Chapter 12: The Words

I hadn't agreed.

"How will I know you'll keep your promise?" I demanded.

Raze cocked his head to the side, as if he were trying to puzzle out a problem he wasn't sure of. The gesture shouldn't be possible – her neck should not have that sort of range or grace. "It's faith, little witch," he replied. "You don't."

"Faith in demons?"

"You must place it in self-interest. I gain nothing by deceiving you. Your physical form and magic serve my purposes just fine. I can't get your body if I open this portal, can I? I can't get your soul, either. So if I open the portal right now, we both die, and I have to hunt for a new witch."

He tugged her away from the window and began to turn his back to it. "And patience isn't one of my virtues, now is it?"

Something inside me tightened, constricting painfully as it pulled me inward. "So… Zoe… she… she gets to go?"

Raze shrugged, causing the movement with Zoe's shoulders. "Her soul's intact. Bruised perhaps, but intact, so she will need therapy. Lots of it."

I glanced toward the door and noticed the splinters of wood gathered about its frame, as if it had been repeatedly struck. Another thump sounded from outside, followed by a grunt, and then Jenna spoke but the ringing noise in my head consumed the words.

"My patience has run out," Raze said. "Your friends are losing outside."

Raze lifted Zoe's hand, revealing the rising tendrils of darkness curling upward from her skin like smoke. The smoke was slow, thick, and noxious, smelling far worse than burnt rubber and coiling and twisting into shapes that made me squirm uncomfortably. It seemed almost animate in nature.

But suddenly a loud sound rang from beyond the door. It split open, revealing Jenna's fingers clutching the wooden frame tightly as blood spurted from under the nails. The wood of the door cracked again, and a moment later it crashed open. Jenna stumbled through, covered in cuts and scrapes, a large gash above her eye dripping steadily as her silver eyes locked onto Raze's.

"Leave her alone," she said harshly.

Raze didn't move an inch. "Warden. You're stronger than I imagined.”

Jenna took three strides across the room and grabbed hold of Zoe's wrist. Raze tried to jerk away, but Jenna wouldn't let him go. Black smoke seared the front of her shirt, but Jenna didn't move.

"Let her go," Jenna told him.

"She doesn't belong to you."

Dorian appeared behind Jenna. The collar of his shirt was ripped open and something dark and sticky stained his throat. No red. Something slower. His skin had turned gray.

"Arya," Dorian said. "Go."

I couldn't. I stood there watching Jenna fight with Raze as Zoe got yanked this way and that, like a doll with its strings cut.

"I need those enforcers here now!" Mira's voice called from the hall.

Two vampires burst through behind Jenna before Dorian could do anything. They both grabbed hold of Jenna and Zoe. One grabbed onto Jenna's waist and held her from behind while the other pulled Zoe's arm and jerked her right out of Jenna's grasp.

Raze staggered back two steps before recovering and smiling.

Mira came through the door, holding the grimoire beneath her arm. Her yellow eyes scoured the room and came to rest on me.

"We have a new plan," she told me. "The demon and the witch. That's what we're taking."

Dorian tried to step into the door frame in front of her, but he wasn't fast enough. The vampire pushed him out of the way and he went down hard, hitting the door frame and sliding all the way to the floor.

"Stop," I managed.

"You don't have any more say in this matter, Arya. The council wanted to barter for a live witch. They don't want her to get killed like your last one. And Raze wants you." She gestured towards the vampire who held Jenna. "You too."

The vampire drug Jenna forward, struggling. Her shoes left black smears across the tile floor, but she couldn't fight it off. Her eyes flashed back and forth between silver and brown.

"No," Jenna said. "You don't understand."

He hit her in the head and she went limp, hanging limply in his arms like she had no bone structure.

Raze walked close to the door and stood by Mira and glanced at me.

"See you at the blood moon," he said.

Zoe's eyes shifted. The black faded out, making way for a new color—brown. And the skin around her eyes looked different too; like it had just relaxed.

"Arya." That was the voice I recognized. That was her voice. Soft. Panicked. "Don't let them take me."

Her eyes turned black again. Raze made her smile. Then Mira took her by the arm and dragged her into the hallway, followed by the vampires, whose steps thudded all the way down the stairs. I heard a door close somewhere.

Then silence.

I stood in the middle of the room, pressing my hands hard against my thighs in an attempt to control the tremors that were running through my body.

Dorian lifted himself from the ground and touched the side of his head. Black fluid smeared on his fingers when he removed his hand from his hair.

"We lost," he said.

"No." I crossed the distance to the door and peered into the hallway where the vampires once stood. There was blood on the wall, and a chair lying broken in pieces. "We find them. Tonight."

"They already have a head start."

"I don't care."

A groan escaped Jenna's lips. She touched her head. "That vampire's fingers were like damn iron rods."

I sat next to her. "Can you stand?"

She withdrew her hand and squinted at me, her eyes turning back to normal—they were brown now. No silver. "Think so. Give me a moment."

"We don't have time."

Dorian knelt beside Jenna and observed her face intently. "Your eyes."

"I know." Jenna blinked slowly and looked up at Dorian. "The hit made something inside me loosen its grip. It'll return."

"Are you sure?"

"No." She chuckled. The wet sound of it traveled to the back of her throat. "But what do we do otherwise? Wait for them to open a portal on our territory?"

Dorian helped her up. She staggered, caught herself on the windowsill, and stood upright again.

I looked into the hallway once more. My room. My roommate. Missing.

"She asked me not to let them take her," I said.

And Dorian didn't respond.

Jenna touched to clean her bloody eyebrow with her sleeve. "Where could they be now?” "The basement," I told her. "Vance said the portal would appear there. That is where they'll put her."

Jenna nodded grimly. "Then that is where we'll go."

I moved toward the door; the strange numbness in my legs had not disappeared, but it didn't matter now, as long as I kept going.

"Dorian reached for my arm; his fingers were cold.

"Arya…"

I stopped, but did not turn around.

"I should've stopped them…"

Turning around, I saw the pale, drawn face and reopened wound with black blood soaking through the shirt to the skin beneath.

"You couldn't have," I said quietly.

"I should've moved faster."

"It wouldn't have made any difference."

Letting go of me, he went quiet for a moment. "I keep trying to protect you, but fail."

I looked into his face; the rigid line of his jaw betrayed the tension, the inability to look directly into my eyes.

"Then stop trying to protect me and join the fight with me."

Without waiting for any answer, Jenna brushed past us. "Whatever. Now is not the time. Both of you need to get me some weapons – salt, iron, whatever disrupts a demon."

She left, then Dorian left me standing in the room. For one moment, the air felt smoky and bloody, with a hairline fracture starting in the corner of the broken window and

going straight to its center. There was still an indentation from Zoe's head in her pillow.

Leaving the door wide open, I went after them.