Aterrible screeching sound penetrated her battered mind. Ethel didn’t have time to breathe through the pain it caused or do anything about the blood trickling from her eardrums. The darkness racing across the green expanse to meet her tired body would break more than her eardrums if she let it.
What had possessed her to pick a fight with him? He was so much more powerful than she’d estimated. Even with the extra dose she’d gathered from the Underworld, she’d need to be more creative to overcome his power.
She called on her Power of the Water as his darkness approached and parried it away, but not before the black flamesinged the skin on her arms. She winced, holding her eyes shut against the barrage of agony threatening to overcome her resolve.
No. He wouldn’t win. She wouldn’t let him. Pierce, the name he’d chosen for himself, underestimated her desire for power, her quest for vengeance, and this was the consequence. Their agreement when she’d summoned him had been death in exchange for his formidable dark power. But even back then, more than half a century ago, Ethel couldn’t shake the feeling he held something back.
Her suspicions were confirmed when she’d insisted on following him on his most recent trip to the Underworld. The possibility, the power she’d sensed from the dark forbidden place her mother had always railed against, would be sufficient for all her plans. Pierce warned her of the temptations the other demons posed. She’d heeded the warning at first, the Underworld’s natural menace overwhelming her, but the dark power soon seduced her. A power that would be her ally in her quest for vengeance.
The demon he had been when they met, dark, animalistic, and terrifying, was replaced by the man he now appeared to be. Their familiarity over the years, his insistence on remaining in human form, and her constant study of his nature had reduced her fear of him. She’d been waiting, planning, and this was an opportunity she couldn’t afford to lose.
The darkness he’d unleashed in defense of her surprise attack dissipated to reveal his rigid human form. He stood an arm’s length away, the yellow glow of his demon eyes blazing past the blue-gray gaze of his human camouflage.
The anger radiating off him would have terrified her were itnot for the confusion marring his handsome features.
“What are you doing?” Many voices in perfect chorus tore from lips that didn’t move, the blaze in his eyes morphing to an orange color, a signal of his anger.
The blend of voices had once terrified her, but she’d learned to reconcile with his nature.
She shrugged. “I need more power than you can give me.”
He tilted his head, his anger dissipating to bring back the familiar blue-gray gaze of his human camouflage. “What did you do?” His voice didn’t lose its otherworldly blend, growing deeper with each word.
She didn’t owe him anything. He’d been a tool in her quest, nothing more, and their trip to the Underworld had provided her with a better one.
He stepped forward, his ability to read her thoughts with minimal effort a constant, grating fact of their mismatched relationship. “Who did you talk to? When?”
“You don’t need to know that…” She couldn’t help her smile.
In the half-century she’d known him, his superiority had been a constant problem for her. Ethel was aware she would never be as powerful as he was, and his contempt was evident in how he shared a negligible portion of his power.
It was nothing personal. She needed power, more power than the Grand Coven possessed if she was to realize her goal.
He stepped closer, and she called on all her strength to resist the urge to step back. “Who promised you this power?”
His many voices echoed through the air, his angerthreatening her resolve. She would have backed down, had it not been for the fresh dark energy coursing through her. She stretched her hands as the demon had directed and allowed her Power of the Water, the paltry power she’d been born with, to blend with her new ally’s darkness.
She smiled when Pierce gasped, his power diminishing only to grow to inexplicable proportions a second later. The result of the spell his archenemy had given her materialized in a darkness so unnatural she could touch it.
It surrounded them, cloaking them from the physical world. She watched Pierce’s expression move from anger to desperation in the second it took him to decipher its source.
Her joy grew, catalyzed by the increasing power she would soon possess. “Your friend said to tell you he’s waiting.”
Pierce opened his mouth to respond, but the darkness whirled around them to grab hold of his human form. He roared as it tightened its grip, and it flooded past his open mouth into his body, turning his once pristine skin ashen gray, the color of death. It took over the human form she’d grown used to in their long acquaintance. His bones shattered, the terrible cracking sound filling the space the darkness had created around them, but Pierce made no sound, didn’t struggle.
His lack of action brought foreign fear to the joy of fulfilling her end of the bargain. That fear grew into panic, and she took a step back when his body dissolved into the darkness to reveal the yellow glow of his eyes. The memory of the night she’d summoned him out of desperation crawled forth, and she couldn’t resist the shiver tickling her skin. The communication from the unwavering, glowing yellow stare she had no choice but to meet was clear; this was not the last she’d seen of him.
Had she been too hasty in her betrayal of Pierce? The other demon had whispered its intent to her in her dreams for weeks. It claimed to be Pierce’s superior, that he was a fugitive using her to escape Underworld justice. It had also promised unmatched power if she delivered him and provided the spell she would need to accomplish her betrayal.
The silence, deafening in its enormity, as the darkness she assumed was the other demon claimed Pierce, threatened to bring her to her knees. The glowing eyes, the only indication of the demon she’d known, faded away with every passing second, a low hum, the Underworld’s call replacing the silence.
She took a breath when the glow vanished within the darkness, taking away the constant presence of Pierce’s power. It had grown as familiar as her own, and even in her thirst for something better, she missed the reassurance it once brought.
The hum faded into silence, and she braced herself for the unknown, doubting her resolve for the first time since she’d made her deal with the second demon.
A laugh, thick and menacing, floated from somewhere within the darkness still engulfing her. It had the same quality as Pierce’s many voices, only with more power. She smiled. Power she could use.
“That was our agreement, wasn’t it, witch?” Many voices sang in a chorus that seemed to touch her skin, drawing a shiver, not of fear, but anticipation.
