Forfeit Souls (The Ennead Book 1) (26 page)

Families of every size with children of every age passed us by. Teenage couples walked through the garden holding hands. An elderly woman pushed her husband through in his wheel chair while their children and grandchildren trailed behind.

Once in a while someone would give us the odd look, whether it was for sitting so still in the cold night air, or if it was for our strange attire, I will never know. But I did not care. I was at peace here. Their joy at the season somehow filled me with an empathetic joy of my own.

Every so often a person that I knew in my life passed by and I would glance down hoping that they wouldn’t recognize me, no one ever did. And somehow that made me a little sad even though I knew it was necessary.

Any other year I would have wound my way through the garden with family or friends and then made my way to the little gingerbread-like cottage to get some hot cider and a cookie. But I had no need of those now. The frigid wind was actually quite comfortable to me, as it swept past me; I felt the effervescent effect that it had on my skin.

“Come on,” I said, standing up and walking back through the gate. “There’s one more place I want to go.”

We walked down the path that was parallel to the garden’s fence. It wound down to our final destination in the last hours before Christmas, and I smiled a little when we reached the bottom of the steep hill, crossed the small wooden bridge, and my feet sunk into the shell-laden sand. I heard the crisp crunching as I walked out to the middle of the small beach that formed a crescent shape around the secluded cove.

I had been here in the summers of my youth. The water flowed in over a rocky shelf and then broke on the beach that was covered in millions of shell fragments. In the daylight the sand was speckled black and white, but now it all just faded to grey.

No one was here; it was too cold. As the wind swept my hair about I did nothing to alter it. It was nice to be here alone in the dark – to smell the salt air, to know that it was cold. Even the sound of the rain as it fell to the black ocean, making little pock marks fifteen feet beyond the breakers was comforting to me.

“I won’t believe he’s dead, Demetrius,” I said quietly into the howling wind.

“I know it’s not something you want to hear.” He sighed as he took my hand. “But even if he’s alive, I’m still not sure that he isn’t better off with his own kind.”

“You don’t think it’s a choice.” It wasn’t a question. I knew it from the moment he had learned that Paul was an Asakku; I had seen it in his face even as he had told me to go with Paul. “You think that those who aren’t hybrids have no choice.”

He confirmed my statements with his silence.

“You’re wrong.”

“You can’t save the damned, Jo,” he said quietly.

I laughed. Weren’t we all the damned? “Maybe not, but I have to try.” If I could save Paul, then perhaps there was a chance that I could save myself as well.

“It’s Christmas, Jo. Let’s be thankful for what we have.” He took my hand and I allowed him to pull me with him as he dissolved.

The entire hall, which was usually bare aside from the large table and scattered chairs, was completely transformed. Pewter branches had sprouted from the walls and silken spider webs were strewn from bough to bough creating shimmering rafters that lead to the corner where an enormous tree, covered in snow and holly, stood guarding a mountainous pile of silver wrapped packages.

I stopped, though Demetrius tried to pull me forward. “Demons celebrate Christmas?” I asked, a little flabbergasted by the irony of the display as well as by its beauty.

“We were all human once,” he said with a smile. “And don’t worry about the fact that you didn’t get anyone anything. Lilith doesn’t allow us to get each other things; she prefers to play the role of ‘Santa’.”

The high-backed chairs that were usually found strew about the room were now arranged in a semi-circular pattern around the tree. As we got closer I noticed the feet beneath them indicating they were occupied.

I let Demetrius lead me to a chair and I sat quietly next to Lizzie, who was humming a quiet tune as she worked on a crossword puzzle. As soon as Demetrius sat down she looked up toward the tree expectantly, putting her crossword puzzle to the side. I looked to the tree too, curious as to what she was waiting for.

The branches of the trees rustled slightly and then a box appeared on Carla’s lap. She was at the far end of the semi-circle and in a line they began appearing: one for Earl, Nate, Christi, Billy and Lizzie.

But in my lap there appeared no silver wrapped box. A simple black envelope was all that appeared. And I was glad of it. What was there that I, as a demon, could want other than my mortality back.

I folded back the thick black paper of the envelope flap and pulled out the black note card inside, scrawled across the card stock in gold ink, were two words:

Your move.

As I read them, a small burst of flames appeared before me and I caught the rook that fell from the air. Turning the chess piece over between my fingers, I couldn’t hold back the smile that came to my lips.

A piano began playing carols and the others were away from their seats, standing around where Demetrius was playing. I joined them, finally willing to feel as though there was some Joy in the world. Those two words had given me all of the hope I could have ever wanted and my heart welled with the possibility that Paul was still out there somewhere waiting to be rescued. This was exactly what I wanted for Christmas.

-Paul-

I sat across from Gallu, as she moved a chess piece forward, and I countered. The movements were mechanical. I did not care if I won or lost. I only sought the distraction.

I was bound to this table, the smokey black chain dug into my ankle as I shifted my weight to one side. I had been left to my own devices for the last several hours, they felt like decades. I felt more human now than I ever had. Weak and insignificant.

Gallu had come to me today with a flourish. “Merry Christmas!” She said as she sauntered through the door followed by her two remaining goons.

“Do the damned celebrate Christmas?” I asked in a bored tone as I moved my first pawn.

“Not generally, but I figured that since you aren’t embracing my ideals, I might try to embrace some of yours, seeing as you’re clinging to them so tightly,” she said as she moved her own pawn forward.

“Christmas is a time of giving and being with the ones you love,” I said weekly, “I don’t think either will become miraculously available to me now.”

“I’m going to give you another opportunity to change your mind,” she said cheerily. “There is no reason why you shouldn’t. Jo believes you have been destroyed. What more do you have to keep you from embracing what you are.”

“I have my self respect.” My voice was barely a whisper. The chain at my ankle was pulling everything from me, and the more I fought against it, the worse it drained me.

“Fine,” she said, knocking over her pieces. We will just have to wait until next year and see if your sentiments change.”

I said nothing, but I knew they wouldn’t. I felt my eyelids begin to droop as I watched her go. It was all I could do to keep from closing them eternally. But even that, I knew, would grant me no peace.

Gallu and Sasha burst into flames and left the room, but Ryan remained, looking at me with an odd sort of camaraderie.

“I’m sorry I tried to kill you,” he said, an odd clucking noise rising from his throat as he sat across from me and set the pawns back in place. “Your Ellie made me see things a little clearer.”

The mention of Ellie’s name forced my eyes open. “Ellie?”

“She came back for you. Gallu wanted to kill her, but Lilith arrived at an inopportune time,” he said as he moved his first pawn.

I moved mine to block him. “How did she help you to see clearer?”

“She gave me a memory. Thoughts can be falsified, but there is a genuine taste to those that are true.” He swallowed at the memory. “I know that Gallu has lied to us both, and I want to help you. But you have to understand that it won’t look like I’m helping.”

“I don’t really have much of a choice, do I?” I asked, glancing down at my ankle as I blocked his bishop.

“I guess not,” he smiled at my apathy. “You shouldn’t be so negative you know.”

I leaned back, allowing my eyelids to open with gravity. “I’m having the energy drained out of me while being chained to a table and my only diversion is this bloody game, why should I be trying out for the spirit team?”

“Because she doesn’t believe you’re dead. I’ve felt how she feels in her memory of you… she’s not one to give up.”  Ryan pushed another pawn forward.

“Ellie has other things to think about.” I said with a sigh. “I think that Demetrius will manage to keep her mind on things other than her lost Asakku friend.”

“My brother is not someone she is concerned with. She has a tenacity that I think you are under estimating.”

“Your brother?” I wanted to laugh, but it came out sounding more like a cough. “I should have guessed that he was in some way related to the darker workings of this demonic world.”

“I believe my brother will be a bit preoccupied when he learns of my existence. I believe he thinks that I died long ago, or at least that I turned long ago.”

I just looked at the strange man in front of me, waiting for an explanation. I didn’t feel strong enough to ask him what he was talking about.

“Look at my eyes, Paul.” I looked. They weren’t red. “Like you, I have not yet given into the demonic undertow that threatens to submerge us in this hellish existence.”

“How long have you lasted?” I asked, feeling my brow furrow.

He looked at the table and calmly said, “It’s been three hundred and ninety nine years since Carlo changed me to an Asakku.”

I couldn’t wrap my head around that figure. It didn’t seem possible. “How can you fight the urge to kill? It’s so strong, and yet you’ve lasted for almost four hundred years?” it seemed utterly impossible, like it was a trick.

“I have,” he assured me, “and you will too. We are simply going to have to be very good actors.”

“How do you propose that we carry out this dastardly plan that you have yet to fill me in on?”

He picked up the black rook, twisting it about between his fingers. “We, my dear boy, will not allow ourselves to be pawns. We will be players and choose our own destinies.”

“Am I supposed to understand that psychobabble?”

“Perhaps not now,” he said with a smile, “but you will, in time.”

The piece burst into flames and disappeared.

“How am I supposed to play without that?” I asked. I really just wanted to pass out.

“It’s all a part of the game,” Ryan said with an absent smile.

Dear reader, thank you for picking up my novel. If you loved, liked, disliked or hated it, please leave a review to tell others why. I hope you enjoyed reading
Forfeit Souls
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright 2015 Amy Johnson

Cover Image by Amy Johnson| Copyright 2015 Amy Johnson