Demon Leap: an Urban Fantasy (The Specials Book 1) Read online

  “Arrow!” Nurse Melody yelled.

  “Pull!” I shouted back.

  The harness seized tight against my shoulders and chest, pinching beneath my arms as she hauled back on the strap she held. She was strong and she pulled steadily. But her efforts did nothing to slow my engulfment by the stairs.

  As I sank in up to the hips, kicking exhaustedly at what felt like jellied ice, the mist below began to change. My heart hammered against my ribs. A body clothed in a white nightgown began to rise out of the mist, vertical but floating. White hair streamed about its head like a halo of light. The mist blew away like puffed dandelion seeds, revealing the figure’s peaceful, somnambulant face.

  “Grandma!” I cried out in a mixture of relief and dread. Anything, I knew, was still possible. “Grandma, it’s Arrow! It’s Arrow! You have to stop!”

  Her body continued to rise as I continued to sink, until we met in the middle, her closed eyes drawing abreast of my forehead. I hesitated and then I gave up my clinging grip on the stairs to reach for her. My fingers passed through her hair as though through clouds. Her cheek felt like an exhalation of air.

  “Grandma, help me,” I begged desperately. “Don’t do this!”

  Her lips parted and I thought she was going to smile or speak. But her mouth kept opening, wider and wider until the entire upper half of her head hinged back, splitting her skull. Where her throat should have been yawned a black tunnel that stretched into an endless distance. Naked, grasping limbs filled it, each flailing like pale earthworms. Faces howled soundlessly from within the murky walls.

  The stairs in which I was submerged suddenly tilted, angling me toward that tunnel to Hell. I tried to thrash my legs free but I’d have better luck breaking them. The stairs’ grip on me was absolute. I put my hands up as I was steered into the literal jaws of death. As my arms breached the tunnel of limbs and faces I screamed.

  Pfft!

  Strands of my hair kicked forward, stirred by the passage of something too quick to be an insect. The stairs jerked and then reversed their movement, taking me away from the Hellish tunnel. Beneath my feet the stair steps firmed, raising my lower body out of the melt. My hips cleared, then my knees. Finally, my shoes emerged from the goo. The entire set of stairs began to rise and soon I was carried up into my grandmother’s room. The steps beneath my feet melted and spread again, but only to become a floor that filled in the square hole. The last I saw of the misty form down in the hole was its pale blue eyes gazing up at me and its mouth curled into a sad smile. The floor sealed over it completely.

  The lights blinked on. I squinted against the star-bright intensity. All of the missing furniture in the room had returned, including the bed containing my grandmother. I rushed over to her, nearly tripping because of my shaking legs.

  A dart that was smaller than the tip of my little finger jutted from her bony shoulder. I plucked it out and tossed it to the floor but the sedative had already begun to take effect. My grandmother could barely keep her eyes open as she looked up at me.

  “Arrow…the world is changing,” she whispered. She brought a frail, knobby hand to her mouth and covered it as though to muffle a sob. “Where did all the goodness go?”

  I gently pressed my hand to her cheek. I was relieved at the corporeal feel of her. “The goodness is still here,” I promised her, trying to sound strong despite my jangled nerves. “It’s just tricky to see sometimes. But it’s here. You don’t need to fight anymore.”

  “I tried to eat the sinners,” she told me as her eyes filmed over. “That used to be my responsibility in the war. I was the only one who could.”

  “And you saved so many,” I told her around the lump in my throat.

  My grandmother had fought to keep us safe during the Drowning War, but others had feared her strength and took steps to neuter her. This was the result. I believed that she was still strong. I also believed that she was extremely damaged. Deep inside, she retained the will to fight. But because of all the drugs, she now fought only in her manic telepathic projections.

  “You don’t need to be responsible for anything anymore,” I told her. “You’ve done your duty.”

  She blinked and then she caught my hand in hers. Her skin was as soft as rose petals. “The past comes back, I think. And then I can’t tell the difference.” Her puffy cheeks turned pink. “I get lost in it sometimes, Arrow. So lost…”

  “I know. I understand. But you’re doing fine. Don’t worry.”

  A noise turned my head. Nurse Melody inclined her head slightly and I saw that she held a syringe tucked against her side. I nodded. As she shuffled to the other side of the bed, I stroked my grandmother’s cheek, drawing her attention away from the nurse.

  “I’m graduating soon,” I lied. “Soon, I’ll be able to turn spoons into swords. I’ll do the fighting for you.”

  She smiled weakly. She didn’t notice when Nurse Melody injected the sedative into the IV line running into the back of her right hand.

  “You should turn this world into an enormous, glittering palace,” my grandmother whispered. The sedative worked quickly. Her thin, blue-veined eyelids began to slide over her eyes. “Use your power to remake the world, Arrow. Don’t fight it like I did. Make it pretty. For me.”

  Her eyes fell shut and her fingers went lax around my hand. I pressed a kiss to her forehead.

  “I have a dose of suppressant.”

  The hushed admission from the nurse widened my eyes.

  Nurse Melody looked furtively to the open door. “It’s only a portion. I saved it from another resident who didn’t require the full dose. We keep track of all the vials so I can’t get a full one, but…it’s something. With your permission, I’ll administer it. It should help for a couple of days. She’ll need another dose, soon, though.”

  “Thank you,” I said softly. “You don’t know how much I appreciate this.”

  Nurse Melody injected the suppressant into the line and then pocketed the evidence. “She’s an important lady.” Her gaze was fond as she admired my sleeping grandmother. “One of my heroes from the war.”

  I stiffened, but she shook her head at me.

  “I’ve known for some time, Arrow. I didn’t tell anyone then and I won’t now. I know you have your reasons for keeping her here under a false name. I respect them.”

  I nodded slowly, warily. “It’s complicated, but it’s for her safety.”

  “You don’t need to explain to me.” She sighed and looked sadly at my grandmother. “I hate seeing her lose control like this.”

  I could only nod, ashamed. It was my fault that my grandmother lost touch with reality. If she received the suppressant regularly she would be fine.

  “Arrow.”

  Endicott had returned. He took a look around the room and then turned his attention to my sleeping grandmother. His regard was not unkind. “Let’s talk in my office.”

  Once there, he gave me a towel with which to dry off. I rubbed my hair with it and sank into the chair opposite him. My body felt like it was made of lead, though as I’d told him, the cuts I’d sustained when jumping through Morrison’s window had healed completely.

  “She’s an amazing woman,” Endicott remarked as he regarded me from over steepled fingers. “My brother and I used to keep a tally of all the demons that the freedom fighters killed. Gruesome, yes, but psychologically uplifting during a dark time. We both imagined that we were fighting alongside them, doing our parts, though of course in reality we had no way to contribute.”

  “Did you imagine being locked in a hospital and drugged until you no longer understood the word ‘fight?’” I asked bitterly.

  He didn’t flinch from my ferocity. If anything, he deflated. “No. What followed the war was…controversial.”

  “The government still denies it!”

  “Yes.” He sighed. “It was a travesty. And now here we are.” He reached up and loosened the knot in his tie. “Unfortunately, in her current condition, Elise’s magic has beco
me dangerous all over again.”

  “I’ll get you the money for the suppressant, Director. I will.”

  “I believe you’ll try.” He studied me a moment. “I understand your parents’ death merited an honor inheritance…”

  “It’s run out,” I admitted, not able to smother a spike of fear at that knowledge. “It was only meant to pay my expenses through school. But I’m going to graduate soon and I’ll be able to get a good job.” The lie came too easily and I questioned why I kept repeating it. Did I think I could make it come true by pure force of will?

  He nodded and turned his head to look at a painting on the wall. It was of a waterfall in a faraway place where the ground was black and jagged and the sky steel gray. It was a stark, lonely image for him. I would have expected a scene with grazing sheep, maybe. I reminded myself that we were all deeper than we appeared, some holding reservoirs of peace and satisfaction, some stuck on a battlefield where the fighting was never-ending.

  “We’ll take care of Elise.” He faced me again, his expression stoic. “That’s what we do here. But I have a boss to answer to, and he doesn’t extend credit. Not even to heroes.”

  “He won’t have to.”

  “Understand this, Arrow: if you don’t find the money I’ll have no choice but to remove her. Or…admit her to the Crossing Program.”

  I clutched my hands in my lap. “I’ll get you the money.”

  Endicott looked as tired as I felt. The two of us were swimming upstream, dragging my grandmother behind us while trying to keep her afloat.

  “You’ve had a difficult life, Arrow.” His voice was full of understanding. It made me angry, and then it made me ashamed for resenting his kindness. “I promise you it won’t always be like this.”

  I nodded at the platitude but it did nothing for me. I’d just made my already difficult life a thousand times more so by pulling a meddled gun on my counselor.

  “I recently sent my brother to the Crossing,” Endicott said quietly. His gaze sought the waterfall again. “It wasn’t so bad. He didn’t feel a thing.”

  “What did you feel?” I asked him.

  He stared at the painting and said nothing.

  Chapter 2

  The Drowning War happened in the year that I was six years old. A deranged scientist named Dr. Febrero found a way to melt the polar ice caps within twenty-four hours, creating a deluge that submerged our city and drowned tens of thousands. In melting the ice, he also freed the demons that had been embedded within it and used those demons in his assault. As wars went, it was a short one, lasting less than a month. But in that time the landscape was changed both literally and politically.

  Many people died in those few weeks. The dirty secret was that nearly as many were destroyed in the weeks, months, and years that followed the ending of the war. The official line was that we as a city had survived and triumphed. I told myself every day that my family was the proof that we had not. My grandmother was out of her mind. My parents were both dead. And me? So far I was proving to be a failure.

  I blamed it all on the Closure Committee. A member of the Closure Committee had informed me that my parents had drowned on the eve of the final battle. The Closure Committee as a group had taken my grandmother off the battlefield and returned her to me a broken woman with a congratulatory medal hung around her neck. The Closure Committee perpetuated the fiction that life would be better if we forgot about the war and the sacrifices that were made and instead fixed our eyes on the upcoming future.

  The Closure Committee, now the ruling oligarchy, was not my friend. Even so, I hadn’t fully rebelled against it except to lie to them about my grandmother’s condition and whereabouts. Up until now, I’d mostly followed the rules and kept my head down, constrained by the responsibility of keeping my grandmother safe. It was now clear to me that following the rules had done me no favors. It had led me to this: broke and with no chance at a well-paying magic job. It was my worst case scenario. Borderline catastrophic.

  Being responsible didn’t mean I hadn’t bent the rules, however. Using the honor inheritance I was granted as a child of combatants killed in action, I’d bribed the caretaker at the government home where my grandmother had initially been assigned. For a ridiculous amount of money, he agreed to not only keep quiet about the fact that she was no longer there, but to send the government regular, falsified updates about her condition. As long as he didn’t push for more money, the fact that she’d become more lucid in the last year or so would remain a secret. It was, so far, the only thing I’d been proud to be able to do for her—and yet even that was in jeopardy now that I couldn’t get a job.

  The last of my inheritance had also paid my rent for the next two months. However, that carried a downside. Going home was risky. Too much time had passed since the incident at Morrison’s office, enough for the police to have learned what I’d done and issued a call for my arrest. If they caught me—which they would likely do at my home—my life and the life of my grandmother would be over.

  So instead of going there I drove to my favorite bar in the city. Ozium was golden inside, lit by trendy Edison bulbs surrounded by wire. Its booths were upholstered in faux maple leather and every mixed drink came served in an amber glass medicine bottle. All of it was excruciatingly hip and therefore the opposite of me, yet I loved it and felt comfortable here. It was like nestling inside a stoppered apothecary jar that had been put up on a shelf and forgotten.

  “I shouldn’t get drunk,” I said, right before I raised my third inhaler shot to my nose and took a deep, long whiff to make sure I breathed in all the gas. “But I think I’m going to.”

  My favorite bartender at Ozium was Jasper Tracey. He was a handful of years older than me and handsome in a surfer boy kind of way. The sight of him made me want to sigh like a lovesick girl, but it was his personality that had truly ensnared me. He was one of the few people in the world who could make me laugh and forget about my family troubles. He made me feel carefree and feminine and like I had my whole life ahead of me.

  But since my life so far had been filled with doom and gloom, so, too, was my relationship with Jasper. He had recently proposed to his girlfriend. I hadn’t met her yet but I’d heard that she was gorgeous, therefore no one I could compete with. In this, the only life that mattered, Jasper would never be mine. I did my best not to think about how much happier I’d be if that were different.

  Outside of him my love life was non-existent. I was envious of anyone who’d found their soulmate. Everything I was enduring now—the lack of money, the stress over my grandmother’s condition, my failure to graduate—might have felt bearable had there been someone to share the burden with me. But I was a loner, partly by choice, partly because I couldn’t help myself. I wasn’t the most sociable and trusting of people beyond a scant handful of close friends.

  “You have the look of a woman on a mission. What are you escaping from?” he asked me as he cracked the cap on another beer and placed it in front of me on the bar. He collected the three empty inhaler shot canisters. “Ted makes these strong, you know. You have to watch out or you’ll freeze your brain or something.”

  “You’re part of the patriarchy, aren’t you?” I mumbled. “Trying to keep a strong woman down by demanding an explanation for her actions. Do you ask men why they drink?” I cocked a finger at him. “I thought not.”

  He laughed. “Come on, I’m serious. What’s up? Everything okay?”

  I shrugged and rested my forearms on the bar. “I’m broke. I can afford this beer, but don’t expect a tip.”

  “That’s always on the house and you know it.” He took a sip of his seltzer water and surveyed the rest of the bar. “You’re nearly finished at Filkmore, right?”

  “Classes are finished.” My smile could have sliced paper. “All that’s left is to collect my IMT certificate.”

  He eyed me with suspicion. “Why do you have that funny look on your face? What’s going on?”

  “Nothing, Jasper.�
��

  “Don’t ‘nothing’ me.” He set down his water and drew closer. “Come on, Arrow. Tell me.”

  I sighed with resignation, and perhaps a touch of relief. I was attracted to him and he was my closest friend. Certainly he wasn’t someone I could deny for long if he pushed even a little bit.

  “You told me that your parents went through the Crossing a few years ago,” I said delicately, aware that Jasper hadn’t wanted to put them through the program but had only done so at their insistence; both of his parents had been afflicted with different stages of cancer. “Do you ever worry that they can see you from wherever they are?”

  “Like they’re watching over me? Sort of.” He shrugged. “I’m not religious, so logically I know there’s nothing left of them to see me. But…I’m only human. I like to think they’re still with me in some way.”

  “Do you ever worry that they’d be disappointed?”

  His face softened and I knew it was because he’d figured out that I was really talking about myself and my parents.

  “I’m not a father,” he said, “but I think pretty much all parents are proud of their children, even when they make mistakes. It’s that whole unconditional love thing.”

  “Even if your kid reflects badly on you?” I felt my throat closing up but I forced the words through. “Even if your kid fails to do the most important thing she needs to?” Like take care of and protect a sick, elderly woman who once saved the world?

  Jasper was frowning now, and while at another time his concern would have felt as nice as a warm blanket wrapped around my shoulders, at the moment it was an offering I didn’t deserve.

  “Arrow, you don’t reflect badly on your parents. That’s insane to even suggest. You’re brilliant and wonderful. Just the way they’d want you to be.”

  But they’re heroes, I wished I could say. They and my grandmother sacrificed everything for us, and yet I can’t return the favor in even the smallest way.

  “Yeah, you’re right,” I said and stretched my lips into a smile. “I am wonderful, aren’t I?”