Demons Forever (Peachville High Demons #6)

by Sarra Cannon

  "It's all my fault," I said, lowering my head. "If it wasn't for me, they never would have taken you."

  Angela sat up straighter, and I helped her readjust the pillow behind her back. "You can't blame yourself for the actions of evil people," she said. "You aren't responsible for their choices."

  Her words touched a place deep in my heart. They were an echo of something our father had told me. It was so easy to blame myself for all that had happened, but she was right. I couldn't control what others decided to do with their lives.

  Our eyes met again and my heart fluttered.

  "It's so strange to be sitting here with you like this and to know you're really my sister," I said. "I mean, I always dreamed of something like this, but I never thought it was really possible. And now to have finally met both my father and my sister? It's a dream come true."

  "I wanted to tell you so badly," she said.

  I swallowed. "How long have you known?"

  She raised an eyebrow and smiled. "Since the first moment I saw you," she said. "Do you remember that day? You had just gotten to Peachville High and you passed out in front of the demon statue. I rushed over to help you up. When our hands touched and then I saw that necklace, I knew it was you. You have no idea how hard it was to keep it a secret."

  "Why did you?" I asked, trying not to sound hurt.

  "I couldn't tell anyone," she said. "The Order has ways to extract memories and secrets. Telling you would have put us both in danger. It was too risky. I couldn't draw any unnecessary attention to myself."

  "I have so many questions," I said, not even knowing where to start.

  "We have time," she said with a smile. "I'm sure you've figured out by now that our lives are going to be much longer than the typical human lifetime."

  My eyes widened. I honestly hadn't even thought about that. "How much longer?"

  "It depends on whether you spend more time here or in the shadow world," she said. "The more time we spend over there, the stronger our demon half becomes and the longer our life becomes."

  I still had so much to learn. So many decisions to make.

  "Why did you stay here?" I asked. "If you've known who you were all this time, why wouldn't you leave the Order behind and live with our father where he could keep you safe?"

  Angela's eyes searched my face, a sad smile pulling at the corners of her mouth. "Because I knew eventually they would find you," she said. "If I was living in a castle in the shadow world, I wouldn't have any way to really help you or keep an eye on you. I stayed because I knew if I played their game and pretended to be a good member of the Order, training the initiates, I could be there for you whenever you came home. I could get close to you without looking suspicious."

  "You did that for me?" I asked, my face warm.

  "Our father wasn't happy about it," she said. "He wanted me to live in the shadow world where he could keep me from going through the initiation, but I couldn't abandon you like that."

  "You'd never even met me."

  "That didn't matter," she said. "You were my sister and I knew you'd come home someday. I wanted to be there when you did."

  I didn't know what to say. I couldn't believe she'd gone through so much for all these years, waiting for me to return to Peachville.

  "I always used to wonder if you'd look like me, "she said. "But you don't look like me at all. You definitely take after your mother. I was just a little girl when she used to babysit for me, but I thought she was the coolest. She was so beautiful and such a rebel. I was incredibly sad when she died. It was a really tough time for me. My father had just up and left our family out of the blue and we didn't know where he was, and then Claire died. I felt abandoned."

  "I've been wondering about that," I said. "I tried talking to him about Mom and about you when I was living in his castle, but he's a hard man to get to know."

  She laughed. "To say the least."

  "He mentioned something about leaving Peachville just before Mom died," I said. "I didn't realize he didn't tell you where he was going."

  "One day everything seemed fine, and the next, he was gone without a trace," she said. "At the time, my mother and I had no idea why."

  "How did you find out who he was?" I asked. "Did he come back for you?"

  "He showed up at my house just before I turned eighteen," she said. "My mom had a meeting with the Order, so I was home alone. There was a knock on the door and when I opened it, there he was. Like he'd never even left. His hair was lighter and his eyes had changed a little, but I knew it was my father."

  My mouth fell open. "What did you say to him?" I asked. "I probably would have slammed the door in his face after what he'd done."

  "I almost did," she said. "Something in his eyes stopped me, though. He looked so serious. He said he was there to tell me something very important, but that he couldn't stay long and I needed to listen very carefully."

  "He told you about the Order?"

  "Yes," she said. She smoothed the blanket over her legs and stared down at her hands. "It was a lot for me to take in at the time. I'd grown up thinking the Order was great, full of powerful, beautiful women. But as he talked, I realized everything he said made sense. The way the Order controlled everyone in town. The way my mother acted sometimes, keeping secrets from me about the initiation ritual. He told me everything that night. He told me about the demons, about who he was and why he'd had to go so suddenly."

  I swallowed. "Something about his father dying?"

  "His father died fighting the Order," Angela said. "He's never told me all of the details, but I know it happened here in the human world, in a town called Clement in Tennessee. After that happened, it was Father's duty to take over as ruler of the Southern Kingdom. He didn't have a choice but to leave us."

  I took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. I tried to imagine what that must have been like for her, growing up without a father and then having him suddenly show up and tell her he was a demon king.

  "He also told me about you," she said. "Of course, all of us girls on the cheerleading squad knew our town's prima was missing. We knew the story and that someday she would come back to us, but it wasn't until that night that I knew the prima was my own half-sister."

  I sat back. "So all in that one night, you found out how evil the Order really is. How they enslaved demons and that you, in fact, were half demon. And at the same time, you had to find out that your half-sister was the future prima?"

  "Yes," she said, nodding. "It was a lot to take in, but I had an important decision to make. I was only a few weeks away from my initiation. I had to decided whether to go back with my father to the shadow world or whether to go through with it and become a member of the Order of Shadows."

  "I don't understand why he waited so long to tell you the truth," I said. "He should have given you more time to make up your mind."

  "He felt the information put me in danger," she said. "He wanted to keep me safe and innocent as long as possible. Besides, it worked out in my favor."

  I narrowed my eyes at her. "How?"

  "If I had known when I was little what the Order was really all about, I never would have joined the cheerleading team in the first place. Instead, I gladly became one of them," she explained. "They trusted me, which allowed me to eventually become a leader within the Peachville Order. It put me in the perfect position so that when you finally did come home, I could be there waiting for you."

  I still couldn't believe she'd chosen to stay in the Order and put her life at risk just to help me. No one had ever done something so selfless for me. "If it hadn't been for you, I would have felt so lost. And if you hadn't been there to warn me about how the demon tattoo allowed them to keep an eye on me, I probably wouldn't have ever been able to get my memory back. Everything would have turned out completely different."

  I thought of the night I'd gone to the third floor to retrieve the recipe for the Elixir of Kendria. If I hadn't known to hide myself from the Order's watching eyes,
they would have stopped me for sure.

  "There were so many times I thought I was going to lose you," she said. "The Halloween Ball was the worst. I went looking for you, but I knew you could be anywhere. I hoped Jackson would be able to keep you safe, but as soon as I heard the Order had taken you prisoner, I thought I had lost you forever."

  "The important thing is that we're together now," I said. "We have so much lost time to make up for."

  "I have no idea how you survived against the hunters and everything Priestess Winter has thrown your way, but the fact that you actually broke into her house to save my life is honestly a little unbelievable," she said.

  "I wouldn't have made it without Zara's help." I looked away. "And Coach King's."

  She paused. "Roan?" she said. "I thought they killed him."

  "Zara was supposed to finish him, but she didn't," I explained. "She gave him a note for me and let him go. He barely made it to the castle in time to tell us everything that happened."

  She cleared her throat and swiped at her eyes. "Father couldn't save him?"

  I shook my head. "I'm sorry."

  "Roan and I have been together since I was eighteen. Father sent him to watch after me." She laughed through her tears. "It was his idea to use the last name King. Kind of a joke right under the nose of the Order."

  "Did you love him?" I asked.

  She sniffed. "In a way," she said. "We weren't in love with each other, if that's what you mean. But he was always looking out for me. Always paying attention to what was going on in the Order, trying to guess their next move or make sure no one was in a position to hurt me. I can't believe he's gone."

  "They'll pay for what they've done. I'll make sure of that. I know Priestess Winter is going to send everything she has at me now," I said. "We need to be ready. Find a way to trick her or weaken her in some way."

  "What are you thinking?" Angela said. "I assumed we were heading back to the Southern Kingdom for a while."

  I shook my head. "We're not going to run," I said. "We're going to end this, one way or another. If you need to go there to rest and get better, I completely understand and we'll help you get there safely, but I'm in this now for real. I won't stop until I've destroyed the Order of Shadows."

  My sister stared at me for a long moment, then nodded her head. "I'm not going anywhere," she said.

  We clasped hands again, and I realized Honora had been wrong.

  Having a sister was more than I ever dreamed it could be.

  Family Tree

  Our small group gathered in the middle of the village the next morning to share breakfast.

  Angela was feeling much better already, her body healing rapidly now that she was awake.

  "It's part of my power," she explained. "I can heal others, but I have also always been a very fast healer if I focus my energy inward."

  Mary Anne and Essex had brought out more chairs and had even managed to scrounge a mismatched set of plates and glasses. There were six of us all together and we sat down to enjoy pancakes, eggs, bacon and orange juice.

  "Where did we get all this food?" I asked. We certainly hadn't carried it here in our backpacks. "I thought we agreed no one should risk going into town unless it was an emergency."

  Mary Anne laughed. "This is one of the perks of hiding out here in the village," she said. "My family members hated leaving the nest, so they always stockpiled food in this big freezer in the basement of the Crow Mother's house. I didn't mention it before because I wasn't sure any of the food would still be good. Turns out the freezer was still working this whole time."

  "Wow," Jackson said. "This is incredible. How much is left in there?"

  "Enough that we could feed at least fifty people for a month or longer," Mary Anne said.

  My eyes grew wide. This was definitely good news. If we needed to, we could stay here indefinitely. Well, as long as no one discovered we were here.

  I poured a tall cup of coffee and loaded it with cream and sugar. Then, I stood and clanged my spoon on the side of the mug to get everyone's attention. "I wanted to take a second to say thank you," I said. "You've all taken a huge risk by being here with me, and I want you to know how much I appreciate it."

  Jackson placed his hand on mine and Zara smiled up at me.

  "We want to be a part of this just as much as you do," Mary Anne said. "I want a front row seat to the destruction of the all-powerful Order of Shadows."

  "We need a plan first," Angela said before taking a huge bite of her eggs.

  "It all starts with Aerden," I said, looking to Jackson. I sat back down and loaded my plate with food. Now that my sister was feeling better, my appetite had returned in full force.

  "In the shadow world, Harper and I came across a book," he explained. "A diary of one of the original creators of the Order."

  Zara gasped, her fork clanging to her plate.

  "What is it?" I asked.

  "The diary. Did it have a butterfly engraved on the front?"

  I swallowed, my mouth growing dry in an instant. "Yes," I said. "Do you know something about it?"

  "I've heard my mother mention it specifically," she said. "You're right about it belonging to an original member of the Order. Alexandra, I think. The youngest."

  Excitement shot through me. This was proof the book was real. And if the book was real, that meant the spell was real too.

  Beneath the table, Jackson gripped my leg. "What else do you know about it?"

  "In order to understand the origins of the book, you need to understand my family's history," she said. "There were five sisters who started the Order of Shadows. Young witches in a coven near D.C. where my family lives now. Eloisa was the oldest. The first Priestess Winter. I am her direct descendant. She's my great-great-great-grandmother or something like that."

  Zara leaned over and reached under her chair into the small white bag she'd brought with her when she came. She pulled out a piece of white paper and a set of sparkly gel pens in various colors. "Here, I'll draw it out so it's easy to understand," she said. "Over a thousand years ago, a demon named Mythic came to our world and fell in love with a human woman named Aeliana."

  She wrote their names at the top of the page. I remembered them from my first lessons about the Order's history.

  "They had a daughter named Kallista. She was the first witch ever to exist, a half-demon, half-human hybrid. I'm going to skip all the stuff in between, but one of Kallista's direct descendants was a woman named Haven," she said. She wrote the name at the top of a family tree, then drew five lines out from that in different colors. "She was born just over two hundred years ago. Haven had five daughters, power-hungry sisters who created the Order of Shadows. Eloisa was the oldest. Then Hazel, Magda, Gladys, and finally Alexandra. Eloisa created the first demon gate, which is my home gate at Winterhaven."

  "And the diary we found belonged to Alexandra?" I asked.

  Zara circled her name on the page. "Yes. Her descendant is Priestess Love. She lives in Frankfurt, Germany where the fifth original gate was opened, and is the head priestess over all of the European demon gates."

  My eyes widened and my hand went to my throat. "I didn't know there were gates in Europe," I said.

  Zara's light blue eyes met mine. "Oh yes," she said. "The Order has gates all over the world."

  I gasped. All over the world? I never realized how far the Order's power had spread. No wonder demons were so afraid of fighting back. The Order's influence stretched all across the human world and even into the shadow world. Who knew where else they might have already invaded? What if there were other dimensions with gates and portals here in this world?

  Thinking of it took my breath away. Destroying the Order would take decades, if it were even possible at all.

  I grabbed my drink from the table and placed the cool glass against my flushed skin. Every time I felt like I was getting a handle on things, I realized the Order was much bigger than I'd imagined.

  "Can you explain to me abou
t the gates?" I asked. I needed to understand the structure of the Order so I could bring them down, one by one if I had to. "How many are there? And how do you know which Priestess is in charge of which gate?"

  "There are five priestesses who make up the High Council. Each one of the priestesses is a direct descendant of one of the five sisters," Zara said. "To begin with, each sister opened one gate of her own. These were the original gates which used five separate colored stones. Like I mentioned, Eloisa's gate was the first, a blue portal in D.C. at Winterhaven."

  I listened carefully.

  "These five original gates are by far the most powerful," she said. "Once the sisters learned to open additional portals of each color, they began opening gates all over the world."

  "Using their rings as anchors," I said, putting it all together in my head.

  "Yes. At first, they were each in charge of a color of gate. For example, the Winters were in charge of all the blue gates around the world," she explained. "However, that became difficult since they are spread out. In order to make it easier on themselves, they eventually decided to assign themselves regions instead. Since Priestess Winter's home is in the eastern part of the United States, she's in charge of all portals in the East. Since Priestess Love's home is in Europe, she's in charge of the European gates, and so on."

  I nodded, feeling overwhelmed. My head was spinning with information.

  "The five priestesses meet at least once a year to discuss policies and the state of their regions," Zara said. "Then, there's the High Priestess."

  "Who is she? Another descendant of the sisters?" Mary Anne asked.

  Zara shook her head. "To be honest, I'm not sure. There's a lot of mystery surrounding the High Priestess. My mother doesn't like to talk about her."

  "Let's get back to the diary," Jackson said. "That's what is really important right now. You said it was Alexandra's diary?"

  "Yes. Apparently Alexandra's descendant, Priestess Love, kept the journal a secret until a few years ago when it went missing. I know this because my mother was extremely angry about it when she found out," she said. "I've never seen her so mad."