Demon Heart (The Darkworld Series Book 3) (30 page)

Shit.
I had about half a second before I fell, so I did the only thing I could. I contacted the Darkworld and cried out for help.

The shadows around my legs held me as I dropped through the air, slowly. My mind spun, my throat burned from trying not to scream, my heart was about to burst out of my chest―

And then Leo held me in his arms and I could breathe again. I clung to him, and he held on to me tightly.

“Thank God,” he whispered. “Thank God, Ash.”

I tilted my head and saw the woman fall, just behind us. She hit the pavement with a horrible
crack
and a spray of red. I looked away, bile rising in my throat, even though I knew she’d been dead long before.

Leo looked sickened. “I had to burn her…”

“Not your fault.” I coughed. “Put me―put me down, I can walk.”

He nodded, walking over to the woman’s body. I staggered after him, clutching my bruised arm.

Blood seeped out from under the woman’s head. Her limbs were twisted at odd angles, and the bones of one arm poked through the skin like a snapped candy stick. Gore was spattered around her in a halo-like pattern. I gagged, shutting my eyes.

“Shit,” said Leo. “What do we do with the demon heart? It can’t be the same one as before, right?”

“Just take it.” I swallowed, hard. “Give it to the Venantium.”

Leo bent down and pulled at the now lifeless crystal. It came away easily, like peeling off a plaster.

Someone screamed.

People ran towards her. We backed away from the corpse and tried to look as stunned as everyone else did. I felt like I barely had control of my own body, like I experienced this through someone else’s eyes. That feeling when I’d touched the crystal had thrown everything else out of whack. Now Leo held it, but he was already walking away.

“Did anyone see?”

“Where did she come from?”

“Did she jump?”

“Who saw?”

We needed to get out of there.

“Train station,” I said to Leo, who nodded.

We pushed our way through the crowd. No one gave us a second glance, to my relief. As we entered the station, someone grabbed my arm―thankfully, not the injured one.

“Ash.” Cara stared at me, wide-eyed, like she’d seen a ghost.

Oh, crap.

here you are!” I said. “Did you see―”

“Ash, seriously. We need to talk.”

“About what?” I struggled to bring my mind back to normality after what had just happened.

“I just spoke to your parents. They didn’t know who you were.”

My heart dropped. “They what?” I turned to face Leo, who looked as aghast as I felt.

“I’m not stupid. I know something’s going on. I saw you
flying
just then. Are you going to tell me what that was about?”

My voice seemed to have deserted me.
Crap.

“Look, I’m sorry,” was all I could manage. It sounded like a stranger spoke. My head throbbed. Maybe I was going into some kind of shock. I had just nearly died, after all.

“I’m your best friend, Ash. I’m not an idiot. I know there’s been something going on. But you can tell me. I can take it.”

“I need to see my parents,” I whispered, and I felt tears pricking at my eyes. “I don’t understand.”

“You’re not the only one.” Cara’s face said it all: she’d persist with questioning until she had answers.

“I’ll explain,” I said. “Honestly. I just… I really don’t know what’s going on.”

“You said you thought someone had messed with your memory,” said Leo, who didn’t seem to care that Cara was listening. She’d seen enough, and we had bigger problems to worry about.

“Yeah―it must be that, but… my parents…”

“They said they didn’t have kids,” said Cara. “Gave me a hell of a weird look. You know what that’s about?”

I shook my head. “No. I need to go to the house.”

“They’ve cordoned it off,” said Cara. “But yeah. Let’s get on a train.”

Leo bought the tickets; my arm hurt too much to operate the ticket machine. It was beginning to swell; I wondered if it was broken after all. I still felt detached, in a dream, despite the pain. We just made the train, jumping on seconds before the doors closed.

“Right,” said Cara, as we found a mercifully almost-empty carriage. “Spill it.”

I drew in a deep, calming breath, and unconsciously stroked the crystal around my neck. Surprisingly, it helped, like it anchored me back in reality.

Leo gave me a look as if to ask if I felt okay to talk, and I nodded.

I gave Cara a basic rundown of the insanity―from the start. Firstly, I told her about seeing the demons in the assembly hall at school and how they’d dogged me ever since.

“I knew there was something bothering you besides the exams,” she said, to that. “I hoped you’d talk to me about it, but when you went to uni, I thought you might be okay.”

“I was,” I said. “Because I met the others. But…”

“You remember when I came to visit?” Cara interrupted me, and I could tell this was something she’d wanted to say for a while. “I heard you yelling in your sleep, begging demons not to kill someone.”

“Seriously?” I never knew I talked in my sleep. But that night, I’d dreamed of Melivia Blackstone for the first time.

“Hell yeah. Also, I saw your book.”

“What book?”

“I can’t remember the title―seven demons of something. It was shoved down the side of the bed.”

“What―the
Seven Princes of the Darkworld?”

“Yeah. I thought it was a story at first. I couldn’t sleep, so I just had a look inside. But there was something a little too
real
about it. It creeped me out. I couldn’t figure why the hell you had something like that in your room. So I did a little research. It’s amazing what you can find on the dark corners of the Internet.”

“So you knew about the demons?” I said, disbelief colouring my voice. Cara had once accidentally gone onto a poltergeist-spotting website, and when her computer had subsequently crashed, she’d refused to go near it for weeks, fearing it was possessed by an angry spirit. But she’d willingly researched demons?

“Not exactly… The site I went on sure as hell didn’t mention
flying.
But I found this forum. Mephistopheles’s lair, or something.”

“Mephistopheles has his own website?” said Leo. “Man, no one better tell him that. He’s egotistical enough, thinking he’s king of all demons.”

“I want to hear your version, anyway,” said Cara. “Knock me out.”

So I launched into a repeat of the events since I’d come to Blackstone, from the first week. I told her about my encounter with a shadow-beast at Satan’s Pit; about meeting the fortune-teller; finding out about the Darkworld; Claudia teaching me magic. I told her about the group meetings, about the Venantium, about Terrence and how he’d almost killed me. Cara didn’t flinch once, not even when I revealed that I was half-demon. Of course, to an outsider, it would be seen as irrelevant, not that I was a monster.

Then I told her about Mr. Melmoth’s murder, about the Ghouls, the doppelganger, Jude, and the night I’d almost died. Finally I mentioned Lucifer, and told her that we’d just defeated Mephistopheles, Lucifer’s second-in-command.

This took most of the journey. I had to keep backtracking to explain things like demon hearts and higher demons and even the fortune-teller’s past―I didn’t want there to be any more secrets. It was selfish, but I wanted her to understand. And amazingly, she did. Cara, who feared things that went bump in the night more than the average ten-year-old, sat calmly as I told her about the horrors that lurked beneath our world.

“You’re taking this way better than I pictured,” I said.

“Yeah, well, I have a lot of experience dealing with the unseen.” It amazed me at how flippant she sounded.

“You’re not going to perform an exorcism on me?” I said.

“From what you tell me, exorcisms aren’t much use. You’re not evil. I might not totally understand what it’s like, but I get that much.”

“You’re the best friend ever, you know that?”

“Glad to be. You weren’t ever going to tell me, were you?”

“I just didn’t want you to worry about me. Most people can’t even see harpies, let alone the Darkworld. There’s like a one in a million chance.”

“And it’s hereditary?”

“Huh? I think so. It’s the only way it makes any sense. Most magic-users are from the Blackstone area.”

“I mean, you’re part demon. Your parents are totally normal, aren’t they?”

It hurt my head to think, but I knew she was right. Which meant…

“So they’re not your parents,” said Cara. “Jeez, what’s wrong with you? You’re not freaking out.”

“I am freaking out,” I said quietly. “Someone’s screwed with my memory. Every time I try to think about anything related to my parents―”

I winced as a jolt of pain lanced through my head.

Cara stared at me. “What, they made you forget about your parents? And
they
forgot about you?”

“Or it could be the other way around,” said Leo, in a low voice. “They made your parents forget about you, which made you forget… Unless there was
already
a spell there, and it got removed.”

Ice curled around my heart at what Leo implied.

“Everything… everything was a lie? My entire life? It was just a spell?”

Leo squeezed my hand. “To be honest, I’ve never heard of anything like it. I’m sorry. We’ll figure it out.”

He hugged me, but for the first time, it didn’t make me feel all right. I didn’t see how things could possibly be okay ever, now.

After a short walk from the station, I saw two fire engines parked at the end of the road where I used to live. I quickened my pace, Cara and Leo behind me.

Several people gathered around the house at the end of the street. The smell of burning hovered around the road, and smoke lingered in the air like mist. The fire had been put out, although as we drew closer I saw the living room windows thrown wide open and the room inside reduced to charred ashes. A rush of déjà vu reminded me of the Blackstones’ house.

The area had been cordoned off, so we couldn’t get any closer. My heart jumped into my throat as I saw two familiar figures.

My parents stood talking to one of the firefighters. I both recognised and didn’t recognise the two people in front of me, like they were strangers I’d passed once on the street. And it felt wrong, like the world had shifted on its axis and left me behind, spinning in a black void.

“Ash,” said Cara, “are you sure you want to…?”

I stumbled towards the house. The woman―Mum―was shaking her head. She looked like she’d been crying. Dad said something to the fireman.

“Mum,” I said, choking out the word before it slipped back down my throat.

She didn’t look up.

The fireman did. “Excuse me, can I help you with something?”

I looked at my parents. They regarded me blankly, with no recognition in their expressions.

“No,” I said. “Sorry. I was just looking.”

And I walked away, my heart breaking because I couldn’t feel a thing, like I’d just had a passing conversation on the street. Tears overflowed and streaked down my face. But I felt frozen inside.

Cara and Leo exchanged glances and hurried after me towards the train station again. I kept my head down, tears flowing freely, mind in free fall. Rushing onto the platform, I collided with someone, and looked up to find myself face-to-face with the fortune-teller.