No!
The world flickered. Lucifer should never have trusted me with Angelical. Then again, that slippery bastard probably did it on purpose. I’d seen him do it in my nightmares so many times that the words formed on my tongue well before the thought even settled. My heartbeat slowed as my body turned into a wisp. Sasha buckled when I rolled straight out of his hold. His head snapped around, searching for me.
But I was already on my feet. I saw everything through a slow-motion filter. Three wendingos slid their way into the room. My consciousness settled over everything and nothing at the same time. I registered Roland throwing himself in front of his sister to take the blow of a demon right to the chest.
I looked on as Trey grabbed hold of one of the demons that was about to descend on Sophie. He buried his claws into its neck, sliced out and ripped its throat to shreds. Ironically, when I turned back to the professor, his left foot was inside the circle. A few more steps and we’d be able to try an exorcism. Too bad we were otherwise occupied.
The professor demon glanced down at the circle and grinned. It was the kind of smile you never forgot. His foot traced over the smallest circle, the one I had imbued with as much of my hedge magic as possible. The slide of his shoes smudged the chalk. Without Sophie to speak the enchantment, it was nothing but a desperate attempt at art.
The professor’s head turned up. He locked his focus on me. Those palms lifted to the sky once more. Pressure built behind my eyes. I felt the tentative touch of something in the outer rim of my consciousness, but it shrank back too quickly for me to hold on to.
The professor’s mouth opened. “Mistress!” The sound of his voice was like acid sliding over my eardrums. It was a sound that was never meant to be heard by human ears. This was a demon that shouldn’t have ever been made. Around me, my friends screamed. The high-pitched wails of the little voices inside the common room sank into my soul.
I snapped. Throwing caution out the wind, I blasted the professor with as much of my magic as I could. “Possideo!” Possess.
My voice came out cold. Laced with all the rage and anguish that swirled inside me. Everything inside the room stood stock still. Wave after wave of blue cascaded through the Academy. It surged against the barrier the professor demon had created and smashed right through it, bleeding out into the other academies. The magic rolled. It latched on to every demon and undead mind it came into contact with. I gathered them up like ants swarming a nest. Starlight pricked at every cell in my body. I felt weightless.
The professor demon made a choking sound. He clutched at his throat as my magic took hold of him. As soon as our minds touched, the world flipped. My vision became a blaze of vivid, cornflower blue. On instinct, I dived into the Ley dimension, thinking it might offer me some relief. And in that moment, I finally understood. I saw myself as the demons all saw me. An enormous beacon of demonic power amidst a midnight velvet sky. There was nothing wrong with my Ley sight. It was just that the brightness of my power was blocking out every other light in the sky. The way electricity had dampened the stars. Every time I used my powers, I was broadcasting to the demons that I was there, that my power was strong, and that they could harness it to trespass into this dimension. I was the reason there were portals opening up all over the Academies. My blood, Lucifer’s blood, had made it possible for them to come here. Like it or not, I had fulfilled a prophecy. I had led the armies of Hell to earth.
36
As my magic swept through the academies, the demons stopped their endless deluge of violence. They craned their senses to find me, drawn to my power as a substitute for their true master. And they would keep coming until there was nothing else left alive in this dimension. The portal had to be closed.
Unfortunately, I was on the wrong side of it. That could be corrected easily enough. My magic wrapped around the demon in Professor Mortimer’s mind and yanked. It came away like a bandage. Sasha caught the professor as he deflated. But I was already running. Morning Star whipped into my grip. I had always been slower than the supernaturals before, but shock gave me a few seconds’ head start. And then I was surrounded by so many demons and demonic essences that there was no way they could get to me.
I sprinted as fast as my body could take me across the great lawn that intersected the Academies. Green and silver streaks shot towards me in the sky. They attempted to dive but there were winged demons flying in formation around me.
“Blue!” Kai screamed.
I blocked it out. Biting my tongue, I used the distraction to push more of my magic farther out. The portal rose up into the sky in front of me. Professor Flint still floated in the air. I drew a circle around him and wrenched the demon spirit from inside him. It was crude but I didn’t have time for delicacy. I couldn’t be sure where he dropped, but that was a secondary consideration. The horde was hundreds deep at this point. I was the Pied Piper leading my demon rats back to the depths of Hell where they had come from.
Closing in on the portal, I felt the reason why it wouldn’t close despite the dozen mages who were chanting in the protective circles around it. On the other
