Chapter 2
“What do we have here?” The older woman leaps off the table with inhuman speed.
The white sheet that had been covering her whooshes to the ground.
Thankfully, the embalming process hasn’t started yet and she’s still wearing the nightgown she came in with.
It’s thin and white, clinging to her graying flesh like a cotton second skin.
Her eyes widen and she tips her head. The smell of death emanates from deep within her body.
Her eyes ink over and I throw my hand out, sending a pulse of energy through the air.
She twitches her head to the side and raises her hand, sending a blast of energy right at us.
Bracing myself, I put up a shield and the energy goes around me.
But my siblings, who have no powers, get thrown back—hard.
The knife clatters on the floor as Antonio hits the door behind me, slamming it shut. Larissa and Leo were thrown into a cart full of embalming tools that scatter loudly on the tile floor.
In a practiced move, I throw my dagger into the demon’s chest. The blade has been soaked in the same vanquishing potion. It hurts like hell and temporarily weakens the demon, but it’s not enough to kill it—yet.
The demon screeches as it stumbles backwards. Bodies clamor inside the refrigerated drawers, and the smell of death gets stronger and stronger.
“Tony,” I breathe, turning away to look at my brother.
He hit his head but is conscious, which is more than I can say for the twins, who got knocked out.
Blood drips from Antonio’s head and his movements are jerky and uncoordinated, letting me know the head injury is something to be taken seriously.
“One of these things is not like the other,” the demon sneers, narrowing its eyes, pointing a bony finger from me to my siblings.
The body it’s possessing has long been dead.
The demon blinks and its eyes go back to normal, light blue tinged with the gray grip of death.
“You don’t belong, and they don’t want you, orphan,” it taunts.
I roll my eyes, knowing better to listen to demons—even when they speak the truth.
“And what? You do?” I retort, taking a step to my left, edging closer to the body of the funeral home worker. There’s some sort of sigil drawn on the floor with blood, and it might be giving this demon power somehow.
“I want to be inside you,” the demon goes on.
“Take me to dinner first,” I scoff, turning my head ever so slightly. Leo is still behind me but Larissa…I can’t see her in my peripheral vision at all. The cart is in front of her, blocking her from my sight.
“We would be unstoppable together.”
“Again, I prefer to take things slow. And consent is sexy nowadays.” I take another sidestep.
“You don’t belong with them,” the demon continues. “They don’t appreciate your talents.” The old woman’s head snaps to the side, and the demon inhales as if it’s breathing in my sibling’s thoughts and feelings. “There’s fear…and jealousy. But they’d rather you have no powers at all.”
“Nothing you’re saying is news to me,” I go on, refusing to let her words sting, and take a quick step toward the fresh body. I’m almost to it, and my plan is to slide my foot through the blood, smearing it and ruining the sigil. Then I’ll deal with the demon.
Expecting the demon to come at me for getting close to the blood on the floor, I’m not prepared for it to dodge forward, moving past me.
I throw my hand out, summoning a string of energy and using it like a whip to hit the demon across the back.
She screeches but shudders, soaking in the energy like a sponge.
“Motherfucker,” I grumble. I hate when demons do that. It’s time to fight hand to hand, and my knife is still in the demon’s chest.
The demon extends its hand and the energy it just absorbed rises from its fingers in a dark tendril of smoke. I brace myself, ready to deflect it right into the ground. But instead of directing it to me, the demon sends it into Larissa.
Oh shit.
Larissa’s body shudders and then she sits up, eyes wide but void of emotion. She’s temporarily under demon control. I roll my eyes.
“Nice try,” I tell the demon and rush over to my sister. “Somnum,” I say, casting a sleeping spell. Larissa slumps forward and I catch her, easing her body to the ground. I pull a knife from Larissa’s belt and round back on the demon.
It takes a quick step back and mutters something in ancient language that I don’t understand. But it only takes a second to know what the spell was for.
Every dead body in the morgue stirs and awakens. The demon raises her hands and the refrigerator drawers fly open, bodies sitting up and spilling out..
I’ve dealt with reanimated corpses before but not, uh…
I look around…not five at once. They’re simple-minded, like old-school zombies that can be taken out with an enchanted knife to the brain, beheading, or fire.
Seeing that the blade in my hand is only about five inches long, a knife to the brain is my only option here.
Wasting no time, I dodge forward, ducking out of the grasp of the closest zombie. I kick its legs out from under it, driving my knife into its ear as it falls. The body goes limp and blood splatters on my face as I pull the knife back and spin, kicking another zombie in the chest.
It stumbles back, tripping over the table it was just laying on. I grab a pair of operating scissors and throw them at the zombie across the room. Using magic to guide them, it hits the zombie right in the eye, penetrating its brain.
Zombie number two drops and I can see the demon start to panic. It wasn’t expecting a witch to show up.
The youngest body in the morgue belongs to a teenager who died of a gunshot wound to the chest Brown, goopy blood seeps out of the bullet hole as he quickly jolts forward.
I thrust my left hand out, sending a wave of energy at him to slow him down.
I flip over an empty embalming table, taking out the slow-moving zombie crawling toward me.
This one must have died in a bad car accident.
Her legs are crushed and detached, wiggling on the table, not connected to the body.
It’s a mercy to take out this one.
She slumps down and I yank my knife back from her skull, feeling a bit of bone hit my face. Then I round back at Mr. Gunshot and throw my knife. The blade hits him right between the eyes and he falls to the ground.
Out of weapons, I pick up some sort of small drain used for removing body fluids. The last zombie is the morgue worker, and he died recently enough to still look alive. His throat had been slit by the demon possessing him, allowing the blood to spill out freely so the sigil could be drawn.
“Sorry,” I tell him. “I thought I’d get here sooner and no one else would have to die.” I make a face, frustration rising inside of me. I told the others something seemed off. That it wasn’t normal for a demon to just hide inside a body. My tarot reading warned me of something bigger at play.
But they didn’t fucking listen.
“We have rules in place,” Larissa snapped. “Rules the Order has abided by for centuries. They’ve kept us alive, and no one used silly little picture cards to tell us how to hunt.”
“We need to take everything into consideration,” Marco told his daughter, flicking his eyes to me as we sat at the dinner table, discussing our plan of attack for tonight. “And then we vote.”
Shaking my head, I close my eyes and jam the drain into the mortician’s temple, wincing from the way it feels and sounds as it pushes into his brain. No matter how many monsters I’ve taken out, it doesn’t get any easier to accept that I cannot save everyone.
I turn back to the demon, wiping blood on my pants. Realizing it’s all out of tricks, the demon takes a quick step back, pinning itself up against the wall.
“Now that we’re all alone,” it goes on, “you can confess. You know you don’t belong. You know the people you call family aren’t your family.”
“Family isn’t always blood.” Out of the corner of my eye, I see Antonio getting up. My left hand is resting along my side and I give him a signal, coordinating our next move.
“It is to them,” the demon sneers. “I can feel the hatred coming off in waves. It’s delicious.
They will betray you someday, you know. Leave you for dead to save their own kind.
You’re not one of them.” The demon blinks several times, trying to appear more human than monster in an attempt to mess with my head.
“I know what it’s like to be unwanted. Join me and you’ll never feel that way again. ”
“Yeah, no thanks. I’m good.” I inhale, wait a beat and then spring forward, pushing the demon against the wall. Anger fuels my magic, and the demon grunts in pain as tendrils of energy burn it from the inside out.
“They don’t want you,” the demon hisses and I hate that there is some truth to these words.
Antonio is back on his feet and is next to me in seconds.
Using magic, I force the demon’s head back, pinching the dead woman’s chin so her mouth is forced open.
Antonio pulls a vial from his pocket with one hand and tips the demon’s head back with the other.
The demon gargles and sputters as the vanquishing potion is poured into its mouth.
We jump back as the old woman in front of us coughs up blood, unearthly screeches coming from deep inside as she collapses to the floor.
“Fuck,” Antonio sighs, whirling around. The demon’s power died right along with it, and Leo gasps as the hold is released. I rush to him, and he gives me a nod, letting me know he’s okay. We both go over to Larissa.
“Liss?” I ask, slowly shaking her. The sleeping spell doesn’t last long.
“Is she possessed?” Antonio asks, saying what I’m thinking.
“No,” I say, reading the energy. “It was a command spell, not a possession.”
“Good.”
I hold my hand over her head. “Excitare.”
Larissa groans and Leo helps her up. “We got the big bad wolf. Well, Wren did,” he tells her, and even with her hair over her face, I can see the look of disdain in her eyes.
“I had help,” I say, automatically downplaying my role. It’s something I do often because, as much as I don’t want to admit it, there are times when I do feel like the ugly duckling in a family of swans.
Larissa gets to her feet and looks at the house. “Are we burning it down?”
“The entire funeral home?” I raise my eyebrows.
“We can’t exactly leave it like this.” She gives me a look that implies I’m dumb.
“This is someone’s business.” I wave my hand at the room. “They’re already going to deal with a loss.”
Larissa lets out a sigh and we all look at Antonio, waiting for him to make the decision.
“We were not granted permission for a controlled burn,” he says after a moment of consideration. “Stealth is always the main objective, so we’re going to clean up the best we can and make it look like a satanic cult is responsible.” He looks at the mortician on the floor. “We have our leader.”
“Fine,” Larissa huffs. “Why did you have to make such a mess, Wren? God, you’re so careless sometimes.”
I curl my fingers into my palms and the dim lights above us flicker. Internalizing it, I let it go and get to work on setting up the scene.
“You know what the demon said wasn’t true,” Antonio tells me quietly as we each grab a foot and drag a body to the center of the room. “You are one of us. Even if we find your parents, you’ll still be my sister.”
“Yeah, of course. Demons lie.” I don’t look at Antonio as I speak.
I’ve lived with the Russo family since I was a baby.
I don’t remember my birth parents or any time I spent living in Italy before the Russos found me.
My real family was attacked by demons. My parents are believed to be dead, but I was told their bodies were never found.
But I also know how hurtful it has been over the years to not be able to go to family functions. To be left out at events because they couldn’t risk any other members of the Order of the Mystic Realm finding out that the innocent baby Vivian Russo took under her wing was actually a witch.
I’m a superior hunter for it, able to sense things others can’t.
I can kill demons without getting my hands dirty and can track monsters without breaking a sweat.
You couldn’t create a better supernatural assassin, yet here I am, always toeing the line of being included, but never fully.
And while it’s been ingrained in my head that demons lie to get their way, I know that sometimes they tell the truth.
And the truth can really fucking hurt.