Chapter 8 Hector #2
“The name is Emon, but you can call me Warden of the Chasm, Lord of the Wastes and soon-to-be Heir of the Unseen.” The viper’s tongue forked outwards, licking the air as he familiarised himself with the new surroundings.
“And you must be the thorn-in-our-arse Hector Briar. Oh, yes. I know who you are. Your room is… like a cesspit of teenage depression and obsession with the occult. What have I gotten myself into helping you… oh wait, I didn’t have a choice, did I? ”
Perhaps I should’ve thanked the demon for helping me out of my dire situation, but I couldn’t get past his attitude. “Well, Emon, you are more than welcome to go back to whatever dark hole you slithered your way out of. I don’t need you.”
I needed Caym.
“Is that a command, master? Because I am sure you do not need me to remind you that Caym is dead, and you have no familiar to help you anymore.”
The way he called me master was certainly supposed to be riddled with irony. But it was the mention of Caym that turned my fear to fury.
“Yes,” I shouted. “Go away.”
It was a futile attempt, for I couldn’t eternally get rid of Emon.
But I knew enough of the rules of witches and familiars.
If the demon was now my familiar, he would be forced to listen to my commands.
And lo and behold, Emon followed the order.
Just as the bedroom door swung wide open, the viper dissipated into shadow, although his presence didn’t leave the reaches of my psyche too far.
“Call upon me if and when required. As you have already shown to know the rules between our bond, you also know that I can never stray too far. I am forever beholden to serve… unless you die, that is.”
I was sure I heard the demon’s laugh fade into the back of my head.
“Hector!”
My attention snapped to the person who had just barged into the room. Blame it on my mild concussion, but I could hardly think straight.
Romy stood in the doorframe, panting and frantic. Her hair was a mess, her face smudged with blood and ash, likely looking no better than I did. Seeing her broke something in me.
“You’re alive,” I said, shattering the silence. It was all I could think to say.
“So are you,” she replied, panting as if she’d just run a marathon to get here.
There wasn’t an inch of my body that she didn’t look over. My torn knees, my bleeding head and the bruises that likely blossomed across most of my flesh.
I nodded, aware of how much my body ached. “Just about.”
Noise exploded from somewhere behind her. Romy turned around, swearing beneath her breath before entering the room and slamming the door. “We’ve got to go. Now.”
I tried to stand but my legs were weak. My body felt as though I’d been struck by something large, which it would have been if Bahmet hadn’t swallowed the helicopter up in shadow.
The apartment shook violently. “That would be the front door.” Again, the floor trembled, knocking items from my desk onto the floor. “Do you think they’ll keep knocking, or just break their way in?” Romy asked, the question almost to herself.
“Who?” I dared to ask.
“Our enemies,” Romy said before a shuddering explosion rocked the world, followed by the thundering of many boots on the ground, and the demanding shouts full of command and warning.
“Need me yet?”
I ignored the demon as I moved towards the bedroom door.
With my ash-smeared fingers I began to paint runes upon the wood.
I hoped my trembling fingers calmed enough for me to draw the correct symbols.
They were the same I’d used to barricade our door during the Witch Trials.
If it worked, there was no getting inside the room unless I willed it.
I completed the runes in good time. As I traced out the final stroke, it was as if something heavy slammed into the other side of the door.
“Open this fucking door now!”
“Shit-balls,” Romy swore, backing slowly away from the door. I could see in her moments of silence that she was calculating a way out of this mess. Her eyes settled on the large window behind us, her thick brows lifting in an ‘I’ve got an idea’ kinda way.
“Don’t even think about it,” I hissed.
“Jump, jump, jump,” Emon sang. “Put me out of this misery.”
“The only way out is through the window. You got back here, you can get us out the same way, right?”
She was right.
I looked around the room… my safe haven. It was a shrine to everything I’d worked on, and I found the concept of leaving it close to impossible.
“Hector. Say something! Can you get us out?”
Romy’s panic snapped me out of my thoughts.
“Yes,” I said, trying to bury the sheer amount of pain my body was in. “Gather as much of my stuff as you can. Then we are getting out of here.”
Romy didn’t ask questions as we both raced around the room.
I grabbed the Witch Hunter’s backpack, thrusting as many items into it as I could.
Except for Eleanor’s grimoire, there wasn’t anything else important to me.
Not enough to take. But that didn’t stop me from aimlessly throwing as much as I could into the bag, including my handfuls of snacks from my draw, and a half-drunk bottle of water that was likely stale considering it had been left for close to a week.
“I’m waiting,” the demon sang, reading my intentions. “You truly could not stay away from me for long, could you?”
“Shut up,” I snapped.
Romy’s panicked gaze landed on me. “Harsh. I didn’t say anything.”
Another hefty bang. The door shook. Wood splintered, but the spell was holding strong only if I allowed it. And frankly, my energy was fading. “Romy, what’s happening out there?”
“Perhaps we can talk about it when we get out of here,” she replied, already working with the lock on the window as if she was literally prepared to throw herself out of it. “No time.”
Fair point.
“I need a safe place for us to go. Know of one?” I asked.
The demon had brought me back here, but that was only because he sensed my desire. If I didn’t give him another place to go, we would be left to fester in the shadows of this room.
“Considering witches are going to be hunted in every corner of the world, I don’t really have an answer for that right now.”
“Think!” I snapped aloud, more so for myself, but I caught the offence Romy took as if I meant it to her.
Romy’s scowl deepened the more the banging on the door grew. “The witches who escaped the White Tower are seeking refuge in the forgotten undergrounds. Safe for me, but not for you, that’s why I didn’t mention it.”
She was trying to protect me, even now.
“Underground?”
“Once again we are being driven into the shadows, so there is no better place to go until this all blows over…”
“Then that’s where we will go.”
“But you… if you go, you will be putting yourself at risk, Hector.”
I shrugged off her concern, because right now there was no place in the world safe for me. “It doesn’t matter. None of this will matter until we can find a solution to this fucking mess.”
“I sense that a command is imminent, master-oh-master of mine.”
I spun towards the corner of the room, where the shadows swelled, and the demon lurked. “Would you stop it!”
Pain radiated in my head. I clutched either side of it to stop the awful swelling of my brain against my skull.
A hand found mine, firm fingers steady compared to how mine shook. “Who are you talking to, H?”
Regret hung heavy in my chest, likely reflected in my eyes as I looked to my friend. I didn’t know what to say really, not without admitting to what I’d achieved with the darkness inside of me.
Would she fear me to know what I’d achieved? Especially when I didn’t have the answers as to how.
“Emon,” I said the name aloud, refusing to look away from Romy. “Time to get us out of here.”
The shadows broke like a wave against a sandy shore.
Romy looked over my shoulder to find the demon as he slunk from the shadows.
As my skin crawled with the idea of the viper getting closer to me, I expected Romy would react in the same way.
But a smile broke her face, a devious one that glittered in her eyes.
“Well, well, well, that might be the cutest little thing I’ve ever seen! ”
“Again with the little? At least someone has some taste I suppose.” Emon slithered across the floor, coming to stop between us.
Romy reached down for him, letting the viper slink up her wrist like a bracelet of sun-devouring glass. “If only the fates were kinder to me, and I would’ve been conjured by someone who actually would appreciate my company like this pretty witch.”
“You’re welcome to have her,” I replied, which made Romy pull a face, reminding me she couldn’t hear what Emon was saying. “He likes you. Can’t say the same for me.”
“Alas, you have worked me out. I’m stuck with you. Until death do us part, something you should be familiar with, Hector.”
Emon was referring to Caym again with his dig.
I knew it. Apparently, my offence was greater than my fear, because my hate for snakes was forgotten as anger rose within me.
That was enough for me to reach out, wrap my fingers around his slender throat and lift the demon up before my face.
“Time to get out of here, demon. Romy is going to share our destination, and you are going to make sure we make it in one piece. If not, that death-do-us-part bit is going to happen sooner rather than later.”
Emon split his pointed face, flashing sharp twin blades at me. “Do not tempt me with a good time, witchling.”
For the second time, shadows seeped from the demon’s scales. Like the blanket of winter night, they rose over Romy and me, swallowing us whole.
The old magic keeping the bedroom door secured broke, allowing the personnel who’d come to get us to barge in. What they found was an empty room with nothing but the memory that we’d ever been inside of it.