Juliana didn’t know why it needed to be so thick. The whole circle could be shrunk down if the lines were smaller.
At least the work was fairly simple. A bit repetitive. Definitely in need of double and triple checks to verify that everything was in its proper place. But not that taxing of a job. Juliana and Eva had taken Vektul’s designs, applied them to a grid, sketched each section of the grid out on a piece of paper, and were slowly making their way through each segment. They had a whole tub filled with papers.
Correction, Juliana thought with a tinge of annoyance. I am working my way through.
Eva was supposed to have popped into the meeting with the other participants, told them she would be entering into the first event, and run right out to join in the misery that was massive ritual circle creation.
An hour later and Juliana had still seen no sign of Eva.
She wasn’t sure if she should be worried of angry.
Probably both.
Worse, it was dark and had been for most of the hour. Juliana could make little lights through the use of order and fire magics, but they were dim and flickered. Eva’s light spells were much more advanced. Because of the poor lighting, Juliana had a feeling that she would be redoing a good chunk of her current segment.
With a resigned sigh, Juliana decided to stop what she was doing. Instead of fumbling around in the poor light, she turned to her only companion.
“Any problems?”
“I would have mentioned if there were,” Srey replied, not even looking up from his book.
He had no lights around him. Demon eyes must be amazing.
It made Juliana wonder just how Eva saw the world. She had said that her eyes only made things mildly crisper. No night vision or heat vision. But was that actually the case?
Maybe she was trying to hide what her eyes actually did. She was trying to hide her teeth.
Juliana had not missed how infrequently Eva flashed a grin these days.
If Eva was trying to hide things, who was Juliana to argue. She was just curious. Though, if she could do something awkward like see through clothing, Juliana could completely understand why she might keep it secret.
“What are you reading?”
Srey flicked his eyes to her. Contrary to the hostile glare she had expected to get for interrupting his reading, he just stared. He set his book down in his lap after a moment, keeping a finger between the pages.
“A tale about a city, the inhabitants, and how it was all built and destroyed by one man who thought he might be a being equivalent to a Power.”
“Fiction?” Juliana said, surprised at the choice.
His voice turned a few degrees colder when he next spoke. “Is that a problem?”
“Not at all. I just wasn’t expecting that. Maybe magical theory book, spell casting, or a book on rituals.”
“Just because I am a demon and you a mage does not mean that we can only read related books. We are allowed our pleasures, after all.”
Juliana was about to ask what else the demon enjoyed doing when his head snapped to the side. He stared off into the darkened woods with narrowed eyes.
“Trouble?” Juliana asked as the metal coating her body started flowing, ready to encase her in a suit of armor.
“I don’t sense anything,” he said slowly. “I just thought I heard something.”
Oddly enough, that had Juliana relaxing. Someone was nearby and he wasn’t sensing any hostile intent. That probably meant Eva. Or maybe Vektul decided to help out.
Ha, she thought, like that would ever happen.
In Juliana’s personal opinion, all these demons really should be making the ritual circle themselves. At least helping a whole lot more than they were.
“About time you showed up,” Juliana said. She didn’t quite call it out in a shout, just in case it wasn’t Eva. But neither did she whisper it to herself.
“I didn’t realize I was expected,” a suave voice answered from directly behind where Juliana and Srey were looking.
Juliana didn’t hesitate for a moment. That was not Eva’s voice. Neither was it Vektul.
A blade sprouted from her wrist as she spun around, lashing out.
Her blade struck something solid, sending reverberations up her arm. The metal snapped. Juliana’s arm continued in it arch as the tip flung off, hitting the ground and continuing for a short distance.
Juliana ignored the destruction to the segment of earth. It wasn’t that bad and she would already have to redo most of it.
Instead, she flung out a small light from her ring foci, brightening the area enough to properly see her foe.
The first thing she noticed were the two sharp points on either side of a toothy grin. Her eyes flicked upwards, staring at two dark almost burgundy-red eyes. Dressed in a fanciful suit, the student from the Nod Complex casually waved at her.
“Vampire,” Juliana hissed.
She had only ever met one vampire, that being Serena. Despite Eva’s assurance that Serena was normally a happy-go-lucky girl who might have been starved for attention, Juliana really couldn’t see it that way. Her first experience with Serena had nearly ended in being eaten. That incident combined with her mother’s stories really did not endear her to the blood-dependent race.
Srey snapped his book shut as he stood, setting it down almost lovingly on the small segment of log he had been using as a chair.
The vampire glanced at him. Srey looked back. Both regarding each other, sizing each other up.
Neither made to attack.
Which made sense. Srey hadn’t detected any hostile intent. The vampire wasn’t here to attack them. Unless drinking their blood didn’t count as a hostile action and therefore wouldn’t trip Srey’s senses.
Still, she was glad to have the demon at her side.
“What do you want?”
The vampire took his eyes off Srey, looking towards Juliana with bared teeth—she couldn’t think of him as smiling anymore.
“I was just taking a little walk, looking for a hint of what the event might be. Imagine my surprise when I catch the sent of a snack I had been wanting to try. I followed the trail here.” He mimed glancing around, not taking his eyes off Juliana and Srey. “But no snack is here. Pity.”
“I,” a voice behind Juliana thundered.
Juliana whirled around.
Twin eyes blazed in the darkness, bathing Eva’s face and short hair in a bright red light. Eight more eyes, far fainter than Eva’s, glowed just behind and over her shoulder.
“Am not a snack.”
Chapter 006
Eva seethed. It took a great deal of willpower to not blink behind him and take off his head. He was a student. She couldn’t just kill him. Not without inviting all kinds of trouble at least.
To the side, Srey edged closer to Juliana. He slipped just behind her, peeking out over her shoulder. It took Eva a moment to figure out what he was doing.
Really, she should have realized based on how all the demons reacted around her.
He was cowering behind a human. And he was leaving his back open to a vampire. At least he was protecting Juliana’s back. Sort of.
Of course, Juliana wasn’t looking so confident either. Eva couldn’t see her face as she had completely encased herself within her suit of armor. However, Eva got a decent map of Juliana’s face using her sense of blood. Using the little blood that hadn’t drained from her face, that was.
Despite the two frightened people—two friends who Eva really shouldn’t be scaring—the vampire stood still, his irritating smile never wavering. Without a working heart, Eva couldn’t even tell if he was mildly nervous. He probably wasn’t. Serena had said that there was something wrong inside his brain. She hadn’t said his brain specifically, but his strain all had the same problem.