FIGHTING THE DEMON: ARIYUS
By
Ashleigh Neame
SMASHWORDS EDITION
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PUBLISHED BY:
Ashleigh Neame on Smashwords
Fighting The Demon: Ariyus
Copyright © 2011 by Ashleigh Neame
This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Your support and respect for the property of this author is appreciated.
This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.
No Adult Reading Material
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I would like to thank my mum, who convinced me not to throw this away, Mr Dave Dearman (Author of Tui Brown and The Spiral) for inspiring me to write, and Nick Grey a.k.a B2 for mocking me and making me even more determined to write and be published. Also, many thanks to my boyfriend of almost three years (as of 2012) for reading my works. You guys are awesome.
Please note that I use New Zealand Spelling throughout. This differs from American spelling.
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Fighting The Demon Book 1: Ariyus
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Alexis rushed down the crumbling stairs in a frenzy of nerves. She was late for work again and couldn’t find her car keys. She ran into her shabby kitchen, almost slipping on the puddle that had formed from the overflowing kitchen sink.
“Shit!” she cursed, running to turn off the taps. Her feet skidded on the worn lino.
She emptied the sink and moved to the coffee machine. The last dregs of coffee were sitting at the bottom. Having no time to make any more, she added lukewarm water and grabbed her favourite coffee mug down from the cabinet overhead. As she opened the door it came off – the hinges had obviously rusted through. She slammed it down on the wobbly kitchen table and turned back to her coffee. Cold. She put it in the microwave, but it was on the blink again. Frustrated, she downed the soggy mixture and slammed her cup on the counter.
“Disgusting,” she spat.
She turned away from the empty mug and searched for her car keys. Nowhere could she find them. She saw her flatmates keys peeking out from under the fridge and dived for them. She was sure her flatmate had taken her car when he couldn’t find his own keys.
She tucked the keys in her pocket and ran to the back door. The front door had long since been boarded over.
A fat grey rat scurried in front of her and she screamed, flailing her arms and dropping her bag. She scooped it up before the rat found residency inside it and pulled on the door. It jammed on her first pull. She tried again but the door still wouldn’t open. She looked out of the window and saw that it had been boarded up too.
She went to the laundry and climbed on top of the washing machine so she could reach the window. She jimmied it open and looked out. The rosebush was directly below her, but that couldn’t be helped. She jumped out of the window and shredded her tights on the thorns.
“Argh!” she screamed, pulling her tights off and stuffing them in her bag. God, she really needed to find a new place to live.
She stood up and ran out to the roadside. As she suspected, her flatmate had taken her car. She unlocked his car, put the key in the ignition, and switched the car on. As she moved into gear and pulled away, the exhaust expelled a loud ‘bang!’ and small volumes of smoke started streaming from under the bonnet.
Alexis was so preoccupied that she didn’t even notice the dark-skinned man watching her from the bushes.
~*~*~
Ariyus shimmered back to the underground and bowed to his master. His knees cracked on the hard cobblestone floor.
He murmured and apology before standing up, his hands crossed and head bowed.
“Well?” his master asked impatiently. “Did you find out who it is?”
“I know who she is,” he said gruffly, in his low voice. His mouth was hidden by a giant moustache and distorted by the unsightly scar on half of his face.
“And?” His master’s silky voice was tainted with boredom, and a hint of desperation. It echoed around the chamber and spookily whispered his words back to him.
Ariyus shifted uneasily. “She is no older than twenty-two, perhaps. Light brown hair, violet eyes. She has an intense aura – I know that she is the one with the power.”
“Well done,” praised his master, as he toyed with a gold coin. “I knew feeding you that aura reading witch was a good idea.”
Ariyus bowed deeply at the waist and shimmered out.
~*~*~*
“You’re late.”
Her boss was not pleased. Alexis watched apprehensively as her boss swivelled in her chair, tapping her pen in a upbeat tempo on the dull, pine desk.
Alexis bowed her head, worrying.
“You do realise that this is your last warning? If it happens again then you’re out.” Her boss’ voice was stern and sharp. The tempo of the pen increased.
“Yes, ma’am,” Alexis replied in a tiny voice. Even her supposed delicate good looks and honest soul could not get her out of this situation.
“Remember, Alexis. Just because you are my best friend’s niece does NOT mean that I will continue to be lenient. The rest of the staff are asking questions.”
Alexis bowed her head.
“Just remember Alexis, no more warnings.”
Alexis sniffed unhappily. It wasn’t totally her fault that she was late.
“Stop crying, you still have a job.” Her boss shooed her out of her office.
Alexis sighed and made her way back to her desk, where she stared at the plans for a new shopping mall downtown. It was an enormous project, and she was the rookie in charge of it. If she stuffed up on one tiny detail then she was out for sure. She would go down as the biggest idiot decorator in history. She trusted herself to get it right, but this mall had a very small budget for such a big place and really, a master was needed to pull it off.
She sighed again, feeling somewhat dejected.
“I am never going to pull this off,” she announced to thin air.
“Oh, come on,” smiled her co-worker, Andrew. He had peeped around to her cubicle when he heard her sigh. “You have the most brains in this building.”
“Right,” she said, turning to face him. “That’s why I live in a condemned, boarded up building with a flatmate who steals my car.”
“Right,” he replied, smiling. “You know, there’s a spare room at mine if you’re interested. Cheap rent, too.”
“Let me guess, it’s boarded up too?”
Andrew laughed and shook his head. “No way, just the opposite. Seven bedrooms, four bathrooms, two living areas. It’s huge. Some old lady rents it out for, like, fifty kaching a week.” He rubbed his fingers together, indicating money. “You wanna come and check it out after work?”
Alexis hesitated, wondering if she should. She didn’t even know the guy, really.
Andrew saw the hesitation in her eyes. “Don’t worry, there are four other girls. It’s totally respectable.”
“Ok, sure,” Alexis replied. That was a huge weight off her chest. She hated living in that boarded up hell hole. What could be worse?
~*~*~
Ariyus watched as she moved around the office. He was pretending to be a client, transmogrifying himself into a famous basketball player. Thank god he had eaten that witch, Hannah.
“So, Mr. Carter,” the annoying employee was saying. “You would be best to look at upwards of fifteen thousand dollars for the kind of redecoration that you want.”
Ariyus looked at the employee without blinking. “I heard that Alexis Osiris works here. I would like to see her instead. I've heard that she’s quite skilled at doing luxury redecorations on a low budget.”
“I'm sorry, sir, she is busy with the new downtown mall. She won’t have time for anything else for the next few months.”
“I don’t care,” Ariyus growled. “I wish to see Alexis Osiris NOW!”
Alerted by the yelling coming from Andrew’s booth, Alexis rushed around to see what was wrong. Before she could get there, however, huge bangs and crashes filled the room.
“Someone call security!” she heard someone yell.
Alexis stood in the doorway, horrified at what she saw. Andrew was in the corner, whimpering. His desk was turned at a funny angle and on its side. A big, muscled, dark-skinned man with a huge scar on his face was standing in the middle of the room. He turned when he sensed her, snarling.
Terrified, Alexis waved her hands and froze the room. The man froze for a second but fought through. He unfroze and growled even more threateningly.
“You shouldn’t have done that, Alexis Osiris!” he sneered, stomping his feet. “I am more powerful than you!”
Alexis backed out of the room and grabbed her keys, hurrying to her filing cabinet. She unlocked the bottom drawer and pulled out her diary. She had kept it since she was a little girl, when her mother was still alive. She remembered her mother telling her about witches fighting demons, and writing them down in a diary for Alexis. Alexis didn’t know that her mother was a witch, until she started developing powers, too.
Alexis flicked through the pages, looking for the picture of the demon invading her workplace. She couldn’t find it fast enough and the demon crashed into her cubicle, pushing everything over and creating a huge mess. She turned around and froze him again, moving her desk (and anything else heavy that she could find) on top of him. She thanked her lucky stars that she could move things with her mind. She never would have been able to move those by herself.
She turned back to her diary and held her hands over the pages. She willed them to open to the right page. A wind picked up and the pages flipped by themselves, eventually falling open to the right page.
Alexis turned around and saw that the demon had unfrozen and was struggling to move. She froze him again and turned back to the page.
Ariyus.
A recently ‘born’ demon (of the last century) that was converted after an almost fatal car crash. He was gifted the power to absorb a witches powers by eating them. He is a particular favourite of the Demon King because of his near invincibility.
“Shit! He’s near invincible?” Alexis turned to look at him, horrified.
“That’s right, bitch. You can’t defeat me,” Ariyus laughed.
Alexis froze him again and read on.
Ariyus was deathly allergic to peanuts in his human life and is still sensitive to them if inhaled. A simple jar of peanut butter is enough to kill him.
“Peanut butter?” Alexis laughed. “That’s all it will take to kill you?”
Alexis continued to laugh at Ariyus. She laughed so hard that she didn’t realise that she had no peanut butter.
“Do you have any peanut butter?” Ariyus smiled evilly. “Of course you don’t. You’re allergic too. I can sense it in your aura.”
Alexis stopped laughing and froze. She hadn’t thought of that.
“See?” Ariyus’ laugh mocked her.
Alexis froze Ariyus and read some more.
He can also be killed by sticking a demonic blade into his stomach, or chanting this simple spell.
Alexis read the spell to herself and smiled. She turned towards Ariyus and, despite being exhausted after freezing him so many times, she did not stop.
She gulped in a deep breath and then looked at Ariyus. She unfroze him and stared at him.
“Evil eyes look unto thee, may you soon extinguished be. Bend my will to the power of three, Eye of Earth, evil and accursed.”
The spell hung in the air for a moment. Light seemed to burst from inside Ariyus’ stomach and he looked down at himself.
“No!” he cried. “How can this happen to me? He promised me near invincibility!” He shook his fists in the air and his body exploded in a burst of flame, sending ashes into the air. When the ashes floated down and touched the carpet, they disappeared in a cloud of smoke, with a small ‘poof!’
Everyone but Alexis was disoriented. She knew that she was now a fully-fledged witch, thanks to her first demon vanquish. She hoped her mother would be proud of her.
Poor Andrew was especially disoriented. He was the one who Ariyus had attacked in the beginning. Alexis fished out her memory dust from a pocket in the diary and blew some at his face. It cleared and relaxed. He would be ok, just a little dazed for a while.
She heard the familiar tap tap tappity-tap of stilettos. She knew who was coming. She stood up and turned around and saw her boss standing in the doorway. It didn’t take a genius to figure out what was coming.
“I'm sorry Alexis. I can’t keep you here anymore. I don’t know how but you were involved with whatever happened here, and it’s going to mean a lawsuit for me. I can’t risk having you here anymore. I'm sorry. Our lawyers will be in touch about your final pay and reference.” Her now ex-boss looked disappointed in her and she hung her head.
“I'm sorry,” Alexis replied.
“That’s ok, Alexis,” her ex-boss said sympathetically. “Good luck finding a new job.”
Alexis grabbed a box and began packing up. She soon left, feeling oddly buoyant.
END
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