Earth (35 page)

“Fine, if I answer you, will you answer
me?”

“Agreed.”

“I set another circle over yours to protect
myself and I entered it ritually. That is a thing of evil; it
cannot enter my circle of protection unless I invite it in,” I said
it as matter-of-factly as I could. I decided it were best if he
didn’t know I hadn’t just set my circle over his and had erased his
circle. Call me paranoid, but I don’t think that would have made
him happy.

“Hmm, so you knew that I wanted you to come
to me?”

“No, you said you’d answer my question if I
answered yours. You don’t get to ask another question until you
answer mine.”

“Yes, I have already entered Ian’s body, you
are correct. I need the third sacrifice, human obviously, to seal
the possession and my ascension. Blood for blood, a life for a
life, you understand.” He smiled at me with a nod.

“I wouldn’t think a demon would worry about
karmic balance.”

“I don’t make the rules my dear; I only
follow them – when I have to.” He shrugged casually. I decided to
let that one go, we would have to agree to disagree on whether or
not he was following karmic rules. “Alright, well, time is wasting,
I do need to have this ritual underway almost immediately if I am
to get it done in time, so, will you be staying or shall I proceed
with Ms. Tracy?”

“You know I can’t let you kill her.”

“Wonderful, if you’ll just get rid of that
little knife of yours and join me over here in the middle?” He
reached a hand out to me, just as if he were my date for the night
and wanted me to take his arm.

“Let them go first,” I motioned to Jensen and
Tracy with my chin, never taking my eyes off of Ian.

“Oh no, my dear, you first and then I’ll let
them go.”

“I’m not an idiot. If I go first, you’ll kill
me and there’ll be nothing to stop you from killing them.”

“But why would I do that? Once you have
sacrificed yourself I won’t need them anymore.”

“Because you’ll want to get rid of any
witnesses.”

“That’s a risk you’re just going to have to
take. Now, stop stalling,” Ian said.

I drew in a deep breath to calm my nerves and
dropped my athame to the ground. He smiled at me and nodded slowly,
encouraging me to come to him.

This was the part of the plan that I hated
the most; I would have to go willingly to him, unarmed. I took
slow, careful steps to him, taking as much time as I dared to close
the distance between us. I concentrated on Steven’s energy and drew
the heat into both of my arms, desperately trying to control the
energy to keep it from bursting into flame in my palms. I didn’t
want Ian to see what I was doing. I was only a few feet away from
him when I felt the heat grow in my hands until I was sure my skin
must be red and blistering from it. The memory of the grass I had
set aflame in the school and the trees Ian had carved into flashed
into the front of my mind and the pain in my hands tripled. The
pain of controlling the element clawed up my arms and past my
elbows.

“Yes,” he hissed at me, “come to me,
witch,
come to me.” I stopped just three feet away from him,
hoping that I appeared scared and angry and was just hesitating. I
watched him start to lean for me and I opened the channels between
Jodi, Steven and myself and screamed in my head for them to come. I
bent my knees and with a wild, wordless scream I lunged at Ian, my
hands formed into claws, reaching, tearing in the air for his face.
He leaned into my lunge, realizing too late what I was doing. My
fingers found his face, nails ripping down his cheeks until I could
hold on. I pressed my burning hands into his face, shoving him back
with my body.

He screamed as wildly and wordless as I had
and tore away from me, stumbling backwards, and I fell to my knees
on the ground. I looked up and saw Jodi and Steven running into the
clearing towards us. Ian was clawing at his own face, slapping
himself, trying to put out the fire that he could not see,
crabwalking away from me. I was strangely calm as I watched the
blisters burst over his skin, melting holes into his cheeks and
forehead as it burned relentlessly. Steven and Jodi both had their
bottles of holy water in their hands, Steven gripping his rosary in
the other. They reached Ian and started flinging the water on his
body. He fell to the ground screaming, steam rising up from his
body, his clothing smoldering from the inside out.

“Our Father, Who art in heaven, Hallowed be
Thy Name,” Steven started the prayer, he and Jodi flinging the holy
water on every part of Ian’s body that they could reach. “Thy
Kingdom come. Thy Will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven. Give
us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we
forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into
temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen.” Ian screamed, but
could not move under the weight of the prayers.

“Keep praying!” I screamed and got to my
feet, tripping myself and nearly falling again in my rush. Steven
started to repeat the prayer again. Ian screamed again but a roar
of frustration colored it and I watched, horrified, as he was able
to start to push away from the ground. Without thinking, I plunged
my hands down, the earth giving way to my hands. I searched until I
found the wandering roots of the trees that I had used to form my
circle and begged their help and felt them respond to my call. The
surface of the ground began to roll, a threaten rumble shook the
trees around us. The roots broke the surface of the ground and
reached for Ian, grabbing his wrists and ankles and pulling him
tight against the ground, twisting and twining around him until he
couldn’t move. The roots drew the shape of the star I had walked
the day before, binding Ian in the same place the magic of the
circle had laid me.

I pulled my hands free of the ground,
relieved when I saw the roots didn’t let Ian go, and ran to them.
He roared again and I felt an icy wind rush around us, whipping at
our faces and thunder cracked overhead. I looked up to see the
black and gray clouds swirling malevolently in the sky and
lightning ripped through the clouds.

“I think its working!” I screamed at them
over the thunder and wind and Ian’s screams. Steven kept praying. I
heard Jodi take up the chant of the elements, their voices taking
up the same cadence so you almost couldn’t tell who was saying
what.

I fell to my knees at Ian’s head and Jodi and
Steven followed on either side of him. I reached out a hand to both
of them and we formed a circle around him with our arms. “By the
power of three times three, I bind you demon,” I began my chant,
falling into rhythm with Jodi and Steven’s voices. “By the power of
three times three, I bind you demon. By the power of three times
three, I bind you demon,” I kept all emotion out of my voice and
concentrated on raising the power between us.

Ian began to writhe on the ground in pain,
the smoke from the holy water faded away and his face turned up to
me. I stared into his black eyes and he spoke to me in a voice no
human could have and in a language I didn’t know. Steven’s voice
faltered and I felt the pain the words were giving him. I gripped
his hand tighter and lent him my strength. Jodi chanted a little
louder, leading Steven back into his concentration. “By my will, I
banish you, demon. By my will, I banish you, demon.” I steeled
myself, found my center and the power contained therein, and held
his gaze with my eye. “By my will, I banish you, demon!” I cried
out over the howling wind and heard Steven cry out, “Deliver us
from evil!”

Ian screamed in pain and lightning crashed
down around us, slicing into Ian and striking a tree close to us. I
felt the wood breaking long before the bark started to give and I
lunged forward, pulling Steven and Jodi with me just as a heavy
tree branch came crashing down over Ian’s shoulders. He lay there,
immobile and silent, as the winds began to die and the thunder
faded away. I looked up into the sky and saw the clouds were still
there, but the black and gray were gone. Steven was crying and Jodi
was shaking, holding on to him. Ian’s eyes were closed and his
mouth was slack. If his eyes had been open, I would’ve known he was
dead, but as they remained closed, I knew he was just
unconscious.

In another moment I felt the air around me
shift, as if taking pause in the Earth’s rotation, and the ground
below me rumbled as thunder cracked over head. A black mist erupted
from Ian’s chest. A pain ridden howl tore through the air in the
distance. I pulled my gaze away from Ian and looked out at the
trees beyond my circle of protection to see a pillar of smoke
rising above the treetops, dissipating as it caught the breeze. I
heard the howl of the hell hound fading as the mist over Ian’s body
grew weaker. The demon and his pet were leaving this plane. The
ground continued to rumble as the roots of the trees began sliding
away from Ian, disappearing back into the ground. The tremors
subsided with the last root tip gone, but the large tree branch
still pinned Ian to the ground.

Before I could succumb to the effects of
shock, I ran, tripping and nearly falling, over to the bags that
Jensen and Tracy were in. I had a split second where I wanted to
free Jensen first, but I thought better of it and tore the bag open
that Tracy was stuffed inside. She was crying and trembling, but
with my help she crawled out. Her wrists and ankles were bound,
making it awkward, but we managed it.

“Shayna?” she gasped, staring at me,
confused, but instead of asking any more questions, she clutched my
sweatshirt and pulled me into a hug. “You’re always saving me! It’s
like you’re my very own, live guardian angel,” she sobbed into my
shoulder with a laugh. I looked at her, a weight on my back
suddenly there and undeniable.

“What did you call me?” My voice was hushed
and she couldn’t hear me over her own sobs. I felt Steven and Jodi
at my back and they eased her away from me, pulling her to them so
I could get to Jensen. He crawled out of the bag, weak-kneed and as
shaky as Tracy, bound the same way at his wrists and ankles. His
face was covered in bruises and swelling, but he smiled at me and
the endless blue of his eyes sparkled for me.

“A guardian angel, that’s what she called
you,” he whispered.

Chapter 20

Jensen was bloodied and bruised from a fight
he’d had with Ian. He told me that, for as long as he could
remember, they had powers. They never knew anyone else who did, so
they had been teaching themselves with books and the internet their
whole lives. Ian had become obsessed with growing his powers. The
more they learned, the more he craved. It was a vicious cycle that
Jensen, the weaker of the two, had been caught up in. Jensen
admitted he had been helping Ian, just like Ian had told me. But
when Ian killed the first goat, Jensen realized what a wrong turn
they had taken and tried to stop Ian. It was Jensen stopping the
rituals that had the police stumped.

Unfortunately, with the supernatural powers
Ian was gaining from being possessed by the demon, Jensen was no
match for Ian. I asked him why Ian didn’t just kill him to get him
out of the way and Jensen told me that Ian figured if I wouldn’t
take Tracy as bait, I’d most likely come for him. Sadly, he was
probably right. We found Ian’s sacrificial knives and grimoire in
the same sack he had put Tracy in. I could only read a few pages
before I had to put it down. It was full of nothing but evil,
twisted spells and incantations and of course a fully detailed and
outlined description of all of the rituals he had done in the woods
and what he planned to do with Tracy, or me.

Once the trees that had bound Ian to the
ground had retracted their roots, still leaving the large branch
pinning him to the ground, I had Tracy use Ian’s cell phone to call
the cops. I didn’t have enough time to ask Jensen any more
questions. Steven, Jodi and I ran back to my car before the police
showed up. Tracy told them that she and Jensen had been kidnapped
by Ian. She told the cops that he was the one committing all of the
animal sacrifices in the woods and that he planned to kill them
next, but as she was trying to run away after he cut her ties, a
lightning bolt struck a tree and knocked him to the ground,
crushing him. Sadly, he was still alive.

Tracy and Jensen’s injuries were minor and
Ian was placed in custody at the local hospital. Once he is well
enough to be moved, he’ll be placed at the Juvenile Detention
Center until he turns eighteen. Then it’s on to big boy jail for
ten to fifteen years. It seems a rather light punishment to me, but
since no one was killed and he’s still a minor, that’s how it goes.
Their mother didn’t take it too well, but she was happy to find out
that both boys were alive. She’s handling the rest as best as
anyone could expect of her.

Everyone except me is insisting on going
through with my birthday party tonight. Since, as Jodi pointed out,
we didn’t have anything to do with last night’s events it would be
weird to cancel now. Jensen asked if he could come. I told him no.
I’m not sure I want to see him again.

I drove to Jodi’s house in my witch costume,
full green face make-up on, complete with a hooknose and two hairy
warts.

“Now that’s attractive,” Steven said as he
opened my car door. It was another time where I deeply regretted
that he was gay. He was dressed in motorcycle boots, dark blue
jeans, a tight black shirt and black leather biker jacket. Each
piece of clothing was carefully selected to highlight his muscular
build and height. Two grey horns were expertly affixed to his
forehead, looking like they had burst from his skull. He was the
sexiest demon minion I had ever seen. But after seeing the animal
in the forest and looking into Ian’s black eyes, the appeal of his
costume didn’t have quite the same effect it would have three weeks
ago.