Page 50 of Demon Sworn
My throat dries out, and I swallow hard as my heart starts to pound in anticipatory fear and my palms grow clammy. But I will do anything for Adam. Anything.
So my nod, though slow, is sure.
Raz grabs my hand and then lets his free hand morph into a claw, black fingernails elongating and sharpening. His eyes glow a deep ruby color, and he lifts the claw, shredding the air right in front of my eyes until the closet behind him literally looks like it’s made of ribbons, like it’s a façade and something else exists behind it.
Fog seeps out of the shredded air, and a deep cold breeze rolls across my skin, making goosebumps rise. Raz shoves aside the ribbons of Earth’s reality like he’s lifting a beaded curtain. A dark door waits, the wood black and aged. The knob is silver, and with a glance at Raz for confirmation, I reach for it.
The metal is ice-cold against my hand, and the cold seeps up my arm in an unnatural way as I turn the handle, my entire forearm chilling to the point of pain. I shove the door wide, and it opens to…blackness.
But I know there are monsters lurking in the shadows there, because I’m holding one of those monster’s hands. Steeling myself, gripping Raziel’s hand even tighter, I step into the realm of boogeymen.
As soon as Raz follows me, the door whips shut on its own, like it’s sentient, and I’m left in completely disorienting blackness. My hand automatically reaches out in front of me, as if I’m about to fall. My ears hear piercing shrieks in the distance, and for the life of me, I can’t tell if I’m imagining them, creating the screams out of my own expectations, or if they’re real.
“Call him,” Raz whispers as he brings his body closer to mine, shielding my back and giving me a sense of calm to counteract the rising tide of panic.
I close my eyes, though that really doesn’t make any difference, and call out gently, “Adam?”
Immediately, there’s a flash of red behind my eyelids. I open my eyes to see a distant cloud, where red lightning dances.
“Katty?” Adam’s voice echoes around me, though he’s not here.
I have no idea what’s happening, but apparently Raz does, because he scoops me up and spreads his wings. We lift into the air and zoom towards the red storm. As the cold air scrapes across my skin, Raz whispers, “I’m going to change our faces for this, in case whoever took Adam is one of my kind.”
He doesn’t say anything further, but I immediately understand what he’s not saying. He thinks that a nightmare demon might have taken Adam. If that’s the case, a demon like that could return my little brother but still access him, every night. If that’s the case, we could be flying right towards the monster who destroyed my family.
I’m going to be sick.
Why didn’t we bring everyone? How can we fight this person on our own? Pink sparks start up in my hands, and I stare at them, willing them to grow bigger, to be useful, to stay. So that I’m not useless anymore, so that I can do something. But they don’t stay. They fade.
Of course they do.
Because my nightmare is having to watch my little brother suffer and being unable to do a damn thing about it. And we’re in the realm of nightmares.
To our right, a giant clown face appears out of nowhere, cackling. His mouth opens in a smile, and his teeth are covered in blood that drips down his chin. I hear a shriek from somewhere in the darkness beneath the clown, and I can’t suppress my own shiver of horror.
Raz angles his wings, and we change directions slightly, still heading towards the red storm in the distance but avoiding the clown.
Beneath us, I hear moaning start up and glance down to see two figures writhing—a man and a woman. Another man watches as tears drip down his cheeks. “No, Maddie! No!”
Behind the crying man, I see a demon with his wings spread wide, his arms moving as if he’s conducting an orchestra. One sweep of his arms, and the couple rolls over. A flick of his finger, and the man fucking the woman grabs her leg and tosses it up on his shoulder. A wave of his hand, and the woman moans, “Ben! I love you!”
Raz’s hand cups my chin, and he gently pulls my face up. “Don’t look at that,” he whispers in my ear, his breath as hot as fire in this godawful frozen realm. “Call Adam again.”
“Adam?” I dutifully call out, this time slightly louder than before.
As if by magic, the storm hops through the sky like a checker jumping spaces. Hop, hop, hop. It gets three times closer to us.
“He hears you,” Raz says.
My hands tighten on him in response, and I mumble, “Should we have brought the others?”
“Not much they can do here,” Raz responds. “Their powers are physical. This is the underside of the mind.”
He squeezes me tighter, trying to reassure me, but I think I might be past that now. I turn all of my attention on the dark grey clouds lit with ruby lightning that slashes over the puffy masses like blood vessels bursting.
A blast of heat comes from my other side, and I turn to see a house on fire, a woman screaming as she watches it from outside. A demon holds her arm so that she can’t run in, but she doesn’t seem to see him. She just screams out, “Jada!”
I have to turn away because something about that powerless feeling the woman is experiencing hits too close to home.
