Sophie Ashe
The Mountain
I stand my ground and fight the bile rising in my throat. The demon devoured Octavia in two bites, clothes and all. There was nothing left of her aside from a few smatterings of blood peppered across the snow.
The demon lifts it revolting mishapen head towards me and yawns. Its mouth filled with several rows of razor sharp teeth covered in blood and strands of Octavia's lovely blonde hair. It's dark eyes narrow on me, and I get the impression that I'm dessert to this thing.
A sniffling sound distracts me and I see Gwendolyn shedding a few tears for her mother. The demon cranes it giant head towards its daughter and makes a low hissing sound. Gwendolyn flutters her eyelashes as she replies tearfully, "I know it's silly. We all agreed this would happen, but I will miss mom."
The demon utters a growl and Gwendolyn wipes away her tears with the back of her sleeve. "Yes, yes. We must carry on. I will go to the woods and greet your soldiers. The portal should have opened now and they will coming through."
The portal? Was this the portal the witch had mentioned a few nights ago? She had said that the black rot covering the trees were hairline fractures between our world and Hell. Octavia's sacrifice might have been the final push to widen that fracture into an actual gateway.
Gwendolyn gestured dismissively towards me and said, "The soldiers will be expecting you, Father. Please dipose of her quickly, so we can properly welcome them. Afterwards, we'll need to 'clear' out the lodge of any remaining staff and guests. Then we shall have the perfect place to wait for my baby to be born."
The demon swung it's grotesque head back to me and took a step towards me. Suddenly, I was tyring to remember every words of advice Nico gave me as he chased me around the ballroom with a sword.
I needed to keep my distance and pray that my demon slaying powers kicked in before that thing devoured me in two bites.
I stared back at the demon and whispered, "Come on you, ugly bastard. Come and get me. I'm not going to let you win. I won't let you hurt Mia."
Gwendolyn heard Mia's name and replied with a raised an eyebrow, "Now the portal is open , you can have Mia back. She's no longer a threat to me and my child."
"She was never a threat to you," I snapped. "You tore a mother away from her two children. You tried to destroy her family."
Gwendolyn let out a humorless laugh and retorted, "And I am trying to protect my family. Mia is a damn necromancer. She can talk to the dead! I didn't want any ghosts blabbing to her about our rituals in the woods."
"Mia is a necromancer? " Cool, that makes me like her even more," I say out loud. "I can't wait to kill your ugly-bird-faced-pa and set her free. We are going to have so much to talk about."
"I admire your bravado and for that, I will grant your wish," Gwendolyn replied and turned to her father, "Set the Princess Mia free."
I was confused. What was Gwendolyn's plan?
Her father growled enthusiatically and lumbered towards me.
Gwendolyn shot her father a smirk and said, "I doubt you'll get to meet her, but it will allow Prince Luc a few precious moments with his wife before we slaughter them all."
The demon reached out towards me with long unnatural arms. Its terrifying mouth and clawed fingernails transfix me. Fear bubbles inside me and I feel my power manifesting.
I'm going to to kill this thing. I'm going to grab its jaws and pull it apart like a god damn cheese string. I'm going to...
I stop. The demon is changing shape. Its sharpened fingernails retract. Its bloody beak shrinks back into it's head. The creatures strange proportions shift back into proportion and in a matter of seconds, I'm staring at perfectly normal man.
A perfectly normal man who looks exactly like Casper.
A kind smile crosses Casper's face and that fear inside me dissolves.
A little voice in the back of my head is screaming at me. It's not him. This is not Casper - this is Fake Demon Casper.
Fake Casper reaches out, and grabs my shoulders. My feet lift off the ground, and I'm thrown hard and fast across the clearing into a large silver birch tree.
My back slams into the tree trunk, and the tree, weak with black rot snaps in two like a twig. I lay on the ground for a few seconds, stunned and winded. Fake Casper is standing twenty foot away, sneering and laughing at me with his daughter.
I glance over my shoulder at the broken birch trunk and wonder if Mia is finally free. I'm not given much time to wonder this as Fake Casper seems to be making his way toward me again.
I stagger to my feer and close my eyes. Fake Casper may look like Casper, but he is not Casper. I try to think horrible thoughts. The decomposing bodies in the tree. The hanging girl. The Wendigo. My mother bleeding to death on the bathroom floor.
I clench my fist into a tight ball and open my eyes. Fake Casper is close. He lunges at me and I slam my fist hard into it's jaw.
Fake Casper's eyes widen in shock as bone splitting crack echoes across the clearing. His hand leaps to it's broken jaw and lets out a whimper of pain.
Behind him, I see the smile from Gwendolyn's face fall. She fidgets from side to side and yells, "What are you doing? Kill her!"
I don't give Fake Casper a chance to respond to his daughter. Instead, I raise my fist start punching him in the head, over and over again. I channel all my pent up rage and imagine that I'm hitting Rudolph's stupid smug face.
Gwendolyn screams as Fake Casper starts haemorrhaging black blood from his ears, eyes, nose, and mouth.
I only stop when Fake Casper crumples to the snowy ground. He whimpers and writhes in agony, clutching his face. I stand over him, wondering how I was supposed to kill him.
My hand drifts to the knife Rayne had given me, but it was too small to kill a demon. Perhaps, I should try punching through its chest like I did with the Wendigo?
I raise fist over his back and think about the time when Rudolph called me a whore in the middle of my wedding ceremony. I focus that rage and anger into my fist then...
Fake Casper turns. He is holding splinter of wood from the broken birch tree. His arm moves fast, slamming the pointed piece of wood into my heart.
Pain explodes through my chest. I reach up and wrap my fingers around the wooden stake sticking out my chest. I yank the splinter out of my chest and toss it aside.
Blood pours from my chest and a wave of weakness overcomes me. Finally, I fall to my knees and collapse sideways into the snow.
I'm dying in the snow.
I have failed.
The periphery of my vision darkens. Fake Casper crawls towards me, his mouth widening to eat me as he did Octavia. I wait for the first bite, but then I suddenly sink into blackness.
I hear the sound of the ocean washing over the sandy shoreline. I feel the heat on my back from the sun and know I'm on the beach in Belize, in front of my family's farm.
I open my eyes and see the farm house. My grandparents are sitting with my great aunt and uncle on the porch. I wave to them and they wave back to me.
I try walking towards the house, but someone calls my name.
"Sophie?"
The voice is male and kind. It's not a voice I recognise, but is some how familiar. I turn and see a young man with sandy brown hair walking towards me. He's not alone - he's with my mom.
My mom is smiling at me. She looks healthy and happy, instead of the the haunted wasted figure I remember from childhood.
I stare at both of them.
My parents.
"Open your eyes, Sophie. Don't give up," Mom urges me.
My father, Gustave, nods in agreement, "Use the knife. It's a gift from your grandfather. It will destroy the demon completely."
I reach for both of them, overwhelmed with emotion. But my mother shakes her head, "It's not time for you to die, Sophie. Open your eyes."
"I can't," I reply, "It staked me through the heart. I'm dead."
My father shakes his head, "You're not dead. You're healing. Remember, you are not all vampire."
A pain starts nagging at my chest. I rub the flat of my palm against it. It's healing itself. I'm still alive.
"I don't want to leave you," I cry.
"It's not your time, darling," Mom says. "But we love you. We have always loved you."
Gustave nods in agreement, "We are so proud of you, Sophie. But you must wake up now. You must fight. Casper needs you."
The mention of Casper's name is enough to drag me back to reality. I can't die. I have to save Casper and Mia. If I fail, the demons will kill Mia and Rayne will feed Casper to his army.
I can't stay here.
With a pained expresiion, I look up at my parents as they start to fade and whisper, "I love you."
I wake up, face up in the snow.
My eyes widen and I see Fake Casper's unhinged mouth coming at me like a starving man at an all-you-can-eat-buffet. My hand reaches for the knife on my hip, and I grab its handle.
In one swift slashing motion, I aim for Fake Casper's face. The knife trembles and shakes in my hand and as it nears Fake Casper's face, the small black blade erupts into a pillar of dark black flames.
Fake Casper lets out a scream and pushes itself backwards, but it's too late. The black flame sword slices through his head like melted butter,
Gwendolyn lets out an ear piercing scream as her father falls to the floor, dead.