Demons Forever (Peachville High Demons #6) (34 page)

I stifled a cry, my fist pressed hard against my mouth.

Priestess Winter stumbled, nearly dropping the chalice as the prima fell to her knees. Blood trickled over the side. Summoning her strength, the priestess made her way to the eye of the red portal, then poured the contents of the cup across the large stone. It bubbled and hissed. All at once, the witches of the Clement coven fell to the ground, their faces locked in a death-gaze.

With a loud crack, the portal stone broke into a million pieces.

"Stop," I said, falling to my knees. "I can't take any more."

"Wait," Lea said. She crouched down beside me and placed a hand on my arm. "What's she doing?"

I expected the priestess to go straight to my grandfather, but she didn't. Instead, she fell to her knees on top of the ruined stone. Slowly, she lifted her hands upward in a V, chanting again in a foreign tongue.

I shook my head. "Did this happen in Aldeen?"

"I don't know," Lea said. "We didn't stay long enough to find out."

I waited with breathless anticipation as a mist began to form above the body of each fallen witch. "Oh my god," I said, my flesh erupting in goosebumps. "I've seen this before."

The white mists hovered over each dead body, each taking on a light of its own, just like when Coach King had passed on. The mist over the prima's fallen body was so bright, I had to shield my eyes.

"I have too," Lea said, her voice trembling. "But never here in the human world. Usually when a witch dies, there's no sign of the demon's spirit. I don't understand it."

I waited for the mists to fill with shimmering color like Coach King's spirit had done, but it didn't happen.

"Why aren't they passing on?" I asked. Dread pooled in my stomach.

Priestess Winter stood, her face unrecognizable now. She stretched her arms out wide, then leaned forward as she released all the air from her body. With a terrible gasping sound, she let her head fall backward, sucking in a loud breath as her jaw practically came unhinged.

The white spirit of each demon lifted up, then moved through the air toward the priestess. One by one, they were sucked into her open mouth. She consumed them all, her wrinkled body becoming younger with each demon that entered her. The trickle of rust-colored blood at her side stopped as her wound healed over. Her hands lost their wrinkles and her face became smooth and young.

Finally, only the prima demon's spirit remained. A single bright mist in a room full of death.

Priestess Winter walked over toward the statue that held my grandfather captive. Tears flowed from his eyes, wetting the stone beneath. "Your Queen will never be free," she said. "Her fallen spirit will fuel my withered heart for an eternity to come."

Priestess Winter inhaled again, pulling the bright spirit into the dark cavern of her mouth.

Finished with her feast of souls, her jaw snapped shut. Then, she licked her lips and smiled.

I've Seen Something Like It Before

We returned to the crow village in an instant.

Lea fell to the ground, gasping for air. Courtney ran to her side, but I didn't even look around to see who else had arrived since we'd been gone.

"What did you do?" I shouted, my body feverish. "We have to go back. He was still alive."

"I can't," Lea said. She coughed, her shoulders shaking violently.

Angela ran inside the blue house nearby and came back with a blanket. She threw it over Lea's shoulders, then looked up at me, worry in her eyes. "What happened? Did you see our grandfather?"

I paced, my steps quick and frantic. I drew a shaky hand through my hair, images of death burned in my mind.

Jackson took my hand, but I pulled it away. I didn't want to be comforted. I wanted to make sense of what I'd seen. I wanted to go back there and see the rest of it.

"We saw him," I said. "We saw..."

My voice gave out. I struggled to breathe. What had Priestess Winter done back there? What exactly did we see?

"You're scaring me," Jackson said. "Tell me what happened."

"Harper?"

I looked up to see who had spoken. It was a voice I hadn't heard in months.

Lark stepped forward, her eyebrows drawn together in concern. Seeing her face brought down my walls, and I threw my arms around her, holding her tight. She hugged back.

"I missed you," she said. "I was so worried about you after my mother told me what the Order tried to do to you. Thank god you're okay."

"I don't feel okay right now," I said. I pulled away and collapsed into a nearby chair. I leaned over on the large table and put my head in my hands. "I don't even know where to start."

Jackson, Lark, Angela, Zara and Mary Anne all sat down at the table with me. Courtney and Lea sat on the ground near us, meditating together to restore Lea's power. Essex stood behind Mary Anne, his hand on her shoulder. All eyes were on me, waiting.

"It was horrifying," I said, my voice catching. I cleared my throat. "The ritual started as a regular initiation. Some helpless girl. But once it started, we could tell something was wrong. Priestess Winter was there, but not the one we know now. Her mother."

I looked to Zara.

"Your grandmother," I said.

She pressed her lips together, then looked down at the table, her hands fidgeting in her lap.

"Instead of just one demon coming through the portal, there were more than a dozen," I said, reliving it in my head. "They slaughtered as many as they could before Priestess Winter stopped them. She was so strong, she made them powerless with just a flick of her wrist."

I paused to catch my breath. My heart was still beating a hundred miles an hour.

"My grandfather led the demons through. I think they planned on killing everyone," I said.

"Why?" Angela asked. "Why would he do something like that?"

I rubbed my forehead, then met my sister's gaze. "Because our grandmother was a slave there," I said. "She was the prima demon of that town. He said he'd come to set her free. To release her spirit by killing her and the woman she was trapped inside."

Angela gasped and lifted the back of her hand to her mouth. "I had no idea."

"I don't think he was expecting Priestess Winter to be there," I said. "Either that or he'd completely underestimated her power. She was too strong for the small group he'd brought with him. He tried to fight back, and for a minute, I thought he'd killed her. It was the strangest thing. He was able to surprise her. He stabbed her straight through the stomach and she was bleeding really badly. But..."

How did I explain what happened next? I replayed the scene in my memory.

"When he wounded her, something weird happened to her. She began to age really fast. Her skin shriveled up and her face changed," I said. "I thought she was going to die right there, but then she got free and before he could defend himself, she turned my grandfather into stone."

"She killed him?" Mary Anne asked.

I shook my head. "No, she just trapped him there so he could watch." Tears filled my eyes. "Priestess Winter said something about needing to heal her body, then she slit the prima's throat, performing the same ritual we saw her perform in Aldeen when she killed the whole town. Every witch in the room fell dead right there in front of us."

"Why would she do that?" Essex asked. "Why would she kill her own people?"

"She needed them," I said. "She needed what was inside of them. The demons."

Jackson's mouth opened in surprise. "What are you saying? The demons didn't die when the witches died?"

"They died," I said, searching for the words to explain what I'd seen. "But it was as if the death of the prima and the breaking of the portal stone freed their souls. It's hard to explain. Their spirits rose up from the bodies as mist. I saw it when Coach King died. It was exactly the same, as if they were preparing to pass into the Afterworld."

"Oh my god," Jackson said. He brought a hand to his forehead. "The broken portal set their spirits free."

"I think so," I said. "But they didn't shimmer and disappear like Coach King's spirit. They just hovered there for a minute, until..."

My voice cracked, and I had to take a deep breath to compose myself.

"Until what?" Angela asked.

I glanced up at Zara. I knew this would be difficult for her to hear. She might have hated her grandmother, but this was still her family I was talking about.

She swallowed and straightened her shoulders, as if readying herself for the news.

"Until Priestess Winter inhaled them," I said finally. "She sucked them in as if she was drinking them."

"They healed her," Mary Anne said, her eyes wide and her expression blank.

I nodded. "How did you know that?"

"I've seen something like it before," she said. She glanced toward the alter at the center of the village. "I've seen the Mother Crow eat the souls of the dead, but I never understood what it was. I never realized they were demon spirits."

Everyone around the table grew silent and still.

"I only saw it once," she said. "When I was a little girl. She brought a witch up here and slit her throat like you were saying. Only, she didn't exactly inhale the spirit. She used a stone."

"What kind of stone?" Essex asked.

"A soul stone, I guess," Mary Anne said. "I can't remember exactly. It may have been red, though, instead of black. She pulled the spirit into the stone, then she ate it."

"Then what happened?" I asked, sitting on the edge of my seat.

Mary Anne stared ahead, as if seeing the ritual play itself out before her. "She became younger," she said. "Not exactly beautiful or anything, but somehow less grotesque. And stronger."

I lay my head in my hands. The similarities were obvious. Both Priestess Winter and the crow witch had somehow eaten the demon spirits to give them power and strength. "But the crow witch was how old?" I asked. "Over a hundred years old, right?"

"Yes," Mary Anne said. "About one hundred and twenty."

"And she was in rough shape," I said, remembering the old woman's leathery skin and clawed hands. "Priestess Winter was still young and beautiful. She was only, what? Fifty back in 1995? Fifty-one? She didn't even look that old at first. I don't understand why she aged so fast when she was wounded. It doesn't make any sense."

"It makes sense to me," Lea said, standing to join us. Her strength had returned completely thanks to Courtney's abilities.

"How?" I asked.

"Because she wasn't just fifty years old," she said. "She was two hundred."

The Greater The Cost

"That's not possible," Zara said. "You think my grandmother lived for two hundred years?"

"I think she's still alive," Lea said. "You yourself said you didn't think your mother was the same after she took over as Priestess Winter."

"This is completely ridiculous," Lark said. "No one can live that long."

"Don't you see?" Lea slammed her hand down on the table and everyone jumped. "She's been keeping herself alive all this time by using dark magic. She's powering her own body with the souls of demons. That's why she keeps killing those demon gate towns. She needs the demons' power."

I shook my head. Was this really possible? Could Priestess Winter really have kept herself alive for that long? If the crow witch had been able to do it for over a hundred years, didn't it make sense Priestess Winter could keep it going for much longer? She was so much more powerful and had access to a lot more demon souls.

The skin on my arms erupted in goosebumps.

"Her fallen spirit will fuel my withered heart for eternity," I said.

All eyes turned to me, questioning.

"Those were the last words we heard her say before we left the vision in Tennessee," I said. My pulse raced. "Priestess Winter was telling my grandfather that his wife would never know freedom because her soul had become fuel. She plans to live forever."

"Are you telling me that my mother really isn't my mother?" Zara asked. "That I was right about her?"

"That's exactly what I'm saying." Lea rubbed the back of her neck. "I think the original Priestess Winter, the oldest sister who started the Order of Shadows, has never died. I think she's been using the spirits of the dead to keep her looking young."

"But she looks just like my mother," Zara said.

"A glamour," Lea answered. "All she would have to do is use a glamour to switch places with her oldest daughter when the time came."

"There's no way she could keep that up twenty-four hours a day," Lark said. She stood from her place at the table, a frown on her face. "I think this whole thing is a stretch. Maybe you didn't understand what you were seeing."

"I know what we saw," Lea said.

"There is a way to make a glamour permanent," I said, remembering Lydia Ashworth's story. She'd said all magic has a cost. "Almost any spell can become permanent if you sacrifice a life to create it. A memory spell, a glamour, anything. The greater the magic, the greater the cost."

"All she would have had to do was sacrifice a human life in order to make the glamour last a very long time. Years, even," Lea said. Then she gasped. "That's why there was usually twenty or thirty years between one Priestess Winter and the next. Maybe her glamour was starting to fade."

"But who would she have sacrificed?" Lark said. "Don't you think someone would have noticed if all these people kept going missing or being murdered?"

"That's the beauty of it," Lea said. "She sacrificed the oldest daughter. The one who was next in line to become priestess. No one noticed she was gone because as soon as she took her daughter's life, she switched places with her. To everyone else, it looked like the grandmother had died and her oldest daughter had taken over as the next priestess. In reality, it's been the same woman changing faces every twenty years or so."

Zara made a choking noise. "I knew it," she said, clutching at her heart. "I knew something terrible had happened to my mother."

"But how does she keep having children if she's so old?" Angela asked.

"She doesn't," Lea explained. "That's why she waits until the oldest daughter has three daughters of her own. That way there's always an heir who will grow up, have three children of her own, and then die. It's brilliant."