Old Beginnings (The Forgotten Slayer Book 1)

by Alix Marsh

  Ice sent him a desperate look.

  A massive tree speared up in the centre of the square, its roots pushing through to crack the paving. The lowest branch was about ten feet above their reach. The shoddy picnic table bolted to the ground in one corner wasn’t much help either.

  They moved to stand behind the table anyway; anything was better than nothing.

  “What did you mean by Demon Static?” Flynn said.

  “Static. The flickering.” Ice slid her swich from her boot. Was her hand shaking? “Sometimes the weaker demons can’t contain their essence properly, it leaks out.”

  “But that was a man.”

  “A human shell.” Her voice was shaking now as well. “There’s nothing left after the demon takes possession. The man is gone.”

  Flynn clenched his fists at his side. This couldn’t be happening. “Are you sure?”

  “Of course I’m not sure!”

  “There’s not supposed to be demons here.”

  “I know!” She pushed a button on her phone and put it to her ear again. Her other hand was locked over the hilt of her swich. “Come on, Charlie. Come on… Charlie! Where are you?”

  Flynn’s hands felt bare. He was never leaving his room again without his swich.

  “We don’t have five minutes!”

  “We’re trapped…”

  “There’s an archway, first opening on your left…”

  “Your left, no, no, your right, the first opening in the wall on your right…”

  “I’m not panicking…”

  “Charlie, you have to—” Ice froze.

  The man had appeared at the top of the steps, the bluish energy flickering over his face and hands, and Flynn knew, he just knew, Ice was right and there was a demon staring at him.

  “Bunny in a hole. Bunny in a hole. One, two, three, bunny in a hole,” the demon chanted as he took a step toward them, then another. “Bunny in a hole. There’s the bunny. Where’s the bunny? One, two, three, bunny in a hole. Bunny in a hole…”

  “First chance we get,” Flynn said under his breath, “run for the steps.”

  “He sounds whacked,” Ice said. The demon was still chanting away. “Maybe he doesn’t—” She broke off as the demon raised a hand and she screamed, “Flynn!” and shoved him one way while she dived the other.

  Flynn managed to put his hands out in time to cushion his fall. He rolled over and back onto his feet in an instance. A burnt, jagged line split the picnic table in half, exactly where Flynn had been standing. Whatever weapon the demon had used, there’d been enough heat to scorch the stones of the wall behind the table.

  The demon had taken a few more steps closer and he’d changed his tune. “Bunnies want to play. Denny didn’t think. Bunnies want to play.” He raised his arm again and this time Flynn threw himself on the ground, behind what was left of the table.

  Ice was still down there, wide-eyed and ashen.

  A blast of air hit the wall to his side and sizzled.

  “What was that?” Flynn hissed, but he didn’t wait for an answer. What did it matter? If they got in the path of it, they were dead.

  “Master likes to play. Treats to play.” The voice came closer and closer. “Treats for games. Denny didn’t think.”

  “Run.” Flynn flapped his hands at her, motioning Ice to edge around her side of the table. “Go. Don’t stop. Don’t look back.” Don’t think. No other option. The table’s no use.

  Ice met his eyes.

  “I’m right behind you,” Flynn said urgently. First or last was an equal risk. The demon would be caught off guard or he’d be ready to zap. Doing nothing wasn’t a risk; it was certain death.

  Ice took off and Flynn was right there, on her heels. They just had to dash straight down along the wall— Something hooked his left shoulder, spinning him around, his back rammed flat against the wall, and he was pinned there. He couldn’t see what was doing it. What held him there?

  The demon was walking toward him, grinning a crazy, demonic, wide-mouthed grin. Energy crackled and sparked between the two rows of his teeth as he came to stand in front of Flynn. His arms reached out to Flynn, but still, not touching… Flynn’s eyes flashed to the table, the two halves sagging away from each other, and right there and then, uselessly bound by invisible chains, he understood just how bad his situation was. The demon didn’t have a weapon. He didn’t need one.

  Ice hadn’t gone much further before she realised he was no longer on her heels. She jerked to a stop.

  “Go,” Flynn croaked. “Ice, come on, get out—” The invisible chains dropped from his limbs. He could move! The next moment, something punched him in the gut.

  Not a normal punch. It felt like he’d taken a direct hit from a wrecking ball. He doubled over, gasping for air. He needed to move, to get down… He staggered sideways, lifted his head, and caught the flash of a blade dicing the air. Ice! But she’d missed, her swich skittering over the paving near the demon’s feet.

  “Busy, busy, busy.” The demon turned to her. “Can’t you see? Denny busy.” He flicked his hand at Ice and that invisible force tossed her in the air.

  She went down with a scream.

  “Busy, busy, busy.” The demon gave her his back, as if he were done with her, and cocked his head at Flynn. “Denny tired of playing.”

  The demon’s hands were moving, conducting a silent symphony, and with each beat, Flynn rose a little higher. Two feet, three feet, four, five feet above the ground. Flynn hit out and kicked, but there was nothing to fight.

  Ice was pulling herself up, slowly, but she could do it. She had to. There was nothing between her and the exit.

  Between that second Flynn had taken to reassure himself and the next, he plummeted from the sky. Not free-fall; it felt as if he’d been shot downward like an arrow, smashing into the stone below. Pain stabbed his calf, cracked over his knee and shattered all the way up his thigh. A pain like he’d never known before, never could have imagined. He had to get up. He had to move. His leg was splayed at an awkward angle… He pushed up on his elbows, pushed up onto his good knee, and it felt as if all he was doing was pushing into pain, and more pain— Another strike clipped his shoulder, flinging him back, slapping his arm and hand against the wall with a crushing force. Before his body could even register the aftermath, yet another blow came, this one ripping into his ribcage. A ball of fire exploded inside his chest, and it was too much.

  His head hung low, he crouched forward with his crippled body, an arm reaching out—and finding solid ground—to steady the shaking. His mind blanked in and out of focus as the pain spread across his chest in a spider web of pure agony.

  Tears blurred his eyes.

  He didn’t want to go like this.

  He wouldn’t cry.

  That would not be the last thing he ever did.

  But the tears came anyway.

  He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t think. His life didn’t flash before his eyes. There were no last minute regrets. There wasn’t space for any of that with the scalding pain crammed into every corner of his head and body.

  And then, even as the blackness washed over him, he found a bit of space. Enough to inch his head up, blink through his blurry vision. Just enough space to watch Ice run for safety, to know she’d be okay.

  She wasn’t.

  She wasn’t running, she wasn’t even crawling, for safety.

  Ice was running up to the demon from behind, flinging herself onto his back, locking her arms around his throat, and—

  And Flynn ran out of space.

  HE WASN’T LYING FLAT on his back. Someone must have propped me up against the wall. And with that thought, everything came rushing back through a groggy filter. The demon! Ice! The pain… Where was the pain?

  He pushed his eyes open, which felt like a monumental effort (why were his eyelids so heavy?), and he wasn’t looking into the fading, dull blue of his last ever day. His gaze travelled across the glossy white wall, over the trolley with a blee
ping machine on it, to the armchair with Jack draped all over it—Jack! And Ice, standing by the window, staring outside.

  “Your arm,” he said, his mind sharpening as he saw the cast fitted from just below her shoulder.

  She spun about. “You’re awake!”

  “Of course he’s awake,” Jack drawled, shifting slightly so he was less draped and more upright. “I told you he’d be just fine.” He grinned at Flynn. “And you’re one to talk about Ice’s arm. Have you seen yourself lately?”

  Flynn tried to shuffle into a better sitting position as he brought his gaze back to himself, but he seemed to be stuck. It didn’t take long to figure out the problem. His one leg, from the top of his thigh and all the way down to his ankle, was encased in something that resembled shiny aluminium. So was his left arm, and his hand, the metal wrapped around each individual finger. He was also wearing some type of breastplate that sheathed his entire torso. Each section of metal casing had a seam of tiny bolts and was attached by a series of arms and levers to a framework he only now noticed on the other side of his bed.

  “It looks worse than it is,” Ice said, coming to sit at the end of his bed. “They use this contraption when people have shattered too many bones.”

  Flynn groaned. “My mom is going to kill me.”

  “Your mom need never know,” Jack said.

  Ice gave him an eager smile. “My cast comes off tomorrow and they said you might be ready to be taken out of that this afternoon.”

  “How long was I out for?”

  “Two whole days!” Ice exclaimed.

  “Only two days?” Flynn said doubtfully.

  “Slayers heal very quickly,” Ice said, nodding. “Don’t worry, you didn’t shatter any bones, Flynn, you only broke a couple. And cracked your ribs. But you’re healing quicker than anyone’s ever seen, and these are slayer doctors, so they’re used to that. Apparently your bones had already started knitting together when you got here…That’s why they used the aluminium rack, there wasn’t time to wait for the plaster to set.”

  “The doctors said that’s why you were out for two days,” Jack added. “That slayers get really tired when they go through rapid healing, and with the rate your body was healing, your brain actually shut down and you went into a deep sleep. Which,” he said to Ice, “is not the same as a coma.”

  “Deep sleep is a coma.”

  Flynn looked around. “Where are we?”

  “The SSSS infirmary. You and Ice were airlifted here straight from Parson’s Corner.”

  “I was so worried.” Ice leaned forward, reached with a tentative hand, but couldn’t seem to find a safe place for that reassuring touch. “I thought you were…”

  Dead.

  Flynn’s eyes met hers. “You saved my life.”

  “Don’t be silly!” She pulled back. “Charlie killed the demon. I barely managed to irritate him a bit.”

  “You did far more than that.”

  “I wish I had.” She jumped off the bed suddenly and turned to Jack. “You were right. The strength of our powers do matter.”

  “No,” Jack said at once. “I wasn’t right, Ice. I’ve been wanting to tell you.”

  “I was completely useless out there,” she insisted. “If Charlie had arrived even a second later—”

  “He only arrived in time because you distracted the demon long enough. You should have seen her,” Flynn said to Jack. “I thought the demon was going to finish me, and then Ice actually jumped onto his back, attacking him like some fierce warrior.”

  “I was scared silly,” she said.

  “Of course you were,” Flynn told her. “That’s what makes what you did so brave.”

  “I should have done more.” Ice took to pacing a short line beside the window, not interested in listening to them. “I would have been able to do more if I wasn’t so weak.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “You cannot be serious.”

  She stopped her pacing. “Want to know about my Surge?”

  Both Flynn and Jack shook their heads furiously, but she still went on, “A tingling. The slightest tingling in my fingers,” she spat out. “I mean, I saw the Shadow demon, I really did, but for a long time I wasn’t sure I’d have enough power for that. If I’m ever allowed into the field…” Her sad gaze slid to Flynn and lingered. “The slayers depending on me might not get so lucky.”

  “I was lucky.” Flynn tried to pull himself up, but again, he couldn’t. The system of levers didn’t give an ounce. “I was lucky to have you there with me, Ice. That demon would have zapped me right at the start if you hadn’t pushed me out of the way. I didn’t even know he could do that. We’re not warriors. Yet. We’re not trained slayers. But you made up for that with your gut, and maybe what you read out of a book,” he added hastily as she opened her mouth to object, “but that’s more than Jack and I have bothered to do, and it helped. It saved my life. And you were much, much braver than me.”

  “Braver than I would have been,” Jack agreed. “I nearly wet myself in the Bunker that day… Well, if we’re being honest, that night as well when you took us down there.”

  Ice had grown silent. She wanted to believe them, to believe in herself as she’d always done. Flynn could see the emotions struggling on her face.

  “My Surge was very different from yours,” he said, looking from her to Jack.

  “You don’t have to tell us,” Ice said.

  “I want to.” He considered playing it down, but Ice deserved the truth. She deserved more credit than she was giving herself. So he told them everything, from the stranger who’d accosted him to the white heat that had ripped through him, scorching him from the inside out. He even told them briefly about the monstrous creature.

  “I thought I’d been struck by lightning,” he said to Jack, “like that slayer you told me about, but if it had been a proper lightning bolt, I would have been dead.”

  “Do you know what this means?” Jack said, his eyes shining with awe.

  “No.”

  “No, neither do I,” he admitted. “But no one’s Surged like that in, well, forever.”

  “Only the really early slayers,” Ice said.

  Flynn gave them a wary look. “You don’t think I’m making this up?”

  “You wouldn’t lie,” Ice said. “Not about this.”

  “Not to us,” Jack said firmly.

  “You’re not to say anything to anyone,” Flynn told them. “I’m already a freak—”

  “This isn’t freaky,” Jack said. “This is bleedin’ brilliant!”

  “Please…?” Flynn looked from Jack to Ice, getting a nod from each of them.

  “I wish we knew who that man was,” Ice said. “You must have some awesome slayers in your family tree, Flynn.”

  There was one way to find out. The Book of Zeus. If he could figure out a way to get his hands on it. But that wasn’t going to happen anytime soon and Flynn still had his point to make. “It didn’t make a bit of difference when we came up against the demon, did it?” He raised a brow at Ice. “Which one of us fared better?”

  “That demon wasn’t interested in me,” she protested. “He was totally focused on you.”

  “Or I was just slower getting out of his way.”

  “No, there was something weird there. It was as if…as if he’d come after you.”

  “I don’t know about that, but if it’s true, then I’m just glad he was after me and not you, or you’d be dead. I’d have tried to help, I would, but I’d never have gotten my head straight quick enough to save you. Ice, if I ever have to face a demon again, I’d rather have you at my side than myself…” He laughed. “That didn’t make any sense, but you know what I mean.”

  Ice looked at him for a long time, and then the struggle slowly cleared from her face. She gave him a small smile. “Thank you.”

  “I’m only saying it like I see it.”

  Jack rolled his eyes at them, but left them to their soppiness until Mr. Swan, the
last person Flynn was expecting to see here, entered the room.

  Mr. Swan’s terse smile swept over Jack and Ice and came to a rest on Flynn. “I’d ask how you’re doing, but the hospital’s buzzing with the extraordinary speed of your recovery.”

  “What does it mean, Sir?” asked Jack.

  “It means,” Mr. Swan said softly, “that Flynn is a remarkable young slayer.” His gaze moved from Flynn to Ice. “As are you, Icilia. From what Charlie’s been telling me, you showed remarkable courage and strength of character on Sunday. I’m incredibly proud of you.”

  The grin that cracked Ice’s face almost reached her ears.

  Just then, a doctor popped his head inside the room to speak to Mr. Swan.

  Jack took the opportunity to mutter, if somewhat good-naturedly, “What am I? Chopped liver?”

  Ice turned her grin on him. “You’re the best friend in the whole world, Jack Davendish. Do you know?” she said to Flynn, “He made Mrs. Avery drive him all the way up here as soon as he heard what happened. And when she reminded him that he’d be missing the House Trials—” she slipped Jack a cheeky look “—Mrs. Avery told me, you said it wouldn’t be much fun without your friends.” Her eyes came back to Flynn. “He’s just a big old softie inside.”

  “Yeah, well, there’d better be a place for me on your helicopter because I’m not driving all the way back.”

  “You’re all driving back with me, I’m afraid,” Mr. Swan piped in. The doctor was gone. He looked at Flynn. “I’ve just been informed you’ll be unshackled in a couple of hours. But they want you to stay overnight, and Icilia still needs her cast removed, so we’ll set off in the morning, okay?”

  “Um, Sir…” Flynn cleared his throat. “I thought, um, you did say the demons can’t get inside the warded area and Parson’s Corner is in the dead zone, isn’t it?”

  Mr. Swan grimaced. “Parson’s Corner is just inside the border, Flynn. The protection force gradually peters out from the source and wavers at the edges. The strongest of demons might attempt to cross inside there, although that hasn’t happened in decades.”

  “So that was one of the stronger demons?” Ice said enthusiastically.