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Blood fell from the cut in my brow in quick drops before I felt the heat of Asmodeus’s magic course through me. It warmed my battered flesh and soothed my aching bones. It radiated through my brow before the sound of my blood hitting the stone floor stopped.
Going against a witch was something I was hard-pressed to admit I just couldn’t do. I was a mortal, and though the witch looked as mortal as I was, her flesh didn’t bruise when I hit her. After the pummeling to her face, she looked as pristine and eerie as she had when I first saw her in my mind. As though I hadn’t put up a fight at all.
That alone made me feel tired.
I wasn’t one to give up but I had to admit there was just no use.
Blowing a strand of hair off my brow, I aimed hard eyes at her and wrinkled my nose. Gone was the illusion of my bedroom. I guess whatever trickery she was trying to pull wasn’t worth the effort after it came to blows. Now I was in a circular room with dark stoned floors. The chinking between each stone lit a dull orange that brightened slightly before it dimmed and brightened again. It shone like it kept the pulse of this weird place with the hole in the floor at its centre and the ceiling that I never got to see. It was just darkness that seemed to stretch infinitely on.
As an architect, I could see this place needed a lot of work but if its sole purpose was to spread dread, that hit the nail right on the head. This place was as creepy as that house on Gran’s block that went all out for Halloween and had kids walking away crying.
There was a glowing orange shape before the witch. Like a dust bunny that kept growing and swirling. She held her hands around it, long nails stretched out as her face tattoos and eyes glowed and she stared into its depths.
It was pretty freaking creepy. If I wasn’t so worn out, I would definitely be more scared.
The truth was, being scared got tiring and it had been nine days — at least it was nine days if it was still Sunday — since Asmodeus appeared above a spellbook and all my fear was pretty much spent now. I wasn’t sure if that was good or bad yet.
Another huffed breath left me as I adjusted where I sat on the floor inside a witchy snow globe of sorts. There was a dim orange dome around me. She sure loved orange.
“Whatcha doing?” I crossed my legs and planted my hands on my knees. I may not be able to do much, but if I was going to be a prisoner, I wasn’t about to sit quietly. There had been a story when I was growing up about a kid who annoyed their kidnapper so much they dropped them back off where they grabbed them. That was the energy I was going for now since fighting was off the table.
The witch ignored me.
I shoved my thumb and finger in my mouth and whistled.
The shrill sound cut through the air and the witch bared her teeth. “Will you be quiet?” she snapped.
Umm, no bitch. The audacity. “Whatcha doing?” I repeated in the singsong way Olivia would say things when she wanted something.
She narrowed her eyes, focused on her task.
“Hello! Can you hear me out there? Maybe this thing is soundproof or something.” I knew it wasn’t by the way muscles worked over the witch’s jaw every time I spoke. Lips pursed, I wracked my brain for an annoying song. If she didn’t answer me, I was about to start singing and I had the voice of an angel — if it was falling down the stairs with its harp.
“It seems your demon has aligned himself with your mortal brood.”
My eyes widened but I quickly schooled my expression. “So?”
“I wonder which of them I will do away with first.”
Panic wrapped a firm hand around my throat as I hardened my gaze.
“Ah. So that quieted you.” She snickered, the sound doing nothing to irritate me now.
“Is that your plan then? Keep me in this weird ass bubble while you kill off my friends and family and… what?”
“All good things take time. This is as much for you as it is for him. The marriage was only the first step. I needed him bound. Needed the key placed inside your chest just as I needed to place dark clouds in your mind. Fear. Doubt. Pain. They’re all seeds that, hopefully when watered, will create the cracks in your mind I need to slip through. Broken, you’ll make the perfect house for my plans, but that takes time. And time makes him feel too much. It will make him careless as he searches for answers. Answers I knew would force him to reveal her to me.” She looked up from her weird buzzing magic, her eyes desperate and bright with madness. “The statue.”
My nose wrinkled. “All this for a statue?”
Lame. I mean. I knew some people were really into art but this seemed a little overboard.
“Though I knew I would need to weaken him with someone else’s emotions before he dared bring the statue from his realm, that wasn’t my only goal. He needed a bride. Needed to be bound to her. His magic makes your mortal flesh inhabitable.”
When her glowing eyes latched onto me, fresh panic bloomed in my chest. Inhabitable? She didn’t mean…
“You see, I needed a new body for my sister and the witches whose bodies I could easily steal are feeble and not worth the effort, and demons are far too powerful to be inhabited but mortals… your bodies are vessels that can all too easily be taken.”
Eyes wide, I sputtered, “Taken? You want to give your sister my body?” I didn’t know how to feel. This was… I couldn’t even put it into words. My thoughts fought, all talking over one another with one simple thing chiming through the noise. A witch was going to get inside my body. Possess me… if that was a thing witches even did.
