Callie nodded and tucked the flap of her satchel at the back so the interior was open and accessible.

I crouch-ran behind the row of shrubbery until I reached the edge and straightened up. I stuck to the deep shadows, and Darius fell in behind me a moment later. “Side door,” I whispered, moving quickly.

Without a word, he peeled off.

The blood must’ve worked. He wasn’t being overprotective. That was good news.

Fire raged within me as I jumped over a rock and made for the back door. Deep down, I also felt that pounding cold, pulsing like a beacon, yelling at me to use it. I wished it would also yell instructions.

I slipped through the gate and around the back, heading toward the porch. Stripes of light glowed between the cracks in the curtains. A wind chime lay, twisted and broken, on the ground next to a beam of wood supporting the roof.

Magic vibrated across my skin, singing the current of the spell. He hadn’t encircled his whole yard, just the area around his house, and not far out. So, he was more worried about B&E than Peeping Toms. Interesting.

What did he do about pizza deliveries?

I pulled out my sword as that cold lump of power inside me started to grow. It ate away the edges of the fire, cannibalizing my power.

What in holy hades? I braced my hand to my chest.

My heart started to beat faster, and I had no idea why. Sweat beaded on my forehead and upper lip. My chest constricted, squeezing the breath out of my lungs, nearly cutting off my air supply.

The cold power throbbed now, pounding outward. Taking over. Stifling.

I squeezed my eyes shut, focusing on the fire. On the power I knew how to control. Otherwise, I’d be a sitting duck for this mage, unable to throw magic of my own, and when my sword ran out of stored power, equally unable to slice through his attacks.

“I feel you.”

I jumped in fright at the horrible rasp that crawled over my skin like a centipede, and spun. Rocks flew out from all around me, focused in their assault. They struck a human man with a crooked smile and unusually widened eyes standing within a cluster of bamboo. The bamboo stalks bowed away from him, creaking, before swinging back and thwapping his body.

Did I do that?

He staggered out, his hands raised to ward the attack away, but his smile grew. He rose into the sky, feet completely off the ground, and shoved his hands backward. His shoulders popped out of the sockets. The cluster of bamboo snapped and cracked before flattening like gale-force winds had blown through it. Then the plants ripped up from the ground. Dirt clung to their roots before the whole lot was flung away by unseen hands.

Holy balls, that was a lot of power. I wasn’t facing a mage, but a demon who had complete control over a human’s body.

I felt my hands fist as an uncomfortable truth accosted me.

It was the demon. The level five. I could feel the strength of his power smacking against me, pulsing in time to the coldness within. Pushing down my fire.

“You are afraid,” the demon-man said in that strange rasp that made me feel covered in crawling insects. “Are you the one I seek? I feel you.”

“You mentioned that. Didn’t you know it’s not polite to feel people without their permission? You can’t hang around with humans if you don’t play by the rules.” I didn’t let my fear overcome me. Instead, I charged.

A push of air hit me, but I was already swinging my sword. The blade cut through the demon-man’s power, my stored fire power slicing into the hard air around him. I came up, my blade aiming between his legs. He flinched as I cut up his thigh.

“What power is that?” he boomed.

I cut through another attempt to grab me, feeling the sword suck at my power. But all it could reach was the cold. It couldn’t draw on the fire.

Did that matter? Could it channel this new power? I had no idea.

“Show yourself,” the creature yelled. Its feet hit the ground and it waffled before turning to run. It had to be running low on power. That was good news.

“I’m right here. Quit running away, damn you.” I chased it, stumbling when my foot hit a divot in the dirt.

It shoved its hand at me, clearly trying to push me away. I cut through its attempt, ripped out my gun, and fired—all in one smooth movement. Kinda. The bullet punched a hole in its stomach that immediately welled up with blood. It flinched with the knock of impact, but showed no signs of pain.

I aimed for the head this time. The gun roared, but the demon-man jerked away. Fast little sucker.

Another push of its hand, but its power was definitely weakening. I cut through the spell easily, as I had done before.

“The definition of crazy is repeatedly trying the same thing and expecting different results,” I said, readying for another attack. “But can demons really be called sane?”

I rushed at him and slashed, catching his arm. The blade sailed clean through. The demon-man’s flesh sizzled, the wound immediately cauterized.

I’d never seen that happen, not even with vampires.

The human face contorted into something truly heinous before stretching into a non-human, jagged-toothed grin. “Highness.” The human body split down the middle, like a seam that had just been unzipped. Great black wings stretched into the sky as the skin fell away. A strange, trollish face with a protruding snout and inch-long pointed teeth gaped at me. Despite its lack of lips, it was still able to talk. “You have not learned your power. We can help you. Guide you. Prepare you to step into your intended role.”

“No way.” I struggled to bring out the fire, needing a good blast of it to take this thing out. It was hampered by the ever-pounding, throbbing cold seeping through my middle and infecting my limbs.

“Do not be afraid of it,” it said gratingly, making me grind my teeth. “Allow it to overcome you.”

Terrified of the feeling, instinctively knowing I would lose myself if I let the power succeed in overcoming me, I struck forward in terror. My blade jabbed through the demon-man’s middle.

The sound of sizzling grew until it was crackling like a campfire. The creature howled, its face contorted in pain. Three-fingered, clawed hands grabbed the hand on the hilt of my sword, freezing my skin.

A surge of power tore through me. Rocks and debris around me rose into the sky. I followed, levitating, but my inner fire wasn’t giving me the power to do it. The ice had coated me in a sickly way, and like a siphon, I took the demon’s magic into myself. Thoughts around me sparkled to life, but most I couldn’t pinpoint. Someone was afraid that I’d know about the broken second-story window. Another was embarrassed that he’d peed himself. A gun in the car. A feeling of helplessness. Blind terror that I would be lost, and his soul would be lost with me.

The demon howled in my face, a sound that no horror movie about an exorcism could adequately portray. It writhed around my blade. I was killing it, but my power wasn’t draining as it should have. Instead, it swelled, sucking the evil from the demon and ingesting it. As the viciousness took over, my humanity started to erode away.

“No,” I yelled. The word came out sounding like snakes slithering across sand. “No!”

Not thinking, I raked my nails down the oily black feathers on the demon’s chest. Lines like streaks of acid appeared in the wake of my fingers. A clawed hand touched my skin, and I jerked back, abandoning the sword. I needed to kill the demon, but I wouldn’t lose myself to do it.

It yanked the sword from its body and let it drop to the ground. The great black wings beat at the air, taking the creature into the sky. Like a wounded bird, it faltered. Still the wings pumped, taking it higher and higher until it was an absence of light on the dark background of the sky.

I spun around, still floating. Rocks and dirt hovered with me, kept afloat by me, though I didn’t know how. Nor did I know how to stop it.

The demon was gone, but that dark and sticky force I’d sucked up through my sword spread through me inch by inch. Assuming control, like a demon taking over the host body.

Clamping down, I yanked my mind away, separating myself from it. Putting everything on hold.

Fear constricted my chest. Breathing came hard. But I made myself suck in air, keeping hold of the part of me that was definitely human.

“Help me,” I cried weakly. More thoughts came. Bloodied claws trying to rip through an invisible wall. Magic acting strangely. Nullifying. That window still broken. Maybe he should put something in front of it. That girl down there was clearly the one sought by the demon. She would kill, or rule, them all.