Testing: A 13 Covens Magical World Adventure (YA)

by Cassandra

  “Either that,” Jessica said, “or it is finally showing exactly how evil it can be. Somehow, I doubt it cares this time whether I’m capable of handling it or not.”

  “You’re ready,” Grandma Ethel interjected, her voice stern. She nodded at Jessica, her expression full of confidence. “You’ve come this far, sweetie. You’re ready. So let’s prepare to kill some demons. After all, you said you wanted to get this game over with. Now, you get to kill all the demons with one stone, so to speak.”

  Approximately a half hour later, Grandma Ethel’s house was hardly recognizable. The furniture had been pushed against the walls, valuable china had been removed from harm’s way, and with Grace’s help, all the cats had been rounded up and temporarily banished into the basement so that they, too, wouldn’t end up in harm’s way.

  The dining room table had also been cleared, so that all that remained were the demon cards, including the ones that contained Roger and Frank.

  To help her prepare, Pastor Norman had gone through his duffle bag and produced every demon-fighting weapon he had—from holy water guns, to silver knives, and wooden stakes—and laid them out so that they were all easily within Jessica’s reach.

  Meanwhile, Grandma Ethel and Chad pulled her aside and assisted her with their respective pep talks.

  “I have all the faith in the world in you, sweetheart,” Grandma Ethel said. “After all, you’re my granddaughter. You have some of me running through your veins, which means your instincts are spot-on, especially when under pressure. So trust them and use them, all right? And this time, I don’t even care if you have to flood my house.” She paused to pinch Jessica’s nose. “You give those demons more hell than they could ever have asked for, you hear me?”

  “Yes, Grandma.”

  “You’ve helped me and Roger out of tight spots before, Jess. So this shouldn’t be anything you can’t handle,” Chad said and squeezed her shoulder. “Remember all the things we taught you and all the demons you’ve killed before, and don’t be afraid to think outside the box. If you do that, these demons will run away with their tails tucked between their legs and regret the day they ever messed with you. Years from now, witches everywhere will tell stories about you, just like they do with your grandma.”

  She smiled wearily and shook her head. “Chad, too much. I don’t know if you’re helping me or trying to make me crack under the pressure.”

  He laughed and gave her a one-armed hug around the shoulders. “I’m doing both, I hope. You’re what witches call a diamond in the rough. A little pressure is what will help make you sparkle.”

  “That sounds like something old people would say. Wait, I keep forgetting, you are old.”

  Chad shoved her in the arm, which gave her a brief moment of laughter. She appreciated it, though, because she felt it would be the last time she laughed for quite some time.

  Jessica was about to say something else to him, wanting to draw out the friendly banter for a while longer, when the lights suddenly began to flicker. Mere seconds later, a soft and eerie laugh drifted through the house and seemed impossibly to come from all directions.

  She shuddered. It had been a while since she’d dealt with this kind of demon and she had almost forgotten how unnerving it's signature laugh was. It was like nails on a chalkboard and made her want to cover her ears.

  This was no time for cowering, though. She had to be brave. Accordingly, she forced herself to look on the bright side—at least she knew what was coming. Or at least some of it, anyway.

  “Well, I think we all know what this means,” Pastor Norman said.

  Jessica drew a deep breath. “Yeah,” she said, “it’s showtime.”

  No sooner had the words left her mouth than the temperature in the house suddenly plummeted. In the flickering lights, all their breaths fogged in the air. The floor began to tremble like an earthquake had struck Ethel’s house and ignored the homes alongside.

  Once again, she wondered if the neighbors ever noticed anything strange.

  She turned on the spot and looked toward the dining room table where the stack of demon cards rested. One-by-one, they floated into the air and swirled around until they resembled a tornado. Black smoke poured out of them and slowly, the smoke began to take on various horrifying forms.

  The shapes of demons.

  Some were the kind she had fought before—the kind that looked like overgrown lizards. Others looked like what she could only describe as insects on major steroids. Some slithered across the floor like overgrown centipedes and stretched a minimum of three feet long.

  Jessica felt the blood drain from her face. No matter how determined she had been earlier, she now felt like she wasn’t anywhere near ready for this. She couldn’t even comprehend how many sets of evil red eyes glowed in her direction from creatures in all different shapes and sizes. She was in over her head and would have given anything to go to back to only facing one demon at a time.

  “Grab the holy water, Jessica,” Pastor Norman yelled commandingly.

  Her hands trembling, she snatched the bottle of holy water he had set out with one hand and grabbed the gun filled with extra holy water in the other. She secured them at precisely the right moment as one of the demons had already lunged for her.

  She screamed and pulled the trigger of the gun as quickly as possible. A strong stream of holy water struck the creature between the eyes. She moved her hand slightly and aimed the stream of water directly into its eye. The beast growled and stumbled backward to fall heavily and make the whole house shake. She almost thought it would fall through the floor and into the basement.

  Jessica was about to douse the demon with more holy water when she suddenly tripped. She immediately lost her balance, landed on the floor, and dropped both the gun and the holy water as the centipede-looking demon wrapped itself around her legs.

  Through her pants, she could feel hundreds of legs crawling on her, pinching and poking. Bile rose in her throat and terror seized her to the point where she couldn’t even scream, although she wanted to.

  “Jessica!” her grandmother yelled.

  Before she could warn Ethel to stay away, the old lady ran towards her with a knife in hand.

  “No, Grandma, don’t.”

  Her warning came too late. Grandma Ethel had taken the knife and stabbed the centi-demon through the middle of its body. She dragged the knife across it and split the hideous creature in two, then proceeded to stomp on its halves as she muttered some kind of spell under her breath.

  Unfortunately, exactly as Jessica feared, before her grandmother could kill the demon, she was propelled backward by some invisible force.

  No.

  She knew exactly what was happening; Ethel was sucked into the cards in punishment for trying to help out in a game that wasn’t hers to play.

  As for the centipede demon, its two halves continued to move without any apparent disability. Before her very eyes, each half sprouted its own pair of eyes and immediately hurtled toward her again. This time, each one attacked a separate leg.

  “Jessica, here!” Chad grabbed the bottle of holy water that she’d dropped and threw it at her. It soared in a slow arc and she gasped, praying that she could catch it while the two creatures wound themselves tighter around her legs and made her skin crawl.

  “Shit!” Jessica cried when she missed the bottle of holy water by at least a foot. It slid across the floor and landed in the path of a demon that resembled an enormous grasshopper.

  It hopped menacingly, its feet barely inches away from landing on the prize.

  She stretched and tried in vain to reach the bottle. All the while, the centipede demons tightened themselves around her legs.

  The lights continued to flicker and her heart pounded. Tears making the already poor visibility even worse.

  And then she heard the tale-tell crunch—the grasshopper demon had stepped on the bottle.

  One extremely valuable weapon smashed to smithereens.

  “Gra
b the glass, Jess. Stab it. Finish him off with the glass!” Chad yelled at her, but her fear intruded and it took a moment for her to understand what he said.

  Eventually, she realized that the grasshopper demon seemed to have injured itself when it accidentally stepped on the vial. It had fallen and now made a hissing sound that Jessica could only presume meant it was in pain.

  Her gaze scanned the terrifying beast and she noticed that a piece of glass protruded from its foot—and that particular foot now sizzled.

  The demon’s limb was burning.

  She realized in a moment of clarity that the glass itself had been in contact with the holy water, which was apparently enough to do some damage.

  Jessica gritted her teeth and reached for a shard of glass. With a long and painful stretch, she finally succeeded in getting her hand around it. Pain shot through her palm as it sliced her, but she didn’t care. Her teeth gritted in both pain and determination, she swung her arm furiously in an effort to stab and slice the grasshopper in any way that she could.

  The only problem was that she couldn’t really move and swinging while she slithered on her stomach would only get her so far.

  She’d been so preoccupied with the grasshopper-looking demon that she had almost forgotten the reason for her immobility. When she glanced down, it was obvious. The centipede demons were halfway up her legs now and clung to her so tightly that her limbs had actually gone numb. Her stomach lurched when their glowing red eyes glared at her, intelligent yet bestial at the same time.

  Somewhere across the room, other demons laughed, standing guard as if they merely waited to have their turn to get in on the action.

  “Aaahhhh!” Two voices screamed in unison.

  Jessica looked up as both Pastor Norman and Chad hurtled towards her, each of them armed. They had clearly decided to join the fight.

  No, no, no. Not again.

  Deep down, she felt she should have known things would come down to this. There had simply been no way that Grandma Ethel, Pastor Norman, or Chad would have been able to stand back and watch the demons obliterate her without stepping in, even if they were well aware of the game’s rules. And honestly, she couldn’t blame them. She knew that if the shoe were on the other foot, she would have found it impossible to not lend a helping hand to someone she cared about who was in dire need of it.

  The two men each grabbed one of the centipede demons and set to work. As one, they sliced and diced and savaged the creatures until the demons stopped moving and crumbled into a pile of ashes.

  Their sacrifice would not be in vain, Jessica decided, and she finally made it back onto her feet. She did the best she could to ignore the sensation of pins and needles that prickled through her legs as she lunged for the grasshopper demon.

  She sliced another one of its long springy legs with the shard of glass in her hand and no longer cared that her own blood dripped from it. Furious, she slashed at its arms and wings.

  With almost a feral scream, she took hold of the creature. Superhuman strength she didn’t know she possessed surged forward and gave her the ability to slide the creature across the floor until it was in precisely the place where the carpet had been saturated with the spilled holy water.

  At that moment, she plunged the shard of glass into its eye. It screamed and howled, and greenish goo gushed out of the socket before it turned gray and became ashes.

  Jessica spun and her bottom lip trembled as Pastor Norman and Chad both gave her apologetic glances before they were sucked away and trapped into a pair of cards that spun around in the air.

  The other demons laughed.

  She stood for a moment, shaken to her core. “You took my grandma…and Pastor Norman…and Chad…and Roger…and Frank…” she said through gritted teeth, spacing the words with ragged breaths. Her blood boiled with her growing rage to the point where she was surprised there weren’t bubbles coming out of the wound on her hand.

  When the oversized lizard demons continued to laugh, she had officially had enough.

  A scream so full of anger and grief burst from her throat, she thought her windpipes were in danger of exploding. But she didn’t care. She merely retrieved the holy water gun and the longest knife she saw and charged forward, abandoning every ounce of her fear.

  Jessica would end this game or it would end her. Either way, she wanted it to end, no matter what. If she had her way, though, she would kill as many demons as possible before the end arrived, whichever end it might be.

  She pulled the trigger as she aimed for every sign of movement she saw. Water streamed everywhere and screams and roars erupted in the confined space to shake the walls and windows. She was in such a blind rage, she hardly knew who or what she aimed at. In a blur of constant motion, she simply sprayed water and swung the knife, indiscriminately striking any targets she could reach.

  A sickening stench filled the house as demon flesh singed in the holy water and ripped beneath the glistening knife blade.

  Jessica kept going as adrenaline coursed through her.

  When the gun was empty, she tossed it aside and dropped the knife as well. As if the magic inside her suddenly had a mind of its own, it compelled her to close her eyes and raise her palms to the ceiling. Her hands burned and tingled for reasons she couldn’t comprehend scant seconds before something like a burst of light erupted from her hands. The force shook and stung her arms.

  When she opened her eyes, all the demons were dead and smoky figures wafted through the air to disappear into the demon cards.

  Although the vile creatures had returned to where they belonged, blood, water, and ashes still covered every inch of the dining room. The only thing Jessica was concerned about was the fact that Grandma Ethel, Pastor Norman, Chad, Frank, and Roger still weren’t there.

  She collapsed onto the couch in a stupor.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Jessica felt numb, unable to wrap her mind around what had happened. She cradled her aching and bleeding hand, afraid to let her mind even wander too far.

  Her mind seemed frozen, afraid to think about why her grandma and friends had not emerged from the cards yet.

  She was afraid to consider that somehow, for some reason, the game wasn’t over yet and perhaps there was even worse to come.

  It scared her witless to contemplate that, as a game designed by Satan himself, perhaps it wasn’t meant to be fair and she was silly to think that she could ever win in the first place.

  As she continued to sit on the couch, she realized how quiet the house had grown—at least where she was. All that she could hear were the cats in the basement, making a ruckus.

  Still, she didn’t move, trapped in a place of utter shock. A tightness developed in her chest and she realized how much more difficult it was to simply breathe.

  Was she having a panic attack?

  Thoughts coalesced in her mind and it finally hit her that she might never see the others again. A hysterical sob escaped her throat and a loud pop sounded in the air.

  “It took you long enough,” said a voice, high-pitched and teasing in nature.

  Jessica jumped, startled at first, then purely elated.

  Frank had appeared beside her on the couch and grinned at her.

  Before she could manage to say anything in response, a strong wind blew through the house and stole the words from her mouth. One by one, she heard the voices of the others.

  Chad. “Oh, thank goodness that didn’t take too long. Being trapped in a card is not something I had on my bucket list.”

  Pastor Norman. “My sentiments, exactly.”

  Grandma Ethel. “Of course it wouldn’t take long. My granddaughter knows what she’s doing.”

  The three of them emerged from the kitchen and beamed cheerfully at Jessica.

  Tears of joy streaked down her face as she ran toward them. She reached her grandma first and threw her arms around her in a hug. “Grandma! Oh, my God…I was so scared. I thought I messed up.”

  “No, we me
ssed up,” Pastor Norman said. “And you fixed everything. So thank you, dear.”

  When she finally released Ethel, she turned to hug Pastor Norman. “Thank you for leaving the weapons behind. That helped save the day as much as anything!”

  Chad cleared his throat.

  “Oh, hush. I haven’t forgotten you!” Jessica laughed and threw her arms around him. “One of your spells—I don’t even know which one it was—but I think I used it, and it must have worked.”

  “Awesome,” he said when he released her.

  As overjoyed as she felt, the smile slowly slipped from her face. “But wait… Where’s…” Before she could finish the question, she saw a figure lurking behind in the kitchen.

  Roger.

  “I think he’s still in shock,” Chad whispered. “We can’t get a word out of him.” He glanced toward his friend. “Come on out here, buddy. No one’s upset with you. What you did was an honest mistake. As you can see, we all made the same mistake.”

  Slowly, he came out of the kitchen but he looked distinctly paranoid.

  “Roger,” Jessica breathed, “I am so sorry it took me so long to finish the game! I—” She stopped when he suddenly shook his head vehemently.

  “It’s not about the game,” he said. “Forget the stupid game. I…I can’t do this. I can’t.” He cast a horrified look at Ethel and Pastor Norman. “I’ve seen things that no one should ever see.” Without further explanation, he bolted for the door and it slammed behind him with resounding finality.

  “What the hell?” she muttered. She turned toward the others, her eyes wide. “Is it that bad inside the cards? What kind of things do you see in there? Is it like—all the demons running around at once?”

  The others all shook their heads.

  “No,” Chad answered. “I mean, unless we weren’t in there long enough.” He glanced at Frank, who had made his way over to the group now. “You’ve spent more time inside the cards than we have. Did you see anything particularly bad?”