A Demon's Wrath: Part I (Peachville High Demons) (6 page)

My strength began to fade, but I held on with
everything I was.

And then, in a horrible instant, Aerden was ripped
from me. It felt as if a blade had cut us apart, the pain of it so
deep and so brutal, it slammed me against the ground. I screamed in
terror as the vision disappeared.

Only, I suddenly knew with certainty that this
wasn’t a vision of the future.

I felt his absence from this world like a black
hole in my heart, its darkness filling me with a loss so great I knew
I would never recover.

I opened my eyes as Lea cradled my head against
her lap, her hands stroking my face as she begged me to tell her what
was happening.

"Aerden," I said, my voice hoarse from
screaming. "Aerden’s dead."

The Human World – Present Day

The memories of that horrible day tore through my
mind like shards of glass.

I forced myself back to the present, releasing my
grip on the memory stone. I didn’t want to lose sight of all
the good that had happened in my life since that day, but I also
understood that none of this joy would have found me if it hadn’t
been for the pain of my past.

I focused on the sounds of the party beneath my
room until my breathing calmed and the memories began to fade back
into the past where they belonged.

There was so much more of the story to tell, but I
needed to see my brother with my own eyes. I needed to know that he
was here and he was safe. I stood and grabbed my jacket from the back
of the chair, then opened the door and headed down the stairs to join
the party.

I stood in the doorway of the living room for a
long moment, silently watching my friends.

These were the people I held most dear to me in
this world and the next.

Harper stood in the corner with a glass of red
punch in her hand, whispering something to Mary Anne and Essex.

Mordecai, Joost, and Erick sorted through a
collection of Cd’s by the stereo.

Courtney sat in a chair that had been pushed
against the wall, a book of spells open in her lap.

Lea was dressed in a white outfit with her hair
pulled into two large buns. I brought my hand to my mouth, hiding my
laughter as I realized she was dressed as Princess Leia from Star
Wars. She danced in the center of the room with our friend Cristo.

And Aerden, the brother I thought had been stolen
from me forever, stood against the far wall. In his human form, he
looked almost identical to me except for his slightly darker hair.

He must have sensed my presence, because the
second my eyes landed on him, he looked up and smiled.

He shifted into a wisp of black smoke and in an
instant, reappeared by my side. "What took you so long?" he
asked. "I was beginning to wonder if you’d abandoned us."

"Never," I said, my tone more serious
than I intended.

He studied me, then leaned against the door frame.
"You’re up to something."

I tried to keep from smiling but couldn’t.
"Maybe," I said.

"Definitely," he said. "And by the
looks of it, whatever it is has put you in a less than partying
mood."

I sunk my hand deep into my left pocket and
twirled the golden case and the memory stone between my fingertips.
"Can I ask you something?"

"Sure," he said.

"Have you given any thought to telling Lea
the truth about the heart stone?"

He lowered his head, his hands falling to his
sides. "I think it’s too late for that, don’t you?"

I shook my head. "I think it’s never
too late to tell someone the truth, no matter how scared you are."

He turned to watch her dancing. Even after a
hundred years, his eyes still shone with his love for her. I really
don’t know how I didn’t see it all those years ago.

"Lea and I don’t belong together,"
he said. "We didn’t a hundred years ago, and we still
don’t. Telling her about the stone would only open up old
wounds."

"Maybe reopening those wounds is the only way
to ever really heal them," I said.

Aerden swallowed and lowered his eyes again.
"Lately I’m beginning to think her pain is the only thing
holding her to this life," he said.

I drew in a deep breath. He was still trying to
protect her.

Or maybe he was trying to protect himself.

Before I could ask him more, a hand slid around my
waist. A slow smile crept across my face as Harper lay her head
against my chest.

"When did you sneak down here?" she
asked.

"Only a minute ago," I said. "Having
fun?"

She looked around at our friends. "I think
this is the first party I’ve been to where no one was murdered
or kidnapped or dying. I call that a win, don’t you?"

I laughed and wrapped my arms around her. "Yes,
I do," I said.

"The night is still young," Aerden said,
an eyebrow raised.

Harper rolled her eyes and leaned over to punch
him in the arm. "Don’t you jinx this, mister."

"Who? Me?" Aerden lifted his palms in
the air and laughed. "If I remember correctly, I’m the one
who saved you on more than one occasion such as this."

"Don’t remind me," Harper said.
Her hand absently gripped her blue pendant. It was nothing more than
a pretty blue stone now, but she said it served as a reminder of how
far she’d come and how much work was still to be done.

I think she just wore it to feel close to her
mother.

"Well, I’ll leave you two love birds
alone," Aerden said. He pushed off the door frame and walked
into the main hallway.

"Wait, where are you going?" I asked.
There were still some things I needed to talk to him about before the
night was over.

He shrugged and glanced toward the dance floor,
sadness flashing in his eyes. "I need some air," he said,
then took off toward the back door, leaving a trail of black smoke
behind him.

"Do you think he’s okay?" Harper
asked, watching after him.

"I don’t know," I said. "Every
time I try to talk to him about the past, he brushes it off and then
manages to avoid me for days. I wish he’d open up to me and
tell me what he’s thinking."

"Give him time," she said, taking my
hand in hers and kissing the tip of my finger. "I can’t
imagine what it would have been like to be trapped inside someone
else’s soul for a hundred years. He’s been through so
much, Jackson. You can’t expect him to get over all that in a
matter of a few months."

I leaned down and kissed her forehead. "You
really are amazing, you know that?"

She blushed and turned her head to the side. "So
you keep telling me," she said. "I’ll believe it when
we’ve defeated the Order of Shadows for good."

I pulled away enough so I could see her eyes and
know that she was truly listening to me. "Tonight isn’t
about them, okay?"

She was always so hard on herself. She’d
managed to put the weight of two worlds on her shoulders as if she
was personally responsible for saving every human and demon who had
been hurt by the Order.

"It’s Halloween. One hundred and one
years since the Peachville gate was first opened," she said.
"How can it not be about them?"

I smiled and and brushed the back of my hand along
her soft cheek. "Because for the first time in over a hundred
years, my brother is free and the gate is closed forever," I
said. "You did that, Harper."

She leaned into my hand, closing her eyes as a
tear escaped and ran a jagged path down her face. "It’s
not enough," she whispered.

"Look at me," I said.

Her eyelids fluttered open, revealing brown eyes
shining with tears.

My heart overflowed with love and I pulled her
tight against my chest. I remembered back to the hopelessness of the
day Aerden disappeared. I remembered the party a year ago when Mrs.
Ashworth had tried to take Harper’s life. How the Order had
followed us and taken Harper from me.

I thought the only two people I’d ever
really loved had been lost to me forever.

"Yes it is," I said, my cheek pressed
against her hair. "For tonight, it’s more than enough."

Later, I went searching for Aerden.

He’d been traveling in his shadow form, so I
was able to follow him from the back door and into the woods by the
line of decay he’d left in his wake.

In this world, using demon magic sucked the life
from whatever it could use nearby. Plants, trees, animals, even
humans. Something as simple as shifting didn’t take much power,
but my eye was trained to recognize even the slightest trail of demon
magic.

I followed him out past the house I’d once
shared with Ella Mae, across the field and into the woods, but the
trail disappeared as I neared the ruins of the old Peachville demon
gate.

Thinking I might find him near the destroyed
portal, I walked the rest of the way to the clearing.

The ground beneath my feet still buzzed with the
battle that had taken place here a few months ago. There had been so
much death that day on all sides. Witches from the Peachville coven.
Demons from the Resistance. Even Harper’s father, the King of
the South, had given his life in battle.

Our victory against Priestess Winter had come at a
high cost, but the reward was immeasurable.

In the months following the battle, those of us
who remained had started a new army—The Demon Liberation
Movement. Our plan was to find the four remaining priestesses of the
Order of Shadows and defeat them, one by one.

At first, we’d been high on hope, believing
we had found the key to freeing both our worlds from the Order.

But over time and months, we’d realized that
once Priestess Winter died, her four sisters had taken measures to
make sure we wouldn’t find them. So far, our search had been
completely in vain and we were no closer to destroying them than we
were in the beginning.

Our lives had settled into a peaceful routine here
in Peachville, but the coming battles were never far from our minds.

As I walked through the ruins of the old gate, I
found a piece of the statue that had once held my brother’s
spirit trapped inside while the town waited for its Prima to come
home. I sat down beside it and pulled out the memory stone again,
then let my thoughts drift back to the day this gate had first opened
over a hundred years ago.

The day the Order of Shadows ripped my brother
from my life.

The Shadow World – 101 Years Ago

Lea’s lips touched mine, not out of passion
but out of desperation.

The veil surrounding us lifted and a gasp rushed
through the crowd.

I tried to lift myself from the ground, but my
legs were too weak to hold me. Lea gripped my hand as her father came
rushing forward off the throne.

"What is it?" he asked.

"It’s Aerden," she said, low so
the crowd couldn’t hear. "Something horrible’s
happened."

My father appeared at my side, his face stricken
with panic. I had never in my life seen him lose control or show
emotion. He was a rock, always accepting fate as it came to him.

But that day, in that brief moment in the throne
room, I saw a side to my father I never knew existed.

"We must get him out of here," he said.
He lifted me from Lea’s grasp and shifted, soaring through the
air so fast it turned my stomach.

Behind us in the hall, there was shouting and
movement as the crowd tried to understand what was happening.

"I don’t understand," someone said
before the door to the king’s chambers had closed. "Did
they kiss?"

My father set me down on a stone bench near the
wall and I leaned over, retching.

I felt as if I had fallen from a great height with
no ability to fly or shift. Having Aerden’s presence taken from
me was like hitting the ground at full speed. My muscles were sore
and weak and my connection to my magic felt distant. Broken.

"What’s happening to me?" I asked.

My father paced the floor beside me. For the
moment, we were alone in the chamber room. "Did you have a
vision? You must tell me what you saw.”

I tried to sit up and he rushed to my side,
helping to prop me against the wall.

I closed my eyes and took several deep breaths,
each one hurting more than the last. I winced in pain, then shook my
head. "I don’t think it was a vision," I said. "This
was different."

"Different how?"

"It wasn’t like being pulled into a
picture of the future," I explained, trying to remember exactly
what I’d seen and felt. "I still saw images of him in my
head, the same as when I have visions, but this time, I felt him. It
was almost like I was standing by his side, watching it happen. I
could hear him, father. It’s never been like that before."

My father turned his back to me and lowered his
head.

I wanted to tell him more, if only to try to make
sense of it in my head, but the chamber door burst open. Lea and her
parents walked in, followed by my mother. A maidservant bowed and
left the room, shutting the door behind her.

Lea rushed straight to my side and knelt at my
feet. She rested her head against my leg and reached up to take my
hand. "Are you okay?" she whispered.

I didn’t have an answer. Was I okay? Would I
ever be okay?

"Tell us exactly what happened," the
king commanded.

The small group in the room formed a circle around
Lea and I.

Pain surged through me and I clutched my side. How
could I explain to them what I had experienced when I didn’t
even understand it myself?

I nearly lost consciousness, but Lea’s hand
on mine held me to this moment.

"Aerden and I have always had a bond," I
said. I pushed through the pain, but my voice was strained and rough
against my throat. "Even when we’re separated, I have
always been able to reach out to him with my mind and my magic."