Page 13

13

S plintered glass and shrapnel from the iron frame swept over the backyard like a curtain of death. Sharp, stabbing shards pierced the defensive purple shield protecting me, burrowing into an exposed calf and burning a welt on one arm. I sucked in an agonized gasp that miraculously did not shred my lungs with pulverized glass panels, the sound mixing with a hurt grunt from Skip, whose body added an extra layer guarding me from injury. Shoved into the dirt, with my familiar blanketing me, I couldn’t see Jae anymore, but I could feel him. Sense him.

His pain at the lethal chaos swirling around us didn’t weaken him. It enraged him.

My demon must be close. We didn’t need to touch for Jae to siphon off my power to feed his own, but we had to be in physical proximity of each other to make the transfer of energy bleed as little into our surroundings as possible. Desperate times called for emergency measures. I shared my magic, whatever power I had left filling him. Through our link, I sensed the tingle of my power in his clawed fingertips. I felt the roar of his wrath building in his chest.

The hot trickle of Skip’s blood also wetted the small of my back, though. “Get off. Move.”

Against my nape, Skip shook his head. “If they kill you, Jae will turn feral. We all die.”

Jae had already gone feral. I couldn’t see my demon, but his lust for violence and death poured from him and through me, scorching in intensity and fathomless. Flashes of frenzied battle whipped into my mind. Splashes of thick red blood. The wan face of a stranger, mouth gaping in a shocked ‘O’ as his life spilled from him in the wet plop of his entrails streaming from his slashed belly. No answering wail of despair echoed from the demons drawn to the battle, so the dead mage wasn’t a partner in a hunter team. But he was human. And magical.

I clawed my fingers into the soil, anything to anchor me to my own senses and this patch of ground that had meant so much to me too long ago, the only home I’d ever known, but Jae’s bloodthirsty counterattacks and lashing fury thrummed through my dizzy head, anyway. My stomach roiled. Nausea burned a trail up my esophagus, but my skin itched to join the fight, too. Had to get up. Had to defeat my enemies, bathe in their blood, and suck the juicy marrow from their bones.

“Griffith! In the garden,” Clara’s voice rang out, above the din.

“Got it,” the guild boss said on a shout. “Bryce?”

Then an entire ocean’s worth of water dumped over Skip and I both, flooding over my eyes and filling my gasping mouth. Were we on fire? Pulse roaring in my ears, I trembled almost as fiercely as my familiar, plastered to my spine. I tried to say his name. What was happening to him? To us? Where was my demon? But I inhaled a font of warm water instead. Gagged on it. My heaving belly surrendered to the onslaught, and I vomited streams of water into the dirt.

More screams filtered through the smoke and anarchy. Another explosion rocked the ground beneath me, but the energy had shifted. Intimately linked to my demon, I sensed his fury changing—returning—to petrified horror. Not for himself. For me.

The connection between us was new, faint, but it ran both ways, from him to me and me to Jae. I wasn’t drowning anymore. Surely, he could feel that? I’m okay. Maybe. I wouldn’t die. The deafening crash and thunder of battle slowed, and although I hurt, I wasn’t gravely injured. I’d survive. I treasured my confidence in that. Jae would, too. My demon ached and whatever fight I’d missed while buried under my disconcertingly lax familiar, Jae had spent a ton of magic. Little power lingered inside me. He’d leeched that much from me, but the ground, my ground, would always feed me its store of energy. I’d be fine.

Skip, I wasn’t as sure about.

“Hey, buddy,” I said, squirming to jostle him. “You all right?”

He groaned.

“Hang on. Let me…,” someone else said above us.

I flinched, too aware that whoever had found us could be friend or enemy, but my demon flashed an image into my mind of the mage who had escorted me at least part of the way to the community center that morning. Oh yeah. Right. Bryce. Hadn’t I heard Griffith call out to the mage?

The weight of Skip lifted off me, provoking another hurt moan from him. Water that had doused him trickled down, making me shiver, but I was free. With a groan of my own, I rolled in the garden mud and wretched, coughing up still more water. When I blinked the sodden grit of topsoil from my eyes, Bryce stared down at me, the features of his face tight with worry. He glanced up and to the left. “A little banged up, but looks like the imp took the brunt of the damage.” The mage returned his attention to me. “Stay there. Give yourself a second. Healers are on the way.”

I didn’t need healing. I needed my demon. “Jae!”

Bryce crouched in the puddle of mud and flattened a restraining palm on my shoulder. “He’s okay. Griffith’s stitching him up.”

Since the guild boss was as much a healer as I was, which was barely at all, that information failed to reassure me. Despite the mage’s grip holding me down, I reared up to a sitting position.

And gawped, my stomach plummeting.

The house was gone. Well, it still stood. Mostly. Red-tipped flames from the magical attack engulfed its entirety, from the newly repaired back porch step to the gabled rooftop. Fire licked the rear-facing windows and flickered from the rooms inside. My kindergarten artwork, Ma’s grandfather clock, the sunflower wind chimes over the sink, my dad’s too-small clothes in his dresser upstairs. All of it was gone.

Fire ate whatever ghosts of my boyhood had lingered. That loss sank into me like talons.

“Finnegan?” I asked through numb lips.

“He made it out,” Skip said on a low, pained slur. “If his soul passed through the veil, I’d know.”

Finnegan had been behind me in the living room when the assault had launched, though, and there was a lot of room for excruciating hurt between alive and dead.

Grief swamping me, I cringed from the destruction of my childhood home and the nigh certain horrific injuries to my old roomie, who was a spy but also somehow still my friend. Instead, I sucked in a fast, painful breath and stared, wide-eyed, at what remained of Dad’s greenhouse.

A crater replaced the eastern end, jagged pieces of the magicked iron frame stabbing skyward from a pool of broken glass studded with clumps of charred dirt. Most of my father’s plant inventory burned and what hadn’t incinerated yet had withered into dry, forlorn bunches that draped down what remained of the west wall. Some of the metal cabinets looked intact. Dented, some a little, most a lot. Tinctures and dried herbs, mosses, and teas stored in glass jars within those cabinets had probably shattered in the explosive heat, but anything stored in tins might be all right. I wondered if the wards Teddy had set on the cabinets had held.

Anxiety screamed inside me, though, because my father’s other wards were down. Anyone could enter his greenhouse, intrude on his work, discover his secrets, but a still, grieving kernel inside me recognized most of my father’s life’s work was no longer a danger to anybody. It was gone too, destroyed like the burning shell of our home.

Braced and supported by the water mage we’d forged an alliance with a scant hour ago, Jae limped across the debris-strewn back yard to join me. At his wave, I stood on shaky legs and bent so he could toss an arm over my shoulder. With an awkward grunt, I took Clara’s place. “He’ll heal,” she said, transferring the burden of my demon’s weight to me. “I’m sorry. They need me to help quell the fire.”

“I understand.” Tight-lipped, I shooed her away before catching her by her fingers. I squeezed, emotion clogging my throat. “Thank you. Truly. You didn’t have to—”

“Yes. I did.” She tipped her chin to a stubborn angle. “ We did.” Her gaze rose to the sky, where her Menolac soared, guarding the devastation all around us. “News of our alliance hadn’t circulated among the other hunters yet. If they’d located you, we would have been called to join the fight. This attack didn’t originate with demons.” She shook her head. “Some tried to capitalize on the ambush to kill Jae while other enemies distracted him, but Menolac drove them off. That trick won’t work a second time.” Her mouth quirked into a tremulous smile. “The blood oath we swore to one another may be minutes old, but our promise held.”

I gulped, struggling to keep my demon upright. He weighed a ton under normal circumstances, but limping, blood seeping from a gash running the length of his leg wherever his armor hadn’t protected, he leaned on me for support. My muscles strained, but I somehow managed. “Regardless, we thank you. You won’t regret honoring our bargain.”

“See that I don’t.”

With a weary moan, I turned Jae around to guide him toward the ruined greenhouse, but stopped to call over my shoulder. “Will they be back? The other demons.”

“I don’t know.” Clara walked backwards, toward the burning house. “I don’t believe so.” She gestured to the conflagration. “This is human bullshit. You’ll find out soon enough. Demons avoid fights between human factions.” She smiled. “You should, too. You’ll live longer.”

“Are you okay?” I asked my demon once the mage had turned to add her water magic to extinguish the fire destroying my house.

“I will heal,” Jae said, voice slurring. He plodded with more determination than stability to my father’s greenhouse. “We need to be fast. You have the grimoire?”

I stooped to grab it from where it had fallen to the muddy ground during the attack. “Now I do.” I shoved it into the waist at the back of my shorts and then pulled out my sodden tank to cover the lump. I already felt the weight of the leather book sliding toward my ass, but not a lot I could do about that unless I wanted to let my demon topple over. “What’s the plan?”

Blowing out harsh pants, Jae tipped his sweaty head toward the cabinets across the debris of the greenhouse. “Take whatever you need. Then we go.”

My heart ached at abandoning my childhood home, but Jae was right. We couldn’t stay, not now. Staggering at the burden of my demon leaning on me, I circled the thickest tangle of debris to avoid most of the sharply angled glass shards and warped, jagged metal. Toward the battered cabinets.

The first layer of the grimoire’s array was a simple pentagram with crystals at the points. None were especially rare, but the stones weren’t common either. Black tourmaline. Amethyst. Hematite and both clear and smoky quartz. If I had to, I could replace those crystals with little difficulty, but I wouldn’t leave the chunk of black tourmaline unless I had to. The specimen my dad had collected was that exceptional.

Those rocks, alongside everything else, burned inside the house.

The cabinets, though, held my most desperate hope. Because the second layer of Teddy’s array required a collection of tinctures.

My father had shielded my power from the magical community as much as he could since I’d been in diapers, but he’d more than made up for any lack by thoroughly training me, tutoring that had far surpassed whatever remedial magic a guild, including the Towpath, could have offered a young, though wildly magical boy. Teddy hadn’t only taught me how to exercise and expand my druid powers, though. He’d schooled me in a wide variety of other magics as well. I’d started brewing tinctures before I’d grown tall enough to reach drinking glasses and bowls in our kitchen cupboards.

The tinctures splashed in the second layer of Teddy’s array were not, however, novice brews. Not all of them. The purpose of the complex magic focused by the array remained a mystery to me. I hadn’t puzzled through it all and I didn’t know enough about the elements I recognized, not by half. Of the five tinctures, six if I counted the charged moon water at the second layer’s center, I was confident I could gather the plants, herbs, flowers, and minerals needed to make four of them by foraging locally.

The fifth tincture, though, was a refined variation of the one Finnegan had criticized moments before the attack. Kratom. It included kratom.

Kratom derived from a leaf harvested from a tropical tree native to Southeast Asia, but creating other biomes was no hurdle to a powerful druid like my dad. He’d grown it. Where? No idea, and whatever trees he’d nurtured and harvested must be long gone now. Without careful maintenance, any magically crafted dome of non-native climate would fritter away and the more drastically that artificially created biome differed from what was natural, the faster the disintegration progressed. Teddy’s kratom source had begun decomposing before tourists had discovered the first dismembered chunks of my dad washing up on the banks of the Potomac.

I had zero chance of recreating Teddy’s fifth tincture.

If my father had gone to such lengths to ensure only I would one day access his grimoire and the complex magical array contained within it, I had to believe Teddy had left me the tincture I lacked the ingredients and skill to brew, too.

In that cabinet. Had to be.

I trudged around the smoking carcass of my dad’s greenhouse to the other side, which partially blocked the flickering glow of my home burning. Thank God. The corner of the greenhouse facing away from the house wasn’t as severely damaged. Chest heaving with the exertion of supporting Jae, I squinted at jangled bunches of glass, pottery, and metal and judged I might forge a path that wouldn’t shred me too much.

With a weary grunt, I propped Jae against one of the grafted trees I’d planted here what felt like lifetimes ago, my heart lifting with pride that my grafts, at least, were still hale and healthy. “Watch my back. I’ll only be a second,” I told my demon.

“Hurry,” he said, his voice weak.

The glass panels composing this corner of the greenhouse had cracked into vibrant white spiderwebs, like scar tissue forming over a wound, but the glass had held. The splinters and shards wouldn’t shred me as readily, but magic always demanded a sacrifice, didn’t it? Genuine power did, anyway. I dug deep to tap the stingy well of power I had left to move the biggest hunks of debris aside, though my body shook at the chasm of spent energy practicing even so little tunneled out of me.

My power had drained low, perilously low.

Megan had been right, though. Magic didn’t solve everything.

Steeling my spine, I trudged into the maelstrom of glass, wood, and jutting iron that was this section of dad’s greenhouse and bent to my work. I flinched at the pricks and cuts moving the scattered and tangled pieces of my dad’s legacy aside. Blood trickled from gashes on my exposed legs and arms. Stopping to search for work gloves first would’ve been smarter. My fingers and palms stung at each fresh lash from the wreckage I cleared, but speed mattered.

Whoever had attacked us wouldn’t tarry to launch that fight again.

So neither could I.

I made a quick steady path to the greenhouse cabinet that looked to be damaged the least. The pair of cupboards flanking it hung askew, doors cratered by whatever debris had crashed into them. One knob, locking mechanism still engaged, hung by a single screw. As soon as I touched the frame of the central, almost undamaged cabinet, though, magic zinged up my arm from my fingertips.

Teddy’s ward hadn’t fragmented under the explosive assault of fire and magic, and the Goddess only knew what else. This protection had held.

Relief poured through me in crushing waves. “Thanks, Dad,” I said on a whisper. “You did good.”

When I reached for the knob of the center cabinet, the door popped open despite the yet engaged lock. The sturdy hardware had been intended for intruders and I cherished no uncertainties that anyone other than me, Teddy’s son, disturbing this cupboard would’ve been met with an unpleasant surprise. For me, though? The door opened on an easy glide, startling considering the extensive damage the battle must have done.

Inside, intact bottles gleamed in neat, labeled rows.

Distant memories jangled into my head of my father, grinning at me as he stood in the open door of this same cabinet when I was a boy and his greenhouse had bloomed in riotous abundance. I could almost smell the mint and verbena that had perfumed the muggy air, still felt the weight of my father’s enormous hand grasping my thin shoulder. “This is my life’s work, David. This and…”

He’d nodded toward a potting bench, where only the beginning pages of his last grimoire lay. “What will keep you alive is what’s important and you will have it when you need me most. No matter what.” His glance had swept the rest of the greenhouse and darted to dismiss even our home, where I could still hear Ma singing along to Queen on the kitchen radio. “Nothing else matters. Just this. Try to remember.”

Shifting on my restless feet as only an eight-year-old craving T-ball and popsicles on a hot summer’s day could, I’d answered him with my obedient, “I will, Daddy.”

More than a decade later, those long-ago promises were finally fulfilled.

Love and grief clogged my throat. I couldn’t resist trailing my bloodied finger along the line of bottles, each of which sparked with a glowing red ember—Teddy micro-managing me beyond the grave because that glimmer didn’t light up green until the slow stroll of my touch brushed the correct tincture.

I halted, my fingertip lingering on the amber glass. The label had faded with age, edges pealing, but I didn’t need to squint to make out my father’s scrawl to know the treasure I’d found. The tincture that included kratom.

I lifted the precious gift my father had protected and saved for me from the row and, my heart aching, I slipped it into the pocket of my borrowed shorts.

Inside my head, Jae whispered to me. Time is short, Dah-veed.

Wasn’t it always?

But the regression of my demon’s communication skills urged me to quicken my steps, so I shut the cabinet on the remaining treasures of my father’s inventory of wonders, unsurprised when whatever wards Teddy had crafted flashed in neon purple as the cabinet door once again sealed shut. Hopefully, one day, I’d have the luxury and ease to discover what else my dad had left for me inside the cabinet, the tools, potions, and blended teas he’d gifted me.

But not today.

Today was for survival. And tomorrow. And the many days after that.

I pivoted, careful of the glass and iron stabbing from the lethal chaos of the greenhouse. With the fifth tincture safe in my pocket, I forged a slower return to Jae, who glared at me from his exhausted collapse against the trunk of my peach and lemon hybrid. “We must go,” he said, his voice wavering.

“I still need crystals inside my dad’s junk room.” I glanced over the wreckage of the greenhouse to flames yet licking the roof of my boyhood home. “In there.”

“The imp as well.” Jae harrumphed. “The traitor needs healing, but the annoying imp must accompany you to our destination.”

Frowning, I bent and then grabbed my demon’s arm to toss it over my shoulder when he seemed too weakened to lift it around me himself. When I pushed up from my knees, my muscles straining to pull my demon upright, I groaned in part at the exertion required to steady the demon, but also in trepidation and worry. Whatever injuries plagued him, physical or magical, had taxed my demon too much.

We had never been so vulnerable, including when Jae had crawled to the dryad’s sacred circle to die and spelled bullets had pierced my calf and shoulder as we’d fled the botanical garden short days ago. If we weren’t gone by the time our enemies returned, my demon and I wouldn’t last. I had little power left, my demon next to none. The lowliest curse could end us. “If you can walk, the fire will re-energize you while you look for those crystals,” I said. “As soon as you’re strong enough, we’ll portal out. I swear.”

To where? What isolated corner of the universe could hide us? From hunting demons, from whoever had assaulted us at my childhood home…from my father’s killer, too. From everything and everybody? Nowhere was safe. I’d learned that lesson and repeatedly relearned it my whole misbegotten life. If a square inch on the planet wouldn’t get me killed, I’d never known it.

Maybe Jae did.