IT TOOK ONLY an hour for my night vision to return. The goggles I’d grabbed helped, keeping the wind from stinging my eyes due to how fast Brutus flew. As expected, he seemed to revel in the cold, undeveloped landscape, dipping low over the forest as if trying to tag the treetops with his clawed toes.
I let him fly wherever he wanted for that first hour, waiting for my senses to kick into a higher gear. Once they did, I directed him in a loose search grid a few miles out in either direction from the hotel. I had to make sure that we kept out of view of the village lights, of course, which made us skip some areas, but those I could explore on foot tomorrow. For now, I wanted to cover a broad search area over parts that couldn’t be explored by foot, like the river.
I had Brutus fly over that as low as he could, reassuring myself that if he made a mistake and we crashed, he would fish me out. Sure, I might get hypothermia, but it wouldn’t kill me. My body could stand a lot more than most due to the perks of my lineage. In any event, it was worth the risk. If I wanted to hide the spearhead where it would never be found, the bottom of an icy river would be a great place.
I sent my hallowed sensors outward, looking for any telltale blip that might indicate an interesting object. So far, I’d felt nothing except for an area in the village that the tall steeple outed as a church. Another hour later, and the cold was getting to me even through my thick protective wear. An hour after that, I was pretty sure I was getting frostbite in my fingers. These gloves were made to withstand the interior of the ice hotel, not countless blasts of wind that came from steering a gargoyle at high speeds through the arctic night.
“Let’s go back, boy,” I said, steering Brutus toward the lights in the distance. This flight had accomplished one thing: it told me that if the spearhead was here, it was warded. Otherwise, I would have felt it, and I’d been within fifteen or twenty miles of the hotel in almost every direction.
If it was warded, it had to be in a box that was buried. After all, no one would leave a big, symbol-covered box out in the open unless they wanted whatever was in it to be found. If it was warded and buried somewhere in the river or the vast wilderness around the village, I wouldn’t be able to find it even if I had a map with a big X on it, and if I couldn’t find it, then neither could demons.
I was cheered by that thought. Tomorrow, we’d hike around the area plus check out the village, and if we didn’t notice a big warded box, we could mark this place off and move on to the next one. That might be interesting. I’d never been to Russia.
Brutus chuffed and dipped in a way that caught my attention. He jerked his head to the left, chuffing again while also slightly altering course. I squinted, trying to see what he saw. At first, all I noticed was the many lights and roofs of the village we were approaching, with the darkness of the river on the opposite side. Everything looked normal. What was agitating Brutus?
Brutus chuffed a third time, this one ending on a growl. A few seconds later, I noticed a lone figure standing in the middle of a field that was bordered on one side by the river. As we got closer, I realized it was a large backyard. It didn’t seem strange until I factored in the late hour and the much colder temperatures. It had to be well below freezing by now, and whoever this was really wasn’t dressed for a midnight stroll.
The person turned and seemed to stare right at us. I told myself that had to be coincidence. With the black sky as our backdrop, no one should be able to see us. That was why I’d chosen dark colors for my outerwear, and Brutus’s blue-gray skin was natural camouflage—Wait. Did that person have long blond hair?
“Ivy!” I faintly heard before the sound was snatched away.
“It’s Jasmine,” I told Brutus, patting him when he only growled again. I angled him toward her and pulled down on his reins so he’d drop lower. He did, and with every second, I got a clearer look at her. She was wearing a different coat than the one the hotel had supplied us with, and she waved when we got within five hundred yards of her. Yep, she’d spotted us.
Maybe she’d been searching the sky with binoculars. She must have checked on me at some point and seen that I was gone, then figured out what I was doing. I felt bad for worrying her. I don’t know why I lied to her about taking a nap in the first place. Damn this new tendency to lie without thinking twice! Was that the darkness from my soul-tethering growing? Or was it me, taking the easy-but-wrong route all on my own? Either way, it had to stop—
Brutus’s growl turned into a roar as he pulled his wings to his sides and began to dive right at Jasmine. Good Lord, he would hit her if he didn’t veer! I yanked his reins hard to the right, but he ignored me. Jasmine smiled, oblivious to the danger. I hauled on Brutus’s reins with all my strength, trying to pull him up, and he only roared louder.
“Brutus, stop!” I screamed. What was the matter with him? He was going to kill her!
I figured it out as soon as I was close enough to see Jasmine’s face. It was just as pretty as ever and her eyes were just as blue, but the look in them. This wasn’t Jasmine.
In the final seconds before we hit, I hid behind Brutus’s back and held on for all I was worth.
The impact felt like hitting a brick wall. I was torn free from Brutus and tumbled through the air, limbs flailing, until something hard broke my fall. A fence, I realized dazedly. I’d broken it, too, and every part of me felt as destroyed as it was. It was agony to even breathe, let alone to move, yet I forced myself to scramble through the remains of the wood and wires until I was free.
That was when I got my first look around, and screamed. Brutus was about fifty feet from me, swinging around to put himself between me and what could only be Demetrius. No one else could shape-shift into someone’s exact likeness, and Demetrius was well aware of what Jasmine looked like. He’d held her prisoner in Adrian’s former realm for weeks. But I wasn’t screaming in fear of Demetrius, although I probably should be. I was screaming in horror over what he’d done to Brutus.
His left wing had been torn completely off. It lay, spasmodically jerking, in front of Demetrius as if it were still attempting to take the demon’s head off. Dark red blood ran from Brutus’s side and he was howling in pain, yet he didn’t run. He squared off against Demetrius, lowering his remaining right wing into a chopping formation. Demetrius, still wearing my sister’s appearance, smiled at Brutus while a thin trickle of shadows flowed into the shape of a large sword.
“Brutus, no!” I shouted. “Stay away from him!” If Demetrius’s shadows could penetrate Brutus’s unnaturally thick hide enough to slice off his wing, he could take off his head.
“Listen to Mommy, beast,” Demetrius taunted Brutus in his own smooth, accented voice. Hearing it while the demon was still in my sister’s form felt like a desecration to Jasmine, but I had bigger concerns, like getting me and Brutus out of here alive.
“Adraten!” I told Brutus, putting all the force I could muster into the command for him to stand down.
Brutus flinched, his wing dropping before he took a reluctant step backward. Demetrius’s low chuckle reached me like a poisonous wind.
“Adrian taught the last Davidian the language of demons. How delightfully twisted of him.”
“I’m still learning,” I said, trying not to panic as blood continued to flow from the hole where Brutus’s left wing used to be. I had to get Demetrius to focus on me long enough for Brutus to get away. As for how I’d get away...well, I’d worry about that afterward. “Remind me what dyaten eskanitta montubule means. Adrian always said that when he was talking about you.”
Demetrius’s face darkened and he stalked toward me, his shadow sword dissolving into what looked like a long, thin whip with a knife attached to the end of it. He really didn’t like being called fucking demon trash. I’d have to remember to use that insult more often on him, if I survived.
I backed away, silently praying that Brutus would do the same now that the demon’s attention wasn’t on him. From the pain shooting through me, I had busted myself up pretty good hitting that fence. Still, I was able to turn and run, and the Icehotel had a chapel right next to it. It wasn’t that far away. If I could reach it before Demetrius could overtake me—
“Take one more step, and I won’t stop at killing Adrian’s pet,” Demetrius spat, his knife-tipped whip moving with blinding speed. A long rip appeared in Brutus’s flank, and the gargoyle stumbled, a pained howl coming from him. “I’ll kill that bitch you call a sister along with everyone else in the hotel.”
I stopped, panicked as Brutus’s leg crumpled beneath him. Then my heart ached when he tried to use his remaining wing as a crutch in order to crawl toward me.
“Brutus, stop,” I said urgently. “You have to leave!”
Defiance echoed in his answering roar, and he kept crawling. Now I knew what hell no sounded like in gargoyle, and my heart broke. Oh God, he’d die like this: brave, bloody and a thousand times more loyal than I deserved. Please, I found myself thinking. Zach, if you’re still around, please help us!
Demetrius regarded Brutus with disdainful amusement. “Foolish beast doesn’t know when he’s beaten. Then again, I shouldn’t be surprised. He was too stubborn to die like the thousand other experiments we attempted before we successfully bred him, and yet Adrian still believes he was born after hatching from an ancient, previously lost egg.” He paused to roll his eyes. “Children, right?”
“What do you want, Demetrius?” I was pretty sure I knew, but I was stalling to give Brutus one last chance to escape. “And drop the disguise. Blond and beautiful doesn’t suit you.”
He smiled, then Jasmine’s face melted as if it were wax under a blowtorch. Black hair seemed to bleed over blond locks and my sister’s body contorted, too, though thankfully I couldn’t see the details due to his clothes and coat. Moments later, Demetrius stood in his true form of a medium-sized man with shoulder-length black hair, pale skin, average features and a wide mouth. Only the shadows clinging to his outline and his coal-black eyes that seemed to burn with their own inner fire gave him away as nowhere near human.
“You will come with me, or I will lay waste to the hotel your sister is in, then the village after that,” he told me.
“How’d you know I was here?” I said, trying to stall so I could think up a way for me and Brutus to get out of this. “Come on, Demetrius, tell me. We both know you love to brag.”
“This was one of my son’s favorite places when he began sneaking into your world,” Demetrius said, glancing around while his lip curled in contempt. “So I sent a realm crashing down on it. Adrian never knew. I evacuated the town first so that none of its sparse population would be swallowed up. That way, I could keep a constant eye on this place.” He smiled. Nastily. “Then all I needed was a mirror to travel here once I saw your sister’s face at the hotel. You were careful to avoid them, but she wasn’t as careful as she should have been. Now, enough chatting. You’re wearing out my nonexistent patience.”
The house on the other side of the fence I’d wrecked began to shake and crumble. Then it flattened completely as if stomped on by a giant’s foot. I stared at it, my mind trying to cope with how it had been a two-story structure a minute ago, yet now the only thing that rose more than a few feet from the ground was all the dust from its sudden demise.
I wasn’t aware that I’d spoken, but Demetrius said, “How?” as if repeating me, then laughed. “I can use gravity to smash pieces of this world into their dimensional mirror images to form new realms, and you ask me how I could use that same gravity to force one tiny wooden structure to crumble?” He laughed again, with far more cruelty this time. “The answer is easily. Now, if you don’t want me to do the same with this entire village, you will come with me.”