Cheryl’s blonde strands stuck to the gloss on her lips as her body went limp. She fell against me, and I instinctively shot my arms out to catch her, trying to keep her from face planting. The other students had to squint as they endured the harsh breeze, holding their hands up in front of their faces as they tried to ward it off while we were stuck in the center of its cyclone.
The room began to shake, the wind tore through us, and still, the Spector guards kept on chanting.
“Don’t let go! Keep going!”
I looked over, tears ripping away from my windblown eyes, and I saw one Spector man’s face twisted up in pain. The other two on either side of him were struggling to keep hold of his hands, their muscles bunched and their eyes squeezed shut as they continued to speak in the demonic language that wasn’t meant for their tongues.
The lights began to surge in and out. The ground began to shake. The smell of smoke permeated the air and filled my nose. In an instant, I felt a tugging sensation somewhere deep in my gut. The feeling was just a light nuisance at first, but then it grew more and more insistent until it felt like my entire body was being ripped in half. Students all around me started screaming.
It was fire and pure, burning pain.
Every cell, bone, tendon, and organ burned with a hellfire of excruciating pain that made my mouth crack open on my own blistering cry.
It ignited my veins and drowned me with punishing smoke that filled my lungs. Whatever ritual they’d done...they hadn’t just brought demons here; it felt like they’d brought hell itself and shoved it down my throat. I was covered in smoldering suffering.
All at once, the floor opened up and flashes of black light shot up inside the pentagrams. It surrounded us, engulfing our bodies with dizzying darkness. Cheryl stared at me, struggling to stand, her eyes wide with fear. She backed away out of my hold, and when she opened her mouth to scream again, the blackness shoved itself down her throat, swallowing all sound.
And then I was suddenly surrounded by my own swathe of darkness, and everything else was blocked off until all I could see was him. Her. It.
A huge, sleek black body. Legs. A bloody hourglass. Frightening reflective eyes that stared back at me like they could burrow into my soul. A spider demon. A black widow here to kill me. It towered over me, its body made of that unnatural black light and billowing smoke.
There were other demon shapes crowded around the room, facing off with the others, but I only had eyes for mine. It crawled closer and closer, moving stealthily. It seemed frozen with graceful decision, and then without warning, became a blur of legs rushing toward me. It leaped, and I opened my mouth to scream, but it entered me before I could let out a single sound.
Its shadowy presence slammed through my chest, soaking into my body like water to a sponge. I felt it under every inch of my skin. I heard its legs creeping over my soul. It scurried across the recesses of my existence, and every syllable of the continued chant had the creature burrowing in deeper and deeper until there was no way to discern where I ended and it began.
I could feel the moment I wasn’t myself anymore. There was an intense shock of endless pain and then nothing but hunger.
My body lifted up off the floor, and I felt my limbs flail around as the creature assimilated to me. I could feel the stretching of its presence filling me up from the tips of my fingers all the way to my toes.
A sharp jab of pain seared into the skin of my throat, and then my body was tossed to the floor, making me land in a pitiful heap of heavy limbs and shock.
I dragged in a ragged breath and desperately blinked away the darkness from my vision. The chanting had stopped, though I had no idea when.
I sat up with a wince, my whole body trembling with the echoes of pain. I brought a hand to my tender throat and hissed in pain when I brushed against the skin there. It felt like I’d been marked with a searing-hot brand.
“Check them,” I heard Hafferty say. “If a demon successfully possessed them, take them through the portal. Burn the others.”
I tried to get to my feet, but I fell to my knees. I desperately looked around. Everyone was on the ground like me, but some of the students were struggling to get up, some were unmoving, and others...their bodies were convulsing. Black smoke was stuck around their skin, demons hovering over them like they’d been unable to sink inside.
A Spector woman stopped in front of me. Gripping my chin, she looked me over with a nod. “How do you feel?”
Even with the echoes of pain and my drained energy, one feeling was pushed to the forefront of my mind. “Hungry,” I croaked. “So hungry.”
But she wasn’t even listening. She was already moving on to someone else. Students were being picked up and dragged away to a portal, while the others were left inside the circle to writhe on the floor.
I wanted to get up. To run, to fight, to do something, but I was so damn weak, and my head was so hazy that I felt like I was in a dream. All while this unfamiliar hunger was clawing up my throat like thorny vines, a deadly rose garden spreading from my chest. I ached to feed—but it didn’t just feel like my thirst for blood. This felt different.
Gritting my teeth, I shoved the strange sensation away just as Jones came
