Storm (6 page)

Chapter Ten

Carter

I can’t sleep. Poncho’s weird prophecy shit is on replay, but Dad’s recent comments about Mom haunt me the
most. I had one moment with her for my whole life. I hate that. I hate that Dad lied to me about her. I hate what he’s trying to turn me into. I toss the covers off, put on a hoodie, and go.

It’s way after midnight before I get out of the house. The streets are quiet through our neighborhood of Georgetown, except for a couple of bars. I need a clue. There has to be a demon with information about what happened to the Statics. Or at least a demon who can tell me why Kriegen wanted us. I’m not sure what I’m looking for with the demons. Not yet. I guess I’m hoping one of them will accidentally be useful.

For the rest of the night, I don’t have a name.

I don’t have gold triangles.

I don’t have anything except demons. Lots of demons.

And an itch in my hand that can only be calmed with the blade in my belt.

…

Lights flicker off in the apartment above the street, as I pound a demon’s head back against a brick wall. I hope it hurts. Just like the last four I’ve killed tonight. Not killed, but ridded the world of. “Last chance.”

“Let me go,” the demon hisses in my face.

I don’t even respond to it. I shove the salted iron dagger into its heart and say the words in a whisper.
“Virtute angeli ad infernum unde venistis.”
Then, it’s guts.

This is the only thing that makes sense to me. Tracking demons, looking for answers, destroying. I hate them all. Living with the fact that their magic and blood runs through my veins, sometimes I hate myself, too.

Another demon jumps me from behind. I should’ve suspected there were more in this location. Ever since Kriegen, they’ve been working in groups more and more. Its nails dig into my skin, and I force it to the ground. It hisses through sharp fangs. I can’t reach the salt in my pocket, but I don’t need it. I punch it in the face.

Claws and fingers dig at my shoulders. Its legs kick and teeth show as I drive my fist into its face. Again and again. I stick the point of the dagger into its neck, and a howl so loud fills the street. I don’t stop. Goo-like blood seeps from the spot on its neck. All I have to do is say the words and end it. But I want it to suffer. Like I am, like I have.

And then I’m going to destroy it.

Destroy it like they all did my mom.

Like she tried to kill Pen.

Like the Static killed Maple.

Like my dad tries to kill who I really am by making me someone else. Making me him.

The demon cries out again, gasps in breaths of air. Demon blood is all over my hands and a gaping wound is across its neck. I did that. I should feel bad, but I don’t. It deserves this. Its eyes widen and glisten, hands close around my arm. I whisper the words. “
Virtute angeli ad infernum unde venistis.”

And then it’s gone, except for the remains of its flesh. I expect to feel better. I don’t. Somehow it makes me want more.

I mutter another spell to get rid of the blood on my hands, and then a scream echoes through the air.

That was not a demon. It was a girl.

My instincts go on high alert, and I run toward the sound.

I’m standing in a parking garage as another scream fills the air. Someone is in trouble. The pavement of the garage angles up, and I follow it. Halfway to the top, a sound echoes down toward me. Demon laughter and the sudden pungent smell of demons drift toward me. They must have a Non.

“Hey kid,” someone yells from behind. I turn, ready to end get rid of another vermin. The skin it possesses is thin, practically falling off, a sign that this poor guy has been possessed for too long. It comes toward me, and I take it down with a swipe of my foot. Pretty lame. I expect at least a bit of fight.

“Tell me about the Statics,” I yell.

The demon doesn’t answer. My blade rests against his throat. There’s no saving the Non he’s wearing anymore. It makes me want to end the demon more. To slash its throat. It would be so easy to slide this iron a little deeper.

“Don’t kill him,” a familiar voice commands. “Good help is hard to find and it’s a busy time of year to be searching for replacements.”

I don’t release the demon, but I look up. Vassago stands before me, looking the same as usual with his disgusting white beard flecked with bits of food, graying, dirty clothes and one sock. What is this? Vassago wouldn’t have taken a Non. He’s not that kind of demon, surprisingly. He’s the demon of lost things, a guide, not a murderer.

“Where’s the Non?”

“There is not one here,” he says softly. He looks at the demon under my blade. “You seem troubled, Mr. Prescott.”

“I’m not,” I say.

“Then release my goon, please.” Vassago says calmly, looking from the demon to me. I stare at Vassago, and his eyes are intent on me. “It will solve nothing,” he says.

I look back at the demon, and it doesn’t fight me. I ignore the urge to end it and lower my blade. He scrambles away from me, and I glance back at Vassago. “If you don’t have a Non, why was there screaming?”

Vassago raises an eyebrow. “How about a match, Mr. Prescott?”

I look past Vassago toward a little table set up with Scrabble. “Are you serious?”

“I anticipated your arrival. Come.” He turns away without me and walks toward the table. This is ridiculous.

I cross my arms. “I don’t really feel like playing Scrabble.”

“What do you seek then?”

“Answers.”

Vassago gives me a nod. He moves to sit at the table in the middle of an empty parking space, waiting for me. I stand there for long, silent seconds. I don’t want to play Scrabble.

“A quick one,” Vassago says, “since you are already here and it is set up.”

I am here, and obviously Vassago went through some trouble to make that happen. Why would he do that? Has he been keeping tabs on me? I sit next to him on the opposite side of the table and glance at the board. It’s surprisingly pristine for a demon that burrows through the trash and keeps a collection of crumbs in his beard.

The whole thing reminds me of being a kid. Dad and I used to played chess. The first time I sat down to play with my dad, I was six. He is always white because he likes to make the first move. Back then, his approval was the only thing I longed for. It was before I knew better. That first day when he explained the rules of chess me, he said the most important thing to know about chess—and every other game—is to have a strategy.

Every move has a counter move if you are able to see it.

“Choose wisely,” Vassago says, passing me a sack of letters. I get an ‘M’ and he gets a ‘J,’ so Vassago goes first. Almost immediately he puts down CENT. It’s only six points.

“Really?” I ask. “Six points?”

“It’s what I have,” he says. “Do not underestimate. The end result can be stronger with a slow start.”

I reach in for my letters.

L C Y X G A E

I stare at the pieces, and then see the word LEGACY and put it on the board. Sixteen points, since Y is a double letter score. I don’t have a strategy in Scrabble aside from winning.

Vassago makes a noise at my move. “Interesting choice.”

“All I do is draw the letters from the bag,” I say.

“Or are meant to draw these particular ones?” Vassago asks. “It is your job to make the words, after all. Perhaps destiny is at play as well.”

I have no clue what that means. I watch him while he puts his own tiles on the board. What have I gotten myself into? Is he going to make everything have a higher meaning? The letters I draw from this bag are just letters. That’s all.

“I don’t really accept that crap,” I say. Destiny, fate, all of it is an excuse.

Vassago spells out CHECK and then I add MATE and it makes him laugh. He plays REMAIN and I play MANY. He must find the whole thing amusing because he’s laughing and muttering and smiling.

“I also enjoy chess,” Vassago says randomly.

I was thinking about that a second ago. I raise an eyebrow. “My dad taught me, but it’s been awhile since we played.” Years, really. I can’t even remember the last time I could be in his presence without hating him. Which meant avoiding him at all costs.

Vassago nods, putting down a ‘G’ onto the board. If anyone had told me I’d be playing Scrabble with a demon in the middle of the night in a parking garage, I would have never believed them. Vassago’s hand flits over the board, freezes, and then he looks at me. “Do you remember the incident with the red balloon?”

Red balloon? For a second I don’t, then he touches my leg with his foot, and it all comes rushing back toward me.

I was three or four and Dad and I were in the park. There was a festival with balloons—mine was red—I wanted blue. I wasn’t aware I had the void, but the magic changed it to blue. My dad was so angry with me that he popped it. I cried and he told me to stop crying. “This is not how Prescott men act,” he’d said.

“Your move,” Vassago says. I look at the board. DAGGER.

I stare at him. What the hell just happened? “I’d forgotten that moment.”

“Your move,” Vassago repeats. I shake my head and look at my letters. I really only have one option, so I play KING.

“Ah yes, the King’s safety is crucial,” Vassago says randomly, looking at the board. I look back up at Vassago’s goons, standing frozen, and then meet his gaze. “Your father is also aware of that rule.”

“Why are you bringing him up again?” I watch him, waiting for Vassago to pick the rest of his letters.

“He is the reason you are out killing innocents, is he not?”

I scoff. “Demons aren’t innocent.”

Vassago draws another letter. “Some are. You are. Penelope is.”

My jaw tenses. “We’re not the same as them.” He can’t even try to compare us.

With a curt nod, Vassago leans over the board. “Perhaps not yourself, but she is the same. Her magic comes from us now.”

I lean closer toward the table, mimicking Vassago. “How do you know about all that? What am I doing here?”

Vassago licks his finger and then holds it in the air, muttering words I can’t make out. “A storm is coming. And a cold front, I expect.”

“Cold? It’s August.”

Then he looks at the board and lays down the rest of his pieces. I stare at the board. His new word says

MAUVE

Chapter Eleven

Penelope

“Took you long enough,” Lia says. We’re standing in the middle of an empty park at two in the morning, and she’s complaining as if my tardiness is the most inconvenient part
of this.

“Yeah, well, human.”

Lia
hmms
, eyes on me, and I notice for the first time that her eyes are blue. Very blue. I’ve never seen a demon with blue eyes, only green, and it makes Lia seem almost human.

“Why are we here?”

“I have information for you, and I think you’ll be even more inclined to think about it considering your current predicament.” The demon’s lips snarl.

I cross my arms. This demon is tuning into the wrong news channel. “I don’t have a predicament.”

“You do,” Lia says, looking me over. “It hasn’t occurred yet—not beyond the whole ‘giving all the Statics magic’ thing.”

“Right. You think I did that.”

“I know you did,” she says. She doesn’t look back at me, but I see her chest move as she sighs. A demon with an attitude. Great. “Magic is a balance, and any tipping of the scale can destroy it all.”

That quote again. It’s becoming one of those earworm songs that I hate, but gets stuck in my head all the time. “What does that mean?”

“It’s a fact,” Lia snaps, jumping off the railing and moving toward me. I try not to gag as the sulfur smell fills my immediate breathing space. “You need me, and I need you. You are the tipping point on the scale. You changed things when you made the demons disappear, because you used both sides at once. The void and the essence.”

“Is this a re-run? You told me that part, thanks.”

She’s close enough now that I can see the dark black skin under her scales. “Magic isn’t supposed to be wielded that way. It’s one or the other. Someone who can access both sides? Dangerous. For both sides.”

“I don’t have the essence,” I say. Kriegen made that perfectly clear to me before. I only have a little jolt of my family’s magic, not enough to power up on my own. They filled up the rest of the essence to let me have power. Like a supercharged battery.

“Yet, before you met your halfling, you used it.”

“Only with someone in my family.”

Lia shrugs. Demons. They’re always so cocky.

“You’re pretty annoying. You demons only like to say half of whatever you’re trying to say. Humans like sentences.”

Lia’s standing next to me now, and I move to the side, not because I’m scared, but because I don’t like what she’s saying. It can’t get any better from here. Not with that blue steel look of determination on her face “Sentences, right.” She pauses. “I’ve learned your story, Penelope Grey, and all about the demon who took your essence—you survived, because he didn’t take it all.” She moves around me toward the other side of the park, and despite my better judgment, I follow.

Lia stops at a streetlamp and peels off a sticker, then she says, “It’s like that. A sticker that’s been on a surface for a few years. When you take it off, the outline still remains. It becomes part of what was.”

“Did you plant that there for this demonstration?” I ask.

“Your essence is still part of you, Penelope, even if there’s not enough for it work on its own. You’ve been using the void since you met your halfling loverboy, and after that encounter last week, there’s no question that it liked what it saw, and I’m assuming that it’s staying.”

I scrunch up my nose. Magic is a balance, and before I used the overflow of the void that Carter had and didn’t use. And now the void likes me? Destiny sure likes making crap confusing.

“You’re dangerous when you use the void, especially with the halfling,” she says.

I scoff. “He does have a name.”

She doesn’t pay attention to that. “Even as you tinker with it now, you’re opening the crack, and it will only be a matter of time before you can access the void regularly. Until it moves from liking you to becoming part of you. The void isn’t the same as the essence—it’s more alive. It’s more innate.”

I raise an eyebrow. I do like the void. It’s easy and natural, like it’s always supposed to have been part of me.

“I have power with Carter,” I say.

She snorts. I think. It’s hard to tell what the sound is actually supposed to be. “You have a glimpse with him. The magic you’ve used already is only a sliver of the potential. The void will do what it desires with you, and you need to be ready.”

If what Lia is saying is true, then the dam was sealed and now that it’s been cracked, I can take whatever I need to from it. Will it really try to overpower me? And what does that have to do with the Statics?

“You said you would give me information about the Statics. This isn’t information.”

“I am helping you, you daft girl,” Lia crosses her arms. “When demons take a witch’s essence, it’s absorbed. It becomes part of a demon, but it changes the magic that already exists inside a demon and becomes tainted. All those demons in De’Intero you killed? You also pushed out their magic. Released it. The magic couldn’t return to the source it came from because it was tainted.”

The magic couldn’t go home. “So, where did it go?”

“All magic needs a host.”

The gleam in her eye

Suddenly, it all makes sense. “The Static witches.”

She nods. “Those with ability but not with power. At least not until now.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“You have a responsibility to magic now. You alone. The fact that you can access it makes you a target. Don’t you feel it calling to you?”

I don’t answer that, even though I always feel it. It’s always trying to come out, ready to be used.

“You can trust me,” she says.

“I doubt that,” I say. Trusting her is the opposite of everything I’ve been taught. Everything I’ve learned. “You should go.”

Lia nods. “I’ll leave, but this isn’t over. You need me.”

She flickers out and leaves me standing alone on the sidewalk of the park.