Chapter Three
Let me be. It was the same thing I wanted to be.
"Let you be?" I repeated gazing into his eyes grabbing my back up chalk in a secret pocket in my jeans. He nodded and my hand hurt when he let it go and the blood started flowing again.
"You aren't wanted here," he said eyes lifting from me as I leant back, the deathly silent hills watching us. "They hate you. Why are you protecting them? This is your playground. Play! Play with me!" He shouted at me turning his back from to hills looking to me again.
He was smiling, looking as beautiful as only a satisfied demon could. Knowing he was right and I lost. I felt my wrist looking for a way out of using plan B knowing immortal or not it may very well kill me and finding none.
There was no collective to help me move the curse, no white knight in the guise of the city wide outflowing with good will. They had turned their backs on me for the last time. Screw them. My home is in the Ever After, but the one person who has been my home lives here and I am not letting him hurt my home anymore without a fight.
Flicking my eyes to Ivy, my home I spoke in a deathly calm voice letting anyone who could hear me know how serious I am. "This isn't my playground, this is where my home is," Looking away from Ivy to Ku'Sox I could see my reflection in his eyes, my hair mussed, face flushed and pure hatred in my eyes. I continued "And if you don't leave, I am going to kick your ass out!"
His head tilted to the side as he assessed me and suddenly he laughed. "I wish I could make you last, but you are a threat and I don't trust you not to best me."
He's right I can best him, much more I can kill him and he damn well knows it. As I squinted at Ku'Sox hating what he did to Ivy, those children I rescued save one orphan, my adopted son Cole, for almost destroying the Ever After through my liner before I fixed it.
While I fixed all that within three years he had three days to torment Ivy and Jenks with no idea I found out about his schemes and thwarted them.
Hell Ivy and Jenks don't know either. Just Trent, Quinn and Ceri who I gave all oof the babies minus Cole to give them back to their families or to find them homes. I didn't' need the damn collective I was a powerful Demoness.
Unaware of my thoughts, Ku'Sox reached out and snatched my wrist again, delighted as I struggled he pulled me closer. "What no long monologues?" I taunted him and his expression became even more domineering yet.
"No," he growled rising to keep the weight advantage. "When I see a snake I cut off its head and be done with it. After I suck out its poison for myself of course."
I twisted, trying to avoid his other reaching hand and he splayed his fingers. They were coated in his black aura, sparkling at the edges and I did not want that thing touching me. But with a grunt of satisfaction his hand set against my face and he shoved his will into mine.
I gasped as he was suddenly in my mind with me, more oppressive and heavier than Al had ever hinted at. My heart pounded and every thought of fighting vanished. Power. He had it. He was it. He had no morals. And he had no problem killing torturing or breaking anyone to obtain it. His soul was empty. He was content with what he is, confident that none could stop him. He was a day walking demon who like me hadn't been born a slave to the Ever After. He could see the sun and it gave him strength. And he wanted me dead.
Except I wasn't a demon, I was a Demoness and that last little bit X chromosome was going to save my life.
YOU STUPID SON OF A BITCH! I shouted at him in my mind knowing he would hear every word I thought and then I grabbed his thin soul by the thread and yanking it completely into mine with callous disregard.
NO! Ku'Sox aggressive sexual heat flashed into his fear. Is powers suddenly meant nothing as my soul swallowed his, cutting him off from everything but the memory of existence.
Eieci te semper cum aetheri Ku'Sox exitium. Tu nihil in nisi euismod. Sit ut nullam desperaveris vacuum. Unde dicitur Deut. Sic fiat. (I banish you Ku'Sox Bane of the Ever After to the ether. May you exist in nothing but memories and nothing more. May you despair in the nothingness that is the void. So it is said. So mote it be.) I invoked the spell that end him, holding him within me as the pin pricks of the curse lifted from me arrowing into him like flats of iron to a magnet.
As he howled in pain and fury I screamed over his cries, "I RACHEL MARIANA MORGAN, DAUGHTER OF THE DEMONS, DAUGHTER OF THE ELVES, CHAMPION OF THE WILDE, WORLD BREAKER, AND DEMONESS HEREBY CURSE YOU TO DEATH BY WITNESS OF NEWT THE FIRST DEMONESS, THE DEMON QUEEN, ALGERIPT THE DEMON OF TRICKERY, CHAOS, DECEIT AND CONSORT OF NEWT, DALI OF THE SLY and DANTE OF THE INFERNO AS WITNESS AND PEERS. FOR CRIMES OF TAMPERING WITH THE LINE OF A FELLOW DEMON TO DESTROY THE EVER AFTER. I FIND YOU GUILTY! FOR CRIMES OF KIDNAPPING ROSE SYDROME BABES TO CREATE AN ARMY OF DAYWALKING DEMONS TO OVERTHROW THE EVER AFTER AND CAUSE STRIFE AMONGST BOTH THE HUMAN AND DEMON WORLDS ALIKE. I FIND YOU GUILTY! FOR 1,152,582 COUNTS OF MURDER. I FIND YOU GUILTY! FOR THE MURDER OF THE DEMON QUEENS FAMILIAR NICHOLOUS GREGORY SPARAGAS. I FIND YOU GUILTY! YOU ARE HERBYE CONDEMNED!"
"Quas eieci Te! Ego te condemnabo vade! I maledicentibus vobis! Unde dicitur Deut. Sic fiat!" (I banish you! I condemn you! I curse you! So it is said. So mote it be!)
"TRIAL! LET ME GO!" Ku'Sox screamed over the pain as the Demonic-Elvin mixed curse slowly killed him.
"I am a demon. I deserve a trial not an execution!"
Well I am a Demoness and I could hold another soul even one as disgusting as Ku'Sox. And once there I could give him the rest of the curse, collective or not. Fix it into his very DNA so that should he transform it would go with him forever.
A heavy mallet smashed into me and I fell off him the connection between us breaking. The cement slammed into my back and the sun blinded me. I blinked trying to figure out what happed. I was on my back looking up at the sun and my mouth hurt.
"Take it back! I am a Demon! Take it back!" Ku'Sox demanded, as I propped myself up on an elbow to see him standing before me stiff with fear.
I looked at the blood on my hand and back to him, "but you're not a demon Ku'Sox," I mused smiling peacefully as I looked away from him to the horizon, where the sunset and the ocean was calm no noise but the gulls and us. It was somewhat peaceful if you discounted the drama going on this would be a beautiful day. It was fitting I supposed to die on a beautiful day.
"Every demon dead and every demon still alive has been a slave, has been hunted even me. And you have not. You have never felt the anger of being made powerless, controlled bought and sold," I said softly as I struggled not to cry as I thought of all the hell I had been through, the times I had been betrayed by the humans I thought myself to be once, controlled subjected to their whims like a slave, hunted by them, imprisoned by them. Only with the demons have I ever felt more at home and free than I ever had with the humans. Ivy is really the only reason I would stay here.
"You have not felt the unfair lash, been pissed upon by those who call you an animal, underling, or an object," Mom, Al, Dali, Dante and Ivy were silent thinking upon this and my stomach quivered. "I think you need to be a demon before you can claim to be one." I panted "you lose Ku'Sox."
"NO!" He screamed lunging at me. My hands came up to fend him off, and just as his weight fell on me I felt the line between us. What the hell is he doing?
SHIT! I thought, floundering as I reoriented myself, then clenched in pain as my bubble of protection around Ivy and Hel pop. His hot anger made clouds of agony and hate rise from his mind, like the choking stink of decay, He gripped my consciousness as he was dying intent on taking me with him and I felt my soul shiver in pain as the fire he poured into me.
"Take it back!" He demanded once more, "Or I'll kill you here!"
"Try," I whispered, then screamed as he began to shred my memories. I caught glimpses of my life as he burned them taking them as his own. Trent and I riding Tulpa in camp. Gone. A birthday at the hospital, him standing in the background as I blew out the candles and wished for a day without weakness. Gone. One by one Ku'Sox found my earliest memories and ate them, ate my soul.
TAKE IT BACK! He seethed, shredding me, cutting me to the bare bones of myself. TAKE IT BACK OR WE DIE TOGETHER! He screamed into my head.
Gentleman's choice I thought grimly then punched a whole right through my protective bubble. Letting go of my mind he pushed me away as we drowned in pain. Pain like no other crippled our thoughts. It was as exquisite an agony as angels singing to the beginnings of the world, exploding the idea of infinity into reality, stripping my aura from me in sheets securing it layer by layer. I struggled to keep myself together.
The howling of demons lost in the lines before us echoed their voices caught in the moment of death forever. OUT! Ku'Sox soul shrieked and I clutched it, a point of common ground amid the absence of anything but pain. He was struggling to keep his aura and failing. He couldn't get out of the line and was already dead. For all of his strength, he didn't love, couldn't manage to tune his aura to another's, giving all and trusting. And suddenly it struck me that only demons who knew how to love survived.
After what seemed like an eternity Ku'Sox finally died. He was gone. Alone I whimpered and writhed in pain, trying to scrape together enough memories to tune my own aura. Hel tried to help but it wasn't enough.
The memories of those who meant the most to me flashed through my mind. Memories of Jenks hands on his hips as the sun lit his hair. The soft smile Ivy would allow herself when she thought no one would see, Trent his face showing love as he held his daughter and his powerful grace when he sat atop a horse, the hounds baying and the moon lording over it all. And finally Kisten, his smiles, his laughter and his love for me.
One by one, I fastened on them as a way out and one by one my memories were ripped away by the energy screaming through me burning me from the inside out until I realized that my aura was gone. There was nothing left for the line to recognize. I couldn't think fast enough, I was going to die here amid the screams of the unbalanced energies and the forgotten souls of demons long since dead.
In utter agony I curled my memories around what was left and tried to see past the pain to form a barrier to protect those memories as much as I can. I tried and tried again until I realized I was too weak and would definitely die. Terror struck me at the thought, mom said I can't die that I am a double immortal, immortal because of my demonic half and immortal because of my Elvin half but I have had my doubts and this proves them.
"Rachel!" I heard a voice call me from what sounded like far away to me.
"K-Kis-Kisten?" I struggled to speak in a whisper, mindless from pain I felt my soul start to burn. Wait isn't Kisten dead? Then I realized it was Ivy. I felt her wrap her arms and aura around me and yet I still burned.
"H-Hel-Help m-me, I-Ivy," I managed to stutter and with a ping, the shattered remnants of my soul shifted.