A Demon’s Book Of Shadows (Witches & Demons #1)

38. Amon

38

Amon

The air was thick enough to suffocate me. As soon as I hit a solid surface, I tumbled forward. I squinted into the dark, feeling stupid as I grasped for something to tell me where I had fallen.

But there was nothing. I was surrounded by an endless void. Was this a different part of the Summoning?

“Amon?” a gravelly voice called from my right.

“Who’s there?” I replied.

A groan followed. “Can’t you recognize the sound of your father’s voice?”

I crawled toward Dad’s sarcastic question until my hands met something solid. “Where the fuck are we?”

Greenish-yellow light illuminated my father’s ghoulish features.

“Inside of bone boy,” Dad replied, shaking his head to remove his greasy hair out of his face. “You ever wonder what the process looks like for him to turn demons into grimoires? Well, welcome to the fresh hole of hell where it all gets started.”

“If Amon hadn’t been flirting with that librarian witch, none of us would have to be here in the first place.”

I jumped at the new voice to my left. “Krim? ”

“Yeah, I’m here. I found Dad shortly after you took off with Lucy.”

I caught the yellow outline of his thick neck muscles flexing not far from where Dad was. “Who else is here?”

“Zed’s not saying much. He’s pretty fucking pissed about everything,” Krim replied as he cracked his neck.

Dirt flew into my face.

“Zed, are you seriously digging?” I stammered, shielding my eyes.

“Hey, I’ve dug a lot of graves in my life. But I don’t think I’m going to find anything that—”

A terrible sound of metal on bone filled the Bone Threader’s stomach.

“Got something!” Zed cried.

A hot blast of air burst into my face. The smell was a horrible mixture of sewer gas and rot.

I thrust my hand out, gripping sticky bones. His ribs were sharp and angular, cutting into my skin as I felt my way around our enclosure.

The burst of air stopped.

“ Any last words, Ravenbloods ?” The Bone Threader grumbled around us.

“Leave my sons alone, you fucking scab of a demon!” Dad barked.

Purple streaks exploded out of the dark. Anger and Sadness, complete with onyx wings, ripped out of the ground, burning with ash and smoke that was hot enough to burn flesh from the bone.

A dark chuckle followed as my father’s purple cinders died. “ You can’t burn your way out of me, Eugene . ”

Dad held his hand out, purple flames billowing as his ravens hissed and shrieked into smoldering ash. “He’s won, Amon. He’s always been ahead of the game.”

One of the ravens darted past my face, his wing clipping me on the cheek.

“Stupid bird!” I yelled, angry in my own certainty that Anger had clipped me.

Something glinted in the dark on the ground. I crouched down, finding my mother’s medicine bundle had opened. One of Dad’s ravens must have taken it from my tattoo parlor. I didn’t remember a crystal being inside of it.

Lucy said her father’s love of nature inspired her to write her book about a witch named Crystal. The story began to coil through me like her magic had when we were in the shadow archives—magic she had suppressed since her father passed.

Here it was here, a shimmering crystal light in the dark belly of a wendigo. Suddenly, Lucy’s children’s book had a purpose.

“What is this?” The Bone Threader barked, his terrible voice echoing around me.

“Where did your mother’s bundle of art supplies come from?” Dad asked as he slid beside me.

“Your angry raven stole it from my place,” I replied.

Krim and Zed huddled around the crystal that started to glow between us. The light emitting from it branched across our bodies, casting shadows on the cavernous walls of the Bone Threader’s stomach.

Suddenly, I had an idea .

I grabbed the crystal and held it over our heads.

“Shit, that’s fucking bright!” Zed grumbled, shielding his eyes.

“Guys, we are going to make this wendigo really sick to his stomach,” I said, squinting into the light.

“How?” Krim asked as he slapped his hands over his face to prevent himself from being blinded.

“Get closer to me. I’m going to count to three. When I do, I need all of you to release your most terrifying shadows, got it? We are going to impersonate death.”

Zed and Krim nodded. Dad just stared at me, confusion wrecking his expression.

“One,” I said, and the crystal pulsed in my hand. “Two—”

“I’m breaking out the Nematodes!” Zed cried.

“Amon, stop!” Dad cried as he grabbed my arm.

“Three!”

The crystal exploded into a shimmering ball of white. The shadows from my brothers and my fathers ripped upward, carried by the light.

I dove as the Bone Threader’s ribcage came crashing down on me. I would feed him what he wanted. I sucked in a breath as I threw the crystal into the void of his stomach, surrendering what was left of my shadows.