Demons and DNA (Amplifier 1)

by Meghan Ciana Doidge

  I jumped off the railing, dropping straight down onto the brown grass at the base of the kitchen patio stairs.

  Aiden, behind me on the patio, muttered some sort of curse at my abrupt appearance. Another arcane word, perhaps. Thankfully, it didn’t carry any magic. I hated getting hit with friendly fire.

  Assuming the sorcerer actually was friendly.

  Assuming I hadn’t been royally hoodwinked. Though I’d never yet met anyone who could truly lie to me, foiling my empathy.

  But this life was full of firsts, for good and bad.

  I turned to look at the sorcerer. The lights of the kitchen behind him cast his face in shadow. He had the baseball bat settled over his right shoulder, the carved runes along its length glowing a soft, deep blue.

  A slow grin spread over his face. His teeth were a white flash against the ever-deepening dark. “This was where you wanted me, yes? At your side in a fight?”

  If Aiden was going to hurt us, if he had come to hurt us, Christopher would have picked it up by now. I answered his smile with one of my own.

  Christopher stepped out from the kitchen, laughing huskily.

  “Where are they coming from?” I asked. “These things I’m supposed to be decapitating?”

  “Right in front of you, Socks. You won’t be able to miss.”

  I strode forward, barefoot in the dry grass, pausing about five meters out from the house. Paisley slipped out of the shadows along the edge of the garden to my left.

  “Come to play, have you?” I asked, lazily warming up my arms and wrists.

  I glanced back at Christopher and Aiden. They’d stepped off the patio, following me a few steps onto the grass.

  Aiden lifted his baseball bat, holding it by the base with the tip pointed down. He slammed it onto the ground, muttering an arcane word in a language I once again didn’t understand. Though it sounded vaguely Arabic, it might well have been a tongue that only his family spoke, commanding their magic with it, passing it down from generation to generation.

  The Azar family. Not the Myers. Because the Azars were the sorcerers. Witches didn’t carve runes into bats and copper rings.

  Magic shot out from Aiden’s bat, etching a bright-blue pentagram across the grass. The energy Aiden had collected with the baseball bat drained from about half of the runes carved into it.

  He stepped to the side, gesturing Christopher toward the pentagram. The clairvoyant laughed, but he stepped over the fiery blue lines and into the center. He hadn’t armed himself.

  Then Aiden repeated the process of calling a pentagram forth, completely draining the bat’s reserves. He stepped within the second defensive ward.

  A prickling sensation ran up my arms. A dark energy slithered up my spine. Magic that was incompatible with the natural power held within the earth itself.

  I turned my attention back to the horizon, already knowing what I’d be facing.

  Demons.

  The vestiges of the red-orange sunset began to fade from the sky.

  “Tell me what you see, Knox.” The blood tattoo on my T3 vertebra — my connection to Christopher — tingled. Then it triggered at my request.

  Chapter 6

  “Three striker demons.” Christopher’s voice rang out clear and strong behind me, filling the early evening with his magic as he fell into a shorthand we’d developed over many years and many fields of battle. Still, I knew that if the other three had been with us, we would have quashed the summoning of the demons before the witch — Magenta, Aiden had named her — had even pulled the first of those creatures through to our dimension.

  That was the threat we were facing, assuming I was putting the pieces of the puzzle together correctly.

  “Striker?” Aiden asked. “What classification is that?”

  “Placement on the field of engagement,” I said, glancing back over my shoulder. “Meant to cut through the line of skirmish.” In this case, I was that line. Placed in a defensive mode rather than hunting down the summoner, because I had Christopher and a home to protect. “The summoner is far enough off site that I can’t sense her magic at all.”

  “The first wave is backed by enforcer demons.” Christopher’s eyes were the full-blown white of his magic, not a hint of iris remaining.

  “Enforcers for what?”

  “A snatcher.”

  “Teleportation?”

  “Yes.”

  Damn.

  “I’m not following,” Aiden said. A hint of a frustrated growl threaded through his words.

  Christopher laughed. “Keep thee in your pentagram, sorcerer Azar.”

  “Sorcerer Azar is my father,” Aiden said stiffly. His face was shadowed, his expression inscrutable. “Or if he’s dead, my eldest half-brother.”

  My heart grew heavy in my chest — which was an annoying reaction, especially since I’d already known Aiden was connected to one of the members of the Collective. “Kader Azar?”

  “Have you met?”

  “Once.”

  “I’m surprised he let you go, with magic like yours. Though perhaps you were a little young, even for him.”

  “My leaving wasn’t his choice.”

  Aiden frowned. Given his tone and the comment about his half-brother — and his claiming to not know if his father was even alive — it was obvious that he and Kader Azar were estranged. That certainly lined up with the fact that he used his mother’s family surname. Unfortunately, tone could be faked even more easily than a passport.

  My empathy worked only with skin-to-skin contact, and touching the sorcerer had a way of confusing the situation more than it clarified it. But I simply didn’t believe that Aiden was lying. And if the sorcerer, the demons, or the black witch were directly connected to the Collective, Christopher would have seen some hint of that in his visions.

  The clairvoyant was casting his gaze over the backyard now, murmuring quietly under his breath. Running the vision through in his mind over and over, and reminding me that I had more immediate concerns.

  “Who is the snatcher coming to grab?” I asked Christopher. “You?”

  The clairvoyant glanced toward Aiden.

  So not the Collective. Not yet, at least. “Apparently, someone has gone to a lot of trouble to collect you, sorcerer,” I said wryly. “Would you like to go?”

  Aiden shook his head, tension radiating through his shoulders and stiff back. “No.”

  “Well, then, I shall do my best to foil the attempt to kidnap you.”

  “I doubt you ever do less than your best, Emma,” Aiden said. “But the house should be warded. Even better, the entire property.”

  Christopher laughed. It was a clear, bright sound, filled with the joy of using his magic unfettered. “Socks is the wards.”

  Leaving the conversation behind me, I started walking toward the demon horde I could now feel coming through the back field. The cleared section of our property stretched all the way to the forested edge that bordered the north side of Cowichan Lake. So thankfully, none of our neighbors stood between us and the demons about to pay us a visit.

  Aiden was about to see me. See who I really was. That idea equally thrilled and terrified me. Because if the sorcerer was stupid enough to not run when faced with me — the real, whole me — then I might have no choice but to invite him to stay. And not just for a quick tumble in his bed. Whether or not he’d been born or even raised as an Azar. After all, there wasn’t anything any of us could do about our parentage or DNA.

  Yes, we were the sum total of our parts. But I firmly believed it was what we chose to do with our talents that made us who we were. I knew who I wanted to be, and who I avoided being. I was just presently stuck somewhere in the middle of those two, stuck between Amp5 and Emma Johnson.

  But both those halves were the same in one fundamental way. They would do whatever was necessary when there was no other way forward.

  “First three, coming right down the middle,” Christopher called out. “Triangle formation …”

>   Holding my blades at my sides, I stepped twice to my left, centering myself in the yard.

  Just slightly ahead of me and to my left, Paisley snorted, pawing the ground. Her magic bristled over her, writhing pulses of energy. Her head and shoulders expanded, bulking up. As she slammed her front feet into the ground, a set of long sickle claws burst from her flesh, gouging the brown grass. A mane of tentacles crackling with dark energy sprang up all around her head and shoulders. She opened her now-massive maw, displaying her double rows of two-inch-long teeth. Then she roared.

  Her challenge faded into the darkness.

  “Holy shit,” Aiden whispered behind me.

  Three inky-scaled monsters tore out of the night in tight formation, barreling straight for me. Sleek, elongated heads. Blood-red eyes — two sets, one facing forward and one to either side. Powerful back legs and slimmer, taloned front legs.

  I’d seen this type of demon before. I’d slaughtered their kin by the dozen, also called forth by a black witch. She had wronged the Collective in some fashion and been put down by the Five as punishment. I’d been nineteen or twenty at the time.

  “Their claws are wickedly sharp,” I said to Paisley. “Don’t let them bite you. They deliver a wallop of venom, and —”

  Paisley gathered her legs under her. She was the size of a massive lion now, easily two hundred kilos. Leaping into the fray, she took out the lead demon, she and the creature rolling across the yard in a tangle of claws and teeth.

  That left two for me.

  I lunged forward, my blades aimed for their chests. The demons avoided me, separating, then attempting to strike me from the front with their tails and at the sides with their claws.

  I jumped the dual tail strikes, tucking my knees as I flipped and twisted. The demons spun to engage me. I struck downward with my blades while still in the air, landing facing the house. I’d skewered one demon in the shoulder and the other in the back of its head.

  “Right,” Christopher barked.

  I released my hold on my left blade, leaving it embedded in the demon’s head. I spun right. Its claws scored my back as it fell forward, shuddering and dying.

  My other blade was still stuck in the other demon’s shoulder. I swung underneath its claw strikes, using the blade to jump up on its back. I braced my feet on its shoulders, needing leverage to get my weapon out of its black carapace. It leaped upward, flipping forward with the intent of crushing me under it when it landed.

  I abandoned the second blade, leaping from the back of the demon and landing next to the creature I’d already taken down. I yanked my first blade out of its head, dropping under a vicious strike just in time to skewer the second demon through its neck and up into its brain.

  “Behind you,” Christopher shouted. “Three …”

  I wrenched my second blade out of the demon’s shoulder, decapitating it along with the one at my feet for good measure. They began to crumble into ash.

  “Two …”

  I jogged back to my first position, facing the dark sky again. Off to my left, Paisley was snarling and batting her fallen prey around.

  “Stop playing with your food,” I said without heat.

  “One.”

  Two beaked, black-scaled enforcer demons dove out of the night on dark wings.

  That was unexpected.

  The first caught me around one shoulder with a taloned claw, lifting me off my feet as I tried to gut it. Its acidic blood splashed over my arm and up the side of my neck, searing my skin.

  It dropped me, crashing to the ground behind me. Not dead, but incapacitated enough that I could leave it for a moment.

  I charged back into the fray, both blades in play.

  Paisley sank her teeth into the neck of the second winged demon. Together, they spun away, clawing at each other with their back feet.

  A third enforcer landed on taloned claws before me, wings spread as if hiding something behind it. I spun, striking at its webbed wings in rapid succession, severing multiple tendons. It slashed at me with its beak, missing my shoulder and then my face by only inches.

  Through its shredded wings, I got a look at the demon that lurked in wait just behind the third enforcer — a thick-skinned black creature so smooth and sleek that it blended almost perfectly into the night.

  The snatcher.

  The winged enforcer clamped onto my shoulder with a taloned front arm that I hadn’t seen folded under one wing. I struck at its neck and chest while it held me fast, battering me with its wounded wings and trying to peck out my eyes.

  I was too near, too close to my target. My blades couldn’t penetrate its flesh deeply enough without being able to put my full body weight behind the strikes. So I brought the blades together, lopping off the taloned claw the demon held me with.

  “Right leg,” Christopher called.

  I slammed a kick to its right leg, throwing it off balance. It clamped my already wounded shoulder in its beak, but struggled to gain leverage with both its right wing and leg compromised. I brought both blades forward, thrusting upward under its beak, then decapitating it.

  The demon fell.

  Leaving me facing off against the snatcher.

  A teleporter. According to Christopher’s vision.

  It craned its long, sleek head toward me, regarding me with four sets of glowing red eyes, all front facing.

  Paisley landed next to me on all fours, hitting the ground so hard that she actually jostled me.

  The snatcher whipped its tail forward in a lazy strike, testing the distance between us. Then it raised itself up to its full three-meter height, clicking its long front claws, four on each front leg. It also had two thickly curved talons on each of its back feet, meant for gutting its prey.

  “Mine,” I murmured to Paisley.

  Magic shimmered across the snatcher’s chest, drawing my attention. It had a phrase seared across its smooth carapace — The Last Son of Azar.

  That wasn’t overly dramatic at all.

  It was an easy guess that that was where Christopher had picked up the sorcerer’s lineage in his vision. But I knew that the demon must have been more than simply branded in order to be directed and controlled so specifically. The others had been aimed at a named target, but the snatcher would be under a compulsion to return that target to its summoner. Because when they weren’t tightly controlled, demons slaughtered everything in their paths.

  In order for the demon to be controlled in such a way, the snatcher would have been called forth and bound with something intimately tied to Aiden. Something that held his magic. But hair, skin, or saliva wouldn’t have held enough energy for a binding of this magnitude. This level of summoning would need blood.

  Or semen.

  The snatcher demon disappeared.

  I brought my swords up in a crossed block, scanning the yard.

  “Right!” Christopher roared.

  I stepped right. But not far or fast enough. The snatcher appeared behind me, clipping me on my already wounded shoulder and sending me flying. I lost hold of my blades.

  Paisley attacked the demon.

  I hit the ground, tumbling uncontrollably until my back slammed up against one of the fence posts edging the garden.

  My shoulder screamed with pain, my arm hanging limp. I stumbled to my feet, feeling Aiden trying to call forth magic, but spell after spell failed to catch. He’d put too much into casting the barrier spells of the pentagrams.

  Paisley and the demon tore at each other.

  I took a few running steps, then stumbled. I fell to my knees, then made it to my feet again.

  The demon disappeared.

  I ran, scooping up one blade with my good arm, leaving the second in the dead grass.

  The demon appeared and slammed into Paisley’s back, riding her down to the ground. Her neck was tight in its maw.

  Paisley shrieked. The demon clamped down hard. A killing strike.

  “Jump!” Christopher shouted.

  I raised my blade
, leaping up.

  Slow, too slow.

  Out of shape, out of practice.

  I slammed into the demon instead of landing fully on its back. But I still managed to skewer it near its upper spinal ridge — and to hang on.

  It released Paisley.

  Then its tail struck me over and over again as its claws tore at any part of me it could reach, trying to rip me from its back. I held on, yanking the blade free. Using my still-wounded arm, I double-fisted the hilt of the weapon and struck at the back of the demon’s neck.

  It stumbled.

  Magic gripped me. A darkness compressed me, squeezing my head, my lungs. The demon was trying to teleport.

  I screamed as I stabbed it again. And again.

  The darkness shifted around us.

  I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think.

  All I could do was pull my blade out of its flesh and stab it over and over. Its blood seared my thighs, my hands, speckling my face with fiery motes of pain.

  I lost hold of my weapon.

  I lost hold of myself, falling.

  Falling.

  Then hitting the ground.

  Stars appeared overhead.

  I sat up, trembling from a terrible chill. The brightly lit house swam into view. It was much, much farther away than it had been a moment ago.

  The snatcher slammed to the ground beside me, my blade sticking out of its head. I rolled over, reclaiming the weapon. My shaking abated as I gripped its hilt.

  Paisley limped out of the darkness. She grumbled at me, then proceeded to tear the snatcher demon apart. Each piece that she gouged and spat out crumbled into ash. Apparently, the snatcher wasn’t good enough to eat.

  I made it to my knees, then my feet, forcing myself to cross the lawn, to return to the house. I didn’t know if more demons were coming.