One of the orderlies at Nanna’s psychiatric hospital had explained that to me during a visit. Understanding why something had to be done and liking it were two vastly different concepts. I tried to find something in him that would provide a reason why he would have surrendered himself to the demon. I kept thinking there would be something to rationalise why he’d done this. But there was nothing. At least not anything apparent.
“Who can tell me what the Nephilim guard is doing?” Professor Mortimer asked.
The Nephilim woman had produced her angel blade. Like Astrid’s, it was a short rapier that hummed in a bright yellow.
“She’s attempting to make the demon uncomfortable,” the girl who first spoke said. “The presence of an angel blade can often irritate a demon enough that it will voluntarily leave its host.”
I didn’t realise I had my fingers crossed until the man threw his head back and gave a harsh laugh. My hand cramped. I had to pry my own crossed fingers apart and massage them until they stopped throbbing.
Having failed to agitate the demon, one of the mages in the room signalled to the everlasting fire. A portion of the flame jumped and separated from the blaze on the hearth. The mage caught the lick of flame and gathered it in the palm of his hands. He tossed it from one hand to the other like he was juggling it. The sound was slightly muffled, but it was so deathly quiet on this side I could hear him chanting a spell.
All of my instincts stood to attention. Every muscle in my body commanded me to run. Had I not been a hedge witch and aware of the existence of supernaturals, I would have called this a gut feeling. There was some bad mojo in there. It skated across my skin. I shivered and rubbed my arms as my stomach tried to turn over on itself. I suddenly wanted to go to the bathroom really badly. Anyone in their right mind would have bolted. I stepped closer to the glass so that my nose was almost pressed up against it.
As the mage continued to chant, the flame warped until there was a single strand of it swirling around the larger mass. The strand of flame crept closer to the possessed man. He struggled futilely against his bindings. He turned his head to towards us, his mouth clamped shut like a child refusing to eat something unpleasant.
The second he locked eyes on me, I drew an involuntary blue circle. I was in the middle of trying to retract it when invisible limbs reached out and latched on to the circle. The man’s eyes grew wide, his pupils dilating to the point where they blanketed his irises. His entire socket was filled with blackness. His mouth opened. “Mistress,” he pleaded.
I took a step back. Every patient in the room turned their attention to me. All of them began to fight their bindings. They struggled as though their bodies weren’t at the point of breaking. Despite being bolted down and secured with magic, the beds shook. The magical forcefields around each bed sparked with corresponding bursts of silvery white and red laced black.
“Alessia!” Professor Mortimer said, “get away from the glass.”
I was about to do just that when my grip on this dimension slipped. My mind dropped into the Ley dimension. In it, there were no more humans. No more classmates. Only the corroding magical barrier in front of me and the swarm of demons behind it. The lower demons were the ones with physical bodies that you could fight with weapons. These demons were the ones that had done unspeakable things and transcended their mortal bindings to become closer to Lucifer. They were his silent army.
They weren’t so silent now as they bashed against the magical barrier to get to me. Somewhere out there, somebody was calling my name. In this dimension all I could perceive was the ghostly essences of the demons and the unbelievably bright astral light that I had become. Wisps of my bone-witch magic fluttered across the barrier. The demons scrambled for it like fish in a tank at feeding time.
“Mistress,” the demons whispered in their frenzy to reach me. They were under some kind of delusion that I was their mistress. A voice in my mind offered a contrary thought. I was made of Lucifer’s blood. By rights, I was the closest human to him.
The thought rocked me to my core and tore away the film of the Ley dimension. Back in the earthly realm, the humans had managed to break through their bindings by hurting themselves in gruesome ways. The man who was closest to me had seared off his arm in his attempt to break the spells surrounding him. The woman at the back of the room was gnawing away her own wrist. I watched as she bit through the tendon and yanked it out with her teeth. She alternated between destroying one arm and using the other to scrape at the air between us like she was trying to crawl back to me.
They would get to me at all costs.
The Nephilim guard was joined by a dozen others. More mages spilled into the room. When they tried to reinforce the barriers of light, the magic flared and rocked them back.
“Alessia!” Professor Mortimer shouted. His voice sounded muffled. I turned my head in his direction. My heart stopped. I stood inside a circle of my own blue-and-black magic. Surrounding that was a new barrier of restraint belonging to the Dominion guards. The other students were nowhere to be seen. They had probably been evacuated.
Both professors were still here. And both of them were watching me as though I
