Authors: Carrie Harris
“Devoured?” I asked, proud that my voice wavered only a little.
“Didn’t you know?” 693 licked his lips and shuddered with what looked uncomfortably like ecstasy. “The reason he held midseason tryouts is because I ate the souls of two of his skaters. Soullessness tends to be more than most humans can handle. They grew suicidal and crashed themselves into a tree. And he stood by and did
nothing
. So much for his stellar reputation.”
“I’ll tear you apart, and screw the consequences,” Michael snarled. His head whipped around, and he pinned me under the gaze of his once blue eyes. Now they glowed a dull, faded red, like the embers of a fire left untended a little too long. “Get out of here, Casey.”
For once, I didn’t argue. I turned tail and ran. My frantic flight took me down one of the woodland trails, dimly lit by the light of the rising moon that filtered through the branches. Trees blocked my vision of Michael and 693, and the path was silent except for the usual rustling sounds of the forest and the crunch of my own footsteps. I paused, hands on my knees, chest heaving with exertion.
Dojo hide-and-seek had taught me a valuable lesson: when people search for a hiding spot, they rarely look up. My khaki-shorts-and-brown-tee combo would disappear against a tree, especially in the dim light, so I searched for and found a nice tall trunk that would defy most attempts to climb it. This wasn’t the easiest of freerunning stunts, but if there was ever a time to get over myself, this was it. I could stand here angsting, or I could get to safety.
Marshaling my breath, I ran toward the tree, then planted my foot and shifted my torso the way I’d practiced a million times pre-cancer. My momentum carried me a few quick steps up the trunk, and a quick grab of a convenient branch got me to safety. I crouched comfortably in the crease of the fork, feeling an insane wave of accomplishment. I might have had a soul-eating demon on my hands, but at least I’d gotten my freerunning mojo back.
An earsplitting howl broke the silence of the forest. I had expected anger, but 693 sounded triumphant. Which was stupid, because I’d gotten away.
Unless I hadn’t been the target after all. What if he’d picked that fight just to get to Michael? Those red eyes hadn’t seemed like a good thing at all, and if Michael turned, I’d be hiding from two demons rather than one.
I shifted uncomfortably on my perch, squinting at the shadowy path with increased concern. How would I escape them both? And more to the point, why was I hiding when I could help Michael? He had said it from the start: I’d faced 693 before. Michael had been willing to stand up for me; maybe it was time for me to repay the favor.
There was no time to think about it. Either I was doing this or I wasn’t. I pushed myself out into the air before I had a chance to question the wisdom of leaping onto an uneven dirt trail in poor light, windmilling my arms for balance. My heart leapt to my throat, because this landing would be even tougher than the descent off the parking structure, but Michael needed me. I landed with a crunch of dead leaves, transferring the force of my fall into a forward roll and rising into a graceful trot. Under different circumstances, I would have shouted in triumph. Instead, I ran.
When I reached the playground, I could barely believe what I was seeing. Michael and 693 rolled on the ground in what would have looked like a barroom brawl, except for the flickers of white and red energy that withered the grass underneath their bodies. I could hear the smack of fists against flesh
and animalistic grunts of pain as they traded strikes, vying for dominance. 693 landed a strike on Michael’s jaw and followed it up by wrapping his hands around Michael’s neck. His gleeful expression told me everything I needed to know. If I planned to act, now was the time.
“Hey, demon!” I yelled, the strength of my voice surprising me. This was such a bad idea. The two of them turned identical red glowing eyes in my direction. “I’ve got a nice juicy soul over here.”
The demon removed his hands from Michael’s throat and started a slow stalk in my direction. His face rippled as he howled a challenge, the sound echoing off the trees and distorting into screams of what sounded like horrendous agony. The noise assaulted my head with an almost physical force. I fumbled the key chain out of my pocket and almost dropped it.
“Stop that!” I shouted.
The noise cut off as if someone had pulled a plug. I felt the same buzz in my spine that I’d felt when I’d thrown my necklace at him; it tingled up through my skin and made my hair stand on end. My hand went numb, as if I’d been sitting on it and now it was all pins and needles. Then the feeling was just gone, like someone had flipped a switch.
693 snarled like he’d been stung. Now he looked really angry instead of just playing at it.
For the first time, I began to wonder if that necklace fried demons because it was mine, not because the priest had murmured some mumbo jumbo over it. Maybe I really could touch the Between like Michael had said. It felt like I could turn
this to my advantage if only I knew how to make it work at will, but my only potential source of information was lying motionless on the ground. I stared down at my hand. Was the key chain growing uncomfortably warm, or was I hallucinating? Everything kept whirling around in my head, the way my necklace had scared 693 off when we met in the alley, the mysterious rules that bound Michael but didn’t seem to apply to 693, the fact that 693 had known to attack me in the first place. It didn’t make
sense
. But maybe I didn’t need to understand it. Maybe it was enough to believe in it. And in myself.
I was not going to let Michael down. And as I took my first determined step to confront the demon, the key chain began to burn with the same white fire that made up Michael’s wings. It didn’t exactly smolder; it vibrated, so hard and so fast that my teeth chattered.
It felt like an eternity had passed, but it must have been only a second or two, because when I looked up from the glowing key chain, 693 had just begun to reach for me. He pulled up short, wincing away from the light. I took another step forward, and he shrank before me. This was easier than I’d expected; I’d take him out quickly so I could tend to Michael. This whole demon-hunting thing was a piece of cake.
Then the demon’s eyes met mine.
Black wings crept into my field of vision, cutting out all light. I heard his laugh, the one that felt like fingernails screeching down a chalkboard, only it was inside my head, and I couldn’t make it stop. I felt him then, a pulsing, venomous presence inside me, unearthing every negative thought I’d
ever had. The thoughts that said I didn’t deserve to live when the kids in rooms next to me died. The ones that said I was a mistake. The ones that said I was a waste of a miracle.
Pain I could take, but this went beyond that. Every middle-of-the-night fear I’d ever had flashed through my mind in one agonizing second, and I fell to the ground with a shriek, dropping the key chain. My fingers clawed at my face; I would gladly have ripped it off just to make the agony stop. I deserved to die. I should have been dead.
Then I heard the demon’s voice. “All you have to do is give up and all of this will end. I’ll take it all away. It’ll be like it never happened.”
“No,” I whispered, but it came out as more a question than a statement.
His voice was intimate and slickly smooth. It gave me goose bumps. “No more people staring at your head. No more wondering why. No more guessing how much time you have left. I’ll take it all.”
I found myself nodding, but that didn’t feel right. I was the girl who picked fights with death. Yeah, maybe I felt a little guilty some days and angry on others. It was hard to be the miracle girl and walk out of the hospital, past the rooms of friends who you knew weren’t going to make it. But I’d dealt with that. I could keep on dealing.
I pushed up from the ground as the word came screaming out of my throat. “No!” I yelled.
I reached out blindly for the key chain. And when my fingers touched it, the darkness dissolved. My vision cleared.
The demon loomed over me, his words blending into a stream of babble.
“I’ll give you money. Power. Strength. The girl with the red hair, the one who hates you? She’ll be on her knees at your feet. The team will accept you for real. Your friend and your sister? They’ll give you the credit you deserve. I can give you Michael; I know you want him.”
“No …” I shook my head. “I’m not dealing.”
His voice came even more quickly. “Your body. I can heal it. I can make sure you never spend another night in the hospital, never worry if this is your last healthy day. I’ll give you your hair back. I’ll take your scars. You could wear a bikini in public without everyone looking at you like you’re a circus freak. Wouldn’t that be nice?”
I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t tempting. It was. But this demon thought that having cancer had made me weak.
He was mistaken.
“I don’t want what you’re selling,” I said, the words coming easier now. “Get your sorry demonic ass back to where you came from, and don’t ever come back!”
There was no other choice. My fist jerked toward his neck, the key chain once again clenched between my stacked knuckles. The strike was nothing special, but it did the job. The fiery metal hit the demon and sank in as if he were made of Jell-O. The flames spread through him, and I felt them burn him into nothing, his voice fading away to silence. His body dissolved, the white clothes blowing away in a convenient gust of wind.
That was when Michael whooped so loudly, it scared the crap out of me.
“Yes!” he yelled, still lying on the ground. “That’s what I’m talking about!”
My arms gave out, and I lay back on the ground, overcome by a heady wave of relief and delayed adrenaline. That could have gone wrong in so many ways. I could have died. I could have gone over to the dark side. Holy crap, what had I been thinking?
“What’s wrong?” Michael scrambled to his feet, gravel crunching as he hurried to crouch by my side. “Casey, are you okay?”
“Look at me,” I demanded in a shaking voice.
He did. His eyes were wide and blue. No more red flickers that made me feel like running off into the trees. “Are you hurt?” he demanded.
I shook my head. And then began to cry.
Once I started, I couldn’t stop. The demon had stirred up so many feelings that I had kept struggling to bury, and I was so tired that I didn’t know if I could bottle them up again. Michael sat down next to me in the middle of the path and slung his arm over my shoulders, pulling me to rest against him. I don’t know how long we sat there, but eventually my sobs turned to hiccups and finally to hitching breaths.
Then my stomach growled.
“You need to eat,” Michael said. “I’m taking you out, and we can talk then. Is there somewhere close?”
I wiped my face on my sleeve, snuffling. “Smuckers. Right
down the street. It’s the best greasy spoon in town. But you don’t have to pay for me,” I added hastily. “I’ve got money.”
“You agreed to go on a date with me. You’re not going to go back on your word, are you?” He looked at me sternly, but from the way his lips twitched, I could tell he was kidding.
“I guess not.” I took in a shaky breath and wiped my runny nose on my sleeve.
“Good,” he said. “Because demon slayers eat for free around here.”
“Oh, joy. And by the way? If my performance of a few minutes ago is any indication, I might need a little more info on this whole demon-fighting thing.”
His mouth twitched. “First food. Then explanations. I don’t want you fainting on me. I might have to give you mouth-to-mouth.”
I couldn’t help but flash back on that image of the two of us together, and I knew my face was bright red. So I ducked my head and said, “Okay. Help me up.”
Instead of giving me a hand like I’d expected, he crouched down in front of me, presenting a very nice set of shoulders for inspection. His hair was wavy and kicked out in the back. I wanted to run my fingers through it.
“Get on,” he said.
“What?”
“You’re tired, so I’m giving you a piggyback ride to the bike. Get on.”
I almost protested, but I really was exhausted, and there were worse things than being toted around on the back of a
studly not-quite-mortal. He wrapped muscular arms around my upper thighs before standing easily. Then he started off at a light jog, which you’d think would have bounced me around like a ball but didn’t. His stride was so fluid that I almost felt like I was floating.
“So do you know why this guy was after me?” I blurted out. “If I’m going to get attacked once every few days, I’d like to know why.”
His shoulders tightened under my arms, and for a second, I got jostled around uncomfortably as his stride faltered, but then it smoothed out again.
“You’re a threat to demonkind. Your brush with death changed you. A lot of people fold under that kind of pressure, but you just got more stubborn, as far as I can tell, and I mean that as a compliment.”
“Thanks,” I said dryly. “But I still don’t get it. What does having cancer have to do with fighting demons?”
“It’s not the cancer; it’s how you reacted to it. Most people are stuck in the physical world; they’re fixated on money and beauty and all kinds of physical things. Being sick forced you to confront the spiritual and come to terms with it. You’ve achieved sufficient balance that you are able to pull power from the Between like you just did with—what was that thing you hit him with, anyway?”
“My key chain?” I held it over his shoulder for inspection.
“Yeah. Anyway, weapons like these, charged with the Between, are the only way to kill a demon.”
“And you can’t fight them yourself because you’d become
a demon in the process. That’s what was happening to you back there, isn’t it?” It felt so strange to say it that way, all calmlike. But there were no words to describe how horrible the thought made me feel, and I knew if I tried, I’d break down again.
“Yeah.” He sighed. “It was pretty close back there. If you hadn’t interrupted when you did, I probably would have been a goner. And I can’t stand to think about what I would have done then.”