Page 6

6

I lingered by the firepit hours after Finnegan headed inside to my uncomfortable boyhood couch. Stirring only to feed more logs into the healing flames, I stripped and sprawled naked in grass nearby so as much as my skin touched the ground as possible. Fire would heal Jae, just as the magic-imbued earth strengthened me.

When I woke shivering at dew gathering on my skin at dawn to find only embers in the firepit and no demon, I wasn’t surprised. A definite chill had crept over the mountain ridges overnight, and a demon’s primary weakness, aside from other demons, was cold. Frigid temps weakened them, which was why I figured none had settled in this part of the country despite our nexus. The Appalachians would never rival the Rockies, but our elevation brought harsh winters. Demons would reject conditions hostile to them if they could.

My heart did a slow flip when I wandered inside to find my parents’ old bedroom empty. I pawed through my dad’s dresser drawer until I discovered pajama pants that would do, brushed my teeth, and then headed downstairs to start coffee.

No Jae.

While my caffeine fix brewed, I checked everywhere inside and stumbled out to look in the greenhouse. He was gone, and that he was hunting seemed unlikely. He wouldn’t venture out in this chill, not a chance. Not while he was still weak and vulnerable. The fire last night would’ve helped, but rebuilding magic once drained took time. Without his power, Jae was a target. Prey. When I opened the fridge in hopes of cream to add to my coffee mug, neat packages of butcher paper lined the bottom shelf so my demon hadn’t needed to hunt—fresh protein was available.

I squinted at the venison and ignoring that, I grabbed milk to lighten my coffee. With my mug doctored, I returned to the firepit to let Finnegan sleep. I snagged more wood to rekindle the fire, and when it crackled busy yellows and oranges, I rolled a thick slice of a tree trunk yet to be split into logs near the dancing flames. I settled on it to drink my coffee, both it and the fire warming me.

On the one hand, Jae’s absence was a net positive. In a few days at most, I would be revealed as a level ten druid. That alone was enough to provoke my father’s murderer, not to mention my estranged relatives up north. Any strong magic was also a target for rivals, the extremist mundane fringe, and corrupt magicals and mundanes alike. Power was just another word for danger, but being the human partner of a demon? Exponentially more so.

America hadn’t seen a successful binding since I was in my mid-teens, and those failures couldn’t be attributed to a dearth of demon arrivals. Portaling to escape certain death didn’t guarantee survival here. Many perished, anyway. If not from their injuries, the influx of other bound demons hungry to snuff out a new threat finished off wounded demons. Forging a bond with a magical wouldn’t stop that slaughter, and I would’ve faced as much risk as Jae in the bloodthirsty hunt we could’ve expected over the next several days.

I didn’t have a death wish, so I couldn’t regret my relief.

But.

Jae hadn’t healed enough to portal home, nor was he strong enough to outrun the teams of predatory, earthbound demons. While I cherished zero doubts my demon could be every bit as lethal as any other, he was hurt. Weakened, without human magic support, and compared to other daemonica in our world, Jae was tiny. He wouldn’t last once another demon cornered him.

I sipped my coffee and silently cursed because I didn’t want Jae dead. I just didn’t want him, yanno, here. Destroying my life.

Since I could not do a damn thing about Jae’s presence or absence, I finished my first mug and stumbled back inside for a refill. When I returned to the fire, I fed still more wood into it to build the flames higher and ignored the fact I did so in case my demon did return, in desperate need of heat to better facilitate healing and recovery. After the fire crackled and flared, I eschewed the upended stump to sit in the dirt with my dad’s grimoire—direct contact of my skin with the ground was best. I released the bungee cord holding it shut with a grimace.

Teddy Mace had been a lot of things, many of which had frequently contradicted. He was both crusader and capitalist. A loving father and a harsh taskmaster to the small boy who’d been drafted as his unwitting apprentice—me. Regardless of any role he assumed, though, my dad had been a sly strategist and one of the many measures of his gamesmanship inside the power-hungry space of magicals was his grimoires. He’d created several during my early childhood alone, not just the single over-stuffed book I clutched in my hands. I remembered him constantly scribbling in journals, binders stuffed with acetate sleeves and looseleaf paper, even spiral notebooks I’d used in third grade. The crates of books Finnegan had discovered in the house’s extra unused bedroom? While I was confident that room contained Teddy Mace’s vast library, I was also dead positive that room’s contents were dotted with Dad’s older, retired grimoires as well.

Part diary, part records of his botanical experiments, and yes, pieces of magic he’d experimented with and explored, each tome yielded a treasure trove of wisdom and—for me, at least—fond memories. Locating all of them and then finding an answer or any specific bit of magic inside the collection would be a Herculean task we hadn’t the luxury of time for.

But he’d left this specific grimoire inside the additional warding of his greenhouse.

That was no accident.

This was the book my father had intended for me in my hours of greatest need.

Because I knew my dad, I wasn’t surprised at the bespelled steel barb I discovered embedded into the first page when I opened the supple leather cover of the book, nor the gibberish scrawled around that scrap of sharp junk metal. Pieces of the written text, which spiraled in widening circles around the centrally affixed barb appeared to be French, other sections Arabic and still others an odd sort of ancient glyph. None of it was genuinely anything of the sort. To anyone who wasn’t a direct descendant of Theodore Oren Mace, the scrawled words would be nothing except illegible nonsense.

For me, though, and only for me, this first page was my door to entire worlds.

“Magic, especially powerful magic, isn’t free,” I said, but my father’s voice permeated my mind, my memory. “Everything in life costs something, Davey. The air we breathe is generated by photosynthesizing plants and other processes. The water we drink represents a tiny step in the global climate cycle. Whatever food fuels our bodies requires the death of another being. All of life is balance and sacrifice. The resources we consume can’t be used by anything or anyone else. Every moment we exist pays a price.” My chest swelled in fond remembrance of my long-dead father’s crooked grin. “The power we summon and command is no different.”

Like me, Dad had been a high-level druid, showing a strong affinity with plants and the natural order, but also like me, Teddy Mace had been bi-powered. He was weakly precog, allowing him vague glimpses into futures that may or may not be, but despite the extravagant riches of magic gifted to him, my dad’s curiosity had been insatiable. He’d dabbled and researched across the magical spectrum, from alchemy to witchcraft and all that lies between. Including dark magics. To my father, power held no morality, being neither good nor evil. Only the wielder of the magic could determine that. According to my father’s worldview, the darkest power could be employed for a greater good and he’d devoted his abbreviated life to learning as many forms of magic as he could…and teaching them to me.

This, his apex grimoire, had been sealed with blood magic and only the blood of my father or his direct descendent could unloose his secrets within.

I reached for the center barb and, with a quick hiss of pain, sliced the pad of my thumb on a sharp edge. When the tip of my thumb beaded with a scant circle of red, I stiffened my shoulders and stabbed my thumb again.

Everything has a cost. My dad understood that. I did, too.

When glistening scarlet streamed from the gash I’d torn into myself, I painted the barb with it. No stingy dabs or single droplet would do. My ask was big—access to the pinnacle of my father’s accumulated experience and wisdom. The sacrificial offer of my blood needed to reflect that, and I pressed a finger below the wounded pad of my thumb to force more red from my body and onto the barb. If covering the metal required opening another wound, fine. I saturated the barb with my blood and, as ruby wet soaked into the thick page of the grimoire, I blew out a long breath. I focused my intention free of my anxieties and doubts.

Incantations worked, but words were a method to encourage the wielder of power to concentrate on whatever purpose he or she sought. I didn’t need such tools, not for this. As soon as I brought into focus my desire to tap into and connect with my dead father’s acquired knowledge, the nonsensical words spiraling around the bloody barb on the first page of Teddy’s grimoire began to alter and shift. The scrawls of ink wriggled across the paper like worms, connecting and reconnecting, until my dad’s true words started to replace the dense spiral around the red-soaked center.

I shifted my injured thumb from the page before my wound stained and wrecked the paper and lump forming in my throat, I read my last message from my dad.

Love and welcome to my son Davey and a thousand upon a thousand curses to all laying eyes upon these pages who is not he or of his line.

The rest of the spiral detailed the parameters of my father’s curse to intruders into his life’s work, lots of “your flesh shall melt from your bones” and other gruesomeness. That was my dad all right. A few brief words to the son he’d orphaned and then a diatribe of doom. But he’d stylized the first three words, love and welcome, in a special script to signal his genuine affection despite the merciless curse that followed.

He had loved me. I entertained zero doubts about that.

With my father’s protective magic unsealed by my blood, I gulped down the emotion threatening to choke my breath from me—grief, sadness, the void of my father’s loss an endless chasm inside me still. Instead of giving into it, I swallowed my pain and turned the page.

Teddy had left a more fulsome message for me there. Surrounded by his magic, this a precisely drawn array with specific crystals, tinctures, candles, and offerings, my dad had written:

Every possible future I glimpsed led to tragedy for you and your mother. Nothing I tried changed our path to that—my—painful end. I beg you to trust the events that drew you to these pages were the least harmful of the tortuous many I saw for you. I love you more than anything and would have spared you if I could. I wanted to be there for you, son, to guide and protect you as you grew into adulthood, but to my bitter regret, that could not be. In the fullness of time, giving you all that I am in this, my last grimoire, was the best means of seeing you through what must come and how I could love you best.

Your demon is much, much more than he appears. He is vital to you and you to him. Hang onto that…and him.

Forgive your mother, if you can.

Tears wet my eyes, though I did not shed them. I stopped crying for my dead father before hair had sprouted on my pubescent chest, before alcoholism had taken Rosie and had left me truly orphaned. Crying accomplished nothing. Solved nothing.

But I missed the tortured mess of a human being that had been Teddy Mace and his loss remained an intense and endless ache.

Scrubbing a quick hand over my face to squelch the burning in my eyes that signaled useless tears, I concentrated instead on the grimoire. Hang onto my demon? I smothered a gallows chuckle. Nice try, Dad, but Jae was gone. When I shut my eyes and concentrated, I still felt the subtle thrum of the link between the demon and me, but faintly.

Jae had abandoned me, not that I blamed him. Twining his fate with a human’s? What demon could desire it? Sure, magicals boosted the power of the demon who bound with them and most portaling demons had some talent for healing and prolonging the lives of their human partners, but we humans nonetheless died. I knew the scars of grief better than most and I would never wish the emotional devastation on anybody, including a psychopath demon. Maybe especially Jae.

If he could be free of me, free from the looming disaster that was my life, I bid him well.

Rather than focusing on that fresh abandonment, I studied the array my dad had drawn around his parting message to me. The crystals he’d specified in the intricate magic’s first layer were no mystery. I’d have to search my father’s crates jammed full of his crap, but Teddy had been a magical hoarder. He’d invested his tragically shortened life collecting and saving all he could, so I was confident most of the stuff my dad had drawn in this array’s many layers was probably somewhere in his crate vault. I would need to create the tinctures myself and would demand months of time, but such magic was most effectively summoned by investing your own spark into the cast. The plants and herbs that went into the melted wax of the candle layer weren’t much of a problem, either. Teddy’s greenhouse had survived and thrived. What couldn’t be harvested inside my father’s workroom, I’d have little trouble foraging in the surrounding mountains.

But to what purpose?

What magic did the array bring forth?

Wiping the blood still welling from my thumb onto my pajama bottoms to preserve the grimoire rather than stain the paper, I flipped the page to discover what else my dad had written. I glanced down at the laundry list of recipes for tinctures used in the array, but turning to the next page revealed nothing, not a single word, about what this magic did.

It must be important.

My dad wouldn’t have featured directions for such elaborate spell work at the start of his capstone grimoire and then written his personal note to me within it if the power the array brought into being wasn’t critical. This magic would save my life. I was certain of little, but the necessity of beginning to build this array resonated inside me like a clarion alarm.

When nothing my father had written hinted what the magic could do, I reviewed the spell’s components. Black tourmaline, amethyst, and smoky quartz, black salt, sage…Obviously a protection spell, but what of the hellhound’s claw? That item didn’t cue defense, but was a powerful offensive tool in a spellcaster’s arsenal. The candle colors felt off too, and the offering of herbs reflected more of a kinship with love and passion.

I frowned at the grimoire because none of this made sense.

Granted, I had practiced no sort of magic whatsoever since I was a boy and then, only when my father could guarantee no one else would witness my first fumbling attempts at using my power. I hadn’t the skill or practical experience of the most novice of magicals, but what I lacked in application I more than made up in my breadth of knowledge. Dad had taught me well. I knew which plants, flowers, herbs, and tree barks should be used for whatever purposes I had set for my intention in a broad range of circumstance. I knew which specimens in my dad’s greenhouse would poison, which would heal, and how each of them should be best processed to achieve its result. I could sink my fingers into the dirt to tap into the energies of nature to bring balance to the land or to myself…or nurture a garden into a bountiful harvest in the icy dead of winter.

My father’s array reflected little of what he’d taught me. At the very least, the building blocks of the magic seemed to contradict one another.

“You bleed.”

With a startled yelp, I jumped, dislodging the grimoire from my lap. It tumbled into dewy grass tipped with frost outside the circle of the fire’s heat. Heart thumping a wild staccato, I yanked my stare up.

My demon glared at me from the other side of the firepit. He crossed arms guarded by spelled bracers over his chest and glowered, my pulse quickening when I spied a glint of red in his dark eyes.

He’d grown a little stronger, was healing. No, he wasn’t healthy yet, but satisfaction swelled my chest anyway because, maybe for the first time, I grasped as a certainty that this demon could survive the portaling. Would survive this.

“You bleed,” he said again, mouth thin and hard, “but no enemies attack.”

Part of me rejoiced that he’d returned to me. Another equal instinct of abject horror bloomed inside me. I wanted him to return home…didn’t I? The gestalt of the warring responses at the sight of him set me to trembling. Thumb still streaming, I gestured to the fallen grimoire. “Blood magic.”

He wrinkled his nose. “Hmph.”

Indeed.

I froze, a prey animal before a stalking predator, when Jae stalked around the fire and crouched low on his haunches as he reached me on the other side. A gasp slipped from my lips when he clasped the unprotected wrist of my injured hand. He lifted it to sniff at my sore thumb. Shaking, my heart thudding against my ribcage like a war drum, I watched the tip of his tongue dart from his mouth to sample the blood that still slipped from the gash I’d torn in the pad of my thumb. When his nostrils flared and rabid hunger lit his gaze, my body clenched in both fierce alarm and delight. “You left me,” I mumbled, if only to break the unwelcome daze that had fallen over me at his reappearance. “You ran.”

He nodded, his tongue sliding out to bathe my injured thumb. “I went far.” I jolted again at the spark of magic he fed to the wound and fought to dull the roaring in my ears at his thunderous glare. “Not far enough. I smelled your spilled blood.” With his free hand, he tapped the plate armor guarding his chest. “Here. I shared your pain, which was not significant. I sensed this and see now it was truth, but I could not continue away.”

Jae had fought to break the binding compulsion. I wanted to cheer his audaciousness, and at the same time, curse him for it. The link strengthening between us felt natural, as innate and artless to me as breathing, but I knew the binding magic weaving us together was wholly not. He’d come from the daemonica realm and I was a child of the earth. We two should never have met. That was the natural order, he in his world and me in mine, but as was so often the case, magic disrupted all norms, sometimes violently, many times catastrophically.

Wasn’t magic natural too, though?

My freshly woken druidic instincts shrieked to push him off me, force him to resume his escape from my thrall, but those same gifts within me also urged me to pull him closer, draw him in. Because this demon contained power to add to my own, so much power. The constant push/pull war that raged within me held me numb, the dissonance weakening me and my resolve. “You haven’t given me your binding oath. You could’ve been free of me,” I said, my belly flipping as that truth sank in. “Of this.”

“ Issa. ”

“You should be free.”

“Who is free?” He smirked at me, sly tongue lapping the last of my blood from my now-healed thumb. “You? The imp? The young fool or his warrior father?” He smiled. “I was no force unto myself before I portaled. I cannot be after.”

I gulped. “If you returned home—”

The demon chuckled. “ Hoo-mins stupid. Amisi and stupid.”

“Stop calling me names.” I scowled, my irritation welcome. Better than feeling adrift and confused, anyway. “I’m not dumb.” Overwhelmed. Probably damned. But not stupid.

Jae lifted my hand, brushing the healed pad of my thumb across his shockingly warm lips. I shivered at the hot breath of his laugh over my skin. “And weak,” he said, eyes sparking with evil humor. “I could not leave such a helpless one to the slaughter.”

My brow furrowed. “I could poison you.” My gaze swept the greenhouse behind us. “Then raise you from the dead to murder you again. And again. And again.”

He arched an eyebrow.

Which infuriated me all the more. I yanked my hand from his grasp and, splaying both on the heated metal armor of his chest, I gave him a mighty shove. That I didn’t move him a millimeter triggered my temper to full conflagration. “God, get off me,” I said on a snarl. I pushed again. “I don’t know why I bother to worry. You are such an asshole.”

His forehead furrowed to a V. “I do not know this word.”

We both jerked, startled, when the screen door on the back porch creaked and slammed. “Oh good, you’re back.” Finnegan dragged his fingers through sleep-mussed hair that stuck up and out like dandelion tufts. He narrowed disgruntled, drowsy eyes on both of us. “Flirting? Seriously? We have a war to plan. Fuck’s sake,” he grumbled, pivoted on his heels and marched into the kitchen.

When my attention shifted to Jae, he stared at the porch where my so-called friend had absconded. “Not him. The youngling is a fool, but not stupid.” He pursed his lips and stared at me. “Maybe not all hoo-min . Maybe just you.”

This time when I pushed him away, he let me and smiled as I stumbled when he released his grip. Fed up with demons and spy frenemies, I bent to scoop Dad’s grimoire from the ground, my mouth hardening when my quick glance showed the spiral of words and glyphs surrounding the blood magicked barb had reverted to gibberish again. The blood I’d drenched onto the first page had coagulated while I’d talked to Jae, my blood beginning to flake dry on the steel and of course, my demon had healed my thumb so now I’d have to slash myself open again to try to figure dad’s shit out.

“Coffee’s on!” Finnegan yelled from the kitchen. “I demand intel. Get your asses in here.”

Jae grinned up at me. “Fuck’s sake,” he said, repeating the pearls of human intelligence dropped from the not-stupid Finnegan’s lips.

Lovely.

“How many?” Finnegan bent over his plate at the breakfast bar, his fork raised with another bite of his southwest omelet, his sides of from-scratch hash browns and buttery biscuits waiting on his plate. I would’ve liked fresh oranges to squeeze for juice, but Skip’s hasty grocery run hadn’t included them.

Jae hovered at the back porch door. “Four.”

Finnegan’s eyebrows arched. “Four?”

“Issa.” He nodded decisively. “Four.”

Finnegan whistled, then resumed shoveling his omelet into his gaping mouth. “Miracle you evaded two hunter teams, forget three. But four?” he said around his food, which was pretty gross. “That’s some crazy luck.”

“No luck.” My demon’s spine stiffened. “Skill.”

I snorted a muted laugh, transferring the last of the scrambled eggs to a waiting platter. “Order up,” I called and then frowned when Jae merely scowled at me from the door. “What? There’s protein here. A pound of bacon alone.” I carried Jae’s food around the central island and placed it next to Finnegan. “Don’t make that face at me. Eat.”

He studied the basic bitch bacon and eggs with a pensive stare. “I hunted when I left.”

While dodging four hunter teams bent on finding and killing us? “For a demon, you are a terrible liar.”

“Truth.” Finnegan nodded. “That you made it back without a scratch is genuinely astonishing. I hadn’t expected that much heat this early. Griffith didn’t, either. Teams descend to disrupt the binding before it sets. Everyone recognizes that, but four teams? In less than twenty-four hours. That’s shockingly fast.”

“I am First Blood.” Jae shrugged and eschewing the bar stool to stand at the kitchen island, he lifted the plate and sniffed. “We are smaller, faster. More dangerous.” His mouth bowed into an evil smile that jellied my knees. “Kill me, live longer.” His chest swelled. “They run to kill me before I heal. Then will be too late.”

Skip stumbled into the kitchen, making a beeline for the coffeepot. “I smell bacon.”

Jae glared at Skip, grabbed a handful of crispy bacon from his platter and stuffed them into his mouth.

“But…” Finnegan’s voice trailed, his fork frozen in front of him. “You’re short,” he said to the demon. “I’m sorry, but it needs to be said. You’re short and kind of—” He shrugged helplessly. “Tiny.”

A moan of glee escaped my demon as he crunched his bacon. “This meat.”

I snatched a strip off the draining plate before Skip stole the rest. “Try the eggs.”

Finnegan’s face flushed. “He’s too small!”

“Rude.” Mug cradled in both hands, Skip leaned against the counter. “Also wrong. First Blood is the most lethal daemonica tribe because they are faster and more agile warriors. Other tribes are too big and cumbersome. Slow. They can’t keep up with First Blood. Other tribes must team together to fight First Blood demons to stand any chance of survival. Winning is a much less certain proposition.” He turned to face Jae. “How many did you say have shown up so far?”

Jae now guarded his food. “Four.”

“Well.” Skip sucked in a sharp breath. “Finally. Some good news.”

I gaped at him. “You think he can take on and defeat four demons.”

“I don’t believe it.” He swiped the plate of extra bacon off the counter next to him. “I know it. Are there more eggs?”

I snagged the plate I’d meant to use for myself and loaded it with the rest of the eggs I’d scrambled. I shoved it at him. “Explain.”

“Think of a pair of ships in the ocean, a massive ocean liner and a speedboat. Who’s going to make a sudden turn to avoid disaster faster?” Skip opened a drawer to retrieve a fork. Scooping up his first bite, he nodded to Jae. “He’s a speedboat.”

Jae stuffed more bacon into his mouth. “Two are Black Sand. One is Fire Island. Last is Aerie.”

Skip and Finnegan both grunted.

“He has grown fat, his flight patterns awkward and lazy. Aerie did not anticipate one such as me encroaching on his territory among the hoo-mins .” My demon jerked a stiff shoulder. “Black Sand are bigger threat. They already fly in tandem. Partners.”

My mind whirled, struggling to process. “Pairs are dangerous.” Because a team of demons could kill him.

“The two from Black Sand will ally with Fire Island soon,” Finnegan said, mouth thinned. “I’m surprised they haven’t already. From what I’ve read, those tribes are natural collaborators.”

“Because they are weakest.” Jae chuckled. “They are no worry.”

“Where are they searching?” Skip eyed him skeptically. “They have to know David would come to his father’s sanctuary.”

But Dad had been dead a long time. He’d also sold the goods he’d produced from the greenhouse and component ingredients in town, away from his bolt hole. Few had been invited into his home. In my entire boyhood, I remembered only three—Griffith, Clark Hocking, and my dad’s old mentor, another druid in the region named Carter Banks. “Other than you guys, Griffith and my mom are the only people left alive who know where we are, though, and the place is otherwise untraceable.”

Skip nodded. “Rosie could be our vulnerable point.”

I grimaced. What else was new?

“They are East.” Jae waved toward the stove. “Far. Military birds interrupt the grid pattern of their search.”

“Helicopters,” Finnegan corrected.

“Helicopter birds.” The demon gestured back and forth, almost dumping his breakfast from his plate. “In the way.”

“Dad had a farm near ABL. The feds knew we didn’t live close to their rocket and munitions center. They would’ve dislodged any magical stronghold in the vicinity to avoid the risk of an explosion tipping off a chain reaction to their facilities, but Dad thought letting people believe we were close to them was an advantage.” I turned to the stove and reached for the carton of eggs. I cracked a few into the bowl I’d been using to prepare my breakfast…again. “That the military isn’t dispelling that old rumor despite the influx of hunter teams around their bomb factory is promising.”

“Tomorrow problem.” Finnegan finished his omelet and carried his plate to the sink. He rinsed it —

“Wasting water,” Skip said, his voice a singsong dig.

“This dishwasher is older than you are.”

Skip laughed.

“Older than I am then.” Plate and fork placed in my mom’s ancient dishwasher, Finnegan turned to face me. “The point is they aren’t near us, so we can use the next couple of days to catch you up on the skills you should have learned in a guild as soon as you tested as magical as a tween.”

I poured the eggs into the skillet to scramble them. “I’m fine.”

Finnegan snorted. “You can’t draw a translation sigil.”

“Can you? This very second.” I peered over my shoulder. “If I gave you a pen and a notepad, you could sketch a rough of that sigil.”

His face twisted into a fierce scowl. “As soon as I check the documents for the specific components, sure.”

I returned my attention to the frying pan with a shrug. “So can I.”

“You don’t know the incantations—”

“Unnecessary,” Skip said.

“—or the tools and supplies—”

“Also unnecessary,” I said, remembering Jae drawing his translation sigil on my abdomen in his blood. I scraped the pan with my spatula to whip the eggs. “I don’t need or want Remedial Magic 001.”

“Sucks to be you then, because that’s what you’re getting.”