CHAPTER TWO || TOBIAS
T he demon manifested just long enough to shoot a jet of blue fire straight at my face.
Years of training took over and I ducked the blast without even deciding to, dropping flat to the ground. The acrid smell of singed hair, where the flames had just missed my head, told me that it had been a much closer call than it should’ve been. The flames struck the concrete wall behind me, leaving behind a smoking crater of ashes roughly the size of a dinner plate.
The demon growled, apparently disappointed that I wasn’t burned to a crisp. Then it turned and vanished back into the shadows.
I swore under my breath, then pushed myself back up into a standing position. The demon could manifest and dematerialize at will, which meant it was an upper-level entity. One of the coven’s more foolish students had convinced her friends to help her summon it, reading in one of our many crumbling grimoires that it was a demon of prophecy. They’d apparently skimped on the protective wards and binding circles necessary to effectively conjure and control an infernal spirit, and it had broken free to terrorize the streets of Seattle. The girl and her friends were lucky to be alive.
Then the coven had called in their big guns to fix the situation. AKA, me.
“Throw up a ward,” I hissed, shooting my twin sister a dark look. “I need to be out of body when I banish this fucker.”
Poppy gave me a sharp nod and immediately launched into a protective spell that created a shimmering golden bubble around us, twisting the shadows of the dank alleyway crazily along the walls of the buildings that loomed over us on both sides.
The demon reappeared fifteen feet away, hissed at us, and then shot another bolt of blue flames from its fingertips.
The fire struck the edge of Poppy’s ward and then fizzled out with the crackling sound of water hitting hot grease. Unlike what you might imagine, demons don’t have horns, red skin, sharp teeth, or glowing eyes. They’re more like semi-corporeal shadows, impossibly elongated, misshapen, and only vaguely humanoid. This particular demon was at least ten feet long and looked almost like a person from the waist up—there was definitely a head and a torso, albeit two sets of arms—but from the waist down it had the body of a snake.
The demon hissed again, then slithered closer in an instant, moving so fast that it almost seemed to teleport. It took an experimental swipe at Poppy’s ward, shooting a spray of glittering sparks everywhere.
Poppy yelped and flinched back, but to her credit, she didn’t drop the spell.
The demon slithered away again, then turned and launched itself at the wall of light protecting us, slamming into it at full speed. The protection held, but I could see it wobble slightly.
“If you’re going to banish this thing, now would be the time,” Poppy gasped out. “This thing is stupid strong. I don’t know how much longer I can hold the ward.”
“You were the one who wanted to come,” I reminded her, plopping myself into a sitting position on the filthy ground of the alleyway.
The demon took another swipe at the wall of protection and the golden light dimmed for a split second. The creature made a triumphant noise, then swiped again.
“Next time I’ll happily let you get eaten!” Poppy snapped, her blue eyes narrowing, even though she didn’t take her gaze off the demon. The ward grew brighter, which meant she was pouring more magic into it than before. “Now, do your damn job! Please and thank you.”
She was right, of course. With an exhalation of breath and a minor act of will, I stepped into the spirit world.
It was as easy for me as moving a limb. All witches and warlocks have a specialty—which is basically our magical fingerprint—and this was mine. I could step out of my body at will, any time I pleased.
The mortal world looks gray and washed out in the spirit world. Like a reflection seen through a dirty window. Poppy’s protective spell, however, was lit up so brightly that it almost hurt my eyes to look at it. It was easy to forget sometimes how powerful she was.
And, of course, the demon no longer looked like a shadow to me. This was, after all, much closer to its native realm. Instead, the creature had a vaguely insectile body, with an exoskeleton that was black and shiny with ichor, and bits of flesh that clung to it here and there.
How lovely.
It snarled when it saw me standing there, in the spirit world, but still safely inside the ward. But it seemed vaguely confused, too. Like it didn’t quite know what to make of me.
I grinned back at it.
It charged the protective circle again, and I saw the impact shoot flares of pure magic in all directions.
I winced, but Poppy held the ward. A lesser witch wouldn’t have been able to, but she was one of the strongest spellcasters in the coven.
I began to recite a banishing charm.
The words flowed out of me, rough, forceful, and guttural.
The demon screamed in fury, seeming to catch on to what I was about to do.
Then it turned to flee.
Inwardly, I rolled my eyes. It was already much too late for it to go anywhere. It should have run the moment it saw us. But just because it was powerful, didn’t mean it was all that bright. Still though… it was a demon of prophecy. Shouldn’t it have known it wouldn’t stand a chance against us?
I raised my hands in front of my face, repeating the spell again with more force, putting every speck of my own will and power behind it.
The demon froze in place.
Then it turned back toward me with a twitching, jerky motion, like its body was acting against its will, which was exactly right. The creature’s gaze locked onto my hands, it’s putrefying eyes widening slightly.
Vivid neon purple energy began to dance between my palms, moving hypnotically.
At first, it was only a few sparks. But as I repeated the charm, again and again, the sparks brightened and multiplied until it looked like a supernova was being born between my outstretched hands.
The demon fell utterly silent and motionless, its gaze transfixed by the light I had conjured. Something relaxed in its body, as if the tension was being drained out of it with each recitation of my spell. Through the shimmering wall of golden protection Poppy had cast, the creature looked almost peaceful.
I changed the pitch of my incantation, going from forceful to soft and singsong in a single repetition. Plaintive. Like it broke my poor little warlock heart that the big bad monster didn’t want to obey me. That it didn’t desire with all of its being to do exactly what I told it to do.
The creature twitched.
The spell I was casting wasn’t technically even a banishment, strictly speaking. That requires opening a rift between worlds and then shoving the demon through it. But that wasn’t practical here. After all, there’s an upper limit to what a single witch or warlock can do. And opening interdimensional tears between worlds was definitely beyond that, no matter how powerful you were.
No, this spell was meant to first to capture the will of the demon, then to force it to return to whence it came of its own power.
The same way that Bryan’s will was captured by Giles. The way he had been forced to do what Giles had wanted.
The thought came to me unbidden and I shoved it away with force, before it could cause my spell to wobble. Bryan had been an innocent person, forced to do awful things. This demon was far from innocent, and I was stopping it from doing awful things. It wasn’t the same thing at all.
I took a deep breath and refocused. I repeated the incantation, causing my spell to stabilize again.
Now for the tricky part.
I steeled myself, then reached through the protective wall of golden light with both hands, still intoning my spell. I intended to press the energy I had conjured directly into the demon’s body.
In the instant where my spell crossed the walls of Poppy’s protective bubble, the light blended seamlessly with the ward and the demon broke free of my compulsion.
The creature snarled in rage and immediately seized me by the wrists with both sets of its claws, clearly intending to yank me out of the protection spell. And after that, probably chow down on my soul or something.
I had half-expected this, so I didn’t stop my casting, but instead kept repeating the spell, keeping my voice light and cajoling. I put as much of my will and conviction into my words as I could manage. Will and conviction alone don’t do much, but if you couple it with a healthy dose of magic and the right spell, you can move mountains.
The light snaked out of my hands, spiraling around all four of the demon’s arms, then flowed through its skin easily and seamlessly. The creature gasped, its body seizing up, and its grip tightened for an instant.
Then a blinding white light blotted everything else out. It was accompanied by searing pain, like my head was cracking open. There was a high-pitched whining sound, like the feedback from a microphone, but at ear-splitting volume.
A vision bloomed before me, vivid and close enough to touch.
Bryan Peterson, my mate. His mouth formed a small ‘O’ of surprise, and his eyes were wide with disbelief. Like something had just startled him. Then he fell to his knees, blinking rapidly, his lips moving like he was trying to form words. Dark blood foamed on his mouth.
And then the light drained out of his eyes and the tension fled from his face. His lifeless body collapsed to the ground, face-first. Blood so dark it was nearly black pooled all around him. The end of a long wooden stake protruded from his back.
He turned grayish blue in a matter of moments, the skin mummifying everywhere on his body as his life-force withered to nothing.
My mate was dead.
The vision winked out of existence, popping like a soap bubble.
I gasped in relief as I realized this wasn’t something that had happened, no matter how real it had seemed. It was merely something that might happen. There was time to stop it. I would stop it. I had to.
The demon dropped me as my spell finally took hold of its mind completely.
Still in spirit form, I collapsed to my knees on the ground, but I barely noticed.
The demon calmly turned away from me and vanished into thin air, no doubt returning to whatever dank hell it had come from. The space it had just occupied seemed to become warped and cavernous for an instant, as though hundreds of invisible doors had opened all around me. Then, in the next instant, reality reasserted itself, flattening back out, and the space was once again as it should have been. Just a normal alleyway in downtown Seattle, with the Space Needle looming overhead behind us.
I slammed back into my body. Horror and shock tried to rocket through me, but I shoved them away. They were useless.
My mate needed me.
Because unless I stopped it, Bryan was destined to die.
*
“Are you sure that’s what you saw?” Ethan asked me over an hour later, his violet eyes searching mine. Beside him, his husband, Nathaniel Bailey, the king of Seattle’s vampires, gave us both a worried look. Behind him, the city skyline at night sparkled through the windows like a sea of glittering jewels, indifferent to the mounting panic I felt at the prospect of something awful happening to my mate.
“I know what the demon showed me,” I told him, striving for calm. “But I don’t know if it’s real. ”
Ethan and Nathaniel exchanged a wordless glance, but I knew they were communicating privately. They were bound to each other not only by vow and by choice but also through a blood bond, which was a supernatural connection that allowed them to share thoughts and emotions with each other clearly and effortlessly.
Nathaniel’s rugged features darkened nearly imperceptibly, but he nodded. He didn’t look especially happy.
“Okay, so you want me to use the mirror, then?” Ethan confirmed, glancing back at me.
I nodded. “I need to know if he’s actually in any danger.” My words sounded much calmer than I felt inside. My emotions were always like that. Placid on the surface, but a riptide beneath, always threatening to drag me down into the dark. “And if he is, I’m going to burn down the entire world if I have to, in order to keep him safe.”
“Indeed,” Nathaniel agreed, nodding at me with what appeared to be grudging approval. He even gave me the barest hint of a smile, though he still looked unhappy about what would need to happen next.
I didn’t know the vampire king very well, but there was a strange understanding between us. Like we were comrades in arms or something. He had recognized Ethan—my best friend—as his mate immediately, the same way I had with Bryan. The big difference was, Bryan had run and Ethan hadn’t.
Then again, Bryan had his reasons, and I couldn’t exactly blame him. Besides, it wasn’t like he was the first person to leave me.
Everyone did, eventually.
Even Poppy and Ethan, who had been constant companions for basically my whole life, were pulling away. Ethan was married to Nathaniel now. Apart from that, he was so busy with his insane schedule of training with Poppy to eventually split coven leadership and working with Nathaniel and other city leaders to plan a truly massive philanthropic undertaking meant to help solve the city’s homelessness crisis that I rarely ever saw him.
And Poppy, apart from the fact that she was now the Witch Queen’s personal student, was also dating a thousand-year-old vampire. I rarely saw her, either. And it would only get worse, the more serious they got. I was happy for my sister, of course—Simone seemed to worship the ground she walked on. But I could see the writing on the wall perfectly well.
They were both pulling away. Everyone who mattered always left me behind.
Ethan sighed, running his fingers through his unruly mop of shockingly white hair. He chewed on his bottom lip for a long moment before exchanging another worried look with Nathaniel. “Fuck it. This qualifies as a life-or-death emergency. I’ll go get the mirror.”
With that, Ethan stood up from the table and left the room so quickly that I got the sense that he was forcing himself to move before he could have second thoughts.
Nathaniel watched him go, his unhappiness visibly deepening.
I suspected he was remembering the same thing that all of us were: the mirror had shown Ethan horrible visions of the future, but it had been extremely cagey on the how and why. Part of that was due to the fact that Giles—the extraordinarily powerful warlock who had been attempting to cause a war between the vampires and witches of the city—had been protected by layers of powerful dark magic. But part of it might have simply been the mirror itself. It had been created by Gregory Ames, the founder of our coven, who had used it to enact his own dark and twisted plans over a hundred years ago. It was almost certain that it didn’t have anyone’s best intentions at heart. It would never lie, because it couldn’t. But it would definitely be more than happy to obscure the details, allowing me to frog-march myself head-first into terrible danger.
Ethan had married Nathaniel in order to stop an all-out war from happening, after learning from the mirror that their marriage was the only way to save everyone. Then he had managed—narrowly—to defeat Giles, but Nathaniel had nearly died in the process. In fact, Ethan, Poppy, and I had all almost died. Even with just recalling it for a moment, I could still almost feel the suffocating darkness of the curse Giles had cast upon us, choking the life from me. The panic I had felt at realizing I would never have the opportunity to get to know Bryan at all. That I had found my soulmate, only to immediately lose any chance I ever had to be happy with him.
Strange, how that seemed to be a running theme for me with my mate.
“I don’t like this,” Poppy whispered, taking my hand and giving it a squeeze. I wasn’t sure if she was comforting herself or me. She added, “That mirror almost got Ethan killed.”
“It also helped Ethan save the city,” I pointed out. “It’s never wrong.”
“It’s also not exactly forthcoming with help,” Ethan put in, returning to the room with a pouch held in his hands. He settled back into his seat beside Nathaniel at the dining room table. He shuddered, then added, “And when it is, it’s at its least trustworthy. It doesn’t care who lives or dies. I wasn’t sure if I was ever going to use it again.”
“You don’t have to,” Poppy told him. When she caught my outraged glare, she grimaced and added, “We could do about a thousand other divination spells. I would help, obviously.”
“None of the spells you guys could do is going to be even half as powerful as the mirror.” Ethan shook his head. “Besides, Tobias is right. It did help us. It will again.”
“If you’re sure,” Nathaniel told him.
Ethan nodded back at him, something going steely and determined in his expression.
Then, with shaking hands, he pulled the mirror out of its pouch. It was a small disc of obsidian, only about four inches across and maybe half an inch thick. His ancestor had cursed it so that it would never show the future again, after learning that Gregory Ames had used it to commit atrocities. But Ethan’s powers allowed him to negate magic, meaning that his touch temporarily neutralized her curse, parting the veil she had cast over it, in order to allow the object to fulfill its original purpose.
It also meant that no one else but him could use it.
“Ask your questions, Ethan Solomon.” The mirror’s monotone voice echoed through the room, a ghastly greenish face swimming into view in the depths of the dark surface.
Ethan shuddered, flashing us a nervous glance, before peering back down into the depths of the mirror. “Is Bryan Peterson, the mate of Tobias Hawthorne, in danger of dying? Was Tobias’s vision tonight an accurate representation of the future still to come?”
The face in the mirror smiled at him, very clearly enjoying itself. It paused for a long time, its black eyes locked with Ethan, as if relishing the drama. Then, at last, it replied. “Yes.” Its alien voice caused my flesh to crawl. “Would you like me to show you what I know?”
Poppy cast a nervous look in my direction. Perhaps she had correctly intuited that it wouldn’t matter to me one bit what I would have to do to stop this from coming to pass. Or how much risk I would take.
I decided, then and there, that even if it got me killed in the process, even if I had to go full-dark, no stars, I would do anything I had to do—anything at all—to protect Bryan.
Ethan shot me a worried look too, as though he was having the same realization as Poppy. He grimaced at whatever he saw in my expression. He and Nathaniel traded a dark look before the vampire king put a hand on Ethan’s back. The touch seemed to steady Ethan because his voice was even and mild when he replied.
“Yes. Show us everything you know about how, when, and why Bryan is killed.”