Daimonion (The Apocalypse Book 1)

by J. P. Jackson

  An acrid smell tinged the air, and I tensed; one of us was nearby. It was faint, but the air seemed charged, thicker than it should have been. I noticed several of the massive trees that lined the path were dead, their trunks twisted like monstrous corpses in eerie death poses.

  “Holy shit. Did you see that?” Caleb pointed ahead of us but slightly off to our side.

  “See what?” I asked.

  “Eyes. Red ones,” he said with a sense of dread.

  “Hemming, I think we’re being followed,” I whispered as I pulled him close. “I saw a pair of them after we crossed the stream.”

  Hemming stared at me, seemingly stunned. “Why didn’t you say something?”

  “I wasn’t sure,” I said, “but I am now. Let’s keep moving but be on guard.”

  “What is it?” Alyx turned to me. There was just the slightest amount of uncertainty in his gaze, and the citrusy smell of his fear gently tickled the inside of my nose.

  “I don’t know, but we’ll be careful. Besides, we’re almost there.”

  As we continued the trek surrounded by dense forest, each of us confirmed when we spotted the red eyes staring back at us. They were always several trees away and disappeared as soon as they were spotted.

  As the forest receded, our inquisitive guest became less shy, accompanying our band as we moved forward. At the widest point of the path, we came to an enormous hedge that blocked our passage. Tall and thick, it had been carefully manicured with a rounded arch, and through the opening, I could see a river-stone cottage with a thatched roof. It seemed cold and forgotten.

  Jenae screamed.

  “I can’t lift my foot. It’s got me!”

  Her eyes rolled white. Caleb roared, his face morphed into a snarling bear muzzle, bones cracking and popping as they rearranged themselves to take on the demon bear form. Caleb’s hands were large to begin with, but one swipe of his bear paws would be lethal. He charged towards Jenae’s foot.

  “No!” Hemming darted in between Jenae and Caleb. He put out a hand, and Caleb stopped. “You cannot touch it.”

  Caleb snorted. Thick billows of hot breath puffed out his nose like a bull challenging the matador.

  Jenae’s head listed back as she began to mumble—the air became quiet and still, save for her words.

  Hemming grabbed a large fallen stick, thick enough to be a club, and swung. With one deft stroke of the club, an expert golf swing, the hand that had clutched Jenae’s foot flew into the air, releasing her.

  Realizing she was no longer bound, Jenae calmed and her irises returned to their normal colour. Letting out an exasperated sigh, she approached Caleb, who shifted back into human form. His shredded shirt hung in strips from his waistband, revealing his hairy, muscular chest.

  “I’m okay. I’m okay. It just startled me,” she said as Caleb wrapped his arms around her in comfort.

  But no sooner had she mouthed those words, than the ground started crawling and moving as corpses emerged.

  Rotten meat hung off their decaying limbs and torsos. As they ripped themselves out of the dirt, heads with little to no flesh turned to search us out, their eye sockets caked with mud. The entire field where we stood crawled with the dead, and they advanced towards us.

  I wasn’t prepared for this.

  My D’Alae strength couldn’t match the relentlessness of the living dead. Keeping them as guardians was clever. They were resilient. The only way to stop them was to take out their arms and legs. Even that didn’t kill them, but it slowed their advance enough to escape. Their grasp was the killing blow—it would sap the life out of any living tissue.

  “Don’t touch them, and don’t let them touch you,” Hemming said sternly.

  If an attack on one front wasn’t enough, the red eyes that had followed us up the mountain appeared again in the forest. But it wasn’t a single pair of eyes. Gathering in masses and floating soundlessly towards us, it seemed like there were hundreds of the creatures.

  The ethereal beings came out of the woods and floated above the rotting corpses. All I could make of them were red orbs within shadows.

  Alyx crouched in front of us and spread his wings in a guard stance, hiding most of the group behind him. I could smell hints of cinnamon, nutmeg, and fresh earth wafting off of him. He was going off of instinct and using whatever power he had at his disposal, but the heady aroma would only seduce everyone in our group and the creatures around us.

  The ground writhed as more limbs erupted out of the ground. I held up my arm to protect my eyes from a spray of dirt and ended up with a mouthful of grit and mud instead.

  One of the red-eyed shadow beings moved directly towards Alyx, never slowing. It reached out a dark hand and placed it on Alyx’s chest. The hand dissolved into Alyx’s torso.

  He gasped in shock.

  Alyx threw his head back and exhaled torrents of black smoke. His body rose, arms outstretched, until he hung a couple of feet off the ground suspended in midair. The red-eyed monster continued to push a deadly smoulder through Alyx’s chest and into his lungs, choking him to death.

  I had never seen anything like it before.

  I howled. My skin tightened and fangs lengthened as I unleashed my demon and charged the shadow, wings splayed, and tail poised to strike.

  The red eyes peeked at me, and then it vanished.

  Alyx floated helplessly towards me. I grabbed him as he continued to spew the noxious cloud out of his opened throat. His eyes glassed over, then flipped into the back of his head.

  “What the Hell? Hemming, what are these things?” I demanded. But he didn’t respond. “Hemming?” I asked, just as another red-eyed monster thrust its hand into Hemming’s torso. Black smoke cascaded out Hemming’s mouth and down his chest.

  Something grabbed my foot. I glanced down to find cadaverous hands gripping my boots, holding me fast.

  This was not going well.

  I glanced around for assistance from others or for the stick Hemming had used as a club, only to see the Kasadya demon standing in the middle of the fray. None of the creatures were attacking him.

  From my peripheral vision, within the arch of the hedge, another creature emerged, moving in fluid steps. Her dress billowed and flowed behind her. The woman carried a staff made of alabaster wood with most of the tree bark still attached to it. A bleached human skull sat crooked, strapped to the top of the stick with thick twine.

  The woman lifted the hood of the robe. Within a blink, she hovered directly in front of me.

  Her face, covered in mud and wrinkled, glared at me with ebony eyes. Caked hair hung in greasy thick dreads. A beetle crawled across the cheekbone, then disappeared into one nostril.

  She slammed the staff down into the mud as she opened her maw and let an airy “Ahhhhh” escape.

  Dread filled my soul from the sound of her voice, and shivers ran down my spine, my flesh going cold. As soon as the staff made contact with the ground, a ripple of energy emanated outwards, like a drop of water hitting the surface of a still pond.

  The shadows vanished, dissipating like smoke from a campfire. The corpses slowly melted back into the earth.

  Alyx, Riken, and Hemming dropped onto the ground, all three choking and wheezing as they tried to get air back into their lungs.

  Elementalist

  DATI

  “What creatures trespass on my mountain?” She spoke with a raspy voice of an old lady.

  The Kasadya stepped up to the front. “Mistress Aradia, I have heard of your mastery with Air, Earth, and Fire. We have a need for your talents.”

  The Elementalist hovered in place, contemplating this.

  Her fingers pulled at her chin, and at first, I thought she was thinking, like some people stroke or twirl their hair while deep in thought. I was wrong. She picked and pulled on the skin that covered her chin until it peeled away, and continued the movement until her face had come right off. She folded the skin and stuffed it into a tiny sac she had tied at her waist.

&nb
sp; What was left of her face was a mess of bloody tissue, but within seconds, emanating from the ears and jawline, a second skin quickly grew, creating lusciously smooth caramel skin with dark pouty lips. Her cheekbones were rigid and high, which gave her clear blue eyes a sense of severity. Her dreadlocks still hung in dirt-caked, matted strands.

  “To control the dead, you must wear the dead,” she explained as she walked around our group, studying each of us with just a passing glance. “You. Girl. You come here,” she commanded.

  Jenae glanced at the Kasadya, then at me, holding onto Caleb’s hand like a vise grip. The Kasadya pushed Jenae forward.

  “Do as you have been asked,” he said with disgust for Jenae. “Forgive her, Mistress. She is new and unlearned.”

  “Come here, child. I will not harm you.” She stretched out a hand as if the two were schoolchildren, meeting on the playground for the first time. “Come, don’t be shy. Let me have a look at you,” Aradia said in a sweet voice.

  Jenae and Aradia clasped hands. The minute Aradia’s long slender fingers, capped with fierce fingernails, wrapped themselves around Jenae’s white trembling hands, Aradia hummed.

  “Oh dear, child, so much potential. Do you feel that, between you and me, that pulse, that warmth? Yes, I do believe we’ll be good friends.” She cocked her head to one side, pulling Jenae close to her side and wrapping her arm around her shoulder. “Come, all of you. I want to see who my new friend has for travelling companions.”

  Walking through the arch, we followed Aradia and Jenae and passed by a small garden with assorted herbs and tender plants.

  Her cottage was just beyond the garden. It was old, made of thick round boulders slathered with mortar to keep them together. Thick and darkened wooden beams framed the door and windows, but the glass in them was so filthy I couldn’t see inside. The roof was made of various slabs of wood and patched here and there with fallen trees from the forest around. Moss and tiny ferns littered the surface of the roof, which was why I had thought it was thatched from a distance.

  Nothing appeared stable or solid. The chimney was on the furthest side of the cottage, part of it crumbling away.

  Aradia opened the door to the small hut and ushered us inside. Surprisingly, we were treated to a wall of warm air as we walked in through the threshold. A raging fire burned in the hearth, and there were candles lit all around the place casting a warm glow, illuminating the living quarters. Trinkets and herbs, bowls and books plagued every flat surface. Something scurried away out of sight as we made our entrance.

  There were tall glass pillars in each corner of the room, like old roman columns, but their contents were visible. Each was vibrantly lit from the core and a different colour.

  The closest pillar pulsated with the colour of sand, filled with assorted layers of dirt, dried leaves, and tiny rocks, and an enormous slimy worm was pressed against the glass, wriggling its way upwards, leaving a sticky trail behind it.

  In the next corner, a pillar was consumed inside with tall flames of orange, red, yellow, and the occasional lick of green and blue. I wasn’t sure, but I thought a tiny hand pressed up against the glass, a hand created from clumps of burning embers.

  The third pillar had smoke and roiling fog contained within. Shades of purple and smoky grey with hints of yellow undulated inside its confinement, and oddly, it appeared more sinister than the other two.

  The last pillar was empty. Well, not quite. There was the odd water droplet inside of it, a trickle running down the inside of the glass. Aradia noticed me studying each of them.

  “My sources. Each a different element, Earth, Fire, Air, and alas Water, which is near empty. Each Elementalist has these, they are our tools, and we study them, combine the inherent energies with the fifth element, Soul.

  “From this, we can make powerful things happen. But not quite as powerful as what we have here, my dear,” she said, nodding in Jenae’s direction. Jenae’s cheeks reddened with embarrassment, but then she smiled.

  “Told you,” Jenae said as she elbowed Caleb in a playful way.

  “Ha! Careful, child. You are new; I can feel the power in you. I can see the souls you carry with you. That is power! I respect that, and you should too,” Aradia cautioned.

  “‘Souls you carry with you’?” I asked.

  Aradia flung her head around to stare at me displeasingly, making one thing very clear. I was allowed in there because of Jenae. She had little or no interest in me and possibly the others. I was but an annoyance.

  I glanced at Jenae, waiting for an explanation. I didn’t want to displease Aradia, so I kept quiet.

  “I’ll explain later,” Jenae said.

  “Yes, later. Later would be better.” Aradia squinted her eyes at me, then returned her focus to Jenae. “So, child, tell me: why do you come here with three skin-changers, two demons, and…” Aradia was peering directly at Alyx when she stopped midthought. My back stiffened, and I leaned forward. Powerful or not, I wouldn’t let her hurt Alyx.

  She sensed my movement and lifted a hand in my direction. Instantly I was thrown back towards the stone wall by a violent wind, and pinned there. The impact against the cabin’s stone walls sucked the wind out of me. In that same heartbeat, Aradia was inches from my face, hissing at me. The new caramel skin shrank, wrapping tight around her features, while her eyes turned into burning embers. She opened her mouth, making that awful “Ahhhh” sound again. Her mouth was black and putrid.

  “Don’t test me, demon. I don’t like you and will make short work of you,” she hissed, then spun around and resumed her study of Alyx, circling him like a shark.

  Her features melded back into a more human form.

  “Well, now, boy, I don’t think I’ve ever seen the likes of you.” She sniffed him, then glanced at Jenae and leaned in to her neckline and inhaled deeply. “Interesting. Perhaps this group is more intriguing than I first saw.”

  Aradia scurried around the cottage, pulling together some bottles of dried things, a piece of parchment paper, and then sat at what appeared to be her usual spot: a rickety old stool. It creaked as she sank her slim body onto it, then leaned over a table so worn with use its top was black.

  All of us stared in fascination as she placed a drop of dark blue smoke into the mortar that sat before her, then added some sandy grit into the bowl. She picked up her pestle and started to grind, and as she did, she mouthed words, but nothing I could quite make out. Sprinkling some dried herbs, she continued her chant, and then added more of the grit.

  She got up suddenly, grabbed a nearby pitcher, and disappeared out the door, then returned far too fast with the vessel full of water. She walked over to the mortar and poured in as much as she could.

  We all waited as the mixture swirled, mesmerized. Seconds later, the concoction boiled, but there was no heat source.

  Aradia nodded in satisfaction. She took the parchment and carefully dipped it into the water, then poked at it, submersing it until the sheet was soaked.

  She took the soggy paper out of the bowl, walked around to the front of her desk, and with an arm, moved all of the items that were on the table off to one side, making room to lay the wet parchment flat on the surface.

  “Come,” she commanded, and beckoned Jenae and Alyx. Obediently, they moved towards her.

  But just as the two approached, Aradia moved past them and sniffed the air again. She stepped towards Caleb and Riken. She cocked an eyebrow and tilted her head, then pointed at the new Shape-Shifters.

  “You, too. Forward,” she commanded.

  Aradia placed herself between the table with the wet piece of paper and the four she had separated. She lashed out quickly, grabbing Caleb’s big paw of a hand, and slapped his forearm.

  “Open!”

  Caleb glanced around at us, confused, but did what he was told. Aradia nodded, then with her free hand, pulled a pin out of her lapel, and stabbed the end of Caleb’s finger.

  “Ouch, bitch, that hurt,” Caleb said, and then imm
ediately regretted his choice of words.

  Aradia stared up at him, pupils completely gone, no iris, just the white of her eye. Hissing, she said, “Don’t tempt me, boy. I’ll make bear soup out of your hide.” Her lip curled, exposing blacked teeth.

  “Sorry,” Caleb whispered and hung his head. Blood dripped from his finger.

  Aradia’s eyes returned to normal. “Press the paper near the bottom.”

  Caleb did as he was told, leaving a bloody smear on the paper. Each of the four had their turn, flinching as the pin stuck their fingers, until there were four bloody smears.

  Aradia picked the bloodstained paper up, took a knife from the table, and stabbed the parchment to the beam of the window so that all could see.

  The blood diluted on the page and rose upwards from all four fingerprints.

  Jenae’s and Alyx’s smears altered in colour as they climbed up the sheet, and then the blood morphed to a solid ebony bar. Both columns stopped growing at that point. They were similar, but not identical.

  Caleb’s and Riken’s continued up, past the top of Jenae’s and Alyx’s marks. The brothers’ blood marks were, on the other hand, identical in shape and colour and slowly traversed from light purple to an odd shade of orange, then shifted to green, and suddenly, the two columns stopped growing and the colour went solid black.

  “Well now, that explains the smell,” Aradia confirmed.

  “Mistress, please, what do you see?” the Watcher asked.

  “Well, isn’t it obvious?” she said flippantly, tsking afterwards. “These two are brother and sister.” She pointed to Jenae and Alyx, then turned her attention to Riken and Caleb. “But these two have shared the womb.

  “Although that’s not even the interesting part,” she cooed. “They are all related. Your father—” She pointed at Jenae and Alyx. “—is their great grandfather—and from the deepness of the black end mark, a rather potent demon himself!”

  Jenae, who had been standing as close to Caleb as she could get, shrank away. Alyx stared at Jenae with rounded eyes and mouth agape.

  “So the question is—who is really here to visit me? And what do you want with me? I have no quibble with the likes of a demon who makes that black of a mark or who has an interest in creating Daimonion.”