Rival Demons (14 page)

I couldn't help but wonder why there were so
many secrets in a place like this. Hadn't everyone come down here
with the same idea and purpose? Why would it be important to keep
the activities of the soldiers and the council hidden from the rest
of the community?

For that matter, why would they have a library
that no one could see? Why didn't everyone have a right to learn
what they could about the Order of Shadows? Was the council really
that paranoid about spies?

I kicked my boot against the stone wall. Nothing
in my plan was coming together like I hoped.

The only thing I'd accomplished so far was
learning a few extra magic tricks and establishing a new connection
to Jackson. A pretty much useless connection now that I knew I
couldn't follow him through this door.

Still, I wasn't going to give up. I may be in
hiding from the Order, but that didn't mean I couldn't be working
on ways to fight them.

My two main objectives hadn't changed. I wanted
to watch the demons here train and see if I could pick up on some
real offensive magic I could use to fight. And I wanted to find the
books the Underground's Resistance army had taken from the Order's
hunters.

All of this would have been a lot easier if
Jackson had stuck by my side and worked harder to include me in his
plans. As I made my way back to my room, this thought made me more
and more angry. Why hadn't he at least introduced me to the members
of the council? I was confident that if I had my chance to speak to
the council members individually, I could have convinced them of my
dedication to destroy the Order.

My anger fueled my steps as I tore through the
marketplace with increasing speed.

If I had to resort to more drastic measures, it
was his fault really. He could have made this all a lot easier for
me, but instead he deliberately made it impossible for me to do
anything down here except sit in my room like a prisoner.

Well, I had been a prisoner most of my life in
one way or another. First, a prisoner to all the horrible foster
homes, never really given any freedom to be myself. Then a prisoner
in Peachville, forced into a life I never wanted as future Prima.
And finally, when the Order realized I wasn't going to bow to their
will, a prisoner on death row at Shadowford.

I'd had enough of being locked up.

I wanted to be free, and the only way I was ever
going to do that was to get more knowledge. I needed to know how to
fight, and I needed to know how to break the spell that bound me to
Aerden. And down here in the Underground, with or without Jackson's
help, I had a chance to learn both.

I reached the suite and threw open the door.

Mary Anne and Essex sat on the couch together
playing some kind of game I didn't recognize.

"Hey Harper," Mary Anne said, raising a hand in
hello.

I ignored her, anger and hurt sending me
straight toward my room. Then, I decided, what the hell? It was
time for drastic measures, right?

I turned back toward them, my gaze landing on
Essex. "What do you know about invisibility?"

He drew his eyebrows together and stared blankly
toward me. "What are you meaning by this?"

"You know, being invisible," I said. "Going from
being able to see something to not being able to see it at
all."

"Okay," he said, tilting his head to the side.
"What is it you are asking?"

I sat on the arm of the couch beside Mary Anne.
"Say I was to go invisible right now and start walking around the
marketplace," I said. "How many of your kind would be able to see
me?"

"If you are disappearing?" he asked. "No one.
Isn't that the point of disappearing?"

I couldn't help but laugh at his logic. "Yes," I
said. "But the point of the dark is that you can't see anything,
but some shadow demons see perfectly fine in the dark."

He nodded, as if finally understanding my
question. "You are wanting to know if anyone here has the special
powers of seeing through invisibility."

I thought about the wording of his statement.
"Sort of," I said. "The only way I know to make myself invisible is
to use a glamour. Do you know this word?"

He brought a hand up to his lips and narrowed
his eyes. "I am not certain, what does it mean?"

"A glamour is when you change your outer
appearance to something different," Mary Anne explained. "Not
really changing it deep down, only on the surface."

He opened his mouth and nodded again. "Yes," he
said. "You are meaning an artificial self, in a way. Like the way
you see me because of your potion. Human."

"Right," I said. "Can everyone see through those
things? Like if I made myself look like Mary Anne and walked around
the marketplace, would people know it was really me and not
her?"

Essex shook his head. "I do not believe this is
a magic most of my people would be able to see unless they were
specifically looking for it," he said. "Up on the surface, they
might be more careful with such things, but down here, I think you
would be unnoticed."

I decided to practice without letting him know I
was practicing. "Thank you," I said, standing up from the
couch.

"Wait," Mary Anne said. "Why are you asking
about all this?"

I shrugged. "I was just curious."

Mary Anne cut her eyes toward me suspiciously,
but I just turned and walked back to my room, careful to leave the
door wide open.

In the living room, they resumed their game. I
moved quietly into my bathroom and sat down on the floor,
concentrating until my power was strong enough to let my body
become enveloped in a glamour of nothingness. My body disappeared
from the room, and once I was sure it was going to stick, I stood
and walked quietly into the living room.

I took each step extremely slow so that I didn't
make a single sound.

I moved around the couch and stood inches from
them, watching them play their game for about ten minutes before I
finally cleared my throat.

Both of them jumped sky-high, pieces of their
game scattering around the couch. Essex was so frightened, he was
halfway to the door by the time I released my glamour and let him
see that there was nothing to be afraid of.

"I didn't mean to scare you," I said, trying not
to laugh. "I just wanted to see if you'd see me."

"Well we didn't," Mary Anne said, laughing. She
held a hand up to her heart. "Jesus, you scared the crap out of
me."

Essex still stood halfway between the couch and
the door, a blank expression on his face.

Crap. I'd probably pissed him off.

"Are you okay?" Mary Anne asked, hopping off the
back of the couch to go to his side. She took his hand, and it was
the first time I'd seem them so openly touch.

Her hand in his seemed to wake him up from his
shock. "Yes," he said, shaking it off. "I have never had this
experience before now. I honestly did not see you or even sense
your presence in any way. You startled me."

I apologized again, but in my heart, I was
satisfied. It had worked.

Now, all I had to do was make it work in front
of about five hundred demon soldiers.

Early the next morning, I slipped out of the
suite long before Lea was even awake.

I didn't want to miss it when the soldiers went
into the training room for the day. Since I'd mostly just watched
them come out in the afternoons, I had no idea what time the doors
opened. I guessed it had to be pretty early.

I hid myself between the folds of the tent, just
as I had last time, and waited. About an hour later, as my eyes
drooped with sleep, the first soldiers arrived at the hidden
door.

I pulled myself together and was able to make
myself invisible just as the door slid open. My heart racing, I
stepped from the safety of my hiding place and waited. To my
surprise and great happiness, no one noticed me. I hung back and
waited for the last of the group to file inside, then I followed
close behind.

And just like that, I was inside.

Training Day 1, Distraction

Today the soldiers learned about the art of
distracting their enemies. I watched as they each practiced
distracting their enemy with one type of magic while they prepared
a death blow from behind. The soldiers practice with floating
dummies that look eerily human. They are not alive, but are
animated with some kind of magic to make them act like living
targets. One girl in particular caught my eye, and I watched her
very skillfully throw a fireball directly at her target while
simultaneously lifting a dagger from the floor behind the dummy.
The dummy easily defended itself against the fireball, but was
defeated by the well-placed dagger stabbed through its heart from
behind. Watching this gave me chills.

Training Day 2, Momentum

It seems that many of the demons here have
some connection with one or more of the elements. Some used fire in
their training today while others chose wind or water. Except not
all demon power seems to use a pure version of the elements. I
noticed that some use lightning instead of fire, much like Agnes.
Others use ice instead of water. It reminded me of the way Jackson
had so quickly frozen the archers in the woods the night we were
attacked by the fake witch. I wondered if every demon had its own
talent where the elements were concerned or if they each just
picked one they liked and went with it? What were the rules of how
the different elements could be manipulated? Maybe energies is a
better word than elements.

I watched today as they learned different
ways to create momentum with their chosen energy. Fires that began
small were infused with power to become raging infernos of rolling
fire that reached from floor to ceiling, which is saying a lot
considering how high the ceilings here are. One boy with particular
skill in wind control created a tornado so large it swept several
other students up into the air before the instructor calmed him
down.

Training Day 3, Black Smoke

Out of all the magic I've seen so far, this
was probably the one that I'll never be able to attempt. Today, the
recruits learned to use their raw demon power as a weapon in and of
itself. I remember seeing Jackson and Lea's power manifest itself
in ribbons of black smoke once they passed through the portal.
Jackson had said it left a trace or signature behind, but he hadn't
really explained how it worked.

Today, I got to see a lot more of this black
smoke in action. Every time one of the demons casts a spell, the
smoke seems to come from their hands. If the spell is small or
weak, the smoke is thin and barely noticeable. If the spell is
strong or powerful, the smoke becomes like billowing ropes that can
be used to strangle an opponent or lift them into the air. Many
students used their power today as a type of extension of their own
hands, letting the black smoke reach out and touch something far
away.

I was fascinated, wishing this was a magic I
could use.

Training Day 4, Danger

I almost got caught today. I fell asleep
during the afternoon session and fell against the rock behind me. I
didn't lose my glamour, but I must have made a noise, because
several students toward the back turned to look in my direction.
For a moment, I was sure they could see me. I am going to have to
be more careful.

By the end of the week, my little notebook was
almost completely full of journal entries from the training
sessions I'd sat in on. Watching the shadow demons at work was
fascinating. It was nothing like what we'd been taught on the
Demons cheerleading squad. This training camp made ours look like
child's play.

When I first followed the soldiers into the
cave, I'd had to spend some time figuring out which class was the
beginner's class. The training area was made up of about twenty
smaller rooms and one giant room that was about a quarter the size
of the Grand Hall marketplace. In each of the smaller rooms,
individual classes met, each seeming to work at different skill
levels.

Some of the classes were dealing with magic that
scared me. I knew those classes were way too advanced for me, so I
kept looking until I found one class that used types of magic I
felt I could replicate. I found a dark place in the corner where I
could sit and observe them throughout the day. I remembered as much
as I could from the day's lessons, and in the evenings I would
spend a couple of hours in my room writing down what I'd learned in
my notebook.

Holding the invisibility for so many hours each
day was draining, but I was surprised to find that it didn't make
me sick the way it had back in the human world. Back home, I never
would have been able to stay invisible for so long, but here it was
much easier. I was still exhausted, but after a short break, my
power came back to me. I wasn't sure where all this new power was
coming from, but I liked it.

In the evenings after dinner, I practiced some
of what I'd seen, trying to perfect the art of distraction or learn
how to manipulate fire. Of course, since I was only in my small
room in the suite, I had to be very careful not to catch the whole
place on fire. The space limited what I could do, but at least I
was working on new skills.

After that first week, though, I knew I needed a
bigger place to practice. The best place would be the training room
itself, but what if I got locked inside? Or if someone caught me in
there? What if they had guards that walked through the rooms at
night?

I worried about it for about five seconds before
I decided to just do it. Hadn't I already come this far? The bottom
line was that I needed the space to practice if I was ever going to
learn to do these things myself.