“Then what are we going to do when they do come?” Dylan shouted back. “That’s all I got.”
“I don’t know. Doesn’t your grandmother have other tricks or something? The stuff you dipped his chains in, what was that?”
“Saint’s blood? It doesn’t come cheap. What do you think we’d do with it? Throw it at ’em?”
“I don’t know. Put it in squirt guns?”
“What?” Leah laughed. “Are you stupid?”
“I’m trying here! All I know is that Kellan and Shay won’t be harmed by some stupid words. They’re stronger than that, stronger than these two.”
I was starting to be amused by their conversation before Kellan touched my wrist and indicated the stairs. Nodding, I moved to follow, but he took hold of my elbow instead and whisked upstairs. We never touched one step. I opened my eyes, and we were in Gus’ room again. Her face was turned toward us, straining against the rags around her mouth and neck.
“You can untie her.” Kellan moved to the door, watching out. “I can’t.”
Gus’ eyes popped out, straining even more. I felt her desperation and a flare of hope when she heard his voice. Then, as I knelt and untied all of her restraints, Gus flew upward and wrapped both of her arms around me. She gurgled into my neck, “Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. I’m so sorry, Shay. I didn’t know—” She gasped and fell limp in my arms.
“Wha—” I looked at Kellan, whose hand was outstretched toward us.
He rolled his eyes. “She would’ve alerted them if she hadn’t shut up. Take her out; get her in the car with Aumae. They’ll watch over her.”
“And how I’m supposed to do that? They can see me now.”
The window flew open behind me, and Kellan smirked. “Fly, Shay. Fly.”
I rolled my eyes, but bundled Gus in my arms and climbed onto the window’s frame. Perched there, I glanced back once and then jumped. I landed, smooth on my feet, and was across to the car in a hurry. The back door flung open, and Aumae held open her arms, a cloak over her and I placed Gus in her arms. As soon as she wrapped them around her, both of them were invisible to the human eye. I looked at Damien who still sat in the front seat. He stared back, unaffected. It was like we had gone to get groceries, and it irked me for some reason. It should’ve meant something to him.
“He’s going to need your help soon,” Damian spoke in a flat voice, watching over my shoulder.
I swallowed a harsh retort and hurried back. Instead of the front door, how we’d gone before, I circled back to Gus’ bedroom window. No light shone out of it, so I sucked in my breath and jumped back up. When I cleared the frame and landed on my feet beside the bed, I saw that Kellan wasn’t there.
In fact, he wasn’t anywhere. I left the room and searched the remaining ones on the floor, but nothing. Then, as I stood at the top of the stairs, Dylan, Leah, and Matt all stood at the bottom, conversing with each other.
“I don’t care what you guys think, something’s going on. Someone’s here.”
Dylan cursed under his breath.
“It can’t be Kellan and Shay, can it? We did the chanty thing and nothing happened. How can we not see them?” Leah’s voice went from excited to confused and ended with disappointment.
Dylan had been watching her as she spoke and then rolled his eyes. “Don’t tell me you’re excited to see the demon? That’s pathetic.”
“It’s not pathetic,” she cried out. “I used to have a relationship with him, and I can’t help that I still…”
Matt shuffled to the side, looking disgusted. “Still? You still have a thing for him?”
“But I want Shay dead. Isn’t that enough?”
Both guys snorted and looked away.
“What?”
“I’m going to check on Gus,” Dylan started to say as he turned to the stairs and then he looked up. His hand had been reaching for the hand rail and then he froze. His hand froze in mid-air as his eyes were locked on mine. “Holy—” As he cursed, he went pale.
I’d forgotten they could see me now. “Hi…”
Dylan threw something at me, and I sidestepped it as it soared over my shoulder and shattered behind me.
“Get down!” he yelled, turning away and throwing an arm over his eyes.
Matt and Leah did the same, but I stood, confused. And then a light exploded in the house, from behind me, and I turned in curiosity. What could produce such blinding light? It didn’t bother me, not at all. My eyes were able to see clearer and I bent to scoop up the broken pieces. It looked like a Christmas ornament, one that sparkled and illuminated. It was beautiful.
“What the…”
I turned, holding the ornament in my hands and saw Dylan’s mouth fell open.
The light started to fade, and he gaped at me, speechless.
“But…you’re…”
Matt growled, grabbing Leah’s hand, “I told you. Your stupid tricks won’t work on them. They’re too strong. Come on!”
He dragged Leah behind him to the back of the house. Dylan remained as I soared down the stairs toward him. He couldn’t seem to move, and he lifted a hand to me, pointing. “What are you? That should’ve—all demons are affected by that. That was some of the Holy Fire. It’s supposed to sear the skin off any demon, but you…you picked it up like it’s a toy.”
I balanced the broken ornament in my hand, rolling it around my opened palm.
“It’s very pretty. White mosaic?”
A gurgle left Dylan’s mouth as he stood, as white as the ornament in my hand.
Then my eyes snapped to his, cold. “What else does your grandmother have up her sleeve?”
Dylan didn’t answer. He turned and fled. Everything shifted in me when he took flight. A burst of pure energy rushed through me, spreading throughout my body from fingertip to my hair follicles, and I lifted off the ground in one movement. Soaring over him, I landed in front, stopping him and staring straight into his eyes.
He gasped, reeling backward. “Your eyes—they’re black, just black…”
“I know.” My voice was different, stronger. It sounded like it was coming from a well, an ancient well that was so deep and water was surging upward at an alarming speed. I didn’t know what it was, why my voice was like this, but I felt connected to every messenger that had died before me. They were with me in that moment.
“Demons don’t look like that. Their eyes are red, brown sometimes when you see their true form.” He kept inching backward.
“Are you trying to run away from me?” I glided after him, moving an inch to his inch. “Do you think you can escape me?”
As I watched him consider his options, run, fight, or surrender, I saw into him. There was a tiny speck of blackness in him. It had a ring of the same reddish brown that he just testified all demons have in their eyes. Dylan didn’t know it, but he was becoming part of a demon or a demon was becoming a part of him.
“What are you?”
I stopped in the kitchen’s doorway as he continued backward, closer to the front door, through the living room now. “What do you think I am?” But that wasn’t what I wanted him to know, so I asked instead, “Did your grandmother prepare you for beings that aren’t fully demonic? What did she teach you? What else do you know?”
Vespar and Gus weren’t full demons. They were only half. At least that’s what I thought, but she doesn’t act like one of them. She’s more or something else? What else could she be? Grandma didn’t teach me this stuff.
His inner voice was panicked, and he still hadn’t decided what to do. Then again, if he chose to fight, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do either. He was dark, and I felt the messenger in me rearing to attack, rip his head off, but another part held me back. The majority of him was still a human, a very sinister and sinful human, but one nonetheless. A protective emotion filled me at the same time.
“Shay, I—” he gasped, interrupted by his own thoughts. Where the hell did Matt and Leah go? Is Kellan here? What about—o
h God. I can’t…
“What are you going to do, Dylan?” I tilted my head to the side and narrowed my eyes. He had become part of the black and white backdrop that I saw through my messenger eyes. The little demonic part of him flared upward, like a small fire that had been given a burst of oxygen. The smoldering red and brown waved together in a furious motion. It wanted to take over more of him, but couldn’t. Not yet.
“What do you mean?” Dylan fought a shudder from coming over him.
“You can’t fight me. You can’t kill me. You don’t even know what I am or what I’m not. What are you going to do?”
He licked his lips in a nervous motion. “I think the question is what are you going to do to me?”
“What do you think I should do?”
The shudder broke over him, making his body tremble before my eyes. “I…I don’t know.”
“What were you going to do to us? To me? If you could, what were you planning?”
“I—it doesn’t matter. I can’t take it back, can I? You’re going to kill me. I can tell. It’s what—” I’d do if I were her.
“Where did your friends go?”
Hope flared in him as an idea came to him. “Leah wanted you dead more than I did. I wanted Kellan, but Leah wanted to hurt you. She asked me if she could be the one to torture you. She wanted you to watch her have sex with him.”
My, my, what a little whore she’s become. I added out loud, “And you were going to let her?”
“No! I wasn’t, I really wasn’t. I wanted her help. I knew that she’d been affected by you guys, too, and that…” Leah’s a fun screw. Why wouldn’t I want her? If Matt hadn’t taken over, things would’ve been fine.
“Let’s be honest. You wanted her with you because you wanted some sex on the side. Didn’t you, Dylan? I can hear your thoughts. I know I’m right.”
His eyes popped out in horror. “What? You can? I don’t—I mean. Holy shit.”
“Matt got in the way? She’s been with him when you were hoping that she’d be with you this whole time? That’s why you planned this, isn’t it?” I saw the wheels in his head turning. Each statement I made was true and with each word, the hope in him shrunk. “You didn’t even really care that Gus killed your entire family, did you? You liked the idea that you were alone, not held back by human morals. Then when Kellan brought them all back, when Kellan and I brought them all back, that’s what really pissed you off. You wanted to be done with them, but you couldn’t, not after all of that. And you wanted us out of the way. You want to be top dog around here, don’t you? You want to be big and bad and Leah will be all yours? Why didn’t you compel her? Use one of those handy magic spells your grandma taught you and make her yours?”
“It didn’t work,” he gasped out, blanching as he heard his words. “She’s too broken from whatever you guys did to her. Her mind can’t be controlled anymore, it’s in pieces.”
“Well, there you go. What were you going to do to Matt? If this had all worked and you’d been rid of the Braden Family, what then? She still would’ve wanted to be with him.”
I was going to kill him.
“How?” I spoke to him in his mind, and he winced from the intrusion.
“I was going to drug him one night and leave his body in the woods.”
I withdrew from his mind and moved backward, watching him in condescension.
“And you think we’re the demons? Before you know it, you’ll be one of us.”
“What?”
“You’re becoming a demon. I see it in you, and it’s thirsty. It wants more of you, and it’s going to make you do horrible things to grow. You planted a bad seed inside of yourself. All your pretty words are only going to hurt you.” Then I smirked. “You might want to watch what you teach others. It can all be used on you, too, now.”
Dylan’s face scrunched together, and he opened his mouth with an angry retort on the tip of his tongue, but a blood-curdling scream shrieked through the air.
“What the—” he cut himself off and sprinted for the basement door. I was right behind him. We braked at the top of the stairs. Matt was pointing a gun at Kellan. Leah stood in the middle while Vespar was straining against his chains. His skin was pale and sweaty, white around his mouth, but his eyes were alert, more focused with the sight of help in front of him.
“Matt, don’t,” Leah pleaded with her hands clenched in tight fists. One was stretched toward Kellan while the other held on to Matt’s arm. “Think about this first.”
“Oh my God. Why do you care?”
“I love him.” The admission was whispered. “I can’t help it. I don’t know why, but I do. Don’t kill him. Don’t shoot him.”
“You’re sick, Leah. You’re just…you’re so sick. How can you love one of them?
You know what they did, what he did to you.”
Dylan was slow as he went down the stairs, both of us watched in silence. The tension was thick in that room between them, so thick I feared the slightest sound would set off Matt, or Kellan, who looked like he was contemplating killing Matt or waiting to see if Leah would be successful.
“I know,” she said, quiet as tears slid down her cheeks. “But I can’t help it. Don’t kill him, Matt. Please.”
“I have to,” Matt choked out. His fingers tightened around the gun.
“Don’t!” Leah yelled.
“Why are we scared of a gun?” I looked at Kellan and saw him hear my question, then shoot me a dark look.
“You were supposed to stay upstairs and distract that idiot. Go back. Make something up.”
“Why are we scared of a gun? Can it hurt you?”
“It can hurt you. Go back! You’re still half human.”
“So are you.”
“I’ll be fine. Get back! Shay, do it.”
I cast a worried glance at Vespar, whose eyes hadn’t moved from Matt. He seemed captivated by the threat from him.
“And Vespar? It can hurt him, too?”
“More him than you. The bullets are dipped in the same saint’s blood that his chains are. It’ll kill him. It might hurt you. Stop wasting my concentration and get out of the room. Take Dylan with you; better yet, just kill him.”
I ignored him, too concerned for Kellan and a little bit for Vespar. As I watched, Leah started to reach for the gun, but Kellan murmured at the same time, “Leah, you still love me?”
She swung her gaze to his with her eyes wide with devotion. “You know I do. I never stopped.”
“Help me then.”
“How?”
“I can’t touch Vespar’s chains, but you can. Unchain him. Let him go.”
“But—” She swung nervous eyes to Matt and then back to Kellan. “He’ll kill me. I hurt him, too. I was a part of this, but I did it for you. I wanted to be with you.”
“Wanted? You don’t want to anymore?”
“No! I do. I really do. But…”
“Unchain him. I promise Vespar won’t hurt you. I’ll protect you. You can come with us then.”
“Don’t listen to him, Leah,” Matt burst out, his hand started to tremble.
“He’s lying to you. He loves Shay. You know that. You saw him with her. He won’t leave her for you.”
At the mention of my name, she sucked in her breath and then pinned Kellan down with her eyes. “What about her? About what he just said.”
Kellan frowned. “Shay is my sister. Of course, I love her. You want me to kill one of my siblings for you?”
“You don’t have a sister-brother thing. I’ve seen you with her. It’s not right. It’s gross. What about her? Do you love her?”
“Of course, I love her. She’s my sister.” As Kellan answered her, he started to move forward, gliding with each word he whispered. “But I could love you, too, in the way you want me to.”
“You don’t now?”
I winced, hearing the pain in her voice, no matter how delusional she was.