A Demon's Wrath: Part II (Peachville High Demons) (11 page)

“I’m ready,” he said.

The woman held her hand out to him. “I have
something for you first,” she said. “A gift.”

He opened his hand and returned her smile. I
stared down in anticipation, powerless to stop these events from
happening. The woman dropped something into his hand and closed his
fist around it. At first, I couldn’t quite make out what it
was, but I saw its effect immediately.

Aerden’s face tensed and his entire arm
shook as the object in his hand paralyzed him. I could feel his
intense struggle against the black magic, but it was already too
late. His fist was closed around the item, but a silver chain dangled
from it—delicate and beautiful.

My brother’s eyes searched the face of the
witch, then widened in horror as she transformed from a beautiful
young girl to an old woman and then, finally, to an entirely
different woman. It was difficult for me to judge age, but this third
form seemed to be in the middle of the other two—not too old
and not too young. All three of her appearances were similar in their
coloring with white hair and the same piercing light blue eyes,
almost as if she had cycled through generations of the same family,
transforming from younger daughter to grandmother to mother.

Her smile grew dark and twisted as she stared at
Aerden’s horror.

“I love this moment,” she said, moving
her face so close to him their cheeks were nearly touching. “The
moment when a powerful demon like you realizes for the first time
that he has made a very terrible mistake.”

Aerden struggled to speak, but it was no use.
Whatever was in his hand had him completely trapped for the moment,
unable to move or speak or fight.

The witch laughed and the sound tore its way
through my soul. She was enjoying this. My brother’s pain was
amusing to her.

I curled my hands into claws and ripped at where
her heart should be, but my hands only touched air. Nothingness.

“I didn’t lie, you know,” she
said. “You were chosen for a very important purpose and your
sacrifice here today will never be forgotten. Your power will be
used, I promise you. You’re one of the lucky ones, really.
You’ll learn to thank me eventually. As the demon of a prima,
you’ll live much longer than the others.”

She released his hand, but his fist stayed closed
around the object she’d put inside. She walked around him,
whispering in his ear.

“But I may have lied about how much you’ll
enjoy your time in my world,” she said. “I’m afraid
it’s not going to be very pleasant. Especially this next part.
The less you struggle against it, the better it will be. Trust me.”

Something shimmered inside her blue robe as she
reached her hand inside. I gasped as she pulled out a dagger made of
a silver metal that I recognized. A metal that comes from our own
world, just like the gemstones she used.

She placed the tip of the blade against Aerden’s
back and I cringed, tears flowing down my face. I couldn’t bear
to see him hurt. This was torture.

She ran the blade across his flesh, from his back
to his shoulder and around to his neck. She cut a very thin slice
into his neck and his blood poured from it, black at first, then
turning to a deep blue. She quickly pulled a silver cup adorned with
blue stones from her robe and collected the blood inside as Aerden
struggled to pull away. I could see the sheer terror in his eyes.

From the corner of my eye, movement drew my
attention. I turned to see a robed figure floating up from the edge
of the Black Cliffs. She wore a robe that had been torn into rags.
When she lifted her head, I could see that part of her face had begun
to decay.

A hunter.

But not so far gone as most of the ones I had seen
in the portal rituals I’d witnessed over the years. This was a
fresh hunter.

“Yanora,” the witch said. “Are
you ready to be bound to this portal?”

The hunter nodded, as if she had a choice, but I
knew she had none. Dark magic bound her to obey.

“Yes, Priestess Winter.”

My gaze snapped toward the woman. Priestess
Winter, ruler of the blue portals. She had betrayed my brother.

This woman did not look the same as the woman I
had seen in the previous memory, when Lea had first taken us into
that hallway to watch the hunter being drained with the stone. She
did not have the same face, but she had the same name.

Anger surged through me. See? It didn’t
matter that the humans were not immortal. They may not live more than
a hundred years, but they had powerful traditions. They were passing
their knowledge down through the generations, training their
daughters and their granddaughters to take over when they died.

The king was ignorant to believe we could outlast
them simply because we were immortal.

His ignorance would be the end of us all.

“Bind him,” the priestess commanded.

Yanora the hunter floated toward my brother, then
bound his hands and legs in shackles with sharp spikes along the
inside. Blue blood ran from his wrists and ankles as she locked them
in.

Priestess Winter forced his fist open, revealing
to me for the first time a silver pendant with a bright blue stone
inside, its chain dangling from his hand. She took it from him and
placed it inside the cup of his blood.

With the necklace gone, Aerden regained some small
ability to move. He screamed and fought against the shackles, but the
pain of the spikes kept him from shifting to smoke. The hunter held
fast to his chains and cast something to bind his mouth.

“It isn’t any use struggling,”
Priestess Winter told him, her voice harsh. “You belong to me
now.”

She lay the items in the grass at his feet. A
dagger. A cup. A necklace. A ring. Each with a single blue stone
embedded in the silver.

Then, she knelt at his feet and began to chant.
She lifted her palms toward the sky and as she spoke, black-thorned
vines rose up through the dark rock, shattering it to pieces. The
wind carried it away like dust, leaving a small clearing of earth
that looked as though it had been burned. The vines grew up in a
perfect circle, then stopped. Slowly, the tips grew buds as black as
night that blossomed into roses, their petals opening to the stormy
sky above.

Priestess Winter continued to chant as the sky
cracked with lightning. She looked up, surprised. There was fear in
her eyes.

“You should not be able to cast,” she
said. She stood and checked the shackles at his wrist. More lightning
sounded above, then cracked to earth, a burst of fire erupting where
it landed.

“Hurry,” she shouted to Yanora. What
was fear at first transformed to excitement and awe. The corners of
her mouth curled up into a smile that sent a terrible chill down my
spine. “He’s stronger than we ever dreamed.”

The pair of them rushed into place, continuing
their chants.

I knew I should pay attention to the ritual, but
all I could do was stare at my brother’s face. His pain and
terror cut through me. I should have been there to save him. I should
have gone looking for him the moment I realized he was gone that
morning.

“I’m so sorry,” I shouted to
him, even though I knew he couldn’t hear me.

My brother fell to his knees amongst the roses,
their thorns tearing into his flesh. He cried out, sobbing with such
heart-shattering pain that I almost lost myself to madness.

“No,” I shouted. I threw myself to the
ground at his knees, not wanting to see this but knowing I must.

Lea, who had been standing in silence at the edge
of the memory, came to sit beside me, her body shaking with tears.
She put her hand on my arm as we watched the blue light begin to pool
in the center of the circle.

The light nearly blinded me, but I clutched at
Aerden’s form, trying desperately to pull him back as he began
to shift from solid to smoky blackness.

A disturbance rocked the scene as a demon raced
forward. My heart stopped. I had seen this part before.

I forced myself to sit up and watch, wanting to
make sense of the pieces of this I had seen on the day Aerden was
taken.

The demon rushed forward, sword drawn. He sliced
through the black roses at Aerden’s knees and miraculously, the
blue light of the portal disappeared. But only for an instant. It was
like a flash.

Priestess Winter lost her concentration only for
an instant. With a single motion of her wrist, she brought the
intruding demon to his knees. She nodded to the hunter, who then took
a shiny black soul stone from the pocket of her rags and pressed it
to his palm. His body shifted to smoke then was sucked into the
stone, screaming as his life force was sucked from his body and
locked inside the stone.

I looked away, horrified. This was a process that
was sacred in my culture—reserved for the respected passing of
an elder. A choice that is made in sacrifice and love. Not a
murderous weapon to be used to steal souls. My hatred for this witch
and her Order of Shadows grew so great within me that I nearly lost
my mind. A fearsome, painful cry ripped from my throat. The Order of
Shadows had taken our gems, our silver, our traditions, and turned
them against us as weapons of dark magic.

I wanted to make every witch who ever lived pay
for this betrayal. This absolute corruption of all I held sacred.

Hatred consumed me.

I watched as the black roses regrew themselves to
reform the circle. Priestess Winter resumed her chanting and the blue
pool of light formed again.

She stood and stepped through the light, lifting
her hood over her face as she moved between worlds.

Just as in the other rituals, the light inside the
portal was too bright for me to see everything on the other side. All
I could make out was a young girl inside, her hair in braids. Instead
of hovering over the light, she was kneeling, a white gown pooling on
the floor around her.

She looked up, her brown eyes startled as she saw
the demon bound and shackled on the other side. She looked up to
question the priestess, but it was too late for questions.

The priestess secured the blue pendant around the
girl’s neck.

I turned to my brother. I was beyond tears now,
knowing the moment was close. I was destroyed, madness and rage
consuming me as I clawed at his ghostly form.

For a moment, he briefly opened his eyes and
looked almost straight at me. He seemed to understand something about
what was happening to him. Something I had still not grasped. He
managed to say one word before his body turned to smoke and was
sucked through the portal of blue light.

“Denaer,” he said, then was gone.

The Human World – Present Day

I released my grip on the memory stone, letting it
drop to the wooden boards of the front porch.

I leaned forward and dropped my head into my
hands, unable to control the flood of tears. These memories were the
most difficult, and I knew they would be hard for Harper to see, too.
After all, that had been her ancestor sitting on the floor of that
ritual room, waiting to become Prima.

I stood and wiped my tears against the sleeve of
my white shirt. I walked over to the window and looked inside,
careful to stay hidden in the shadows on the porch. I didn’t
want anyone to see me like this, but I had to know it was real.

I had to know that my brother was alive and safe.

Aerden stood on the other side of the room. His
laughter carried all the way out here and the sound warmed the chill
in my heart.

I watched him, still hardly able to believe we
were both here. Both safe after all this time. After all these years
of struggle and hopelessness.

I still couldn’t believe Priestess Winter
was gone. I’d never hated someone so much, but she had seemed
so strong. Untouchable.

But Harper had come along and changed everything.
She had shown us that you can’t ever give up, even when there
doesn’t seem to be any hope left.

Without her, none of this would have been
possible.

But she was right. We still had so much work to
do. There were still four more sisters to defeat. Thousands of
portals to close.

And we still didn’t know the first thing
about the mysterious High Priestess who ruled over them all.

Harper and I, along with the rest of the newly
formed Demon Liberation Movement, had spent a lot of time since the
defeat of Priestess Winter discussing which sister we would go after
next.

We had some information about the priestess who
ruled over the red portals, but it was the green portals I wanted
next. I didn’t care that we had no real leads or clues as to
how to find the priestess who controlled the emerald stones. I just
knew that second to blue, green was the one who had hurt the people I
loved most.

Andros and I may not have agreed on how to handle
the witches of the Order of Shadows, but despite our differences, I
owed him this after all he had done for me. Andros and Ourelia had
both lost loved ones to emerald portals.

Harper agreed with me about the emeralds. Her
friends from Cypress, Prima Sullivan and her daughters Caroline and
Meredith, were bound to the Order still. They wanted to be free just
as we were now free. And because of what had happened when Harper had
saved Caroline from the crow witch, there was a piece of Cypress’s
demon locked inside of Harper. She felt a duty to free him.

Lea and Aerden both felt that red was a better
target since we knew more about it, but in the end, the decision was
Harper’s to make.

Emerald would be next.

I looked through the window at the party going on
inside and soaked in the sounds of happiness. Laughter. Music.
Footsteps dancing across the hardwoods. If I could have, I would have
bottled that happiness and taken it back in time with me to the day I
had to face that dark memory. I would have told my younger self that
even though the darkest of times lay just ahead, there was hope of
better days.