Demon Heart

Chapter 22~"Please...help me,"

"CJ!"

Fear washed over Evabelle, almost overwhelming her back. His presence recoiled at her exclamation.

Calandra's voice floated in the void. "He senses you!"

"But I can't hear his thoughts," Evabelle whispered. But she'd definitely felt something. Something she didn't like at all.

"That's okay," Calandra replied. "Just hold on."

Evabelle didn't know what to do. "Can he hear me?"

"No, but he knows you're here too."

The fear slowly slipped away and instead, an intense feeling of relief flooded into its place, so much that it normally would have brought Evabelle to her knees if she'd been aware if her knees.

"He knows it's the real you," Calandra said.

"What does that mean?" Evabelle asked. She didn't like the implication of what she'd said, but Calandra didn't answer.

"He's listening now," Calandra breathed out. After a few more moments she said. "He doesn't know where he is. But he suspects somewhere underground with a lot of tunnels, but he says that only because he hasn't seen any windows, and there's a lot of winding hallways. It's also cold."

Evabelle's heart sank. "He doesn't know," she repeated to herself, then refocused. "Is Thom with him?"

A bitter sensation of sinking despair rode over Evabelle like a tide. Her own fear mixed into it at CJ's desolation. Evabelle almost cried out. She knew it had been her question that had brought on the shift.

"Yes, not in the same room, but he knows where he is," Calandra murmured, as though chilled. She must have felt the emotional decline too.

Evabelle desperately wanted to ask if CJ knew if Thom was okay, but she stopped herself. The agonizing impression of drowning in misery was abating, but it haunted Evabelle, since it had all risen from bringing up her little brother. She didn't think she could take the answer just then. Calandra's answer implied that Thom was alive, and that was all Evabelle could accept for now.

Evabelle instead asked Calandra to tell him what they'd learned about breaking the familiar bond.

"He doesn't believe it. He thinks it's too good to be true," Calandra spoke.

It is, CJ. Evabelle thought and willed it to somehow reach him. We're going to get you out. You just have to help us. You can break yourself free.

"He knows where the mark is," Calandra cut through Evabelle's concentration.

"What?"

"He knows where the familiar's leash mark is. So all we have to do is find him, hurt him, while he's being controlled, enough to break out of her spell, and he should be able to sever it."

Calandra sighed and Evabelle could feel the mage's aggravation in the darkness too. She understood the feeling. "This isn't going to easy, since I still don't know where he is."

"Do you have any kind of idea?" Evabelle asked.

"West. I'd say far west."

Okay, well that was something. They could, at the very least, split the U.S. in half. And far west implied they could narrow it down a little further. But still it was a lot of ground. And underground, by the sounds of it.

"I think that's all we're going to get for now," Calandra said. "I'm going to break the connection, but I'll now be able to find him again easily." She went silent, and Evabelle waited to be pulled out of this black oblivion world, but before she was, another feeling that was not her own, engulfed her. This was something that was directed at her. It was piercing like an arrow, painful and raw.