Dealing with the demon, p.18
Dealing with the Demon, page 18
‘I’m so sorry, Jen,’ Merindah murmured.
‘Yes, Merindah found herself in a spot of bother after it was discovered that she’d been falsifying her reports and possibly hiding fugitives.’ Mackenzie tsked. ‘I promised to help her out, to Persuade our superiors to drop her suspension and forget why they’d been investigating her in the first place. All she had to do was help me acquire hybrids for our experiments. But then how did she reward me? By running off to save you.’
‘Merindah…’ I wasn’t sure what to say.
‘I did it for them, Jen,’ Merindah said, refusing to look at me. ‘She said they’d be safe if I worked for her.’
My chest felt so hollow it was a wonder it didn’t cave in on itself. Mack had offered Merindah a way out, a way to keep protecting the people she’d refused to kill. And I was just one person. A single life that could be traded in exchange for many more lives. Even if I was—had been—her best friend.
I wasn’t sure I’d have done things any differently in her shoes.
‘I get it, believe me, I so get it,’ I said, linking my hands behind my back, hoping that what I was doing wasn’t showing on my face or in my mind. I think I looked a bit strained—not that this was unexpected, given the situation. ‘But you have to listen to me, Merindah. Mack’s promises are worthless. She said she’d get me my job back if I led her to your sanctuary. You haven’t told her where it is yet, have you?’
Merindah’s eyes slid to Mack, but not for long. They lasered back on me.
‘Merindah, I’m not lying,’ I said.
I was practically screaming at her with my surface thoughts, but she knew as well as I did that I could be feeling something else entirely to the words I was deliberately thinking. Damn it, we’d been friends for years. Didn’t that count for something?
‘Don’t waste your breath,’ Mack told me. ‘Merindah will do exactly what I tell her to. After her unwise decision to assist you, I located and kidnapped her mother.’
‘That’ll do it,’ I muttered.
Mack sighed deeply. ‘It’s a shame you’re much too dangerous to keep alive. Your apparent lack of a second P is interesting; a close study of your powers could have showed us how to remove abilities from others. Oh well.’ She pointed at Merindah, then guided her finger over to me. ‘Kill her. Or I’ll kill your mother.’
And then Mack ran for the Portal that had replaced her bed.
But I was ready for her.
I’d spent the last couple of minutes doing something that I would have thought impossible before Simon had put the idea into my head.
That big honking Portal Mack had made? It wasn’t hers anymore. When I’d focused my attention on it, the Portal had started whispering my name, making me an offer I couldn’t refuse. So I’d reached out to it, thirsty for the power it could give me. And holy shit, did it ever give. Way more than the Portal in my phone ever had.
My veins were practically bulging. I felt…invincible.
I threw out my hand and Mack smacked face-first into the magical wall I’d thrown across the Portal. She glared up at me from the floor, blood leaking out of both her nostrils.
Her face—a mess.
My smugness—amplified.
Something slammed into my chest and I went down hard, wheezing. Merindah had hit me with a ball of Physical, but evidently not a spiked one because I was still alive and (mostly) breathing. Relief washed over me for a second—then I realised I was pinned in place with solid black manacles on my wrists and ankles. My best friend had just turned me into a tasty offering for the resident Hellcreatures.
‘So you can’t kill me yourself, but you can stand by and watch them gut me?’ I demanded of Merindah.
She had the courtesy to flinch.
But she didn’t let up with her powers.
The carpet in the hallway behind her was now being shredded by hungry, hungry Hellhounds. Yeah, I wasn’t in the mood to become mincemeat and I didn’t want Merindah tearing herself up over my death (well, I hoped that would happen—it was the least she could do), so I knew I had to do something. And fast.
I looked wildly around for Mack, to see if I couldn’t give her something of value in return for my life, but she’d already buggered off through another Portal that she’d made in the corner (must have missed that when I’d hit the ground).
What a shock. Not. She’d always been good at looking out for herself. But she’d very thoughtfully given me a second Portal to play with. And it had also started singing my name, promising to add to my already considerable power. There was no way I could turn that down. No way I wanted to. I pulled hard.
My vision briefly went white and I screamed.
A cocoon of Physical, stronger than anything I’d ever seen let alone made, sprang out from my chest and snapped around Merindah. Her arms clamped to her sides, her mouth went wide, and then she toppled over onto the carpet.
Just as I’d hoped, she lost her concentration and, with it, her grip on her powers.
I jumped to my feet, my own hands now free, but I didn’t need to funnel my power through them anymore. I’d never need them again. Not like Merindah. I’d hobbled her. I felt a ridiculous amount of pride when I saw her mouth oscillate and the cords in her neck tighten.
See? I’m more powerful than you! I thought at her.
Her panicked eyes shot to the side, towards the Hellhounds. But I’d already thrown up yet another shield in front of the creatures, a Physical curtain that filled the doorway. I would have laughed with delight at my prowess if I wasn’t in so much pain.
The Hellhounds were invisible to me but the damage they inflicted wasn’t—gashes formed in my construct, shallow at first but deepening by the second. I poured more energy towards that shield, as well as the cocoon keeping Merindah in place. I couldn’t let her escape, not when I’d lost Mack. Merindah might have the information we needed.
And if the Hellhounds got into the room, at least she’d be safe from them for a little while longer. Until they shredded my body and my constructs died along with me, that is.
I clenched my jaw and tried to make yet another shield for myself. But with one already over a Portal and two more keeping living things in place (at least Merindah wasn’t resisting as hard as the damn Hellhounds), I just couldn’t. My head was pounding and my mouth was drier than the Simpson Desert.
I needed backup and I needed it now.
I staggered towards the window. I didn’t give a shit who heard me, neighbours or police, just so long as the demons did. I was still drawing breath to shout for help when the cavalry arrived. If there really had been a Persuasion field covering the property, it had gone with Mack.
Portals roared into existence all over her bedroom, demons leaping out of them and bellowing Persuasion-fuelled commands. The Hellcreatures wasted no time in obeying. They ripped into each other with wild abandon and their black blood spewed into the air, making hypnotising patterns on the shag-pile carpet.
I only stopped staring when my chattering teeth clipped my tongue, grating over the wound I’d bitten into it earlier. The pain snapped me back to reality.
I sat heavily on the windowsill. Then I realised I probably didn’t need the barricade over the Portal, because it wasn’t like Mack was around to use it anymore—and I doubted the demons wanted to jump in and face the unknown dangers at the other end. And we definitely didn’t need that curtain in front of the dead Hellcreatures.
So I tried to shut my shields down.
They refused my request.
I sagged. Well, that wasn’t a huge problem. They would vanish when my power reserves ran out. I’d just have to sit and wait…
But then I looked at Merindah. Her face was ashen.
Oh shit. I’d forgotten to allow air through my cocoon-shaped shield. I had never needed to take this into account before—my constructs had always been weak and porous.
I yanked at my Physical again. Nothing happened. My power reserves, usually a stray thread inside me, were suddenly external and endless, spun into an unbreakable rope by the multiple Portals in the room. There were at least twenty smaller ones now and they kept on forcing more strength into my magic. Why hadn’t the demons shut their Portals down yet? It hurt so freaking much!
Merindah was going to die if I didn’t get that shield down.
‘She can’t breathe!’ I said.
A Physical ball shot across the room, crashing into the construct encasing Merindah. There was only one person who could have done that and he must have climbed in through the window, because he couldn’t survive the trip through a Portal.
Dennis had arrived. Thank God.
Merindah’s cocoon shivered and thinned, but not enough.
‘Do it again!’ I screamed.
Dennis obeyed, grunting with the effort he put behind the Physical projectile he flung towards Merindah. But my shield repelled it completely this time, now a lot wiser—and a hell of a lot angrier. Dennis’ construct ricocheted into the wall, gouging out a hole big enough to reveal the room on the other side. His next ball rebounded right at his head.
Dennis fell to his knees.
‘Merindah!’ I cried. ‘I can’t! I’m sorry!’
My stomach rolled as the world abruptly titled sideways. Someone grabbed my shoulders and started shaking them. I looked blearily up at Dennis, annoyed that he was touching me, but then I saw the gash in his hairline and the crimson blood smeared over his face. He was injured. Because of me.
My hip ached. I distantly realised that I must have fallen onto it. Everything hurt, actually, not just the hip. My whole body was on fire and my head felt like it was about to explode from all the power I was channelling.
Funny. I’d spent my whole childhood so sure I’d had more reserves tucked away somewhere, and here they were. At long last.
And my damn careers advisor wasn’t even there to see it.
‘Jen! Cut it out!’ Dennis shouted.
‘I’m trying!’ I rasped in response.
My shields were growing stronger by the second, drawing more and more energy from the Portals. And I was the conduit, becoming increasingly battered and bruised the longer I was forced to hold on. Blood trickled out of one nostril and onto my lip. It tasted sweet and thick.
‘Jen can’t douse the shields!’ Dennis snapped at the demons.
‘It’s the Portals,’ I heard Simon say somewhere nearby. ‘They’re feeding her Physical and her magic won’t let us close them.’
‘Then stop her! She’d never forgive herself for killing her best friend.’ Dennis had never sounded that angry. Ever. ‘If you cared about her at all, you’d stop her!’
Barely a second later, Simon was kneeling in front of me, hands on both sides of my head. His lips, so close to mine, whispered, ‘Jen, I won’t do this unless you agree to it.’
I didn’t need to ask him what he meant. I just knew.
And I could see no other way out of this.
‘Get inside my head, Simon!’ I hissed.
My scalp itched as Simon poured into my mind, sealing all the cracks that might have let me escape his Persuasion. I was trapped inside the whirling of his blue eyes.
‘Release the Portals and drop the shields,’ Simon ordered. ‘All of them. Do it—do it now!’
It didn’t occur to me to argue, to say that I had no idea how to comply with his command. I simply obeyed him, not to save Merindah or even myself, but because it was him asking. His words were gospel and I knew I had to give him everything he wanted, give it willingly, give it all. He pervaded every thought, for he had conquered the corners of my soul, and had he told me to jump off the Sydney Harbour Bridge, I’d have—
His Persuasion fled my mind.
I didn’t have the strength to turn my head to see if Merindah was safe. All I could do was breathe and swallow.
‘I’m here, Jen, I’m here,’ Simon murmured as I shuddered, utterly spent without the Portals to prop me up.
There was no denying it now.
Portals spoke to me. And I listened.
Whether or not I’d survive travelling through one…I never wanted to be desperate enough to find out.
29
The wide berth the demons were suddenly giving me would have been comical if I wasn’t so freaking tired of being the outsider, ostracised because of something beyond my control. The only demon who remained anywhere near me was Simon. He kept a firm hand on my shoulder, either to reassure me or to remind his people that I was under his protection. Both, probably.
While I’d been catching my breath, Dennis had placed himself between Merindah’s crumpled form and the rest of the room. I was grateful for this, because the outright murderous scowls the demons were shooting in her direction were way worse than the looks I was getting.
‘Why did you stop her, Simon?’ Saul demanded, singling me out with a violent shake of his finger. ‘It was the hybrid’s right, to slay the human who hurt her. She is owed vengeance.’
Wait…what? He couldn’t be arguing with Simon on my behalf. No way.
Simon stared up at Saul with an amount of dignity I couldn’t have mustered in my entire life, let alone five seconds. ‘Jen asked me to stop her with my powers. So I did. It was her right to refuse to take what was owed.’
What the hell are they talking about? I wondered. It was probably yet another demonic law (there were hundreds, apparently). Dot had admitted that they always seemed to favour anyone with demonic blood. Funny that. But the demons would have to get used to new, fairer rules if they wanted human magic-users to work with them instead of skewering them with something sharp and Physical.
‘No!’ Dennis yelled, a machete sprouting to life in his hand.
His Physical had never been the best in the class (at least he hadn’t hidden some secret skill in that for years), but his objects were solid black and could last the standard two to three minutes against my thirty seconds—well, if I restricted myself to my inner power reserves, that is. It occurred to me that I had to stop thinking of my power as weak. Because it wasn’t.
And it was starting to hurt people. People I cared about.
Why did Mum have to fall in love with a demon? Why did I have to end up with this weird freaky version of Portal that even spooked scary demons?
‘No,’ Dennis repeated more firmly, the machete held out in front of him so that it crossed his torso. ‘I can see into your heads. I know what you’re thinking. And you’re not killing Merindah. Not while I’m alive.’
‘Then we’ll be sure to kill you first!’ a demon hooted at him.
‘What are you waiting for? Go on!’ Dennis baited. I saw his eyes glaze over momentarily and he shook his head, confusion giving way to fury. He waved the machete. ‘Nice try, demons! If you Persuade me again, you’ll just give Jen a reason to suffocate you!’
I flinched. So did the demons.
I guess we were all afraid of little old me.
Saul, however, didn’t seem to care what I could do to him, judging by that extra step he took towards me. ‘You wish, human! She knows who she stands with.’
‘She stands with whoever she wants to, thank you very much,’ I muttered.
‘It is good that she is on our side,’ Saul went on, pointedly ignoring me and addressing the rest of the room. ‘She is far too powerful to meet in battle.’
Murmurs of assent followed this. I scowled.
I’d nearly killed my best friend and they were impressed instead of horrified.
Simon helped me to my feet. I tried my best not to cling to him too tightly. My head was pounding and blood was rushing through my ears, making a disconcerting whoosh-whoosh sound as it went. Dennis clearly wasn’t having any more fun than I was; he kept twitching at the slightest inkling of movement from the demons.
‘Stop interfering with the human’s mind,’ Simon commanded his people. ‘I’d rather not waste my power reserves defending him. Mackenzie’s Persuasion field has dropped and if the neighbours call the police—’
Yeah. We did look a bit suss—most of us wearing black, hanging out in a house that definitely didn’t belong to us. And this street was far too fancy and bourgeoisie for unmarked vans.
A siren started screaming on the next street over.
Everyone froze.
But within seconds it started to fade, then rapidly became more distant. The demons relaxed and laughed. Dennis and I didn’t join in. And neither did Simon.
‘We need to get out of here,’ Simon said through clenched teeth. ‘We can talk about this at my place. There’s no time to argue.’
‘But there is time to wonder if bringing a second human back with us will put our lives in danger!’ another demon snarled. She was all dolled up and her jeans had lines of diamantes running down to the cuffs. Demons might wear a lot of black, but they still knew how to complete a look. ‘Kill the human and be done with it.’
‘I’ll kill you first,’ Dennis warned her.
‘No one’s killing anyone, alright?’ I cried and then, I’m ashamed to admit it, I stomped my foot. Okay, time to do something less petulant and more intimating. I threw my hands towards the ceiling and more than a few demons ducked, just as I’d hoped. ‘I screwed up! I let Mack get away and I didn’t get enough out of her. So Merindah’s the one we need to question. She’ll know things.’
‘What did you manage to find out?’ Simon asked me.
I was so sure my voice would fail me now that my anger was ebbing, but it emerged relatively intact. ‘It’s bad. Really bad. It’s good that we came after Mack, because she sure as hell is going to come after us. And she’ll do worse than kill us.’
Us. I really was one of them now, wasn’t I?
‘What’s she planning to do?’ Dot called out.
So I told them. I told them about the experiments. I told them everything. Well, except for the fact that the bar fridge under the dressing table had a stash of powerful injections inside it. That was going to be for Simon’s ears only.
If I’d thought my words would get everyone to settle down, I was so, so wrong. All I managed to do was ignite a wave of fury that would have knocked Merindah off her feet if she’d been standing. What she was doing was rousing, sitting up, and taking us in with venom dripping from her eyes.
