Chapter 47: Be Gone, Demon!

Bruce reverted from his massive werewolf form and back into his regular human body. His waist was covered by only the fragments of torn jeans that remained from his transformation, and he and Silvana both smirked to one another, both privy to what needed to be done now that Duponte had revealed her true form, and as the demonic energy continued to corrupt her.

“You’ll never be strong enough to fight me like that,” Duponte angrily hissed at Bruce. Her arms grew thin and long and skeletal. Lightning whipped all around her.

“I don’t plan on fighting you,” Bruce replied calmly and in complete control. He took Silvana’s hand.

“Are you ready?” he asked her.

“Always,” Silvana said with a smile that confused and angered Duponte.

How were these two so calm in the face of her? It infuriated Duponte, and she unleashed a fierce, howling wheeze.

But the truth was, Silvana and Bruce were privy to secrets that Cecilia Duponte were unaware of. It had all been inside of Solaris’s journal, which Bruce and Silvana had read together when they were unable to sleep inside the cabin. The two had snuck out while Amelia snored gently on the futon, and discovered inside the journal’s torn and dusty pages, a way in which they may put Duponte to rest once and for all. Silvana suspected that while Solaris had taken the notes and put the pieces together, he did not see the complete image she had created. That, or he was not strong enough to do it by himself.

Otherwise, he surely would’ve ended Duponte by now.

Silvana clenched Bruce’s hand, and while Duponte raged and tried to move closer to them without much success, as if she was being pushed back by a great wind, the survivors of the species began to rise up from the snow, dusting themselves off and taking great care of the other injured. There were far more alive than Silvana had originally imagined, and she was grateful that the vampires, werewolves, and witches had the fortitude to survive the spirits’ attacks.

As she watched vampires aid witches and witches offer help to werewolves, she realized how weak and isolated Duponte really was.

Then, magical markings on the ground beneath Silvana and Bruce’s feet began to spread out like running rivers. The ground glowed a bright blue, brighter than the sky that was fighting past the crimson and black in the clouds, and pushing all of Duponte’s energy away.

“What is this spell you’re casting?” Duponte asked, her voice tainted and plagued with hatred.

She must’ve been starting to slip up, for even Solaris was beginning to move again. Indeed, her magic was weakening, and Solaris, as Bruce had done, began to shatter the magic binding him in place, first with his shoulder, then with an entire leg. Amelia, too, was finding the strength to push past the demon’s spell.

Silvana closed her eyes and envisioned a young Cecilia Duponte, craving strength and willing to do anything for it, including stealing fangs and claws from fallen werewolves and combining them into forbidden rituals. Silvana saw past the wicked deeds of the woman who had just murdered Kurt, and who had released countless spirits upon the city to terrorize its inhabitants. Silvana looked beyond the lightning storms, and the different species at war over their hatred for Duponte, and instead Silvana, rocking back and forth with her hand nestled in Bruce’s, gazed into the past, when Cecilia Duponte had been a terrified, lonely, and miserable woman who believed that power was the only way she might change her life for the better.

It was as if Silvana’s soul had left her body, and she was traveling into Duponte’s memory, pushing past all the crimson walls of hatred and black fires clouding Duponte’s mind. Curled in a ball deep in the recesses of Duponte’s soul was a version of herself she had not seen in decades, shaking and shivering with fear.

“It’s alright,” Silvana said to the shivering woman.

Silvana extended a hand. “It’s not too late to be saved.”

The woman, this scared and trembling version of Duponte looked up at Silvana, her eyes a deep shade of green, just like Silvana’s mother in all the pictures inside their house.

“I never meant for all of this,” the woman whispered weakly, as if frightened of the very sound of her voice.

“I know,” Silvana smiled. “So let’s fix it.”

Silvana reached her hand closer and the woman accepted it.

In a flash of blue light, the markings on the snowy floor had extended over to Duponte’s feet, locking her place. She writhed and contorted as the demon stretched out from her body, yanking itself away from Duponte like it was being burned just by being close to her. With an explosion of an even brighter blue light from the markings, the demon cried out and fully separated itself from Duponte, before being fizzled out by the magic that Bruce and Silvana had cast together.

It wasn’t about fighting Duponte and trying to outmatch her in strength, it was about ridding the world of evil and saving the soulless.

What was left in the demon’s wake was a beautiful middle-aged woman in a long white dress who bore a striking resemblance to Silvana’s mother. She had long, curly blonde hair that fell almost to her chest, and sparkling green eyes.

Solaris shattered out of the freezing spell, as did Angus and Amelia.

“So that’s what Cecilia Duponte really looks like without all the anger and evil,” Bruce said with a pant, exhausted at the toll the spell had taken.

“Just like my mother,” Silvana added, amazed.

Cecilia Duponte, now freed from the clutches of darkness, looked at Bruce and Silvana with a thankful face and large, grateful eyes.

Her mouth opened to say something, but a trickle of blood dribbled out from her mouth, and her comforting face became one riddled with surprise.

Duponte collapsed face first into the snow, and standing behind her was a vampire who had thrust a sword into her back, and a werewolf who had slashed at her shoulders.

“What are you doing?” Silvana shouted.

The vampire raised her sword.

“We’re ending this once and for all,” the vampire proclaimed, before thrusting the sword down towards Duponte.