Demon Heart (The Darkworld Series Book 3) (8 page)

Alone, a demon was powerless. But the cases the Venantium had to deal with usually involved a demon’s power combined with a sorcerer’s―twice as deadly, and much harder to send the demon back to the Darkworld.

But demons couldn’t simply possess anyone in an instant. They had to have permission, a kind of contract. I didn’t know how it worked, only that they usually ended up killing the host to save the bother of arguing. Either way, the human wouldn’t get out alive once a demon had picked its target.

All in all, getting involved with demons was a bad idea.

We leapt off the bus as soon as it pulled to a stop, and raced up the main street, past the blazing lights from the bars. We dodged around inebriated clubbers, slipping on the wet pavements. Leo swore as we took a turning into a side street and almost ran smack into a wall of shadows.

Something like a huge clot of darkness leapt at us. It crashed into my shoulder, knocking me off my feet. I fell down, and the Darkworld answered almost before I touched it, ice flowing from my palms to break my fall. The rain turned to ice in the air, glittering crystals suspended around me, blocking the beast as it lunged at me again. Shadows folded around the edges of my vision, the demon inside me awakening. I pushed back the sudden, unexpected urge to taunt the beast to move closer. I had to finish this fast.

Luckily, the Darkworld was more than willing to answer. I summoned icy fire to my right palm and threw it at the shadow-beast. The shadowy mass distorted as the monster screamed, its jaws gaping wide, a fist-sized hole smoking in its flank. It shrank from the size of a lion to more like a large dog, but it still bared its sharp teeth. It jumped at me, trailing streams of darkness, and I responded with another palm of ice-fire. A horrible scream tore from its throat as the fire ripped through its semisubstantial coat. The demon within me blazed with approval, and for a brief moment, violet flashed across my vision.
Go back to the Darkworld,
the demon in the back of my mind hissed.

That was enough for the creature, which backed off and ran, scattering shadows like torn pages.

I looked up to see Leo, outlined in flame, face down another shadow-beast. It stood like a living shadow, several times the height of a person and with the mad, roving eyes of a wild beast.

But it was afraid of the flames. Leo blazed all over, and the creature cringed away. A hiss crept between its jagged teeth as it turned its purple-red eyes on me.

I was ready. The ice on my hands coalesced into a glittering dagger, and I stabbed wildly at the creature as it lunged at me.
Burn,
whispered the demon inside me, and the icy weapon met shadowy flesh.

As it touched the shadow-beast, the dagger melted, its form becoming flame-like, and the Darkworld bit deeper into my skin. The beast howled, the ice-fire searing its flank. It broke apart
,
pieces of its shadowy skin falling to the ground, and it leapt through a hole in the universe, leaving the alleyway deserted.

Deserted except for the body on the ground, and the figure crouching over it.

My feet skidded, and my stomach lurched as I realised I was treading in blood. Lots of it.

Howard lay on his back, his arms flung wide, unmoving. Berenice knelt at his side, shaking with sobs. I’d never seen her cry before. She had her arms over Howard’s body, as though trying to protect him.

Don’t let him be dead
, I thought desperately. But he
looked
dead―his face and chest were crisscrossed with deep lacerations, and my insides twisted when I realised I could see
bone
poking through one of the face wounds. His eyes were closed.

“He’s… alive,” Berenice choked. “I didn’t know what to do―we need a healer.”

“The fortune-teller?” I said. “Or the hospital? But they’d ask too many questions…”

Berenice glared at me through red-rimmed eyes. “How’re we going to move him to Blackstone, genius?”

“Magical concealment,” said Leo. “Influence. The three of us could carry him.”

“You’re shitting me,” said Berenice. “It’ll never work. Someone would know something was up.”

“Well, you’re the one who called me. If you’ve got a better idea, why’d you bother?”

“Leo!” I said. Why were they wasting time bickering when Howard might be
dying
?

“Look, we could try the hospital, but Ash is right. These are Darkworld-inflicted wounds. They aren’t like regular injuries. The fortune-teller’s the best person to go to.”

“Okay,” said Berenice. “You’d better be ready with some serious Influence.”

Leo smiled. “Been saving it up.”

Berenice was so shaky she could barely support her own weight, let alone Howard’s, but she wrapped her arms around his waist. Leo joined her, and I felt an irrational spike of jealousy when he put his arms around her to support her.

“Little help, Ash?” Leo grunted. Even between them they couldn’t carry Howard’s bulk.

“Sure,” I said, awkwardly positioning myself next to Leo with Howard’s arm draped around my shoulder. A faint groan escaped him. He
was
alive.

I wondered how in hell we were going to get him onto a bus.

Then a hole in the Darkworld opened in front of us. A familiar chill rushed through me as I met the eyes of the creature on the other side.

A demon.

“
Ashlyn.”
The familiar voice, devoid of any emotion. All demons sounded the same to me―sinister, otherworldly, and beyond life or death.

“What?” I said tonelessly.

“I can help you.”

“The hell you can,” I muttered. “You won’t get me that easily.”

“Not all of us are your enemies.”

“Doesn’t mean I trust you,” I said, and alarm flickered as I felt the demon respond inside me. I pushed the presence aside, conscious that Berenice and Leo were staring. But more urgent was the blood rapidly pooling on the pavement and Howard’s limp form.

“Come on,” said Leo, taking a step toward the dark space and pulling Berenice and me along with him. “You leave her alone,” he told the demon.

It merely grinned at him, its teeth flickering in and out of existence behind the black smoke.

Together we managed to get Howard to the edge of the street. Leo told me that Influence worked by being unnoticeable, by constantly repeating the same mantra in your mind.
We’re not here. We’re not important. Don’t notice us.
I’d done it before, albeit unconsciously. I used to put it down to coincidence that at school, people often simply failed to notice me if I didn’t feel like talking, and teachers would sometimes forget I was there if I was having a particularly bad day. And sometimes people would look right through me. It wasn’t like I was particularly noticeable anyway―just one in a thousand students―so it never crossed my mind to wonder about it. Only since I’d been at university had I gone out of my way to make new friends and socialise.

This was different. I could feel my connection to the Darkworld like something burning inside me, paradoxically ice-cold and yet hot as fire. The combined strength of the three of us meant that tendrils of the Darkworld surrounded us in a cloud, a usual side effect of using strong magic. But it surrounded me in particular like a thick dust cloud; if it hadn’t been semitransparent, I wouldn’t have been able to see where I was going. We waded through black fog, and a chill rushed through me as Leo and the others faded in and out of view, like ghosts.

But when we walked down the main street, I could tell it was working. No one gave us a second glance, even the obviously sober bouncers watching out for anything suspicious outside nightclubs. The bus driver didn’t even glance up as we heaved Howard onto the bus; luckily, the door didn’t shut on us. We laid him down on the back seat, and I slumped down in the seat opposite, exhausted. My arms ached like crazy. I tried not to look at the trail of blood leaking onto the floor.

“How are people not noticing that?” I whispered to Leo, not sure if I was supposed to keep my voice down or not.

“Because we’re keeping their attention away,” said Leo in a strained voice. “I’ve never done it on this level before. You holding up okay, Berenice?”

Berenice was still chalk-white and shaking. “Yeah,” she croaked.

Why wasn’t it having as much of an effect on me? I wondered. Maybe I was doing it wrong.

But I knew I was doing
something
, because otherwise the Darkworld wouldn’t be responding to me so strongly. Shadows danced around us, and I saw the flicker of violet demon eyes.
Shit.
There was a demon on the
bus.

I looked away from the shadows, fixing my gaze on my feet instead.
This is absurd.
There’s blood all over the floor, and no one’s looking.
We’re invisible in full view. We didn’t even have to pay bus fare.
A strange, wild giggle bubbled up in my throat.

“What’re you grinning at?” Berenice snarled at me. “You glad it got us and not you? Or is it because you think
you’re
invincible? You make me sick.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” The overwhelming feeling faded, and I just felt confused, shaken by the strange thrill part of me got from being this close to the Darkworld. And I didn’t miss the demon grinning at me out the corner of my eye before it vanished as the bus lurched down a hill.

After the doppelganger had gone, I’d thought the demon inside me would stay back. The doppelganger had taunted me, brought the dark presence within me to the surface, but the fortune-teller had insisted that I wasn’t dangerous. The demon was part of me. And yet… for a couple of seconds there, during the fight, she’d felt like an entirely different person.

“Berenice, stop snapping at Ash,” said Leo. “We’ll find the fortune-teller soon, and she’ll sort everything out.”

“She’d better.”

We hauled Howard off the bus at the stop at the far end of Blackstone and made our way through the dark streets towards the town centre. None of us had ever been in this area before, but we used the towering cathedral spires as a guiding point. It was hard going. My arms burned, and Berenice stumbled so many times that if Leo hadn’t been supporting her on the other side, we’d have crashed to the floor in a heap.

There was clearly a pub crawl going on, judging by the number of people in rainbow-striped outfits and superhero capes in the square. But none of them gave us a second glance as we walked right through the centre, to the corner where the fortune-teller’s tent sat hidden in plain sight. Like us.

We dragged Howard over the tent’s threshold, Leo shouting for the fortune-teller. It was dark in there, and even the incense candles no longer burned. I stumbled into the desk as we laid Howard on the wooden bench. In the gloom, I made out the shapes of glittering charms hanging from the ceiling and the faint glow of the crystal ball that presumably was a fake on the desk.

No reply came. I conjured up a light and directed it upward to illuminate the entire tent. The fortune-teller’s usual seat was empty.

“Shit,” said Leo. “You’re kidding.”

“She’s not in?” whispered Berenice. “But we need… we need to help… him.” She sank down onto the floor and made choked sobbing noises.

“Oh, pull yourself together!” I snapped. I shook all over from the exertion, but something in me felt alert, and for some reason, angry. “Where does she keep her healing stuff?”

“Here,” said Leo, who was already pulling out bottles and containers from behind the desk. “This is the one she used when the harpies got you, Ash―I think it works on all wounds from Darkworld creatures.”

Berenice took the bottle from him with shaking hands. She still looked like living death, but my yelling at her had snapped her to her senses, at least.

“This one’s for stopping heavy bleeding.” Leo examined another bottle. “These instructions are handwritten. I think she makes all these herself.”

“I don’t care. Just hand it over!” said Berenice.

“Okay, okay.”

Berenice unscrewed the lid. The strong smell of herbs mingled with the lingering aroma of incense. For a minute, the only sounds were Berenice’s sharp breaths as she tenderly rubbed the lotion into the worst of the wounds.

“The bleeding’s stopping,” said Berenice. “But he’s not waking up. Why isn’t he waking up?”

“We need to find Madame Unreliable,” said Leo. “Seriously… she can’t be far. It’s not like her to leave her tent unguarded.”

“Maybe she wanted to make sure we could get inside, just in case,” I said.

“Sounds like her. But she couldn’t have known this would happen.”

“You never know,” I said darkly.

Howard groaned from the bench.

Berenice let out a startled shriek. “Howard!” She threw herself onto him.

“Ow.”

“Sorry―sorry!”

“Son of a bitch.” Howard groaned. “Did it get away?”

“You crazy motherfucker,” said Leo, with a relieved laugh.

Howard squinted at him, tilting his head up. “The hell are you doing here, Blake?”

“No, ‘thanks for saving my ass?’”

“You didn’t save my―” Howard sat up and promptly fell backwards again with a groan of pain. “Where the hell am I?”

“In the fortune-teller’s tent,” said Berenice. “You weren’t moving. I freaked out and called Leo. He came here with… Ash.” She gave me a distasteful glance. Typical. “Cyrus is blocked to the outside world, and Claudia didn’t pick up her phone. We had to move you here. I didn’t know what else to do.”

“So where’s Madame Whoosit?”

“We don’t know,” said Berenice. “She wasn’t here when we arrived, but this place was open.”

“Bitch,” he said. “Fuck, my head kills.”

“You probably need painkillers.” Berenice snapped into caring nurse mode again in a rather disconcerting way. “Are there any in here?”

“No, just natural medicines,” said Leo. “It’s like I said―I think the fortune-teller made them herself.”

“I have ibuprofen in my bag,” I said.

Howard practically snatched them from my hand.

I frowned. “Hey, a thank you would be nice.”

“Thanks,” he muttered, dry-swallowing two painkillers.

Well, that’s friendly.
Not like we’d dragged him all the way from Redthorne or anything.