Demons Forever (Peachville High Demons #6) (37 page)

Something about the way he called me prima, the way his voice was drenched in judgment and hatred, started to piss me off.

"I don't expect someone like you to understand," he said. "You're one of them. You're the enemy."

His words were the final straw for me. As he stepped toward me, I shifted into smoke, whipping around behind him and coiling my power around his neck. I forced him to the ground. He gasped, his eyes bulging as he stared at my empty spot on the grass.

I returned to human form, but kept my smoky chains around him. Not enough to cut off his air, but just enough to let him know I was in control. I leaned down and whispered in his ear. "I am not your enemy," I said. "I may be a human prima, but I am also a demon like you. I'm innocent in this. Caught between a history I can't control and a future I have to fight for every day. Don't tell me I don't understand."

I released him and pushed him down to the ground. He fell against his palms, his head lowered and body shivering in the cool afternoon air.

"I didn't know," he said, his voice weak and trembling. He raised his eyes as I came around in front of him. "How?"

"My father is a demon. The King of the South." I crouched low to meet him at his level. "Can't you see? We're fighting against the same enemy here. The Order of Shadows has taken so much from all of us. But the lines between good and evil aren't as cut and dry as demon versus human. And I refuse to kill anyone there might be the slightest chance we can save."

Andros' eyes filled with tears.

I offered my hand to him. "Fight with us," I said. "Help us complete this ritual and free someone we love."

He stared at my hand, his face wrinkled with doubt. "Do you really think it will work?" he asked. "The ritual from the journal?"

"Yes," I said, believing it with all of my soul. "It will work."

I waited, my heart beating fast in my chest. If he didn't want to work with us, I knew we would have to fight to stop him. And we were running out of time.

Slowly, he raised his hand to mine.

The End Of It

Lark finally arrived at ten minutes to three.

"Thank god. Where have you been?" I asked, pulling her into a huge hug. "I was worried something had happened to you."

I glanced around to see if her mother had decided to join us, finally spotting Mayor Chen in the center group near Lea. I sighed with relief.

"I'm sorry. I had some last minute things I needed to take care of," she said. "My grandmother can be very demanding."

I tilted my head. "Your grandmother? Is she visiting or something?"

"You could say that," she said, her smile forced. "I'll fill you in later."

I eyed her. Something was off about Lark tonight. I couldn't really put my finger on it, but she was acting strange. Distracted. Was she just nervous?

I didn't have time to worry about it. We needed to begin the ritual exactly at three in the afternoon. We had to get down there and into place before it was too late. I looked around the ritual circle one last time before descending the stairs. Across the grass, near the demon statue, Jackson's eyes met mine.

I lifted my fingers to my lips in a kiss, then turned my palm toward him, sending my love through the space between us. His lips parted slightly, love and worry and hope mixed in his expression.

Would I ever see him again? I wanted to run to him. To tell him one last time just how much I loved him. But he already knew.

"Are you ready?" Zara asked. She took my hand, her usually cheerful attitude turned gloomy and serious.

The three of us made our way down the stairs to where Mary Anne, Courtney, and Angela already waited. The ritual room itself was dark without the magical orbs to light it. Only a single black candle shone in the darkness. Angela held it out to me as I passed her.

The other rituals items lay on the floor by the portal stone.

The chalice.

The ritual dagger.

The necklace.

The matching blue stones glittered in the dim light, all of them chipped from the much larger stone in the middle. In the quiet chamber, I felt the energy and power of these items. They belonged together.

My heart fluttered and I had to work to keep my breathing steady.

Zara nodded to me, then took her place at the head of the five-pointed star. A descendant of the one who created this portal a hundred years ago. She leaned down and placed her hand around the hilt of the ritual dagger. She looked to me, questioning.

A chill ran through my body, a mix of fear and excitement. My hand trembled as I held it out to her and nodded.

"Mary Anne, bring the chalice," Zara said.

Mary Anne wrapped her hands tight around the base of the cup. She stepped forward and held it under my outstretched hand.

Zara's shoulders tensed, and her lips pressed tight together. With a nervous breath in and out, she placed the tip of the dagger on the tender skin of my palm. I braced myself for the pain as she sliced through my flesh in one swift movement.

I winced and clenched my jaw. A blue stream of blood flowed from my hand, pouring into the ritual chalice. The blue stone embedded on the side of the cup began to glow.

"Now the necklace," Zara said, nodding to Angela King. "It's important to get the scene set up exactly like it would be at the end of the binding ceremony."

I closed my palm, then cradled it to my chest. Angela stepped forward and secured the necklace around my throat. I lifted my hand to the stone and rubbed my fingertip across its smooth surface.

Zara secured the dagger in her belt, then carefully reached for the cup. "Take your places," she said. "We're ready."

The five of them stepped onto the points of the pentagram drawn on the floor of the ritual room. Everyone but Zara knelt down on the floor and placed their left hands on the small blue stone embedded in the floor.

I retrieved the communication stone from my pocket and rubbed my finger over the top of it until it began to glow. I thought of Piotrek in the shadow world. Caroline Sullivan at the edge of town. Jackson up above on the ritual grounds. They each held a similar stone which now glowed bright with my signal.

Were their hands shaking like mine?

With timid steps, I took my place in the center of the star, the light from my candle creating five flickering shadows on the walls behind us. I closed my eyes and breathed in deeply. My heart thundered in my ears. I held the air inside my lungs until it burned, my body tense. After all these months of pain and frustration. After all Jackson's years of sorrow. After so many like Brooke had been forced into a life no longer their own. This would finally be the end of it.

I released the breath from my body, surrendering myself to the power of the ritual.

Electricity surrounded us. Anticipation. Great longing.

The scene was set. It was time to begin.

A Crack In The Bond

"Cognatus ab adnexus."

Zara held the blood-filled cup high in the air as she recited the words of the original ritual backwards.

I held my breath, unsure what to expect. We were in unexplored territory now, at the mercy of the ritual. At the mercy of our own hope.

At first, nothing happened. My ears hummed with the silence that surrounded us. I held my body tense, waiting, terrified. What if we couldn't get the ritual to work? What if something had happened to Piotrek and he'd been unable to place the ring in the right place? What if we'd risked everything for nothing?

Then, in a rush, light erupted from the portal stone. The force of it seized my body, pulling my neck backward as my feet lifted off the ground. I hovered in the air, parallel to the stone floor. An invisible power bore down on my chest, and I gasped for air.

A breeze swirled around the room, whipping my hair like ropes across my face. My lips parted as my head stretched back. Something deep in my veins burned, and I cried out.

The ghostly body of a woman in white formed on top of mine. My ancestor, Clara. The first Peachville Prima. Mary Anne gasped as the room filled with the ghosts of an entire coven of women. The memory of the first day, the creation of the Peachville gate, became visible to us.

We watched the last moments of the binding, as if watching a movie in reverse.

I felt Clara's terror as her jaw wrenched open, the black smoke of a demon ripped from her body.

Aerden.

Our connection burned within me. The bond boiled in my blood. Then, as the last of his essence left Clara's mouth, the necklace lifted from my chest. Aerden's spirit passed through the stone, and I felt a strange distance open between us. A crack in the bond. He coiled around us, swirling wildly as he tried to break free.

"It's working," I said, having to raise my voice over the force of the wind.

Lark, Mary Anne, Angela and Courtney stood and began to chant ancient ritual words in reverse. Mary Anne stepped forward, her fingers trembling as she unclasped the necklace and pulled it from me.

She held it over the chalice of blood.
"Moderatus compingere animus."

She opened her fist and let the pendant fall deep into the chalice. The blood bubbled up, overflowing and spilling down the side of the cup.

Zara took my wounded hand in hers. Slowly, she poured the blood onto my palm. Wide-eyed, we all watched, breathless as the blood soaked back into the cut. Lifting the dagger from her belt, Zara retraced the scar, gasping as it disappeared, erased from my skin as if it never happened.

Like a mirror image, the ghostly forms around us went through the original steps of the ritual from a hundred years ago, only this time in exact reverse. Hope filled my heart as Aerden's essence uncoiled itself from me, his bond growing more distant.

Continuing to follow the steps, Zara fell to her knees beneath the swirling black smoke. Her light blue eyes appeared white, glowing as she lifted both palms high into the air.
"Animus efferri accio."

Aerden's dark essence was sucked back into the stone and the wind around us died suddenly. The portal's light extinguished and the ghostly vision dropped from sight. Whatever force held me up disappeared, and I fell.

My head slammed against the portal stone with a crack, and I cried out in pain and panic. Fear gripped my heart with its tight fist as blood trickled down my neck.

What happened? This couldn't be right. I struggled to sit up, a scream lodged in my throat.

Angela rushed to my side. "Why did it stop? Is it over?"

"I don't know," Zara said. Panic filled her voice. "Maybe I did something wrong."

A rumbling above caught my attention. "Shhh," I said, lifting my eyes to the ceiling as bits of earth and dirt fell on us.

"What was that?" Mary Anne asked.

Shouts rang out in the clearing above and adrenaline shot through me like a lightning bolt.

"They're here," I said, holding my hand out to her. "Help me up, quick."

I stood and ran toward the stairs, but an invisible power pushed past me. Before I could reach the top, an onyx barrier rose up, closing off the exit. I'd seen a barrier like this before when the tiger witch used it to lock me out of the domed city.

Dark magic.

The candle went out, plunging us into complete darkness. We'd been sealed inside, the ritual room silent and dark as a tomb.

A stream of light from below raced toward us, its beam separating into four points. With a popping sound, the points exploded as they barreled into the chest of the girls standing behind me on the stairs. Mary Anne. Zara. Courtney. Angela. All frozen in time, their mouths open in various stages of a scream. Their bodies still like statues.

Something skittered through the darkness below. I swallowed, my throat thick with fear. Someone was down here with us, but how? Where had they come from? How did we miss that? I stretched my hand out and formed a small orb of light, then sent it down into the heart of the room.

There, at the bottom of the stairs, surrounded by five scorpion monsters, stood Lark. She wore a strange smile on her face, her dark eyes watching me carefully.

My first instinct was to rush down to her. To warn her. But something in those eyes stopped me cold.

They held no fear.

"Lark?" I asked, my tone uncertain.

She sighed and shook her head. "This is the part I've been dreading," she said. She glanced at the monsters next to her. "I never wanted to hurt you, Harper. Why couldn't you have just cooperated with the Order? Things would have turned out so much better for all of us."

Her words took my breath away. The room began to spin, and my knees went weak. I couldn't seem to make sense of what was happening.

"I really didn't want to have to be the one to do this," she said. "My grandmother told me I didn't have a choice."

"I don't understand," I said, shaking my head. I took a few steps forward, holding on to the wall beside me for support.

"Maybe this will help," she said. She spun around, her body shrinking to a tiny blue butterfly.

I fell to my knees on the hard stone steps, her betrayal piercing my heart. I brought my hands up to my head, the truth coming in waves.

Anyone could be anyone.

An image of the blue butterfly tattoo on her back flashed into my mind and I opened my eyes. She fluttered around me, then reformed on the steps by my side.

"You're one of them?" I asked. "You're a Winter? But how?"

Lark giggled. "I know it's hard to believe," she said. "My mother and I don't look a thing like them, but that's because of the glamour. I would drop it, but it's permanent. The real Chen family had to be sacrificed years ago, of course, but it couldn't be helped. Grandmother needed a spy on the inside, someone about the same age as the future prima, just in case you ever came home. Someone who could gain your trust. Teach you special spells to make you think we were friends."

"The glamours," I said.

Lark stood and walked back down to where the scorpions waited. "My job was to seduce you with your own power and with the idea of acceptance and friendship."