Louis
Arunning stream of black-and-white images flashed through my mind. I was not controlling them, and each one sent inky spirals of darkness through me. This was their new form of torture, and for the first time I wasn’t sure I would make it through without breaking. Regina … her eyes wide and filled with laughter as she ran from me. There was a field of wildflowers just near their house. She would spend hours dashing through them, picnic basket and rug in hand for when she grew tired and wanted to lie back and stare at the clouds overhead. I always knew I could find her out there when she disappeared.
Wait … no.That was wrong. It wasn’t Regina who loved the wildflowers.
It wasTee.
I had no idea why the images of Elizabeth Teresa—Tee to me—were being confused in the demons’ walk down memory lane. Because they were sisters? Was my mind reaching the end of its limits?
Was I starting to fade?
I’d never confused Tee and Regina before. Outside of them being sisters, they had very little else in common. Regina was tall and broad, lots of curves and muscles. She was loud and funny and dramatic. She was a good girl, always following the rules, but she had a cheeky side as well. She also loved attention, always wanting people to watch her and appreciate her gifts. Tee was none of those things. Quiet and powerful, she commanded attention even when she didn’t want it. She was also beyond kind and smart; she’d been my first real friend. She had saved me from the lonely existence that probably would have destroyed any slice of good inside of me.
And I’d lost her too.
The wildflowers disappeared then, as did my maudlin memories, and another set of images appeared.
No!
They’d finally found the wound at my center.
The moment I came home to find Regina lifeless, her blood and energy ripped from her body … nothing more than a shell. The vivacious, funny, headstrong magic user I had loved was gone.
I hadn't been there to save her.
I'd been busy with my sorcerer duties. With being the strongest mage there ever was. With being the best.
I should have been home.
It was one of my greatest regrets, and it hurt like nothing I’d ever felt to see her again. The demons made it so real. I could smell the copper of her blood. Taste the remaining resonance of her fear and pain.
A guttural roar burst from me, and since I hadn’t made a sound for a very long time, that was a win for the demons. Regina's body disappeared in my mind’s eye and I tried to breathe through my pain. There was no time to regroup though; the next scene was Tee stumbling into the house to find me crouched by her sister. She had screamed and screamed, and then she took off. I left Regina and chased her, because she was all I had left in the world.
Together we had mourned, and then I had lost her too.
“You're going to lose her permanently,” the demon hissed at me, its translucent body drifting around me. “The one who holds your soul.”
Tee’s face was burned into my brain, and a dull roar in my head was making it hard to think clearly. I found myself asking, “What are you talking about?” My voice was rusty from not being used. “The one who held my soul is already dead.”
Chilling laughter from another demon. I couldn't tell them apart when they swirled in and around each other like this. There were at least twenty of them surrounding me this torture session, closing in, their coldness seeping into my essence.
“Wrong,” it replied. “You’re so very wrong.”
I jerked on the chains, my movements slow, but determination to reach one of these bastards was filling me. If I could get my hands on them, I might be able to absorb their energy and refuel my own. This was a last-ditch option, because the darkness in a demon’s soul had to go somewhere, and that somewhere would be right into my soul, but I was desperate. They must have sensed that–they were smart enough to hover just out of my reach.
“You're very weak now,” a demon said, swirling to just beyond my fingertips. “Very weak. Would you like to make a deal?”
Rock bottom had come and gone long ago. The fact that I was considering absorbing a demon’s energy told me everything I needed to know about my mental state. But still I would not make a deal. I could not. If my body and power were returned to Earth with a demon riding shotgun, then the world was over. As much as I wanted to end my captivity and suffering, I could not do that to the world. Absorbing some of their energy was different to allowing them to use my body and power on Earth. The former should still allow me some control until I could release the darkness. The latter would strip my free will from me.
The swirls of demons around me stopped moving then, and I wondered what had distracted them. Less than ten seconds later, I straightened as familiar energy brushed against me.Fuck.Everything inside of me went icy cold.Jessa and her pack were here, their bright energy like a beacon in this dead land. They had arrived in the land between, and while part of me was grateful to know they hadn’t given up on me, I really wished they had. Now I was going to have to watch them perish because I was too weak to save them.
The only positive in my current situation, stuck in the center of a very well-lit circle of hellfire, was that no upper-level demons were inside with me at the moment. These lower-levels would be deterred by dragons—their fire could destroy them—so my family had that one chance.
The fires soared higher then as the demons fed energy into the magical flame. Hellfire would burn a soul and physical body to dust in a fraction of a second. It cost them a lot of energy to keep it powered, but it was essential when they had to unchain us for certain physical tortures or when we were moved. The fire was the only thing keeping us from escaping when we had those few moments of freedom.
And it would stop my family from getting to me.
Powerful gusts of air started buffeting the flames, and icy tendrils of strong magic brushed across my soul. My senses were dull without my body, but I could still feel the difference in air temperature. A roar drew the mass of dark demons closer to the center of the flames, and they started to rise up, until they were hovering near the stone ceiling.
