“We have several male helpers who live here. And most of the time, we have fifteen men who are well trained Guards.”
He scratched his head. “Well, we’re here for the time being. We’ll make sure you’re safe, too.”
I didn’t know these men. They’d come recommended by someone my Sister Superior trusted, which meant that I inherently believed that wouldn’t harm me. Maybe I shouldn’t have felt that way considering my last Sister Superior cursed me. But Anne made me believe in divinity again, in purpose. She was real.
My cheeks grew hot. Earlier, I’d thought his accent interesting. Now he sounded downright sexy. His voice was low and lacked the genteel melodies of the Guards who were the only men I usually spoke to. They’d all had their accents trained out of them when they came to the Sisterhood in the South. The starts and stops of his voice, the way not everything was enunciated perfectly—he sounded real.
I internally shook my head. What did that even matter? He was here to do a job, not be fantasized about by a Sister who was suddenly interested in sex after years of finding the very idea of it abhorrent.
A crack of thunder boomed, and I jumped. Neil reached out to grab my arm. “Don’t be afraid. It’s just a nasty night. It’ll blow through fast.”
“It won’t.” I’d read the warning sky correctly. This was going to last for days. “Hold on a second.” I didn’t want him to get wet traveling the distance back to the guesthouse. We had an umbrella in the storage closet. I grabbed it before returning to the kitchen. Krystal was still looking at her plate, which had left Neil standing there in silence. That was bad manners, even for a Sister. What was the matter with her? She used to be chatty.
I offered Neil the umbrella.
“No thanks, Mika. Ah, I mean Sister.”
“Mika is fine. We don’t hold to formality here. Part of leaving the place we used to live was trying to start anew. I know people get hung up on the Sister part, but I’m fine with Mika.” I’d never said that before. I didn’t realize I meant it until I spoke the words.
“All right, Mika then. I can’t accept your umbrella. If I take it with me, and you need to go out, you’ll get wet.”
This was like a math problem they’d given us in early schooling. I knew how to solve this problem. “Come with me. I’ll walk you over with the umbrella and then walk myself back.”
“I can’t have you walking back out there alone. It’s storming.”
I stiffened my back. “I fight demons and things that crawl through the dark. A little weather is not something I need to concern myself with. Come on.”
I was lying, of course. Demons scared me a great deal less than thunder and lightning. I had never been able to make sense of it, but fear was a nonsensical thing. He ran after me, catching my arm. “At least let me carry the umbrella while we walk together.”
Since he was taller, I supposed that made sense. Neil smelled clean, as though he’d recently washed up with soap, and I liked the scent for the few seconds I could before the musk of the rain soaked world overpowered me.
Neil held the umbrella over both our heads, tugging my shirt a little to draw me closer to him. We were both still getting a little wet. He shouted above the pounding rain, “I should never have agreed to this. You have no business being out here. A little water doesn’t cause me any trouble. Why did I say yes?”
“I didn’t really give you a choice.” That was how I dealt with people. It was easier to get what I wanted done rather than spend a lot of time obsessing and questioning it. “What did you mean you don’t have experience with demons?”
Everyone did. It was the world we lived in… the end of days. We’d been taught there wasn’t a family alive who hadn’t lost someone to possession. The nobility hid their possessed relatives better, while the poor suffered in greater numbers publicly.
“We’re from a little island no one around here has ever heard of. It’s off the Western Coast, called Peter’s Isle. We don’t have demons there.”
Now, that was just not possible. “Can’t be.”
He shouted to be heard, but after a few seconds it was like I could only hear him, as though all other sound stopped. “I know it sounds like I’m making it up. But I’m not. We’re a small but steady population of people. Craftsmen. Carpenters. Plumbers. Farmers. Just about everything you really need to survive. And we don’t have demons. We’re very protective of the place. It’s hard to get to. My mother used to say we didn’t have demons because of this giant oak tree in the center of the square in the main part of town. That somehow the oak protected us. Now, I know that’s ridiculous, and I can’t really explain it. But there it is. No demons. No possessions. Three times a year we go onto the mainland and sell our wares. There is a shuttle that goes back and forth daily so if there are small things that have to get done, they can get done. People never try to come who aren’t already there. I know it doesn’t make sense, but it is real. We’re not the only ones either, we know of three other places that are demon-free. They just are. Little enclaves, I guess.”
I listened to him speak as though he’d just informed me the planet was flat and gravity didn’t exist. I knew better than to believe this, yet I was also absolutely sure he was being honest. Above our heads, in the storm, the ravens cawed. I gritted my teeth. They needed to go find Guards. I couldn’t understand them, and cawing at me was useless. The spirits danced around—Neil would not be able to see them—and yet they said nothing, always watching me and never telling me what I was supposed to be doing.
I stopped moving. We were under the awning of the guesthouse. Neil lowered the umbrella. “Neil.” I had to know the answer to a very simple question. It seemed the most important thing in the world for me to find out. “Why are you here then? If you had this beautiful place with none of the filth, none of the evil, none of the things that are destroying us all day by day, what are you doing here?”
I couldn’t believe how easily the words flowed off my tongue. It was nighttime. I didn’t know him, and it was raining. Somehow, I was still able to talk to this man despite all of those factors that should have made it impossible.
“The five of us have always known each other. It would have been impossible not to; the island isn’t that big. We all went to school together. We just all felt one day that it was time to see the world. See what else there was. Meet people.” He cocked his head to the side, looking at the sky for a second then back to me. “My mother called it wanderlust. I don’t know how else to explain. We just had to leave. We’ll go home, eventually. I know we will. For now, we’ve been able to help a lot of people who just don’t have the skills we do.”
That was lovely. I hoped they didn’t live to regret that decision. If I had somewhere safe to stay, I’d never have left it. I’d been born to battle, even chosen it—or so Teagan, Daniella, and Anne told me. “Goodnight.”
He handed me the umbrella. “I’m going to stand here and watch you walk back.”
They really raised men to be kind on his Peter’s Isle. If there were no demons there, then I would never see it. Still, I liked thinking such a place existed.
2
I woke up in the middle of the night. My powers were on, riding me hard. It was as though my body was on fire. Power surges at night had been a problem for me when I was a teenager. Now they could only mean one thing: demon. Bob never activated my power, which was odd. Teagan said it hadn’t alarmed hers until she’d been practically right on top of it. Something had significantly changed if I was feeling the demon now.
That meant this was something else. I was in my pajamas, long cotton pants and a long sleeve shirt since I’d fully expected—and was right—that the fire would burn out in my room overnight and I would be freezing in the morning. The room was cold as ice. That might also have indicated the demon’s actions. I slipped shoes on and ran down the stairs toward Krystal’s rooms. Surely, she felt it, too. We could work through this together. We didn’t have Guards, but we had each other.
> Krystal had been sound asleep in her bed but sat up straight as I burst through the door. I stared at her. Where were her powers? Why weren’t they on?
I saw the second it registered on her face that my power was on full blast. I shook my head. “How?”
“I don’t have powers. I haven’t since Teagan pulled us back from that place. I’m truly useless.”
What? She was telling me this now? “Why didn’t you say anything?”
“I thought perhaps you were having the same problem, and I kept hoping they would come back.”
I clenched my fists. Obviously, I wasn’t. Now it looked like I had to handle this alone. Rain still assaulted our old, broken home. Whatever was happening, I would be soaked by the time I finished. Ignoring the evil wasn’t an option. The thing about a Sister, once our powers activated, there was no resisting the need to use them. They rode me until I used them.
I didn’t bother with the umbrella or something to cover my head. My years in the hood had made me practically allergic to having anything on my head. The rain struck me. It was cold, violent, and unforgiving—as were most things in life.
I saw the demon in the distance. He was at our gate, shaking at the door. It wasn’t like demons had to ask to come in, so I wasn’t sure what it was doing exactly. It also lit up the night in a red glow that must have been visible for great distances.
Alexander, the boy who rang our bell to alert us when people needed help, rushed out to me. “Ma’am?”
He’d been in my class the last few weeks. With everyone else coming and going so much, I was the only teacher remaining. He was a sweet boy. “You need to go far back from here. Far, far back. Okay? Stay away from this. You can’t help me.”
I didn’t have to tell him that. He’d come to live with us after being possessed. Teagan had saved him. She was amazing like that.
The closer I came, the more I realized how completely outclassed I was.
“Mika.” Krystal’s shout behind me caught my attention. For one second, I hoped beyond hope that she might have suddenly had a power surge, but she remained un-lit. “You can’t do this. You don’t have Guards or any help.”
As though I needed the reminder?
“I have no choice. This thing has presented itself, and it’s mine to deal with.”
Above my head, three ravens cawed and the spirits danced. I raised my head to look at them. “A lot of help you were in this. When I die, I expect you to take me back in your arms and explain to me what I did so karmically wrong to deserve to be so utterly without help in this moment.” I glanced over my shoulder at Krystal. “Stay back. If you’re powerless, you’re as much at risk as Alexander. Stay with him. If it gets past me”—when it gets past me—“you’ll need to run, fast. Get all the babysitters with the kids, the help who work for us, and don’t forget the guys in the guesthouse. All of you will need to flee.”
She shook her head. “You can do this.”
Both she and I knew I likely could not. Alexander ran to Krystal.
“Mika?” Neil’s voice called to me, and I turned to see him running toward me with his four other friends. The five of them should have stayed on their isle.
I didn’t have time to waste. Soon, that thing at the gate was going to realize he could come right in. “Please stay back. I’m going to have to take care of this thing. If I can’t, you’ll all need to escape via the back gate. In fact, go now.”
The tallest of them—Gordon—he shook his head. “No, we can help you. What do you need?”
“For you to stay back and not get hurt. Only Sisters can handle demons. Lesser demons can sometimes be struck down by Guards, but there’s nothing lesser about this.” Under the red glow of the demon on his face, Neil’s expression fell. It almost made me wish I could give him something to do.
None of them moved. I almost hollered to the ends of the earth for all of them just to run and hide. Instead, I decided that with the exception of Alexander, who had listened to me, they were all adults. If they didn’t want to be sensible, there was nothing I could do about it at all.
I had a task to do and a gift to use.
The demon was huge. It took me half a second to realize that I stared at an Original. When I thought it was just powerful, I’d been worried, but utter dread filled me now. I’d never been rated above a level two in terms of demon fighting. No one would have ever sent me out here to deal with this thing.
Yet, here I was. I looked up at the sky again. “Clearly, something has gone wrong. You must have meant to send this thing to Anne or Teagan or Daniella. But seeing as they are not here, you are stuck with me. So, I want stories told about how brave I am. Do you hear me? I want epic Sister Mika tales to swarm through the world.”
Having made that declaration to the universe, I returned my attention to the demon. “Why are you here foul creature?” I spoke to it in the old tongue. The language sounded like gibberish to most people, but on a Sister’s tongue it came naturally. “Why would you come and bang on my gate tonight? Ready to die?”
“Why, Sister Mika, we heard you were lost to the darkness that is your own mind. There is nothing quite so scary as what we think ourselves.” He pointed at the house. “I want to be where he is. How am I being kept outside?”
I had no idea, but I wasn’t going to tell that to this eight-foot demon trying to take down the gate. I also hated—detested, loathed—when the demons knew my name. I was hardly that important of a Sister that the demons should have been talking about me. But they always seemed to know us and that was a special kind of disconcerting.
He wanted to get into where Bob the demon was. Why? Not that I planned to ask him. I raised my hand toward him, my power flaring inside of me, dying to be let out.
“There, and there,” I heard Neil behind me saying, but I couldn’t focus on what that was right now because if I took my eyes off the Original, it would kill me. Out of the corner of my vision I saw two people moving to the sides of the gate. What were they doing?
Boards were being moved. Why? I didn’t know. I had to answer the Original demon and think of something significant to say to get him to go away. “Haven’t you heard what happens to demons who bother us these days? They end up destroyed. Even you Originals. Feel like being killed tonight?” I raised my hand higher.
“I am not as easily bested as my brothers, particularly by a little girl.” The demon sneered.
The way he said girl infuriated me. It was a better emotion than fear. I hated this thing in front of me. The demons had destroyed our world, possessed our people, and left most with a helpless and hopeless existence. I wouldn’t be either tonight.
I shot my power through my fingertips, hitting him so hard he flew backward a step. He quickly rushed toward me, slamming against the gate. I didn’t understand why he was so solid when he should have been able to get through it by simply dissolving. Although, I didn’t know everything about demons. This was why I needed to not be left alone for days on end as the only working Sister.
The gate didn’t budge. A drilling sound came from my left. Gordon and Lennon were reinforcing the gate. That was incredibly nice of them, considering the risk. If I lived through this, I’d thank them.
I shot my powers at the demon again, and this time his energy sucked me forward. Both of us disintegrated into nothingness, cells, energy, drops of power. This was why Originals were so difficult to take care of. Other demons could be sent back to where they belonged. But the Originals could become pure energy. Only the same would undo them.
We floated through time and space, and I saw universes unfold around me as we wrestled for survival. There were no beginnings, no ends. And only power—those who had it, those who wanted it, those who would destroy universes for a chance to possess it. And beneath my house was…
I slammed back into my body. The Original melted into nothingness. His red glow disappearing while I watched it happen, shock rendering me mute. I stumbled backward. Strong arms stopped me from hitting the
ground.
Ren, the one who had made the comment about the horns, spoke to me. “I’ve got you.” His original comment must have imprinted on my brain. Where had he come from, and what had the others been doing with the gate? I had so many questions to ask, but instead, I fainted in his arms.
Fading to blackness was unfortunately part of our lives as Sisters, whether we liked it or not.
I woke up cold, shivering under my blanket. It took me a moment to realize I was in the guesthouse, the third bedroom to the left down the hall from the kitchen. I knew it well. I’d cleaned it to get it ready for the contractors. I’d even put pictures on the walls that I’d bought from a local shopkeeper so it looked homier.
“Easy.” The last person I’d seen had been Ren, but now Wayne was there. How long had I been out? “I think you might be in a little bit of shock.”
I shook my head and forced myself to sit up. “No, that’s the demon. It’s a freezing cold creature. So c-c-cold that it burns with heat. I know that doesn’t make sense.”
“Doesn’t have to, to me.” He picked a bowl off the table next to the bed. “You’re up right around the time that other woman said you would be.”
The other woman? “Krystal. Yes. She’s a Sister.”
“Not like you are.” He spooned some liquid toward my mouth, and although I should have been humiliated—he was a relative stranger—I let him feed me like a baby. “That was the bravest thing I’ve ever seen. I’m not sure I understood it, but you battled for the world and won. I’m honored that I witnessed it.”
That was… not something anyone had ever said to me before. My own Guards had complained about having to drag me around half dead to get me home. They’d certainly never seemed impressed with my abilities.