by Laken Cane
“Nearly?”
He nodded. “In the end, we gave him to someone who believes he’ll be useful someday.” He cupped her cheek. “Don’t ask me who has him.”
She might have insisted, but she didn’t really care. Not then. “Let’s go find Vogdris and get Maggie back.”
“I love you,” he told her. “You know that.”
“Yes.”
He blew out a hard breath, then stood and took her hand, pulling her to her feet. “I won’t stop trying to find you. If it takes me forever, I will not stop until I free you.”
“I know.” For a second, they stood there holding each other, both of them terrified it might be the last time they would be together.
Finally, hand in hand, they slipped from the house and got into Asa’s car. He drove aimlessly through the city, and they waited for the call that would tell them where the soul-stealer waited.
Waited for Krista.
When the heaviness of night came to shove the sun away, the call came. They arrived at the site, and Luke and Talon arrived not two minutes later. Barbie pulled up a few seconds after them.
Together, the slayers and Asa would face down Vogdris. They’d watch as Krista did the only thing she could do to free the souls. To free Maggie.
Luke pulled her into his arms. “I don’t want you to give yourself to him, Kris.” His voice was hoarse, his eyes full of despair, and briefly, something dark flashed through his fierce stare. Something that said he might try to keep her from sacrificing herself. Something that said he might knock her out, throw her over his shoulder, and get the hell out of there.
The others wouldn’t have tried to stop him.
“Your sweet battered face,” he murmured at last, as he let the thoughts go. “I will find Rafael. I will do whatever I have to do to get you returned to us. We all will.”
Talon and Barbie nodded. Asa stared into the distance, trying to find the blankness that was much preferable to the pain.
“I know. And I will fight him from the inside. I’ll make him wish he’d never—”
“Slayer.”
She jerked and turned toward the voice, a voice so full of gravel and savageness that he no longer sounded like a man. Or even a soul-stealer or a demon. He stepped from the shadows, and she saw that he no longer looked like a man, either.
Built like a rocky mountain, he was bent and bulging with muscle, around ten feet tall, and glowing with a red shine. All around him the souls swirled, and she could not only see them, she imagined she could hear them.
“Maggie,” she cried. “Maggie, I’m here.”
Vogdris grunted. “She has no ears.” He made a sound and his shoulders shook, and she realized he was laughing.
She straightened her back. “I’m here to give you what you want. Release the other souls, and you can have mine.”
He didn’t know her power was gone. He didn’t know he’d be getting her, but not her power. If he’d known, he might not have wanted her. She wasn’t asking him to find out.
“You are the power I need to return to my world,” he admitted. “Come to me.”
“Release the souls.”
“Send the others away and I will release them.”
His odd voice vibrated with eagerness as his gaze was drawn to her mark. Not only did he recognize that there was strong, unique power inside her, but he also wanted to take something that belonged to Triganoth.
Luke, Barbie, and Talon backed away without her having to tell them, but Asa stayed at her side and refused to leave her.
Vogdris didn’t seem to care. Asa was human and no real threat to the monstrous demon lord. And as soon as the others were out of reach, Vogdris kept his word. He released the souls. All of them but one. All of them but Maggie.
And then he showed Krista why he didn’t mind Asa staying at her side.
He shot out a blast of magic, whirled it around Asa’s neck, and yanked him high into the air. Almost immediately, even before Krista could scream, he released Maggie. Krista could have sworn she felt the girl rush by her.
“Now, come here,” Vogdris said. “Before this man dies a horrible death.”
“Krista,” Luke yelled. “Wait!”
But she would not allow Asa to be sacrificed for her. The demon lord had to be dealt with, once and for all. He had to leave her world, or Maggie would never be safe. No one would.
She ran toward him, and when she was a couple of feet away she leaped, and he released Asa to grab her. He wrapped his magic around her, rushing into the shadows even as he bit into her neck.
Pain screamed over her an instant before her blood started to churn—she could feel it like a tornado of fire in her veins—and then it was as though a sharp-edged hose punctured her flesh and began to siphon out her blood. Her soul began to leave with it. It was not something she could describe. Her body fell away, and the soul-stealer had her.
But at the very last second, she saw Rafael. He tore through the air toward her, a blur of speed, and he slammed her power back into her. And though her body lay crumpled upon the earth, it didn’t matter. She was not her body.
She was trapped inside Vogdris, but she had her power. She didn’t know what would happen as she dove deep inside him, letting her power build, then forcing it to explode. Would it kill her, trapped as she was? As long as it killed him, that was all she could ask.
She’d proven to the angels that she would choose the light. She would give herself to save her city, the souls, her daughter. The angels were giving her one last task. If it killed her, it would be worth it. She didn’t want to be remembered as the slayer who’d turned bad. Now she wouldn’t be.
And Maggie was alive. She was home, right then, waking up in Beth’s arms.
Krista smiled, and then, she brought her power with all her might. There was something extra in it. A little bit of the angels. And a little bit of angel power was a hell of a lot of power. Vogdris exploded from the inside out, obliterating the moon as parts of him—his blood, his bone, his darkness—were flung into the sky, the city, the earth.
He would not come back from that.
She looked up and saw a hand reaching into the darkness. She clutched it, and Rafael pulled her into the light. He smiled, his beauty so raw, so terrible, so powerful that she thought she couldn’t live through seeing it.
Then she knew nothing more, and that nothingness was like never having existed at all.
29
Run.
The echoes of a voice or remnants of a bad dream startled her awake and she jerked upright, her heart pounding. “Trig?”
Suddenly she missed him with an overwhelming sadness, and she pressed her fingers to her mark as though she might find him there.
Asa and Luke sat up as well, reaching for her.
“Kris?”
She tried to take a breath. “It’s too dark. I can’t breathe.”
Luke clicked on the light as Asa pushed himself against the headboard and pulled her into his arms. “What’s wrong?”
“I thought…” She inhaled deeply, then blew the breath out slowly. “I thought I heard Triganoth.”
“Just a dream,” Luke said. He climbed from the bed. “I’ll get you some water.”
“Luke…”
“And I’ll check on Maggie.”
“Thanks.” They’d killed the soul-stealer, but the effect he’d had on them—on the entire city—would not fade for a very long time.
She settled back against Asa’s chest. “Something bad is here, Asa.”
“I know.”
The bodies of the three children and the two adults found in the woods had only been the beginning. Every day after that, two or three bodies were found in Edgefield. They’d been fed upon and their necks snapped.
Something bad was there, and it was hungry.
The council had officially cleared her—needless to say, she wouldn’t be going to Darkwell—but they were itching to get her and the other slayers started on the new case. People were dying. There wasn’t
a lot of time to recover from Vogdris.
“I’m not ready,” she told Asa.
“You’ll always be ready to fight the enemy. It’s what you do.”
“I think I’m done with that.”
He tightened his embrace. “I wish you could be. I wish I could take you and Maggie away from here.”
But there was bad shit everywhere, and they were destined to fight it. It wouldn’t matter where they went.
Might as well stay in their city with their people.
“At least we have a cause,” she murmured. “A purpose. I guess that’s more than some people have.”
He smiled down at her. “Your purpose is to protect people. Mine is to protect you.”
“If not for Rafael, I would not be here.”
“If not for Rafael,” Asa said, angry, “you would not have been forced to face the soul-stealer without your power.”
She hadn’t seen the angel since the night they’d killed Vogdris. Maybe he’d gone back to his world. Maybe he’d helped her though he’d been expressly forbidden to, and his punishment was to wander the earth, bleeding and alone, his wings clipped, exiled from his home.
Luke came back into the room carrying a glass of ice water. “Talon parked a cot outside Maggie’s room. He said he’d found her in the kitchen drinking milk and knew she’d had a nightmare. She didn’t argue too hard when he told her he was sleeping in the hallway.”
Krista sighed. “I’d still be sleeping with her if she hadn’t thrown me out.”
“She doesn’t want to give in to her fear,” Asa said. “She’s a strong girl.”
“She’s amazing,” Luke said, handing Krista the water. “She got that from her mother.”
Krista smiled at him before taking a long drink, then gave him back the glass. The cold water seemed to help clear her mind. She patted the mattress beside her. “Come back to bed.”
He returned to bed and she took his warm hand, pausing for a second to think about how very good it made her feel to have those two men in her bed. In her life.
“Okay,” she said, only just that minute realizing she was going to bring up a touchy subject. “I want to know. Who has Michael?”
They’d been waiting for her to ask, because Michael’s girlfriend had been at the house that day, and the day before, and the day before that. She thought they’d done something to him.
She wasn’t wrong, but they weren’t telling her that.
Neither Luke nor Asa replied.
“Look,” she said. “It’s time for him to go home. He may be an asshole, but we can’t abduct people and hand them over to weirdos who want to keep them in case they’re useful in the future. We can’t do that. I want you both to go in the morning, pick him up, and take him home. He’ll keep his mouth shut about what happened.” She looked from one man to the other. “He’ll be afraid not to.”
Luke and Asa traded a long look.
“I’m waiting,” she said.
“Stella,” Asa said reluctantly. “Stella wanted him.”
Krista closed her eyes. “Oh. Oh my.”
“She convinced us,” Luke said. “At least we didn’t kill him.”
“Chances are,” Krista said, “she’s already discovered a spell that will turn him into a toad or a miniature warthog. I’m pretty sure he’s wishing right about now that you’d killed him instead of turning him over to a nerdy, vengeful witch.”
Luke sighed. “If he’s not dead or insane, we’ll take him home tomorrow.”
Asa nodded. “For you, Krista.”
“Good,” she said. She slid down in the bed and fluffed her pillow. “Let’s get some sleep.”
Luke didn’t have to ask—he knew to leave the lamp burning.
Held securely in their arms, she drifted once more into sleep. And in her mind lingered soft echoes of a voice urging her to run.
But she had a feeling it was much too late for that.
Epilogue
Krista.
Triganoth might not have loved her if not for the light inside her. Her light overcame his darkness. Pushed it back, spread a halo of brightness in a world of grimness, showed him what it was like to feel almost like a child again, full of eagerness and hope and wonder.
Darkness was attracted to her light—whether to extinguish it or bask in it or own it depended on the person holding the darkness.
He hung in his spelled, unbreakable chains, silent and grim, refusing to acknowledge his torturer. They could not break him, no matter how hard they tried. And they tried very, very hard.
“Your king is coming,” Astrid said, running her tongue over his bloody chest. “Will you cry for him, Triganoth?”
Astrid was the king’s twin sister, and perhaps the only person in the red-dark whose heart was blacker than his own. When the king needed someone broken, he sent Astrid to them.
But she could not break Triganoth, and terrified that she would fall out of King Arturo’s favor, she tried all the harder to give him what he wanted.
Arturo swept into the dungeon, followed by a group of fawning, fearful attendants, and rushed to Triganoth. “My sweet, sweet boy,” he gushed. “Look at you, all broken and bloody.” He ran his fingers through the blood on Triganoth’s chest, then pushed a fingernail into one of the seeping wounds.
Triganoth kept his eyes empty and his face emotionless, but inside, he sighed. Fucking demented king. Would it have been worse to have Vogdris ruling him? No. But Vogdris would never be strong enough to overthrow his king, no matter how many souls he stole. No one was strong enough to overthrow Arturo.
And the king, irate at Triganoth’s “disobedience,” had run out of patience and decided to punish him. It didn’t matter to him that Triganoth had tried. It only mattered that he had failed.
“Shall I give you one last chance?” Arturo asked, sliding his hand over Triganoth’s belly. “If I free you, my slave, will you bring back the disloyal one? I will eat him. I will eat the souls he brings with him.”
Triganoth remained motionless, quiet, empty, even when Arturo gripped his cock. It wasn’t anything he hadn’t done a dozen times before.
Arturo leaned closer to whisper into Triganoth’s ear. “If I didn’t love this beautiful thing so very much, I would cut it off. Perhaps you would obey me if took a knife to your cock, hmmm?”
But he would not. Triganoth was one of the few objects of Arturo’s affections who steadfastly refused to go willingly into his bed. He was a challenge that both fascinated and enraged the king. Obsessed him. He had never once in his long, long life faced a man woman, or child who resisted him the way Triganoth did.
And he continued to believe that one day, Triganoth would submit. Would love him. Of course, once that happened, Arturo would likely tire of him, kill him, and try to find someone else to present such a challenge.
Arturo, King of the Red-Dark, was quite mad.
He was also the most powerful being in their world. Should a challenger arrive with enough power to overthrow him, the red-dark would celebrate for eternity.
Astrid’s hatred for Triganoth was as strong and violent as Arturo’s desire for him. She would have killed him, but Arturo would have been…displeased. So instead, she hurt him, using all her considerable skills to keep him clinging to life as she tortured him nearly beyond endurance.
She put her hand over her brother’s and together, they manipulated Triganoth into an erection, using his blood as a lubricant. She used her free hand to massage Arturo through his clothing, smiling when he purred with pleasure.
Triganoth went deep into his mind.
He went to his light.
To Krista.
It was tragic to love someone but be unable to exist with them. Neither could thrive in the other’s world—not for long. He was okay with loving her from afar. He had people who depended on him. People he ruled. Unfortunately, his king would not allow him to go to them. Would not free him so he could slip up top to Krista. Their moments were brief, but even stolen moments
with her made everything else bearable.
If his king ever found out, though, he would bring Krista to him. He would snuff out her light. He would hurt her so fucking badly.
She would no longer look at her Trig as though he were worthy of her regard. She would no longer smile at him, her eyes bright and filled with goodness, and she would no longer handle him so sweetly and with such care. She would not continue to see him as no one in all the worlds had ever seen him, or love him better.
Trig shuddered, the pain of that imagined loss harsher than any torture his tormentors could devise.
He would not worry for her as long as she was hidden from his king’s eyes, and as long as she stayed in her own world. Not even Vogdris could harm her so severely as his king or his world. His delicate girl would not recover from the red-dark.
“Arturo,” Astrid murmured, “My marked one is in his place. Allow me to go above. I will fetch our traitor and I will bring him to you.”
Triganoth stiffened and his eyes flipped open. No.
“Oho,” Arturo said, releasing Triganoth’s dick. He grabbed his prisoner’s face and slammed his head back against the filthy, damp brick. “Now why, I wonder, would the thought of Astrid going above distress you so, my love?”
Triganoth cursed himself, then attempted to cover up his mistake. “Because that is my job.”
Both Arturo and Astrid stared at him, considering, eyes narrowed. Then the king tilted his head. “I don’t think so. I don’t think so at all.” He began to pace, his fingers to his square chin. “You are afraid of nothing. But Astrid’s words have caused you fear. Why?”
Astrid put a hand to her thin chest, her eyes wide. “A woman. He has fallen in love with a fucking woman.”
“Untrue.” A gleam of genuine pain sparked in Arturo’s eyes. “It is impossible. Triganoth cannot love.”
She shrugged. “Whatever you want to call it. He is afraid for a female, Brother. I would stake my life on it. Allow me to go above. I will bring you the demon lord, and I will bring you the woman.”
Triganoth knew before the king opened his mouth that he would agree, and for the first time since they had known him, Triganoth lost his calm. He roared and thrashed in his chains, and they all stood back with mouths agape, watching him.