Shrill screams filled the room. My mouth gaped open but my voice got stuck in my throat. For whatever reason, Daniel put our friend down. Demi's hands immediately went to his neck, trying to stop the curtain of red draping down the slit of his neck. Then, Daniel did something that made my blood boil. He grabbed Demi's hands away, and with his free hand, pulled on his hair, forcing him to bow, making the blood gushed down Demi's neck like an open faucet.

"Oh...no," Indigo slumped to the ground, crying. "Demi..."

Caprice kept pleading Daniel to stop. Scarlet continued cussing him out while his brother and Leo threw chairs at Daniel, but it just bounced off of him, not even enough to distract him. There was nothing we could do but watched as the life slowly drained out of our friend's eyes.

Lines broke out of the surface of the pool of blood on the floor, forming the cult's zodiac-inspired ritual symbol. "We had to get on our knees and draw this ourselves with brushes a while back," Daniel said, clearly amused by the convenience of the power of the Shade.

"You won't get away with this." Cato said in a low voice filled with rage.

But Daniel just scoffed at him. "I disagree."

We huddled backward to our side of the room. Daniel held up Demi's body over his head with one hand, catching the rest of Demi's blood with his mouth. I fought hard to push down the contents of my stomach coming up my throat. He licked his lips and tossed Demi's body as if our friend was a soda can he just emptied. I kept my eyes at Demi, looking for any signs that he's still alive. But he was sprawled over the floor, completely still.

"That should do it," Daniel said. Then he started speaking in a language I don't understand.

I looked around. Dark living shadows covered the walls, the door, the ceiling. Escape is impossible. Help is not coming, not that it would make any difference. Our only defense, U.V. light, is rendered useless.

It was hopeless.

I sunk to the floor, my back against the wall. My mind wandered to my parents, to our planned trip to the Ocean Park that I was looking forward to so much. They're probably asleep right now, blissfully unaware that their only son is going to die tonight. I wondered how they'll take the news when they found out in November. Especially when my dad and I reassured mom I'd be fine.

In front of me, my friends, screaming and crying. I should have been scared, knowing that one of us will suffer the same fate in a bit. Hysterical, even. But my body is washed with strange...serenity. It must have something to do with accepting that I'm next that I find myself at peace.

Cato sat beside me. "What's the plan?"

I can feel the corners of my mouth curling up into a smile. Did he really just ask me for a plan?

"We die. That's the plan," My smile became laughter. Uncontrollable, wheezing laughter. I laugh till tears rolled down my face. My friends turned around to look at me. Shock and worry are written all over their faces. Except Cato's.

"Look at you," I said to him. "Too cool to be scared. You'd make a great Spock, you know? How's your Vulcan?"

He hit me.

"Guys!" Harmony yelled. "Are you seriously fighting right now? Demi's dead!"

I pushed myself up from the floor. He grabbed me by my uniform and forced me to stand up.

"Was it something I said?" I sneered.

But he fixed me with his serious eyes. "You don't give up. Not now. Not after what Eris did for you."

I gritted my teeth. "Oh yeah, well how about you come up with something and I'll do the punching."

I swung hard that he staggered backward, releasing his grip on me.

Harmony stood between Cato and me, pushing us away from each other. "That's enough!"

"You can figure this out," Cato said, wiping the blood from his lips. "You're just not looking."

"Oh, I'm not looking?" I said. "The shadows covered every inch of the room, the floor, the ceiling, cutting us off from outside help and preventing any real chance of escape, trapping us here with that guy who wants to use us as guinea pigs for his science project. We have no way to defend ourselves. Our only chance is the sun but I doubt Dr. Frankenstein over there would just sit quietly."

"Herack Mea, Azgarmoth!" Daniel finished the chant.

Just then, red light shone from the circle.

"Um, kids," Daniel said. "It's cool that you're planning on stopping me and all but could you keep it down? I'm trying to work here."

I kept my eyes on Cato. "Did I miss anything?" I said.

Cato brushed Harmony's hand away and walked up to me. "Like I said, you're not looking. We have something more powerful than sunlight behind me."

I got his meaning immediately. "And you assumed I can just use his magic circle?"

"He's already activated it," Cato said. "All we have to do is figure out how to use it."

"If it were easy," Daniel said, stretching his back. "Everyone would have done it. It's not like you can just repeat what I've just said." Then he exhaled, slowly, and closed his eyes. He started chanting in that language I don't understand again.

Cato ignored him. "So I was thinking. If that summoned that Shade, maybe we can use it to unsummon it."

The place darkened. The symbol shone brighter. Arcs of red lightning shot out. The red lights died out. I couldn't tell if it worked because Daniel didn't look any different. "That's one down," he said. "Eleven to go." Then his stomach spat out the bodies of Kent and Eris.

Daniel looked down at the bodies of Kent and Eris. "These kids won't be going anywhere," he said. "Maybe I'll start with the live ones?"

He stepped out of the symbol and closed in.

But we were already hugging the wall. There was nowhere to go. We screamed as he gets closer. But my mind was on what Cato had said. Maybe he's right. Maybe we can use it against him. The only reason why no one was able to replicate the ritual was that they don't have the spell to activate it. I remembered what Major Coleman said back at the museum. Without the proper incantation, drawing the symbol is no different from a doodle. But now, Daniel has activated it. I just have to copy what he's doing.

It's just a few steps more until he's on top of us.

The front row of our group armed themselves with the plastic chairs. I thought about picking one up but I decided to slink to the back. Think! I told myself. Cato gave me something to work with. Now my mind is in an overdrive to put the pieces together.

First is the offering, our blood. Well, that's easy. Just get close to him and he will do the rest. But that means that whoever was being drained was surely going to die. I'm not going to do that. There are nine prime candidates here, ripe for the picking. I'll just wait for him to pick his next target and launched myself after him. This isn't the time to be a hero. Besides, if this works, I could save all of them and get rid of the Shade, once and for all. Everyone wins.

Daniel took a step closer. Darius threw his chair at him, who he just flicked aside.

Come on! Focus! I thought. So I've got the offering. Next is the incantation. The only thing that made sense to me was the last three words he said. Herack Mea, Azgarmoth. But why did he pause before saying Azgarmoth? In role-playing games, all spells end with the name of the god they were trying to summon. Is that why he paused? Because Azgarmoth is the name of his deity? But what's Herack and Mea? I can't just say these words without knowing their meaning.

Daniel yanked the plastic seats away from Leo and Darius' hands. I'm too late.

I closed my eyes. I didn't want to see who it was going to be. I'm sorry. I thought. But I need more time. I kept telling myself that I wasn't abandoning them, that there was no other way. Someone's got to go.

That's when I've heard Eris' scream.

My eyelids flew open. I looked around for Eris, but all I saw was that Daniel had Cana by her wrist while my friends were pulling her back. Images of the night Eris died flashed through my mind. Her face, contorted in pain and in shock.

Is someone else going to die because of you?

A voice said inside my head.

A different kind of fear surged inside of me, overpowering the fear I had for my own life. I broke through my friends and launched myself on him.

I was just a few inches from his back when I stopped mid-air. I looked down on my body and saw his free hand, enlarged, enveloping my body completely with cold fingers. I pulled out Cana's penknife and uncapped the hidden knife inside.

"You would have made a fine acolyte," Daniel said. "Or a fine Shade but you just have to pull this stunt with that little knife?" He brought me towards the symbol. My friends kept pulling on me but Daniel swatted them aside with his free hand, sending them smacking to the walls.

I saw them getting up as we entered the symbol. But Daniel shot his free arm to the ground. Tendrils of shadows crept along my friends' bodies and pulled taut, binding them in place.

I thought I'd have some time to think while he figures out how to kill me with both his hands occupied.

But he started groaning as if in pain. His eyes were rolling up and down, side to side, both looking at different directions. Then they popped! Long and narrow, limbs of flesh came bursting out, wriggling in the air like a pair of newborn parasitic alien life forms that had just broke through its host body.

I screamed my lungs out. I crossed my arms in front of me, one hand spread out, the other clutching Cana's pen knife, shielding myself from the horror. Suddenly, I'm starting to regret my actions. I didn't even know if just saying the words will make it work but my body took off before I realized that.

Then his mouth gapes open. His jaw kept dropping till I heard horrible crunching sounds as if the hinges in his jaw were being dislocated. The stench of his breath was nauseating. It made my eyes water. It smelled of rotting flesh, left to decompose under the hot sun. My stomach kept on contracting hard that I was in a constant battle forcing down the burning bile climbing up my throat. I looked at my friends, still wrapped in shadows, still screaming my name.

Swarms of the same but narrower appendages came out of his mouth, his nose, and his ears until all orifices of his face have been occupied. But many flopped down to his face and began to melt, like a candle, till they tear off and fell to the ground, leaving the part they've left behind bleeding. Until only those from both of his eye sockets and two from his mouth were left wriggling.

My throat was starting to hurt from screaming. Tears and sweat trickled down my face. But my mind was still clear enough to make the connection—he wasn't in full control of whatever he was doing to his body. I can use this to my advantage.

The wriggling stopped, allowing me a closer look. With all the adrenaline pumping through my body, my focus sharpened. My eyes immediately studied the muscle-like structures without me telling it to, as if my brain already knows that I'm about to die and is now in a rush to find a way out.

Each looked like tongues—veiny and sinewy—but tubular in shape, and with a mouth consisting of rows of tiny teeth. Like the mouth of a lamprey, a fish that feeds by sucking blood. And it wasn't hard to guess what they were planning to do next.

The four, remaining tongues shot through the air. Each found a spot on my neck. I screamed when they bit down, latching themselves with their teeth.

"Vergil!" Leo yelled.

"Let him go!" Cana followed.

But the pain wasn't bad. It was like being bitten by ants in four different places at once. I screamed more out of fear and shock than of in pain.

Suddenly, I'm more afraid of dying than of what I was seeing. I was a mess but the sharp, jolt of pain forced me to remember my plan. I watched the dark liquid flowing through the veins of the tongues, gorging up is it delivers my blood down Daniel's throat.

I remember how just having a small amount of my blood taken for my medical last Monday made me dizzy afterward. That experience doesn't even begin to compare to now, having these four suckers drain me empty at an alarming rate.

I tried to make it seem like it was hopeless, that he had won so that he pays no attention to what I was going to do. I put up a real fight, kicking and struggling as if in mortal fear of dying, which I was. But if this dragged on, I won't have the strength nor the sanity left to test my plan.

So I get to work. I grabbed a couple of the tongues attached on my neck with trembling hands. They were gross to touch—slippery and slimy, like the chicken intestines I helped my mom clean to make Isaw. I squeezed my hand around the two of them so that I wouldn't lose my grip. The tongues felt hollow. They didn't offer much resistance. Alternating between sobbing and gasping for air, I brought Cana's penknife down on them and sliced them off.

He threw his neck back, the other mouths shrieking in pain. That disengaged the suckers on my neck. I could feel the blood flowing freely down the wounds on my neck when I pulled the severed tongues off.

"Ow," one of the mouths said in Daniel's voice. His own lips were drawn to a smile. The two, mouths cackled in chorus, clearly enjoying my struggling. Of course, he wasn't worried; he knows how futile what I was doing, he knows I wouldn't be able to do any real damage to him, and he knows how his tongues will simply regenerate. And sure enough, his tongues were whole again, and attached themselves on spots on my neck once more.

I can feel my strength fading. Keeping my eyes open was getting difficult. My entire body was shivering not only out of fear but also because of how cold it suddenly had become. But now I have everything I need. Just in time too, because my thoughts were becoming hazy. Any longer and I might lose too much blood to retain rational thoughts.

It's now or never.

The tongues I was holding still had drips of my blood inside them. But just to be sure, I used them to wipe the blood that had run down my neck before it thickens and dries up; making sure that each is covered with my blood. Then I let it go. My mind was fuzzy. But I was able to say the only words I know of the incantation in my head.

Herack Mea, Azgarmoth.