by Lan Chan
All of my instincts stood to attention. Every muscle in my body commanded me to run. Had I not been a hedge witch and aware of the existence of supernaturals, I would have called this a gut feeling. There was some bad mojo in there. It skated across my skin. I shivered and rubbed my arms as my stomach tried to turn over on itself. I suddenly wanted to go to the bathroom really badly. Anyone in their right mind would have bolted. I stepped closer to the glass so that my nose was almost pressed up against it.
As the mage continued to chant, the flame warped until there was a single strand of it swirling around the larger mass. The strand of flame crept closer to the possessed man. He struggled futilely against his bindings. He turned his head to towards us, his mouth clamped shut like a child refusing to eat something unpleasant.
The second he locked eyes on me, I drew an involuntary blue circle. I was in the middle of trying to retract it when invisible limbs reached out and latched on to the circle. The man’s eyes grew wide, his pupils dilating to the point where they blanketed his irises. His entire socket was filled with blackness. His mouth opened. “Mistress,” he pleaded.
I took a step back. Every patient in the room turned their attention to me. All of them began to fight their bindings. They struggled as though their bodies weren’t at the point of breaking. Despite being bolted down and secured with magic, the beds shook. The magical forcefields around each bed sparked with corresponding bursts of silvery white and red laced black.
“Alessia!” Professor Mortimer said, “get away from the glass.”
I was about to do just that when my grip on this dimension slipped. My mind dropped into the Ley dimension. In it, there were no more humans. No more classmates. Only the corroding magical barrier in front of me and the swarm of demons behind it. The lower demons were the ones with physical bodies that you could fight with weapons. These demons were the ones that had done unspeakable things and transcended their mortal bindings to become closer to Lucifer. They were his silent army.
They weren’t so silent now as they bashed against the magical barrier to get to me. Somewhere out there, somebody was calling my name. In this dimension all I could perceive was the ghostly essences of the demons and the unbelievably bright astral light that I had become. Wisps of my bone-witch magic fluttered across the barrier. The demons scrambled for it like fish in a tank at feeding time.
“Mistress,” the demons whispered in their frenzy to reach me. They were under some kind of delusion that I was their mistress. A voice in my mind offered a contrary thought. I was made of Lucifer’s blood. By rights, I was the closest human to him.
The thought rocked me to my core and tore away the film of the Ley dimension. Back in the earthly realm, the humans had managed to break through their bindings by hurting themselves in gruesome ways. The man who was closest to me had seared off his arm in his attempt to break the spells surrounding him. The woman at the back of the room was gnawing away her own wrist. I watched as she bit through the tendon and yanked it out with her teeth. She alternated between destroying one arm and using the other to scrape at the air between us like she was trying to crawl back to me.
They would get to me at all costs.
The Nephilim guard was joined by a dozen others. More mages spilled into the room. When they tried to reinforce the barriers of light, the magic flared and rocked them back.
“Alessia!” Professor Mortimer shouted. His voice sounded muffled. I turned my head in his direction. My heart stopped. I stood inside a circle of my own blue-and-black magic. Surrounding that was a new barrier of restraint belonging to the Dominion guards. The other students were nowhere to be seen. They had probably been evacuated.
Both professors were still here. And both of them were watching me as though I had grown another head. The room shuddered with the build-up of energy. I heard metal creak. Specks of concrete dust bloomed around me as the walls and ground began to give way.
Still all I could think of were the demons trying to find their way back to me. Why had they suddenly grown powerful enough to break their bonds?
A shriek had my attention snapping in the direction of the Nephilim woman. She had been trying to stop the new female patient from breaking her neck as she used her frail body to smash against the forcefield. The moment the patient’s body made contact with the barrier, the Nephilim had sliced into it with her angel blade. A decision had been made. Putting the humans down was the best way out of this.
Something inside me rejected the notion. No matter what happened, I would always be human. I despised the thought of seeking hope in the wrong place only to be betrayed. That was the frightening thing about the way the patients looked at me. The demons inside them saw me as a proxy for their Prince. But the humans, what little was left of them, looked at me with longing. They had made a mistake. Now they wanted out.
I knew the moment the word popped into my thoughts that the consequences might be dire. It was nothing compared to watching the patient sagging as the Nephilim’s blade sank into her throat. The moment the patient died, a black mass of swirling demonic energy released from her body. It formed the outline of a demon with horns protruding from his head and hooves for feet.
“Mistress,” it cooed.
I raised my left hand. I knew the word of light for this situation. The guards had been speaking them to no avail. There was no more light left in these patients. So I would give them some.
“Kavhalah,” I shouted. Hope. My mind would explode. The Angelical word hung in the cooling air. For a split second, everything became preternaturally still. And then reality turned upside down. The Ley dimension seeped into this reality. The world became a hodgepodge of light and colour. It clashed in a fireball of light so vast, I couldn’t see anything else.
There came an agonising chorus of screams as the demons were rent asunder. Not just to be returned to the Hell dimension but to be unmade. Everything in the room crumbled. And then so did I.
26
The soothing touch of angelfire would have comforted me if not for the terse conversation happening around me.
“...as a weapon,” I heard Michael say.
“There is too much about her we don’t understand,” Raphael responded.
“How much longer do we allow her to walk amongst this world unchecked?” Michael responded. “The Angelical word should have destroyed her.”
“What would you have us do, brother?” Azrael said. Though the quality of his tone didn’t change, I sensed the bone-deep fury in it. “Are you suggesting we murder her?”
“You should have allowed me to do it when we had the chance,” was Gaia’s cutting reply. Silence followed in its wake. I felt their scrutiny even though I couldn’t for the life of me open my eyes.
“I am suggesting that you should not have made a pact with a treacherous witch without discussing the ramifications,” Michael said.
I felt Azrael’s reassuring grip on my shoulder. Somebody sighed. “You still believe she will be able to resist him?” Raphael asked.
“You tell me, brother,” Azrael said. “When you look inside her, do you see evil?”
Another weighted silence. “I see death,” Raphael said. “But I do not know where. It is impossible to parse anything about her with Luc’s stranglehold.”
“Then what do you suggest we do about it?” Azrael said. There was a fair amount of snark in it. I could see where I got some of mine from.
Michael sighed. “Her will is free. We have no choice in the matter.”
“You’ll eat your words if you don’t do something about it,” Gaia said. But I already felt myself slipping back to the mortal dimension.
A bright white light flared in the corner of my eye. The hand that touched me this time was clammy and very much human. I scented brimstone and coughed.
“Lex?” I heard Fred say. My eyes peeled open to reveal a padded celled room. Oh hell no! Fred had his hand on my forearm. It glowed the iridescent white of his light magic.
“What d
id you do to get all these easy gigs?” I asked him.
He gave me a weak smile. “I’m learning to be what I was meant to be,” he said. His magic flared again. It lifted some of the oppressiveness in my chest. Well, I’ll be damned.
“Get me out of here,” I croaked. My whole body ached when I tried to move. The door burst open and Kai strode in. He scooped me up in his arms.
“She’s not demonic,” Kai said. “Happy now?”
He faced off against both arms of the Councils. “Happy is not exactly the word I would use,” Victoria said.
Kai teleported us out of there. We landed back inside one of the private rooms in the Bloodline infirmary. Kai put me down on the bed. He reached out and placed his palms on both side of my face. Green light seeped into my skin. I gasped. The flood of healing shattered the last of the dark power lingering inside of me.
My eyelids fluttered. I gripped Kai’s wrist. “I’m okay,” I told him. “I’m not injured.”
“Well, that’s something at least,” Jacqueline said from the doorway. Sophie popped her head out from behind Jacqueline. Kai threw them both a menacing glare.
“Maybe we’ll come back,” Sophie said. The door closed behind them.
Kai kicked off his boots and scrambled onto the bed. “You sure you’re not hurt?” he asked as he curled himself around me. I could feel the frantic thud of his heart against my back. I closed my eyes and breathed in his scent.
“I’m sure.” He wrapped his arms around me. While I had always been a bit hesitant before, this time I sank into him. I revelled in the vibrancy of him. From the hot scrape of his breath against the back of my neck to the unbreakable hold he had over me as he crushed me to him.
We stayed that way until I felt his heartbeat slow to a normal pace. “What was that?” he finally asked.
“I’m not sure.”
“Professor Mortimer said the demons called to you.” I actually thought it might have been the other way around. It felt like my magic fed them strength. It was why they were so desperate to get to me.
“I think my presence agitated them,” I said. “They went insane.”
“That’s the understatement of the year. A demon doesn’t give up its human host easily. These ones were willing to kill their hosts to get to you.”
I blinked slowly. “Did any of the humans survive?”
“Seven out of the twelve.”
I released the breath I’d been holding. Five people had died because of me. My body tried to curl involuntarily but Kai held me in place.
“Shhh,” he said. “Without you, they would have all died eventually. The Dominion couldn’t find a way to exorcise the demons and it was becoming dire.”
I knew that in those circumstances, the humans were sacrificed. But the logic of it was lost on me right now.
“Can I sleep?” I asked.
He kissed my temple. “Relax. I’ve got you.”
It was dark outside when I woke again. Somebody was making a racket. Kai was still wrapped around me, but he’d dozed off. His exhaustion was evident because he didn’t wake when I crawled out from underneath him. As silently as I could, I opened the door and stepped out into the main floor of the infirmary.
There were more students in here than I had ever seen. Most of them were Bloodline kids but some of them were refugees from the other Academies. A pixie was sitting on a bed screeching at the top of her lungs.
“I don’t care how qualified he is,” she said. “I’m not letting that thing touch me.”
My hackles rose. One of the dwarf nurses grunted at her. “You’ll be seen by Doctor Thorne or you can drag your sorry behind out of here.”
The pixie’s ruby lips opened into a perfect O. “How dare you threaten me? Do you have any idea who I am?”
“You’ll be out on your ass soon if you don’t stop that caterwauling.”
The nurse turned on her heels, saw me, and rolled her eyes. “These ridiculous pampered princesses are going to be the death of me,” she said.
“Why does she have a problem with Doctor Thorne?” I asked.
She made a derisive sound. “Because she’s an empty-headed moron. All these idiots hang on to a dimensional hierarchy that is long gone. None of these kids even knew the home dimensions but they act like they’re still part of a war that ended long before they were even conceived.”
“Why doesn’t she go to her own infirmary then?”
She showed me her teeth. “The other Academies don’t have infirmaries. Bloodline is the only one that has ever had human students. The other Academies just make their students tough it out.”
Now that I thought about it, that made a lot of sense. With their healing abilities, they didn’t really require the kind of healing us humans did. They had spells that helped their own regenerative powers accelerate. But sometimes healing had little to do with physical injuries.
“But the elite guards have medics in their ranks,” I pushed.
“The elite guards don’t cry over a sprained wrist.”
Point taken.
Doctor Thorne appeared from one of the other private rooms. He tried to approach the pixie girl only to be lambasted. He was so gracious about it, taking their abuse with stony calm. How long had this being going on? I remembered Griff’s terse words about how the para-humans needed me.
“Alright, that’s it.” I marched over there, grabbed the girl by the arm that wasn’t injured, and hauled her towards the door. She hissed and tried to throw a hex at me, but I was already protected by a circle. It bounced off me and blasted a hole in the wall. I knew the scale of her attack and what I’d done in Dominion weren’t even on the same level, but I hadn’t meant what I did. She wanted to hurt me and was preparing to do so again. I pushed open the door and tossed her out. “Anybody else that has a problem with the medical staff can leave right now,” I said.
Jacqueline made her reappearance then. The pixie girl threw me a withering glare and stomped off. “Perhaps we should have a chat before you frighten the daylights out of any more students,” Jacqueline said.
I expected her to take me back to her office, but we lingered in the courtyards outside of the infirmary. I was glad. The last thing I needed was for Kai to wake up without me around and kill something. We sat on a bench beneath an arch of clematis vines.
“Let me guess,” I said, “neither Council is happy with me at the moment?”
“It’s not just the Councils. It’s the parents, the board, the other students, and pretty much half of the supernatural community,” Jacqueline said. Ouch.
“Way to put a positive spin on it,” I said.
To my utter surprise, she smiled at me. “I said half the supernatural community. There is still the other half. And now there’s the Human League. Thanks to this stunt, they’ve agreed not to reveal us to the humans for the time being.”
I blinked stupidly. “Why?”
“Nora drilled it through their heads that if more humans found out about demons, they would give up their humanity for power. And then we’d have a situation where the demons would rule the earth. The difficulty of that exorcism was made blatant. Without you, there would be twelve deaths on our hands.”
She leaned back on the bench. “Having said that, I’m finding it particularly difficult to keep you enrolled in Bloodline at the moment.”
I laced my fingers in front of me and spun my thumbs around each other. “Maybe I shouldn’t be here. I keep getting myself into these terrible situations.”
“Do you, though? Professor Mortimer says you followed every instruction until the demons got hold of you. By all accounts, you were a perfect student. I can’t see how we could do anything more to protect you.”
It was then that I understood what she was trying to say. I found myself reaching out for her hand. It was strange to be the one comforting her. “You couldn’t have known that was going to happen,” I said. “And I am so grateful for everything you’ve done for me. But if me being here is going to be a
problem, just do what you need to do. I’ll be okay.”
She gripped my hand in hers and sighed. “It’s a little difficult right now,” she said. “On the one hand, I have the board breathing down my neck and the Nephilim Council wanting to throw you in the prison. On the other hand, Bruce and Peter have both threatened to resign if you get expelled.” The infirmary door opened and Kai stalked out. His focus latched on to me. “And then there’s that.” She waved her hand in his general direction.
“They’re not expelling her,” he said.
“Why thank you,” Jacqueline said. “How would I ever know how to do my job unless my grandson grunts it at me? You’re on a break until you hear back, Lex.”
Kai made a displeased sound that was definitely in the realm of a grunt. She rolled her eyes at me behind his back before disappearing.
“I’ll walk you back to your room,” Kai said.
Once there, he handed me off to a very distraught Sophie and promised to come and see me after his patrol.
Diana arrived shortly after. The mirror beeped. When I answered it, Basil’s worry-lined face appeared. “You can’t be left alone for one second,” he yelled at me.
“Basil,” I heard Nanna say, “screaming at her isn’t going to help.”
“I’m not trying to help!”
The mirror turned sideways. They were wrestling for access of the view screen. “Oh brother,” Diana said. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. It wasn’t as though the demons were trying to attack me.”
“That’s the worrying part!” Basil snapped. He’d managed to regain control but with very little of his dignity intact. His hair was all over the place. I bit my lip to keep from laughing.
“Three of the Dominion guards are currently being treated for what were life-threatening injuries, but you managed to come away completely unscathed. There are rumours flying all over the place about the prophecy.”
“Basil,” I said, “I didn’t do any of this on purpose. I keep trying to read books to find out what’s wrong with me, but surprise, there’s nothing. So I’m flying a little blind here. And freaking me out with your meltdown isn’t helping.”