Splintered gates, p.30
Splintered Gates, page 30
The all-mouths demon dissolved mid-scream. The sound cut off with a wet pop.
One by one, they unraveled and were pulled back. They were simply erased from this realm.
The ritual pattern buckled and screamed. And then it snapped.
There was a thunderclap of absolute silence, so absolute that the sudden absence of sound made my ears ring.
Then the gateway itself began to move in reverse. It began folding inward and the red light from the demon realm grew dimmer. The oppressive weight gradually lifted. And finally, ordinary night air replaced the toxic atmosphere from the demon realm.
But Lang and I were still inside the circle, and so was the lead demon.
It was diminished now because I’d stripped away half its stolen substance, but it was still massive and still deadly. Its connection to the demon realm was stretched thin by the contracting gateway, but it wasn’t completely severed yet.
It was stuck here with us in our improvised prison of the original summoning circle.
The demon turned toward us, tilting its head. When it spoke, its voice was quieter now, almost conversational. But I could see the calculation in those molten eyes.
“Clever,” it said. “You have trapped us all. But tell me”—it took a step toward Lang—”what happens when I tear out the father-seeker’s throat before the walls finish closing?”
I stepped between them.
The demon smiled. It had too many teeth. “You cannot absorb me forever, morph. Eventually you will burn out. And then I will feast on what remains.”
It was right. My reserves were nearly gone. The conversion process had drained everything I had. If it attacked now…
“Then we’d better make this quick,” I said and didn’t wait for it to move. I lunged first—not at the demon, but at the anchor point behind it, at the last structural node keeping the gateway from complete collapse.
The demon realized too late. It spun, claws reaching.
I grabbed the node. Poured everything I had left into it. Every scrap of converted energy, every ounce of my own essence, everything.
The gateway shrieked and slammed shut.
In that final instant—as the boundary between worlds collapsed—I felt something slip through. Not a demon, not energy. Something smaller. A fragment. A seed.
It nestled into the space my mother's filtration technique had created, the purified channel I'd carved through my own morphic field. It fit perfectly, as if it had been designed to.
The backlash threw me across the circle. I hit the ground hard, tasted blood, saw stars. But I was alive. The gateway was closed.
And deep inside me, in a place I couldn't quite reach, something settled in to wait.
The smaller demons were gone.
The lead demon stood in the center of the scorched circle, cut off from its realm, its power source, its reinforcements. It was still dangerous, still deadly, but it was alone, trapped, and its life was now finite.
Outside the circle, I could hear the Agency forces regrouping and Mercer’s voice cutting through the night. They couldn’t reach us yet, but they were working on it.
Lang looked at me, pale and trembling. Blood ran from his nose. “That wasn’t exactly the plan.”
The demon began to laugh, a hollow, desperate laugh. I recognized the sound of something trying to convince itself it still held the upper hand, but I could see the fear in its eyes.
It was stuck here, with us. And its gateway to get home had just disappeared.
“Welcome to Plan B,” I said, keeping my eyes on the demon as it began to pace.
Somewhere in the distance, I heard Alison calling my name, Marcus shouting about energy readings stabilizing, and Mercer coordinating containment for our new prisoner.
The demon was still dangerous. We weren’t safe yet, but the invasion was over.
Lang’s research had worked—but he’d failed at getting his son. And we’d failed getting Elena.
And I was facing a demon.
So now what?
CHAPTER 28
“Every trap requires bait. The question isn’t whether you’ll catch your prey. It’s whether you’ll be able to get out once the door closes.” —Elizabeth Drexler’s research journal
The demon lunged. There was no warning, no dramatic pause. One second, it was studying us with those molten eyes and the next it was airborne, claws extended, moving with liquid violence that defied its massive size.
Lang barely sidestepped. A sigil ignited midair, a brilliant blue fire that carved itself into existence between his fingers. The ward slammed into the demon’s chest, searing across its obsidian hide and sending it stumbling backward—but only for a moment.
The creature recovered with that grotesque, sinuous grace I was beginning to hate, its form writhing as it circled us like a predator testing cage bars. When it moved, reality seemed to bend slightly around it.
“Still think you can control this?” I asked Lang, keeping my eyes on the demon.
“I never wanted to control it,” he replied, sweat beading on his forehead. “I just wanted my son back.”
The demon’s laughter sounded like a painful shrieking of stone grinding against stone. “The father-seeker speaks of want. Yet he knows nothing of true desire. Nothing of the hunger that drives the spaces between.”
I flanked wide, trying to gather residual energy from the fractured ritual.
The morph ability within me buzzed with chaotic power. I reached for disruption patterns my father had trained me on years ago—endless hours in his basement workshop, him pushing me past exhaustion because "dead morphs don't get second chances." I'd resented those sessions then. Now I understood: he'd been preparing me for exactly this moment.
The energies were toxic, but my father had me study filtration methods specifically for morphs. I could feel the technique engaging, my morphic field acting as a sieve. His voice echoed in my memory: Separate before you absorb. Control before you convert. Survive before you succeed. Lang had spent nine years trying to tear reality apart to reach his son. My father had spent twenty years teaching me to put myself back together. Different kinds of love. Different kinds of sacrifice.
Lang shouted something in a language designed to hurt human throats. The demon paused—not from obedience, but surprise. That gave Lang time to carve a ward into the ground, a spiraling pattern of containment runes that flared silver.
It still wasn’t enough.
The creature’s form flickered, becoming partially translucent—not weakening, but becoming less solid and harder to pin down.
I opened my morph ability wide and pulled in everything I could reach: residual energy from Lang’s failing wards, wisps of power from the closing gateway, even the ambient magical field. But I used my mother’s filtration technique, separating the predatory realm corruption from the raw power. The filtered energy converted cleanly.
I channeled it through my palm in a focused blast. The stream caught the demon mid-lunge, slamming into its chest. It recoiled, something like pain flickering across its features.
The demon recovered faster than it should have. “The changeling thinks to wound us with our own power. But you understand nothing of what you channel.”
And then I felt it. A trickle of power. Not from the demon and not from the failing ritual but from beyond the gateway.
The boundary walkers. The three who had been sacrificed, who I’d thought were lost forever, weren’t entirely gone. Their essence had been pulled into the demon realm, but somehow they were still connected to our reality through threads of power.
“No,” I said aloud, understanding what they were offering. “Don’t—”
But they didn’t stop. The energy surged into me, carrying more than just power. Each thread brought fragments of memory, echoes of personality, the last whispers of lives sacrificed for Lang’s desperate bargain.
I engaged the filtration technique immediately. My mother’s methods worked and the morphic field separated the boundary walkers’ essence from the predatory corruption, preserving what remained of their identities while converting their power.
The demon roared and lashed out at Lang, catching him with a glancing blow that sent him sprawling. I turned back just in time to intercept the follow-up attack, throwing up a barrier of converted energy that deflected the creature’s claws.
But even with their help, I could feel the balance shifting. The demon was too powerful.
“Your friends die for nothing, changeling,” it said, advancing as Lang struggled to get back to his feet. “Their sacrifice buys you moments. I am eternal.”
“Maybe with the gateway open. But not here. Not now.”
“You didn’t think I’d let you do this alone, did you?”
Nadia’s voice cut through. I turned to see her emerging through the shimmering barrier at the circle’s edge, her threadweaving abilities allowing her to pierce the containment field. Magic laced around her hands, and behind her, the air rippled with the cost of forcing her magic through barriers.
She was bleeding from her nose, her violet eyes showing strain, but she was here.
“Nadia. How did you—”
“Questions later. Survival now.”
A moment later, Matthew shimmered into existence, his boundary walker nature allowing him to slip through. His face was streaked with tears, but his expression was set with grim determination.
“They’re gone,” he said simply, referring to the sacrificed boundary walkers. “I won’t let it be wasted.”
Even Lang pulled himself upright, blood streaming from his nose but his eyes still burning with fury. “Whatever you plan, you will likely only have one chance.”
Four of us now. Four different kinds of magic.
“Together,” Nadia said, her hands beginning to glow with violet light.
“Together,” Matthew agreed.
I nodded, gathering the last of the boundary walkers’ gift, still maintaining my mother’s filtration technique. “On three. One—”
The demon struck before I could finish, but this time, we were ready.
Almost.
The creature's first strike was aimed at Nadia—it had identified her threads as the binding threat and moved to eliminate her first. I saw the attack coming but couldn't move fast enough.
Matthew could.
The boundary walker threw himself between Nadia and the demon's claws, moving with speed that seemed impossible for someone who looked so human. The impact sent him spinning, silver blood spraying from wounds that would have killed a mortal instantly. He hit the ground hard but was already rolling, already rising.
"Matthew!" Nadia's voice cracked.
"I've survived worse." He staggered but stayed upright, one arm hanging at an angle that made my stomach turn. "Millennia of avoiding death doesn't mean I've forgotten how to fight. Now—bind it while it's focused on me!"
Nadia's threads wrapped around the creature's limbs like silver chains, her face pale but her hands steady. Matthew, bleeding silver from a dozen wounds, called forth the spirits of boundary walkers long dead, their essence forming a cage around the demon.
Lang added his own power, his ward-work reinforcing our combined assault.
And I pulled everything together, running it all through my mother’s filtration technique before channeling it into a massive containment field.
For a moment, it looked like it might work.
Then the demon roared and broke free, exploding outward with enough force to send us all sprawling. It surged toward center of the circle where the power was the strongest with desperate speed. If it reached it, could it reopen the gateway?
I didn’t want to chance it.
“It’s too strong!” Matthew shouted.
The demon was almost at the threshold now, claws reaching for the tear between worlds.
And pulled it open again.
Then I felt it—a surge of power unlike anything I’d experienced before. Not demonic energy, not human magic, but something that bridged both worlds. It flowed through the gateway, carrying a signature I recognized from Nadia’s threads. It carried a familiar resonance, the same pattern of power I knew but transformed by years in the demon realm.
Nadia gasped, her violet eyes widening. “Elena,” she whispered. “That’s Elena’s power.”
Her words came out broken and her whole body went rigid, her threads flaring bright as she reached toward the gateway. “Elena. Elena, I’m here. I’m right here.”
But it wasn’t just power flowing through. There was communication woven into the energy threads: intent, purpose, and unmistakable choice.
“She’s holding the door,” Nadia said, her voice breaking. “From the other side. She’s—James is there. She found him. She’s pushing him through, but someone has to hold the gateway closed or the demons on her side will follow James.
“No,” Nadia whispered, her threads showing her the full picture. “Elena, no. There has to be another way—”
But Elena had already decided. The energy signature became more focused, more deliberate. The gateway because something else, though I wasn’t exactly sure what it was, only that I could feel her use hep power in some way.
Not just using it. She was pushing.
“She’s staying,” Matthew said softly. “She’s sending the boy through and staying behind to hold the door closed.”
“Elena!” Nadia’s scream tore through the clearing. Her violet eyes blazed as her threads strained toward the closing gateway, stretching across dimensional space to touch her sister one last time. “Five years! I spent five years trying to find you! You can’t… you can’t do this… please…”
I watched Nadia’s face as understanding crystallized. Five years of desperate hope shattered and re-formed into something else. Her sister wasn’t lost anymore. Her sister was choosing. And that choice was killing Nadia even as it saved the rest of us.
Through the connection, I felt Elena’s response. It wasn’t words, but pure emotion transmitted through power. Love. Determination. And something like peace.
“She knows what she’s doing,” I said quietly. “She’s chosen this.”
“She’s my little sister,” Nadia choked out. “I was supposed to protect her. I was supposed to bring her home.”
“She is home,” Matthew said gently. “This is her way of coming home. Through you. Through what she’s giving you.”
Nadia’s hands were shaking, but she didn’t stop reaching for her sister’s threads. “I can feel her. She’s... she’s not afraid. Why isn’t she afraid?”
“Because she found what she was looking for,” I said. “She found James. She’s finishing what she started.”
The energy Elena channeled slammed into the demon, driving it back from the gateway’s edge. But more than that, it began to reverse the portal’s expansion, forcing the tear to contract faster. From the other side, Elena was pulling the gateway closed, weaving herself into the seal, becoming part of the boundary between worlds.
Working together—the four of us on this side, Elena sacrificing everything from beyond—we began to force the demon back. Our combined power created a feedback loop the creature couldn’t escape.
The demon fought desperately, its roars echoing as it realized what was happening. But it was too late. With a final, ear-splitting shriek, the demon was pulled back through the portal.
The gateway was contracting rapidly now. And just before it sealed completely and for a final time, I saw a figure stumble through: young, emaciated, but unmistakably human. James Lang, pushed through the closing portal by hands we couldn’t see.
In the same moment, I saw Lang.
He was running toward the gateway. Not away from it, but toward it. His gaze was fixed on his son, but his trajectory would take him past James, through the shrinking tear and into the demon realm beyond.
“Lang!” I shouted. “What are you—”
“She can’t hold it alone,” he called back, his voice cracking. “Elena needs help anchoring the seal from inside. Someone has to stay with her.”
“That’s not—”
But he was already past James, already at the threshold. He turned back for just a moment, his eyes meeting mine. There was no madness in them now. No desperation. Just the terrible clarity of a man who finally understood the full weight of what he’d done.
“Tell James I’m sorry,” he said. “Tell him I love him. Tell him it was worth it.”
Then he stepped through.
I saw Elena’s threads wrap around him on the other side—not attacking, but welcoming. Two people who had destroyed each other’s lives, now working together to close the door between worlds. Lang’s power joined hers, reinforcing the seal, and I felt the gateway’s collapse accelerate.
“Tell her—” Nadia’s voice broke completely. She was on her knees now, hands pressed to the ground where the gateway had been, as if she could still feel her sister’s presence. “Tell Elena I love her. Tell her I understand. Tell her I’ll find a way to—”
But the gateway was gone. The threads that connected Nadia to Elena—threads that had stretched across five years and two realms—didn’t sever. They simply... reached. Extended into somewhere I couldn’t perceive, attenuated but not broken.
“She’s still there,” Nadia breathed, wonder mixing with grief. “The thread didn’t end. It went somewhere. She’s still there.”
The last thing I felt through the gateway was Elena’s response: not regret, but love. She’d made her choice. She’d saved James Lang. She’d closed the door on the demon realm. And she’d given her sister the closure of knowing it was her own decision.
And Lang had gone with her. The man who’d started all of this, who’d sacrificed boundary walkers and nearly destroyed reality… In the end, he’d sacrificed himself to help fix what he’d broken.
Silence fell over the clearing.
I looked around, taking inventory. The portal was sealed. The demon was gone. Nadia, Matthew, and I were all still breathing.
Nadia was still on her knees, one hand pressed to her heart, the other reaching toward what had been the gateway. Her violet eyes were distant, focused on something none of us could see.
