Chapter 25
Atlas
Don’t let him go.
Don’t let him go.
Had this been what he’d meant? Was Dad trying to warn me about the demon in my brother? And if so, how did he expect me to protect Wes from this? God, I’d fucked up. I had to get it out of him.
My brother stared at me with those demon eyes, and my heart broke in two. How had I let this happen? I was supposed to take care of him. I was supposed to protect him. And here he was, perverted by a fucking monster.
“Aww, don’t be too hard on yourself, Atlas Colt,” the demon said. “He wanted this. He begged me for it.”
“Shut up,” I hissed and clenched my eyes shut.
“He did this to protect you,” it said. “And trust me, he’s paying for it now.”
I tried to block it out, to ignore the demon’s words, but the thought of Wes in there, being tortured by whatever hellscape the demon made for him, made me want to punch holes in the stone walls.
My ribs ached and my ankles burned, but none of it compared to the chasm in my chest at the mere idea of losing my brother forever.
“I can tell you how to get out of here,” the demon goaded. “I can get you back to the human realm.”
“Oh, yeah? And what will that cost me? Want to possess both of us at the same time?” Was such a thing even possible? I didn’t know, and I certainly didn’t want to find out.
“Wesson has already paid for the information,” it said. “All you have to do is follow my instructions to the door and step through it.”
“Just like Constance’s rituals?” I blew out a disbelieving breath. “That worked out so well for us.”
“It got you here, didn’t it?” The demon raised an eyebrow on my brother’s face, and I wanted to smack it off. “You even liked it, didn’t you? The feel of sliding into your brother’s body.”
“Stop it.” I wouldn’t have this monster spewing lies about what was or wasn’t between Wes and me.
“You wanted it even after the ritual was over. You’ve wanted it for a long time.” The demon laughed. “He liked it, too. In case you were wondering. He wants you to fuck him again.”
With facing through my veins, I grabbed my pistol and pointed it at the demon’s face…my brother’s face. My hand shook as I hovered my finger over the trigger, willing myself not to pull it. I wanted this fucker out of my brother, but I desperately wanted my brother back more.
Footsteps broke my focus, and I glanced up as Marta walked down the aisle between the pews. She’d been crying, her eyes puffy and wet, and I lowered the gun at the resolution on her face.
“Did you figure it out?” I asked when she climbed onto the dais next to me.
She nodded. “Yes. We’re going to banish him.”
That made the demon cackle harder, raising the hairs on the back of my neck.
“Banish me?” The demon rolled his eyes. “Pretty little idiot, you can’t do that.”
“Shut the fuck up,” I roared and shifted my focus back to Marta. “How? I thought banishing it would hurt you, would make you lose a piece of yourself.”
Marta took a deep breath and steeled herself. “Sacrifices are always painful. But we need him back, and I’m willing to do it.”
I didn’t like the sound of it. I didn’t want her to lose anything else to this wretched place. It had already taken so much from her…from all of us.
“Marta,” I said, reaching out to cup her cheek so she had to look at me. “We can find another way.”
“The veil opens at midnight. That gives us four hours. We don’t have time.” She leaned into my touch and stepped closer so she could press her forehead to mine. “I’m not leaving here without him.”
“Me neither,” I said. “That’s not an option.”
“So we do the banishment,” she said. “We get the demon out of him, banish it to wherever it came from, complete the soul binding with Wes, and step through the veil. Easy peasy.”
Don’t let him go.
Fine. Fucking fine.
“That doesn’t sound easy,” I retorted. “But I’ll go with it. Where do we start?”
“I don’t know the spell,” she said. “But witches have done more with less, so we’ll have to wing it.”
“Wing it. Right. Feeling so much better about this.” I forced away my frustration and exhaustion to turn to Wes, who had a shit-eating grin on his face that made his obsidian eyes even more sinister.
Marta grabbed the chalice from the altar and set it down at the top of the circle, right near Wes’s head. “First, we’ll need to cleanse ourselves.”
“I didn’t see a bath anywhere.” So much for ritual oils and protection enchantments.
“Washing our hands will do.” She walked to the holy water basin and dipped her hands in, scrubbing them a few times before wiping them on her jeans.
I did the same. After that, Marta grabbed some herbs from her satchel and dumped them in the incense burner before lighting a match to set them on fire.
She walked around the circle three times, muttering to herself in a whisper too low to hear.
But her thoughts were clear. She was praying, asking God, the Virgin, and Saint Michael for help.
She called to Saint Marta, the dragon slayer, for strength.
She called to the ancestors to guide our work.
She called to her parents for wisdom and love.
She called to my father, to my ancestors, to Wes’s, for their power and protection.
“I invite you to use me as a channel,” she said, closing her eyes and holding her hands above her head. “Let your power run through me. Guide me. Hail and welcome. Hail and welcome. Hail and welcome.”
I took a deep breath and stood next to her. When she lowered her palms, she grabbed mine with one hand and interlaced our fingers.
“If you’ve ever had faith in God, I need you to bring that with you into this,” she said.
God and I had never had a heart-to-heart.
Monsters, demons, and vampires lived among us, and I didn’t trust an omnipotent being that would allow such evil to exist. But…
After everything I’d seen, after all I’d been through, how could I admit that such a thing wasn’t possible?
If we needed God on our side for this, could I set aside my skepticism?
Could I pray to someone…something…I’d long since questioned?
Wes writhed on the floor in the middle of the circle, testing the restraints, yanking and pulling his wrists and ankles.
Yes. I could do this for him.
I would do anything for him.
Gods were just another form of magic, another power source. They were real, and they had influence, and if Marta had placed her trust in her God, I trusted her to know it was the right thing to do.
“Okay,” I said.
“Do you know the Lord’s Prayer?”
I nodded, the words coming to me from the depths of a little boy’s memory. Dad had taken us to church only a handful of times, but I’d picked up on enough over the years to know that one piece.
“Good,” she said. “Repeat it over and over again. Don’t stop, no matter what happens.”
My mouth had run dry, and my heart sprinted against my ribs, but I opened my mouth to say the words. “Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name…”
I carried on with the chant while Marta gathered more candles, red and black, and interspersed them with the white ones already glowing.
She lit them with one match, then returned to the incense bowl and gathered dried flowers from her satchel.
Marigolds, from the look of it, but I couldn’t be sure.
Then, she placed them in the incense. Next, she pulled something else out of her bag of magic tricks, whispering, “Copal ash for purity and guidance. Light the way. Clear the path.”
I finished the prayer and started over again, just as she instructed. But when she held up her palm and grabbed her knife, I froze.
More blood. More sacrifice. Hadn’t we given enough?
Apparently not. She sliced open a finger and dripped crimson into the incense burner, where it hissed and cracked on the charred remains of her spell. She stood and walked to me, holding out her palm to request mine. I gave it.
“Stop,” the demon hissed. “Stop, you don’t know what you’re doing.”
That was true; we didn’t. But we also didn’t stop. Marta sliced open the pad of my finger and drizzled my blood on top of hers.
“A gift given in sacrifice. Your blood. My blood.” She turned to Wes, her focus narrowing on his shaking form. I restarted the prayer.
Getting his blood took some work. The demon didn’t want to give it, and she’d created a protective circle around him, one she had to invade and escape before the demon could do anything to her.
Watching her in her element always amazed me.
She exuded an elegant strength, even in the face of everything stacked against us.
“You can’t banish me from the liminal,” Wes shouted. “You’ll kill us all.”
We didn’t listen. We’d had enough of the demon’s ramblings, and demons lied. They couldn’t be trusted, especially not when one was possessing my brother.
“Finally, a little something extra,” she said, retrieving a tiny bottle full of a clear liquid.
When she opened it, the heady scent of tequila hit my nose.
“Mezcal. Earth to fire. Fire to spirit. An offering given so one may be received.” She dumped it into the chalice and took a deep pull before spitting it into the incense, where it reacted to the burning herbs with a sharp flame and a crackling hiss.
Marta walked to me, holding out the goblet so I could drink.
I did, only taking a sip before I repeated her motion, spewing the liquor into the cauldron.
“If you put that in my mouth, I’m going to drink it,” the demon snarled. “Don’t try—”
“No matter,” Marta said, dripping more into the incense.
The demon let out another loud laugh before its voice dropped to a low, devilish tenor. “You stupid witch. You can’t banish me from a liminal. I am the liminal. This world was created for me. I’m the anchor. You get rid of me, and it all falls down.”
I stopped my prayer. That sounded a little too close to the truth.
The coven had to summon the demon and figure out who it was before the liminal could be made.
When I glanced at Marta, she seemed to come to the same conclusion, her indecision and sudden discouragement racing down the tie between us.
“That hits a little too close to home,” I admitted. “What if—”
“We need to do this,” she said. “Sacrifice is always painful.”
I didn’t like it, but she was right. I didn’t have any other ideas, and we were running out of time.