A Demon's Wrath: Part II (Peachville High Demons) (10 page)

She put her arms tight around my waist and drew in
a surprised gasp as the roses pulled us through, our forms turning to
smoke and tumbling around as we were pulled through the solid earth.

It was a feeling of separating from myself. Not
quite like turning to my shadow form. Even in shadows, I am whole. I
cannot turn invisible and walk through walls.

This was more like being taken apart and put back
together again.

When we pushed through to the darkness of the cave
below, I took a deep breath and held Lea to my body. Her breath came
fast and her chest rose and fell against my own. She looked up at me
with such a mix of adoration and longing that it broke my heart into
pieces.

She deserved to be loved. She deserved so much
more than this. Tears filled my eyes and I wanted so badly to tell
her the truth. That someone did love her. That it was all my fault he
was gone.

Even after all these years, I could not forgive
myself for his disappearance.

And I could not love her the way he’d asked
me to.

It suddenly felt as if this brief journey—this
passage through the earth and into the darkness of the cave below—was
a sign of times to come. This embrace was the beginning of the end
somehow, although at the time I couldn’t explain how or why I
knew it. But I sensed it with all that I was. We were on the edge of
great change.

And I think she knew it too.

I looked away and released my hold on her. Lea’s
shoulders fell and her eyes darkened. The moment of tenderness
between us passed as quickly as it had come. Never to come again.

Words cannot describe the awe we all felt as the
small corridor emptied out into a large hall. I had never seen an
underground cave with such extensive carvings and gemstones.

The hall itself was dirty and needed a lot of work
to bring it back to its former glory, but it was breath-taking even
in its run-down state. The ceilings in the Grand Hall were as high as
the sky. It reached out so far it was difficult to even see the back
of the hallway from the stairs here at the entrance.

Smooth white marble, unlike anything I’d
ever seen before, adorned the floors. Tall circular columns rose up
from the ground, reaching all the way to the ceiling, adorned with
intricate patterns of gold. Grand staircases curved down either side
of the entrance, leading down to the floor of the Grand Hall.

Six smaller staircases on each side of the Grand
Hall each led up to their own separate corridors. Just how big was
this place? And who did it belong to?

“What is this place?” I whispered.

Andros stepped toward me as I stared out over the
main balcony, my eyes drinking in the enormity of the hall. “This
is the palace of the Troll King.”

I laughed, not believing him at first. But when I
turned to look at him, I realized he wasn’t kidding.

My smile faded, replaced with an open jaw and wide
eyes. “You’re kidding me,” I said. “Trolls
are real?”

He leaned against the railing. “Were,”
he said. “As far as we can tell, they’re extinct now.
Possibly for several thousand years.”

“How do you know it belonged to the trolls?”
Lea asked.

Andros smiled. “Besides the incredible size
of this place? There’s a library,” he said. “Come
on, let me show you guys around.”

The ancient troll caves proved to be the perfect
place for The Resistance. We called it the Underground, and it fit in
every way.

With the amazing amount of space deep inside the
caves, we had all the room we would ever need to not only train an
army but also to protect those who would seek shelter inside our
walls. Several of the corridors off the main hall held hundreds of
rooms, which we each claimed for our own homes. There was a library
like Andros had said, full of floor-to-ceiling bookcases made out of
white marble. Most of the books inside were written in an ancient
language none of us could speak, but we claimed this as the home of
our research on the Order as well.

At the back of the Grand Hall, we found rooms that
were perfect for training our army, including one that was large
enough to hold over a hundred soldiers all running tactics at once.

Together, we fortified the spells and traps at the
entrance to the Underground. There was no way the Order—or even
the king—could come inside without one of us opening the door
and inviting them inside. It was the safest place in the kingdom next
to the throneroom itself.

Andros proved to be a great leader during those
years. He appointed a council of members to lead. Ourelia was in
charge of recruiting new soldiers and residents. Azira had taken on
the task of organizing the library. Jericho was put in charge of
security, building a team of trusted recruits to guard the entrance
day and night.

Lea, Andros and I took turns teaching battle
skills to the newer recruits.

Andros also took on the task of organizing the
layout of the Underground. He assigned demons to their homes and
turned the Grand Hall into a gathering place and a market.

The Underground—and The Resistance—thrived.
It became home to more than a thousand demons in its first five years
alone. Some of those thousand were trained as warriors, ready to
fight against the Order if it came to that. Others were children and
elders who became part of the community and who blossomed in the
security and safety of the caves.

The demons of The Resistance began to speak of Lea
and I as the future hope of the kingdom. They spoke of a time when
the king would give his throne to his daughter and how we would
restore the kingdom to its former glory. For them, we kept up the
appearance of a couple who would someday be married, but we kept
separate residences and rarely spoke of anything beyond the business
of running the Underground city. Over the years, her sadness turned
to cold determination.

It was a time of great change and great progress.
The others were concentrating on building something powerful, but on
the inside, I was falling apart. At night in the solitude of my room,
I spent all my time reading through spellbooks, maps, and journals,
retreating further into myself with each day that passed. I drew
pictures of my visions and memorized every single detail of every
ritual I’d observed.

I needed to know. I needed to understand what had
happened. There had to be a clue in there somewhere. I had to be
missing something. So I relived it. Not a moment went by that I
wasn’t thinking of revenge or regret.

It had been close to fifty years since Aerden had
disappeared when the knock on my door came that would change
everything.

I had been inside my small room in the
Underground, drawing again. It was very late at night, but I hadn’t
been sleeping much. So much time had passed since Aerden had been
taken that I had started to lose hope of ever seeing him alive again.
All that held me to this hope was a single vision I ’dhad of
him recently. He was standing in front of me, his form black and
strange, his eyes distant. What did it mean?

And when would I see him again? How did I know
this vision was real and not some random wish of an obsessed mind?

I had started to lose myself, thinking that if
there was no hope of ever seeing my brother again, what was I living
for at all?

Revenge? We’d been planning revenge for
decades, but we never fought back. All this training was worth
nothing if we weren’t prepared to fight.

Despite our growth in power and numbers, Andros
still refused to begin the war against the Order.

He preached patience, saying that demons had been
around a lot longer than humans. He said demons were immortal while
humans were fragile. We had time, he would say.

But I wasn’t so sure. To me, he sounded like
the King of the North with his assurances that because we were
immortal, we were stronger than the humans.

Why couldn’t they see that while we were
being patient, the Order was growing stronger? The longer we waited,
the less chance we had of ever defeating them.

With each passing year, I felt Aerden slipping
away from me. I felt my memories of him fading.

And it was tearing me apart. When I wasn’t
training, I spent almost all of time alone in my room or wandering
the outerlands, looking for portals. I hardly spoke to anyone,
because I had nothing to talk about. All I thought about was Aerden
and all I dreamed about was revenge.

Then, one night, a timid knock sounded on my door.

I’d been in the middle of an intricate
drawing, immersed in my thoughts of killing Priestess Winter someday.
The interruption was an annoyance. Who would be coming to visit me
this late at night?

I yanked the door open, scowling and ready to tear
into whoever had disturbed me so late.

But it was Lea. And the look on her face scared
me.

She’d been crying, and these days, Lea
simply didn’t cry. She hadn’t shown much emotion at all
in years, come to think of it. Training the Resistance army and
rising up as a leader of the Underground had hardened her.

“What is it?” I asked.

“There’s something I need to show
you,” she said. Her voice wasn’t much more than a
whisper.

“Is everything okay?” I glanced down
the long corridor, wondering if someone had upset her. But the place
was empty and quiet, everyone asleep in their rooms.

“Yes,” she said. A tear fell across
her cheek. “No. I don’t know.”

I knew I should comfort her. Put my arms around
her. But the time for that kind of affection between us had long
passed. I didn’t want to be close to her. Or anyone. I just
wanted to be left alone.

“Whatever it is, it’s going to be
okay,” I said, wondering what had her so upset. “We’ll
face it together.”

“Will we?” she asked. A sob escaped
her lips and she turned from me, holding her hand up to hide the
sound of her cries.

I stepped forward and placed a hand on her
shoulders and she jumped in surprise, as if I had burned her. I moved
my hand away quickly.

“What did you want to show me?” I
asked. “Maybe it will help when I see for myself.”

She shook her head. “It will help you,”
she said. “That’s the only reason I’m showing you
after all this time. But it will not help me. It will only take you
further from me. But I see now that it’s the only way.”

I didn’t understand what she meant at first.
Her words were a mystery, but she didn’t say anything more
until she had led me down the quiet corridor, through the Grand Hall,
and out into the evening air.

We traveled in complete silence, through the
Obsidian Forest, along quiet roads and empty fields until we had come
to a place near the Black Cliffs. The king’s city rose up
against the night sky in the distance on one side while the cliffs
gave way to the Sea of Glass on the other.

“Why have you brought me so far out here?”
I asked. It had taken hours for us to get here and the moons were
very low in the night sky.

Her green eyes darkened and chills swept across my
skin.

And I knew without a word from her. She wanted to
show me a memory. An important memory.

My hands shook as I reached for her. Sorrow and
hope both warred in my heart, squeezing it until I couldn’t
take it any longer. I opened my mouth to catch my breath.

She took my hands tentatively at first, only
touching her fingertips to mine, as if she were still uncertain.
Then, finally, she slid her fingers down the length of my fingers and
wrapped them around mine until they were entwined so tightly I could
barely tell them apart.

“I hope you’ll forgive me,” she
said.

“For what?” I asked. The wind blowing
off the cliffs carried my voice away.

“For keeping this from you for so long.”
She closed her eyes and took several deep breaths. The sky around us
darkened and then disappeared as we shook and tumbled and fell. When
everything settled, I opened my eyes and looked around at a familiar
scene.

A scene that stopped my heart inside my chest and
brought me to my knees.

We were standing inside the memory of the moment
Aerden was taken from this world.

My brother stood in front of me, his eyes
unseeing.

I stood and called out his name, but he could not
hear me.

Like before, the memory was slightly dull in
color, but the vision was clear. I reached out for him, accidentally
letting go of Lea’s hands. But somehow, inside the memory
itself, it didn’t seem to matter that we weren’t
touching.

I reached for my brother, out of my mind with
regret and sorrow. I wanted nothing more than to be able to grab onto
him and take him from this place. I would have given anything to
change the events of that day.

If I could have, I would have traded places with
him in an instant. It should have been him standing in the throne
room with Lea all those years ago. I should have insisted he tell her
the truth so that he could take my place and claim her as his own.

But this was only a memory. I reached for Aerden,
but my hands went straight through him as if he were no more than a
ghost.

A beautiful human woman with long white-blond hair
stood in front of him. She wore a beautiful blue velvet robe adorned
with silver embroidery. She smiled at him and ran a hand along his
cheek.

“You have no idea how glad I am that you
came,” she said. Her voice was muffled inside the memory, but
easy to understand. Lea must have done a lot of work on her skill to
make the voice as clear as it was. “I know your heart is broken
now, but I promise you that you will find a new home in my world. It
will be a place where your power and your light will be used in such
amazing ways.”

I paced around him, screaming for him to run away,
but it was no use. Watching him fall into this trap made me feel
weaker and more useless than I’d ever felt in my life.