“Very nice,” he said. “And you use these to . . .?”
“Incapacitate demons, of course,” she said. “Sometimes you need a little time to maneuver, you know?”
“Yeah, I know. But the question is, how do you know? And exactly why is it that you think you’re my . . . sister?”
Loreli picked up a pinch of blue powder and tossed it above a candle. A little blue cloud formed, and within it, he could see tiny bolts of lightning.
“It’s not complicated, Will. I’m just like you. The Dark Lord is my father, too.”
Bang. There it was. And she said it so casually, when he still had trouble even thinking it.
Will thought back to watching her move around. He knew that she was different. But he also knew that she could be a demon pulling some elaborate ruse. Narrowing his eyes, he laid a couple of moves on her, attempting some half-speed hand chops that a normal human being would never be able to block—but a demon, or half-demon, would. Loreli blocked his chops easily.
“I see you don’t believe me. You want to test me. Okay.”
Loreli did a standing backflip, grabbed an overhead pipe, and kicked Will across the room.
He flew through the air and wham!—slammed into the far wall, breaking the plaster. Sebastian yelped and zipped out from behind a chair.
But Will wasn’t finished. He leapt up and, time-bending, sprang across the room and flew at Loreli, tackling her. She squirmed out of his grasp quickly, rolled to her left, and kicked him in the back. When he hit the wall it knocked a beaker from a shelf. The beaker hit the floor and shattered, spilling yellow liquid on some ants, which started to grow larger and glow and pulsate.
“Oooookay! Now look what you’ve done,” said Loreli. She swept the glowing ants into a bottle, sealed it, and then turned to Will. “Do you mind if we take this outside?”
The backyard was dominated by four towering pines, their graceful tops swaying in the wind. One of the trees had a couple of swings hanging from a branch. A light rain had begun to fall. Coming out through the back door, Loreli turned and issued a simple challenge: “See if you can catch me, brother.”
In a flash she was up the tree, climbing like a leopard. Will jumped after her, and the chase was on. She moved like lightning, and as Will clawed his way to the top he saw that she’d already leapt to another, taller tree. As he turned, she sprang down and kicked his shoulders, knocking him backward. He fell to the ground and felt a sharp pain as the air huffed out of his lungs. He gasped for a moment, watching in awe as up above Loreli jumped from tree to tree, swinging. Her speed and agility were astonishing. Catching his breath, Will jumped up and scrambled up the tree. He gave her a bit of her own medicine as he anticipated her next jump and vaulted ahead of her. They fought hand to hand, not with lethal blows, just showing off their moves. She’s good, thought Will. Then wham! He took one in the face. Okay, she’s better than good, he thought. She’s great.
Will was flummoxed. She was quite possibly his sister, and most definitely a girl, so he wasn’t quite sure just how to treat her in a fight like this. While he was considering this, she kicked him off the top of the tree, and as he fell he hit four branches, cracking through two and bouncing off the others, finally righting himself just as she landed next to him after swooping down like Batgirl or something. She seemed to love sparring with him and fought with a wry smile on her face, like a fierce ninja with wild green eyes.
He was staring at her when she caught him with a lightning-fast kick to the side of his head. It was a hard enough hit that he felt the red anger surging inside him. He dove at her, but she’d anticipated his move and leapt straight up onto the next branch.
“Getting a little pissed off?” she taunted.
She broke off the branch next to her and swung down, and as Will ducked she dropped past him and did a mid-air twist, kicking him again before landing on the branch below.
He kneecap was throbbing. Still seeing red, he jumped down after her, swinging twice. She ducked both, and his fists slammed into the trunk of the tree. She made a clucking sound and laughed, and the skirmish continued. Will’s red curtain lifted, and he finally began to get the best of her, feinting left and high, then punching her low and kicking her off a branch. She fell backward and he time-bent to the max and swooped down and caught her. As he put her down, she exhaled.
“Thanks for catching me, bro. You saved me a world of pain. I’d like to return the favor, but—” She faked a punch and he fell for it, and she caught him on the chin with her elbow, laying him out. He blinked up at her and she extended a helping hand.
“Okay, I get it,” he said, accepting it. “You’re amazing.”
“You threw down some pretty cool moves yourself. But you’re a hothead. You let your anger take over sometimes.”
That struck a chord with Will, but he didn’t want to acknowledge it so he stared off into the distance.
“Did I hit a nerve?” Loreli asked.
When Will didn’t answer, she pressed him.
“Do you ever wonder about stuff? Like . . . since you’re half human and half . . . him, which half is really running the show?”
Will didn’t want to admit that that very question had been tormenting him for weeks, ever since the battle in Mount St. Emory. When he was younger, he knew he had an amazing capacity for violent rage but he had no idea where it came from. After he found out he was the son of the Dark Lord, it all made sense. But knowing where it came from didn’t solve his problems. Every time he felt that red curtain or rage descend over his mind, he worried that someday it might take over entirely.
“Why are you trying to make me talk about this?” he said. He was angry now, and it showed.
“Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe because I’m your sister and I haven’t had anybody to talk to about this stuff before?”
She suddenly looked vulnerable, like she had feelings, too. Will softened.
“Okay, I get it. Yeah, I wonder about my dark side. How about you?”
She didn’t hesitate, but just let it right out. “Not a day goes by that I don’t think about who I am and what I am and where I really belong.”
They stood in contemplative silence for a few moments, and then Loreli went in to get some ice packs and drinks. Will sat on one of the swings. A moment later she was back with the packs and cokes, and they drank sitting on the swings while they iced their bruises. The trees provided a thick canopy so they were out of the rain. Will noticed a nasty scrape on her neck and pulled out a small healing patch.
“Try this,” he said.
“What is it?” she said, pulling back.
“Just a healing patch.” When she just eyed it warily, he said, “Fine. Bleed, scar, maybe get an infection, see if I care.”
She accepted the patch.
“So, after that little game in the trees, I think we’ve safely established that you’re not your average female homo sapien,” Will said while she was putting it on her neck.
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” she said.
Loreli finished her coke and crumpled the can in her fist, crushing it like an NFL linebacker. Then she looked at him for a minute. “You wanted to know about the drawing?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Okay. I was there, in art class, in front of the easel, and my hand just . . . started moving. I sort of blacked out standing there. The next thing I knew, you were standing right beside me, freaking out.”
“That’s because that image, that exact same image, the one you drew, with him lying on that altar . . . it was in a dream I had. It looked like he was dead.”
“I had the same dream. He was just lying there, not moving.”
They thought about this for a moment. Then Loreli spoke. “But he’s not dead, is he?”
“No.” Will felt the pain welling up inside him. “My mother’s in a coma,” he told her. “His . . . spirit came and took her. Not her body, but what’s left of her mind, her consciousness. I’m going to find h
im and I’m going to kill him and bring back my mother.”
“Finding and killing the Dark Lord isn’t going to be easy.”
Will’s eyes flashed with anger. “Nothing in my life has been easy.” He took a deep breath, calming himself. “Just like nothing in yours has been, probably. Look, if you really are my sister, meaning you have . . . him as your father, then you gotta tell me . . . how did it happen?”
“Pushy,” she said, but she was smiling a little bit.
“I’m going to get more than pushy if you don’t start laying it out for me.”
“I’ll tell you on two conditions,” she said. “First, you must swear on your blood never to reveal my secret to anyone. And that means anyone. Best friends, girlfriends, parents, whatever. What I tell you—and what I’ve already told you—remains a secret, guaranteed. I want a lock on this.”
“You’re in no position to make demands,” said Will.
“I’m in the perfect position to make demands,” she said. “I can reach into my pocket and pull out an orb and blow you up any time I want to. Plus, I’m the one with the information you want to know.”
Will shook his head. “Okay, fine, relax. Secrecy guaranteed.”
“Swear on your blood?”
“I swear on my blood. It’s a lock.”
“Good. Now for the second condition. You gotta go first. You have to tell me about how it happened with you.”
Will thought for a long time, but couldn’t come up with any downside to being honest with her. And so he told Loreli all about how, at the ripe old age of eight, he’d had a rite of passage like no other: how his father Edward had shown him an ancient book and instructed him not to open it until he turned thirteen. And how that same fateful night the Dark Lord had arrived in a violent storm and kidnapped his father and burned his house down. He told her how, when he turned thirteen, he decoded the ancient book and learned that it was his fate to be a Demon Hunter, and how he’d spent years tracking the Dark Lord from school to school, only to finally be led into the beast’s trap for a fateful ceremony in the bowels of Mount St. Emory. It was there, in the demon world’s sacred underground cathedral, that he’d learned that the Dark Lord was his father and that he intended for Will to rule the underworld by his side.
Loreli listened as he told the whole story, nodding occasionally in sympathy. He’d had an amazing and painful life. When he was finished, she spoke softly, reverently.
“I’m sorry he killed your dad, Will. I mean, your adoptive dad. But what you did down in that cavern is already a legend. I mean, that’s how I found out about you. When you put the squeeze on them, demons sometimes talk. And every demon on Earth and beyond knows how you turned the Dark Lord down, how his own son not only shunned him, but defeated him in battle. I didn’t really believe it until I heard you tell the story just now. What you did down there . . . it was amazing.”
“It was my only choice.”
“Don’t be modest. It wasn’t your only choice. You could have gone over to the dark side and ruled a kingdom. It was a difficult choice. But I would have made the same one.”
A few minutes of silence passed as they watched the misty rain drifting down out of the sky and listened to it pattering as it hit the clogged gutters. Loreli sighed, then pushed off with her feet and swung.
“At least you had a father, even though he wasn’t your blood. Me, I never had anything like that. All I’ve ever had is my mom, and, as you saw, she didn’t fare too well from going through what she went through and having me. She turned to the bottle a long time ago, and I can’t say that I blame her. She needs to be medicated, one way or another.”
“How did she . . .” Will’s voice trailed off. But Loreli knew what he was asking.
“Her mom, my grandma, grew up poor as dirt in the hills of Mississippi. The men were moonshiners, and when Grandpa got killed in a feud, there just wasn’t any way out of those hills except for one. When my mom came of age, Grandma took her down to New Orleans and shopped her around. She took her from brothel to brothel, and then sold her to the highest bidder. That was all they knew; there wasn’t any other way. At least, that’s the way the family used to tell it when they were alive. So my mom worked as a ‘lady of pleasure’—that’s the polite way of saying it—and sent money home whenever she could. Grandma cried every night, but the family had food.
“While the other ‘working’ girls spent their earnings on clothes and jewelry and Southern Comfort, my mom saved all of hers. She was going to quit, run away back home. In fact, the dark deed happened the very night that she was going to give up the life.”
Will looked at Loreli, and for a moment he didn’t see the kickass femme warrior but a young Southern girl who’d suffered a world of hurt. She continued.
“That night, the Prince of Darkness came to the house of ill repute near Bourbon Street, looked over every single girl, and chose Mom. Bought and paid for her for the entire evening, and then did what he wanted to do. Mom knew he wasn’t an ordinary man, and afterward she was sick inside—not just in her stomach, but in her soul. When she found out she was pregnant, she went for an abortion, but the Dark Lord showed up at the clinic in the form of a mad bomber. As the building burst into flames, Mom took it as a sign that she should reconsider the procedure. She went home to the hills and Grandma, and suffered through a long and painful pregnancy. Finally, on Halloween night, she gave birth to me. The Dark Lord must have been watching, and I guess he wanted a boy, because the skies opened like crazy that night and the rain washed our entire hillside clean away. It was a miracle that we walked away with our lives.”
“I’m sorry,” Will said
“Sorry?”
“It’s a hell of a life, if you’ll pardon the pun.”
“It’s better than no life.”
Will nodded thoughtfully. He was inclined to agree with her, except for the fact that being half demon and having pledged his life to destroying evil and exacting revenge on his biological father—who just happened to be the Devil—kind of put a damper on the whole “happiness” thing. It was a fact that had been hitting him harder and harder lately, between what happened to his mother and knowing he had to send Natalie away. Happiness? That wasn’t part of Will Hunter’s destiny. There was only one moment when he could picture himself happy: the moment when he was driving a stake through the Dark Lord’s heart.
He asked Loreli, “All the chemistry stuff you do—”
“Alchemy,” she said.
“. . . how did you learn it?”
“I guess I was just born with it. When other little girls were playing with Barbies and Beanie Babies, I was mixing stuff up in the basement. I once made a bomb out of Dr Pepper and blew a hole in Mindy Carpetta’s leg. She was my best friend. Well, she was, until that little incident.”
A tiny smile crept onto Will’s face but didn’t linger.
Loreli continued. “Anyway, I’m kind of a prodigious reader, and I just have this unreal capacity for retention, for learning stuff. When I was eight, some brainless zombie—a demon wannabe, you know—somehow found out about my lineage and started harassing me. He’d crawl out of his grave every night at midnight and come looking for me. He’d claw his way up the cottonwood tree next to our house and stare in at me through my window and whisper his stupid curses, thinking he was cool because he was one of the undead. Any other eight-year-old girl would have screamed her lungs out, but me? I was never afraid of stuff like ghosts and zombies and monsters under the bed and all that. I guess being half demon helps.
“Anyway, I got tired of his nocturnal visits, so one night I slipped out and followed him back to his grave just before sunrise. Once I knew where he was buried, I built these little bombs made out of bleach and gasoline and some other stuff. Then I went into the cemetery one night—this wasn’t here, this was when we lived in Callahan County in Texas—and when he woke up and started crawling out of his grave, I let him have it. That zombie lit up like a roman candle and screeched like a
skinned cat, and as I watched him, I felt such a powerful sense of purpose, such satisfaction, knowing I’d ridden the earth of an evil being. It was a rush, let me tell you, and right there and then I knew I’d found my calling. I’ve spent most of my life since learning my . . . trade.”
“From what I’ve seen, you’ve learned it well.”
“Thanks. One of these days my skills are going to help me fulfill my ultimate quest.”
“And what’s your ultimate quest?” asked Will.
Loreli’s eyes flashed with anger. “To kill the beast who raped my mom, rejected me, and then left us both to die. I’m going to kill the Dark Lord.”
Will nodded. “Well, just in case you don’t already have enough motivation, there is one other thing,” he said.
“What’s that?”
“He might have a sword.”
“So? That’s no big deal.”
“Yeah, well . . . it might not be just some ordinary sword. It might be the Sword of Armageddon.”
“That doesn’t sound good.”
“Yeah, I didn’t think so either.”
They kept talking through the night, exchanging stories of their bizarre childhoods and troubling teenage years. They were outcasts, kids who’d missed out on so many simple joys because they’d been chosen by the gods of fate to lead different lives and embrace extraordinary destinies. Like Will, Loreli had been a loner. After Mindy, she’d never had another best friend. She’d never had a boyfriend, never been to a school dance. She’d once belonged to a science club, but because of her phenomenal abilities she was envied and shunned by her peers. So hers had been a lonely existence, living with a shell of a mother. She hadn’t had the benefit of an ancient book to guide her, but she’d evolved into something of a demon hunter herself, and had spent the better part of her life searching for the Prince of Darkness. She had to admit that much of her life had been downright painful and lonely. But she was determined.
Will, too, shared his pain of being a perpetual outsider, and how many nights he’d lain awake scheming of revenge on the black creature who had taken his father. And now that same creature had his mother’s consciousness held captive. He was going to defeat him. He didn’t yet know how, but he had some ideas. When they were done talking, Will gazed at his half-sister, and their eyes held for a long, long time. He could see the pain behind her eyes, the years of suffering. He decided that their meeting was no accident, that it must be part of a larger plan, part of the universe unfolding. Will reached out his hand. Loreli took it and squeezed.
The Rising Page 16