The Devil's Due (The Earthwalker Trilogy Book 2) Page 17

  Beelzebub laughed inside my head. “Well, of course, I’m here to test you! You know how this works by now.”

  Laugh while you can, I thought, turning around to face him. “I’m Wynnona Hendricks, and I accept your challenge.”

  The creature grinned, clicking the pincer on his hands as he walked around me in a circle. “Good girl. Now let’s see what I have in store for you — the girl who loves to be special.”

  “What? I’m not an egotist,” I argued stubbornly. “And I hate being the center of attention.”

  “Yes, but you also love knowing you’re important. When Lucifer activated your demon powers, you were secretly proud of the fact that you were different. You see, we’re attracted to our sin — Aidan sought you out specifically which means you have quite the ego. That’s why Charlene bothers you, her existence here means you’re not special — there’s another demon in town. You’re used to being the center of attention,” his words whispered to me cruelly. “She’s stronger than you, prettier than you, and knows more about the Demonic Realm than you ever will. Now she’s stolen Ryan, what are you going to do?”

  “She didn’t ‘steal’ him,” I insisted. “They’re in a relationship. I want him to be happy.”

  “But wasn’t he your confidant long before Charlene entered into the equation? Now he doesn’t have time for you and your petty problems anymore.”

  “Stop it!” I hissed out angrily. “I don’t care about that!” but I knew it wasn’t true. Something inside me snapped and all the terrible, spiteful things I’d been thinking bubbled to the surface, like Beelzebub was drawing them out of me. Things I had never even told Caleb because I didn’t want him to see how angry I really was. I couldn’t help myself, before I knew it words were spilling out of my mouth. Feelings I had tried to squash for weeks erupted.

  “She’s a demon, she shouldn’t be allowed to have everything handed to her. She shouldn’t get this perfect little relationship when mine is fraught with trial after trial. Demons don’t get to have lasting relationships like that! That’s why they’re demons! I had to struggle to get this far, it’s a constant uphill battle! Why does my version of being a demon suck, when hers is all sunshine and roses?”

  Beelzebub smiled, the pinchers in his mouth dribbling a dark brown ooze. “I only bring out the truth. Envy is merely desiring what had been denied you all along. Who’s to say you’re not entitled to taking what should have been yours? Yearning for more than what we have is natural and what inspires us to greatness, reaching and taking what before had never been achievable. There is no limit to what you can achieve and what should be entitled to you. You’re the Earthwalker! You’re better than them, you deserve more than petty humans. Lucifer spoke truthfully in the Grove, this land is your birthright, and you should take what you see fit from it.”

  I snarled at him. “You mock me for not taking him for myself, but who are you to judge me for being happy and satisfied with what I have?”

  The clicking of his pinchers quickened, and the leathery mask covering half of his face pinched from where it had been sewn into his exoskeleton, which made me think he was smiling. “Are you telling me I’m mistaken? You never wanted the mortal boy?”

  “NO! I…”

  Charlene and Ryan suddenly appeared on the grassy path beside us and I felt my stomach drop. His expression was neutral, but hers was nearly staggered. “Wynn, what’s going on?”

  When she saw Beelzebub lurking in the corn rows, his large green and brown husk of a body not even attempting to blend in with his surroundings, her face went completely pale.

  “Ryan, let’s get out of here,” she insisted, taking him firmly by the hand and dragging him away from me.

  “Charley, wait!” I shouted.

  She whirled around and snapped at me. “You leave us out of this! I don’t care what you having going on over here, but Ryan and I will not be part of it. We’re leaving!”

  “What? I didn’t bring you here!”

  “You keep telling him to stay away from me, that I’m ‘dangerous’ and a ‘bad influence’, but I have never ever, brought him face to face with a Demon Lord,” she barked. “You’re going to stay away from us from now on. You’re the odd one out, Wynn. He doesn’t want you anymore, he’s got me now, and I don’t care if we never see you again.”

  Having my fears spoken aloud caused an uncomfortable ball of emotion to clone within my throat. “Charley! You don’t mean that,” I begged.

  She took him by the wrist and started dragging him away again. His face was completely blank and unresponsive, he just followed her blindly, and I knew something was wrong. I reached out for him reflexively and tried to stop them from leaving.

  “No! Ryan, don’t listen to her. I’m your friend, we’ve always been there for each other. I would never hurt you, don’t leave me like this.”

  Charley angrily pulled on his arm again, which only made my possessive need for him flare up stronger. I pulled back on him, and Ryan stumbled on the grassy path, not knowing which way to go. Charlene and I both locked eyes and narrowed them with determination. She wasn’t going to let him go, and neither was I.

  Before I knew it, we were in a childish game of tug of war tugging on either side of him, and Ryan being pulled back and forth between us.

  “Augh!” he cried out in pain.

  The harder Charley and I pulled on him, it was like ripping him in half. I hadn’t seen what we were doing to him until now, but one of his arms had been dislocated and was being pulled out of its socket. He was bruised and in pain.

  “He was MINE first!” I insisted.

  “Not anymore.”

  We pulled back and forth, jerking him this way and that until he screamed out in pain. Charley snarled at me and yanked hard at his side when I released him and fell to my knees in front of them. I was panting on the dusty pathway, gritting my teeth with rage as they disappeared. I’d rather have him be with her than see him be ripped in two like that.

  His arm is not supposed to bend that way, I thought. His eyes went glossy and rolled back inside his skull which frightened me for a moment until I realized, it was a scarecrow. The hay mannequin was wearing a plaid shirt than had been ripped to shreds at the sleeves, I was holding part of the fabric in my hand.

  It wasn’t Ryan.

  That meant I hadn’t hurt him, I hadn’t lost control again and hurt him. He was safe. Charley would keep him safe, even if that meant keeping him from me. I was okay with that. For the first time, I was — I could let him go.

  I surveyed the cornfield wide-eyed for a moment in search of Beelzebub, but he was gone. Before I could breathe out a sigh of relief, I felt a tingling sensation from my enchanted necklace.

  I squeezed the chain between my fingers and closed my eyes before allowing myself to see it. Tears were streaming down my cheeks, from anger, confusion, and just an overflow from emotion at almost losing my childhood friend. When my breath was calm, I released my grip on the chain and looked down to see the result.

  Four sparkling gems with the opalescent center, one black, and the other two were clear.

  “I passed,” I breathed to myself in shock. “I … I passed?”

  That didn’t seem right to me anymore. It made me sick to think I had held too tightly to my claim on Ryan that I had hurt him in my dream. Not fatally, but hurt him nonetheless, and that was not okay. Not killing someone was such a ridiculously low bar, I had to expect more of myself. It was the bare minimum of not being an absolutely terrible person, and that couldn’t be good enough for me. I didn’t want to pass these trials for the Elders anymore, I wanted to pass them for myself. The wind whipped by me stinging my wet cheeks with the cold gust of air. I sat on the ground and hugged my knees, trying to hold myself together.

  I had to know I was in control.

  Just then all four of them came walking around the corner. They were all smiling and excited to see me as if they’d been searching for quite some time. “Wynn! There you are, we th
ought we’d lost you,” Charley teased.

  Maybe it hadn’t been Charlene either, just another trick by a Demon Lord.

  I hated them.

  “Yeah, Caleb and I were going to get some cider at the food stands,” Lacey cheered. “Then Ryan’s getting his face painted.”

  “Says who?” he challenged playfully.

  Caleb stopped them when he saw me clutching the necklace and his smile faded. “Hang on, guys. You had another one of your trials, didn’t you? Who was it this time?”

  “Beelzebub,” I whispered.

  “Envy?” Caleb mused as he knelt beside me and helped me to my feet. I nodded feebly, brushing my hands off on my jeans while I stood up and turned away from him embarrassed. “Interesting. And?”

  “I passed.”

  “That great!” he told me happily, with a reassuring smile and I nodded, forcing a brief uncertain smile of my own, but my lack of enthusiasm kept the moment from being something it should have. “I don’t understand. That’s not great?”

  I stumbled back on my feet and wiped the hair mingled with my tears from my face. Ryan gave my shoulder a gentle squeeze as he walked past and said, “I’m proud of you, kid.”

  I barked a laugh and wiped the fresh tears away with the sleeve of my shirt. Given the circumstances, his forgiving and gentle nature only managed to make me feel worse about myself, and how close I’d come to hurting him again. If only you knew.

  Charley smiled up at me as he and Lacey left. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah,” I told her stiffly. “I’ll catch up with you guys later and tell you all about it then.”

  No I won’t.

  She nodded. “Okay. Wait, what’s that?” she asked, pointing to my hand.

  “What?”

  I glanced down and realized there was a pearly white envelope in my hand. Written in silver calligraphy was Elyse’s handwriting addressing it to me: Wynnona Hendricks. “It’s from my Guardian,” I told them.

  “Elyse?” Caleb asked me curiously.

  I nodded, pulling out the hand-written note and reading it to them aloud.

  Come home right away. We need to talk.

  Xoxo,

  Elyse

  “That’s Elyse alright,” Caleb commented from over my shoulder. “Leave it to her to send a handwritten note across the Mortal Realm inviting you to tea.”

  “That’s certainly what it sounds like. Even in the afterlife, she’s still so formal!” I chuckled to myself quietly.

  As Charley scampered off in the maze of corn, I turned to him and sighed. “It is nice. We should probably get going, Elyse will be expecting us.”

  ~ * ~

  I unlocked the door to my dorm room as Caleb waited patiently in the hall behind me. As the door swung open to the common area, Elyse stood waiting for both of us in her new angelic capacity.

  “Hello Caleb, so nice of you to join us.”

  Caleb gave a one-handed wave and came into the apartment. “Nice to see you too, Elyse.”

  She gestured to the table, where a pitcher of tea and some sandwiches had been arranged in a decorative manner. “Good grief, Elyse. What is this all about?”

  “Seroquel wanted me to check on you. She also wanted to know if you’d had any more visions since we talked.”

  I sighed and took a seat at the table. “No, and I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.”

  Caleb’s lips thinned into a line, but he said nothing as he took a seat beside me. Elyse just nodded and clasped her hands delicately in front of her. “Any word from Maya? The Elders haven’t seen or heard from her since she left. It’s making the Council nervous.”

  My lips pursed together as I took a bite of a sandwich she’d magicked into existence. “There have been a few times when I felt like she was present,” I told her honestly. “When we left the theater the other day, someone put out the light and tried to grab me. I had to fight them off to keep from being dragged away, and I’ve got the nail marks in my arm to prove it. When the lights came on there was a black feather on the ground. I can’t be sure, but something tells me that was her. I also regularly feel like there is someone watching me. Do you think I should be worried?”

  Caleb and Elyse glanced at each other knowingly. “Maybe, we can’t know for sure. You should keep your eyes open though. I don’t have a whole lot of time … strictly speaking, I haven’t been assigned to you. I’m not even a Guardian.”

  “So? Caleb came to visit me all the time before.”

  Elyse smiled weakly and she and Caleb both shared an awkward glance. “It’s because of me,” he muttered.

  My sister nodded. “Unfortunately, yes. They’re keeping a closer eye on you than before, and refusing to assign a new Guardian to his post. Some of the Elders think that because of what happened it’s too much of a risk.”

  “What? How so?”

  “You sent your last Guardian away,” she responded curtly. “Michael didn’t take kindly to that. In fact, he took it as a slight. You’re lucky that I was able to make it down here at all.”

  “Okay. Okay, what’s going on?”

  “I wanted to talk about your trial,” she started slowly. “And that demon you mentioned, Charley.”

  “Yeah, that was weird.”

  Caleb set down the glass in his hand and frowned. “I thought you said your trial was from Beelzebub.”

  “It was, he used Ryan and Charley as a ploy.”

  “Yes, I’m a little concerned about how that played out,” Elyse told me irritably. “You’re letting your emotions get the best of you again and letting blind hatred rule your judgment. It isn’t right.”

  Before I could speak, Caleb interjected, “Wait, you encountered envy in its truest form and the person you saw was Ryan?” His face was hurt and confused, but I didn’t understand why. Ryan was my best friend, and I was losing him to Charley. Didn’t he understand that?

  My brow furrowed as I formulated the best response I could muster given my state of confusion, “Why, is that a problem?”

  Elyse rolled her eyes and sighed with a delicate facepalm in the corner.

  “I didn’t think it was,” he muttered brusquely, all humor gone from his tone. “Are there unresolved feelings between you two? Should I be worried?”

  “No! That has nothing to do with this!”

  “Oh, really?”

  “Yes! It has to do with being replaced as his best friend, not about actually wanting to be with him. I’m with you.”

  “I find that hard to believe,” he responded coolly.

  I rubbed my forehead and took a breath, calming myself before responding, “I know this is hard for you to understand, but you’re a fighter — I know you can protect yourself, Ryan can’t. So I worry about him.”

  “Oh, well if that’s all...”

  “Don’t you trust me? You know how I feel about you!”

  Caleb closed his eyes and sighed, breathing heavily through his nose. “Do I? I think I've been straight forward about the way I feel for you and my intentions, but you have yet to let me know we are even on the same wavelength. You’ve never said I love you.”

  “What? Yes, I do.”

  “No, you don’t,” he insisted.

  “Why does that matter?”

  “Because it does! I shouldn’t have to be explaining this to you,” he threw back angrily. “I’ve been around for a couple millennia, people come and go all the time. I’ve never attached myself to anyone before and admitting you have that kind of dominion over me makes me vulnerable. Saying ‘I love you’ isn’t something I do lightly, but it is what it is — the truth. I don’t understand why you can’t reciprocate it. I’ve got to go. Elyse, thank you for checking in. Wynn, I’ll … see you when I can.”

  “Caleb …”

  He shook his head and turned towards the door without a word. Elyse and I watched him go as I felt the familiar tightness and pang of loss start wrapping around my chest.

  Elyse sipped her tea quietly at th
e table with her eyebrows raised in thought. “I should probably go as well, I just wanted to check on you,” she told me. “I’m sorry about what happened with Caleb. Give him time, I’m sure he’ll come around.”

  I nodded robotically as she stood and walked over to give me a hug.

  “Goodbye, sis.”

  As she kissed me on the forehead I could almost smell her perfume. I closed my eyes and felt her shimmer from the kitchen.

  When I opened them again, she was gone.

  That night I dreamt about the hooded figure once again.

  He beckoned to me across the wreckage of my parent’s house and I drifted towards him slowly, feeling nothing except the blissful numbness of music playing in my head. My limbs felt weightless and I couldn’t remember if they were friend or foe.

  Was I supposed to be struggling?

  Each step over the ruined planks of the hardwood floor brought me closer to feeling the cold breath of his embrace.

  ~ * ~

  I drummed my fingers against the table at Death Before Decaf, looking out the window as Charley and I waited for our drinks. It was the first chill of fall, so I decided to go for brunch. It was a frosty Saturday morning, and Ryan had been bugging me to make nice with his girlfriend. I didn’t know a better way to bond except over my rampant caffeine addiction. I was hoping that having Ryan close by would help take the pressure off.

  Both of us had put our hair back inside a beanie, hers had a decorative poof on top that matched her fur lined boots.

  She was something else all right.

  “So, do you come here often?” she asked me hopefully. “It’s right by your apartment.”

  “Yeah, it’s on our way to class, so Lacey and I stop in here sometimes.

  “Hmmm…” she acknowledged with a smile.

  I fished in my purse to pull out my phone to see if I’d missed any calls. The smooth black device was being stubborn, and I hadn’t received any calls for text messages from Caleb. We hadn’t spoken since the fight, and I kept hoping he would call me. I’d messaged him at least three times over the last week with no response — he was avoiding me.

  Caleb, why won’t you answer your phone? I pouted. Won’t you at least let me apologize?