Demons Forever (Peachville High Demons #6) by Sarra Cannon Read Free Book Online Page B

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    "She had to have been after some piece of information she knew Gregory would have," he said. "He was a good man. He wouldn't have shared what he knew willingly, but there's no telling what kind of dark magic she might have used to torture him. I have to assume he told her everything."
    I shivered. What had she done to him? And what exactly had she wanted from him?
    "That means she knows now that I'm your daughter," I said. "Do you think that's what she was after?"
    "There's no way to know for sure, but yes, I imagine she knows about our relationship now," he said. "That's only going to make her more determined to capture you. She'll stop at nothing to steal the essence of your power and transfer it to someone else."
    "A new prima?"
    "Maybe," he said.
    "If she kills me during a ritual and transfers the prima line to another girl, would that give the new witch the demon half of my power too?" I asked. "In addition to making her Prima?"
    "I don't think it would be that easy," he said. "The way I understand it, the ritual she tried to perform on you before only transfers the bloodline, not the true essence of the witch. She'd have to plan something more elaborate if she wanted to capture your demon spirit as well."
    "Like what?" A cold fear slithered down my spine.
    "She could be planning to use a soul stone to trap your essence first," he said.
    I gasped. I hadn't thought about her using a soul stone on me. I'd seen what one of those stones had done to Caroline, the future from Cypress, when the crow witch had kidnapped her. It had almost killed her.
    "This is why it's more important than ever that you don't go back to Peachville," he said. "Not under any circumstances."
    After hearing all this, I was kind of inclined to agree with him. I didn't want to die. Still, I knew we couldn't leave Aerden there, trapped inside a statue for all eternity.
    Members of the palace council entered the throne room, cutting off the rest of our conversation.
    "If you'll excuse us, I need to fill the council in on what happened," he told me. "We'll talk later."
    Later .
    I was really starting to hate that word.

Everything You Think You Are
     
    Over the next several weeks, I immersed myself in my training. If Priestess Winter was determined to come after me, she was going to be in for the fight of her life.
    Or at least the fight of mine.
    In the training room, Piotrek, one of the guards who'd been working with me, lunged forward. I shifted into my demon form and became weightless.
    Airborne.
    I was smoke and space. Nothingness. Not in my body, yet fully whole.
    I whipped from one side of the room to the other, dodging in and out of the hands that reached for me. Fingertips grazed my arm, bringing my awareness back to my human body. I shifted before I was ready, falling from the air like a sack of rocks. I landed hard on the stone floor of the training room.
    "Are you alright?" Jackson rushed to my side. "That looked like it hurt."
    I winced and rubbed my hip. "I'm fine," I said. "Probably just another bruise to add to the collection."
    Piotrek turned and smiled. "You're already so much better than when we started a few weeks ago," he said, offering me his hand. "Think about the first time you and I sparred. You were barely able to shift."
    I took his hand and pulled myself up.
    He was right, but that didn't make it any less frustrating. I'd had weeks of intense training. I thought I would be so much better at this by now.
    Shifting into demon form was such a strange sensation. The first time it happened against the hunters, it was shift or die. Some kind of survival instinct that kicked in. But when someone asked me to shift on demand?
    Impossible.
    My first training session with Piotrek and Liroth, another of my father's palace guards, had been spent doing nothing more than learning how to shift and connect with the demon side of my power. Even now, nearly four weeks later, I still hadn't mastered it.
    Hell, I still had a hard time