“Where is she?” I asked. Not that I cared.
I did care.
“She’s out,” Damien said. He had a face like a scolded child staring at the floor.
“Just out? So she’s coming back?”
Damien nodded.
“Why, Damien?” I asked. “Why is she coming back? I don’t understand any of this. I thought you said you had taken care of it back in September. That you would break up with her so we could be together.”
“I know.”
“But you lied! How could you lie to me?” My voice was a cobra’s bite, my words laced with venom.
“I’m sorry, Amber.”
“I’m sorry? I’m sorry doesn’t cut it! You didn’t just hurt me, Damien. You wasted my time, you humiliated me and you lied to me. You had me believe you were this totally good guy—that you were different.”
“And I am different, Amber. I swear that I am.”
“Then why did you lie? Give me a good reason for trying to have us both.”
Damien stood perfectly still. I got the impression he maybe thought the slightest of movements would cause him to shatter like a glass statue. But he must have known this day would come, so where was his defense?
“Amber, all I can tell you is that I’m sorry for… all of this,” he said, “I know you won’t forgive me. I know I fucked everything up, but I just want you to know how sorry I am.”
I tried not to let him see it, but my chest felt like it was under a vice-grip. I couldn’t breathe, and my vision was starting to get a little murky. Anger or pain? Both, perhaps. “That isn’t an answer, Damien. Why can’t you just answer the question?”
“Because you won’t accept the answer.”
“Maybe not, but you still need to tell me the truth.”
Damien considered, for a moment, his predicament. I wished, then, that I could read minds. The closest I could get to that was the bitter lick of his aura. Hardly mind reading.
“I... Natalie and I… we’re…”
Engaged.
Married!
Oh God, no… family?
The conveyer belt kicked in to high gear and shot the questions out at me like a machine gun spits bullets. I couldn’t get my brain to shut up!
“We’re bound,” he finally said.
“You’re… wait, what?” I cocked my head and for a moment my guard evaporated. “Bound?”
“In Magick.”
Chapter Twenty Five
Bound in Magick? What the fuck was he talking about? I had never heard of this concept since I learned about my heritage. Nothing in the books Damien had given me, or in the books my mom had left behind in the attic, had introduced me to something like this before. I had heard about binding—the process of Magickally preventing a Witch from doing something—but I was sure this kind of binding was different.
“What… so she’s a Witch?” I asked.
“No. I mean yes, she is, but—”
“Is she or isn’t she?”
“Yes, she is.”
“And how how exactly are you bound? Don’t make me ask questions, Damien. Just take a moment to explain yourself.”
Damien took a deep breath. His muscles relaxed when he noticed my posture change. I was still a Cobra, but the siren song of curiosity was keeping me docile and attentive. For now, at least, I had been charmed by interest.
“Natalie is my charge,” Damien said. “A long time ago I made a promise to protect her. We became a couple because of our closeness, because it was convenient.” Surprise, surprise. “But I was never in love with her.”
“Bullshit,” I said. I may have been spying on him the day I caught him talking with Natalie over the internet, but I never forgot the way he smiled when he saw her. “Start over.”
“Start over?”
“I’m going to ignore that lie and let you try again, but next time I won’t be so easy on you.”
“It wasn’t a lie, Amber. She was my charge; she is my charge. When you and I hooked up I didn’t know how to tell her without sending her away; and I can’t do that. I won’t.”
Frank was right. You shouldn’t shit where you eat, and Damien had made a real mess of things with Natalie. And now with me. Still, my breaths were starting to get short. A strange, dizzying heat was coming and I couldn’t stop it. This feeling was alien to me. The word anger wouldn’t have done it justice.
“Not even for me?” I asked.
“Don’t make me say it,” Damien said.
I was grinding my teeth. The Power had started to come to me, unbidden. The sofa jerked of its own accord, wood grinding on wood, as if it had been yanked across the floor a couple of inches. The noise caught Damien’s attention.
“Say it,” I said, “That’s why I came here, Damien. I need you to tell me that you would do things for her that you wouldn’t do for me.”
“Why is that what you want?”
“Because it will make it easier for me to hate you and move on from this whole fucking thing.”
“Hate me?” Something happened inside of Damien. His aura flared vibrantly before turning pale and dull. Defeat. I knew, before he spoke, what the reason for this sudden shift was.
“You thought… there was still hope,” I said. My voice had gone soft. “You thought, maybe, if you explained, that I might forgive you for keeping the charade up with her. That’s what you told Frank, isn’t it?”
“Frank told you?”
“No, Damien. Mysterious as you might be, I’m a clever girl. I figured it out on my own. Did you think an explanation would be enough?”
Damien didn’t respond.
“Did you think I would just… understand and accept it? That you had some kind of obligation to this girl so you decided to omit the fact that you’d gotten a new girlfriend? What if she would have found out?”
“I don’t know.”
“You know what, Damien?” I said, advancing like the coiled Cobra I was embodying. “I’m going to give you one chance. One question. Answer me truthfully, and if I like the answer, you’re off the hook.”
“Just like that?”
“Maybe not just like that, but it will be a step forward.”
Damien paused and then asked, “What’s your question?”
My heart was racing, my body trembling. I felt like I was on a ledge about to jump. “Did, at any point during our relationship… you sleep with her?”
They had been sleeping together way before I ever came into the picture, and I was only too familiar with the longing that came with a long-distance relationship. Damien and I had been together for a few months, and in those months we had spent many weekends apart. Not for any reason other than we liked space. I never suspected that, on any one of those weekends, he could’ve been sneaking off to see his real girlfriend back in San Francisco. Although, he had gone once or twice to visit old friends…
Ha! I’m such a fucking idiot. Way to give him a ticket, Amber.
When Damien nodded in answer to my question, the specter of a thought forming in my mind took solid form and I lost all semblance of civility. I turned around to look away from him but saw him in the reflection of the window all the same. As I stared at the darkened image, brow furled, pulse pumping against my temples, the glass cracked.
“Amber,” he said.
I snapped around and the force of my rage made manifest slapped him hard across the face for the second time in as many days. Damien soothed his stinging cheek and stared at me. I wanted to hurt him but he was defenseless, so I made for the door instead.
He tried to stop me, but invisible hands grabbed him and pulled him away before he could get close. I opened the door to his apartment and gave him my eyes so that he could see the damage he had done and live with it for the rest of his life. Maybe I should have said something, given him one last shot to the groin, but what was it all for?
I left in silence and without any further magical outburst. My spirit was tired, my body exhausted. I had lost… everything.
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Everything.
I couldn’t understand how someone’s life could change so drastically, and so negatively, in such a short span of time.
In my mind I was already fantasizing about putting Raven’s Glen in the rear-view mirror with Aaron and Frank at my side. The thought of leaving town had never made more sense. All three of us were damaged in some way. We had common ground, and a common reason to get out of town. If Damien was smart he would do the same all on his own. I doubted he would stay now that I was out of the picture anyway.
At least it was done.
Over.
Damien could keep his… whatever the hell she was… and I would be able to get on with my life away from Raven’s Glen. Maybe we could go to San Francisco? Or San Diego? Or, screw it, why not Barcelona? Something about Europe always called to me anyway. The churches, the people… the policies.
The phone ringing in my bag stole my attention away from the European future I was planning in my mind.
The display read Aaron.
“Hello?” I asked.
“Amber!” It was Aaron, and he was groaning.
“Aaron! What’s happening?” I said.
He wasn’t saying anything I could understand. The sounds coming through the other end of the line were… strange. It sounded like he was having a fight with someone! But as the moments passed the noise seemed to transform into something animal and not quite human; similar to what I had heard moments before the professor hung up on me the other day.
“Amber, you have to come!” he said, and I knew; my wards had failed.
Chapter Twenty Six
I dashed breathless down the final two blocks before reaching Aaron’s apartment building. All eyes were on me; the crazy ginger girl running like a woman pursued. And I felt like I was, too. Being pursued that is. A presence was near me and drawing closer, always at the edge of my perception. I wondered if it would catch me if I stopped.
But I wouldn’t stop.
Though I was exhausted and out of breath, I dug deep. Through the door. Up the stairs. Down the hall. Open the door. But my palm sizzled as I touched the door knob and I had to pull away as the pain shook me. The metal was white hot!
“Fuck!” I said.
I closed my palms into fists and allowed the surge of adrenaline to flow through me as I channeled the Power. Then I took a step back, aimed for the weak spot just beneath the lock, and threw my boot into it—focusing a burst of telekinetic power into the heel of my foot and releasing it into the door.
The door swung wide open, splintering in places, but an inhuman growl accompanied the motion of the opening door, as if I had pissed something off. Something that wanted to keep the door closed; something evil and invisible.
“Aaron!” I said, speeding into his apartment as if the building were on fire. The light fixtures were flickering wildly and the curtains were swaying even though the windows had been closed again. I spotted Aaron in the fetal position on the kitchen floor, shaking, trembling, and with a face that was growing redder by the second.
I rushed to his side and took his hand.
“It hurts!” he said. He was clutching his chest as if an alien was going to burst out of it.
My mind started to race. The lights were still going on and off in strobes, but the room was oddly silent and calm. I pushed Aaron onto his back and took his hands from his chest. The veins on his neck were strained and red, and his chest fared no better. My medical knowledge wasn’t fantastic, but it seemed to me like he couldn’t breathe, or he was having a heart attack.
So, with an image of his heart and lungs firmly in my mind, I pressed my hands to his chest, closed my eyes, and visualized a green light emanating from my breast traveling down my arms and into his body. I wanted to calm him, to relax him so that we could speak, and to dislodge whatever was stopping him from breathing. When I opened my eyes, the undersides of my palms were glowing faintly green and Aaron was starting to breathe more easily.
“That’s it,” I said, “Breathe, breathe.”
Aaron heaved in slow, deep breaths, in and out. My Magick was working! But my victory was cut short when a foul odor wafted my way. I shook my head and turned my nose away from the stench of rot and piss, but it was too late. An involuntary gag worked its way up my throat and I almost threw up on Aaron.
I closed my eyes again and imagined three brilliant silver rings descending from the ceiling to encapsulate me and Aaron in their protective light. From out of nowhere, someone grabbed a great clump of my hair and pulled up so hard the motion forced me to my feet.
“Fuck!” I yelled. My concentration broke, and the imaginary rings fizzled into nothing. My scalp felt like it was on fire, and not just because the tug had aggravated a previous hurt. But because I couldn’t see anyone around me, only a quiet apartment with flickering lights.
I was about to stretch my psychic awareness into the Nether when the activity in the apartment came to an abrupt halt. The lights shut off and then returned to normal, the heaviness in the atmosphere lifted, and even the temperature started to slowly rise. I hadn’t noticed until then just how cold it had been in the apartment.
Did all this mean that it had left?
Aaron’s groans sucked my attention in like a black hole. I knelt beside him again and ran my hand across his burning face and through his hair. “I’m here, and it’s gone,” I said, “Just breathe through this. You’re gonna be fine.”
He reached for my hand and grabbed it. “Amber,” he said. His voice was coarse and rough still. “I’m so fucking glad you came.”
“I came as fast as I could. I just want you to feel better now.”
“It won’t stop,” he said, “The pain, it keeps coming.”
“I know. But I won’t let it take you, you understand?”
I had to figure out how to get this thing away from Aaron for good, but Frank had told me that it wouldn’t be easy. Demons had a tendency to stick to people. Getting rid of them often required an Exorcism, or figuring out how they came to be attached to a person in the first place and destroying whatever link they had.
And even then, some of those victims of Demonic possession still needed Exorcisms. I had no idea what kind of power this Inhuman Demonic Spirit had and hoped that severing the link alone would be enough. I hadn’t the first clue on how to perform an Exorcism; having shared a conversation with an Exorcist once in Barcelona was one thing, but performing the rite was a completely different thing.
Luckily, Aaron’s temperature seemed to return to normal, but the pain remained. It was in his chest, shoulders and stomach; but his legs and arms was where he felt it the worst. I had never heard of an invisible entity that could cause so much physical damage to a person.
“Can you stand?” I asked.
Aaron nodded and, slowly, rose to his feet. He used the fridge for support.
“We have to get out of here,” I said. “We have to get this thing away from you and get out of here.”
“And how are we going to accomplish all that?” His voice was forced now and almost guttural.
“I don’t know.”
“So you don’t have a plan.”
“No, I thought the wards would help.”
Aaron would clutch his chest tightly every couple of moments and double over with pain. His body was wracked!
“We need to get you painkillers,” I said.
“I… feel like it’s twisting my insides,” Aaron said.
I couldn’t feel my legs. My brain turned to mush. I had no idea what to do, but I knew who did. I grabbed my phone and dialed Frank’s number.
Aaron went to his knees. “Amber!”
I nearly dropped my phone.
“I can’t!” he said “I need to get out!”
“Out? What? Where will you go?”
Aaron shot upright and headed for the front door.
Frank picked up on his end and asked “How did it go?”
“Aaron, no! You can’t just leave!” I sa
id.
“Amber?” Frank asked.
Aaron opened the door and turned to face me, his piercing blue eyes as alive as ever. “I’m going to finish this. Right now.” His voice was like a lion’s roar, primal. Animal. I stood rooted to the spot, electrified with fear as Aaron turned away and bolted into the corridor. I could hear him bounding down the stairs.
But was it really him? Had the Demon succeeded in possessing him after all? Or was he just being stupid and big headed?
“Amber! What in the fuck is going on?” Frank sounded desperate.
I struggled to process what had just happened. “F-Frank.” I said.
“Where are you? I’m coming to you right now.” He knew something was wrong.
“Aaron’s gone.”
“What do you mean, gone? Where did he go?”
“I don’t know.”
But I did know; Aaron had gone to his death.
Chapter Twenty Seven
I wanted to wait for Frank to arrive, but Aaron had moved so fast. He could’ve been half way to the woods by the time Frank got to Aaron’s place. Every second counted, and time was ticking.
Gods-dammit.
I ran out of the apartment, burst onto the streets, and hailed a cab. Aaron was on foot so I would beat him to wherever he was going in a vehicle, but my car was too far away. I would catch him in a cab. At least, that was the thought. I had no idea how far he had already gotten, but the thought of Aaron alone, in the woods, possibly lost… it burned a sense of urgency into me like a hot brand and I had lost the ability to think.
The cab driver took directions well. I sat, lost in silent thought, in the back seat as the town faded to black behind us and we made the quiet drive into the same road I had driven down with Frank and Damien not a few nights ago.
Aaron.
Damien.
Demons.
Nuptis Profanum.
“Where did you say you were going again?” the cabbie said.
“Huh?” I said.
“There’s nothing out here. What’s a pretty thing like you doing going out into the middle of nowhere?”