Page 231 of The Demon's Spell

Talia brought her knee up into my jaw, and my whole body lurched backward as I was thrown to the ground. I lay flat on my back, staring up at my best friend who wanted nothing more than to kill me.

It was the worst torture of all. Leto knew that we were stronger together, and that the way to break us was to turn us against one another. I knew Talia would never hurt me, but seeing her face above me as she beat on me was horrifying.

I tried breaking the spell by connecting to Leto’s power and siphoning it away from him. The physical beatings made my own power unreachable.

Leto pitted each of us against one another. He forced Miles to slam Chloe’s head into the wall, and he made Charlotte whack Professor Warbright with the broken bed post. Grant pinned Lucas against the wall by his throat, until Lucas’s face turned purple.

I couldn’t move. I was one of Leto’s puppets now. I may be a talented supernatural, but he’d become a demigod, and I wasn’t strong enough to overpower him.

Leto threw his head back, and the room filled with his amused laughter. He was certainly enjoying the show. He flicked his wrists again, and half of us went flying to one side of the room, and half to the other. He pitted Charlotte against Chloe and Miles against Talia.

I was forced to stand in front of Lucas and punch myself in the jaw over and over again. Pain radiated through my knuckles and across my face. Tears welled in Lucas’s eyes, knowing there was nothing he could do to stop it.

Leto circled us, and hunger grew in his eyes. “I warned you not to make an enemy out of me.”

Lucas let out a scream through gritted teeth. “Go. To. Hell.”

Leto laughed in that chilling, animalistic way. “Gladly.”

The ground beneath us started to shake, and Leto begin to grow again. The ceiling groaned as he went from eight feet to twelve. He continued growing until the ceiling gave out completely. Debris rained down on us as he burst through the roof, becoming a giant demon that could squash us with a single step. He had to be twenty feet tall now.

He lifted his arms, and we all levitated in the air. The mansion crumbled to bits. Shards of glass, broken doors, and dismembered furniture swirled around us like a tornado, and we were in the eye of the storm. Leto brought his arms down in one swift motion, and everything went crashing to the ground.

My friends and I lay flat on our backs in the middle of the raging storm. Ghosts hovered above us. Heavy water droplets passed through their ethereal forms and turned to ice that pummeled us.

Lightning flashed, illuminating the demon’s terrifying silhouette. His voice boomed over us. “I’m going to hell, and I’m taking you all with me!”

The most deafening sound came—louder than him, louder than the thunder. It sounded as if the whole earth was breaking in two. The earth rumbled, and I felt the ground snap beneath me. Straining against his spell, I turned my head to see a huge cavern open mere feet from me. A terrifying red glow emitted from the break in the earth. The four-poster bed shuddered across the ground, then toppled into the cavern.

My blood turned ice cold. That red glow was unlike anything I’d seen on Earth before. Leto had opened a passage to hell!

My friends and I were separated. Lucas, Chloe, Charlotte, and I were stuck on one side of the cavern, while the others trembled from twenty yards away.

“You will all be tortured properly in hell,” Leto said. “You will serve me.”

“Never!” I screamed.

Leto bent down and grabbed me by the back of the shirt. He lifted me off the ground. “I see we have a volunteer. How’d you like to go first, little priestess?”

He tossed my body into the air, and I screamed as I flew toward the pit. I thought I heard my friends screaming, too, but I couldn’t be sure. My legs failed, and my hands clawed at the empty air, desperate to catch anything.

By some miracle, my hands clamped around something, and I caught myself before plummeting to the bottom of the pit completely. I gasped as my legs dangled below me, and I realized I’d caught myself on a rock protruding from the side of the pit. Rain poured down around me, soaking me from head to toe and making the rocks slippery. I didn’t think I had the energy left to hold on, but if I didn’t, I’d die. I mustered up all the strength I could and clung on for dear life.

Lucas screamed, and I gazed up into the rain to see a shadow falling. He caught himself on the edge of the pit, dangling several feet above me. I scrambled to find my footing.

“Lucas!” I screamed.

He clung on to the side of the pit and held a hand down toward me. “Climb to me!” he shouted.

My whole body ached. I put every ounce of energy I had into pulling myself up, until something grabbed me from below. I screamed as I was yanked downward, my fingers barely gripping to the rocks.

I looked down to see demons crawling from the red pit. They were unlike Leto—less human-like and more like monsters. They were bipedal, with long limbs and red skin flecked with black spots. They looked more like shadows than solid beings. I couldn’t make out their faces, only the blazing red of their eyes. They let out horrible cries, like they were being tortured themselves. One of them grabbed me and yanked me down, tearing my pant leg.

I slammed my foot into its face, and its head snapped backward. It let out an angry cry and swiped its long, twisted fingers at me. Sharp claws dug into my skin and tore at the flesh. I felt blood spring out of the wound on my leg. With as much force as I could muster, I smashed the heel of my foot into its face again, and the creature went spiraling down in the glowing red pit below us.

Others were coming in fast. I scrambled to grip onto the rocks above me, but my feet slipped against the wet cliff.

“Hang on!” Lucas screamed from above me.

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