AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“What is that?” asked a man, wiping his hands on an apron.
“Chemical attack!” screamed a young man who ran away from the danger.
Smart man.
It was the woman who screamed “monster” who guessed right.
From the dark miasma emerged a demon. Bald, gray, and hideous, in full view of everyone.
The sun had burned away its camouflaging fog, but that didn’t seem to matter to the demon as its gaze fixated on me. Its mouth opened, and it ululated. A cry that was repeated, and suddenly there were two demons on the other side of the magical veil. Three…
Fuck. Fuck.
People screamed. Most turned and bolted. A few held out their phones.
Idiots. And I was being just as dumb, standing there staring.
I held out the talisman and huffed, “Transport, dummy.”
Nothing happened.
Had I pronounced it wrong? “Transport me, doofus.”
Still nothing and the demons loped in my direction.
With the talisman clutched in my sweaty first, I ran and closed my ears to the screams at my back. I couldn’t help those poor people. Stopping would just mean my death.
But I also couldn’t keep fleeing. A stitch in my side and a burning in my legs told me I didn’t have much time before I collapsed from exertion.
I clutched the amulet tight and thought of the castle, convinced it wouldn’t work. I suddenly got cold and a voice whispered—Stay with me and live forever—and popped out onto the dais in the woods.
Alive, but at what cost?
16
I emerged onto the teleporting dais, bent over, head dangling, and huffing. That had been a close call, but I couldn’t celebrate. Not yet. Cain and Williams needed help. With that at the forefront of my mind, I stuffed the talisman into my pocket and raced for the castle. My panicked flight had obviously been observed because Nova and a few others were outside and heading for me as I climbed the slight hill, which, in my weakness, might as well have been Everest. By the time I reached Nova, I was wheezing so hard I couldn’t speak.
“What happened? Where’s Cain?” she asked.
“Demons. Attack.” I huffed out the words with difficulty.
“Devika, help her,” Nova commanded.
A woman with deep black hair pulled back from a tanned complexion stepped forward and held out her hands. Since I had no idea what she wanted, I stood still. She placed her fingertips on my temples. The spot tingled for a second. A second after that my heart rate slowed and my breathing evened out. Magical healing. Fucking cool.
“Let’s try this again. What happened?” Nova asked.
I did my best to summarize. “We got ambushed on the street in front of my apartment. Second ambush actually. A mini one occurred inside the store I worked at, but we handled all those demons.” We? Ha. I’d been the classic damsel screaming in distress. “Cain and Detective Williams escorted me to my apartment so I could grab some of my things before coming back to the castle, but once we hit my street, we realized something was wrong. There was this smell, and the guys said it was because people had been killed. We got back in the SUV to leave, but they blocked the road.”
“They who?”
“Demons,” I replied grimly. “Demons wearing people’s bodies. Cain had a name for them.”
“Corposse, the day-walking demons,” Nova murmured.
“Not just Corposse, but a demon wizard too. It did some kind of magic thing where the talisman wouldn’t work and made the area dark, which is when the demons began pouring out of the buildings.”
“How many?” barked a man I’d not met. He was the oldest person I’d seen, his hair salt and pepper, his face lined with age.
