“Right, so a protection spell,” Hadley said as she paced, “demons can’t do that.”
“No one can do that anymore,” James pointed out, standing up from his chair. “Wherever he his is somewhere that’s always been protected.”
Hadley stopped pacing immediately as she turned to look at James. I still sat in my chair and I didn’t move. I knew the words protection spell were two words I have heard before, I just couldn’t quite remember where right now. Isaac told me something was protected, something important. Oh.
“The council,” I whispered suddenly.
Hadley was already shaking her head. She’s worked it out too. “No, no, why would they take him there? They would only take Rhys to use him against you, to get the dagger.”
“Isaac has never trusted them,” I pointed out.
“Isaac isn’t right about everything,” Hadley glared at me a little.
“Maybe he’s right about this,” I said. “I mean…they only thing they wanted from me when I was there, was the dagger… and I was under the impression they would do anything to get it.”
“I’m going to agree with her there,” James said. “I mean, they used me too.”
“The council is supposed to be the good guys,” Hadley said with a dim look. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
“We have to go,” I told her standing up. “We have to go there now.”
“What? No,” Hadley said quickly, jumping in front of me so I couldn’t get to the door. “For one, we don’t know if it’s even the council, and if it is, we don’t even know what’s going on there. I hate to say this; we need to tell Isaac and Felix.”
“He’ll just side line me again,” I stated, “or at least try. I need to help Rhys.”
“And maybe you will,” Hadley told me. “Look, sorry, James we need to go, but thank you for helping.”
“Don’t mention it,” James shrugged. “No, really, don’t.”
“If you don’t, we won’t,” Hadley smiled a little.
“Done.”
Hadley and I left very quickly and I got the impression she wanted to get out of there anyway. We walked at a very fast pace back to Isaac’s and I was not sure if we’re supposed to beat him back or not. It became apparent though when Hadley and I busted back through the front door that it would’ve been better if we had beat him back.
“Where the hell have you been?”
Isaac jumped off the lounge and was in front of both of us before I could blink. He was angry, that I was sure of, and that was made even more apparent when I noticed his fists clenched together and I could see his veins popping out of his arms.
“Chill out,” Hadley said quickly. “We haven’t been gone for long.”
“It’s nearly been over an hour, Hadley,” Isaac said, stepping closer to her. “And I told you not to leave.”
“You don’t have any control over me,” Hadley told him, putting her hand to his chest and pushing him back.
“Hey,” I jumped in, and stepped slightly beside the two. “It was my idea to leave, and I convinced her too.”
“You convinced her?” Isaac asked in surprise.
“Yes, and we found Rhys,” I told him strongly.
“We think we found him,” Hadley corrected me.
“It’s better than you did, I’m sure,” I said angrily, walking around him to see Felix sitting down on the lounge staring at me.
“Where?” Felix asked.
“The council,” I answered quickly, making eye contact with him.
“The council?” Isaac asked surprised.
“I told you that I’m not sure,” Hadley muttered from behind me.
“I’m calling Eve.”
Felix was up out of the room the moment he spoke, pulling his phone out of his pocket. I crossed my arms over my chest and turned slightly and saw that Hadley and Isaac still hadn’t moved. I sighed and I walked over to the armchair in the corner of the lounge room and sat down. I realised that Hadley and I left in such a rush that Annabeth’s diary still sat on the table where I had left it untouched and again I could feel the dagger in Isaac’s room. It was a relief it was still there.
“James? Out of all the people you could’ve got help from, you went to James?” I heard Isaac ask Hadley as they both walked away from the front door.
“Where else was I supposed to go?” Hadley asked angrily. “He’s a tracker it made sense, and you were never going to find anything at Rhys’, you know that.”
“But James, gees,” Isaac muttered.
“Just because you never liked him,” Hadley rolled her eyes.
“He hated me actually,” Isaac told her.
“Oh, he was just jealous of you,” Hadley stated.
“Jealous-?”
“What’s a Regale?”
I spoke to them without really realising my mouth had opened, and maybe it was because I didn’t think their conversation was exactly important, so I felt okay with interrupting, but it was more than that. It was the time I had seen the word in the diary, and the way she used it...it was like she was scared to use it, or even write it down. Her writing was even smaller just on that word, it felt like it meant something.
Both Hadley and Isaac were looking at me now and neither of them knew who should answer first but I saw Isaac sigh.
“It’s the word they used for Annabeth,” Isaac said. “The word…that describes what she was.”
“You mean what I am too?” I asked him. “Because we can both us that dagger and we can both have more than one mark and we both have…power. You mean, I’m a Regale?”
I saw Hadley swallow as Isaac nodded slightly.
“It means more than that, doesn’t it?” I whispered. “The way Annabeth talks about it…it’s like she afraid of it.”
“Eve isn’t answering her phone.”
Felix had rushed back into the room before Isaac even got a chance to open his mouth again. Isaac’s anger seemed to have subsided for the mean time. I could only imagine it was the shock of the idea of the council being involved with something like this.
“Call her again?” Hadley suggested.
“I have, ten times,” Felix answered.
“Okay, so call Seth?” Isaac said
“I’ve already called him too, and he isn’t picking up either,” Felix answered. “Gosh, do you guys think I’m stupid?”
“No, no…sorry,” Hadley muttered.
“Something is wrong,” Felix pointed out. “Something is very wrong.”
I put the diary back down and I stood up. I didn’t know why I was suddenly thinking that a group that was meant to protect our kind, was suddenly working against us. Maybe it was the feeling they gave me when I met the elders. I felt….a disturbance towards them; I didn’t feel like anything was right when I was there, something always felt wrong.
“This makes sense, as much as all don’t want to admit it,” I say strongly. “James can’t track Rhys because he is somewhere that is protected, where else but the council is protected? Eve and Seth aren’t answering their phones, which is odd…and this dagger. The dagger is the only thing the council want, they made that very clear to me, and it’s no coincident that the day after I find it, they take my best friend and all clues point to them. It can’t be.”
They were all looking at me now and whilst Hadley and Felix were exchanging glanced, Isaac was just looking down at his feet. I was focused on him, waiting for what he had to say, because I knew he was the one I needed to convince, the others would be behind his decision. Isaac slowly lifted his head and as he did, his eyes met mine. We just stood there for a moment and it didn’t feel awkward to stare across the room like that. For a moment today, I had forgotten about our kiss yesterday, I had forgotten what was troubling me about him, and it was still clouded by Rhys. I had to focus on Rhys, not my little crush.
“Okay, okay,” Isaac said suddenly, breaking his eye contact. “We’re going to the council, now, but you’re staying.”
I realised th
at was why he was looking directly at me and I felt my blood boil. “What? No! Are you crazy? You need me there more than anyone. If you think you’re going to be allowed to go in there without the dagger and get Rhys back then you’re wrong! Not to mention you need all the help you can get.”
“Lily-,” Isaac started to argue in a low tone.
“She’s right, Isaac,” Hadley muttered interrupting him. “We don’t know what we could be up against in there, we need all the help we can get, and she can hold her own.”
Isaac was silent as he looked at Hadley, but I had never been more grateful for Hadley’s presence and her sudden faith in me. Isaac looked back over at Felix who kept his face strong. Something told me he agreed with Hadley.
“Fine,” Isaac muttered breathing in heavily. “But I swear to god-.”
“I can hold my own,” I said quickly. “I won’t put myself in danger, okay? Trust me.”
Isaac took a moment to react and I could see it in eyes. The pain to let me do this, the thought of everything bad that could happen if I went, but the only thing I could think about was all the bad things that were probably happening to Rhys, and whatever pain I might find myself in, was worth it.
“Let’s go.”
Chapter Twenty Four
I had never felt more anxious in my whole life. The nearly two hours of sitting in the SUV together as we made our way to the council was the definition of torture to me at that moment. Isaac definitely wasn’t driving the speed limit most of the time, which helped, but it was still a long drive. Felix spent the whole time trying to call Eve and Seth, but they still weren’t picking up, and it only made more me anxious.
I recognised the forest entrance as Isaac stopped the car. Everyone jumped out of the car at the same speed, all of them rushing and slamming the doors behind them. I followed them and kept my eye on Isaac, who was around to the boot of the car though first and pulling out the duffel bags of telums that we bought. Isaac was passing them out quite quickly to both Felix and Hadley until I was the only one standing there.
“I brought this one for you,” Isaac muttered as he handed one to me.
From the cover over the telum I could tell that it was old. The leather on the cover was torn with the edges of it frayed, and threads hanging out, and the whole thing was covered in scratches. The telum itself, just from the handle seemed like a lighter blue than the others, and I definitely hadn’t seen it before.
“It was my mother’s,” Isaac muttered again, as he put it into my hand.
“Your mother? Then shouldn’t you-,” I started to argue immediately.
“No,” Isaac told me. “I lost mine in that hospital, and I can’t lose this one, and I trust you with it.”
I took it in my hand and I suddenly felt like it held more power than the dagger.
“I’ll keep it safe, I promise,” I answered with a nod.
With the telum now secure on my back we all started to walk towards the portal. I thought for the first time since I had met these guys I actually kind of felt like I fitted in, and maybe it was just the matching weaponry, but for once I didn’t feel like I was just the child that had no choice but the tag along.
We reached the portal without a demon attack which seemed to surprise us all, but we weren’t going to think on it. Isaac was the one to open the portal, just as he had down before and he glided the blade of his telum over the rim of the portal and with the same serge of energy as I had seen it before and the portal opened.
Hadley and Felix went in first. I watched their bodies become consumed by the swimming blue light as they disappeared into the portal. I felt nervous about walking through the portal alone. I mean, last time I had Isaac practically was carrying me in and I was pretty out of it. There was a wave of relief when I saw Isaac hold out his hand for me to take as he stood near the edge of the portal. I let myself smile a little as I put my hand into his. I felt his fingers grip tightly around mine as we stepped through the portal together.
I felt a weird amount of tingling that I didn’t feel last time, but this time I was also more aware of what was going on. Everything became kind of white around me and I couldn’t see and it didn’t even feel like I was walking all in that same moment. When I knew I was on solid ground again I had to blink a few times before anything could be visible in front of me.
When it finally did, something wasn’t right. It was a whole feeling that suddenly overcame me and I felt an awful pit in my stomach. My first realisation that something was wrong was because there was no one there to greet us at the portal, unlike last time, and I was sure Eve said there was always someone watching the portal. I felt Isaac suddenly take his hand out of mine and I watched him as he let go of my hand and he then stepped forward past Hadley and Felix who were both staring down the hallway too.
I noticed what Isaac was looking at before he reached it. It caught my eye like a bright red stop sign. If I didn’t know any better I would say they were claw marks, three precise claws that had been scraped through the wooden exterior of the wall.
“Something is very wrong,” Felix shook his head.
“You can say that again,” Isaac muttered as his hand touched the claw mark and traced it slightly. “These are fresh.”
“Gosh, why is it so dark?” Hadley said sharply. “Why is there no one here guarding the portal? What could have possibly happened?”
“I know we’re all thinking demons,” Isaac said, turning around to face us.
“But that’s impossible,” Felix nodded, finishing Isaac’s sentence, “this place is protected. It’s designed to keep them out. Demons can’t enter through the portal.”
“Unless someone let them in.”
Everyone turned to me once I had spoken. I didn’t think the thought had crossed their mind. They knew the council better than I did, they trust its safety, and the measures they took to keep them all safe, but I didn’t know it as well as them, it was easier to question it.
“You’re suggesting that someone…on the inside let demons into the council?” Felix asked me, stepping towards me. “Like an Insigne?”
“No,” I shook my head slightly as I tried to think. “Demons can’t come through the portal, right? Which means they didn’t get in that way, so they had to use…like a normal door. So to do that, someone would have to know the real location of this place to summon the demons here.”
“Gosh, Lily, you aren’t suggesting it was an elder?” Hadley said shaking her head as she stood next to Felix.
“That’s exactly what she’s suggesting,” Isaac spoke suddenly from behind them, “and…if there are demons in here, she would be right.”
If there were demons in here and Rhys was here then he could be in danger. He stood no chance up against any demon, and that was made evident after his last encounter. Gosh, he fainted at the sight of blood; he really did stand no chance.
“Where…where would Rhys be if he’s here?” I asked in a whisper and both Hadley and Felix remained silent now.
I looked to Isaac who looked ready to answer me, but he was only interrupted by a sound at the end of the corridor. All of us jumped immediately to the sound, and I even saw Isaac slowly pull his telum out of its holder and had it in a ready position in front of me. The corridor was so dark, there was no way to tell if there was anything down there at all, but then there was a second sound, a lighter sound, and then another sound, and it made me think there were footsteps getting closer to us.
I saw a figure suddenly emerge from the blackness, and at first it seemed completely normal, almost like a normal human. It had the shape of and average man, height and weight and hair, but as the light hit its face I gasped loudly. It had no face. Well in a way, that was an overstatement. There was a kind of face, but where its eyes should’ve been there was just nothing, blackness, no eye balls, and it didn’t have a mouth, just skin that covered it, and no nose. It scared me to my every core.
“Is that….a primus demon?” Hadley whispered suddenly.
I scanned my brain quickly trying to recall what a primus demon was. I knew I had read about it, I was sure of it. Then it clicked, and I knew why I could recall it. A primus demon is an archaic demon and it could change its face to mimic anyone’s appearance and it seemed completely normal, meaning they never needed to possess anyone, but I remembered them because the book I read advised that if you were ever faced by one the best way to defeat it, is to not. The book advised you get out of there as fast as you possibly could because this thing was strong; and it was advised to never take on one alone if you had to face one, so at least there was more than one of us right now
“Lily,” Isaac said cautiously.
“Yes?” I gulped.
“If…if Rhys is here, he’ll be downstairs, in the old cells,” Isaac answered. “You’re going to go there now and check, okay?”
“But-.” I didn’t know why I was arguing, I could get away from this thing.
“You have to go past the kitchen and you’ll see a grey door, go down there and you’ll find it,” Isaac interrupted me. “I need you to go, okay?”
I didn’t move. I didn’t know if I could. I knew why Isaac wanted me to leave. He didn’t want me to be near this demon, he didn’t want me in danger, and this thing could really get the upper hand on me, whether I had two marks or not. The primus demon took another step towards us and Hadley and Felix moved into position next to Isaac. The three of them should be fine, right?
“Lily, go!”
I thought I saw the demon pounce towards them, but before I could look clearly I had turned and I had started to run. At first it was just an aimless sprint to get away, but I quickly realised that I needed to get on course. I had a vague idea of how to get to the kitchen; it was more or less the opposite direction of the bedrooms.
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