Neon Blue by E Frost (best big ereader .TXT) 📕

the Earth’s heartbeat. Pressure against my skin, but it’s not smothering and I’m not afraid. This is the essence of my magic; there’s nothing to fear. The burning of my wounds eases, fades. There’s just warmth, just safety. I don’t want to ever leave.

But there’s coldness around my wrists. A sensation that works its way inward, down into my bones. An itch that becomes unbearable, like a million insects running over my nerve endings. It yanks me out of my Element.

I struggle against the pull. I want to stay. But after a moment of flailing, cold night air claws across my exposed skin. I roll, feeling the slide of wet grass and the bite of twigs and small stones under my hands and knees.

There’s light and movement behind me. I twist, and watch in the light of the moon and the hot blue spilling from Jou’s eyes, as he beheads Denys with his scythe.

Denys falls, his head rolling to land against that golden orb Timmi was holding, lying in the grass. Timmi’s head rests nearby. Her eyes are closed, but her mouth is open in a silent scream. Denys’ eyes are open and I stare at those dark voids for a moment before shutting my own eyes.

Shutting my eyes opens my other senses. Stupid with violent death so close, and I immediately pay for it. Pain. Horrific pain, and shock, and rage. All the things that Timmi and her friends felt as they died. I cower down into my lawn, digging my fingers into the damp soil, but that only makes it worse. The Earth has absorbed their spilled fluids, and the power those fluids carried. They were magi, warlocks and diabolists but magi all the same, and their power, spilled here on this ground I call my own, overwhelms me.

A heavy foot-fall near my head. A thump of wood on dirt as Jou rests the butt of his scythe on the ground. I snap my head up and open my eyes.

“Get up,” he says harshly.

I meet his eyes, still glowing brighter than the moon. There’s no softness there. No love. He let Denys torture me. What kind of man does that? The answer’s obvious. He’s not a man. He’s a demon. And I’ve let him into my life, and this is the price. It will always be the price.

“You killed them,” I say, and flinch at the emptiness in my own voice.

“Too fuckin’ right.”

I close my eyes and bow my forehead to the ground. Dig my fingers further into the soil, reach down into my Element. The ground, already softened by the dew, liquefies, and slowly swallows all of us. Bodies, demon and me.

I step out of the Earth a moment later. Into my hearth room. Around me, my protective circles flare to life like an atomic blast.

Within the inner circle, caught behind my wards, triple-circled, the demon rages.

“What the fuck are you doin’?” he snarls. “Let me outta here.”

“No,” I say softly.

That stops him. He tucks his claws behind his back. Rocks on the balls of his feet so his leather pants creak. “Okay, let’s talk, sweetness.”

“Don’t call me that. It was ‘sweet meat’ at first,” I say, remembering. “That was more honest, wasn’t it, Jou? Since that’s all I am to you.”

He tilts his head to the side and watches me. The neon has died out of his eyes. They’re just dark now. Soft. But I’ll never forget how he looked when Denys was cutting me. He would have let me die. Without regret. Without remorse. My life doesn’t matter to him, because he already has my soul.

“I got my limitations,” he says slowly. “I’ve been walking among your kind for a long time, and, yeah, you all look like meat to me. But you know that’s not all there is between you an’ me. You know that.”

I scoff while I rebelt my robe to cover myself. He doesn’t get to see me naked anymore. “I know you want me with you. Whatever that means. But you don’t need me alive, do you, Jou? I’ve been wrong, all this time. About everything. I’ve been afraid of all the wrong things. I shouldn’t have been afraid for my soul. It has value to you. You’ll protect it, won’t you? You told me that. But my life, that means nothing to you—”

“It means something to me,” he interrupts, holding his hands out towards me as far as the flaring golden light of the protective circle will allow.

A sudden whiff of sulphur flares my nostrils.

“Oh,” I say, as I realize what it is. “Oh, oh . . . that’s the first time you’ve lied to me.”

We stare at each other in silence for a long moment.

I push the sleeves of my bathrobe up to my elbows.

“What’re you doin’?” His voice is as soft as velvet, but I can feel the hidden razor of his will. It scrapes along my abraded nerves.

“I’m going to be free of you. And you are going back to Hell,” I answer.

He explodes. “You’re gonna send me back? I protected you! I killed them ‘cause a what they did to you!”

I sit down cross-legged on the packed dirt floor of my hearth-room. Look up at him. I don’t feel anything. Shouldn’t I feel something? I just feel numb. “That’s the second lie you’ve told me. You killed them because they threatened you, Jou. What they did to me didn’t matter. Because you already have my soul wrapped up in a nice box, don’t you?”

I shake dust and dirt off my arms. Hold up my hands to the night and call power. The shadows of his bindings creep across my skin.

The demon’s roar brings my attention back to him. He’s pressed up against the edge of the protective circle. My power restrains him, shooting like golden wires across his skin, glyphs flaring like supernovas, outlining his massive form against the smoke that billows behind him. He’s buried his talons in the wall of light separating us. His dark not-blood streaks