“Oh dear Gaia,” I hissed.
“What?” Max shouted.
“The Nephilim. They’ve been possessed.” The demon no longer needed Kate’s necklace to ground it in this dimension. It had better hostages.
And then I heard it. A voice inside my mind that couldn’t have come from anywhere but the master demon. “When there is nothing else left: there is blood. I’m coming for yours Sophie Mwansa.”
18
My vision was blurred when I climbed down off Max’s shoulders. Judging by the quivering of his top lip and the way his hair bristled, Max had heard the voice too. He enveloped me in his arms. More than the fear, it was the knowledge of what a demon possession did to a Nephilim that hurt me. They were two opposing entities. The pain the Nephilim must be feeling made my eyes water.
“I’ll get you out of here,” Max said. If we got out of this, I’d get him to teach me how to lie so effectively. Funny thing was, I kinda believed him.
“We can’t leave everybody.”
“Everybody isn’t my concern right now. It’s coming after you.”
That was just my luck. I was so busy trying not to turn into a monster that I’d ended up pissing off a demon. An honest to Gaia demon. If I wasn’t dead soon, my mama was going to kill me. I gripped Max’s arm.
“That’s right. It’s coming after me. Maybe I can distract it so you can get the word out and get help.”
“Are you insane? How are you going to defend yourself?” My silence was answer enough. “It’s not happening. We’ll find another solution. You’re Enock Mwape’s great-granddaughter for heaven’s sake! Now would be a good time to act like it!”
I sputtered. “If anyone heard you encouraging me to be like him, you’d be in a world of hurt.”
“I don’t give a shit! Aren’t you tired of making yourself lesser so other people feel better? They’re supernaturals. It’s about time they stopped whining. You threw a wolfsbane fireball in my face. Let’s try more of that scary shit! What can you throw at a demon to banish them?”
You could say a lot about my great-grandfather, but he was a human who scared the pants off supernaturals. Right now, I could use some of that mojo.
“Angel blade?” I suggested.
“Try again.”
I glanced at the leather chain. “Binding is out of the question then. My circles aren’t strong enough to keep it in. What if…what would happen if one of the Nephilim died while possessed?”
Max bared his teeth in a silent snarl. “They die. And the beast will find another host.” I wracked my brain for anything else I’d learned in Demonology. Max did the same.
“We can’t close the portal. We can’t fight them all. Is there any way we can break its hold on everyone? You managed to make us immune. Can we try something like that?”
A seed of hope planted in my mind. “They’re already under,” I said. “My food was a preventative. We need a cure. The only cure for demon possession has to be something so strong it…”
“What?” Max stepped closer.
It had been right there in front of me the whole time. “What?” Max whisper-shouted.
“The Elixir of Life!”
“That’s a fairy tale.”
“No, it’s not!”
“I’m pretty sure it is. Professor McKenna said no one has ever been able to perfect the potion before. It asks too much of the spellcaster. Whatever that means. We don’t have any of that lying around in case you hadn’t noticed.”
I was already running. Back inside my room, I snatched my cauldron and then sprinted to the bathroom. Max was still babbling as I filled the cauldron with water. “Sophie!” he yelled. “Hang on a second.”
“No! You said be scary. So that’s what I’m doing. I don’t need the ingredients.”
He pulled at his hair. “Then what are you going to do?”
I looked him directly in the eye. I was breaking rule number one when dealing with an alpha shifter but I didn’t care. “I’m going to cheat.”
For the first time in my life, I was going to allow my magic to be free. I might not be physically strong, but I could transmute potions like nobody’s business. Max’s lips slowly pulled into a grin.
“Let’s kill us a demon.”
I grinned back. Then I dropped the bombshell. “Can you catch me a possessed Nephilim?”
As expected, his smile dropped. “You mean one of those flying, supernaturally strong, angel-blade carrying Nephilim?”
I nodded. He sighed. “Fine. But you owe me.”
I set the cauldron down when we were back in the common area. Terror was baying at the edges of my mind, but I pushed it back with focus. “We need to get out onto the portal field.”
Max shrugged off any scrap of good humour he’d shown. The face he wore now was of the shifter lurking beneath his human exterior.
“I can draw a circle around myself but it’s not going to hold for long. Do you think you can do this quickly?” Implicit in the question was an admission that I trusted him to protect me. I just wished there was somebody to protect him. My stomach clenched at the thought of something happening to him. I bit the inside of my cheek.
He clamped his hand around my right shoulder. “Just this once I’m going to pretend you didn’t just insult me.”
Right. I should have known better really.
“Ready?” I nodded even though I wanted to curl into a ball. Max removed the piano and pushed the front doors open. I picked up the cauldron. We expected to be set upon by low demons as soon as we emerged. But the Academy was deadly quiet. Like it was holding its breath.
Without saying a word, Max and I started out for the portal field. The cauldron sloshed water on my hands. I didn’t need
