Heir of Night by Emily Goodwin
Chapter 8
The demon surfaces, eyes blackening once again. It shoves Alyssa to the side, and she falls hard, whacking her head on the leg of one of the armchairs.
“Mom!” Brock yells, and the demon grabs him, biting his bicep and tearing off a chunk of skin. I throw my hand out and shove the demon back, giving Brock enough time to scramble away.
“The salt,” I say, keeping a hold on the demon. Brock, blood pouring down his arm, fumbles when he gets up, knocking into the desk. The canister of salt falls and spills all over the floor. “Dammit,” I grumble and get up but get hit with that damn round ligament pain. I falter, and it’s all the time the demon needs to charge forward again, challenging my telekinetic hold.
“Filthy half-breed,” he growls, bringing his hands up and sending a wave of energy at me. It knocks me back, and I fall hard on the ground, twisting one of my wrists as I attempt to catch myself. The demon is over top of me in the blink of an eye, and blood drips down the demon’s face as he leans over me, grabbing both my wrists.
Freya gets into the room first and shadows in between the demon and me, breaking his hold. Lucas is there only a second later, grabbing Noah by the throat and shoving him against a shelf so hard several books come tumbling to the ground.
Fangs out, Lucas snarls. “Give me one good reason I shouldn’t tear your heart right out of your chest.”
“He’ll just…he’ll find another body,” I pant. Alerted by Binx, Tabatha and Evander come running in. Evander goes to Brock, who’s still bleeding, and Tabatha rushes to me, but I direct her to Alyssa, unconscious on the floor.
Tell Kristy to get bandages,I mentally call to Pandora. Planting my hands on the couch beneath me, I slowly get up, bracing for pain that I’ll have to ignore. Come on, stupid half-human body. Deal with pregnancy a little better than this. On my feet, I conjure two bright blue energy balls and hold up my hands.
The demon, who’s fighting against Lucas’s hold but not using his powers, stops and looks at me, smirking once again.
“Then I’ll rip the heart out of that body as well,” Lucas threatens. “And every heart after that until he’s dead.”
“There he is,” the demon slowly draws out. “The big bad Lucas King. Though that wasn’t always what you called yourself, is it?” The demon laughs. “Tell me, does your precious witch know you? The one who killed for fun. The one who took lives and innocence abound just because he could? There were times the bloodshed even impressed us. Times when we watched from the shadows, chained to the darkness, and looked at you in envy.”
“Do yourself a favor and stop talking,” Lucas demands, but the demon continues. He eyes me, making sure I’m listening. Demons lie. All the damn time. You can’t trust them, yet lately, they’ve spoken the truth. But this demon…he’s telling lies about Lucas just to get under my skin.
“I remember the first time I watched you work. You’d been killing your way through a small village in Romania, and you became particularly fond of a young woman named Bogdana. She was so desperate to escape your clutches that she summoned me.” He laughs. “A demon sent to be the savior from the vampire.”
“You’re the one who had her turned,” Lucas says, voice void of emotion. The energy balls I’m holding start to fade. Everything the demon is saying is true.
“I am.” The demon grins, twisting poor Noah’s face into something sinister. “A vampire owed me a favor, and I thought it might level the playing field. You were centuries older than her from the start, so the fight wasn’t exactly fair. But she wasn’t as much fun to you when she couldn’t be controlled and fed off of, and you moved on only days later, leaving Bogdana behind. The blood lust was too much for her to handle, and she slaughtered what was left of the village, including her own mother and sisters.”
The demon coughs and fights against Lucas’s hand around his neck just so he can stare down Tabatha and Evander. “Do you still approve of the marriage now? What will be said by your precious Grand Coven when Bogdana tells her story? Will they be as eager to forgive as you hope when they find out you stood back and watched your most promising witch marry a monster?”
Suddenly, all of the fear I thought I buried comes rushing back. Excommunication from the coven isn’t that big of a threat for me, but it is for Tabatha and Evander. Their lives would be ruined, and they’d be lucky if they still had a life to ruin if the Grand Coven found out everything.
“Then again,” the demon mewls, “you’ve also been harboring a half-breed for years, keeping her under the same roof of impressionable students. Passing her off as your own.”
I blink and I’m back inside the research lab, cuddled up on a hard foam bed. The only blanket I have is a thin sheet, and the A/C has been turned down on purpose to see how I’d react. I’m holding a black stuffed cat against my chest, and it’s soaked from my tears. Then Elena flips around, foot pressing into my gut. The pain brings me back to reality, and it hits me that this is exactly what the demon wants: to use fear and hatred to drive a wedge between us all.
War can make loved ones turn on each other.
This demon isn’t here to take me to Hell and use me to rule. It isn’t here to threaten my daughter. It’s here to create chaos between us, to distract us with fighting amongst each other so we won’t try to stop what’s already in motion.
“Nice try,” I tell the demon, and the energy balls in my hand start to glow brighter and brighter. “But your efforts have failed—again.”
“Have they?” The demon laughs, and Lucas lets go of Noah, stepping back and turning to me. His fangs are still drawn and there’s something dark in his eyes. “Because I think your vampire is feeling rather hungry at the moment.” It holds up its hands and whispers an incantation. Lucas shudders, fighting against whatever the demon is doing to him.
Energy gathers around my fingers, and anger burns inside of me. Lucas isn’t who he used to be. He knows it and I know it. I accepted everything about him, fully knowing how he embraced his vampirism and how he still would if he thought it would benefit him.
But he doesn’t, because I’m more important to him, and using dark magic to force him to do something he can’t take back is a good way to piss me the fuck off. Glowering at me, the demon steps forward, going back into the broken circle of salt.
“Enough!” I yell and throw my hands out. Hellfire erupts around me, following the circle of salt and surrounding the demon. “I know exactly what you are doing.” Slowly, I raise my hands, making the flames of the hellfire grow taller. “And I know who you are.”
The smirk on the demon’s face fades. He stares at me through the flames, and Lucas, shaking himself of whatever hold the demon had on him, comes over.
“Callie, Noah is still in there,” he reminds me, wanting me to hold onto my own humanity. Blinking, I let my hands fall, and the fire dies down until it’s just a few inches tall. The anger almost consumed me, almost made me kill an innocent kid.
It’s another thing the demon wanted. I thought I’d outsmarted the demon, but I was wrong.
“Ad somnum daemonium.” Tabatha stands next to me, hand held high. Noah slumps to the ground, one hand hitting the hellfire. It burns him, and I gasp, clenching my fists to put out the remaining flames.
“Is…is everyone all right?” Kristy appears in the doorway, holding a first-aid kit. Alex is behind her, eyes full of anger and terror.
“Alive, but not all right,” Evander chides. He’s on the floor next to Brock, trying to stop the bleeding. Kristy hurries over, and I get dizzy as I look around the room.
“Callie.” Lucas’s hand lands on my lower back. His eyes meet mine, and though he doesn't—and won’t—say anything, I can see the worry in them. I still love him just as much now as I did before. “Your heart is racing.”
“Yeah. I can feel it.”
“Sit,” he tells me, and I know he’s worried about our daughter. “You fell.”
“I’m okay,” I say automatically. Both Freya and Pandora give me a look and urge me to one of the armchairs. Binx sits on top of Noah’s chest, telling me he’s not moving this time.
“Are you okay?” Eliza zooms into the room. She might not have been in here, but she heard everything that just happened. “Put your feet up and someone bring her water.”
“Seriously?” Alex spits, throwing his arms out. His family is in disarray on the floor.
“Yes, seriously,” Eliza snaps, fangs flashing. “She could have turned you away and yet she welcomed you into her home and has gotten hurt because of it, which means my sister could have gotten hurt.”
“Just get Callie water,” Lucas commands, and Eliza is forced to obey. Grumbling, she zooms out of the room. “Sit and stay,” he tells me. If I wasn’t so shaken up, I’d make a lame joke about being treated like a dog. He speeds over to Alyssa, picking her up as if she weighs nothing, and lays her on the couch. Tabatha and Evander cast another circle around Noah, magically binding his arms and legs to keep the demon from using his powers. Kristy starts cleaning Brock’s arm, working silently, no doubt scared shitless by what’s going on.
I sip the water Eliza brought me, feeling like I’m floating above myself as I watch my friends and family clean up yet another demonic mess.
“So, now what?” Brock asks, going over to his mother. She’s starting to wake up and is going to have one hell of a headache.
“We stick with our original plan,” Tabatha says, dusting herself off. “And I understand tensions are high right now, which is exactly what this demon wants.”
“A chaos demon.” Evander holds his hands over Noah’s body, reading the energy. “I’ve never seen one this powerful.”
“Can you still get it out of our brother?” Alex doesn’t look convinced.
“Yes,” Kristy assures him. “We’ll figure out a way.”
If I could do my little hand trick then this would—wait a minute. I hold out my right hand and conjure a flame of hellfire. It’s bluer than usual, looking like the bottom part of a flame. I watch the fire dance on my palm for a moment and then look up. “If the gates are closed, I shouldn’t be able to do this.”
A collective silence fills the room. I close my fist, and the fire goes out.
“It’s rather presumptuous for us to assume Hell is the only place evil can be sent to, isn’t it?” Lucas gets a book off one of the shelves and opens it to a chapter about Hades and the Underworld. “Historically speaking, this came first.”
“He’s right,” Evander notes. “It’s something I’ve thought about a time or two just recently. Lucifer isn’t the be-all, end-all of punishment. The universe is too big for that.”
I bite my lower lip, mind racing. The gates of Hell are closed, and yet I summoned hellfire, which isn’t possible.
Unless the fire I summoned wasn’t from Hell.