A Demon's Wrath: Part II (Peachville High Demons) (3 page)

“Will you be back before nightfall?”
she asked.

I gave her a quick bow. “Not likely,”
I said, then turned and shifted into black smoke. I didn’t give
her the chance to ask anything more of me, and by the time night did
fall, I was nowhere near the castle walls.

Andros was waiting for us by the roses.

He didn’t see us at first, so I stood there
for a moment watching him through the darkness.

He leaned down at the edge of a small patch of
flowers and closed his eyes. He lifted his hand over the flowers and
mumbled something I couldn’t quite make out.

A bluish black mist of energy rose up from the
flowers like a fog, flowing into the demon’s hand. Then, Andros
cried out and yanked his hand backward, falling onto his back.

I rushed over toward him.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

He cradled his hand close to his chest. “I’m
fine,” he said, laughing. “Just one of the dangers of
experimentation, I guess.”

“What were you trying to do?” Lea
asked.

“Honestly?”

I nodded.

He shook his head and laughed. “I have no
idea.”

“What was the black fog that rose up from
them?” Lea asked. “Where did it come from?”

“I haven’t completely figured it out
yet, but these roses have some kind of property that allows them to
pull energy from the magic around them,” he said. He lifted his
hand over the cluster of the black roses and moved it in a circle. I
could instantly feel the energy of his magic as it entered the air,
and within a few seconds, I could physically see it too. “Watch
this.”

I watched as the energy field of his magic
transferred from his hands to the tips of the roses. It was as if the
roses were a magnet, drawing the energy toward them.

The dark black smoke of his power drifted toward
the roses and hovered above it.

“Now what?” I asked. “Does the
magic get absorbed into the flowers?”

Andros shook his head and moved his hand away from
the roses. The smoke hovered for a moment, then gradually faded
altogether.

“It doesn’t seem to actually soak in,”
he said. “The roses attract the power, but they don’t
seem to have a way to store it. They appear to be more of a conductor
of energy. It’s hard to understand, but that’s why I
started growing them here. I want to understand them. I think they’re
important.”

“I’ve seen these roses before,”
I said, looking out over the darkened field. The light of the moons
was dim tonight, but I had always been able to see very clearly in
the dark. It was one of my gifts. “The day my brother
disappeared, I got a very strong vision of him. He was kneeling in a
circle of these roses, bleeding and crying out. There was a bright
light shining inside the circle.”

I struggled with the memory. It was difficult to
talk about it, even now.

“Tonight may prove to be a very emotional
one for you, my friend, but I think you are on the verge of finding
answers to questions you have held for a very long time,” he
said.

“Where are you taking us?” Lea asked.

She was still unsure about us being here, and I
knew it was a lot to ask of her. If the king found out we were
meeting with rebels, he would be very unhappy. I knew she was only
here out of loyalty to me, which only deepened my guilt.

“You’ll see very soon,” Andros
said.

“What do the roses have to do with what
happened to my brother?” I asked. “I know the two things
are tied together. It’s the only real clue I’ve had to
follow.”

Andros looked across the field of black, his eyes
growing darker and more distant, as if he were remembering some great
pain. “That’s where information get complicated,”
he said. “And privileged. I’m taking a very big risk
showing you these things.”

“I need to know.”

“Once you’ve seen what I’m about
to show you, you’ll never be able to go back to life the way it
was before,” Andros said. He looked from me to Lea, meeting our
eyes. “It will change everything. Are you sure you’re
ready for this kind of truth?”

“My world has already been changed forever,”
I said. “The moment my twin brother was torn from me, it was
like I went over some kind of cliff. I fell into the deepest kind of
darkness. How could my life ever be the same after that?” I
shook my head and ran a hand through my hair. “I’m going
to follow this path as far as it goes, and believe me when I say that
whoever is responsible for this is going to pay for what they’ve
done. It’s the one thing I can say with complete confidence. I
won’t rest until they’ve paid for this with their life.”

Andros lifted and eyebrow and laughed. “You
sound like one of us.”

“Who’s us?” Lea asked.

He ran a hand across his cheek, studying her. “The
Resistance,” he said. “It’s a small group for now,
but it’s growing.”

“What are you resisting, exactly?” she
asked. Her tone was biting. Untrusting.

“You really are sheltered, aren’t
you?”

Andros walked toward a black bag laying on the
ground. He picked it up and slung it over his shoulder, a look of
amusement on his face.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I mean, how is it possible you’ve
never heard of The Resistance?” he said. “Only someone
who’d been sheltered deep within the castle walls could be so
blind to what’s been going on in the outerlands.”

A hollow feeling took over in my stomach. “Yes,
we’ve been sheltered,” I said. “But I’m here
to find out the truth.”

Andros paused and turned around. “And what
about you, Princess?” he asked. “Are you ready to find
out the truth? Even if it means finding out that your father is not
as honorable as you think he is?”

Lea’s jaw tensed and her hands clenched into
tight fists at her side. “I’m here to take a look at the
facts with open eyes and make up my own mind about what’s real
and what isn’t,” she said.

Andros made a face. “Inviting you into my
world and sharing my knowledge with you is either the smartest thing
I’ve ever done,” he said. “Or the dumbest. But if
the two of you are to be our leaders someday, I think you have a
right to know what’s going on. I think you have a right to see
what your king has worked so hard to keep hidden from you and the
rest of the citizens inside his precious gated city of gold.”

His voice trailed off and he looked out across the
roses again.

Finally, he squinted up at the moons shining
above.

“Come,” he said. “It’s
time.”

Andros shifted to pure black smoke and I knew the
time for questions was gone. It was now or never.

I looked to Lea, making sure she was truly ready
to follow where this would lead. She gave me a sad smile, then
shifted and followed the trail of smoke Andros had left behind.

I followed them through the dark forest, then out
across a field of firegrass that sparked across the backdrop of the
night sky. We came across a worn path and followed it for a long
while, then suddenly split off from the road and cut through another
dark forest full of thorned trees and nightwhispers.

I could barely keep up with them. Without my night
vision, they would have lost me miles ago. I had no idea how Lea was
following him with such ease, but I was impressed. And jealous.

When we broke through the trees, the Sea of Glass
stared back at us, the moons’ glow dancing on the black surface
of the water. True to its name tonight, it was as still and
motionless as glass.

We followed the shoreline toward a cluster of
lights in the distance.

Klashok.
I recognized this village.

I had been here once when my father took Aerden
and I fishing as children. We had hired a guide who took us on his
boat across the sea. We’d spent the day casting nets out into
the clear water. Aerden had caught a large spiderfish and I had
caught a whestler. It had been a very good day.

Even from this distance, I could tell the town had
changed. The homes on the outskirts were practically in ruins.
Abandoned by the looks of it.

There used to be a large, sturdy pier leading out
into the water nearly a mile with boats lined up as far as the eye
could see, but part of it had collapsed into the sea.

“What happened here?” I whispered when
we stopped just outside the village.

A young girl appeared beside me out of nowhere.
“This is what’s happening all around,” she said,
her voice so low I almost couldn’t hear her at all. “The
villages that have been hit the hardest are falling into such
horrible poverty they can’t afford to replace and repair the
older buildings and structures that have stood for centuries. Many of
the elders have been taken, leaving no one to pass their power on to
the village. It’s devastating.”

I wanted to ask her more and find out who she was
and where she had come from, but Andros motioned for us to be quiet.

He crouched low and shifted, his smoke slithering
inland, away from the shore and out into a large field of firegrass
on the other side of the village.

We followed quietly. I noticed several others had
joined our small group. Members of The Resistance, I’d guessed.

My pulse raced as we moved into the grass. What
would we find here? What exactly was he going to show me?

The girl had said elders had been taken. Did that
mean they were taken by the same people who took my brother? I was
anxious for answers, but afraid of what truth lay beyond this moment.

Firegrass can grow very tall if left untended and
this particular field was almost tall enough to hide us completely,
even if we had been standing. The tips of the dark grass glowed a
very dim orange, sparks erupting from them every few seconds like
miniature explosions.

We inched our way farther from the lights of the
city and deeper into the grass.

That’s when I saw it.

A clearing in the grass. We stopped as we reached
the edge of the it.

The grass had been burned from the looks of it,
the ground charred and dead. But there in the center was a perfect
ring of black roses.

Fear gripped my chest. What did this mean? What
had he brought us here to see?

It was much too quiet for me to speak without
being heard, so I kept my mouth closed despite my fears. As a group,
we hid in the shadows, watching.

After a while, a dark figure cloaked in rags
floated into the clearing and hovered near the circle of roses. I
held back a scream as she turned her head just enough for me to make
out her hideous, decaying face.

This was not a demon. I had no idea what this
creature was, but she was unnatural. Dark.

Evil.

I covered my mouth and looked away, but in the
next instant, my eyes were drawn again to the sight of the creature
as she began to cast a spell.

Her arms moved around in a circular motion and a
low growling sound hummed in her chest. She threw her head back and
laughed as a large cloud of grey and black smoke rose up from the
center of the roses. She stepped inside and waited.

From somewhere inside the smoke, voices began to
chant. The sound chilled me to my core and I flinched, pulling back.
Being here felt wrong. Dangerous.

I wanted to leave and go back to the safety of the
castle walls and a life of ignorance.

But at the same time, I knew I was exactly where I
was meant to be. This is where my destiny had been leading me ever
since the day my brother disappeared. Andros was right. Life would
never be the same after tonight.

“Maleia, faithful servant of the Order of
Shadows, we invite thee. Wise one, Seeress, Join us now.”

A single voice echoed across the clearing and my
heart stopped. I watched in horror, knowing that something like this
had happened to my brother. Someone from beyond this world had
commanded one of these abominations to steal Aerden from me.

Rage boiled inside of me, alongside my fear.

“Prima.” The hunter bowed toward the
cloud of smoke and for a moment, I caught sight of a shadowed figure
on the other side.

I nearly jumped back, unable to control my shock.
The girl beside me grabbed my arm, her eyes flashing with fear. She
shook her head and I forced stillness upon myself.

“I am your humble servant, now and forever,”
the creature said.

“Maleia, give us the name of the demon you
have chosen for us.”

My stomach turned. A name. Another victim like my
brother.

“Shyla.”

The name rolled off the tongue of the hunter like
honey, as if the taste of it were sweet.

“Thank you,” the woman in the shadows
said. “Your service to this coven is done for now. Set the
summoning stone in the roses and depart from us until you are called
again.”

The huntress bowed low, then floated off into the
night. I could no longer see her, but I sensed she had not gone far.

Inside the circle, the voices began chanting
again. I couldn’t understand what they were saying, but I knew
now what Andros had brought us here to see.

He had brought us to a portal like the one I saw
in my vision the day Aerden was taken. He was showing us proof that
what he’d said was true. A group from the other side—another
world—was pulling demons through against their will.

He’d said they didn’t know why, but
the energy of this ritual was not one of beauty and light. No, these
beings served a very dark purpose.

And now they had a name for their next victim.

Shyla.

I glanced toward the village, looking for any sign
of a demon girl being brought toward us in shackles like the ones
Aerden wore, but the town was completely quiet. Most likely everyone
was asleep in their homes.

My attention snapped back to the portal as a
bright green light pooled like water inside the circle of roses. The
chanting of the voices grew louder and with each repetition, the
emerald pool grew larger and brighter.