A Glimmer of Hope (The Avalon Chronicles #1)(43)

“I fled after this, ran to the hills and didn’t come back. Gyda helped me realize what I was, and I spent the next few hundred years living as a nomad, moving from place to place, never staying long. I saw a lot of the world that way, but didn’t really have much else. In the end I was killed by a man who wanted to make a name for himself and had heard of my prowess with a sword. The funny thing is, I don’t even remember his name. I don’t think it really matters, if I’m honest.”

“No one who’s had these scrolls seems to have lived a particularly happy life.”

“The scroll is a great burden, if you allow it to be. I let what I did this night define who I was for centuries after. Gyda took her own life so as not to allow the demon to take hers because no one told her how the scrolls truly operate, and by the time she’d learned it, it was too late. She continues to tell people that killing themselves is the only option. She’s wrong there. I was wrong to flee too.

“And Rosa . . . she is the only one of us who truly embraced what it meant to have this power. She used it to try to make the world better, even if I don’t always agree with her methods.”

“What if I accept it and I become a killer like my father?”

“I can understand your hesitance. But killing to preserve your own life, or to protect those you love, isn’t the same as killing for pleasure. It’s simple really; you don’t become him. I know Rosa told you something similar.”

Layla laughed, although there was little humor in it, as the scenery around her began to fade. “It’s not that easy.”

“It really is,” Rosa said from beside her. “Hello, Servius.”

The legionnaire bowed his head. “Rosa. I see you’ve taken to invading my time too.”

“We can’t have another you or Gyda,” Rosa said softly. “And there are things about the demon I haven’t told her. That no one has told her. She needs to know. She can only fight this creature with information.”

Servius nodded. “The demon will show you things, things of a future you’ll want no part of. He’ll say that’s what will happen if you accept him. He tried with me after I ran from here. He tried with Rosa, and Gyda too. Gyda let him take control because she had no idea what she was doing. I allowed it to happen because of fear and rage. Don’t go down those paths. Don’t make the same mistakes we made.”

“He showed me killing people I loved,” Rosa said. “Told me that once I’d accepted him and the spirits, he’d bide his time until I needed to use his power so badly that I’d release him. He told me over and over again until I almost believed him. But I fought through it; I decided that there was nothing he could do to those I loved that any one of my enemies couldn’t do if I refused to accept the demon and spirits. Somehow I managed to accept him, although I kept him chained in my mind.”

“So, he’s going to show me a possible future? Can’t I just ignore it all?” Layla turned away from the pair. It was too much to take, too much to absorb all at once. It was beginning to sound like no matter what she did, she was screwed.

Rosa and Servius shared a glance. “Yes, but it’s not just something you can ignore,” Rosa eventually said. “Everything he shows you will feel real. It’s how he works. He will make you believe that you don’t have a good option. We can tell you right now that you can fight it, but it won’t feel like you can when you’re in the middle of it all.”

Rosa’s voice became distant, and when Layla turned to look at them both, she discovered they were no longer there.

Instead of the palace there was nothing, just an empty darkness all around her.

“Is it finally my turn?” a voice asked from the blackness.

“You’re the demon?”

“My name is Terhal.” Two points of fire ignited in the distance as the darkness surrounding Layla dissipated, revealing the glade she’d ridden around with Rosa. The points of fire were inside the large cage, where the demon remained shrouded in darkness.

Layla sucked down the fear she instinctively felt. “Does that eye trick impress anyone?”

The globes of fire vanished, and the demon grabbed hold of the bars, placing his face against them. His skin was taut over his skull. A ridge sat around the circumference of the top of his head, pulsing a bright orange color, making it look as though he was wearing a crown of fire. His eyes were large; the orange and red flame where the eyeball should have been seemed to spill out across the skin around the socket. He had no nose, just a hole where darkness sat, and there was no skin around his mouth, exposing bone and dozens of small, shark-like teeth.

His ears were large and pointy, and when he opened his skinless mouth, a black tongue flicked across his teeth.

On his chin sat two tendrils, each a foot in length. They were a silver color, and like the ridge on his skull, they pulsed on occasion with red and orange.

“What you were expecting?” Something moved inside the cage and wings protruded through the bars on either side. They were black and torn in places, and looked like they belonged to a bat.

“I can’t fly in here,” Terhal told Layla. “I can’t fly in your realm. I’m not whole in your realm. I remember flying, I remember soaring high above the mountains and forests while I hunted.”

Layla did a quick measurement and realized the wings must have been a dozen feet in length, and the demon himself nearly six feet tall. A tail swished out of the cage on one side; spikes protruded from the tip, each one several inches in length, giving it the appearance of a morning star.