“Thanks. You mentioned that last night.” I turned the bruised and swollen side of my face away from of him. “So what’s up?” I wrapped my arms around me to ward off the cold March air, wishing they were his arms instead.
He didn’t have to answer my question. The red hobgoblins ran past us, chasing each other. I counted seven, but it was hard to be accurate when they were running around in circles.
“How long have they been here?”
“I didn’t know they were,” I answered with a shrug.
One of the demons stopped running, slipped on the snow, and skidded toward me on his butt.
“Milayna!” Friendly called, clapping his hands together, bumping into my leg as he slid across the snow. “You came out to play.”
“Nope, sorry.”
“Nice face.” Scarface smiled one of his grotesque smiles. “Looks like mine.” He cackled.
I shot him a small smile. “What are you doing here?”
“We came to make sure you’re okay,” Friendly said, spinning on his butt on the hard-packed snow.
“Why? You want to see me dead.”
Friendly sucked in a breath and shook his head, the tuft of jet-black hair on the top of his head flopping back and forth. “No, we don’t want you dead. We just need you to come live with us.”
“We want her dead, moron,” Scarface snapped at Friendly.
“That’s not the deal,” Friendly argued. “We’re supposed to get her to come with us. Alive.”
“No—”
Friendly’s face turned from soft and childlike to demonic. His bulbous lips pulled back over yellowing teeth. A guttural growl tore from his throat. “We take her to him alive,” he bellowed.
Scarface answered Friendly with a demonic look of his own. “Shut up. You’re an idiot.”
I watched in awed amusement as Friendly tackled Scarface. Their red bodies rolled around on the white snow like two drunken garden gnomes in a bar fight. Little red fists flew and stumpy legs kicked at each other.
I started giggling. Chay chuckled, rubbing his hand across the back of his neck and over the back of his head. His hand rested on top of his head as he watched the little demons wrestle in the snow.
“Well, this is new,” I whispered to Chay.
“Yeah.”
“I guess I know which of the two has my back in a fight, huh?”
“Yeah. One definitely has it out for you,” Chay said with a small chuckle.
“Who’s Abaddon?” I called to the fighting goblins.
Both hobgoblins froze, their eyes wide. “No, no, no, don’t say that name, Milayna,” Friendly warned quietly.
“Why?”
“He’s not nice.”
I laughed hard at that.
Like the demons and Azazel are nice. Yeah, right, they’re teddy bears.
“He works for Azazel,” I guessed.
“No. He rules Azazel. He’s mean,” Friendly whispered. “A name that shouldn’t be uttered.”
“He’s gonna kill you, you know.” Scarface said. “You and your family. You should have obeyed Azazel, Milayna. Now you’ve angered Aba—”
“No!” Friendly yelled. “It’s a name that can’t be uttered.”
Scarface rolled his large black eyes but said, “You’ve angered him,” instead.
My family.
My blood ran cold. Like ice water filled my veins, it chilled me from the inside out. My family. At least Azazel only wanted me. Abaddon was trying to hurt my family. I remembered Jake running with Benjamin—he’d already tried to hurt my family.
“Why does he want to kill my family and me?”
Scarface looked at me and leaned his body close to mine. I could smell the sulfur and stench of rot clinging to his ruddy skin. “You’ll meet him soon enough. You can ask him yourself.”
His message delivered, he disappeared in a cloud of smoke. I watched the hobgoblins leave in seven little puffs, the smell of sulfur swirling around me.
“What do you think that was?” I looked at Chay.
He let his hand fall from his head. “Empty threats.”
“Are you sure?”
“No.”
My stomach clenched and I doubled over in pain, gasping from the intensity of it. I reached out and steadied myself against the corner of the house. The vision assaulted my senses. I could smell it, hear it, see it, and taste it in the back of my throat.
“Come on. Sit down.” Chay led me to a patio chair. He didn’t have to ask if I was having a vision. He’d seen enough of them to know.
Fire. Heat. Glowing light. A boy screaming.
I could feel the burning heat singeing my skin. The smoke burned my nostrils; I could taste the char.
I concentrated on the vision. Where was it? I couldn’t see anything familiar. Just as the image started to move, giving me a different perspective, it disappeared. The clenching in my stomach went with it. The only thing that remained was the slight smell of burning wood.
“It’s over,” I told Chay.
“What was it?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I didn’t really see anything. Just fire.”
“Well, let me know if it changes and I can help.” Chay turned and started toward the fence.
“Why’d you come?” I called after him.
“The goblins—”
“No. I could have handled them. And you could’ve watched from home. Why’d you really come over?” I interrupted.
He didn’t answer me, just stood with his back facing me. “I wanted to make sure you were alright,” he said quietly.