The Devil's Prey (The Demon Within) Read online

  ‘It’s a long story.’ But I could tell he would wait all year until he heard me say it. ‘Ok, so I was training with Lauren, and she was getting on my nerves. I really mean on my nerves. Then I…well, how do I put it…’

  I was trying to think of how to explain it, but before I could say anything, Ethan said, ‘Attacked her.’ He looked sad by what I had done, but I didn’t share his sentiment.

  ‘Well, not the word I was looking for, but anyway, then she was torturing me with her mind thing. Then I was still mad, so I got changed out of my pajamas, and I needed to get away.’ I took a deep breath. I could tell I was talking really fast, but Ethan didn’t seem to take notice. ‘I grabbed the first set of keys I could get a hold of. I was heading back to my place, but the speed of the car was amazing, so I went speeding around a sharp bend when-’ I could see the horror in his face, but pushed on, ‘the cops pulled me over after I ran a dozen red lights. Then I sort of attacked the police officer, then I was taken to the station, and that is where your car is.’ I looked at him, and he looked relieved to hear that his car was not hanging off the side of a cliff somewhere.

  ‘Summer, you are missing one very important part.’ My first thought was Michel. How did he know ? But then Ethan gave me a hint and glowed.

  ‘Oh, that. Once I was out, Amber was there for some reason, and she was…well, Amber was being Amber, and I lost it. I went into a fury thing, and after that, I just walked back home.’ I looked into his green eyes and saw nothing but pure rage.

  ‘I really am sorry for taking your car, and I am really sorry for hitting the officer,’ I told him. I was more trying to convince myself that I was sorry by saying it out loud.

  ‘You are forgetting one person.’ He tapped his foot, waiting for me to say that I was sorry about Lauren.

  ‘What? Lauren? Why should I apologize? She started it by talking trash about my father.’ Ethan looked at me in shock, but I really didn’t care.

  ‘What, so every time someone talks about your father, you attack them? Well, here’s this. Your father was a cheap person, who should have been ashamed by what he created. If it wasn’t for you, he would still be alive. if he hadn’t had a pure fairy for a daughter, everyone would be happy. Even better, if you never existed, the whole fairy community would be better off!’ When Ethan said that, I was not angry. Tears ran down my face, because what he was saying was the truth. If I had never been born, everyone would have been better off.

  ‘Ethan!’ I heard Amanda say behind him. She was shocked by what had come out of his mouth. I saw his eyes flicker black, but that still didn’t matter.

  ‘Get out,’ was all that managed to escape my lips.

  ‘Summer, I am sorry.’ Amanda was trying to apologize for Ethan’s mistakes.

  ‘I said GEEET OUUUT!‘ I screamed. All the windows shattered, and I threw both Ethan and Amanda out of the room. I felt blood run from my nose, but I wiped it away with my hand. I didn’t get time to leave because someone was at my door.

  ‘Summer, you are wanted.’ They left straight away, probably afraid I would bite them or something. I got up and wiped away my tears. I headed down to Lauren’s room, where the fairy officials were, and I knew I was about to get into a whole lot of trouble.

  Chapter 12

  ‘Summer, what you did was unthinkable. Attacking Lauren, and then going into full- and I mean full- fury! What were you thinking?’ I didn’t look at them, as my eyes were planted on Lauren. She looked like her old self, but I looked like a mess- like a crazy person.

  ‘Summer.’

  I turned my head in a sharp motion. ‘What was I thinking? I don’t know. Why don’t you rack my mind, and then you will find out,’ I said. There was so much venom in my tone that I could see them all cringe.

  ‘Summer. you cannot talk to them like that.’ Lauren spoke, and my head turned back to her. I felt the sharp pain in my head, and I knew it was Lauren.

  ‘You bitch!’ I screeched at her.

  ‘Well, if you don’t listen, it will be worse.’ I leaned back, ready to pounce onto her with a lambo in my hand, but someone grabbed my shoulder and stopped me.

  ‘Ladies, calm down. Lauren, what you did was uncalled for. A little bit of your power would have been fine, but not the interrogation skills that we use for torture.’ Lauren went serious again, and she looked more worried than I could ever remember seeing her before.

  ‘I knew what you were feeling the moment you came bursting in the house. Your emotions hit me like a brick wall, Summer, along with anyone else in a five mile radius,’ a young lady said from behind me.

  ‘Now as to your punishment, Summer, considering what you have been through, we are not going to give you a punishment, but Lauren can decide what to do with you regarding your trip to jail today.’ I looked at them, and was very tempted to laugh in their faces.

  ‘Another thing, Summer. You and Lauren are no longer allowed to train with each other, ok?’

  I nodded my head and left. When I walked out of the room, I could see people were listening, and they all backed away when I walked out.

  ‘Everyone, I am sorry. I don’t mean to scare you, but I guess this is what I do instead of releasing a demon.’ I could tell that they understood what I was trying to say.

  ‘We are sorry, too. We never thought of it that way, but we are more scared of the officials,’ a girl said from the crowd.

  ‘Yeah, well, they seem to be scared of Summer,’ someone else said.

  I had to laugh, and a few people joined in. ‘They are scared of me?’ I said, looking into the other fairies’ faces to see that they were dead serious.

  ‘Who wouldn’t be? You are most powerful thing roaming the earth, and the amount of power you have… well, they are scared you will overthrow them,’ said the young girl again.

  ‘Well, I am not overthrowing anyone,’ I said, and walked back to my room.

  When I got back to my room, I tried to use my power to fix all the glass, but it was no good, so I started to sweep it off the floor.

  ‘You need some help?’ I looked to see Amanda there, and turned my attention back to the broken glass. ‘If you want to,’ I said, and she was immediately on the floor, helping me out. We cleaned up in silence until Amanda spoke again.

  ‘Sorry about what Ethan said.’

  I looked up at her. I could tell she had been crying. ‘Well, I guess I deserved it. He is right, and you know it.’ I went back to picking up glass.

  ‘No, he is wrong, and I know you saw his demon come out, so you cannot blame him. You did steal his car.’ She started laughing.

  ‘What is funny?’ I asked.

  ‘You, Summer. You’re supposed to be quiet and hate attention, but you end up behind bars.’

  I joined in, laughing with her. ‘I told you, I have changed. I am a stronger person now.’

  ‘Yeah, I know, and I guess that was hard to accept.’ We gave each other a hug, and I knew she had forgiven me.

  ‘So you and Lauren- hey, you do know everyone was rooting for you.’ I looked at her. Unlike Ethan and most of the other fairies in the house, Amanda was not in love with Lauren.

  ‘Yeah, well, she hits my buttons.’ I went to sweep up some glass when I felt the tingle in my shoulder.

  ‘Amanda, I got another message,’ I said as I got up to collect the paper.

  ‘What? When? Where?’ She was inspecting my body, looking for the message.

  ‘This time it was on paper, in my blood.’ I showed her the message. She took it in her hands. I realized as I handed the paper to her that my hands were shaking.

  ‘You have to burn it, Summer,’ Amanda finally said.

  ‘One problem- I can’t destroy it. Kind of like how I couldn’t heal those other messages.’ I started to bite my nails. One thing that got me nervous was these messages.

  ‘Ok, let’s finish up, and relocate to our new room for tonight,’ Amanda suggested.

  We were allowed to stay in the guest room for the night whil
e they fixed the windows, but the nightmares still followed me. I was hunting someone. I was keeping low and quiet, trying to find them. It was a game to the other person, who was trying to kill me. I heard a dominant voice call from my left, and I looked to see Michel crouching down. Suddenly something pulled him back.

  ‘Michel!’ I screamed as he was dragged away. I started to chase after him. Why hadn’t he re-materialized yet? I continued following his voice, which was calling to me, when I skidded to a stop. My jaw dropped, and I was paralyzed as I realized who was holding the knife to Michel’s throat. I said the person’s name, but I couldn’t hear myself speak.

  I woke up with a jolt, and the memory of who was holding the knife promptly abandoned me. Michel was in my dream, but who was the person with the knife? I looked at the clock to see it was 6:00am. Time to get ready for school. I woke up Amanda, who was up straight away. We got ready and had breakfast. Unfortunately for me, Lauren was in the same room. I did say hello, but ignored her for the rest of the time. When we came back to the guest room, Ethan was waiting for us.

  ‘Hey, Ethan,’ Amanda said. I said hey, but he ignored me.

  ‘I just came in to say sorry I did not wake you. I had to pick up my car.’ He looked over to me straight away. ‘Also, you are going to have to find your own way to school, Summer.’ He left the room.

  ‘Summer, I will talk to him.’ She gave me a huge hug to apologize. “And I’ll give you a ride when my car is back from the mechanic.” There had been some kind of problem with her car’s transmission, so she was catching a ride to school with Ethan now.

  ‘Don’t bother, ok?’ I sighed. I still had enough time to walk to school, but I would have to leave now. ‘It’s ok, I will walk.’ I left the room and headed for the school.

  The day flew by. I handed my calculus teacher the extra work she had given me, and she gave me more to work through. During PE, we had to do more running, and like always, I finished first. During last lesson, I had volleyball. My first day as captain was amazing. We didn’t do much playing, but we worked out tactics for the year, and tried to determine what everyone’s strengths and weaknesses were.

  ‘Ok, people, tomorrow we train before school,’ our coach said, and we left when the final bell rang. Ethan still would not me ride with him, so I had to walk home.

  ‘Hey, princess.’ I looked to my left to see Michel walking with me.

  ‘Hey, Michel.’ He laughed, and I stopped and turned to face him. ‘What is so funny?’

  ‘I am trying to imagine you in an orange jump suit.’ He laughed, and I rolled my eyes and started walking.

  ‘How did you find out?’ I groaned inwardly. Of course Michel knew.

  ‘My secret. So tell me, how did you do it?’

  I recounted what had happened, and he just seemed to find it highly amusing. ‘Never pictured you as a bad girl, Summer.’ I punched him in his arm, and he laughed.

  ‘Well, don’t get used to it,’ I muttered. We kept walking silently for a while, and I found it peaceful. ‘I wanted to say I am sorry for yelling at you.’ I knew he had already forgiven me, but I still wanted to say sorry.

  ‘It’s fine, no harm done.’ I smiled and turn the corner, and saw the house up ahead.

  ‘Well, I better go. See you later.’

  ‘See you later.’ Like that, he was gone. When I got to the house, I was the last to arrive from school. Once I was home, I had to train my abilities, which just ended with me chucking a dummy spit. I had dinner and went to bed.

  The rest of the weeks were very slow. I still had to walk to school and had to leave early for training, but lucky for me, Michel always would appear on my walk to and from school. School was the same. My favorite teacher was Mr. Timberwood. I still hadn’t figured out where I had seen him before, but I could swear sometimes he watched me while I worked. Each day after school would be the same- come home last, and train with Amanda, because Lauren was no longer my partner. With training, I was getting nowhere, which always left me frustrated. I saw Michel mainly on weekends, when I went for a run. Sometimes he would join me, and other times he would mock me. Ethan was still not talking to me, which suited me fine because I did apologize, but he had decided not to accept it.

  Weekends were the worst days ever, because I would have to spend all day training. If not, I was doing homework. The holidays were coming up, and I was planning to spend time with Amy and my mother. The weather was cooling down. It was now autumn. Every once in a while, on my run with Michel, he would help me train, but that too was unsuccessful.

  One Sunday morning, when I had just said bye to Michel, I came to get ready for training. I saw Ethan waiting by himself. He wasn’t doing much, just standing there, playing with his illusions.

  ‘Hi,’ I said, trying to catch my breath. He didn’t say anything, so I walked straight past him, towards the house. Suddenly he had his hand around my wrist.

  ‘Get your hands off me! You have no right,’ I said reflexively, shaking him off me. I knew Michel was watching from a tree, like always, because he loved watching me get frustrated at my constant failed attempts to control my powers. I knew that if Ethan laid a single unwanted finger on me, Michel would be down, kicking his butt.

  ‘You’re right, I am sorry.’ He turned his attention away from me.

  ‘Ok, what do you want? Because you wouldn’t be standing here at this time of the morning just to admire the sunrise.’ I placed my hands on my hips.

  ‘What happened to us?’ was all that came off his lips. I stood still, because I knew he was in the wrong and I think he did too.

  ‘We used to be so perfect together, now look. What happened?’ he asked again, so I answered him.

  ‘Well, what happened was you ignored me for a month because I wouldn’t apologize to Lauren- and maybe because I stole your car and it ended up at the police station.’ I could hear Michel laugh from there, because every time I mentioned I wound up at a police station, it sent him into hysterics. Ethan just stood there, because he knew I was right. I had tried to fix us, but by that point it felt like our relationship had gone beyond repair. He took a step closer. I could tell he wanted to say something, but words never escaped his mouth.

  ‘You know what, Ethan? I give up. If you can’t grow some balls to talk to me, I give up trying, so just leave me be, ok?’ I threw my hands up into the air, but Ethan grabbed them and pulled me into a kiss. I tried to pull away, but he wouldn’t let me, so I kicked him in the knee, and he broke away.

  ‘You think you can fix this by kissing me? Well, if you think that…well, buddy you need to do some more research, because I am not even going to bother if you can’t make the effort, when I have.’ He was on the ground, holding his knee where I had kicked him.

  ‘Hurry up, Summer. I am waiting for you,’ Amanda said in my mind. I walked away, leaving Ethan on the ground and Michel laughing in the trees.

  About an hour later, I had gotten absolutely nowhere with my powers. ‘I give up completely!’ I threw my hands into the air. My hair had fallen out of the ponytail it was in when I left the house that morning.

  ‘Come on, Summer, you almost had it.’ Amanda had been giving encouraging gestures all morning, just like she did every morning.

  ‘No, I did not. Your definition of “almost had it” is nothing,’ I said wryly. We had been trying for months, and yet nothing had worked. I had tried being happy, being sad- Amanda had even thrown insults at me once, which was pretty risky, but still, nothing worked.

  ‘Just one more try, please?’ She was begging me to try at least one more time.

  ‘Alright, but after this, I give up.’ I closed my eyes and reached deep down to tap into my power. I tried to think about moving the bottle. I was nearly there when I felt my power snap back at me like a rubber band.

  ‘That’s it!’ I walked off into the house. People in the house had learnt by then that you never got in my way after training, because I was always in a pissy mood. I could see people watch me as I stor
med into Lauren’s office. ‘You know what, Lauren? I quit! I quit being a fairy! I quit, ok? So I am going to pack up my bags and head back home, because I cannot even move a bottle or make a simple leaf blow with a slight wind, so I quit!’ Once I finished talking, I realized that Lauren was in a meeting with fairy officials, and I had just barged in, ranting about quitting.

  ‘Oh, great. What are they doing here? Because I am sure I haven’t done anything wrong this time, so I am just going to pack my bags and leave,’ I said, but as I was leaving, one of the officials told me to stay.

  ‘It is ok, Summer. We were just talking about you, and from what we have just seen, I think it is fair to send her away,’ the young lady said. My heart plummeted. When she said “send her away,” did she mean for good? I would welcome the chance to go back to my life before any of this, but I wouldn’t want to go if I couldn’t take Michel with me. That kid could make me laugh any day.

  ‘Summer, it is ok- not forever, just during the holidays,’ another official said, but I still stared at them blankly.

  The head official stepped forward. ‘Summer, we have come to the conclusion that you are not learning anything about your powers. It is not that everyone here isn’t doing a good enough job, but we think it would be best to send you to Liam, who helps fairies discover their power. In the past, he has also helped pure fairies get in touch with their powers.’

  I crossed my arms at what he had said.

  ‘So, Summer, during the course of the two-week holiday, we are sending you to Italy to train you on your powers.’ He looked pleased by my reaction.

  ‘Wait, let me get this straight. You are sending me to Italy to train on my powers with this guy named Liam?’ My mouth was hanging open, and I was so sure that I had heard wrong.

  ‘Yes, that is correct, but we can’t send anyone with you,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t give a damn if no can come with me! To hell with them! I am going to Italy for two weeks!’ I threw my hands up in the air and started to laugh.

  ‘Ok, Summer, you need to go and pack, because you’re leaving on Friday.’ Before he could say another word, I was out of that room, jumping all the way back to my bedroom.