Lead Demon

Spilled Already

Derek’s voice drifted through his mind as he fell to his knees. Don’t use magic, not under any circumstances. Don’t give yourselves away.

Water and blood seeped through Seven’s jeans, his numb arm limp. He could only stare at the blood and wonder at how quickly this had come, his end. At how easy it was to die. Pain seared across his back as a Howl ripped through his flesh. Blood was everywhere—black blood, red blood, red rain. The Sphere of Water screamed inside of him as his own life spilled forth. Memories rode the current—flashes of his mother and father, the few friends he’d made and lost, his mother’s voice and a lullaby he couldn’t place. His eyes fluttered. His working hand dropped his staff.

This is how it feels to die, and I will be eaten before they find my corpse.

As another kraven lunged for the kill, mouth wide and broken teeth bared, the Sphere of Water opened unbidden in Seven’s front. 

Power flooded him, rushing through in a whirlpool of memory and pain, a roar that filled him with a thousand freezing agonies, dragging him down, down, down into the pits of his every despair. Down into the deepest depth of power.

The Sphere connected him to the rain hammering from the sky and the blood pooling on the ground and the pulse in every vein of every creature within a mile. He could feel it. All of it. He felt Christal a few yards away, her heart throbbing so fast it hurt his own. He felt the Howls, their pulses thick and jagged and starved.

Most of all, he felt power. More than he had ever tapped before. The rage, the fear, the anger, the thirst. It made his limbs vibrate, made his breath catch, made the rain around him seethe and hum. And in that split second after Water’s opening, he wrapped his fingers deep into the torrent and screamed.

The rain shivered. Changed. He twisted the power and twisted the elements and raindrops became ice, became shards sharper than glass, became hammers that lashed from the sky with sickening velocity. His Sphere raged in joy and agony as its power unleashed, as the bloodlust filled his darkening vision and screams filled the air. His screams. Their screams. Blades of ice met flesh, sliced through skin and bone. Ice spilled forth blood, and Water rejoiced as the world drenched itself in crimson.

Power ran through his veins, and this power craved revenge.

It was over in seconds.

He felt the Howls die. Felt their blood leave their bodies and pool against the sodden earth. Felt their pain. Felt their final heartbeats. And when every heart had stilled, the power in his chest winked out. He collapsed.

“You’re going to do great things,” his mom says. She hugs him. Wipes tears from her eyes. “You’ve already done great things. The moment you came into my life. That was the greatest thing.” And he tells himself not to cry. Not here, in front of the dorm. He tells himself he will see her again. “I will always...”

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” Glenn asks.

“A linguist,” Seven replies. “Or a writer.”

“You like words?”

“Yes. Words have power.”

“Your words do.” They go silent, and the stars slide past as they watch from the library. They go silent, and the stars speak for them.

He sees her. He sees her hand. He sees her hand from where he stands in the doorway. It droops from the shed, a finger c****d. Her fingernails red. Fingers red. Red, red—

Seven curled against himself. Curled against the memories.

Nothing else moved in the world.

Just the rain.

Just his breath.

Just his blood mixing with the dead.

HE DIDN’T KNOW how long he lay there. The wind and rain were a constant roar, but their sound was distant compared to the throb of blood in his ears, the roar of memories in his head.

His house is empty. Too empty. He walks. The g*n is gone. His hand is covered in blood. Blood, like the blood streaking the walls. Where is the g*n? Where are his parents? He shakes. He walks. Water roars within him, a tide that drowns the screams outside. His house is too empty. His house is too silent. He shakes as he walks and the blood-streaked halls tilt. He shakes, and the back door swings. He walks, and his silent house bleeds.

Something brushed his cheek. Frayed nerves snapped to life, and his eyes fluttered open.

Christal knelt beside him. Blood stained her skin, and long gashes webbed across her in leaking lines.

“Are you okay?” she asked. Her voice was angelic, if only because he had been certain he’d killed her.

Seven could only nod. There were tears in his eyes. He couldn’t force them away. He was hollowed out. Raw. Earlier, he’d wanted to break the world, but the world had broken him.

Even as the memories ebbed, the pain and the sadness lingered in his lungs. Tears leaked from his eyes unchecked.

“You’re bleeding,” she continued. “Badly.”

He tried to sit. His muscles wouldn’t cooperate. He felt it then...or rather, he felt the lack of feeling. The numbness leaking through his limbs as blood leaked to the soil. His wounds would kill him. Just as her wounds would kill her.

“So are you,” he managed. He bit back a sob. The world was spinning. Fading. Fast.

“You’ve already broken orders,” she said, without the slightest hint of sarcasm. “We might as well live to face Derek’s wrath.”

Seven closed his eyes and reached deep into the pit of his pelvis, to the place where the Sphere of Earth rested. It was the second and last Sphere he’d been attuned to. He coaxed it awake and sank his focus into the rich soil of it, to the heavy power that rooted him to the earth. Energy filled him with green light, with the warm, calming sap of gravity and flesh.