Demon Day Penelope Fletcher (which ebook reader TXT) 📖

The Rae Wilder Novels

Book Two

DEMON DAY

Penelope Fletcher

Copyright © 2011 PenelopeFletcher

All rights reserved by theAuthor

Smashwords Edition(1ST)

British English(BrE)

All characters and events inthis novel are fictitious and resemblance to real persons, livingor dead, are purely coincidental. No partof this novel may be reproduced, stored or transmitted without theprior permission in writing from the author.

thedemongirl.com

If you are new to thisseries, I advise you first read book one Demon Girl (The).

For the readers who said‘hai’

Chapter One

The path to contentment should beclear to one with a purpose, yet I diminished into the realm of thelost.

Grief smothered me until I gasped forair.

I hummed with passion. Hate. I wantedthe High Lord’s head on a pike. I wanted to dance manically aroundhis corpse, and give in to the dark whispers in the corners of myheart. Nothing less would appease the burring ache in my chest, thecarnivorous sense of loss that threatened to consume me.

The dew from the dawn soaked theunderstory, and smoke from the bonfire faded. I can barely rememberwhat I had seen as I had stumbled through Orchard, fairy Wyld, andplace of my birth.

Coming to a halt at base of threelarge tree trunks the colour of ash, I had gotten a vague sense ofbeing surrounded, and a low intense hum of feelings pressed on mefrom above, like whisperings of the gods calling from the heavens.I had looked up, dazed, and gasped at the fallen stars scatteredacross the forest canopy. The twinkling I had glimpsed among therich green leaves was fairies and their auras. An immediate kinshipbloomed in my heart and it petrified me. I had looked into theirshinning faces and seen exactly what my arrival meant tothem.

The fairies stood on theporches and outer steps of tree houses seemingly growing from thethick bark that coated the broad tree boughs. The males and femaleswore long tunics and dark trousers beneath, similar to what I hadseen in the Grove, but these people seemed softer somehow. Thesewere not warriors, but families with young children and elderlyfolk who peeked down at me with expressions of awe. The elderlyfairies, faces wrinkled, and hair shades of pure white and grayboggled my mind. How many centuries could have to pass for afairy’s skin to wrinkle and back to become curved with age? Twothousand? Three? Not that I had forgotten, but it brought my ownage into question. I had eighteen years of memories as a human. Iwas … had been aSect Disciple found on a Priest’s doorsteps, and was given to theClerics to become a protector of humanity.

Yet Breandan, the fairy-boy who hadfound me, claimed I was born before him. Two hundred years beforehim. That was when my mother had split the key to the grimoire - apowerful book of spells - into three amulets and hidden them withmagical guardians. One, the amulet of protection, had been given tomy older brother Conall. The second, the amulet of wisdom, had beengiven to me. The last, the amulet of power, had been given to hernephew, and the heir to the fairy Wylds, Devlin.

Had the protection of the key been mywhole purpose maybe I would not feel the need to run away. PerhapsI could have adjusted into my new life as a demon, a kind of beingI had been raised to hunt down and kill if it threatened the safetyof my human home. But what came with the amulets I’d nearly diedfor was a responsibility to use their power to protect and guidethe fairy people, the cornerstone of demonkind.

Stricken with grief, stumbling acrossthe Wyld, I found myself in the midst of the people I was destinedto protect they intuitively looked to me for reassurance. Shakenand frightened after the sensational and violent departure of theirHigh Lord they turned their faces down toward me, and I felt theweight of every gaze – a thick swelling of anxious consciousnessespleading for me to soothe them. But I had nothing to give. Nothing.I was a girl, angry, and full of anguish. What did they expect fromme? I watched their Lord abuse and murder my best friend. I wasforced to watch her suffer, unable to help her as iron chainsdrained my power. Alex had been chosen for being nothing more thana source of purity, and as a twisted way for Devlin to get back atme. How could they have expected anything from me? I saw nothingbut monsters. Pointy eared and fanged monsters in a myriad ofcolors and creeds reaching out their talon tipped fingers to trapand torture me.

Shivering, I came back to myself andglanced around. I sat by a pool of cool water, and the mostbeautiful lush flowers I had ever seen bloomed in the morningsunrays. The air was fresh, and scented with a zesty bouquet. Ibreathed in deeply, letting the cool air chill my lungs even as mymind fought for clarity. The air tasted sweet and earthy, and everynoise no matter how low or loud washed over me like raindrops, likemusic. Colour was intense and everything seemed to shimmer andglow. As the dawn passed and the sun climbed higher in the sky thesoft radiance emitted by the flora intensified. Never had Iexperienced a dawn like it. When I was at Temple the sun alwaysretreated behind low and dark clouds, covering the land in aperpetual twilight. Here everything was made of light and shonebrightly.

I was not alone in this magicalplace.

After I had emerged from the earthentomb I encased Tomas, my vampire, inside to hide from the sun thatscorched his skin, Breandan had spoken a few terse words withConall. My brother had motioned for me to follow him after gentlyplacing Alex’s shrouded body on the altar she had lost her lifeupon. Ignoring him, I had walked off, needing to stretch my legsand make sense of everything I had been through. It was then I hadcome to the centre of the fairy Wyld, and caught a glimpse of therest of my kind. Sensing my panic, he’d clasped my elbow andbrought me here, to the sparkling pool, and left me to go and dowhatever fairy lords