by Karen Mead
“Uncle Jay!” said Corianne, detaching from Cassie’s legs to run in his direction. Jay’s smile faltered.
“I don’t understand what’s going on,” Cassie heard Ethan say from somewhere in the hall; Eugene and the boys must have snuck in sometime when she wasn’t paying attention.
“No one does child, no one does.”
Cassie heard a clicking noise, and realized it was the sound of high heels tapping on the tiled floor. “Sadly, I’m afraid I have to cut this touching family reunion short,” said Helen, holding up her left hand.
“Hi Gramma!” called Corianne. She was pulling on Jay’s glasses.
“Hello, my darling. Unfortunately, your Grandpa is going to have to spoil everything, as usual.”
“Don’t!” yelled Cassie, but it was too late; Helen twisted the ring on her finger, and several things happened at once.
Sam’s hold on time was released, and the audience let out a collective gasp at how everyone up front had suddenly moved, from their vantage point. Corianne was gone as suddenly as she’d appeared. Sammael had materialized behind Sam, wearing the exact same suit as his son. He grabbed Sam’s hair and yanked his head back, and Sam grunted in pain.
“Did you even realize that was the third time you’ve frozen time this week, you reckless idiot? Is moderation an alien concept to you?”
The members of the panel all got to their feet shakily, shocked to see Sammael.
“M-my lord,” Arrigio, started, “To what do we owe this, this honor?”
Sammael rolled his eyes at Arrigio’s obsequiousness. “This just got bumped out of your jurisdiction, kids. My son here thinks he can tap dance all over time and space, and it’s high time he had some adult supervision.”
“Better late than never,” said Helen dryly.
“You, my sweet, can shut up for once in your life. I’m taking this one with me; maybe he’ll be back, if we can put a big enough leash on him, but I wouldn’t count on it. Say goodbye to your witch, son.”
Sam was struggling in his father’s grip. “No! Stop—”
“Close enough!” Sammael yelled, and then both of them were gone.
Cassie stared at the place on the floor where they’d been standing for some time. I should have kissed him goodbye. I knew I should have….
“Cassie.”
She jerked her head in towards Arrigio, surprised. Somehow, even after everything that had transpired in this room, hearing him call her by her first name (and a nickname at that) was shocking.
Arrigio was mopping his forehead with a handkerchief; his face looked painfully weary, as though he’d just aged ten years in ten minutes.
“You seem to have some idea what just happened here. I am begging you, for the love of God, to explain it to me.”
Chapter Forty-Six
Sam fell to the rocky floor in a heap, panting. They seemed to be in some sort of cavern, filled with stalagmites, and Sam supposed he should thank his lucky stars that he hadn’t accidentally been impaled on one.
His father was pacing back and forth, filled with an angry energy.
“I’ll have you know, I had them all exactly where I wanted them. Confused and scared witless, and all I had to do was sit back, watch and laugh. Then you and your stupid theoretical family had to start breaking reality, and things got too serious to be fun anymore,” he said. He sounded almost whiney. “Why did I ever listen to that damned woman and make you? I should have just gotten her a dog. Golden retrievers are cute.”
Sam stumbled to his feet, breathless. This is it. He’s taken me to Realm, permanently, and I’ll never see Cassie again. Instead of the court forcing me here, it’s him.
He felt himself flush with anger, but a lifetime of habit kept him from the abyss of rage. He’d learned early on in life that he had to control his emotions, lest others get hurt, and his habitual methods of calming himself took over before he could think. But when he looked at his father, who was kicking a rock like a spoiled child, something in him broke.
This is my father; this is a High Lord of Hell. I can’t hurt him. There’s no need to hold back anymore.
“You!” he yelled, and curses burst forth from him. He didn’t even have to gesture; the curses just appeared, seemingly from nowhere.
Sammael summoned a barrier to protect himself, crossing his arms in front of him, and the curses bounced off him harmlessly. Somehow, seeing the barrier just made Sam angrier.
He’s probably channeling the power of about a dozen familiars to make that barrier. And one of them is Cassie.
“Why did you have to bond with her?!” he yelled, sending a second barrage of curses at his father. He didn’t even know how many he was sending anymore; he didn’t care. “You could have had anyone in the world, but you just had to go after her! Why?!”
Unnatural light bounced off the cave walls as the countless curses ricocheted off his father’s barrier, making it hard to see. At one point, his father winced, and Sam thought he had gotten a hit. But Sammael was reacting to the nature of the curse, not its impact.
“By all that’s holy son, how did you come up with that one? I wouldn’t cast that on anything with an ounce of sentience. You are one nasty piece of work.”
“Yeah well, whose fault is that?” Sam yelled, sending curses his father’s way as fast as he could mouth the words. Strangely, it seemed like his Wordlock was far more flexible here than it was in reality; just one word could trigger countless spells. He felt strong, too; he felt like he could keep throwing curses all day long and never tire.
I was meant for this. I was made for this.
He reached out with the part of himself that was normally pushed to the back and dormant, and tendrils of unctuous black smoke began to surround his father’s barrier, embracing it tightly. He balled his fist and the tendrils convulsed, shattering the barrier into a million shreds of tainted light, and he heard his father cry out. Elated, he reached for the rock formations far above his father’s head, and found them as pliable as he could have wished. With a sweep of his arm, an avalanche of rocks buried the other man, then fused to become one massive golem. He whispered a word he had never used before, and the golem began to implode, crushing anything within it to a fine paste.
That’s what you get for touching her you slow, stupid monster. I’ll kill you, I’ll kill all of you, I’ll kill everything until there’s nothing left of this godforsaken place than a smoking husk, and then—
Then he couldn’t breathe, and he realized that his father had somehow gotten in front of him and hit him in the solar plexus. He fell to the floor and cradled his midsection, trying not to whimper at the pain.
His father was looking down at him with a cold expression. “No, your affinity for violence is all on you, dear boy. You and your mother, that is.”
Sam struggled for breath. “You made me this way,” he said, nearly choking on the words.
I didn’t ask to be born. I didn’t ask to be like this. It’s not my fault!
His father knelt down in front of him, his expression surprising Sam. Was that…pity? “You know that for years—eons, actually— my job was to kill. I killed everyone, everything, old and young alike. How often do you think I enjoyed it?”
Sam was silent, crumpled on the ground in a ball.
Sammael’s face was solemn. “Never. Not even once. It was a sad duty, one I performed strictly out of necessity. That little voice inside of you, that tempts you to curse, tempts you to kill? That’s all you. I have nothing do with that.”
“No,” said Sam. His throat felt sore. “You’re lying.”
“That part of you that finds joy in destruction; that’s the human in you, not the demon. That’s the unpleasant truth of it,” Sammael continued quietly. “But I suppose it doesn’t matter anymore. You’re home now.”
Then Sam blacked out for a while. When he regained consciousness, he was locked up in a cell, not unlike the one where he had visited Serenus just a few days previous. He knew that somewhere dow
n here, they had perfectly modern prison cells, complete with beds and toilets, but like Ser, he had gotten the medieval dungeon treatment. He supposed it was his father’s way of punishing him.
He struggled against his chains reflexively, but didn’t expect them to give; they were probably enchanted with about 47 different strength-boosting spells. He leaned his head back against the craggy wall of the cell, trying to think. Everything seemed a little fuzzy, and he couldn’t tell if it was from his own exhaustion, or some magical property of the room itself.
Is Cassie safe? The Buckleys will protect her, but for how long? If I don’t come back, they’ll have to find a new master, they won’t have a choice. And even though Arrigio doesn’t believe, the Seraph is still out there….
He tried to reach out with his mind to Miri, but it was no use; wherever he was, he was so deeply entrenched in Realm that he couldn’t sense anyone in his entourage any more than he could see the sun. He could just barely sense the existence of Cassie and Ethan, since they were a part of him, but couldn’t reach them either.
Feeling groggy, he still reached out with his mind, trying to find any foothold in reality he could grasp. Surely he could do something; surely he wasn’t helpless in here. Soon, his eyes snapped open as he made a connection, one he really should have anticipated. There was still one; still one soul that he had access too, still one being so thoroughly his own that no amount of distance or magical interference mattered. It would have to be enough.
Chapter Forty-Seven
Cassie explained everything she knew about Corianne and her trip to the future to Arrigio. The older demon had given up the pretense of conducting court and just listened to her quietly, his arms crossed in front of his chest.
“See, um, she doesn’t see time like other people,” Cassie said, stumbling over her words a little. She had been apprehensive about explaining this to Sam, let alone the entire court. “I don’t know if she really understands that her mother is dead. I think she just looks for me in time, and when she sees me, she does something. It doesn’t matter to her that this version of me hasn’t given birth to her yet.”
The hall was full of worried, confused murmurs, but Arrigio made no attempt to silence them. “What you are telling me defies reason,” Arrigio said finally. “We cannot be experiencing the future from the past; we cannot be affected by someone who does not yet exist. Someone must be toying with us.”
“And who in all creation would have the power to do that?” Yamanaka countered. He had been quiet all day in court, just sitting expressionless on the panel next to Arrigio, but had listened very intently to Cassie’s story. “Don, we all saw her. In a way, she already has been born; she was here, and a visit from a child of the future is now in our past….”
Cassie jumped when Arrigio slammed his hands down on the table before him. “That’s exactly the kind of elliptical, nonsensical thinking we must reject!” he bellowed. Cassie had never heard the man yell like that.
I thought I was bad at wrapping my head around time travel, but he’s worse. He literally cannot deal, at all.
Everyone was silent for a moment at Arrigio’s outburst, even the whisperers in the back. Finally, Arrigio sat down slowly, as though trying to summon every last remaining shred of his dignity, and addressed the room at large.
“Obviously the agenda for this meeting has gone somewhat off the rails, but no more cases are currently prepared. Therefore, I move to adjourn this meeting of the Western Court, until our next regularly scheduled gathering.”
“Seconded,” said Yamanaka.
“We are adjourned,” said Arrigio, banging his gavel lightly. “I would like to encourage you all to enjoy the rest of your weekend here in Las Vegas, and don’t worry too much about what you witnessed here today; we will get to the bottom of all this, one way or another. Good day.”
Cassie didn’t move from her seat in front of the dais as the room started to empty out. She felt tired, as though someone was tapping into her magic; it was possible that Sammael was. At the moment, she didn’t really care.
We got through the hearing, kind of, but we lost Sam anyway. Will he be able to come back? What do we do now, just wait and hope?
Eventually Jay appeared before her, stooping down on one knee. “Wow, Arrigio is freaked,” he whispered. His eyes followed the Chairman, who was slowly making his way out of the lecture hall with the other board members. The demon stopped for a moment, like he was about to turn around, then thought better of it and left the room through a door near the projection screen up front.
“I know. I don’t know what he’s going to do,” said Cassie, realizing the prospect scared her more than she would have thought. It wasn’t that she liked or particularly trusted the Chairman, but she expected him to provide a kind of rational bedrock for the other demons. If he couldn’t be trusted not to do something rash out of fear, where did that leave the rest of them?
Mike stooped down next to Jay. “Can you sense him? You know, psychically or whatever?”
“No,” she shook her head. “It’s blocked. They’re not going to let him talk to us.”
“Damn,” said Mike, and Jay frowned. “If you could still contact him, maybe he could let us know what’s going on.”
Dwight and Khalil walked into view together, their faces grim.
“Do you think they’ll let him come back?” Khalil asked, rubbing the back of his neck. Cassie could tell from the noise behind her that the room had mostly emptied out; only Sam’s entourage was left. “Daddy-Sam said he’d let him come back if they could put a ‘big leash’ on him, or something. Doesn’t that mean they’ll bring him back, they’ll just put some kind of a collar on him so he can’t freeze time anymore or whatever?”
“I don’t know. I...” She didn’t know what she had been about to say, but an overwhelming exhaustion pushed out every other thought. “I need to lie down.”
Wordlessly, Dwight helped her to her feet, and supported her as they walked. As they started up the stairs, Cassie passed John, who looked slightly ill.
“You at least should be happy,” she said, feeling delirious. “You hated him.”
Why am I using past tense? Why have I already given up on him ever coming back?
Her teacher looked down at the floor. “This wasn’t what I wanted,” he said softly.
The Buckleys were standing in a huddle together, talking quietly. Cassie wondered if they were discussing how long they could afford to wait for Sam to come back before seeking out a new demon to serve. Ethan was shaking his head and crying, while Hunter just looked shellshocked. Aeka was off to the side, her face a perfect blank.
Miri saw Cassie and Dwight approaching, and broke away from the vampires to grab Cassie’s arm. “Cass, don’t worry. We’re not going anywhere.”
“For now,” said Cassie. I have to get to bed. Why does the bed have to be so far away? On top of everything else, my bed is really far.
Miri didn’t respond, but she could sense the vampire exchanging looks with Dwight over her head. Cassie wasn’t sure if she had somehow nodded off while walking, but she had no memory of the trip from the conference room back to her room. Everything had gone gray, silent.
Chapter Forty-Eight
She slept fitfully on the waterbed, half trying to rest and half trying to use her state of semi-consciousness to call out to the Nameless Ones.
Hey, forgotten angels! Are you there? Your precious scion could use a little help here.
But there was no answer, and Cassie wasn’t surprised. The Nameless Ones just wanted her alive; whether she was happy or not, they probably couldn’t care less.
At some point, she woke up to the sound of electronic music, and realized that Hunter was playing a handheld game on the chair beside her bed. “What is it that you have against knocking?” she muttered, slurring her words a little.
The music from the game stopped abruptly. “Are you okay?”
“Just really tired. Lemme sleep.”
“Are things going to go back to normal now? Now that the demon is gone?”
Cassie turned away from him. “No, they won’t. I’m a witch. Things are never going back to normal for me.”
A pause.
“I don’t like this,” he said finally.
She pulled the pillow over her head. “Yeah, well, join the club.”
She heard him stand up and turn to go. “I hope they don’t kill your boyfriend.”
“He’s not my—” she began, then gave up. She was already falling back to sleep.
When she finally woke up again, it was already dark out. She didn’t know how long she’d been asleep. She just stayed in bed for a little while, staring at the giant dolphin image stenciled on the ceiling.
I should get up. Not because there’s anything I can do, but because at least if I get up, there might be chocolate.
She made her way to the living room, where several people were already gathered; conversation fell silent at her approach. Dwight and Khalil were obviously finishing up dinner, while Aeka was perched in front of the big screen TV, watching some documentary about whales. Miri was lying on the couch, holding a pillow to her chest and looking despondent. She stirred when she saw Cassie.
“How are you feeling?” she asked, standing up. Cassie folded into the nearest chair and shrugged.
“My sleep schedule is all screwed up, but otherwise fine I guess,” she said. There was a menu on the coffee table in front of her, which she picked up and began flipping through. Miri looked nervous, like she didn’t know quite what to do with her hands.
“Cassie, they’re not going to keep him down there, okay? They probably just don’t want him doing massive spells anymore. I’m sure once they find a way to keep him under control, they’ll—”
“I’m ordering a flourless chocolate cake; if anyone else wants some, you better move fast, because I might eat it all myself,” said Cassie, dropping the menu in her lap. She picked up the phone and dialed the number for room service.