Dancing With Monsters Page 7

  Chapter Six

  April

  I had been compelled to love Benjamin Marsh by a love spell he had put on me, but I didn't care-he had cared about me more than anyone in my life. He died protecting me and entrusted me with the ingredient to his other love-the serum he had created.

  "Please, April, you must be hungry," Ayil said, in a motherly tone. "I can make you anything you like."

  I couldn't help but to smile at her. "No, I'm not hungry, but thank you,"

  Since Seth, I learned compelling was his monster ability, had used that power to talk to me, everyone has been quiet and acted as though we were not in danger. I stood by the window and gazed through the sheer curtain. On the outside of the window, I'd look like a ghost to a passerby, but to me the world outside was shrouded in a haze that was slowly thickening the more I found out.

  "So what happens next?" I asked tuning around. "We can't just stay here and cook and eat as though nothing has happened." I tried to not sound agitated, but it came off that way anyhow. "A demon, which ran a B&B just killed my?" I let my words trail off, "and tried to kill me over a serum that can turn humans into an army for demons-kind of like zombies in a movie?a bad, bad zombie movie."

  "Pancakes are ready," Ayil yelled into the living room like she was calling her family to breakfast.

  "So you've seen firsthand what the serum can do?" Ayil asked.

  I watched Nessa and Malachi take a seat at the table.

  "Yes, and it's horrible," I said, shaking my head remembering the man in the alleyway. I could still feel his energy enter me and the way he begged me with his eyes to put an end to his misery. I opened my eyes, Malachi was putting syrup on his pancakes and Nessa was impatiently waiting to put some on hers. "What are you people doing?"

  Malachi passively looked up at me. "Eating. No sense in going hungry when chasing demons and saving not only this world, but our own as well."

  Our world. They had a 'their world' that I now belonged to too. "So, where is your world at?" Might as well get some questioned answered since we don't seem too worried about finding the demon and the serum that was so important.

  "Turn left when you go out the door, walk about three miles to the portal, and in the matter of seconds you're in Iethia," Malachi said being the first to finish his stack of pancakes.

  "I'm going to take something to Ezra." Seth started to get up.

  "No, you hardly touched anything on your plate." Nessa gently wrapped her hand around his wrist. "Sit, eat, and I'll take something to her," she said quickly getting up and leaving with a plate of pancakes before Seth could get out of his chair.

  Seth rubbed his forehead and let out a worrisome sigh.

  "Iethia, is it something like sanctuary?" I asked shifting my eyes to back to Malachi.

  Ayil twirled around from the dishes she was doing at the sink. "Sanctuary, you mean like an angel sanctuary?" She asked as blobs of soap bubbles dolloped on the floor from her hands.

  Malachi and Ayil gazed at me waiting for an answer as Seth stared blankly at his barely eaten pancakes and twirled his fork through the syrup on his plate.

  "That's where Ben and I were to go," I said, not taking my eyes from Seth. "But he said it was built by angels."

  "And how were you to get there?" Ayil asked drying her hands off.

  I shifted my eyes to her. "I don't know. An angel, Yolanda, was to take us there. Ben gave her the recipe for the serum for safe keeping. She was going to meet us in about a week."

  "Where?" Ayil asked.

  "Ben didn't tell me."

  "Of course he didn't tell her," Malachi said turning to Ayil. "She was his spell-struck pet, and he wasn't going to reveal anything to her." He flipped his hand at me as he kept his eyes on Ayil. "She might be a demon made monster, but that doesn't make her a true monster," he said looking at me over his shoulder with a smirk.

  I never thought not being considered a monster would make me mad, but it did. I wanted to challenge Malachi, but now wasn't the time or place.

  "Angels can't always be trusted." Ayil shook her head. "The majority, yes, but there are those that fringe on the border of who they are supposed to be. The Demon-Angel wars didn't help the matter either."

  "Those wars were a long time ago," Malachi said as I took Nessa's spot at the table.

  "Yes, but the effects still linger." Ayil leaned against the counter and lit up a cigarette.

  "Yolanda smoked too," Ayil slid her eyes over to me as I said my thoughts out loud. "I mean I was surprised to see an angel smoke. I thought they were supposed to be pure and protect people." It was too late; I think I had just put my foot in my mouth.

  Malachi let out snicker and shook his head. "Oh, spell-struck pet, your head has been miss-led to the fabricated stories about angels. Yes, there are good ones, but most are like you and me only with superpowers far beyond our own."

  "And even the prettiest, fairest of angels can't be trusted. Sometimes it's the ugliest, most unlikely creatures that are your allies." Ayil crushed out her cigarette and joined us at the table.

  "Ben must have trusted Yolanda enough to give her the recipe before she took us to sanctuary," I said as Malachi shook his head again at me like a teacher trying to instruct a struggling student.

  "You don't get it," he looked at me with his blue eyes that nearly matched the sky outside. "The serum can, if used successfully, tip the scales on who controls the portals connecting the realms, decides which race should survive and which one should be exterminated, and last but not least, who should rule for eternity-and that spell-struck, is a very long time."

  Seth

  "She said Evie, the innkeeper at the Ivy Inn, was a demon in disguise, and knew that Ben had manufactured the serum." I looked down at Ezra as I twirled my fingers through her silky hair. "April said the ring, her engagement ring, contains the secret ingredient for the serum, but she's been spell-struck, and anything she tells us may be the truth or it could be fictitious. Right now, she doesn't even know what's true and what isn't."

  "April's strong," she said in a weak voice as she glanced away from me. "The spell is a strong one, but she'll quickly overcome that. Her years of suffering had made her resilient. I could sense that when I entered her dreams." Her eyes flashed back to me. "That demon bite should have killed her, but instead it changed her into something unique, and?something that could benefit our situation."

  "Benefit??" I asked as Ezra began to cough.

  I helped her up as she covered her face and fought off the violent coughing spell. I didn't want to think it, but Ezra was fading in this world. The disease that took her life before, had come back.

  Finally, she calmed and began to take in deep breaths.

  "I won't be in this world for very much longer," she said looking me steadily in the eyes.

  I grabbed a tissue and wiped the blood from the corner of her mouth-the only color to her. She was drained of energy and suffering. It didn't take any magical ability to see that Ezra was slipping away.

  "I can't go back to the-"

  "You're not," I snapped. I got up and paced the floor running my fingers through my hair. "I'm a monster with archangel abilities." I looked at her. "I can make you better as you once were."

  She shook her head. "It's only temporary, and is no life for you," her withered appearance was a prelude to what was the evitable. "You can't be fixing me every two minutes."

  "I brought you back from the Shadowlands, I can save you, Ezra," her lips curled into a small smile.

  "I love you, Seth, with all my heart, but I had died. Archangel or no archangel abilities, you can't bring back the dead and expect them to live among the living."

  I let out a disgruntled sigh.

  "But," she said, lying her head back down. "There is another way, and April Snow can help." Her eyes flickered. "She has done a Taking before."

  "A Taking?" I questioned. "But how is that going to save y
ou?" I asked knowing some monsters had the ability to consume the life force of others making them stronger.

  "April, since she was bit, has been incomplete. She will never be whole, no matter how much she tries. The poison from the demon will call her to that side one day, but with what strength I have left?"

  "No," I said. "I won't allow it to happen. There has to be another way."

  "There isn't, not for us."

  Ezra, I knew, was right. There was no other way to save her, but I didn't want to give into that solution right away. We still had a mission to complete that if not successful, would not only destroy Iethia, but Earth as well. Not to mention, I would be letting down Uncle Hes. I had to put my duties above my desires right now and I hoped that Ezra could survive until I did.

  "We decided to take another look around at the Ivy Inn," Malachi said as I sat beside Ezra who slept soundly.

  "For what?" I asked trying to force my concern from Ezra to our mission.

  "What do you think?" He asked rhetorically in a sarcastic tone. "We want to have tea with the demon and leave a five star review for her wonderful hospitality."

  I didn't respond, just kept my eyes on Ezra.

  Malachi stepped closer to me and gazed down at Ezra. "She loves you, but I know she wouldn't want you to risk our mission to just save her. Think of everything that is at stake here." He knelt down and met my eyes. "Everything," he repeated.

  "What do you think of the demon that was at the inn?" I asked. "Any residue left that you can sense?"

  Malachi shifted his weight and bit his bottom lip. "No, but that demon is a sly one. It won't make it easy to be found. Besides, that's another demon for another adventure." He turned and stood by the door. "Nessa agreed to stay and watch Ezra, besides she's in my opinion, too little of a monster to deal with big, bad demons." I let a chuckle escape my lips. Nessa and Malachi were like brother and sister-protective and annoying at the same time. "And the demon that destroyed my family is something to not be reckoned with, at least not with a strong wizard or two at your back. And wizards detest monsters, so I think we're out of luck there."

  To humans, the inn was an abandoned, half-falling down building that was tolerated by them through a series of protection spells so it wasn't knocked down in this world. It can only exists as it was as long as the structure was maintained, or at least still standing up, in both realms. The only bad thing-the spells were fading and the structure had caution tape around the perimeter along with a license for demolition plastered across the door. Soon, it would be gone and possibly the only connection to the demon that nearly killed April.

  Ayil, Malachi, April and I walked in under an invisibility spell, so no humans would be alerted.

  "Anything?" I whispered to Malachi.

  He looked around the room from the ceiling to the floor, and then gave me a solemn look with a shake of his head.

  Quietly we walked through the house. Torn wallpaper, peeling paint and broken windows was in contrast to the highly polished wood railing that led upstairs-meaning the spell that the demon maintained was fading rapidly. It was in a state of change that slowly revealed its condition to us.

  "I'm not picking anything up but static from the decomposing protection spell," Ayil said holding out her cell phone.

  Malachi glanced at her as he leaned against the railing. "Is that your phone you are using as a receptor?"

  Ayil smiled. "I might be old, but I'm not technologically impaired. I downloaded an app that can be used just like one of your fancy-schmancy receptors." She smirked with a cock of her head. "And mine isn't picking anything up." She shoved it back in her pocket.

  "Wait," April, who had been quietly following said. She closed her eyes and turned around with her arms bent at the elbows and hands outstretched as if someone trying to navigate while blinded by darkness. "The darkness?" The room took a sudden chill as the air around April formed ice crystals suspended in midair as if they had been flashed-frozen. "It's here." She opened her eyes and looked directly at me as something invisible knocked her to the ground.

  Malachi was closest to her, and as he went over to pick her up, he was catapulted across the room and into a mirror. Glass shattered and spun through the air like darts. The glass-darts whizzed around me and Ayil as she dodged them to reach April. Malachi staggered to his feet as one of the glass shards sliced him on the shoulder.

  "Use the stone! It's the only thing that will stop it!" Ayil yelled covering April.

  I pulled the stone from my pocket and held it high in the air. I didn't know how to use it, but I didn't need to. Just holding it against my bare skin was enough to feel its power radiate from it through me.

  Instantly, the glass shards stopped and moved harmlessly in mid-air as if suspended by string. They glistened along with the crystalized air.

  "It's making a shield around us, but it's not going to last." Ayil pulled April up and wrapped her arm around her.

  "How are we to fight it then?" Malachi asked holding his bloodied arm. "It's a demon, we are monsters and we're nothing but play things to it. How are we to contain it?"

  "It's attracted to the stone and will go after it no matter what. Kind of like a bug to a light."

  "You mean we are going to zap a demon with that?" Malachi asked pointing at my stone. "We should plan things out a little more rather than just going by the-seats-of-our-pants."

  Just then, the glass shards began to pick up speed and gather into what looked like a funnel cloud.

  "I can guide it to the stone," April said as she pulled away from the protective arm of Ayil.

  April extended her arms towards the rotating mass of shards as her hexmark-her royal hexmark, radiated with light. Ayil, Malachi and I stood behind her as the frozen air churned and a dark, fluid shadow stood in front of April. I held up the stone not sure on how to contain a demon inside of it.

  The glass slowed as the shadow slowly took form of a woman with short, red hair. She was tall and wore a long, pink sweater over jeans and had on grey, leather boots. She looked like any human, not a demon that formed from the shadows with shards of glass surrounding her.

  April stood frozen with her arms still extended.

  "Stay away!" She yelled as Ayil pulled her back and behind her.

  "Stop demon!" Ayil warned with her glowing eyes.

  The red haired demon stopped, smiled and then laughed. "Love your eyes, but they don't scare me, and neither does your little stone." She flicked her eyes at me and then suddenly laughed then stopped with a sour look. "How dare you come here, but I am glad that you brought my daughter to me." She smiled as she crossed her arms and cocked her head to see April. "Yes, you April Snow, of room 23 at Sunrise Acres, I'm talking to you."

  April

  "You are not my mother, demon," I said, with a sickening feeling in the pit of my stomach.

  "I'm the one who bit you," she smiled at me. "Your mother didn't deserve you because she didn't care about you nor did she want you. Things were that way without me, darling. If it wasn't for that stupid gypsy, and your mother's knowledge, I'd have you in my brood. It was pure luck that Benjamin found you." She paced the floor as she walked through the hovering glass shards. "The serum? a daughter?what a nice little present for me," she said with flickering eyes.

  "Seth, the stone," I could hear Ayil whisper as Eveie, the demon, began to sing a familiar lullaby-rock-a-by-baby-the one my mother used to sing to me.

  "Your mother sang that to you, didn't she?" Eveie asked as she walked around the room.

  "You. Are. Not. My. Mother," I said as flames now burned inside of me. I wanted her dead for all the years that had been stolen from me.

  "She wanted to protect you, but at the same time, she didn't. You had become a burden to her."

  Her words were like a squirming tentacle that grew into me like a choking vine. She was the demon, the darkness that had followed me all my life and she wa
s standing in front of me.

  "Why?" I asked staring into her human-like eyes. Was that how she always looked? Human? "Why me?"

  Eveie smiled with delight at my question as if she had been waiting for me to ask it. "Why not you?" She asked. "You are special, April. You have things inside of you that you can't even begin to comprehend-neither did your mother, and, your father?died too soon to reveal himself to you."

  "April," Malachi said behind me, pulling me back. "Don't listen to the demon; it's playing on your emotions."

  Eveie's eyes shifted to him with maliciousness. "You know that first-hand, don't you Malachi." She began to laugh. "So, really, is this the group of vigilante monsters sent to capture me?" Her eyes scanned us. "Pathetic."

  My body shook with fear and anger. She knew things of my past, my family?I had to know.

  Malachi grabbed my shoulders and shoved me behind him. He pulled a dagger from his side and flung it towards Eveie. She caught it with her bare hand and then crushed it, releasing the black dust from her palm.

  Something had to be done. Seth and Ayil both held the stone in their hands and were chanting something, but I knew whatever they were doing, it wouldn't work, not on this demon.

  Eveie stepped towards Malachi and lifted him by the neck into the air. "I should have killed you while I had the chance. I thought it would be fun to see what happened to a little, frightened monster boy as an experiment. And I can conclude that all you want to do is still kill me-only with more vengeance-interesting."

  The spell Ayil and Seth were making, was taking too long. I snatched the stone from them and held it my arm that had my hexmark, and aimed it at Eveie. Immediately, it began to glow in a bright light that curled around us like swirling fog. Gold, orange and white light filled in around us as I stared at Eveie.

  At first, she smiled at me with amusement, but then as my power grew, her pleased smile faded. She let go of Malachi as her image began to fade like someone was erasing her.

  "All I wanted was to be a mother, April?I," her image then shifted into my mother's as I remembered her the day I was taken away from her: outstretched hands, long brown hair, and except this time, she didn't look relieved, she was filled with as much heartbreak as I had felt.

  "Take her, she's tricking you!" Malachi stood beside me as my arm began to shake.

  "I love you, April," said the voice of my mother.

  I wanted to give in. "Mother," I whispered as Malachi took my arm, wrapped his fingers around my wrist tightly and shoved the stone that I held in my hand into Eveie's face.

  My mother's image shattered along with the screams of Eveie's voice, and was sucked into the stone. The force pushed Malachi and I backwards to the floor as the last of the black smoke was drawn into the stone like someone had sucked it up through a straw.

  I laid next to Malachi on the floor with our arms extended over our heads and his hand wrapped around mine holding the now black stone. I looked at it then over at Malachi who smiled back at me.

  "Not bad for a spell-struck pet,"

  Seth

  "I'm not sure if she's the demon or not," Malachi said as he sat on the couch. "She had a familiarity to her, but it could have been one of her clan. They all like to claim each other's accomplishments."

  "She knew your name," I said, sitting across from him.

  "All demons know my name, Seth. Don't you know that? I'm the one-stop-shop for all of their needs and desires to rake havoc on someone's life." He threw his hands up in the air.

  I fiddled with the empty mug I had in my hand and swirled the remains of the tea Ayil had served. The subject of demons was a tender one with Malachi, and I quickly changed it back to something more important at the time-our mission. "Don't you think Benjamin would have noticed that Eveie was a demon?" I put the cup on the coffee table. "I think he would have been a little more cautious especially having made a serum."

  Malachi shrugged his shoulders and rubbed his neck. The purple-black bruise of the demon's handprint stood out like a tattoo.

  "Maybe he was a genius that chose the wrong acquaintances. You know, book smart, socially stupid." Malachi stood up and grabbed my empty mug. "Demons can be very tricky, and if the one we captured is strong enough to run a B&B and all the spells that go along with it, then, it will get out of that stone of yours."

  Malachi was right. Demons were tricky creatures that preyed on emotions and manipulated humans as well as monsters for their every whim. And now they had a serum if used on humans, would make them an army.

  Ayil was confident that the stone would hold the demon, but I wasn't so sure. We needed to question the demon, but we'd have to release it to that. And it would never reveal anything to us anyhow. It knew about the serum and claimed April as her daughter.

  I wanted to question April, but Ayil had already tried. The girl was still under the remnants of a spell that was mixed with her emotions. She flipped back and forth between her childhood memories and the present. And to top it off, we had contained a demon-its clan would realize something's wrong when it didn't come back.

  Leaning my head back on the couch, I closed my eyes letting my own thoughts drift to Ezra. She was dying and even though I have archangel abilities, it wasn't strong enough to cure her and keep her cured.

  I woke to the sound of footsteps. Still in a sleepy haze, I stood up thinking the demon had escaped, but was quickly put to rest when a light flicked on and Ezra smiled back at me.

  "You shouldn't be up," I said, walking over to her.

  "I'm fine to get up, Seth."

  "Did you need something?.I should have been in your room so you didn't have to get up?or Nessa was watching you I thought." She waved her hand at me to stop.

  "It's alright. I'm stronger than you think, and as far as Nessa, she's been kind to me-which I can guess correctly is because you care about me and she cares about what you care about." I nodded my head in agreement.

  "Yeah, but she should have told me she wasn't sitting with you."

  "I told her to go to bed. The mission is more important now, and many lives and realms are at stake. My life is no more than a drop of water in an ocean. But there is something I can do to help." She gazed at me with her indigo eyes.

  "The Taking, and no, you're not going to do that."

  She smiled at me and wrapped her fingers through mine. "April needs me. She needs my strength. The demon will come out of that stone and manipulate her without breaking a sweat doing so. April has uncharted strength in her that I felt inside her when I entered her dreams." Her enchanted eyes mirrored back at me almost as if she was begging. "I'm dying and there's no way out of it, but my death doesn't have to be a waste. Let April take my energy, and instead of fading to blackness, I'll live on."

  I curled my fingers over hers wishing I could cure her, be with her forever, but fate had a different agenda in mind that I couldn't change.

  "I'm not afraid of the Taking," Ezra said. "I'm afraid of the darkness that will follow my death."