Fuck, I’m running into a trap.
I try to stop myself, but I’m sprinting full out, and I’m less than ten feet away from whatever protective barrier Rogan has on his property. Momentum doesn’t get on board with theoh shitplan, and I trip and skid toward the trees. Stopping inches away from the blood magic blockade, I let out a pained groan of relief that I didn’t cross it.
Covered in a few cuts and a whole lot of grass stains, I push back up to my feet. I focus back on the nightmare hiding in the trees and start to pace against the magical barrier separating us. The screaming all at once ceases, and the night once again goes eerily silent except for the sound of Elon’s running footfall behind me. I work to catch my breath, an ache in my side from the running and the fall. My eyes dart around frantically, waiting with frigid unease for whatever the demon is going to try next.
“What the fuck does it want?” Elon snarls loudly as he stops at my side. “Why is it just fucking around with us?” he observes, his brow furrowed in both concentration and worry.
“Kill first, ask questions laterfeels like a solid motto for the moment,” I lob at him, shoving aside the fetid disquiet that raps at my chest.
I focus everything I can on obliterating this thing once and for all. We can worry about thewhyof all of this later, once we’re safe and it’s dead. More magic slams against the presence in the woods as Elon and I renew our efforts. I clench my teeth with effort as I throw magic cinder blocks against the demon’s weakening defenses.
I taste justice on my tongue as I feel the wards start to give way. I still can’t see the battle as it takes place, but in my mind, it looks like bright sparkling light crushing a mass of inky, putrescent darkness in its mighty grasp. Elon and I both pant and strain against the slimy presence that feels like it’s taunting us.
I can hear people waking up in the house, and an urgency fills me to destroy this thing before it can get close to the people here I love and care about. I shove more power into my blitz of the demon, and my heart leaps into my throat when I sense a fissure in the demon’s wards starting to form.
“We’ve got you, you piece of shit,” Elon growls, and as the crack widens infinitesimally, I know it’s all I need. Without a second of hesitation, I brutally shove through the last of the demon’s magical shields. I search for a hold, and as soon as I can feel the skeletal structure, I shatter every bone there is. An agonized scream rents through the night, but in its cloying depths, I also hear a taunting snigger that slaps the feeling of victory from my body. The keening declaration of pain echoes all around us, fading quickly before plunging the night back into uneasy silence.
People are rushing out of the house toward us, but all I can do is focus on the man I just killed. Anger and frustration build in me until I’m left standing there seething. I call the bones to me, needing to confirm what my instincts are already screaming at me.
“Fuck!” Elon shouts into the forest, clearly just as pissed as I am.
I know he felt it too. The truth hit just as my magic ordered his death. We both felt the exact second when the demon abandoned the body he was possessing, leaving the mancer behind to inherit a death that was never meant for him.
I bellow out my frustration, tears pricking at my eyes. Once again I’ve destroyed the witch the demon was wearing, but didn’t do fuck all to destroy the demon itself. Elon was right, it was just fucking with us.
I run my fingers through my tangle of curls and try to breathe through the nauseating outrage I feel. My mind whirs and races as I feel the body moving closer to us. It’s clear this was a trap, but what was the fucking point of it? The demon brought one witch to face off against us; was it testing our strength? Our preparedness? Our defenses?
I hurry to search the surrounding woods for signs of any other attackers, suddenly worried all of this is somehow a trap within a trap, but I only feel animals.
“What the hell?” Elon asks me, clearly feeling the same level of distress and confusion as I am. I see a slight tremor in his hand as he rubs tiredly at his face, and I know the toll this trip down horror lane took on him. I feel it too.
“I don’t fucking know,” I confess quietly.
If the Order and the demon are working together, this wouldn’t have been the move they’d make, and it makes me question what I was so certain of the day before. The sound of heavy running footsteps reach us, and Rogan and Marx are suddenly there. Rogan grabs for me, his frantic worried stare looking me over and then turning to do the same to Elon.
“What the fuck just happened, are you two okay?” he demands, just as my magic drags the witch I killed into view. The bright moon highlights his face, and recognition launches through me immediately.
Alvarez.
The Order member who was watching me at my shop earlier, the one who had to have planted the owl skull in my room at Order headquarters, lies dead in front of me. Blood tracks out of his ears and nose, his eyes blank and his form disfigured from where I pulverized every bone in his body without a second thought.
“Are there more of them?” Rogan demands, and I don’t know if he’s talking about demons or Order members. I’m not even sure if it matters; they all want something from us and are intent on taking it whether we like it or not.
Elon tells him no, but I can feel Rogan searching with his magic all the same.
“What the hell?” Marx declares as he works to catch his breath from the sprint down here. “What is this shithead doing here?”
“So much for tracking him down,” I mumble, trying hard not to feel defeated and exhausted, but I’m not succeeding.
“Where’s Prek?” I ask tiredly when I see that he’s not here.
“He’s guarding Tad in the house,” Rogan reassures me, and my heart relaxes a little with his words.
“What was all that noise though? I thought for sure we were under attack,” Marx asks, stepping closer to the body to look it over.
I jut my chin at the dead Order member. “He was a Vox Witch being possessed by a demon with a taste for torture,” I explain, still trying to see how any of this makes sense.
Rogan pulls me closer to him, and I feel the worry and helpless anger rolling off him in waves. My throat tightens, and I shove away the desire to crawl into his arms and crumble. The laugh, the screaming, the defeat, it all settles into my limbs like a weight that suddenly feels too heavy to bear.
