I whimpered as it rifled through my memories, plucking out the times I had spoken Angelical without dying. I blacked out for a second as it tried to penetrate the very core of my thoughts where I kept all my worst secrets.
I spat blood as I tried to resist giving up my soul.
“Screw you,” I cackled.
Kai slammed his fist into the grass. “Do something!” he bellowed.
I wasn’t sure how the mage responded because I was hit with a convulsion like I was being electrocuted. My whole body spasmed. My vision went dark once more. When I came to, Andrei was suddenly there at my feet. He looked horrible. But in the reflection of his normal-coloured eyes, I saw that I wasn’t looking that crash hot either.
The demon didn’t care if I had a second head attached to my shoulders. It had just figured out that although it couldn’t break the seal by sheer force, it had managed to siphon some of the magic that was seeping through the outer edges. My magic was elusive. Since it was low magic, it wasn’t good at obeying the supernatural laws. While most of it was sealed away, the hedge magic was trying to reshape itself so that it could escape through the minute seams that held the seal in place.
The demon wedged a metaphorical foot under the corner of the seal. It felt like someone running a hot blade across my brain. I screamed. It echoed in my mind as well as shattered the night air. The nightmare came for me.
This time, I wasn’t me but a demonic winged creature with a forked tongue and a long tail with a spine at the tip. I wasn’t relegated to the trenches with the other demons but raised up on the dais with Lucifer. How pathetic that in its wildest imagination, the demon wasn’t able to picture itself in charge. It was an eternal servant.
Something cool swept across my brow. I was distantly aware of the low hum of a chant being spoken aloud.
But the demon inside of me was too enamoured with the nightmare. As I writhed under Kai’s crushing hold, the demon speared more and more of itself into crevices of the seal. It was like a thousand needles being forced under my fingernails. I cried out. If Kai and Andrei weren’t holding me down, I would have kicked and scratched at anything to stop the pain.
The sound that came out of my mouth was so coated in despair, I thought Kai was going to spew fire.
A tiny hairline crack appeared at the tip of the seal. My magic bottlenecked to get out. The demon gave a pleasured sigh. A golden-haired figure appeared behind Andrei. The demon’s lips peeled into a cracked smile at Michael’s presence. None of the others reacted as though they saw the seraph. I could no longer distinguish reality from nightmare.
In my thoughts, Michael appeared on the battlefield. Golden light of angelfire so bright it seared my skin ran up his blade. In a corresponding gesture, Morning Star appeared in the demon’s hand.
Smoke curled in the air around me. I became trapped between worlds. In the physical one, I was being restrained and the mage was chanting words of light to try and exorcise the demon. In the nightmare, I was about to challenge Michael to a duel. In both worlds, I felt myself slipping away.
Kai held me by the shoulders. That first time I had been possessed, I had the benefit of my magic to help me resist. This time, I just had myself. It didn’t seem like enough.
A sliver of hedge magic slipped out of the seal. The demon latched on to it. The vile thing bit the edge of it, ingesting it and growing stronger. It laughed with satisfaction. I laughed with it, unable to control my emotions.
All around me, lawn daisies burst into flower. “It’s broken her seal!” Chanelle said. “We’ve got to get rid of her before it possesses her fully.”
“Touch her and it’ll be the last thing you do,” Andrei said. Chanelle couldn’t have been more shocked if he had reached out and slapped her. I wished he would.
The bitter edge of my thoughts turned into a trail. It led the demon straight to the chamber where I hid the worst of myself. All of the negative emotions that made my magic go haywire. It did a little dance of glee. The thing pressed a chilled hand against my innermost thoughts. I reacted to the intrusion by latching onto the mage’s throat when he went to drip candle max onto my forehead.
The demon became wary. My thoughts helped the demon understand what the mage was trying to do. A crushing wave of sheer rage burned behind my retinas. I saw in the demon’s memories that it had been hunted by a being of the same kind as the mage. It had been harvested and stored inside an enclosure that was demeaning for one of its ilk. While the elite guard had constructed the stages of the game, it had laid in wait. The thing had been ecstatic when it was presented with Kai. I overshadowed the Nephilim by a hundred miles.
Never did it think it would cross paths with me. And it would not ever let me go. A tendril of hedge magic escaped the seal.
“Michael!” I pleaded in both worlds. “Stop it, please.”
I tried to latch on to my magic and force it back behind the seal. The demon battered me aside. In the physical world, Kai crushed my wrist, trying to get me to release the mage. His face was turning blue.
“You want air?” the demon cackled through my vocal cords. “I can stop you from needing it.”
Leaves that were scattered over the lawn fluttered against an errant wind that picked up speed in the blink
