Raven of Water

Chapter 31: Goddess

I hissed as the creature ripped its way through the portal. Once Daz's feet were on the ground, he sniffed the air theatrically, savoring the smell of earth and stone. Frowning, I inched my hand closer to my knife resting in my pocket to find that the restraints prevented me from grabbing the thing.

Kai had to have known I couldn't reach the dagger.

There was a reason he didn't want me to have it, but I didn't have time to ponder that right now.

Near me, I heard Jackson and my grandfather gasp in surprise as they watched the demon's massive form slither from the stone portal and into our world. The creature laughed, a sound that sounded like wind through dead tree branches, as his eyes met mine and he gave a toothy grin before inching closer to me.

"You look better tied down."

I laughed to cover my fear, wriggling my wrist to see if I could ease it out of my binds.

No. There was no way Kai would have tied me so tight that I couldn't escape, not knowing I had a weapon. He had to want me to get the knife, right? I just needed to try harder. As I worked, I spoke to distract everyone from my wriggling hand.

"And you look equally horrific in my world as you did in hell, Daz."

The demon balked before motioning to Jackson to bring him the ceremonial weapon he'd already wounded me with. Jackson pretended to be fearless, but his hands shook as he held out the knife for Daz to snatch it from his hand. For the first time, I paid attention to the other weapon.

Compared to my knife, it was ugly, garish, and ridiculously large. It was made of twisting black metal with a handle of small thorns that pierced the hands of the bearer lightly as they wielded. Mine was all nature and curves. This knife was all blackness and death. 

Evil.

Wordlessly, Daz tested the weight of the weapon in his hand then lifted the dagger high. The sight of the demon about to plunge the weapon into me had me panicking and. The plants around me reacted despite my bound magic, though the sparse, tiny high altitude mountain foliage meant that there was very little the surrounding plants could do.

Desperately now, I worked the restraint on my right hand, wiggling and twisting until I finally felt a change, a shift in the material. The sensation nearly caused me to cry out in victory. I could get my wrist out.

I just needed time to work the rest of my bonds.

As for Kai, I couldn't see the man, but I felt him near my head, watching Daz although I couldn't see his expression to read what he was thinking.

I needed to keep the demon talking for just a little while longer. "So, Daz, tell me, why are you doing this?" The creature snorted, looked to Kai in askance as if to ask him why I was speaking, then lowered his weapon and grinned. The fact that he wasn't trying to stab me kept me speaking. "Jackson apparently hates women. That's why he's doing this. You? What's your baggage?"

"I hate your fucking world," he spat, eyes glowing fiercely with his rage as I quietly worked on loosening the binds on my wrist near the weapon in my pocket. The demon's long dark arms gestured as he continued. "I hate that you can bind us to you. In the old days, the primordial days, back when that one was freshly spawned into your world..." The monster paused his tirade to gesture angrily to Kai before finishing, "we could come and go as we pleased from our realm to yours. Until humans came around then learned magic. They fucked with the natural order, started worshiping goddesses who came to this world because of their pleas and locked us away like animals."

Scowling, Daz leaned down, his face inches from mine, pointed teeth dripping with spittle. When he spoke, his breath smelled like rot. "But the goddesses are gone, and the world is ready for us again. We just need more of your blood... all of it. To open the portal." To punctuate his warning, Daz lifted the knife to my face and beamed, running the blade down my cheek just as my wrist slipped from its binds.

Faster than I knew I was capable of moving, I grabbed the dagger from my pocket and jammed it into the beast's flaming eye before pulling it back out with a nauseating squelch. I expected Daz to howl in pain or back away from fear. Instead, he laughed darkly, lifting his free hand to his face to swipe at the blood seeping from his wound. He hadn't even dropped his own weapon.

"Cute." The demon laughed, regarding me through his one good eye. "Kai put you up to that I assume."

"Let me go." I warned, raising the dagger I clutched in a tight, white-knuckled grip, painfully aware that I was still restrained.

"Daz, I didn't—"

"Shut the fuck up, Kai!" The demon growled at the man before rounding on me, slipping his bloodied claws into my hair and gripping tightly as he pulled my head back, seemingly not even worried about the weapon in my hand.

I hissed, moving to drive my knife into him again only to be greeted by a powerful wave of magic which ripped my weapon from my hands and slammed me against the stone. I felt like I was being held to the table by a tremendous weight as the creature's hot breath and blood washed over me.

"I knew he was a fucking betrayer. And I'll prove it. The dark lord will come from the portal once your blood has been shed. Then, he'll rip Kai apart before destroying this world."

I groaned under the weight of his magic. The pressure made it so that I couldn't say anything even if I had wanted to.

"I will rip out your memories as proof to show our lord."

With that, I felt Daz's consciouses worm its way into my psyche. The pain was excruciating enough that I would have screamed if I had been capable of drawing in enough air to do it. Instead, I hissed and writhed as Daz's arm snaked around to pin my free wrist in place while he plundered my mind for memories of Kai. I felt him touch the memories of when Kai and I first met in the past, when I was old me, memories I didn't even know I held. Then he went to the modern ones, of me meeting Kai for the first time in this lifetime, of me blasting Kai out of anger. Of the hurt... But he didn't find anything of Kai conspiring with me other than Kai of the past giving me a weapon.

He had nothing to give their master.

The beast growled before withdrawing his mind, and I gasped as I felt the weight slip out of me and the magic lift from my body.

"What did you find?" I growled, now that I could take a breath. I also realized I was crying, hot tears mixing with my blood and that of the demon. "Kai didn't do fuck. This was all me, and your asinine attempts to eliminate Kai will fail. I'm going to tell you the exact same thing I told Kai... I will save this world. I will destroy you and make it so that you can never visit this world again. You, who ruins the minds of men and steals the minds of others. I might not have the power to control time, but your time is up, Daz."

The demon hissed in outrage before waving his hand, releasing me from my binds and the restraints holding my magic in place. Snarling and with his fingers still knotted through my hair, he dragged me from the table and over to the gate, placing his dagger against my throat.

I could feel the cold of the steel as he sliced across my cardioid artery, a killing blow that would let loose a spray of blood all over the stones of the portal. I could smell the iron and see, in a strange disembodied way, my own death. I heard Kai yelling and watched as he rushed over to the demon.

That desperate look on the face of the man I loved was the last thing I saw before I snapped back to reality, back to this time, only to find myself still pinned to the stone of the gate by Daz's taloned hands. I could only watch in horror as Kai, who had somehow moved over to us, drove the magic dagger he'd once given me into Daz's chest before he could kill me.

Magic.

Kai had used his time magic...

I'd been killed by Daz, but Kai had used his abilities to turn back the clock, but the blow Kai had just given the other demon hadn't been a killing one. Daz, alive but with a knife hanging out of his back, howled in rage and rounded on Kai just as I heard an inhuman, earthshaking snarl coming from the portal and turned my head to see a swirling mass of monsters behind the purple dominated by one large, horrific figure.

The dark lord was nearing, and Daz was royally pissed at the man I loved.