Page 59 of Demon Heart: The Complete Series

ROMAN

R ainbow ribbons of light swirled around my hands. Kind of like how Synth behaved, but constantly changing color, packing a crackling punch.

Time magic.

Whoa.

Butterfly’s eyes widened slightly, making his face more beautiful. “My goodness, Roman. Look at you.”

I held up my magically ignited hands. “This is insane.”

“This is incredible.”

“What happens if the device fails? Does this all disappear?”

“Let us hope that does not happen.”

My guess would be yes. “But will it? Will this meddling with time get erased?”

“I wish I knew, Roman.”

“You can’t sense it?”

He shook his head.

“Wait, wait, wait.” The magic dimmed. “What will this do to the main timeline?”

“Can we just visit the future now, please?”

“Answer me.”

“Do you believe you haven’t already caused problems in the timeline by coming here?”

Okay. Touché. “I…shit.”

“Roman, I simply wish to visit the future to get answers.”

“You really don’t know what happened to the device, do you?”

Even mentioning the device made me want to scream my lungs out.

This couldn’t be real. He’d got the wrong guy.

Feels real.

So, so real.

But as much as there was resistance to this demon’s request, my hunger for answers grew ravenous.

I had to know more.

“We can wait if you are not ready,” Butterfly suggested.

Him being in the future posed a serious risk. However, I just had to go with the flow and get this to make some sort of sense.

Closing my eyes, I drew a long breath and held it, readying myself for this possibly stupid move. I never made stupid moves. My training and my job didn’t leave me with much room for error. Well, before my grandma’s death and meeting Xavier shook me up irrevocably.

And exhale… “I’m ready.”

“Good.” Butterfly came closer, taking the hand I offered him.

I shivered, the magic brightening once again.

The path.

The path.

The path.

I felt it open to me, a soft vibration starting in my feet, spreading up my legs to my stomach, then to the ends of my fingertips and up into my skull.

With my mind, not my feet, I took a step onto that path. The time magic broke our bodies apart into little pieces, shoving us across the years at great speed until we came back together in the corridor of Buckingham Palace’s dungeons.

A stable landing, none of the trauma of being dragged back and forth this time.

Thank God!

Butterfly inspected the surroundings. “Horrible.”

“Tell me about it. Do we always have to come here to use the magic?”

“What do you mean?”

“My power is anchored to these two times. Does that mean always having to be in the same spot to use my power?”

“You have acquired knowledge. I am delighted. I would think you can use in any spot, but will return to where you last used it.”

That sharp sound rang in my mind, confirming it.

Not creepy at all.

He smiled. “I gather this is the place you were shot?”

“Yeah.”

He wrinkled his perfect nose. “Who shot you?”

“The queen,” I answered before thinking. “My queen.”

The demon touched the walls. “I sense suffering.”

“Welcome to the dungeons beneath her palace. Nice, eh? Make yourself at home.”

“We should leave.”

“You don’t want to settle down in that cell over there?”

He grabbed my arm, an army of butterflies coming out of nowhere. A burst of dust, a gust of wind.

Guess he didn’t like my sniping.

“What—”

The bugs encircled us within seconds, closing in, pushing our bodies together. It happened so quickly but then the butterflies were gone, leaving us standing in the cold night air of my time.

The sky was clear, a few stars of the non-blue variety breaking through the light pollution.

I sucked in the London air, taking a step back from him. “Where are we?”

We stood on a residential street, no signs of damage after the toxic rivers and the end of The Rift last year. One of the lucky places to escape the frenzy of damage.

I squinted at a street sign a few feet away. The black writing on the white background was just clear enough for me to make out.

“Cassland Road,” I said. “I’m not sure where that is.”

“Where I sense my friend,” he answered, pointing to a house directly opposite our position.

A faded pink flamingo sat in an overgrown garden, windchimes hanging from a tree jingling in the breeze. The windows were filthy, the net curtains a grim shade of yellow as if a smoker lived there.

Yuck.

“They live in there?”

“Yes,” he answered, striding toward the garden gate.

I followed him, vigilant to my surroundings. If I made a run for it, he’d catch me no problem. His mobility skills were, well, they were off the charts really. His butterfly teleportation move wouldn’t let me get far.

Cassland Road. Where abouts in the city was it? I searched my vaults of knowledge. Nope. Nothing. I had a decent understanding of my hometown, but I didn’t know every nook and cranny. London was hardly a little village.

Butterfly knocked on the blue door.

A crackle of static came from a tiny speaker stuck in the corner of the porch. “Butterfly?” a raspy, unsettling voice asked.

“Hello, Una,” Butterfly responded. “Please open the door.”

“It’s really you.”

I couldn’t see a camera anywhere.

“You died.”

Butterfly cocked his head. “The device worked, Una. It functions within this man.”

His voice grated on me now, losing a lot of its seductive potency.

Thank God.

“The child…” the woman said. “The child is grown.”

Chilly fear seeped into my guts. I didn’t like this one fucking bit.

“Let us in. Tell us what happened.”

“I don’t know…”

“Do you not trust me, Una?”

“Trust gets you hurt.”

“Has someone hurt you?”

She sniffed, the speaker crackling with static.

“Open the door, my friend,” Butterfly pressed.

I glanced into next door’s front garden, ready to launch myself over the wall and get the hell away from this demon.

A sigh passed through the speaker, then the door clicked unlocked, slowly opening to reveal the fairy behind it.

She was dressed in tatty blue sweatpants, a brown woolen sweater swallowing her upper half, her shoulders painfully hunched forward. Matted gray hair hung around her dark brown complexion, nasty boils spread across her cracked skin.

“What happened to you?” Butterfly asked. “Your face. Your body.” He took a step forward.

She shuffled backward. “I made a deal with a demon. It went badly.” Tears leaked from the fairy’s eyes as she looked up at the towering hunk of a demon. “It thought the dream was dead.”

“No, Una. Alive and thriving.” He waved a hand at me with a dramatic flourish. “May we come in and talk?”

My instinct for smelling out pieces of shit never failed me. It told me this fairy bathed in a pool of nasty.

Big time.

The fairy smiled, revealing rotten teeth. “Come in. But don’t touch me.”

“Of course.” Butterfly gestured for me to enter first before he followed, closing the door behind him. “This is Roman.”

“All grown up.”

My skin itched with unease. “What did you do to me?”

Her attention fell to my scar. “Would you like something to drink?” She pulled out a handkerchief, dabbing at her nose.

I shook my head. Taking tea from a fairy only led to complications, especially fairies giving off dark vibes.

Tricky creatures. Seriously tricky.

“Not now, thank you,” Butterfly answered, his forehead creasing slightly. “I sense silk. Spider silk.”

“That would be Xavier.”

“Xavier?” I yelled. “He’s here?”

She smacked her lips together. “Don’t shout. He was here. Recently.”

The penny dropped. Una was the fairy Xavier got those fairy charms from to fight Tanith’s massive demon at that abandoned sports center. The same demon that’d hit me in the face with its giant demon balls.

Ah, memories.

A penny also seemed to drop for Butterfly.

He looked at me, no warmth in his expression. “Xavier was in the cottage when I came to you.”

I rubbed at my neck. “Yeah.”

“Did he or the prince attack you?”

“No. They actually helped us.”

“Us?”

Whoops. Oh, well. Might as well be honest. “Present Xavier went back in time with me.”

“Why?”

“Because he was with me.”

Fury crept across his features. “What were you doing with him?”

“A long story.”

“I would like to hear it.”

“Now? It doesn’t matter. He’s trapped back there. He?—”

“Show me the mark.”

“What?”

Butterfly grabbed my left arm. “Show me the mark. Now.”

I tried shrugging him off, his strength incredible.

“Xavier is fraternizing with witches?” Una chimed in. “I never would’ve thought it of him. But then he’s always been a puzzle to me.”

“Show me the mark,” the demon demanded again.

“What’s your problem?” I called on my Synth.

“Can we do this in the living room?” Una asked. “I need to sit down. My bones aren’t too capable of holding me up for long nowadays.”

Butterfly ignored her, tearing off my left sleeve and the makeshift bandage. His eyes widened, his lips parting in surprise. “No…”

The bleeding had stopped, but Xavier’s cut remained. Deeper than I’d thought, an angry red line across the butterfly tattoo.

Butterfly’s grip tightened. With his free hand, he delicately traced the edges of the mark.

“He tainted you,” he whispered, moving his face closer.

“What—”

“Only a demon as brazen as Xavier would dare taint my mark.”

I tried not to beam with joy. “What does it mean?”

“It means I cannot find you if I lose you. I thought there was something odd in my sensing of you. A fading of our connection almost. I should have checked. Fool. Fool. Fool.”

Oh, my fluttering friend. You really shouldn’t have told me that.

He traced a thumb along my cut. Surprisingly, it was numb. “Him being with you explains why you ended up in Level 548. My poor device was confused.”

“I—”

“He interferes with my power.”

“I—”

“He has no right.”

“I—”

Butterfly grabbed my other arm. “Do you think me a fool, Roman?”

Man, his grip hurt like hell.

I clenched a fist, plotting a punch. “I mean, you called yourself a fool.”

He snarled. “He might want to protect you, but this is blatant meddling. How much does he know?”

I tried breaking free, reaching for my dagger. “About all this? Nothing. He’s as clueless as me. More so.”

He yanked me forward, lowering his face to mine. “I will not allow you to be taken from me. This miracle will not be broken.”

My fingers stroked my weapon. “I?—”

“You cannot leave me.”

“Gentlemen, maybe we should take this into the living room,” Una tried again.

“Please,” Butterfly whispered, closing his eyes. “You cannot leave me. I need you.”

If he thought he could somehow play to my empathy, he barked up the wrong tree.

“I need you to bring the end of magic.”