Shadow Demons (18 page)

The next week was a blur as we traveled by night, then found remote places to camp and sleep during the daytime.

I spent a lot of time thinking about Lark and Zara and my other friends. How much did they know about the Order’s activities? Did Zara know what her mother had done? I didn’t want to believe that. I also didn’t want to believe that women like Mayor Chen and Mrs. King were evil. I was certain that if they knew what the Order was capable of, they would be willing to make a stand against the High Council.

I’d mentioned this to the shadow demons, and they agreed that every demon gate coven had good people who would stand up to the Order if they had the chance. Unfortunately, there was no way to separate the good from the power-hungry.

Cristo was the only one in the group that wanted to approach the whole thing with pure force. He saw no problem with going in and killing everyone on the High Council. He was also slightly delusional in his belief that we were powerful enough to fight against those witches.

“Come on, seriously mate,” he said. “We’re five of the most powerful demons in the shadow world. We could definitely take those witches.”

“You have to remember that those witches are hybrids of both powerful human witches and some of the most powerful demons in the history of our people,” Joost said, pushing his glasses up. “Even if we had access to all our powers in this world, we would still be at a severe disadvantage.”

It was the same argument we’d had a million times. We’d set up camp in the middle of a large empty field somewhere in Oklahoma. I stood up and stretched.

Jackson started to stand, but I held out my hand.

“I’m fine,” I said. “I just need to stretch my legs. I’m going to take a walk in the meadow. Don’t worry, I won’t go where you can’t see me.”

Jackson sat back down reluctantly. He’d been very sweet over the past week. He felt terrible about keeping so many secrets from me, and he was trying to make it up to me. I loved being able to spend all this time with him, especially at night when he put his arms around me while I slept. But I missed having a real bed to sleep in. My back ached and my legs felt like they were permanently asleep from spending so much time sitting around the fire talking.

I walked through the knee-high grass, enjoying the unusually warm breeze. Mordecai had been nice enough to go into a town a few days ago and pick up some clothes for me to wear. Jeans and a few sweatshirts. I’d been glad to get out of my mother’s dress and into something more comfortable.

Unfortunately, the shoes he got for me were a little tight and pinched my feet. I slipped them off and let them dangle from my crooked fingertips as I walked.

No matter how much time I spent thinking about the future, I couldn’t figure out a way to really make a difference. If we had more time, we could go on a crusade to all of the demon gate towns and try to convince them to speak out against the Order. One town alone might be defenseless, but what about hundreds of towns? Thousands of witches working together?

We needed to train these towns to fight back, but in order to do that, we needed to know what kind of spells the High Council was capable of. I sighed. It was so overwhelming. How would we ever find the information we needed? And how were we going to convince all those towns to fight with us before the Council figured out what we were doing?

Lost in thought, I barely noticed the movement to my left. Then, another slight movement to my right. I froze and looked around. No one was there.

I turned back toward the camp. Jackson and the others were still sitting by the fire, deep in conversation. As if sensing my fear, Jackson looked up. I waved to him and smiled. He lifted his hand and smiled back.

Then, he froze, his face suddenly terrified. “Harper! Run!”

I looked to my side as a pair of tigers leapt toward me, then morphed into human form. Two women I didn’t recognize. But I knew who had sent them. Dread filled my veins like frozen water as I felt their hands close around my arms.

I screamed and tried to run, but it was too late. Before Jackson and the others could even travel the distance between us, I was gone.

I woke up on the wet floor of a dark cell.

My body ached from being passed out for so long on such a hard surface. It took a few minutes for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. I considered conjuring an orb of light, but I wasn’t sure I was ready for whoever was holding me prisoner to know that I was awake.

What would they do to me?

Jackson had said if they caught me, there were two possibilities. They would either wipe my memory and force me through the final initiation or they would kill me and transfer the line to another family.

Down in the crow’s library, the diamond earring I’d found belonged to Brooke. That meant the Peachville Order definitely had those books, and I knew they had every intention of using them.

I’d seen the horrible things Lydia Ashworth had tried to do to my mother. Now, she was trying to do those same things to me all these years later. And with the crows out of the picture, she would have complete control over the coven.

I shivered against the cold floor. They’d taken my sweatshirt and jeans and left me in some kind of thin robe. My arms were bound in thick steel cuffs that connected to the wall with a bulky chain. My wrists were raw and bleeding.

I tried to sit up, but my body was too weak to do more than prop myself against the wall.

How long have I been here?

I had no idea if it had been hours or days. Judging from the extreme rumbling of my stomach, I was leaning toward days.

Whatever happened after I was taken from the field was a blur. I couldn’t remember anything. My head pounded, and it hurt to think. All I knew for sure was that I was completely and totally screwed. I didn’t have the strength to fight against the Order, not that I stood a chance against Priestess Winter anyway. My only hope was that Jackson and his friends would somehow be able to find me.

Or that Zara would convince her mother to let me live.

Footsteps outside the door made my stomach twist into knots. I brought my knees in close to my chest and sat pressed tight against the stone wall.

The door scraped the floor as it opened. Light streamed in from the center room, and I realized that I was locked in one of the torture rooms on the third floor. The only problem was that every single demon gate had a torture room just like this. I could be anywhere.

I raised a hand against the light. I’d been in the dark so long, it hurt my eyes.

“Harper, I can’t tell you how disappointed I am in you,” Mrs. Ashworth said. She set a lantern down on a small table near the door. “Did you really think you could run away from your responsibilities?”

I opened my mouth to respond, but nothing came out. My throat was dry and scratchy, but I couldn’t even moan or grumble.

“Don’t try to speak,” she said. “I can’t have you telling lies about me, so I took your voice with a spell.”

I struggled against my chains, then flinched as the wounds on my wrists opened fresh.

Two women stood on each side of the open door. Twins with short auburn hair. I recognized them as the two tigers who captured me in the meadow.

Mrs. Ashworth’s lips curled into a smile. “You have no idea how much of a favor you’ve done for me,” she said, closing the door so the women couldn’t hear. “I’ve been trying to figure out for weeks how I was going to convince the Order you needed to die so that a more responsible family could take over the line.”

Mrs. Ashworth took a few steps toward me, then squatted down until her eyes were even with mine.

“Now, you’ve basically done all the work for me,” she said with a laugh. “All you had to do was attack me and the rest took care of itself.”

She stood and paced the room. “You know, you also did me a huge favor by clearing up some questions I’ve had in my mind for years. I had all these holes in my memory. Inconsistencies I couldn’t quite figure out,” she said. “Well, not until the other night when you reversed that spell and all of it came rushing back.”

I closed my eyes. I couldn’t stand the sight of her.

“It all makes sense to me now,” she said. “Your mother and I were best friends for years. Apparently, I was the only one who knew about her pregnancy. She never even told your father. He was a huge mistake anyway. A married man who was only using her because she was beautiful and his wife was frigid.”

My eyes flew open. I struggled against my shackles, but lost energy quickly. She knew who my father was.

“Somehow, your mother found out I had this plot to end your family line,” she said.

I opened my mouth to try to speak, and Mrs. Ashworth laughed again. She dragged a chair over toward me and sat down.

“I had no idea she’d figured it out until that night we met in the old Randolph house,” she said. “I thought we were meeting to talk about her birth plan or something, but then I saw Jackson there and knew something was wrong. She wiped my memory of you before I’d even told the crows about you. I didn’t remember a single thing about her pregnancy until the other night when you released the spell.”

I wanted her to shut up, but I was powerless.

“She tried to wipe my memory of the plan to kill her too, but she was missing a key part of the whole thing. The crows. She thought I was working alone, but the crows were the masterminds behind the whole thing. They were the ones with the spell books, not me. When she wiped my memory, she had no idea there was an even bigger threat waiting for her.

“When they came to me talking about this plan to kill her, I was so confused,” she said. “I didn’t have any memory of making this plan with them, but they quickly reminded me. And of course, I realized it was brilliant.”

I clenched my fists so tight, I could feel my nails digging into the skin on my palm. I opened my mouth to scream at her, but nothing would come. I forced my legs to work and stood up, pulling against the chains with all my might. I wanted to rip her throat out.

“When they killed her and the ritual didn’t work, they thought I was trying to double-cross them. I didn’t understand it at the time, but now it’s all clear to me. They wanted to kill me too, but luckily, I convinced them that they needed me. They even helped me come up with the idea of a home for troubled girls to try to search for you.” She smiled. “Guess it worked.”

Everything was coming together in my mind. Lydia Ashworth had been trying to be the Prima of Peachville for years.

I thought of the lengths my mother had gone to in order to keep me safe from these people and fell to my knees. She’d sacrificed everything for me.

And when all was said and done, I’d ended up in Peachville anyway.

Mrs. Ashworth left me alone in my cell and no one visited except when the twins came to bring water. I had no concept of time, but without food, my energy was drained.

I was going to die. The image of Priestess Winter wielding the ritual knife kept me awake, but I refused to meet death trembling in fear. I had to at least try to fight back.

Instead of thinking about the end, I focused all of my energy on trying to get my voice back. I knew exactly why Mrs. Ashworth had chosen to take my voice from me. She was scared I would tell the others about her betrayal.

The High Council valued loyalty. I doubted that Mrs. Ashworth’s plot to kill my mother and take over the role of Prima all those years ago would make them happy. They would probably still kill me, but Mrs. Ashworth would get what she deserved too, I felt sure of it.

I had to get my voice back so that I could tell the truth about what happened to my mother. I owed her that much.

I summoned enough strength to sit up, crossing my legs and placing my hands palms-up the way Lark had taught me. I shut out the noise of my grief and cleared my mind of everything. I’d gotten so used to using Zara’s butterfly as my focus, but all the butterfly made me think of now was Priestess Winter in Aldeen, Kansas. I sighed. I needed a new focus.

I tried thinking of my mother, but there were too many emotions tied to my thoughts. Same with Jackson.

After hours of frustrated failure, I finally fell into a deep sleep. In my dreams, I was running through a field of white roses. My mother ran beside me, our blonde hair matching in the sunlight. She stopped in the middle of the field and plucked a white rose from its stem. She handed it to me with a sad smile, and when I woke, I felt so much sadness and regret for never knowing her.

Later, it occurred to me that a field of white roses was kind of ridiculous. Roses grew on bushes, not like wildflowers in fields. But the dream felt so real. And my mother had loved white roses.

I ignored the pain in my bruised body and sat up again. I cleared my mind of all things, then brought up the image of a single white rose in the darkness, its light growing brighter as I finally connected to the power within the core of my heart.

When the Council finally came for me, I was surprised to see Zara standing with her mother. I tried to make eye contact with her, but she avoided my gaze. Her porcelain skin was marred by dark bruises. God, did they beat her? Why? To see if she knew where I was hiding?

I looked away, my heart breaking for her. Deep down, I knew she was a good person. It wasn’t her fault she’d been born into such a strict family. I didn’t blame her for standing by them. What choice did she have? It was loyalty or death.

Despite the pain in my weak legs and the severe hunger in my stomach, I stood to face them. I vowed not to let them see my fear.

“I’m sorry it has come to this, Harper,” Priestess Winter said in her sweet musical voice that mirrored her daughter’s. “You had such great potential.”

She sighed, then motioned for the twins to release me from my chains. My wrists were red and cracked where the cuffs had held me. Instead of wincing or showing pain, I held my head high. They led me through the center room and down the stairs into Shadowford.

So I’d been home all along.

I was surprised when they stopped outside my bedroom door.

“We’re going to let you shower and change,” Priestess Winter said. “You look terrible.”

Gee. Can’t imagine why.

Movement down the hallway caught my eye, and I saw Mary Anne’s blue eyes peeking through the opening of her doorway. I shook my head, begging her with my eyes to stay out of this. It was bad enough I had to face this, I didn’t think I could deal with watching anyone else get hurt today, too.

Slowly, she closed the door, and I breathed a sigh of relief.

“You’ve got fifteen minutes to get cleaned up and changed,” Priestess Winter said. She handed me a white dress. “And don’t even think about trying to escape. We’ll be watching your every move.”

I almost laughed. After not eating for days, I barely had the energy to stand up straight, much less try to escape.

In my bathroom, I undressed and stood under the flow of hot water, washing the sweat and grime and blood from my body. All too soon, though, the twins shut off the water and ordered me to get dressed. With aching arms, I pulled the white dress over my head.

The single diamond earring was still sitting there on the edge of my sink. I grabbed it and held it in my fist, then followed the twins downstairs.

Outside, my eyes searched the woods. Would Jackson come for me?

Part of me wanted him to stay as far away from this place as he could get. The demons had admitted that they didn’t have the power to fight the High Council. If they came for me, we’d all die together. In my mind, I begged him to stay away. To keep fighting until he could build his army and change the world forever.

The walk through the woods to the ritual room was almost an out-of-body experience. I felt removed from myself, not wanting to feel whatever it was they were going to do to me. My feet carried me down the stone stairs and to the center of the pentagram on the floor. The twins told me to stand in front of the blue stone portal, and I did as I was told.

The room was full of witches, both from Peachville and the High Council. I looked each of them in the eye one-by-one. I wanted them to see me for who I was before they murdered me. I wanted my brown eyes to haunt their dreams at night.

Mrs. King stood to my left. When our eyes met, I could see she’d been crying. There were so many messages in her eyes. Regret. Pain. Helplessness. I knew she wasn’t strong enough to fight the High Council on her own, but it still hurt to see her here.

Mrs. Harris and Brooke both stood near the front. When I looked at Brooke, my supposed friend, she looked down. Her mother whispered something in her ear and she lifted her head, but wouldn’t meet my gaze. I clutched the diamond earring tighter. I didn’t think Brooke was an evil person. Before her initiation, she’d actually been kind of sweet. But she had shown me what greed and power could do to a person. She was a perfect example of the kind of corruption the Order was responsible for.

Priestess Winter and Mrs. Ashworth moved to stand in front of me. Mrs. Ashworth’s daughter Lori, the girl who owned the store downtown where I’d first met Drake, came to join her mother.

“Take her necklace,” the priestess said.

Zara stepped forward and, still not meeting my eye, reached around my neck and unclasped my necklace. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered, her voice trembling.

“Bring it to me,” her mother snapped.

Zara handed the necklace to her mother, then moved aside.

Mrs. Ashworth lifted the silver chalice with the blue stone up into the air, and Priestess Winter placed the necklace into it. I tried to swallow, but my throat was dry and burning. My heart raced, but I did my best to keep my face free of emotion. I refused to allow any tears to stain my cheeks today.

“This is a difficult day for the Peachville Order,” Priestess Winter began. “It is never easy to face someone who has betrayed us, but I hope you all understand that the High Council has no choice but to punish this girl for her treason.”

The room was silent except for the soft sobs of Mrs. King.

“The High Council’s decision in this matter is final,” she continued. “As loyal members of the Order of Shadows, you must accept this decision and pledge your loyalty to a new Prima. I realize this won’t be easy, but this is the only way to preserve the coven and make sure this girl does not put the rest of you in further danger.”

She paused, adding weight to her words.

“It is the decision of the High Council that Harper Madison Brighton be put to death.”