by Zandria West
Just as I begin to speak the second repetition of the spell, I hear a bloodcurdling cry and there’s a crashing sound in the bushes nearby. A huge demon emerges near the opening of the cavern, eyes glowing red, fangs bared, hands wielding a weapon that is huge and terrible. I recognise the demon. It’s the same one I saw, over and over again, in my vison: the leader who saw me, who I knew was about to kill me. And he’s here, now. What does that even mean? I’m frozen with terror as he turns to look at me, readying himself to attack. My legs feel suddenly so weak I’m scared they’re going to give way.
‘Be gone!’ Grayson cries, his angel’s Voice breaking over me. He leaps forward, drawing a knife from his belt. Reuben is just behind him. For a moment, I falter in horror as I see the demon take a swipe at Grayson. The huge, deadly blade he’s wielding connects with my angel’s right shoulder, near where he has already been injured. Grayson cries out in pain.
‘Lana! The spell!’ Graciela calls urgently.
I can hear the voices of the other witches faltering. I know they can’t see what I see, but they can sense my confusion and horror. The huge demon takes another wide swing with his blade, and the metal bites into the flesh of Grayson’s side. He cries out, then staggers and falls to the ground.
‘No!’ I scream and start to run to him. Graciela’s hand is like steel on my arm.
‘The only way to save him is to remake the Barrier,’ she says.
I close my eyes and try to regain the tattered thread of the spell, saying the words as I learned them. Even though my voice is shaking, I gradually build the flow of energy once more, feed it into something that is beginning at last to feel real and powerful. The Barrier is rising. And with it, I feel hope return. Once the Barrier is remade, all those demons who have crossed in breach of the Accord will be cast back. The war will be over. The human realm will be safe again for as long as the new Barrier holds.
I’m coming to the end now. I feel the tempo lifting, the intensity of the spell increasing, swirling around me like a hurricane, picking up power and pace. It’s incredible – awe inspiring and terrifying both at once. For a moment, I see a figure: a woman, dark-clothed and white-haired, arms raised as though in invocation. I gasp as I realise it is the Great Witch herself. Gabriel’s mother. The figure is faint and blurry, as though an image of light projected onto dusty glass. And then, something else begins to rise, something huge and dark and terrifying. Something familiar. It’s coming from me.
‘Oh my God!’ I hear somebody cry.
I can’t stop now. I’m so close. The Barrier must be re-made.
I see Grayson on the ground. His whole side is stained with blood. He’s not moving. Before him the demon’s mouth is open wide like he’s howling from pain or victory, though I can’t hear a thing. I can’t hear anything at all – my head is filled with roaring. All around me a darkness is rising.
I say the final words of the spell and hear a tremendous crack of thunder followed by a tearing, as though the world were splitting open, but instead I feel it being re-made. I feel it in my bones: the Barrier is back in place.
‘Graciela – the potion…’ I reach blindly for the small bottle which contains the liquid that was intended for the villagers. A few drops would be enough to stop my heart. I plan to drink the entire bottle.
Something terrible is moving through me, preparing to emerge. I have to stop it, now, before it’s too late.
Graciela passes the bottle but before I’m able to take it, I’m pushed aside. I stagger, dizzy still from the spell. It takes me a moment to understand what is happening, then I see my brother, Jamie, has taken the bottle from me.
Where did he come from? What the hell is he doing?
‘No!’ I cry. ‘Please, Jamie! I have to seal the spell. I must prevent the Dark God –’
My brother gives me a cold smile that chills me to the core. ‘The Dark God is in me too, didn’t you know? Or were you too self-obsessed to even notice? I was boring Jamie, straight Jamie, Jamie who always followed the rules. Do you know how hard that was? How I had to fight with every fibre of my being against who I was meant to be, who I longed to be? I feel him in me now, moving through me…’
I see Graciela staring at Jamie, an expression of shock blanching her face.
‘But… what?’ I sputter. ‘How is that even possible?’
Jamie laughs. ‘We’re twins, Lana. Get it? Same womb. Same spell. Zap, he got to both of us. It’s just, you were never strong enough to fight it, so you got all the attention. Where was my bevy of hot demon ladies magically bound to my protection, hey? You really think Dad could have got that covered for me too…’
I’m starting to shake. I feel a strange rippling sensation, as energy flows through me, moving under my skin, twisting and writhing, preparing for its release. And Jamie’s the one who’s going to make sure it finds its way out. All these years and I never even saw it – my own brother, given over to the Darkness. After everything we’ve done, everything we’ve lost, it’s all going to end here…
‘Please, you don’t have to do this—’ I beg. My teeth are chattering so hard I can hardly speak.
Jamie leans in close to me, getting into my space. ‘For fuck’s sake Lana. Just for once, try and understand,’ he says, his voice low. I see faint symbols moving beneath his skin like dark bruises. He meets my eyes and I gasp – his eyes are utterly black. Pupil, iris, white of the eye are all gone. All I see are whirling dark holes in his head. Is that what I look like too? It’s terrifying to see. Jamie clenches his fists, and when he speaks his words come out through gritted teeth. ‘I’ve only ever tried to protect you, Lana. I fucking failed because the one thing I couldn’t protect you from was yourself. But this – this I can do…’
I understand at the same moment that he acts. He raises the bottle to his lips and drinks. For a second, nothing happens, then his eyes roll back and a foam spills from his mouth and he falls to the ground.
Silence. It’s as though the whole world has fallen silent, waiting in terror and hope. I fall to my knees beside him.
I’m in shock. If only he’d shared more with me, hadn’t hidden so much of himself. We could have helped each other, I’m sure we could have… But even as I wish to my marrow that this wasn’t happening, I realise what he’s done. The horrible sensations have left me. I feel shattered, grief-stricken, exhausted, but I feel like me, not like a fragile human vessel about to have a dark deity emerge from the vicinity of her chest.
I look across to where Grayson lies. Tears are streaming down my face, blurring my vision. My angel looks so pale and lies so still. Then I see that Alex has Grayson in his lap, he’s holding his own wrist at Grayson’s mouth. I see the red of his blood. Alex is healing him. I look away, as though I’ve seen something that was meant to be private.
‘You came back,’ I whisper to. And then I remember that the Binding has been broken. It doesn’t matter if he came back. I’ve lost him anyway.
I thought I’d be dead. As I look down at my brother, a sudden rush of fury takes hold of me. I hadn’t planned for what I might do if I didn’t die, if I actually had to keep on living. Right now, I feel like someone’s torn my chest open and every good, happy thing I’ve ever felt is pouring out. For a moment I’m enraged. Jamie should have let me do what I had planned. Either that, or he should have taken me with him. It would have been kinder than leaving me with nothing but this pain I have to face now, alive and alone.
‘Don’t say that,’ Alex says fiercely. ‘Don’t you remember? You’re never alone.’
I look up, and he’s standing right before me, so close that I almost lose my balance and fall into him.
‘Hey, whoa there tiger,’ he says, grinning wickedly, taking my hands and helping me up to standing.
‘What did you… but… how are you… how are you reading my mind?’ I finally manage to blurt out.
He shrugs. ‘I guess you’re just easy like that,’ he says, and gives me another grin, this one tinged with sugges
tion.
Then Grayson groans and struggles up to sitting. ‘Lana?’ he murmurs.
‘Oh my God, I thought you were dead!’ I cry, crossing the distance between us, dropping to my knees again and throwing my arms around him before I have the chance to think it through.
‘Lana! Lana, you’re alive?’
Grayson’s hands are in my hair and tracing the breadth of my back, and then he pulls me suddenly close to him and before I know it his mouth is on mine in a deep, hard, desperate kiss.
I sob and he pulls away, holding my shoulders and looking into my eyes so intently I actually can’t breathe. ‘Are you hurt? Did they hurt you, my darling?’
I shake my head, unable to speak, unable to find words for anything I’m feeling.
Then I feel Gabriel’s presence behind me and turn and see him standing there, a dark figure against the sky, his face grave and unreadable.
Hang on. I felt him? I close my eyes and reach with my mind and… no that’s not right. It’s not my mind that has the connection now, but something deeper, something truer. My heart. My heart knows that he is standing there as clearly as though I saw him with my own eyes.
‘But the Binding was broken…’ I say. ‘How is this possible?’
‘There are many ways that a man and a woman can be bound together,’ Gabriel says seriously.
‘Or, you know, four men and a woman,’ Alex smirks, raising an eyebrow.
Behind him, Reuben stands, his face so wrought with desperation, fear and grief that for a moment I’m frozen to the spot, unable to speak or move. It cuts through me to see him like that.
‘Lana? It’s not a trick? You’re really here?’
I stand up again on legs that are still shaky and run at Reuben, throwing myself into his arms without hesitation. He stumbles and almost falls over backwards before he rights himself and embraces me so hard I can barely breathe all over again. I bury my face into his broad chest, loving the scent of him, feeling safe in his arms, feeling home. Then I let go and push him away.
‘Lana –?’
‘Jamie saved me,’ I say, only realising the truth of it as I say the words. Something inside me breaks. Jamie, my frustrating, infuriating, stubborn, pig-headed brother, gave his life to save mine.
He’s a few paces away, lying in the shade of a tree. He looks peaceful, almost like he’s sleeping rather than dead. Beside him, my mother sits, holding his hand, rocking herself gently as she weeps.
‘He didn’t suffer,’ she says. ‘I promise you that, Lana. It was gentle. I never knew –’
A sob breaks out of me, and I take an unsteady step towards where my twin is resting. I feel my men behind me, but they give me space, as though understanding that this is something I must do alone, something between Jamie and I.
I reach him in a few steps and sit beside him, taking the hand that Graciela is not holding. I draw his hand to my lips and place a kiss on it. Already he feels cold, the life’s warmth of his body drained away so quickly.
I reach around my neck to where the amulet is clasped, lift it over my head and hold it for a moment, looking at the beautiful stone that has brought me so much comfort and saved me from danger so many times. A gift from my father, the work of my mother’s magic. And what did my brother have to protect him?
‘This is for you,’ I say, wiping away the tears that are running in streams down my cheeks. I gently lift his head from the ground one last time and draw the necklace over it, placing the amulet carefully on the centre of his chest, and touching it for reassurance.
As I look up, I see my men standing in a protective circle around me, and beyond them, emerging silently from the forest, the villagers coming out of their hiding place in the caverns.
‘It’s alright,’ I call to them, feeling exhaustion seep into my bones. ‘It’s over. You’re safe now.’
A chant begins to rise from the assembled group, the words ancient and strange. One word I make out clearly though – Izushi. A shiver of distaste rushes through me.
‘No,’ I say. ‘Please, don’t do that. I’m not a Goddess. I was just in the right place at the right time. And Izushi… I’ve met her and she’s really not that –’ I feel Graciela’s hand on my arm.
‘Let them find comfort in what they believe,’ she whispers fiercely at me. ‘Let them make sense of their losses and their gains in a way that is meaningful to them.’
I swallow down everything I want to say and study the forest floor a long few moments.
‘Look –’ I hear one of the villagers breathe.
And then, before me, I see a myriad of brilliant blue butterflies rising from where my brother’s body lies, circling and dancing, glittering in the air like the most beautiful gems, then vanishing into the darkness of the forest.
EPILOGUE
‘Is it stupid to be so nervous?’ I say, straightening the tablecloth for the eighth time in the past three minutes, like anyone’s going to care about the damn tablecloth anyway.
‘Everything’s going to be fine,’ Alex reassures me, then bustles back into the kitchen and shuts the door after himself.
It’s five months since the Barrier was re-made, and the scars that were left by the invading demon army are only just beginning to heal.
I spent the first few weeks with Graciela. I don’t think I’ll ever call her Mum, I can’t imagine that our relationship will settle into the normal mother-daughter mould, but I do feel close to her. There were a lot of funerals in the time I was with her. More than twenty villagers were killed in the fighting, a terrible loss. We attended burial after burial, the sounds of grief tearing at my heart. I was scared that the villagers would want me – that is, Izushi – to do more, to heal the injured, to bring back those who had died. But it seems that after the demons were vanquished, there was a sense that Izushi’s destiny was fulfilled. People treated me with awe and respect, but not with expectation.
We buried Jamie in a private ceremony at a peaceful location with views of the sea and the mountains. His grave lies near where the underground river emerges to the sunlight. He and Dad are close to one another now, and if nothing else, that gives me some comfort.
It took me a long time to think through what happened, to try to understand how I feel about it.
Was I wrong about Jamie all along?
That was my first thought: that Jamie must have been kinder, better, stronger than I knew, and I missed it somehow. It took a while, but eventually I realised that the truth was more complicated than that.
Jamie was Jamie. He didn’t always treat me well. He must have struggled with his own dark urges, particularly as he got older, and that made him brash and narrow-minded. He lived his whole life on the defensive, and that often meant he was unkind, especially to me. He saw the same darkness in me that he fought in himself, and part of him hated me for it. But in the end, he saved me.
I think it will always hurt – the thought of how the enchantment, the imprint of the Dark God, twisted both our destinies. I wonder what our lives would have been like without it? Maybe we would have been friends? Or maybe we would have grown apart anyway. There’s no way of knowing now.
Anyway, I try not to wonder too hard because, truth be told, once the dust has settled and the dead have been buried, I’m pretty damn happy with how my life is right now.
For one thing, there’s the simple fact that I’m alive.
When you’ve faced death, really faced death, to be given another chance at life is incredible. Every sunrise is breathtaking. Every smile from a loved one breaks your heart and remakes it in a moment. Life feels like a gift, a miracle, an adventure.
For another thing, I still have my men. Though technically, that has not been exactly true for the past eight weeks or so.
A few months ago, Reuben crossed the Barrier to return to the Grey Pack and spend some time with his daughter there. It was a trip he felt he had to take, though I know he didn’t leave without misgivings. I was mostly scared that the pack would see what a
n incredible man he really is, how much they’ve lost through his absence, and nab him for their Alpha. He assured me that was not how it worked. He didn’t want the position. He wouldn’t take it. And besides, after the amount of sex we’d had in recent times, he’d have my human-scent all over him, and that would be enough keep all the she-wolves at bay. I’d done my best on that part.
Gabriel has also been away, chasing some ancient legend, hunting for artefacts in a newly discovered temple dedicated to a hitherto-unheard-of God somewhere in central Asia. I kind of thought all that would stop once the Barrier spell was remade, but Gabe told me the world was big and so much was unknown, there were still many secrets to be uncovered, for the good of all humanity.
I guess I have to accept that. I mean, the good of all humanity? It’s kind of hard to argue against that one.
I’ve missed them both while they’ve been gone though, terribly. Gabriel is due back today and we think Reuben will probably be back in a week or so, though communication is harder from where he is in the demon realm, deep in the forest, so really it’s anyone’s guess when we’ll see him again. I’m trying very hard to stay calm and not panic about his absence.
Luckily, I’ve had Alex and Grayson to keep my occupied, and to help me to settle into our new lodgings.
It might sound kind of left field, but now that we’ve finished saving the world and all, we’re trying to start something new. My Dad left me some money, and we’ve bought a campsite in a gorgeous seaside location near to one of the passage points through the Barrier. Once the Barrier was re-made, there were intensive negotiations to also re-make the Accord. I never realised, but the first Accord lapsed with the original Barrier. Delegations of humans and demons met and worked tirelessly, with the watchful oversight of the Circle of Witches. My mother was busy for months, assisting with the negotiations. To everyone’s surprise, there was a powerful popular upswell of support on both sides for a new, more moderate stance on human-demon relations. To get so close to the outbreak of war was terrifying for many in both realms. Some new clauses around education and improving relations were introduced to the Accord, which were intended to promote harmony and understanding between the realms.