Chapter 26 #2
A sort of magical battle raged in the center of the clearing.
Ostara had done what we all feared she would do—she had indeed created the conjuring Circle and called forth the creature that it was meant to summon.
Within the boundary of the Circle, Abaddon raged, fighting against some kind of magical bonds that had been wrapped tightly around him.
The glowing golden ropes encased him from shoulders to feet as he flailed and arched and strained against their power.
The ends of these bonds extended out of the Circle and into the hands of Ostara Claire, who looked like a vengeful goddess in battle.
Her blonde hair blew out behind her, her arms outstretched as she fought with all she had to keep her control of the spell made ropes.
“Nova!” Eva gasped beside me. By following her gaze, I spotted what had drawn such a horrifying cry from her.
Nova lay crumpled in a heap at the edge of the clearing, so still that I hadn’t even recognized her huddled shape as a living thing.
Eva moved as if she were going to run for her, but I grabbed her coat and pulled her back.
“Eva, no!” I cried. “Don’t! There’s nothing you can—”
Eva twisted sharply, and I lost my grip on her coat.
But she didn’t just burst into the clearing, like I feared.
Instead, she kept to the cover of the trees, following the edge of the clearing to where Nova lay.
Swearing under my breath, I yanked a whimpering Zale to his feet and followed her, trying to watch where I was going in the dark, while also trying not to lose sight of Ostara locked in her struggle with Abaddon.
At last, we reached the far side of the clearing, only a few feet from where Nova lay, unmoving.
Zale was still wordless with terror, sinking once again to the ground.
Eva darted out of the cover of the trees, even as I called to her.
She knelt down beside Nova and then, hooking her under the arms, began tugging her toward the protection of the trees.
Realizing what she was trying to do, I dashed out to help her.
Between the two of us, we dragged Nova’s limp form into the bushes.
“Is she…oh no, is she…” someone was saying, and the someone was me, my voice choked and unrecognizable in my own ears.
“No, she’s alive,” Eva said, her own words thick with tears.
She rolled Nova onto her back, and raised her eyelids one at a time.
“I think she’s been hexed or something. Her pupils are all dilated.
But she’s breathing, look.” She pointed a shaking finger at Nova’s chest, which rose and fell regularly.
I could have cried with relief if I wasn’t still so terrified at the conflict still raging in the clearing.
I jumped back to my feet and danced on the spot, utterly at a loss for what to do.
My body was fighting the impulse to charge forward and to run away at the same time.
I wanted to help Ostara somehow, but what could I do?
What could any of us do? I didn’t know how to do anything in this situation but distract Ostara, or get myself killed.
Meanwhile, the tension in the clearing was building. Ostara and the demon were both fighting with every ounce of strength they had. Ostara’s face was crumpled up with effort, her arms shaking violently as she struggled to keep the bonds locked tightly around Abaddon.
“You… will… tell me,” she shrieked over the creature’s growls. “I name you and command you, Abaddon!”
“I obey no mortal master, witch!” Abaddon roared back. “How you dare… you dare…”
“I dare!” Ostara shouted, and her face was wild, her eyes dark, fiery pools. In her posture, in her expression, I saw echoes of Ambrose, teetering on a precipice he did not understand. “And you, foul creature, will tell me what I demand of you!”
Abaddon let out a deafening roar that seemed to engulf the entire woods, vibrating through every tree, electrifying them down to the roots, and shaking the earth beneath our feet like a seismic event.
The ground in the clearing split open, jagged as a bolt of lightning.
Ostara watched it with wide, incredulous eyes as it broke apart the very dirt beneath her feet, snaking across the space between her and the demon.
With an earsplitting, grating shriek, the rocky foundation of the forest floor ripped apart beneath the conjuring Circle, severing the boundary, tearing it to pieces.
Abaddon’s roar twisted mid-breath into a maniacal peel of laughter, and I knew at the sound of it that Ostara had lost. Everything seemed to happen in slow motion.
I was scrambling to my feet, determined to intervene somehow, but Eva and Zale were grasping at me, pulling me back, shouting at me to stay.
And so all I could do was watch, helpless, as Abaddon reached for the golden bonds that held him so tightly, took them in his hands, and began to pull on them, drawing them closer to himself, and reeling Ostara in like a struggling fish on the end of a line.
Ostara’s face was a mask of shock, white and gaping mouthed as she was tugged steadily forward.
Her bare heels dug into the earth, her body leaned back as she braced against Abaddon’s strength, but her efforts were useless.
The demon was too strong, too angry; and as the shock in her face morphed into terror, the creature threw its awful head back, and laughed at the manifestation of her fear.
“Who obeys whose commands now, witch?” He cackled, his reptilian skin rippling with the effort of dragging Ostara toward him.
He pulled one last time on the bonds, and Ostara lost her control of them.
They shimmered brighter, then exploded into a shower of sparks that momentarily dazzled my eyes.
When they readjusted, I could just make out Ostara’s form being lifted upward by Abaddon’s unnaturally long arms, so that her legs dangled, kicking desperately, in midair.
“And now you learn what happens to mortals rotted through with hubris, who dare to challenge the power of Abaddon with your pathetic magic.” The last word was spoken with a sneer as the demon lifted Ostara higher, its clawed hand clamped tightly around her neck, as if he were offering her to the moon above as some sort of sacrifice.
Abaddon gazed at her for a moment, the way her legs kicked and flailed as she fought for release.
I saw the amused glint in his eyes, the pleasure that curved his expression as, with a satisfied sigh, he thrust his hand forward and sank one of his enormous claws right through Ostara’s chest.
Everything stopped. The wind. The sound. My heart inside my body. The world paused, frozen in this endless nightmare of a moment.
And then it began again, and I was running, running to the center of the clearing as Ostara was flying through the air, crumpling into the grass, grass that was blooming with darkness as Ostara’s very life pooled around her.
How I could forget about Abaddon in that moment, I had no idea, but every fiber of my being was focused on reaching Ostara.
If I could get there fast enough, maybe it wouldn’t be too late.
Maybe everything I knew about the human body and what it could withstand would be wrong, and I could stop what my brain was already screaming was too late.
Too late…
Too much…
I slid to my knees beside Ostara, and turned her over so that her eyes gazed upward.
Already, they seemed to be searching for something that was slipping away.
I looked down at her chest and then away again, because it was impossible, and I knew it, and I didn’t want the last thing she saw to be despair on my face.
I pressed my hand against the pulsing of the blood, and looked back at Ostara’s face.
She was looking at me, and her eyes, dulling already, burned for an instant with recognition.
“I wanted to… to know…” she gasped. Blood trickled from the side of her mouth.
“Don’t try to talk,” I said. “Help is… is coming, just hang on.”
No help was coming. There was nothing to hang on to. She knew it.
“It was… Kildare…”
My heart was thundering. The words were slurring. Had I misunderstood?
“Ostara, just keep breathing, okay?”
“The Darkness… Isabel… Kildare…”
A strange gurgling sound cut off her voice. Ostara twitched once, twice. Her eyes left my face, and found the curve of the moon. Then she went still.
Screaming. Screaming inside my head. This wasn’t real. It must be a vision. I had to wake up. But the glassy eyes stared at the moon, and the wind bit at my skin, and the blood soaked my coat, and I closed my eyes and opened them again, and nothing had changed.
Nothing but the pair of glowing yellow eyes now fixed on me.
I looked up at Abaddon. The demon looked down at me, appraising.
“Another witch. Do you seek to control me too, young one?”
I couldn’t speak. Terror choked me and turned me to stone.
“Hundreds of years, and still the mortals of this place have not learned their lesson. Must I teach it to you, as well?”
Somewhere behind the screaming in my brain, a tiny voice told me to bow my head. Somehow, I obeyed, shifted my head on my neck.
But Abaddon was staring at me more intently now. He was no longer amused. Those glowing eyes were intent, reading me like a book, pulling the knowledge of me up by the roots.
“Oh. This one is special. Special like the others,” Abaddon purred and, to my ever-expanding horror, he moved toward me in a motion that was half-walk, half sinuous slither.
Every inch that closed between us felt like a new fear blossoming inside my skull.
All I could think, over and over again, was that this was a demon. This was a demon.