Elva Rackthorn and the Tears of Azrael

Binding, Part 3

"What are you doing in our garden?"

Elva groaned as something prodded her side. She was curled up under her cloak, her face squished up against the ground. She ached all over, and her knuckles on one hand were cracked and bleeding. Grimacing she rolled over and opened her eyes, at first not comprehending the sight above her.

It appeared to be a boy about her age, but his ears were long and pointed and his eyes the reverse of hers— black where hers were white, white where hers were black, with shocking purple irises— and swirling black lines like ink in water shifted on his pale face. Heartmarks, Elva knew from her research on demons, though she had never expected to see any. After a few moments, Elva realized that his skin wasn't just pale, but a light shade of blue, nearly lilac, and not so much skin as short-cropped fur. After another second of pushing thoughts through her achy head, it dawned on her that she was far away from the pentacle that could return her home and she was the mercy of this irritated demon boy.

"Why, you're human! How did you get here?" His eyes narrowed and his tone turned suspicious. "Are you part of the test? Do I have to fight you?" He prodded Elva again with his lacquered boot, but gingerly. "You don't look very strong."

Elva struggled to sit up, leaning against the short stone wall of the garden bed behind her. The side of her head was warm and wet, and her cloak stuck a bit when she tried to pull down her hood.

"You wouldn't look too hot either if you'd just been yanked halfway across an unfamiliar world." Currently he looked rather unruffled, with his dark hair neatly braided back in a pattern almost like a crown and his cloak far finer than hers, thick and velvety and pinned shut with an silver eagle broach. The silver was a theme, for Elva could see a silver chain tucked beneath his inner collar, probably bearing some elaborate pendant.

"Is that blood?" The demon's white pupils widened for a second before narrowing to pinpoints. His heartmarks pulsed, then started swirling in the opposite direction. "No, this is no good. My isolation's already been broken, we'll have to get you to someone. How are—"

But whatever his question was going to be, Elva never found out. A terrible tearing sound, that she felt rather than heard, interrupted him. It bypassed her flesh to ache and echo in her very bones. It took all her strength to keep from passing out again. The demon boy seemed to be just as affected by it, his eyes widening and his heartmarks flaring jagged as he turned to face the source of the sound.

There was a rending in the air, or rather reality, and through the ragged hole came the monster that still haunted Elva's dreams. Though Elva had grown since the fiend had nearly killed Amelia, it still towered over her, grossly huge and misshapen as it pushed its head and torso through the rent ten feet up in the air.

Even as she stumbled to her feet and grabbed the demon boy's hand to drag him away, Elva tried to catalogue the monster's features, to notice anything that could help her in her quest to save her mother. And yet, even looking straight at it she couldn't distinguish its features. It was like trying to make out the text of plaque under murky water, like losing her memory of its appearance even as the image entered her mind.

"Come on," Elva said, yanking at the demon's hand. "We have to get out of here."

"No, this is... this might be part of my test," the boy said in breathless tone, wonder and fear and too much certainty in his voice.

"This is not part of your test," Elva screeched, unable to find the words to express this is my fault somehow I must have summoned the monster that ruined my mother by coming to your world amid her horror.

"Even so..." The demon boy slowed almost to a stop. "It wouldn't be after you. Run while you can."

Elva yanked again at the boy's hand, but only managed to trip forward instead, falling hard on her knees and feeling a wave of dizziness alongside a pounding in her head. That protected her when the monster made its first attack.