Page 51 of Demanding Discord
A strange vocal clicking sound emanated behind us a moment before claws scraped across the ground. We whirled toward the attacker—a solid black, featureless tulpa with blood red eyes—and drew our weapons, but the friggin’ beastie moved faster than an imp at an all-you-can-eat hair buffet.
It slammed into me. My machete pierced its gut as I fell backward. The tulpa disappeared in a cloud of smoke, and I made a giant splash in the purple people eater.
19
CINDER
The pool engulfed me in thick, frigid…not really liquid. As soon as the splash I’d made settled, the gooey substance began to solidify like soft serve ice cream, minus the yummy, sweet taste. Sort of solid, sort of liquid.
It became a “soquid.”
I made the mistake of opening my mouth when I fell, and the salty, bitter taste of tormented souls made me gag…but that was the least of my problems. The sludge grew colder and colder. My heart rate slowed. Every muscle in my body ached like I had the all-time worst case of the flu and someone had beaten me with a spiked baseball bat. What was it with Ruin making me feel like I had an autoimmune disease?
And on top of all that—the sprinkles on the soft serve—my heart wrenched and my stomach twisted as every fear, regret, and feeling of guilt I’d ever experienced escaped the recesses of my mind and rose to the surface. All the times I’d screwed up, failed my friends and family, and made the worst decisions possible flooded my thoughts. If I wasn’t suspended like a piece of fruit in a gelatin mold, I’d have sobbed.
Another splash shook the pool. Strong arms wrapped around me. My head breached the surface, and I gasped. With one arm around my chest, Discord dragged me out of the perilous pool and lay me on the ground.
I rolled to my side and coughed, my lungs burning as I expelled the bitter substance. The moment it hit the floor, it rolled toward the pool and dropped over the ledge. I sat up, and Discord clutched my shoulders, gazing intently into my eyes, searching my face and body for signs of injury.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“Never better.” I pulled my hair over my shoulder, expecting it to be either dripping wet or full of sludge, but it was perfectly dry. My clothes were too. Weird. “Thank you for jumping in to save me.”
He returned his gaze to my eyes, his brows low, his expression solemn. “I’m afraid ‘save’ is too strong a word. Ruin now has access to our deepest fears and guilt. He will use them against us.”
“Bring it.” I rose to my feet. “I am so ready to be done with this guy.”
“As am I.” He turned in a circle. “I see no exit, aside from the staircase.”
“Maybe this is the end of the line?” I stepped toward an obsidian mirror, but it didn’t show my reflection. Inky blackness drew me closer, my gaze fixing on the swirl of blue spiraling in the center, creating the illusion of depth in the two-dimensional surface.
“This can’t be all there is.” Discord paced behind me. “Hecate must be here somewhere.”
I narrowed my eyes, staring deeper into the swirling obsidian as an image began to form. The blue expanded, forming the silhouette of a woman with long hair. Discord said something from across the room, but his words sounded muffled, like I wore invisible earplugs.
My pulse quickened, my stomach twisting and souring as the image morphed, not into my reflection, but into my sister.
“Why did you leave this time, Cin?” Ash asked, the accusation in her voice as sharp as Ember’s sword. “You made a mess of Salem and left it for us to clean up…again.”
“Again?” I flinched as if she’d slapped me. “I left to find Mom and Dad. I told you that in my letter.”
“Right. The letter that took me over a month to find because you hid it under multiple layers of spells.” She crossed her arms. “Because you always think you’re better off alone.”
Over a month? Had I really been in Hell that long? “I didn’t… I don’t like to work alone, but I?—”
“But you think Em and I aren’t skilled enough to help you. That we’ll screw up whatever it is you’re working on because we aren’t the firstborn daughter.” She narrowed her eyes and curled her lip. “Maybe if you hadn’t been helping Mom suppress my magic all these years, you’d have seen how powerful I really am. You’d have seen that I should be the one in training to be high priestess because I’m the most powerful witch in Salem.”
“What?” I blinked and shook my head, my senses coming back to me. That didn’t sound like Ash at all. The voice did, sure, but my little sister was the least competitive, most humble person I knew. She would never say that.
“Step away from the glass.” Discord clutched my wrist and gently tugged me back. “Whatever you see in there isn’t real. Ruin has fabricated it from your memories.”
My breath came out in a rush, and I swayed on my feet. “It was my sister. Ash knows I’ve been helping our mom bind her powers, and she hates me for it.”
“No. Look at me.” He tucked his finger under my chin, lifting my gaze to his. “You fear she will hate you if she finds out the truth. Ruin only sees your sisters through your lens. As strong as he is, he cannot see across the veil. No demon can.”
My lower lip trembled, so I bit it and nodded.
“She’s right,” Ember’s disembodied voice sounded all around me. “You’ve always known we’re better than you. That’s why you run off on your little side quests alone. Because you know we can do a better job, and that would make you look bad.”
