it was still just a tool. And Matthew was wielding it.

  Jade tried to conjure her fire but couldn’t square her focus. Another spike of pain shot through her and she shrieked. She tried to think of something else, of anything else she knew of her magic which didn’t require her full attention, because, holy God, her attention was on the unbelievable suffering directed at the middle of her chest. But she couldn’t think, she couldn’t focus, she just wanted Matthew to stop.

  Just stop what he was doing, just be incapacitated by something, anything that made him stop.

  Pain made her vision double and blur for a moment but then she focused on the gold of the chain, around Matthew’s neck. The obelisk swinging a bit as he clutched the chain, back and forth, back and forth. She felt like she had in the lab when Paris was testing her power, getting sleepy and dazed, watching it move back and forth, back and forth.

  Then it stopped and Matthew grabbed at it with his fingers and Jade pushed at him as hard as she could, pushed with all her power, thinking of what she wanted him to do, pushed so hard she felt something give a little in her brain and it hurt, like a blow to the head.

  “Oh, possum,” Seth breathed. “You are fun.”

  Matthew plunged the obelisk into his eye, blood spurting out spectacularly as he pressed it in deep and started screaming. He reared back, clawing at his face, shrieking.

  Jade dropped like a sack of bricks and she unceremoniously fell to the ground with a thud, pain radiating throughout her entire skeleton. She turned slightly and looked at the mirror behind her.

  It was solid glass, her reflection staring back her. She had blood running down from both her nostrils and a little bit from one of her ears. The bandage on her forehead was leaking vitae as well, trailing down her face. She was bruised, battered, her hair a mess, her cast broken a bit at the edges. She kicked out as hard as she could against the mirror and it star-cracked once before falling to the floor and breaking into pieces.

  Matthew was still shrieking behind her but she was functional enough to shoot a barb in his direction.

  “Oh, shut up you big baby. It’s your own fault,” she said as she slumped into a little pile of misery on the ground. She could hear pounding on the door to the room - loud, thunderous against the heavy oak of the door. And she thought she heard Callie yelling her name, maybe Henri too.

  Seth leaned over her, eyes bright and fond.

  I can’t do anymore, she thought. I got no more left today. Her brain felt heavy, thick - like she couldn’t get her thoughts to process correctly. Her vision started swimming at the edges, making Seth look strange and foreign.

  Or maybe it was just him. He seemed larger, leaner, more like an animal. She thought she could feel a tail curling around by her feet, swishing just out of her range of vision.

  Of course that could just be brain-damage talking, she thought darkly. She felt like she might vomit. Her breath hitched a bit on a sigh. Jade wanted to pass out. Being unconscious would be pretty nice right about now and then hopefully she would wake up on some pain-killers and all would be right with the world again. But she couldn’t allow herself to slip under with Seth still there, slinking around her like a snake.

  No. Stay awake.

  Seth clapped a tiny little golf clap and gave her a mock bow. “Very nice.” He brushed back some of the strands of hair that had come lose and she batted at his hand. He laughed. “I think we’ll be good friends.”

  She heard something in the general direction of the door give a loud groan and Seth looked up, past her toward the door. “That’ll be your friend,” he said, sneering a bit, “and his demon magic finally breaking that lock. Too bad he missed all the fun,” he signed dreamily and looked down at Jade and then over at Matthew who was moaning now, clutching his eye. Blood dripped red and bright from his fingers. “You do wonderful work.”

  He shimmered and disappeared before she could tell him to go fuck himself.

  She was a little disappointed about that, actually.

  The door burst open with a crack and she waited until she could make eye contact with Paris, be sure it was him and see him
coming toward her before she let the soporific pull tugging at her drag her down into oblivion.

  Chapter 16

  Jade’s first thought upon being dragged back up to consciousness was that she might be dead. She quickly discarded the idea when she heard a faint beeping sound. She doubted they had machines in the afterlife and cracked open one eye to peer from the small slit. She was back in the medical lab, lying on one of the incline beds. Even though the light was dim, she squinted against it as she opened both eyes. Her vision was hazy, the edges of everything she saw blurred, making things seem like they disappeared into nothingness at the fringes of their existence. Jade heard soft clicking noises and she rotated her head slightly. Paris sat in the hideous overstuffed chair, hunched over a laptop. He had a lamp directed at papers on the arm rest. As she watched, he bent over the papers, running his finger along lightly, and then made some notes with his laptop, then bent over the papers again. He paused for a moment to rotate his neck in a circle. His vertebrae made loud, cracking noises as they slid over one another. He checked his watch and went back to work. She watched him for five minutes before he tilted his head slightly, as if listening. He looked up slowly, his gaze meeting hers.

  “She wakes.”

  His voice was low and quiet, barely above a whisper. She opened her mouth to say ‘hi’ but the word got stuck in the dryness of her throat. She started to cough, but that made it worse and her eyes teared as she tried to clear the tickle that irritated her vocal chords. Paris stood and poured her a glass of water from a small nightstand. He placed the straw to her mouth and as soon as the cool liquid touched her parched lips and tongue, she thought she had never tasted anything so refreshing in her life. She finished the entire glass in three big gulps. By the time he refilled it and handed it back to her, she had managed to calm her coughing. Jade cleared her throat once more and took another sip.

  “Hi,” she finally got out.

  He handed her a tissue and she swiped at her eyes with it, clearing away the tears that her coughing spell had unearthed. He pulled his chair closer to the bed and sat down again.

  “How do you feel?” he asked solemnly.

  She coughed again, a dry, hacking sound with no real heft behind it. She swallowed hard around her now sore throat. “Stiff.” Jade finally answered as she tried to move her limbs and found her joints slightly swollen and unwieldy. She started through her usual body check but gave up as soon as she realized her fingertips were sore.

  If her fingertips were sore, for crying out loud, the rest of her must just be shit. Most of the pain seemed centered around her ribcage and she poked a little bit there, wincing and hearing the crinkle of bandages.

  However, she was feeling the pleasant haze of some good drugs. She felt like a warm terry cloth towel, fuzzy and soft.

  She remembered then. Things poking into her. Piercing. She shuddered and the heart monitor started beeping faster, betraying her. With a groan, she pulled the clip off her finger, noticing Paris wave away Dr. Gellar who came to check as soon as the machine didn’t register a pulse. He flicked off the machine quickly, leaving them in silence.

  “You were batted around quite a bit from what we could tell. Nothing broken, other than the wrist from before. Amazingly,” he added.

  “I have tough bones.”

  “Lucky for you,” Paris said.

  “Yeah. I feel really lucky,” she snorted.

  “Other than the stiffness, how are you doing?”

  She paused. “Not bad. Tired. I’ve a headache.” She rolled her neck and then gingerly touched her temple. “Feels fuzzy up here. My magic feels weird. Dull. Like an overused pencil.”

  “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that,” he said grimly, pulling the chair closer and sitting back down.

  “If you tell me I’m dying after all that I just went through, I will punch you in the head. With my cast.”

  “No, you’re not dying,” he replied with a slight smile and then sobered. “Your magic is different than everyone else’s. Or, rather, you are different than the rest of us.”

  She wanted to make some kind of joke, make light of situation but all she could think was, again. You’re different than everyone else again. She didn’t want to be different. She wanted to fit in somewhere. Finally.

  “You know you’re very powerful,” he continued, waiting for her to nod a bit, “but you weren’t born in a coven. You weren’t born a witch and apparently that’s a big factor in how your power works. I meant to talk to you about this sooner but-”

  She saw him clenching his fists on his lap and felt an uncharacteristic rush of sympathy for him. She could only blame the drugs. “We had a lot going on.” She offered him a way out.

  He nodded gratefully. “As it turns out, your brain is not entirely made for magic and using it, using a lot of it is… Hard. On your brain. On you. I’m sure Dr. Gellar can give you the specifics if you’d like but it’s more of a magic conversation than a medical one. You have to be careful how much magic you use. Especially at one time.”

  She thought about how violently she pushed at Matthew, how much she wanted him to stop what he was doing. She wanted it with her whole body, her entire being and she’d made him gouge his own eye out. She remembered the sharp pain in her own head afterward, knowing she’d just broken something in her brain.

  “Is it permanent? When I overuse magic? Did I give myself brain damage?” Jade asked, horrified.

  “No. Not that we can tell.”

  Jade laughed inappropriately. Not that they could tell. Fantastic. She was probably lucky she wasn’t a drooling idiot.

  “It’s all about learning your limits and staying within those limits,” he counseled solemnly. “I can help you with that. The coven can help you with that. If you agree.”

  Oh, right, she still had to make an official decision.

  She had to clear her throat a bit and she opened her mouth twice to speak before she could get it out. “I’d… I’d like that. I think. Um. To stay,” she stammered.

  Paris smiled at her and it was the first big smile she’d ever seen from him. Teeth, crinkled eyes and apple cheeks. He looked just like that picture she’d seen of him as a boy, with his mother - happy and open.

  “I’m glad, Jade. I’m very glad.”

  “You probably won’t be as glad when you get the bill for renovating the HR office,” she said dryly.

  She took another mouthful of water, swished it around in her mouth, unceremoniously spat it back in the cup and handed it to him. He took it without comment and set it back down on the small table.

  “Speaking of,” he said, resting his elbows on his knees, “can you tell me what happened?”

  She snorted. “Matthew didn’t confess all, sobbing and broken, like one of those cop shows?”

  Paris looked pensive. “He’s been an incoherent mess,” he finally said, his tone frank. “We tried talking to him, I tried talking to him but he keeps talking about his deal, and how he owes now and can’t pay and wants to know if we can protect him. That and he lost one eye and is… Distraught about it,” Paris continued diplomatically. “He’s not exactly a dependable witness.”

  “Can you protect him?” she asked, fiddling with the edge of her new, bright pink fiberglass cast.

  Part of her wanted to tell Paris that Matthew could rot for all she cared. When she thought about what he’d been trying to do to her - have some creature, some demon take her heart out, in the hopes that it would give him her magic, it was difficult to drum up sympathy for the guy.

  Even for making him gouge one of his own eyes out.

  “I don’t know,” Paris said honestly. “I know we have the demon wards, but from what I can understand of his raving, he’s got a deal. I don’t know what that means.” Paris paused, seemingly waiting for Jade to make eye contact with him again. “At the very least, I’ll be breaking his magic.”

  “You can do that? I mean, he’s not very strong?” she asked, remembering what Paris had
told her about breaking her own magic.

  Paris nodded grimly. “Yes. I can break Matthew’s magic. It’s probably why he wanted yours. He’s never been very powerful. I’m not even sure how he managed to wage a deal with a demon, frankly, or what his leverage was. It’s very odd.”

  She nodded a bit, uncertain what else she could say without starting to yell, throw the book at him! I don’t care how hard!

  “So, will you tell me what happened?”

  Jade tried to give him the ‘short version’ of what happened, starting with her arriving and seeing the obelisk necklace Matthew wore. Of course, it all deteriorated after that. Paris went stiff and tense when she mentioned Seth arriving and she had to endure a barrage of questions from him regarding exactly what Seth had said and that, yes, Jade was absolutely certain she didn’t get into a demon deal - not by words nor by implication nor by non-verbal assent.

  It was a little insulting, but since he seemed genuinely concerned for her safety, she tried not to bristle and answered his questions honestly and repeatedly. She explained that it had taken her some time - time in which she got spectacularly beaten up - but that she’d finally figured out it was Matthew she needed to stop, not the demon. She faltered a bit when she explained how she pushed Matthew with her mind, pushed him into mutilating himself. She couldn’t quite explain how she did it, and even though it saved her life and she wasn’t sorry for it, it was still a gruesome memory, burned into her retinas and grey matter.

  She finished by telling him about Seth, at the very end and his very clear and continuing interest in her. Jade looked him straight in the eye, knowing she must look like death warmed over but needing him to know how serious she was and how non-negotiable her plans were.

  “I know you’ve said that you don’t know people that deal in demon magic. Well, now you do. I’m going to learn. I’m going to be good at it. And you can’t stop me.” Jade’s voice didn’t waver or falter. She kept her gaze steady and calm even as Paris clenched his jaw a bit.

  He nodded. “I understand. I’ll… I’ll help you any way I can.”