by Eliza Lainn
I could feel a headache starting in the back of my mind, near the base of my head. Tingles of electricity seemed to skate over my skin. The hairs on my arms rose. My breathing became labored.
Power—my power—still swirled in the room.
And I knew, even though I couldn’t see it, that the demon was still there.
I couldn’t look away. Couldn’t turn away.
Doing so would break the power.
I knew it, though not sure how.
But I knew it, so I wouldn’t look behind me.
Not when Molly continued screaming, her terrified sobs reverberating through the room. Or when Bronte tried to comfort her. When Rose and Noah began arguing about staying and waiting for backup or fleeing. Not when Oliver demanded to know where it was. Or when Cyril’s cool fingers brushed my arm, comforting and solid.
Then a collective gasp as another candle, this one in my periphery, went out.
“Shit,” Rose snapped, rushing forward. She struck a match. For a moment, it flared. Then it went out as if someone had blown on it.
She jumped back, right into Noah. His arms wrapped around her, pulling her closer, back from the hallway.
I stared into the darkness.
My mind began to play tricks. Saw tendrils of shadow wriggling at the corner where the living room and the hallway met. Snakes of blackness trying to ease into the living room.
I ignored them. Stared straight ahead.
The dull thudding in my head had turned into war drums. Pounding. Incessant. Loud.
Another candle went out, the light in the room dipping lower.
Then another.
“Relight them!” Rose ordered, scrambling out of Noah’s arms.
With a whoosh, all the candles in the living room went out at the same time.
And with a hiss, the fireplace died.
The room plummeted into darkness.
My head continued to pound.
Fear churned in my gut.
Then something plowed into me from behind. Arms wrapped around me, and for a panicked moment, I thought it was her.
It.
The demon.
But then Molly shrieked in my ear.
Yanked me back.
And I broke eye contact with the demon at the end of the hall.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The moment I did, I felt something wrap around my ankle.
It jerked back, knocking me to the floor.
“Stella!” Cyril shouted, coolness coasting through my arms. “Dammit!”
Oliver was shouting. Rose was shouting. Noah, Bronte, Molly—the living room was a discordant mess of shouting and sobs, only working to amplify the pounding in my skull.
I kicked out at whatever had hold of me, my leg jabbing into nothing. I pulled back, tried again, my hip screaming in protest as my leg continued to snap against nothing but empty air.
It yanked roughly again, sliding me a few inches across the carpet.
Hissing at the carpet burns, my hands shot out to grab the closest solid thing. They landed on the couch, scrambling for something to hold onto, but I couldn’t find any purchase for my fingertips.
“It has my leg,” I hissed, hands still scrambling at the couch, head throbbing, heart racing. My throat burned as if someone had shoved acid down my throat.
“Molly!” Rose shouted.
My head snapped around, a cold dread filling me at the absolute terror in my friend’s voice.
Molly was on the ground too, stretched out prone, hands trying to dig into the carpet. She was behind me, closer to the front door. Dim light from the streetlamp outside barely managed to send any light into the black living room, but it gave me just enough to see two things.
The first was that the bottom half of Molly’s body was in the air. As if something had hold of her legs, dragging her across the floor. Invisible. And something did have a hold of her legs—even if it had masked itself from me seeing it in that moment, I knew it had her. The angle of her body was too unnatural for her to be doing this one her own, not that I could even contemplate her faking it, not with what I’d seen already.
The second was that the front door was open.
But there was nothing through it. I couldn’t see the lawn beyond, the street, our cars. It was like a veil of pure shadows had descended in the doorframe. It was darkness, absolute and thick. Tendrils of it snaked out, coiling around the doorframe, growing along it and the walls like vicious ivy.
Molly screamed, her legs jerked back, the demon dragging her to the black door.
Rose, Bronte, and Noah were there. Rose and Bronte each had one of her arms, pulling her in the opposite direction. Noah hugged her waist, pulling back.
She was sobbing, crying. When she turned her head just right, the light from outside hit her face and I could see the sheen from the tears rushing down her cheeks.
Pure, unaltered terror shone in her eyes.
Another yank at my own ankle jerked me from her gaze. Coldness passed through my arms again, the feeling like when a blast of cold air hits you from a fan on a hot day.
“I can’t…I can’t grab you,” Cyril hissed in frustration. He sounded so angry, so disgusted with himself, and I felt the air in the room stir with his frustration. “Oliver, can you?”
Another pass of cold air.
“No—I can’t, I—”
A heartbreaking sob wrenched from Molly’s lips as the demon yanked her back even further. Her feet disappeared into the door.
I swallowed past the burning sandpaper in my throat, mustering as much power into my voice as I could. “Let her go.”
With another howling shriek piercing the air, Molly’s lower half dropped. She thudded onto the carpet, the air whooshing out of her lungs and biting off her sobs.
Immediately, Noah yanked her to him, pulling her away from the black door. Rose and Bronte helped, the four of them a tangled mess of limbs and bodies as they scrambled away.
Something struck me in the side, throwing me against the wall.
I smacked against it, pain exploding in ribs, both from the strike and the impact. It knocked the air out of me, and for a second, I couldn’t breathe.
Then sharp, stabbing pain flared in my lower leg. I cried out, kicking with my other leg, but met nothing.
“Dammit!” Cyril shouted, his cool hands still moving ineffectually through my physical body.
I was yanked back, sliding along the carpet. It burned as I moved back one yard, two, three, my feet nearly touching the black veil at the door. My eyes locked onto the blackness, tendrils still trying to climb out of the frame.
Corporeal hands latched onto my wrists.
My head snapped up. Rose and Bronte had one of my hands each, pulling me in the opposite direction. Pain flared in my bruised sides at being pulled taut, stretched, as the demon and my friends pulled me in opposite ways.
Beyond them, Noah had Molly in his arms, still pushing back, away from the door.
Cold brushed my cheek. “I can’t grab you, Stella. I can’t…I…” Cyril’s voice faded, despair seeping into it.
My throat was on fire. My head pounded with an intensity Skrillex would have been proud of. I blinked through the tears, concentrating on my friends.
Rose wore a fierce, furious expression while Bronte’s was gentle concentration.
“Don’t you let go,” Bronte whispered, eyes widening as she caught something in my expression. “If Sam can pull up Frodo, we can hold you here long enough to keep that bitch from taking you. So, don’t you dare.”
It was going to pull me through.
I knew that. Without a doubt, it would pull me through.
The question was whether I went alone.
They wouldn’t let go. Both would hold on for as long as they could, even if that meant being dragged through that black veil. It wasn’t in them to give up, not on me. They might flounder, they might get scared, but they didn’t give up.
It was how Rose knew Bronte would join
Apparition Investigations, ordering her a jacket even though Bronte had claimed she didn’t want anything to do with ghosts.
It was why I hadn’t been truly surprised to hear Rose had given up her job to do this.
Bronte with her quiet determination. Rose with her boisterous stubbornness. When things mattered, when we needed each other, we were there.
And they needed me to let go.
“No,” Rose hissed, grip tightening even more, painfully so. “Don’t you freaking do it.”
I concentrated, trying to block out the stabbing pain in my leg, the dull ache in my sides, the headache, the burning throat. The fear. I focused on my power. The weird ability to name things, that had shifted to just speaking, reality shifting at my words.
“Please don’t,” Cyril whispered.
We were the three Musketeers. Three peas in a pod. We had joked about being the Powerpuff Girls when we were younger, then Totally Spies, then Charlie’s Angels. The three of us. One badass team.
I forced the words past my throat, the metallic sting bringing me back to reality. “I love you two. And you need to let go.”
The moment the last power-laden syllable left my lips, their fingers loosened. Their eyes widened, watching, helplessly, as I slid from their fingers and was yanked back into the dark.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Once, when I was younger, we did this sensory challenge at summer camp. Blindfolded, we had to use taste, smell, and sound to figure out what things were.
So, with a bandana wrapped around my eyes, I’d shoved my hand into a bowl of cold spaghetti.
Not that I knew it was spaghetti at the beginning. But the clammy, cold, slimy feeling along my arm had creeped me out. How each small shift in my arm had more noodles shifting. I’d wiggle my fingers and the spaghetti would move, the slimy sensation touching me in a new way and sending my gut roiling as my brain tried to figure out what I’d shoved my arm into.
This was like that only much, much worse.
I couldn’t see. Blackness surrounded me, cocooning me. Only it felt thicker, heavier, the slimy sensation of the darkness wrapping and coiling making me nauseous.
As much as I felt cocooned, I could move. Sluggishly, but I could stretch my arms. Kick out my legs. But each time I moved, the darkness shifting, coiling around me in a different way.
Sliding.
Snaking.
Shifting.
Slimy and sickening.
I opened my mouth to scream and tentacles of it slid into my mouth.
I bit down, not on anything solid, nothing physical, just darkness.
And I could taste it.
Like ash and dust in my mouth.
I resisted the urge to vomit. That would open my mouth again, allowing more of the darkness to seep inside.
My stomach heaved, fighting against the sensation.
And panic flared in my mind.
I couldn’t form words. Couldn’t shout.
And with a terrified whimper, I realized all my pain had gone.
No dull aches, no throbbing head. The fire in my throat had vanished.
I was suspended in blackness, free from pain.
Like I was in Hell.
The actual Hell. The one discussed in literature and theology.
Dragged into it by a demon.
My panic spiked, my lips begging to be split open and let loose the scream building inside of me.
But I couldn’t have the darkness in my mouth again.
Then fire flared on my arm.
I looked at it, only momentarily surprised I could see in my body perfectly in the blackness. White light radiated from a space no bigger than a pencil’s eraser on my forearm. Burning. Like the way light shines through a magnifying glass.
The space widened, growing into the size of a dime. Then a penny. A nickel.
Spreading, growing larger. Bigger. Burning even more.
I couldn’t see my flesh underneath the light. It wasn’t like normal light, illuminating, but more like a whiteness, bright and hot, obscuring what was underneath.
It continued to expand, reaching the size of a quarter. And growing still.
It hurt. Pain radiated out from it. Like what I imagined it would feel like to be branded by a glowing, orange-tipped iron. I couldn’t smell the scent of burning flesh, but I could imagine it, recreate it in my mind.
It was the size of a half-dollar now.
Biting back the screaming, swallowing it, the terror resisted and pushed the scream back up my throat, a new kind of burning as the scream bubbled and expanded, trying to burst past my lips.
I flailed, the slimy darkness twisting and twining around my limbs in new ways. My stomach heaved.
Until, finally, the scream built to a point I couldn’t contain it anymore. And it erupted from me.
Chapter Twenty-Four
My eyes flew open.
Sensations overwhelmed me, so much input, too much. For a moment, I couldn’t do anything but blink. Hearing, feeling, seeing, but unable to comprehend any of it. Like my brain had forgotten how to interpret the data my senses gathered.
One by one, realizations trickled through my mind.
Head pounding. Ribs aching. Throat raw.
The fire, the pain, the burning at my arm. That had carried over from the blackness that had surrounded me. But it originated from a girl, a young woman, leaning over me, hands on my arm. I was stretched out, scratchy grass brushing against my cheek, dampness seeping into my back. Blinking, I looked up at the stars overhead, then shifted to look at the girl.
She was a teenager, if not in her early twenties. Red hair braided, draped over one shoulder. Large glasses. Wrinkles around her eyes from where she concentrated on my arm.
Light radiated from it, spreading outward. My entire arm glowed with white light, spreading, expanding, just like it had in the blackness.
Her eyes never strayed from it. Never moved. She had her hands folded, one over the other, resting on my arm. The light spread from that contact, erupting under her hands and moving to envelope me.
“Stella.”
I turned to the other side, recognizing the voice but unable to place it until I saw him.
Sebastian Adair knelt beside me, relief washing over him. His eyes softened, his shoulders relaxed, and tension leaked from him in spades.
With a gentle hand, he reached out to brush a strand of hair from my eyes.
“No touching,” the girl hissed, eyes never moving, hands remaining perfectly still. “Your energy will add to hers—I already have enough to deal with here, you idiot.”
Sebastian pulled his hand back, his expression never shifting from the naked relief he wore, despite being yelled at by someone possibly ten years younger than himself.
Whatever I was hearing, whatever sound still couldn’t manage to click, continued to sound.
I tried to lean up, to follow the trail of it to the source, to see what was happening.
“Stay down,” the girl hissed. “God, it’s like you want this to be difficult.”
But I was frozen, watching in confusion at the scene on the front lawn.
We were on Molly’s front lawn. The demon was surrounded by a circle of men and women I’d never seen before. All different ages, dressed in their unique, personal styles. Some old, some young. Men, women. Different ethnicities. But together in a circle, the demon inside.
She was on her hands and feet, moving like a bug, her arms and legs bent at unnatural angles like she’s crawled straight out of a horror movie. She had shadowy hair now and it moved, coiling and striking out as if she were Medusa with her hair of snakes, threatening anyone who moved too close.
Cornered, I thought for a moment. Then she pounced.
She leapt onto an elderly Asian man. The impact knocked him to the ground, the demon falling on top of him. He screamed, thrashed, fighting underneath it.
It reared its head back and bit into his throat like an animal.
Light erupted behind it
in a wave, spreading out from another person in the circle, a young woman with dreadlocks. It knocked the demon off, sending it flying. The circle hurried to shift, to move, to surround it again, on the edge of the lawn and spilling out onto the street.