Page 103 of Tales of a Deadly Devotion
The manifestation of malice. A sharp elongated face in that strange smoke, mouth drawn open in an eternal scream. Limbs too long and sharp. Its eyes nothing but dark pits. What remained of him. The man who had hurt my mother – and my magic remembered.
Because it was my father’s first.
‘How the fuck are we getting out of this one, brother?’ Gideon snapped, sweat beginning to bead his brow. The dust clinging to it as if his summoning was draining him too quickly. ‘You’d better think fast because my protection charms arenotmy greatest asset.’
Emrys’s pale summoning flame crackled, the cold of it making our panted breath cloud, his eyes glowing with it. It wove between his fingers and up his arms. The darkness in the hallway seemed to rush for him.
‘Now,’ Emrys commanded in a voice so dark it wasn’t his own.
Gideon dropped his summoning. The malice screamed but Emrys’s demon fire was waiting. It roared past us, brushing my exposed skin in an icy caress as it cut through the deadly mist of the manifestation.
A boom shook the house on contact like a crack of thunder. The demon screamed, convulsing and twisting in on itself. All claws as it gouged chunks out of the wood that surrounded it. Throwing itself against the walls, shattering wood and plaster.
Floorboards jumped beneath my boots, sending me sidewards against the panelling.
A pounding came against the walls around us in response. Screaming things hiding in there. I moved to wrench myself away before a skeletal hand punched through the plaster. Sharp small fingers curling around my wrist to drag me back.
‘Bastard,’ I hissed, tugging my arm, but it wouldn’t come free, boots slipping on the floorboards. I heated my blade, swinging it downwards to cleave through the bone, rendering the bony fingers wrapped around my wrist to ash.
Cracks formed in the wall, more of those davror trying to break free. I stumbled back towards Emrys and Gideon.
Only then the floor stopped shaking, the beams above us sagged ever so slightly. The whole house seeming to droop. How still and lifeless it was in an instant. The magic gone.
‘The house is—’ But I didn’t finish, pressing my fingers to the panelling next to me. There was nothing.
It was dead.
The manifestation screamed again, throwing itself against the hallway, clawing and snapping its cursed jaws. Twisting into smoke once more. Although, instead of coming towards us, it seeped into the cracks it had made. Vanishing between them. Then there was the retreating scuttle of those cursed bones. Their thrilled little demonic laughter as they left.
‘I don’t like this,’ Gideon whispered, turning in a circle, his aether crackling in his palms. ‘Where the fuck—’
‘Kat!’ Emrys barked the same moment the floor erupted between us. The cursed bones screeching as they shot like daggers through the air. I moved but not fast enough. One slammed into my shoulder. The leathers not letting it penetrate but the force sent me tumbling back, hitting the floor. My blade slipped from my grip as my back made painful contact with the ground.
A flare of Emrys’s demon fire filled the hallway. Then as if a great wind had blown through, everything was pulled back towards him. The davror screaming until they rattled and dropped to the floor. Lifeless like discarded dolls. The summoning that had formed them like dark smoke that moved towards Emrys. Gathered between his palms, his eyes burning ethereal white. The dark veins marking every part of his skin. His fingers glowing with that same strange power, and how easily he rendered that summoning to nothing but ash that drifted between his fingers.
Unmaking it in a moment.
A roar seemed to surround us. The manifestation. Watching. The walls cracking and crumbling before us as I got to myfeet. The floor trembling as it threatened to cave in. Not welcoming Emrys’s challenge.
‘Emrys!’ Gideon charged, pinning him against the ruined wall and then I saw why. Emrys’s gaze was suddenly nothing but darkness, veins spreading up his skin. Head twitching ever so slightly as if he was listening to something.
‘Look at me, you bastard,’ Gideon commanded, as if trying to call him back from the depths of that summoning. How it danced across his flesh.
Something from one of those cursed tales. He hadn’t taken his suppressant. His magic was ruling him because to protect was all he knew.
Then the floor beneath us rumbled, boards jumping as more large fissures ran across the walls. Wood splintering and cracking as if the weight of the house was coming down on us.
Emrys’s power rose in answer, the cold of it burning my lungs.
‘It’sbecomethe house.’ My words were breathless with my fear. The manifestation had taken over. To bring it down on top of us. We were trapped. Yet before panic could have me, her voice came back. So patient and real:
There was a little girl who lived in a magical house. With wild roses curling up its side and a stone path that wove like a snake into an enchanted wood.
A beautiful woman she called Mera, with small dark horns, forest-green curls and eyes like firelight. Whose voice was as lyrical as song.
How they spotted folk and made potions from the wild shrooms and nettle patches. How they ran barefoot through the wildwood together.
Together. In the home they’d made here. Before this monster stole it all, long before that darkness came for his soul.
