We were down to the last minute, and no amount of magic was going to get us out of this cage. We had to think fast.
“What are we going to do, Charlie?” Ava panicked. “The only way we’ve broken through inferichite before is with Marcus and Kallie’s help.”
“We can’t use our magic,” I said. “The only way out of here is through brute force. These bars are thin and brittle. The cage isn’t made very well. There’sgotto be a way through.”
Allow me, Oberi offered. She gave a high-pitched whinny and reared up on her hind legs. Ava clung to her back to hold on. I ducked out of the way as her front hooves came down on the bars so hard that the crystal shattered. In her unicorn form, Oberi weighed a thousand pounds or more, and the bars couldn’t support her weight. Shards blasted everywhere, and several inferichite fragments hit me in the leg, cutting deep into the skin. I gasped in pain, reaching out to feel the blood that was seeping through my pants.
I couldn’t stop now. I had to keep moving, no matter if I was hurt or not.
“Good work, Oberi,” I said as I quickly slipped through the bars. Immediately, my Air magic swirled around the area, though I wasn’t nearly as strong with inferichite in the room.
Oberi squeezed through the hole in the bars she’d made, and we rushed across the room to the safe. A chill spread over my skin as Ava summoned Water from the air. She filled the locking mechanism with water, then froze it, until we heard acrack. The door creaked open, and Ava gasped in delight.
“It’s here!” she cried.
A loud whine erupted across the room, reverberating off the walls. It was louder than the alarm blaring overhead, and I wasforced to cover my ears with my hands as the noise raked like nails on a chalkboard across my hearing.
A dark, chilling energy rose from the safe. It was some sort of curse, or perhaps a demon; it had to be. Before I could make sense of it, the energy swept past me— straight toward Ava.
“Charlie—!” she started, but her words choked off the same time I felt her energy change, and she was knocked off of Oberi’s back. The link between our bond seemed to slam shut in an instant.
Oberi whinnied loudly.A dark cloud rose out of the safe and went into her! She’s been possessed!
Rage filled my entire body.Not on my watch.
I reached for Ava where she sat on the ground, because whatever that dark energy was, I was going to siphon it out with my Elf powers. The moment I touched her, an ice-cold chill followed immediately by a blazing heat seared my fingers.
I jumped back. Ava had burned me with her blue Fire!
A deep, ethereal laugh bubbled up from Ava’s throat. In a voice that wasn’t her own, Ava said, “You think you can steal from me?”
Charlie, you have to get that demon out of her now!Oberi snapped.
“I’m on it!” I ducked to avoid a fireball the demon threw at me. It smashed into the wall behind me, and the room ignited into flames. The fire grew intense, licking up the walls and consuming the carpet.
I reached out with my Elf powers, but the demon resisted. I couldn’t get a firm hold on him with my magic. I’d never tried using my powers on a being like him before, and it wasn’t the same as manipulating a living person. There was something there I couldn’t quite reach, like he existed on an entirely different plane than I did. His dark energy was complicated, and hard to manipulate.
I thought quickly, recalling all I could about demon possession. During our training for the Darke Games, Ava had frozen an allure demon out of Marcus. Maybe I could try that.
I immediately siphoned Ava’s Water power and forced her body temperature to drop. I couldn’t go too far, or I’d hurt Ava, but I had to push her limits to freeze this demon out.
Nothing happened. The demon only startedlaughing.It was a strange, terrifying laugh that overlaid a demonic voice over top of Ava’s.
Obviously, this idea was a bust. Ava had told me most of her powers hadn’t worked on the lichen during the Darke Games, either. I tried to create the blue Fire that was Ava’s signature, but I couldn’t pull it off. Even if I could borrow some of her magic for my own, I couldn’t combine two separate elements like she could.
Whatever we were dealing with was a powerful demon. The more time we spent in this room, the more the inferichite drained my powers. We had to outsmart this bastard; otherwise, we weren’t getting the key and we were probably going to die.
“Your punishment for theft will be death,” the demon warned, before raising another fireball.
I dodged out of the way again, rolling across the ground. “Simultension, Oberi!” I barked. “My energy manipulation with your Spirit powers. Go!”
Oberi knew what I was thinking immediately. Our powers combined, creating a massive spell that latched on to the demon inside of Ava. With Oberi’s Spirit magic, I could finally access the same plane the demon operated on. I grabbed a hold of him and yanked his spirit forward, using my Elf magic to manipulate his power.
The demon tore out of Ava’s skin, and its smoky, ethereal form swept by me. As it touched me, I saw it for what it was— a dark cloud of black magic, with razors for teeth and claws thatwere a foot in length. He had no real form here, and he wasn’t solid.
“Charlie, we have to banish him,” Ava gasped, still sounding out of it. Demon possession was no easy thing to handle, and the demon’s temporary hold on Ava had momentarily stunned her, making her unable to fight back.
We weren’t witches. We had no spells that could banish a demon to hell the way Marcus could. And I wasn’t sure it’d work anyway, not with the way things were going in the afterlife right now. If spirits couldn’t make it to the Blessed Haven, then I didn’t think they could make the journey to the Eternal Torment, either.
