Page 54 of Demon Heart: The Complete Series

Ismael smiled up at the present Xavier, watching him a few beats too long for my liking.

Was I jealous?

Idiot!

I put the cup down. “So, let’s talk.”

Ismael blinked, turning his violet gaze to me. “Begin.”

I cleared my throat. “So, we’re from the future. I have no idea why, but I got shot in the heart and rather than drop dead, it triggered some magic I didn’t know I had.”

“Shot by magic or with a firearm?”

“Firearm.”

“How awful.”

“Yeah.” I took a sip of water, leaving the queen out of it.

Xavier picked up the explaining, talking about the end of Arcana two-hundred years ago.

“It disappeared, leaving the witches vulnerable. They quickly devised Synth magic, a synthesized magic using the blood of the populace along with other ingredients. It can’t kill demons, but it can suppress them. ”

“No demon took the opportunity to act without Arcana to hinder them?” Ismael asked.

Xavier shook his head. “The witches were too swift, too brutal in their response. And I think I should leave it there because I don’t know how much we should be telling you.”

“You’ve told us plenty already,” Mean Xavier said. “I say carry on. What do more details matter?”

My Xavier looked at me, then at Ismael. He bowed his head.

“Demons hesitated, and so the witches solidified their dominance. Built towers of magic to resist demonic activity, crush uprisings. If I were to show my true demon form close to one of those towers, it would work against me.” Xavier didn’t lift his head.

“Warlocks were made second class citizens, witches seizing the reins of power.”

“Who was monarch here at the time?”

Xavier shook his head. “No more.”

It was bad enough that his past self and Ismael saw us and knew stuff about Arcana’s demise. Would it be a case of the butterfly effect if he carried on spilling info? Would these things send ripples of change and chaos through time?

Man, this all hurt my head. How were we actually here interacting with history?

I could never really wrap my brain around the concept of time travel.

If something already happened, how did it remain?

Did time leave behind residual moments, fragments of memory waiting for the right conditions to be explored?

Or was I thinking too deeply into it? With this being magic-related, did it have any bearing in reality or was it simply a spell to be broken?

Oh, God. My brain!

And who had been on the demon throne when Arcana died?

“I think we should leave it here,” Xavier added.

“Meaning it wasn’t my father on the throne,” Ismael responded.

Xavier kept quiet.

Ismael seemed like he was about to ask another question. Instead, he faced me. “Does this Synth magic have time traveling properties?”

I sipped more water before answering. “No. Always thought time travel was impossible.”

His eyes flicked to my chest. “Something to do with your heart?”

“That’s right.” I scratched at my left bicep. “When I was a child, I got sick and needed surgery.” I touched the scar through the hole in my jumper. “Now I’m thinking I got messed with.”

The theory curdled my guts.

“An interference during your surgery?” Ismael asked, as if to clarify.

“Yeah. That’s the only possibility I can come up with. I promise you, there’s nothing in the Synth grimoires relating to time travel. A lot of people would like there to be. And I’ve never heard of the Arcana grimoires containing anything like it either. Unless it’s a well-kept secret.”

I doubted it.

“Hmmm.” Ismael twisted his body, moving into a sideways position to face me head on.

“Why would anyone want to interfere with your heart? Do you have any family or connections to nefarious activity? Meaning, does your family have power? Are they successful and a target? I only ask because some demons are against my father’s authority, despite physical retribution for dissenting ideas.

And he always lives with the constant threat of the lake. Do you know of the lake?”

“Yeah. I know about the frozen lake.”

After the Clay Christmas drama, the walls into the demon realm had come down.

And along with dangerously free and easy access between the two realms came a flood of knowledge.

Like the frozen lake of Level 666 where demon kings and queens went at the end of their reigns or because they were just way too much to handle.

Where Ismael would end up in his future after a spate of being too fucking much.

Demons wanting to seal away a monarch performed a series of rituals to open the lake of sleeping demon rulers. Xavier told me the ritual opened the ice enough to get the monarch in, then sealed up again, despite the pain suffered for rebelling against the king or queen.

That pain thing was a sucky demon rule that physically harmed a rebel.

Tanith wanted to open the lake fully by using Xavier.

He was a demon of something called The Word—a powerful, one-use-only tool to completely destroy the ice.

Apparently, it provided an alternative option.

If demons wanted a sleeping monarch back, they could break the ice, lob the current monarch into the water, then restore the ice before any damage was done by using the other part of The Word.

Ismael possessed that other part of The Word—also a one-shot use.

The whole thing was bonkers to me. Absolutely wild.

In my time, Ismael slept in the ice as a tyrant. If Tanith managed to get Xavier to use his power—having hunted and kidnapped him to try—all hell would break loose in both realms. Serious hell. Because the Ismael in my time would not happily put the ice back together again. I’d bet big money on it.

God. Just imagine all those bitter kings and queens set free with nothing to stop them. There wasn’t a monarch on the demon throne in the present, so there would be a lot of gunning for the top spot.

Horrible thought.

“High positions in society come with consequences,” Ismael said.

“Not my family,” I replied.

My family was small, my parents having died when I was three. “I don’t know why anyone would want to mess with me. Well, that’s not strictly true.”

“It isn’t?” Ismael questioned.

“Future problems. Don’t worry.”

Mean Xavier threw a cold scowl at me but said nothing.

Ismael stood up, his lover mirroring the action. “I have no idea how to feel about any of this.”

“It’s a proper head fuck,” I answered.

“A what?”

“Conundrum.”

He smiled. “Yes.”

My Xavier spoke up. “What we do know is we keep coming back to this point in time. There is something here relevant to the magic.”

“What happened here?” Ismael asked him. “Is there anything relevant in our…” He paused, his calm demeanor cracking.

“What’s wrong?” both Xaviers asked at the same time.

The prince shook his head. “Is there anything in our immediate future that is relevant, do you think?”

My Xavier’s left eye twitched. “Not that I can think of.”

They held each other’s stares for several long, drawn out beats. Mean Xavier glanced between them, his brow deeply furrowed.

“Should I call Tanith here?” Ismael asked, taking his seat again.

My scalp prickled at her name.

“No,” my Xavier said.

“She may be able to help.”

“We shouldn’t involve too many demons.”

The three of them—Xavier, Tanith, and Ismael—were once besties.

Called themselves the Blessed Trinity. In my time, she wanted chaos.

In this time, she might be nicer. Regardless, I didn’t want to see her face ever again.

Well, until the time came to deal with her again.

I wasn’t lucky enough to completely avoid her face forever.

A real shame.

Where had she gone? Forced to heal after being floored by Sneaky End—a potion given to me by my queen. Her body had faded away here, but was she healing up here or in the correct time?

There went the painful, confusing knots in my brain again.

Gah!

Where to start looking for answers? I couldn’t go walking around the demon realm searching for clues.

Ismael and Mean Xavier might be okay with my presence—the latter’s tolerance on thin ice—but others would want me dead.

The moment they clocked me as a witch would be the moment I got clocked on the head.

Or worse.

“How are you feeling?” my Xavier asked, giving my shoulder a gentle squeeze.

“Not too bad.”

“No pull to our time?”

“No. Not yet.”

I itched at my bicep, nervous under the scrutiny of the other demons.

What the hell was going through their minds? Especially Ismael’s, seeing this version of his lover being soft with me. What was that doing to his brain? Because it meant he wasn’t with Xavier anymore, as clear as freshly polished crystal.

The itch in my left bicep intensified. I scratched harder and harder by the second. The irritation quickly became searing pain.

“Shit!” I hissed, rolling up my sleeve, not getting it far enough up my arm.

My Xavier crouched before me. “What’s happening?”

I jumped up, Xavier leaping back onto his feet.

Pain flared, stinging hard enough to make my eyes water. The itching raged as a million insect bites. I quickly pulled the jumper over my head to expose my arm.

The other demons gathered round.

“What the hell?”

A butterfly tattoo, intricate in design, colored in with blue, black, and purple ink with what looked to be hints of gold within the wings, sat on my skin. Its edges shimmered as if it were real, ready to take flight at any second.

The pain abated. “That wasn’t there before.”

“Butterfly!” the three demons cried at once.

Something told me they weren’t collectively pointing out the obvious here.

Butterfly…

The man in my dream.

The butterflies…

My Xavier grabbed my arm and dragged me across the room so hard my feet barely touched the ground.

“What—”

He kicked one of the doors down. It flew off its hinges, crashing into a kitchen sink with a heavy bang.

“Xavier!” I cried.

He grabbed a knife sitting on a wooden work top, then drew it across the tattoo.

I wrestled from his grip, shoving at him. “What the fuck?”

He’d cut a diagonal slice through the butterfly, blood dripping across the pretty tattoo.

“What the fuck?” I repeated.

He tore off a piece of his white sleeve and wrapped it tightly around my new wound.

The other Xavier ran into the kitchen, handing me my jumper. “Here.”

I found myself a filling within a silky, muscular sandwich.

“Quickly,” Mean Xavier barked.

The itching subsided as I pulled the jumper back over my head. But the pain still twinged.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

Ismael entered the kitchen.

My Xavier took my face in his hands. “You’ve been marked by a demon called Butterfly. He’s dangerous and he’s coming for you. We have to get out of here.”

My guts rolled. “What?—”

“I’ll tell you everything. First, I have to?—”

The front door crashed open, wind ripping through the cottage.

“No!” Ismael cried.

An army of butterflies stormed the kitchen.