Beyond the Iron Gate (The Faery Meadow Book 1)

Between earth and hell, a tall lanky man rocked back in a chair that didn’t belong to him.

A landscape painting, behind him on the wall, was full of fields of haystacks and pumpkins. The ripening and rotting gourds lay scattered across the endless painted hills he wished, like many, to rule.

His gaze veered sideways hearing the owner of the office return – his father if he knew any better.

The demon disappeared in a puff of smoke and fire. He reappeared a safe distance away from the town that was nestled at the foot of the hill of the underground.

A stone path could be seen starting at the group of black and grey buildings he looked down on. The path stretched its way up onto the hill he stood. It vanished behind him somewhere into the land of the Hallowed Woods where a group of witches gathered.

***

Something was awry in the realms below and above his. Mayor Hollow sensed a disturbance in his office. Behind his big desk was a painted portrait mapping out the domain of dead supernatural. He could see the souls drifting across it.

Good, everyone is accounted for, the demonic being thought with pride.

Two tall followers of his silently accompanied both sides of a long oval mirror that stood in the corner of his office. Their outfits were just as dark as the mayor’s eyes, and their faces, well, their faces were concealed behind the shadows of their tall pointed hoods that nearly reached the ceiling. They remained still and quiet as their jobs were entailed to be.

The surface of the mirror was a dull grey showing no reflection. When one of the mayor’s followers waved their hand in front of it, the surface wavered and a scene unfolded.

The mayor watched as the demon man hammered away at an iron sword on an ironsmith’s block. From the looks of it, he was earning a living too having already accommodated to living with the fae somehow. His form was glamoured to hide his true demonic appearance just like the mayor’s currently was to hide his appearance from the dead members of his town. Beside him, a blazing fire burned with life. The mayor didn’t know where exactly, but he knew the demon to be in the faery realm. And he knew the demon’s name was Colt. The mayor only knew because he could read his soul upon seeing his face.

If you wanted out so bad you should have come to me first, the mayor thought to himself with a small knowing smirk.

He was a little annoyed at the knowledge of a demon crossing over into the faery realm without passing through his first. His land was that of the in-between, or as its inhabitants would call it, Hegley Hallow. He was, in fact, mayor Hallow, and being an old demon, was envious of this dark-haired demon’s freedom.

The demon must have obtained a portal that let him avoid crossing paths with a gatekeeper such as he.

Because if he had come through this way I would have stopped him, the mayor concluded to himself.

Only witches, the fae, and werewolves were allowed to find a home in his realm. The darker supernaturals, such as vampires, were sent on their way to hell being too troublesome to watch over in the afterlife because there were few differences between them and demons. The mayor and his followers were of the latter, but if another demon were to enter Hegley Hallow, the order the mayor worked so hard to keep would quickly dissolve.

“What are you doing away from home?”

His followers made no notion to give away they heard their master’s words.

One did speak though. Its voice was like sandpaper. A mixture of harsh spoken whispers escaped between its razor-sharp teeth hidden behind its veiled hood, “His time is nearing its end.”

Mayor Hallow spoke with piqued curiosity, “Time, it’s an interesting thing, isn’t it? One can never have too much...”

They could only sit back and watch the changes occurring in the realms they sat in between. The mayor knew the demon’s mysterious arrival in the faery realm would create a loophole that the faeries soon would uncover. What he did not know was there was yet another demon just outside his home.

Its soul had yet to be harvested, along with his own, if the mayor knew any better. The witches had him under a spell and his son too.

After all, there was something already changing in his town of the underground. A small-town girl named Elaine had been caught up in the web of the witches too. Her born gift was to deliver such souls to the realm he ruled.

But she had forgotten and trouble would brew.