Sorcerers of the Nightwing (Book One - The Ravenscliff Series) (5 page)

“Why?”

“Because she’ll boot you out of here, no questions asked.” Cecily was evidently pleased by this bit of news. “Rolfe is
hot
. I’d totally
go for him if I was older.”

“Why does your mother not like him? Did he really kill a kid?”

Cecily hopped off her bed. “Okay, I’ve talked way too much. If Mother came by and heard me blabbing about Rolfe, she’d throttle me. I mean … that’s the one name you can’t say in this house.”

“Now you’ve really got my curiosity going,”

“And that’s a shame, isn’t it?” She headed out of the room,
turning in the doorway to look back at Devon. “I could probably tell such deep dark secrets to my boyfriend, but to a perfect stranger, no, I don’t think so.” She blew Devon a kiss. “Night, night,” she said, and disappeared down the hall.

Devon undressed, wishing the power was on so that he could plug in his computer—its battery was dead from the long bus ride—and see if Suze had written to
him. She must have been wondering why Devon had just so abruptly stopped texting her. Maybe Tommy had written, too, telling him how Max was adjusting to living with him. Suddenly Devon missed his little Yorkie very much.

He brushed his teeth by candlelight in the attached bathroom and then, exhausted, slipped between the sheets. It was a comfortable bed, bigger and softer than what he’d had
at home, but still sleep did not come easily. The storm remained fierce, a maelstrom that seemed to have descended upon the village and gotten trapped, spewing out its fury and frustration on everyone below. The shutters outside his window crashed and banged; wind howled through the eaves of the old house; lightning lit up his room at regular intervals. Devon lay wide awake, the eyes of Muir ancestors
looking down upon him from their portraits on the walls.

Each time he began to doze off, a thunderclap would awaken him. In one such moment, as he hovered in those tenuous seconds between sleep and wakefulness, he saw the figure of a man standing among the shadows at the foot of his bed. He sat up at once, trying to focus his eyes.

“Who’s there?” he asked.

There was no one. But the heat
had suddenly shot through the roof. A dank, damp pressure hummed at him, a whining vibration. His sheets were drenched.

It was like this last spring, Devon recalled. The pressure. The high-pitched whine. It had been the most terrifying night of his life, a night he’d been mostly successful in forgetting. But this was how it had begun, with the heat and the pressure. It had ended with Devon
bruised and bloodied, but with a demon vanquished.

“Trust your instincts,” his father had taught him. “Your body will follow.”

The creature that had attacked him that night last spring had been far more cunning than the one who had visited years before, when Devon was six. This one had arrived not through his closet, with reptilian eyes blinking in the dark, but instead had walked casually
through the door of his bedroom, in the guise of Devon’s father. Devon had been reading a graphic novel on his bed and had looked up to see his father come into the room—except Devon knew his father never just walked in without knocking first, and besides, his father was at the grocery store—

“Dad?”

The thing had turned on him then: great yellow eyes and dripping fangs, Dad’s form literally
melting away in the angry rush of the demon’s passion. It had lunged at Devon; he’d fought back with pure instinct. The creature’s talons had sliced his shoulder and ripped an inch-deep gorge in his thigh, but Devon had prevailed, landing a powerhouse blow in the beast’s gut and sending it spiraling back into its Hell Hole. It had come for him—cannier, shrewder than the others—but still Devon
had won.

It was happening again, he realized now.

Another one was close by.

They’ve followed me here.

Or, rather, I’ve found where they come from …

His heart began to thud in his chest. The room seemed to spin. Devon kicked off his sheets and tried to steady his vision, but he was caught in the rotation of the room. He began to feel dizzy.

With great effort, he swung his legs
off the side of the bed. This was worse than last time. Far worse. The heat and the pressure had never been this intense before. Something was happening. He could feel it. Sweat began to pop from his forehead, running down his face. His t-shirt clung to his chest and under his pits. He forced himself to stand, but he faltered, nearly losing his balance.

“I am stronger than they are,” Devon
said out loud, trying hard to believe it.

A dull, low roar filled the room. At first, behind the wind and rain and thunder, it was difficult to perceive, but it grew louder and more distinct. Surely the whole house could hear it. Cecily, Mrs. Crandall … surely they would come running. Devon grasped one of the posts of his bed, and concentrated as hard as he could. Maybe he could stop it in
its tracks. He’d done that before. Only twice had he actually come face to face with them: every other time when he’d felt the pressure building or seen the eyes in the night, he’d managed to concentrate and send them away. With a raise of his hand he’d made his armoire slide across the room or his closet doors swing shut. He’d been able to silence the demonic whispering, make the terror dissolve.

But it hadn’t worked the time the demon disguised as Dad had so casually breezed into his room. There had been no warning then; that creature had been far too clever for that. Devon had had to fight him, punching and kicking, throwing moves he’d never been taught to do, finding that his limbs somehow responded to the situation at hand with a precision that both surprised and awed him.

This
time, however, he could feel the demon coming—but even with a warning, he knew he couldn’t send it away. He had never felt anything like this. What forces had he disturbed by coming into this house? The roar grew louder; the room kept spinning. Devon feared this would be the worst he’d ever experienced: a demon more terrifying, more powerful than ever before.

Suddenly his windows swung inward,
the full fury of the storm invading his room.

Devon raised his arms, but it did no good. The windows did not shut.

All at once the room smelled fetid and foul, like the stink of a swamp, like decomposing animals.

“Who’s here?” Devon called out, as the lightning flashed again.

The roar was deafening now. Devon clamped his hands over his ears to block out its noise.

From the window
came the source of the roar: a figure—a creature—something Devon couldn’t describe. Small at first, but growing larger—closer—it came out of the swirling rain and wind. A thing—of unspeakable hideousness—great green eyes and sharp pointed teeth and a long, wet, slithering tongue—

“No!” Devon shouted. “Back off! Get the hell away from me!”

The demon landed on its six feet. It panted hungrily,
its tumor-covered tongue nearly reaching the floor.

“Go back to hell,” Devon said, springing from his bed and landing a swift kick at the creature’s cranium. Once again his body was responding instinctively, without any consciousness on Devon’s part.

The demon roared and leapt back at him. Devon deflected it with a swing of his forearm, surprised again by his strength. “Maybe you weren’t
listening, you pile of puke!” Devon shouted. “I
said
, go to
hell!
”

The thing hesitated this time, but then pounced again. Devon landed a punch right in its snout, cracking a couple of its sharp teeth. “I am stronger than you! Get that through your ugly head!”

In rage and frustration, the demon reared up on its hind legs and roared. But it did not lunge again. Instead, it leapt back out into
the night.

The room stopped spinning. The heat died down. The night was quiet, except for the steady pounding of the rain.

Devon let out a long breath. He could feel his body trembling. It was only afterwards that he could feel how scared he really was. He approached the window, pulling the panes shut and latching them together.

He turned, waiting for someone to bang on his door and ask
what in heaven—or hell—had just happened in there. Surely then Mrs. Crandall would have to reveal what she knew.

But no one came knocking.

They
didn’t hear
, the Voice told him.
It came for you and you only
.

Devon understood that now. It was his presence in this house that caused whatever it was to leave its Hell Hole. Whatever forces had haunted him since he was a boy were infinitely stronger here.

This is where they live
, the Voice told him.

“And they don’t want me living here, too,” Devon said to himself.

His heart still
thudding in his chest, Devon sat down on the side of his bed.

I can’t face these things without Dad. This is way too much. I can’t do this alone, no matter how many answers I might find.

But how could he leave? Mrs. Crandall was now his legal guardian. And where would he go? What would stop the creatures from following him?

That was when the thought struck him:
Dad wouldn’t have sent
me here if he felt I’d be in any real danger. Dad knew this was where I’d find the truth about myself
.

“Always remember, Devon,” Dad had said, the first time Devon had gotten really frightened by the eyes in his closet. “No matter what happens, no matter what you see, no matter where you are. You are stronger than any of it. Never forget that, son. Never.”

“I haven’t, Dad,” Devon said quietly
now, and let out a long breath.

He actually felt just the slightest bit cocky. He’d fought off that thing without so much as even a cut this time. How he was able to fight like that, he wasn’t sure—he had never received any kind of martial arts training, not even karate lessons as a kid—but he
was
sure of something else: he really
was
stronger than any of it.

Finally, he drifted off to sleep, and his mind would later recall a series of images: Ravenscliff etched against the night sky, the figure of the man watching him from the tower, Rolfe Montaigne’s hot breath in his face saying, “I killed a young boy just like you.” In his dream, Rolfe had him backed into a corner. There was nowhere to run. Devon could feel the man’s warm breath on his face
as he had earlier in the car. His eyes, as green as those in his closet, burned into his soul.

He awoke quickly. The storm still raged, and he expected another go-round with the beast outside his window. But there was no heat, no pressure. Still, something awakened him, and he listened carefully to the night, to the sound behind the storm. There it was: a soft, steady, insistent voice that
seemed to come from some place in his darkened room. And it was saying, “Leave here. You’re not wanted here. Leave here.”

Devon listened closely. The constant drone of the rain and the frequent booms of thunder often obliterated it, but it was there, always underneath, over and over, like a mantra: “Leave here. You’re not wanted here. Leave here.”

“No,” he said out loud. “I will not leave.”

The little voice, high and feminine, continued. Devon jumped out of bed. Standing close to his door, he could hear the voice from the other side: “Leave here. You’re not wanted here. Leave here.”

With a sudden fierceness, Devon pulled open the door and stared out into the blackness. The corridor was darker than he imagined a tomb might be, and just as cold. Still, the voice stopped, replaced
by the ethereal sound of wings in retreat—or else the sound of footsteps, padding away as fast as possible down the carpeted corridor.

Devon was about to close the door when he heard another sound, this one from much farther away, from deeper within the house. It appeared to be the sound of someone crying. Cautiously he stepped outside into the corridor. Feeling for the light switch, he pushed
it up, but discovered the power was still off. He walked back to his bedside table and fumbled for the candle and matches in the dark. Finding them, he struck a match and relit the candle. With a tiny, quivering flame to guide him, Devon returned to the hallway and followed the sound of the crying. It lead him down the great staircase, where strange twisting shadows danced upon the walls, and
into the main foyer, where every creak of the old house made him look around, reassuring himself that the demon was not following him. Through the foyer Devon stepped quietly, past the large formal dining room and heading down another corridor.