CHAPTER THIRTY
Jonathan slung the backpack over one shoulder, and Cassie followed him on the trail up the mesa. If there even was a trail—she couldn’t pick it out by flashlight, and she was usually pretty good at tracking. The needles on the ends of the pine branches spreading across the path looked sharp and cruel.
To keep up with his long strides, she had to occasionally jog, but she didn’t mind. She hadn’t really thought about it taking time to hike in, and she wanted to get there as soon as possible. Large rocks jutted out here and there, and she pointed the flashlight toward the ground right in front of her to keep from tripping.
Despite her best efforts, he got several paces ahead of her, and after a long while she called up to him, “Do we have much farther to go?” It embarrassed her to ask, like she was a little kid hoping to get to Disneyland soon. But instead of the Happiest Place on Earth, they were going to the Most Hellish Place on Earth, or at least one of the 1,001 Hellish Places to See Before You Die.
Jonathan stopped. “We’re pretty close.” He dug a titanium water bottle out of his backpack and brought it over to her. She took a long drink, and he downed a swig, too, before putting it away again.
Behind them, a tree branch cracked. They both jumped and turned around, saying nothing, staring into the dark. Cassie expected to see a glowing pair of eyes. As nervous as she was, if a baby bunny had hopped up, she probably would’ve considered it a harbinger of death.
After several moments of silence, Jonathan muttered, “Guess it was nothing.”
They trudged on, reaching a flat and less wooded plateau, and then made another short climb up to a higher level, sharp enough that they had to use their hands to grab onto rocks. Once they were both on the plateau, Jonathan said, “This is it.”
No moon shone. Cassie had never walked out into a wilderness this dark. The rotten, garbage-y stench assaulted her nostrils again. “Do you smell that?”
“It’s a bad place,” he said in a low tone. He pointed. “The portal’s right there.” She could barely make out the black hole, like a little cave, and the silhouettes of a stack of stones above it. Jonathan’s makeshift memorial to Michael. It was still there. Sweat trickled down her back and under her arms, despite the cold. Would either of them get out of this alive? Would someone else add two more stacks to mark their passing?
She pulled out the booklet Nic had given her and hunched her shoulders against another gust of wind. “Anti-possession spell first. All I have to do is say it.”
Jonathan shifted his stance, planting his feet wider. “How can I help?”
“Just stand by me.” She tucked the flashlight under her arm to flip to the first page, and then shone the light on the text. Her mouth felt dry and she was glad she’d taken a drink of water earlier, when she hadn’t especially needed it. She began reading, taking care to pronounce each syllable correctly and to raise the pitch of her voice where the type indicated.
She finished and waited. Nothing.
“I don’t know if I said it right,” she said.
The rocks below her feet whispered, You do everything wrong. A feeling like bitter acid poured down her throat and then her spine.
“Okay,” she said. “It’s happening.”
Jonathan stiffened as though ready for an ambush, though there was nothing for him to fight.
Why are you telling him? He doesn’t love you. He likes fucking you. The bitter acid in her burned. She gagged on it and bent over, her hands on her knees, as if she could vomit out the negativity.
That’s how stupid you are. Not only the rocks, but also the trees and air spoke. You’re too stupid for this group, too selfish, too ugly, too weak.
Val had told her to argue against it. “I’m not weak.” Her throat was so constricted that it came out a whisper, making the statement a lie. Jonathan’s arm was around her shoulders, and he was saying something to her, but it sounded like he was underwater. Fiery pain ran through her brain, spine, and every inch of her nerves. She fell on her knees.
Pushing back his rising panic, Jonathan crouched down next to her. A strangled sound came from the back of her throat as she covered her head with her arms, rocking back and forth. “Cassie!” He pulled one of her arms away to look her in the eyes, and she struck out blindly, landing a solid punch to his face.
“Leave me alone!”
She thought he was attacking her. He lifted his hands. “Cassie, it’s me!”
Fear and despair filled her wide, unseeing eyes, and her lips formed soundless words. Did she even know he was there? “Disgusting,” she whispered. “Loser. Your family hates you.” Jonathan froze. His father might hate him. Focus. Had the spell turned Cassie against him? She said in a small, broken voice, “Manus Sancti hates you. They sent you here to die.” Christos. She wasn’t talking to him, but herself, caught in the spell’s self-loathing. “He hates you.”
This went straight through Jonathan’s soul. “Cassie, no!” He took hold of her shoulders, leaning close to her. “Listen to me—”
Quick as a rattlesnake strike, she pulled the gun from his side holster. His heart stopped. In two seconds, he grabbed her wrist, wrested the weapon out of her hand, and tossed it out of her reach. He pushed her down to the ground on her side, straddled her, and took hold of her right arm, pinning it across her body. As she attempted to struggle, he took in a breath and let it out. She had no chance of escaping, and he could keep her like that as long as he needed to without hurting her.
She went limp. “You’re a mistake,” she sobbed. “You’re the universe’s biggest mistake.” He ignored the urge to let her out of the restrictive hold and take her into his arms, though his heart was breaking. They never should have let her try this spell. He should have stopped it. With his free hand, he touched her hair, and she jerked her head away. Without even thinking about it, he’d been attempting to shield her psyche, even though he couldn’t protect her from the internal threat. In the edge of his awareness, her very being shuddered under the strain of the spell, and he realized that even if she wasn’t able to physically harm herself, this could still destroy her.
God, please, no. He bent down close to her ear. “Cassie, remember who you are.” Even though his spirit quaked in fear, he kept his voice strong. “The love of my life. An initiate Knight.” He recalled her words about her family. “A beloved daughter. A beloved sister.”
With another strangled sob, she thrashed against him. She couldn’t hear him at all, and she’d have to fight this alone.
The struggle was exhausting her. All she had to do now was give in. Everyone would be so happy if she did, if she were gone from their lives. She’d be so relieved. A bonfire burned behind her eyeballs, charring the optic nerve. The pain. It reminded her—
The initiation ritual. The red-hot coal. She’d gotten through that.
It was fake! half of the cells along her spinal column and her brain yelled. But not all of them.
It was real. It proved she was strong.
You’re stupid. No one loves you.
She shook her head against the malevolent hiss. Another voice came to her, kind, almost too faint to hear. Love of my life. Initiate Knight. Beloved daughter. Beloved sister.
It brought her a glimmer of daylight. Her brain still screamed for her blood, demanding an execution. No one loves you—
Even if no one did, there would still be her. She was someone. She mattered.
The Universe’s mistake.
With every bit of strength she had left, she fired back. The Universe’s plan. I was created on purpose because I was a good fucking idea.
The pain behind her eyes receded. She gasped in a deep breath and let it out. Her throat ached.
She saw a shadow. Heard, “Cassie please, come back to me.”
She jolted in response to the voice. Stared at a face. Pieces came together like a broken mirror repairing itself. “Jonathan.”
“You can see me.” He was straddling her where she lay on her side and holding her arm across her body, as if they’d been grappling, like him and Gabi at the gym. “Is it still happening?” She shook her head, dazed. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah.” The destructive force inside her was gone, leaving her light and free. She gave a shaky laugh.
He released her from the restrictive hold and pulled her close enough to him that she could feel his pounding heart. “Thank God.” His gun. She’d grabbed it. That must have scared the life out of him. She was half drowning in saltwater and snot. He gave her his bandana, and she blew her nose. “Are you all right?” he asked again.
“Yeah. That—” She shook her head. “That really sucked.”
“But you did it,” he said. “I couldn’t help. You couldn’t hear me.”
“I did hear you!” she exclaimed, suddenly realizing. He’d been that other voice. “You did help. And you kept the gun out of my hands.”
“You should be immune now.” He looked at her with a kind of wonder.
“I am,” she said without even thinking. She could feel the protection covering her like a hard shell. “Let’s get this demon to come out and play.”
He scrambled to his feet and offered a hand to help her up. She found her dropped booklet on the ground.
A growl nearly shook the earth, and a dark shape bounded toward her. White teeth glinted in the dark.
Cassie shrieked, turned, and sprinted, forgetting she was next to the ridge. The ground beneath her feet gave way to nothingness. As she landed hard, her ankle twisted and her weight jammed down on top of it.
Then gunfire. She struggled to an upright stance. Another shot. When she put weight on her foot, pain lanced through her. “Fuck!”
“Cassie!” Jonathan scrambled down to reach her side.
“I sprained my ankle.”
“Sit. Let me take a look.” He guided her to a seated position on a rock, unlaced the boot in a few seconds, and eased it off her foot. As he gently removed the sock, as well, he asked, “Did you hear or feel a crack?” She shook her head. He ran his fingertips lightly over the bones of the ankle and the foot. “I don’t think it’s broken.”
“I don’t think so, either.” She pulled her sock on again. “What was that, a bear?” She peered up at the plateau.
“Yeah, I shot him in the head. Then shot him again to be sure.” Jonathan picked her up to carry her back up the ledge.
“He was coming right at me,” she said. “My animals never hurt me.” Her thoughts swirled. “The bad thoughts. I was angry at myself.”
“Suicide by bear attack,” Jonathan grunted. “They could have warned us.” On the plateau, he said, “Okay, you can sit on the ground.” He set her down close to the large, flat stone. She stared at the huge bear carcass not too far away, pitying it.
He was looking down at her foot. “Listen, Cassie, we’ve got to finish this. I’m sorry.”
“Fuck yeah, we’ve got to finish this,” she agreed. “I’m not spraining my ankle for nothing.”
He gave her a relieved nod. “How bad does it hurt?”
“I’m okay if I don’t move it.” Adrenaline was coursing through her veins, which might have helped. He dug into the backpack, found a flashlight, and handed it to her. The wind picked up. “Shit. Where’s the booklet?”
After searching around wildly, he spotted it bouncing along on the ground, retrieved it, and brought it to her. “When I start sprinkling blood on the sigils, you start the incantation. All right?”
She flipped to the page that was helpfully titled SUMMONING INCANTATION. “Got it.” Jonathan gave her the spare gun, and her chest tightened as she stuck it in her belt holster. She asked, “You’re sure you can protect your mind and do this at the same time?”
“Yeah. I’ve got my shields up.” His face was composed and controlled as he pulled the silver bottle out of the bag.
He held his flashlight with one hand, and with a short brush, he painted complex symbols, one after another, from memory. Oddly, it soothed her to watch. The sigils formed an arc and then a circle on the stone. Another gust of wind made him put up the hood of his jacket. He retrieved two sticks of fatwood from the backpack and crossed them in the center of the stone. Cassie shivered where she sat.
From another bottle, he sprinkled oil on each of the symbols in turn. The fragrance that rose up reminded her of Mass when she was little, a welcome counterpoint to the stink of the place. As though for good measure, he shook the bottle empty over the wood. He rolled up his left sleeve, got out the knife, and slashed a gash in his forearm. “Okay.”
As he sprinkled the blood over each sigil, she read the incantation. Latin was easier than transliterated proto-Mayan. She glanced up when he stood and lit a match. The hood partially shadowed his calm features, and the flame danced over them. He looked like a beautiful monk. He set one after another of the symbols on fire and then the fat sticks in the middle as she pronounced the last word.
A thick rope of blue lightning stabbed into the ground not far from them. Cassie let out a scream and dropped the flashlight as her hair flew against her cheeks. Bright blue clouds roiled into being over them, much lower than clouds could be.
Jonathan stood tall beneath them. “Cassie, next page! Read!”
With shaking hands, she picked up the flashlight and scrabbled to the next section, the banishing spell.
A shadow like a man, but twice as tall, faced Jonathan. No, not a shadow, but nothingness, a black hole in a human shape. Dark, terrible laughter echoed in her ear. She froze and then pushed a thought against it: Fuck you, asshole. You can’t hurt me.
Jonathan grabbed the burned bones and placed one along the edge of the stone. “Read!” Shit. If he had to keep yelling at her, his control would slip. She read as loudly as she could, because she wanted him to be able to hear her. The long arm of the human-shaped void reached out and rested a hand on Jonathan’s head. He stopped what he was doing.
No! Keep going! she shouted in her mind. If she said anything aloud, she’d have to start the incantation all over again. His shields must be crumbling. But if she hurried… She read another line. He placed the rest of the bones at compass corners slowly.
A boom and a flash of blinding blue lightning knocked her on her side on the ground. When she looked up, the hand of Dakos was sinking into Jonathan’s head.
Fuck, fuck. What could she do? She dragged herself over to him and grabbed his hand. Her vision filled with light. She blinked. They were both standing, clinging to one another. She didn’t hurt, and she was warm. “What happened!”
“We’re in me.” He laughed, a strange sound and sweet after so much terror. “It worked.”
Cassie stared around them, dumbfounded. A golden aura surrounded his cathedral. It was difficult to tell which part of his church was bombed out and which was whole.
“When you grabbed my hand, I brought you inside me. This is you,” he said, gesturing toward the light. “I have your immunity.”
“Oh my God,” she breathed. “How did you know that would work?”
“I didn’t.” He pointed as the dark, giant shadow swam and dived beyond the golden nimbus. “See? He can’t get in.”
Cassie shook her head. “You did it so fast.”
“My shields were already gone.” He took a deep breath and let it out. “I just needed a break.”
The dark shadow swam closer, bumping against the shell of protective light.
“What do we do now?” Cassie asked.
“We finish it. The summoning spell doesn’t hold him there. As soon as he’s bored, he’ll move on.”
“Are you going to be okay?”
“Yeah, I think so. I feel stronger again already. I’ll bury the malachite. You finish reading.” She nodded, and he pulled her to him and kissed her hard. “Read fast.”
They were on the cold ground. The demon’s hand hovered over Jonathan’s head, trying again to get inside it. Cassie scuttled on her hands and knees for the booklet, ignoring the pain in her ankle. Jonathan got a small shovel out of the backpack as she read as fast as she could. Two or three shovelfuls of dirt, that was all he needed.
Two lightning bolts slashed down to the earth, making her jump, the electricity lifting the ends of her hair. She resumed reading, and Jonathan set the carving in the hole. He threw dirt back over it as she shouted the last word.
The huge dark shadow screamed. It was cursing, but in one hundred voices and languages at once, impossible to understand, and the sound pierced through her. Cassie dropped the booklet and covered her ears.
The portal sucked at the bottom of it like the world’s most powerful vacuum cleaner. The demon’s legs disappeared. It lashed around with alarming motions that, in her freaked-out state, reminded her of one of those tall, skinny blow-up figures dancing out in front of car dealerships. Come on. Let it be gone.
An arm lengthened and flashed across the short distance to Jonathan. It captured his hand and dragged his body toward the small cave that led to the demon realm.
“Jonathan!” Cassie shrieked and ran over on her bad ankle, excruciating pain jolting up her leg with every step. He was scrambling to pull free. She flung herself on the ground and grabbed his arm, trying with all of her strength to keep him in the world of the living. It wasn’t helping. Now they were both being dragged.
Jonathan’s eyes locked on hers, visible in the sickening blue glow of the low clouds above. “Let go! I need my gun!”
The demon had his right hand, and he couldn’t get at his holster with his left hand because she was hanging on to him. But what was he thinking? He couldn’t shoot a demon. They were close to the portal to the other dimension, a black maw eager to swallow Jonathan whole. Maybe if she got a better grip on him, pulled harder…
His eyes blazed. “That’s an order!”
Sobbing, she released him and scuttled backward.
Jonathan drew the gun, pointed it above the portal, and fired.
The rock at the bottom of the cairn exploded and the rest of them tumbled down, nearly blocking the entrance to the small gateway. One landed on the demon arm, and suddenly, nothing held on to Jonathan because the arm was contained in the portal. A piercing, unholy scream faded to silence. The blue clouds above exploded in a loud sonic boom that shook the ground.
Jonathan blinked. It’s finished.
“Oh my God.” Sobs fractured Cassie’s voice. She half lay on her side, propped up on an elbow. “Did that work? Are you okay?”
The poor thing. His love for her filled his whole being. He scrambled over to kneel next to her and pulled her up into his arms, hugging her hard against him. “I’m all right. It’s done.”
She clung to him. “I didn’t want to let go. I thought you were going to get sucked in.” She sniffled. “I didn’t know what you were doing.”
“I wasn’t sure, either, but I thought if I could block it…” He shook his head. “Glad it worked.” He’d been moments away from initiating the drop code rather than getting pulled into the demon realm. “How’s your ankle?” She’d been running on it. Just thinking of it made him feel sympathetic pain in his own body.
“It hurts. That was a hell of a shot. With your left hand.” Her voice had become steadier. No doubt the terror of the last few minutes was burning away.
He kissed the top of her head. “I’ve been practicing.”
She frowned at the portal. “Do you want to stack those up again?”
“No, it’s okay.” The humble memorial he’d made for his brother had saved him. “This is going to sound crazy… Never mind.”
“What?”
“I felt like…his spirit was there, just for a second. When the demon got sucked in.” He didn’t know how else to explain it. The presence had brought a deep, restorative peace to his heart. He didn’t care any more about the earthly marker.
“I bet he was,” she said softly, and he could tell she wasn’t just humoring him. She pulled back to meet his gaze. “Everything’s done now, for sure?”
“No question. That’s how it’s supposed to look.” Without the sickly blue clouds above, it was harder to see, but he could see her smile.
“What the hell was that?” Nic demanded on speakerphone. Jonathan hadn’t heard him trying to call. “Tell me that was a demon sent back to wherever he came from.”
“Yeah, it was.”
“Cassie?”
“She’s fine,” he said and then darted her a guilty look. Cassie had teased him before about using the word fine to mean not actively dying. “She’s got a sprained ankle, and she’s in a lot of pain.”
“Ouch. Give her a Percoset. Front pocket of the backpack.”
“Great. I’ll carry her out.”
“I’ll meet you halfway,” Nic said.
After Cassie washed down a pill with water, Jonathan picked her up. As he started down the trail, she leaned her head against his shoulder. Warmth spread through his chest. He kissed her on the temple, just a brush of the lips. “You were amazing. I was in awe.”
“Sorry about my stupid animals, though.” Her body was lax in his arms, as though she were exhausted, and he wasn’t at all surprised. He carried her in silence so she could rest, and with every step, he exulted in the safety of his beautiful warrior, the one who owned his soul. She dozed until they met up with Nic on the trail.
“I can take her,” he said, and Jonathan hesitated. “Don’t be stupid, you’re tired.” Nic gathered Cassie into his arms, and she didn’t appear to be embarrassed, probably because she was worn out, too. “How was the immunity spell?”
“It was bad,” Cassie mumbled.
Although Nic was a few inches shorter than Jonathan and leaner, he didn’t strain under the burden. Even though he’d given up his Knighthood years ago, Jonathan knew he still trained like one, at odd hours when almost no one was at the gym. Nic peppered him with questions about the banishing.
Jonathan’s phone vibrated, and he took it out of his pocket, saw who was calling, and answered. “Salaam, Samir.”
“Why wasn’t I told about this?” Samir didn’t even bother to greet him back. “What were they thinking? She hasn’t even started to train!”
Jonathan smiled to hear his own sentiments echoed so perfectly. “Believe me, I know. But ready or not, she kicked its ass.”