Dancing With Monsters (16 page)

At first, she smiled at me with
amusement, but then as my power grew, her pleased smile faded. She
let go of Malachi as her image began to fade like someone was
erasing her.

“
All I wanted was to be a
mother, April…I,” her image then shifted into my mother’s as I
remembered her the day I was taken away from her: outstretched
hands, long brown hair, and except this time, she didn’t look
relieved, she was filled with as much heartbreak as I had
felt.

“
Take her, she’s tricking
you!” Malachi stood beside me as my arm began to shake.

“
I love you, April,” said
the voice of my mother.

I wanted to give in. “Mother,” I
whispered as Malachi took my arm, wrapped his fingers around my
wrist tightly and shoved the stone that I held in my hand into
Eveie’s face.

My mother’s image shattered along with
the screams of Eveie’s voice, and was sucked into the stone. The
force pushed Malachi and I backwards to the floor as the last of
the black smoke was drawn into the stone like someone had sucked it
up through a straw.

I laid next to Malachi on the floor
with our arms extended over our heads and his hand wrapped around
mine holding the now black stone. I looked at it then over at
Malachi who smiled back at me.

“
Not bad for a
spell-struck pet,”

Seth

“
I’m not sure if she’s the
demon or not,” Malachi said as he sat on the couch. “She had a
familiarity to her, but it could have been one of her clan. They
all like to claim each other’s accomplishments.”

“
She knew your name,” I
said, sitting across from him.

“
All demons know my name,
Seth. Don’t you know that? I’m the one-stop-shop for all of their
needs and desires to rake havoc on someone’s life.” He threw his
hands up in the air.

I fiddled with the empty mug I had in
my hand and swirled the remains of the tea Ayil had served. The
subject of demons was a tender one with Malachi, and I quickly
changed it back to something more important at the time—our
mission. “Don’t you think Benjamin would have noticed that Eveie
was a demon?” I put the cup on the coffee table. “I think he would
have been a little more cautious especially having made a
serum.”

Malachi shrugged his shoulders and
rubbed his neck. The purple-black bruise of the demon’s handprint
stood out like a tattoo.

“
Maybe he was a genius
that chose the wrong acquaintances. You know, book smart, socially
stupid.” Malachi stood up and grabbed my empty mug. “Demons can be
very tricky, and if the one we captured is strong enough to run a
B&B and all the spells that go along with it, then, it will get
out of that stone of yours.”

Malachi was right. Demons were tricky
creatures that preyed on emotions and manipulated humans as well as
monsters for their every whim. And now they had a serum if used on
humans, would make them an army.

Ayil was confident that the stone
would hold the demon, but I wasn’t so sure. We needed to question
the demon, but we’d have to release it to that. And it would never
reveal anything to us anyhow. It knew about the serum and claimed
April as her daughter.

I wanted to question April, but Ayil
had already tried. The girl was still under the remnants of a spell
that was mixed with her emotions. She flipped back and forth
between her childhood memories and the present. And to top it off,
we had contained a demon—its clan would realize something’s wrong
when it didn’t come back.

Leaning my head back on the couch, I
closed my eyes letting my own thoughts drift to Ezra. She was dying
and even though I have archangel abilities, it wasn’t strong enough
to cure her and keep her cured.

I woke to the sound of footsteps.
Still in a sleepy haze, I stood up thinking the demon had escaped,
but was quickly put to rest when a light flicked on and Ezra smiled
back at me.

“
You shouldn’t be up,” I
said, walking over to her.

“
I’m fine to get up,
Seth.”

“
Did you need something….I
should have been in your room so you didn’t have to get up…or Nessa
was watching you I thought.” She waved her hand at me to
stop.

“
It’s alright. I’m
stronger than you think, and as far as Nessa, she’s been kind to
me—which I can guess correctly is because you care about me and she
cares about what you care about.” I nodded my head in
agreement.

“
Yeah, but she should have
told me she wasn’t sitting with you.”

“
I told her to go to bed.
The mission is more important now, and many lives and realms are at
stake. My life is no more than a drop of water in an ocean. But
there is something I can do to help.” She gazed at me with her
indigo eyes.

“
The Taking, and no,
you’re not going to do that.”

She smiled at me and wrapped her
fingers through mine. “April needs me. She needs my strength. The
demon will come out of that stone and manipulate her without
breaking a sweat doing so. April has uncharted strength in her that
I felt inside her when I entered her dreams.” Her enchanted eyes
mirrored back at me almost as if she was begging. “I’m dying and
there’s no way out of it, but my death doesn’t have to be a waste.
Let April take my energy, and instead of fading to blackness, I’ll
live on.”

I curled my fingers over hers wishing
I could cure her, be with her forever, but fate had a different
agenda in mind that I couldn’t change.

“
I’m not afraid of the
Taking,” Ezra said. “I’m afraid of the darkness that will follow my
death.”

7

April

“
Yolanda was to take Ben
and me to sanctuary,” I said looking at Ayil, but everyone had
their eyes on me. “She is probably looking for us right now, and I
know we can trust her.”

“
How do you know we can
trust her?” Seth asked with his golden eyes on me.

I let out a sigh and let my eyes slip
their gaze from him to the floor. I knew they thought I was weak
and just used as a pawn, plaything, or victim, but I wasn’t. I had
been a part of their world since I was little, only now I know what
the darkness was and how to fight it.

“
She doesn’t know, she
doesn’t understand what’s going on here, and we can’t possible go
by what she says.” Malachi waved his hand at me as he looked at
Seth, Ayil and Nessa.

“
I know more than you give
me credit for.” I lifted my eyes like two darts towards Malachi. He
smiled at me.

“
No, spell-struck, you
don’t. Have you ever been to Iethia, battled demons—before the
incident with Eveie—or even know the slightest thing about monsters
other than your hexmark emits an enormous amount of
light?”

My gaze was steadily fixed on Malachi.
“The darkness has followed me since I can remember. I have fought
it off several times all by myself, and managed to keep it at bay
for sixteen years. And,” I stepped closer to Malachi tilting my
head to the side, “I did without the knowledge of who I was and
what I have.”

“
Instincts darling,”
Malachi rebutted. “There is a little thing called
instincts.”

I tightened my lips, clenched my
fists, “Instincts…!”

“
I’m sure whatever you’ve
encountered in the past is nothing compared to what happened at the
Ivy Inn.” Malachi raised his voice over mine. “Not to
mention…”

“
Enough!” Ayil yelled with
a slam of her fist on the table that caught everyone’s attention.
“April sit down, and Malachi, keep your mouth shut unless you are
contributing important information. We have demons penetrating this
world and inflicted humans as their army invades the Shadowlands.”
She looked at each of us as I sat between Nessa and Seth. “Many
things rest on our shoulders until help arrives.”

“
Help, what kind of help?”
Seth asked with concern.

“
I’ve called for the
assistance of the angels,” Seth started to say something, but Ayil
cut him off. “They are trusted ones that I’ve worked with many
times, and we need them. Once the demons get the serum right, there
will be no stopping them. For right now the serum isn’t holding up.
The humans are dying quicker than the demons are turning
them.”

“
How do you know that is
what’s happening?” Seth asked.

“
That is what my angel
contacts are telling me. And April is right about her ring.” Her
dark eyes gazed at me. “Demons need the last ingredient to hold
their poison serum together, and April to go along with it. With
both they will truly be unstoppable.”

“
But some angels hate
monsters,” Nessa said.

“
I’ve known them for
years, and so has your Uncle Hes,” Ayil glanced over at Seth. “I’ve
informed them on everything that has happened and they will be
assisting us.”

I looked down at my ring that was to
be a tangible promise of a future with Ben. Even though I was now
aware of the spell I was oblivious to before that was in the
process of wearing off, I still felt something for Ben. He took me
in and protected me and showed me who I was.

“
What’s in the ring, and
why do they need me along with it?” I kept my hands under the table
safely on my lap and twirled the ring around my finger. I looked
into Ayil’s dark eyes as they casted over with something I had seen
before. My mother gave me the same look when she was getting ready
to tell me something that would comfort me so I’d be easier to deal
with.

“
If we are right, it
contains the magic of the angels, and you have a royal hexmark,
April. That kind of mark doesn’t appear very often and what my
contacts have told me is that you come from the lost line of ruling
monsters—kings, queens, princes, princesses, the list goes on and
hasn’t been seen for a long time.” Ayil looked at me with a mix of
hope and fear.

“
But a gypsy woman gave it
to me. I wasn’t born with it.” I ran my fingers over it as I kept
my eyes on Ayil.

She shook her head. “No one can give
you a hexmark. It was there, only hidden. The gypsy uncovered it
for you.”

“
Who could have covered it
up in the first place?” Nessa asked looking at my mark with an arch
of her eyebrow. Her neon green eyes flashed at me then at Ayil. “We
are born with these marks, and are there, on every monster, by the
hand of demons. They can’t be disguised by any kind of
magic.”

“
Yes, they can, but it had
to be someone of great power.” Ayil stood up and looked at me with
her dark eyes.

“
Eveie said that my father
died before he could reveal himself to me, maybe it was him that
hid it.” I let my eyes travel from Ayil to Nessa and then Seth and
Malachi.

“
Do you know how your
father died, or was there ever any other family around that you
knew?” Seth asked and I shook my head.

“
No, it was just my mom
until I was four, and I barely remember her.” I felt a bubble
inside of me begin to rise of all the feeling I repressed
throughout my childhood. I became good at controlling my emotions,
and decided a long time ago that I lived to survive and one day,
I’d be free. What that freedom was, I never knew.

“
You’re trembling, April.”
Nessa placed her freckled hand over mine. “Are you ok?”

I didn’t realize I was shaking. “Yes,
fine,” I replied.

I felt everyone’s concerned eyes on
me, but I didn’t look at them, I couldn’t.

“
Well, for now we need to
stay put and blend in with the rest of this sleeper town. We don’t
need to bring attention to ourselves until the angels
arrive.”

I lifted my eyes to Ayil. “When will
that be?” I asked.

“
Very soon,” she
replied.

“
I don’t care what Ayil
says, marks can’t be hidden like that and then uncovered one day,”
Nessa said as she sat on the sofa hugging a pillow. “But you said a
gypsy woman uncovered it, or, did she put it there?” She asked with
a raise of her eyebrows.

“
Ben said I was bit by a
demon and the mark,” I closed my eyes forcing myself to remember
the day I went to the carnival. “It…”

I let the walls I had built around my
vivid memories open like a chasm. I had to remember them, no matter
how much it hurt.

“
We went to a fair, but my
mom called it a market. I remember arguing with her about it
because it didn’t look like a market to me with the bright lights,
music, and booths set up, but at the same time, there was something
strange about it.” I still had my eyes closed and pushed myself to
stay focused.

“
What was strange about
it?” Nessa asked.

“
The smell…it smelled of
sweet perfumes mixed with musky scents and something burning .” A
sudden burst of smoke erupted in front of me and I let go of my
mother’s hand.

“
April, don’t let go of my
hand!”
Her voice echoed in my
head.

Focus.
I tried to stick with the memory that felt incredibly real
now.