Page 27 of My Demon Teacher

He kneels and retrieves a piece of paper from his pants.

The little… I should have known he’d have a backup plan. He’s not stupid. He may be a rich, bratty asshole, but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t thought this through. He wants power. My Yu-jin’s power, and he wants it so desperately that he will do anything to get it.

“I don’t lose focus. Unless some idiot decides to hit me for no reason!” Vincent bites back.

“Shut up, Vin. Even if you don’t, you’ll wear out soon enough. Bring me Taylor.”

Vincent goes to the bed where my darling boy lies and drags him by the feet. His head thuds as he drags him across the floor.

“No. No. You idiot. Don’t smudge the circle. Just his hand inside is enough.”

They lay his hand in the middle of the chalk circle, and Byron gets up, approaches the dresser, and pulls out a knife.

Fuck.

They’re going to repeat the spell from earlier. They’re going to summon another eldritch monster and give themselves more power than either of them should possess.

I need to get free. I need to do something. I need to find some way to unfreeze myself.

I want to shout. I want to set them on fire. But I can’t do either without control of my body. How is this possible? How do I always find myself in this position when I’m supposed to be a fucking hell-demon?

I’m smarter than this.

But Yu-jin…he makes me lose my mind. I can’t think straight when he’s in danger. I can’t sit and wait when there are people in this world who want to use him and his powers.

I’ll take having him in my life over having my mind a hundred times over.

Which doesn’t help me in my current situation. Not in the slightest. They’re about to summon an eldritch creature and use it to kill me and Brim. But they won’t kill Yu-jin. No. He’s too powerful to kill. They’ll keep him alive so they can control more creatures. Control a whole army of them. And who knows what they’ll do with their army.

But they don’t know. They don’t know that if they kill me…Yu-jin is dead too.

“Ready?” Ryan asks Vincent, and he nods.

Ryan kneels again and runs the blade across Yu-jin’s arm.

This is it.

I’ve failed him.

I failed my boy, and now he’s doomed to suffer.

Because of me.

CHAPTER NINE

“DARLING BOY, WAKE UP.”

The two men start chanting. And all I can do is watch.

I can’t even cry for the future lost. For our love that’s about to become undone.

“What’s happening?” someone whispers beside me, but I can’t move my eyes to see who they are. I can’t do anything. I’m hopeless.

I see a pair of dark-skinned hands in my peripheral vision. They’re blurry, but I can tell the fingers are stretching and twisting.

“I can’t hold him for long. You need to knock him out ASAP,” the voice says, and I watch ahead as Vincent, the time witch, drops to his knees and folds in half, screaming. A turquoise ether rises from him. It unfolds, glimmering, taking shape. The shape of Vincent in spirit form.

The pressure around me drops, and Brim jumps on top of Ryan Byron before he can do anything. Spirit Vincent looks at her, at me, at the man beside me in utter confusion.

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