My tears blurred the road ahead until I couldn’t drive anymore. I pulled over, surrounded by the deep darkness of the forest on either side as I clutched the grimoire page and sobbed weakly, helplessly.
Fucking helpless, that’s what I was. A liability, a flailing foolish girl who couldn’t save herself, who had to have others go into the battle for her. I’d never wanted to be that. I’d always told myself that I could handle anything and everything the world sent my way.
But now…now I knew.
It had been love.
Love when he came back to be sure my house was protected.
Love when he watched me as a silent guard.
Love when he turned over his freedom, his name, to me.
Love when he disappeared into the dark, even though he was afraid, even though he didn’t think he would come back.
The paper shook in my hands. The old page was so worn, it was remarkable it held together at all. And there, at the top, the symbol that was his name. It was familiar now that I looked at it, but without that paper I was certain its lines and curves would have been utterly lost to me.
I couldn’t leave him, not when he’d never left me.
My tires skidded on gravel as I wrenched the car around, speeding back down the road. Cheesecake was squashed against my side, panting, and I wished I’d left him at Inaya’s. I wished I hadn’t put him in danger too.
No one was going to die for me. Love meant never fighting a battle alone. And maybe I was mostly helpless, and maybe I really was just a goddamn liability, but I wasn’t a coward.
I’d been venturing into the darkness my whole life. I wasn’t going to stop when it mattered most.
I locked Cheesecake in the house and sent a rapid, desperate text to Inaya begging her to pick him up in the morning. I didn’t know if I’d come back. I didn’t know if I’d ever have a chance to explain what was happening, or if I’d get to walk in my best friend’s wedding, or if I’d graduate. I didn’t know if I’d talk to my parents again, and I realized that I should have called them more.
I should have told them I loved them more.
I should have hugged Inaya longer.
I should’ve told Leon I loved him.
But it wasn’t over yet. It didn’t have to end like this.
I didn’t know which way Leon had gone. All I knew was that if I ran into the woods far enough, I’d find him. I had to.
The woods were a different beast at night. I had the knife clutched in one hand and my phone with its flashlight on in the other. The grimoire page was folded up and shoved into my pocket. The flashlight cut through the darkness in a single pale beam, illuminating the forest floor of soft pine needles and damp leaves, blackened grass and numerous mushrooms.
This wasn’t the forest I knew. Something evil had spread its roots here and it was growing, throttling the life it found. My light fell over the form of a large, twitching spider, its limbs jolting in the air as pale mushroom stalks sprouted from its thorax. The air was thick and difficult to breath, like the sensation of jumping into a freezing pool. It was so dark. Everything looked the same. The trees went on and on in an endless army of dark silhouettes.
My light fell on a broken tree. The trunk looked as if it had been hit with a rocket, splintered into pieces, the entire tree leaning precariously with all its weight supported by what little wood remained. The ground was torn up, the dirt marred in deep, thin trenches, as if scratched by claws.
As I moved my trembling light away, I saw the blood.
Streaked red and stark across the trees, dark and pooled on the leaves. I could smell it, sharp and metallic beneath the stench of mold. The light shook in my hand as I shone it slowly over the scene, trying to make sense of what I was seeing, cold, sickening terror spreading its roots up from my belly.
Then, my light fell on a curled, red-stained form on the ground.
At first, I couldn’t recognize it as even remotely humanoid. But as I stepped closer, I glimpsed the shredded cloth that had once been clothes, and skin adorned with tattoos beneath wet, bright red blood. Even the hair, sopping wet and stained, was indiscernible in color. An arm hung down at an impossible angle, the shoulder torn open — the face was red, bruised, slashed — but I knew that face.
“Leon?” Daring to say his name was physically painful, as if calling this broken body by his name would somehow make it real.
I sunk to my knees on the soft leaves. I shoved my phone into my pocket, tucked the dagger into my boot, and reached out for him, my fingers shaking. I couldn’t bear to touch him. I couldn’t. Surely, it wasn’t him; I couldn’t feel his heat.
I laid my hand against his side. No warmth, no smoldering heat that I’d come to find so much comfort in. Cold. As cold as the icy night air. A little tremble went through him at my touch, and that somehow snapped me out of my dazed terror.
He was alive.
I took his face in my hands, his blood sticky on my fingers. His eyelids twitched but didn’t open, and he gave a weak gasp of pain. “I’m here, Leon,” I whispered. “I’m not leaving you, I promise, I’m not leaving.”
His lips moved, but no sound came out. His hand — the one not attached to his poor, mangled arm — reached for my face and brushed against my cheek. I leaned into him, blood and dirt sticky on his fingers. His eyes twitched again, and this time he managed to open them — bloodshot, one pupil dilated and the other small as a pinprick.
“…coming,” His voice rasped, and he tried again. “Jeremiah…’s coming. Go.”
“Not without you. I’m not fucking going without you.”
“Can’t walk.” He coughed, and I had to hold back tears as he choked on the blood that spattered over his lips. “Can’t…can’t heal. Not…f-fuck…not strong enough.”
Fumbling with my cold, bloodied fingers, I pulled the grimoire page out of my pocket. “Tell me how to do it, Leon. Please. Tell me how to offer my soul. I want you to take it, please. It’ll give you some strength, won’t it? And you can heal…”
His eyes were fluttering closed again, and suddenly, behind us, I heard the sound of footsteps in the trees. They were still far away, but there were a lot of them, and I could vaguely see the beams of flashlights moving in the dark.
“Oh Raaaaaelyn! Where are you hiding, girl?” The voice was distant, but familiar, echoing in the silent forest. It was Jeremiah.
My heart was pounding in my chest, and when I looked back down to Leon, I was shocked to see his eyes wide.
“Go.” He tried to shove at me, but there was so little strength in him that it was barely a tap. “Run, Rae. You…you have to…”
“How do I offer it?” I insisted. “I’m not leaving you like this, Leon! Tell me what to do!”
“No time…”
I clutched his bloodied hand, leaning over him, even as the voices grew closer and I could hear Jeremiah’s sadistic laughter carry through the night. “My soul is yours, Leon. It’s yours. Please. Please, tell me how, and I’ll go. Just…please.”
He was struggling to stay conscious, his eyes nearly rolling back. But he grit his teeth, and his finger barely tapped the edge of the paper. “My name…in your flesh…and…blood…”
“Aww, how sweet! You came back for your poor, mangled demon.”
My heart lurched as I turned. Jeremiah stood there, dressed in a white suit, flanked by figures in white robes and masks shaped like the skulls of stags. There was a dozen of them, if not more, standing silent and eerily still as Jeremiah looked at us with a wide smile on his face.
“I see my Reaper did its job. You see, Leon? I told you I’d punish you. Now, Raelynn” — he held out his hand, as if he actually expected me to take it — “it’s time to stop running.”
I don’t know where he found the strength, but Leon shoved himself up. Even crawling, one arm dragging, he put himself between me and Jeremiah and bared his teeth, spitting blood on the ground. Jeremiah tweaked an eyebrow, his expression half amused, half exasperated.
The white-cloaked figures were spreading out around us. I had nowhere to run, but if I couldn’t run, then I would fight. My fingers twitched, ready to reach down for the dagger in my boot, until I realized I couldn’t move.
Jeremiah’s eyes were locked onto mine, and they were pale as fog. It was as if I was staring at him from the end of a long tunnel, nothing but darkness around me, and his form was wavering, morphing, mutating. He was shaking his head, and holding out his hand still, but it wasn’t a hand anymore. It was a tentacle, gray and thick, slithering through the leaves as his entire form seemed to grow, so huge and so unnatural that it was impossible to look at him without falling to my knees in abject horror.
The vision shattered as Leon attacked him. Jeremiah caught Leon by the throat and wrenched him down, the injured demon’s strength sapped away. As Jeremiah shoved Leon to the ground with a single hand, he snapped his fingers and said calmly. “Take her.”
Hands seized me from behind, my arms pinned to my sides. I struggled, kicking and screaming as hard plastic bit into my wrists, zip ties tightening to keep me restrained. I threw my head back, trying to bite the arms tightening around me. Cloth was suddenly pressed over my mouth and nose, a smell like sweet acetone flooding into my head.
I stumbled, my muscles going limp and my limbs refusing to obey. My head swam, my vision faded — the last thing I saw was Jeremiah smiling as he approached, Leon limp on the ground behind him.
