Chapter 33
Chapter
Thirty-Three
Two can play this game, bitch.
Xavier is back on his feet in seconds and I send a blast of energy through the air, hitting the demon. It doesn’t do much, but bump her shoulder back.
“Get out of here, Wren,” Xavier says, growling and going after the demon again. This time, it doesn’t react but simply stands there. Xavier punches his hand through her torso, right under her ribcage. He jerks his hand back, ripping her spine through her body, tearing her in half.
The demon looks at him curiously, inked over eyes expressionless. Amanda’s body, unable to stand on its own anymore, falls to the ground and the demon vacates the body in a whoosh that blows my hair back.
Xavier steps back, flicking blood and body parts onto the ground.
“Where is it?” Devon asks, holding up the fire poker again. “Is it dead?”
“No,” I tell him. It was using the body, but it’s going to take a lot more than that to kill it.”
“What do we do?”
“I don’t know,” I say honestly. A demon who commands spirits and stood here unfazed isn’t going to go down easily, that’s for fucking sure.
My hands wrap around the hilt of my dagger when suddenly Xavier grabs me and jumps to the side.
Only a second later, a body comes crashing down onto the forest floor.
“Oh fuck,” Devon breathes, looking up.
My eyes widen in terror, seeing bodies strung up, hanging above us. “I think we found most of the missing counselors.”
Xavier has one arm around me and he pulls me to him.
I look around the area we were just standing in.
The ground is dead and rotten, and the bodies hang in a circle above.
Right in the center, the dirt has been disturbed.
Something bigger and darker than I ever imagined is taking place, and the feeling that the world is going to crumble apart and burn makes me feel like I’m going to throw up.
“It’s a ritual,” I exclaim. It’s so fucking obvious now I don’t know how I missed it before. Why else would we be out here in the woods? There were five bodies hanging, and each was equally spaced—like the points of a star.
I move out of Xavier’s embrace and throw out a hand, yanking down another body. It crashes down with a sickening thud, followed by the crunch of broken bones. It’s the body of a woman, and her eyes are open and lifeless. She also has had her throat slit in a ritualistic way.
The sound of metal scraping on metal echoes through the woods and we whirl around, unable to tell where it’s coming from.
I turn, putting a hand on Xavier’s arm. He has dirt on his elbow from being thrown by the demon.
Even though it doesn’t matter, I brush it off of him.
In doing so, the smell of sulfur becomes stronger.
I bring my hand to my face and sniff the dirt on my fingers.
Sulfur.
And then I realize that the demon hadn’t thrown Xavier aside just to keep him from attacking. It threw him right into the middle of the circle, where something has been dug up or buried or—
“It’s trying to access a Ley line,” I say as it comes to me.
“Ley line?” Devon asks.
“Earth’s energy grid,” I summarize. “If you can tap into them, you can access a shit town of power. Demons and monsters and anyone willing to participate in a really risky form of magic have been trying to access them as long as they’ve been known.”
“If a demon gets power from the Ley line…” Devon starts, trailing off so I can finish.
“It wouldn’t be good. They’d be almost unstoppable.” I bite my lip and inhale. “That’s why it didn’t want me to do the locator spell. It wasn’t done with the ritual. Which means we still have time to stop it before it does tap into an infinite source of magical energy.”
“Can you pull the rest of the bodies down?” Xavier asks, knowing using magic drains me.
“Yeah,” I say but before I can, the rest fall from the trees. I flinch and he pulls me close to him again, using his own body to protect me. This time, spirits rise from the bodies. I watch, transfixed in horror, as the spirit of a young, male counselor steps out of his body and turns around.
“No,” he cries, voice echoing through my head. He falls to his knees, sobbing, and each cry hurts, like a vice digging into my brain. His despair is palpable and his emotion and fear spirals around me. The spirits of the others do the same, each one realizing they’re dead.
Their pain becomes mine and I clutch at my chest, heart shattering in two. All the pain I’ve felt before bubbles to the surface and I pitch forward, tears in my eyes.
Everything is hopeless.
I don’t want to go on.
It hurts. It hurts so bad and I just want it to stop.
The spirit of the young man reaches for his body, fingers swiping through his own skin. He watched a shadow rise from the ground, red eyes glowing in the night. His sobs resound off every tree in the forest. This is wrong. Everything is wrong.
“Wren,” Xavier pants, pulling me to my feet. “Wren, what’s wrong?”
Hearing his voice brings me back to the here and now. I blink and suck in air. Holy shit. It’s the demon’s power.
“You don’t feel that?” I ask, as dread threatens to take over again, like I’m about to have a panic attack.
“Feel what?”
“All their emotions.” I blink back tears. “Hearing them cry is awful.”
“Hearing who cry?” Devon asks slowly.
I look from him to Xavier and then out at the spirits. “You don’t see them?”
“The bodies?” Xavier brushes loose strands of hair back that’s sticking to the sweat on my face.
“Oh,” I say as the realization crashes down. “They’re ghosts. You can’t see them.”
“Where are they?”
I sweep my hand out. “Right there. They’re trying to get back in their bodies.
I can feel their pain and their fear and it’s overwhelming.
” I hug my arms around myself, trying not to come undone.
What I’m feeling aren’t my own emotions but my brain can’t tell the difference, and my nervous system is starting to panic as if something terrible is happening to me.
Xavier puts his hands on my shoulders and looks me right in the eye. “Breathe, Wren,” he says. “The spirits are trying to get back into their bodies?” he asks, needing to hear it again to be sure.
“Yes,” I say, looking at the crying man only several feet from us. “I think they know if they can’t get back in. They’re going to hell.”
I swallow hard. It’s the only thing that makes sense right now given how absolutely terrified everyone feels.
“The demon took their souls. And they know… they know what happens when your soul can’t ascend.”
I blink and visions of a hell escape full of brimstone and fire flash before me. That is what Hell looks like to the guy sobbing, desperately reaching for his body. It’s where he knows he will go—unless I can stop the demon.
If I kill the demon, whatever kind of contract he has over countless souls will be broken, and they will be free to move on, going to wherever they deserve to go.
“Get the bodies as far away from here as you can,” Xavier tells Devon.
“The boathouse so they can be identified later,” I say and suck in a shuttering breath, wanting to collapse onto the floor, crying.
Knowing that my soul will never again be in my body is the worst type of existential terror that anyone can ever feel.
But it’s not my fear, though no matter how many times I remind myself that I can’t get rid of the feeling.
“Take a breath,” Xavier tells me, making sure I’m steady on my feet before he speeds a few feet away, jumping up to pull another body down from the tree.
I extend my hand and pull the remaining ones to the ground, feeling a sting in the back of my head similar to the feeling you get when water goes up your nose after jumping in a swimming pool and plunging deep below the surface.
Devon grabs two bodies and flings them over his shoulder as if they weigh nothing. He grabs another around the waist and races through the dark forest, disappearing from sight.
Now that the crying man is gone, I’m able to steady myself a bit more. There are still three more ghosts around us, confused and terrified. It comes off of them like waves, crashing against me and threatening to drag me out in a sea of horror.
Then the smell of sulfur chokes me. Xavier moves in front of me right as something steps out of the forest. It’s the demon, appearing as an older, well dressed gentleman, with swept back silver hair, and gray eyes to match.
“A witch and a vampire,” it says, deep voice reverberating in one thousand whispers throughout the forest. The sound seems to come from everywhere and nowhere at the same time.
“Go back to hell!” I scream, and throw out both hands, hitting it with a jolt of magic.
Xavier pulls the dagger from my belt and speeds forward, sinking it into the demon’s heart.
Like the spirits, the demon isn’t corporeal.
But the blade seems to have some effect, and it sizzles as it slices through the thick shadow.
The demon vanishes, only to appear behind Xavier.
It throws out its hand, fingers reaching into Xavier’s chest, similar to Xavier’s signature move of ripping out a heart.
Thankfully, the demon can’t pull out Xavier’s heart, but whatever he does makes Xavier tense with pain and the dagger falls from his hand.
I spin on my heel, dropping down and out of the demon’s direct line of fire. I put my hand on the ground and pull from the Ley line, summoning power. I wrap my fingers around an exposed tree root.
“Vincti estis!”
The demon’s head lulls back, gray eyes wide with fear. He’s unable to move, but the temporary binding spell won’t last more than a few seconds. It’s more than enough time for Xavier to pick up the dagger and slash it through the demon. It vanishes into thin air.
“What was that?” he asks me.
“Binding spell,” I quickly explain, getting to my feet. “Basically how you would make a haunted object. It’s not strong enough to hold the demon and I don’t have an object to use as a vessel.”
Something crashes through the forest, and we both tense, but it’s only Devon.
“The vanquishing potions,” I tell him, seeing the backpack still on his shoulders.
Quickly, he gets it out and tosses me a potion vial.
The demon isn’t appearing in physical form.
I can’t force it to consume the potion. But we can still get it inside in some way.
I pull the cork out of a vial and look at the dagger.
Xavier, knowing what I’m thinking, holds it out and I pour it on the blade.
Devon gets the last three bodies, carrying them away.
Energy crackles through the air like lightning and thunder at the same time. The demon reappears, standing at the weakened earth where the Ley line is surfacing. Energy pulses up and light flashes around us.
Pain suddenly starts to radiate from my arm and I flinch, trying to pull away from whatever fiery grasp. But before I can really even react, a sharp twinge in my chest almost brings me to my knees. Xavier catches me, and sees something on my arm.
I follow his gaze, hardly able to make out the red handprint in the dim light.
“He wants my soul,” I say through gritted teeth. “I can feel him trying to get in my head.”
“He’s not fucking getting it,” Xavier growls. “Show yourself, coward!”
“Bold invitation,” the demon says, yet for some reason, only I can hear it.
“There,” I grunt, feebly raising my hand.
The demon materializes and lunges toward me, but Xavier is faster.
He brings the dagger down on it, and this time, it rips through the demon’s flesh.
The demon stumbles to the ground, landing against a tree.
With its hold on me lifted, I spring into action and dive over, hands landing on the tree’s roots.
“Vincti estis,” I cry and the demon’s body seizes before he’s able to vanish. The dagger pushes through the air, tip of the blade clipping the tree. Demon blood drips from it.
“Holy shit,” I rush out. “That means the vanquishing potion and the dagger together might be enough to stop it if I can get it into a physical form.”
“Can you bind the demon to something?” Xavier asks, holding his arms out slightly at his sides, ready to attack. With his fangs drawn, he looks absolutely terrifying.
“Not with one incantation. Actually binding an evil spirit to something like a doll takes a full spell and even then, it’s not a guarantee it will stay trapped forever.”
His eyes meet mine. “We don’t need forever. We just need a minute so you can kill it.”
“Yeah, but killing a demon like this would mean having it possess someone. Who are we going to find that will willingly let a demon in so I can stab them in the heart?”
“Me,” he says without missing a beat. “The demon can possess me.”