Page 113 of Death Wish

Cole took out a pocket knife from his jeans and sliced open his palm. Not even a flicker of pain showed on his face as he let the blood flow into his selected bowl.

God, I hoped this worked for them both. Maybe Monnie had been wrong about the whole “the blood must be from the originally cursed” or the full-blooded demon that had helped conceive the baby. Maybe we’d be lucky again and any cursed demon blood would do.

Wouldn’t that be a miracle?

Working quickly, Cole used his uninjured hand to create a spark of flame between his fingers, just big enough to light a cigarette. He tossed it into both concoctions.

Kay’s popped and a small burst of red light emitted, then rapidly turned blue before extinguishing altogether. Cole’s bowl crackled, too, but when the light appeared, it stayed red before snuffing out.

Lastly, Sean added a vial of Holy Water to each.

When everything was mixed together, he handed Kay her bowl first. She took it in both hands, said the ancient words she was supposed to, and gulped down a few mouthfuls of the liquid. She gagged a little at the end but managed to keep it all down.

Cole didn’t wait to see Kay’s reaction before taking his own bowl, repeating the words, and drinking the mixture. He wiped his mouth clean with the back of his hand when it was empty.

For a moment, nothing happened. We stood there, waiting for something to let us know it had or hadn’t worked. But we just exchanged worried looks.

Then, Cole drew in a deep breath, but it came back out as a sputtering cough. “Is your throat burning?” he asked Kay. “Mine’s burning. Ugh, and my stomach.”

I took a few steps toward him as he bent over and started hacking.

“N-No,” Kay said nervously, touching her neck. “I feel fine.”

“It’s the Holy Water,” Cole managed to get out between coughs. “It has to be. Whose idea was it to have a part demon drink the stuff.”

“That’s what the cure said,” I told him.

“Technically, Kay has a half-demon inside her, too. So, if it was the Holy Water, wouldn’t it be affecting her, too?”

“But you feel fine, Kay?” Laurence asked her, never wandering from her side.

She nodded. “I don’t feel anything besides a lot of movement from the baby.”

Laurence’s eyes widened. “But you’re only a week or so along.”

“The gestation of a half-demon is much shorter than a normal human gestation. In most cases, it only takes three months,” Sean said.

“Wow,” was all Laurence said, but his expression showed all his fear.

“So, we need this cure to do its thing and work,” I said and glanced over at Cole who was still coughing so hard his face was turning red. Turning to Sean, I asked, “Any idea why Cole’s acting this way?”

He shrugged. “There are other rituals I’ve read about where ingesting the mixture is needed for the spell to work, and in those cases, any ill effects, especially throwing up, is not a good sign.”

At the moment, the sound of Cole heaving came, along with a spew of vomit.

“There’s our answer,” said Sean, looking at Cole. “It didn’t work for you.”

Cole grumbled and wiped his mouth again. “Tastes even worse coming back up.” He flicked his wrist, and a small flame appeared. He snapped his fingers to extinguish it just as fast. “Well, looks like I’m still me. Still part demon.”

“I told you using your blood might not work,” I told him.

“Well, my blood is all I have. Xaver wasn’t my maker. I don’t know what demon was.”

“You don’t?”

“Do you think I would have let that bastard live another day, knowing what he did to me and my mother? To me, he murdered her.”

True. Cole wasn’t exactly the forgiving type. Especially when it came to demons. Like everyone else impregnated by a demon, there was no way Cole’s mother survived the birth of her half-demon son. He would want revenge.

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