DEMON DOOR (#2 GHOST PORTAL series)

TWELVE

Avery couldn't move. Stars danced in his eyes; stars with bright, blood-red edges, as if coated in actual blood. Stars that laughed at him, screamed inside his head, told him he'd escaped death for the last time.

His throat was in agony, and he could have sworn Jessamine's handprint burned onto his skin. Every time he swallowed, he felt fire rushing up to blow out his mouth in clouds of steam. Breathing wasn't much easier, and his lungs were squeezed tight, desperate for oxygen that he struggled to provide.

The stench in the basement didn't help either, making him dizzy. He was knocked out, collapsed from his mishap in the demonic dimension, then his encounter with Jessamine—demon-Jessamine. Her arrival threw him off, and her departure more so. Without forgetting what she'd done to him, the mixed emotions she'd left him with.

Half kneeled near the wall holding up the stairs, he dared a glance at the glowing red door. Its brightness never dimmed, not even after Jessamine departed. Those demons on the other side were waiting, still hopeful that they'd be rescued by their host, or that their savior—Avery—would prove useful and release them somehow.

He never wanted to touch that door-handle again. Not with how it had scorched him, not with how it had locked him in a scary, sepia-toned realm he wasn't meant to escape from. Not with how close he'd come to never breathing normal air again.

He was beyond lucky to have gotten out, and more so alive. But if Jessamine hadn't been the one to release him, then who'd done it?

He rubbed his wrists, pulling his gaze away from the door. Some questions would remain unanswered, that much he was sure of. Jessamine's captors weren't talkative enough to divulge all their tricks, and Ada would be cryptic as always. No one would own up to saving Avery from his doom, but it was getting to where he no longer wanted to know. Multiple demon doors, multiple realms, monsters created on earth at the beginning of time... he'd absorbed sufficient information for a lifetime, and didn't think his head could take much more without exploding.

Demonic whispers rolled over to him, seeping under the threshold. Even without him looking at the door, it managed to get into his mind, to coerce him into opening it again. But hadn't he shown himself as a betrayer? Hadn't the demons on the other side seen through his ruse and attempted to break him down and use him to get out, or to feed on?

Why would the door still be summoning him forward to open it?

It's a trick. I'm not falling for it.

He swiped a hand through the air and grimaced at the pain it caused. "Nope, I'm never going to that place again. I'm done. Shut the fuck up," he growled at the door, "and leave me alone."

He cradled his arm against his body, sensing his forehead beading with perspiration. The whispers were fierce, flocking to him like moths to a flame, but he gritted his teeth and closed his eyes, ignoring them.

He'd almost died. Not once, but twice. He'd knocked at death's door, pounded on it, even, and he'd been denied access. Why wasn't he happy about this? Why couldn't he relax, knowing demon-Jessamine let him live another day to plot against her? Knowing he'd not yet earned a one-way ticket to whatever hell was reserved for folk like him?

He'd caused this, all of it. His stupid actions, his love-struck reaction towards Jessamine made him weak, and he'd let her go. He'd allowed her entry into the house that would be her demise. Everyone's demise.

Those demons want to restore the world to how it used to be... surely that means decimating all of us in the process, right?

Their motives weren't as shockingly sinister as he'd anticipated, yet there was a tint of malice to every word the red-orbed creatures had uttered in the demonic realm. They'd sounded almost noble, wanting to go back to older times. But older times meant having all sorts of inhuman creatures on earth, mingling with the living, and likely exposing them to immense perils. It was clear the demons didn't want to intervene—it was everyone for themselves, and if they died, they died, and were sentenced to roam the world until the end of time. Non-dead humans, ghosts, monsters—all living in bloody harmony, supervised by the demons?