by Leia Stone
“Kill her!” the siren roared at the demon, who also looked like he’d taken a bullet.
The demon looked from me to my illusion, and deciding on my projection, leaped straight for it.
Bad idea.
With a battle cry, I surged forward and brought my katana down on the back of his neck, severing his meaty head in one clean slice. I’d never felt that powerful, like my magic was surging wildly through me and lending me super strength. It also felt a little dangerous, like I hadn’t given it direction, and so it was capable of anything.
“You little meddlesome bitch!” the siren roared.
I sensed a thud at my back and was pleased to see Brock, in his wolf form but with the seal skin still attached. He’d probably used his alpha power to come through the water wall, and now we were going to kill this bitch once and for all.
‘I’ll carve her up, you take off her head,’ I told him through our pack link.
Brock gave a wolfish grin.
Cass was silent, watching from his post on the wall. It looked like his cuffs kept him from doing magic; otherwise he’d be helping.
Brock and I stalked toward the siren and a grin spread across her lips as she built a water ball in her hands.
“Don’t you know?” she cackled. “My sisters and I are some of the most powerful creatures in all the underworld. There’s nothing you and your mutt can do to weaken us.”
Pulling my magical shield over myself, because I knew she was about to throw that water ball at my face and try to drown me, I felt my projections pop out of existence. It was too hard to concentrate on them any longer anyway.
Holding my katana out before me, I stretched my purple magic along the blade. “Wanna bet?”
Taking in a deep breath, she blew on the ball in her hand. It flew across the room with lightning speed, covering Brock’s entire wolf muzzle in water.
Oh damn! The protection I’d placed over Brock earlier seemed to have fizzled out along with my projections.
When she threw another water ball at Cass, I snapped back into motion.
Instead of freaking out, like the siren no doubt expected me to, and like I really wanted to, I charged forward with my father’s sword, so much rage coursing through my veins I thought it might consume me.
The next water ball came right for me … but I was ready. It disintegrated as it hit my shield and splashed across my face. A purplish blast of magic shot from the tip of my sword and wrapped around her throat like a rope. The panic in her eyes brought me the satisfaction I had been searching for since these sirens started wreaking havoc on Earth.
I needed to end her quickly so I could help Brock and Cass. While my purple magic choked her, she threw water around the room wildly. In an expert maneuver that would have made Haru and Reo happy, I cut across her abdomen with one slash.
Blood, mixed with water, gushed from her stomach, and I wasted no time in bringing my elbow up to clip her in the chin. She threw her head backward and exposed her throat.
Kill shot.
Bringing my katana up, I cut into her neck with every ounce of strength I had. I wasn’t prepared for what happened next. Hissing steam erupted from her body as her head fell to the ground. Then murky red water gushed from her neck like a waterfall, pooling around her body.
What. The. Fuck?
‘Evie!’ My gaze flicked over to see Cass was drowning. The water ball that the siren had thrown had consumed his entire head. Brock seemed to have used his alpha magic to expel his water bubble and was chewing at Cass’ cuffs, to no avail. They had to be magically protected or Brock’s canines should have caused some damage.
‘The seal skin saved me,’ Brock told me hurriedly. Ahh, so that was it.
Without thinking, I burst forward and built up purple magic in my palms. I tried to shape it, intending to somehow counteract the water ball, but it just sort of built into a flat pancake. Fuck, it would have to be good enough. When I reached my bestie, I threw it over his mouth and waited. Red-tinged water was rising rapidly in the small cavern, already at my ankles, and I wondered what kind of shit I’d just unleashed by killing one of the famous siren sisters. The hissing releasing from her neck got louder. I worried she was going to blow like some water bomb.
Cass coughed, spitting the water out and gasping for air, my purple magic finally helping him breathe.
Thank God.
“Cass!” I whimpered, clinging awkwardly to him as he was still pinned to the wall.
“You shouldn’t have come for me,” he whimpered.
Nonsense. “You know that’s impossible.”
Brock urged me to stay on task: ‘The gate. We gotta get out of here. I can’t break his chains.’
Right. The demon army was marching for the gate, and I was pretty sure the other two sirens would have felt the death of their sister. The water was up to my knees. Being underground in a cave filling with water had my lungs hiccupping with panic. I grabbed the chain pinning Cass to the wall and flooded it with my purple-hued magic.
Nothing happened.
Cass yanked in vain against the chains that bound him. “Just go! I’ll figure it out.”
“Nobody is going anywhere!” I shouted.
‘Evie, you promised,’ Brock said in my head. ‘The baby.’
I growled. ‘I fucking lied, okay?’
Cass was my family. I had to figure this out. Like hell I was going to leave Brock behind to deal with who knew what might pop up next.
I rubbed my face in anxiety.
Think.
How do I break magical cuffs when I’m a shit magic user? Think, think, think.
Then it hit me. I didn’t have to break the cuffs. I could let Tianna or Cho do that. I just needed to disconnect them from the wall.
Leveraging my foot against the wall, I slid my katana into the opening between the chains of the cuffs and the ring that held them in place.
Please don’t fucking break my sword. That was literally the last thing I needed right then.
With every ounce of strength I could muster, I pulled down on my sword with all my weight. A snap rang throughout the cave and I nearly cried in relief. It was just barely audible above the hissing dead siren about to explode.
“Let’s go!” I shouted.
I knelt in front of Cass and he leapt onto my back. No way would my vertically-challenged bestie be able to walk or fly his way out of here; there was too much water. I was going to have to piggyback him like we did in boot camp at the academy.
Brock waded through the water, which was nearly up to his neck on all fours, and took a right, back down the way we’d come. Holy shit, this entire place was filling up with water, and fast. How?
‘You killed a siren!’ Cass mind-messaged me. His voice was clearer than it had been before, though still not what it used to be.
‘I did.’ I was still stunned I’d done that. ‘Brock shot another one of them too, but with our luck, she’s still kicking.’
“How’s T?” he asked.
“She’s fine.” I had no idea if she was still with the Blacks, stuck on their land, but I didn’t think so. Not with the magical help I’d been feeling since we’d gotten here, and I didn’t want my bestie to worry.
Brock followed on my heels as I weaved in and out of the winding halls of rock, but it still wasn’t fast enough. There was too much water, and it was flooding us from all directions.
Then Brock made a hard right and I saw the water was flowing out of a hole in the side of the mountain. The same one we’d come through earlier on our way to get Cass.
The moment I stepped back out beneath the dark underworld sky, a startled scream lodged in my throat.
“My sister!” Calista shrieked somewhere up above us on the cliff face, water pouring down its steep side like a raging waterfall.
Oops. She was majorly pissed.
Brock shifted quickly into his human form, throwing on shorts from my pack, and turned to face me. “Evie, the demons will be making their way d
own to this valley any second. From there they’ll head straight up to the gate.”
There were two cliffs and a valley of lava rock between them. We needed to get across the valley and up the next cliff to where the gate sat before the demons did.
I nodded to Brock. “I got this. You take Cass.”
He frowned.
“Take him! We don’t have time!” I snapped.
Brock pulled Cass off of me and slung him on his hip like you would a toddler. At another time, the image would have made me crack a smile.
Taking in a deep breath, I pushed my awareness out, and with it my projection power. Over twenty Evies popped out beside me and in front of me.
I looked at Cass and Brock, their eyes wide. “Run!” I barked.
With that we took off like our asses were on fire. A line of twenty Evies followed us, racing across the lava rock-filled valley, hoping to reach the cliff that the gate was perched on before Calista could drown our asses.
“KITSUNE!” Calista roared, and it started to rain. The dark, dense sky above us shed fat droplets of water.
A quick, tiny peek over my shoulder and I nearly pissed myself. Hundreds of demons were descending from the top of the rock, spilling out onto the open valley—right on our tail.
Calista thrust her arm out and lightning struck from the sky and zapped one of my projections, making it disappear in an instant.
Fuck. That was efficient. Nineteen more to go.
I’d never run so fast in all my life. Brock was right next to me, half naked, with a seal skin draped across his back, carrying Cass.
When we got to the base of the rock cliff that held the gate at the top, Calista zapped another one of my projections. I could hear the footsteps of the demons they were so close, pounding a terrifying rhythm.
Without thinking, I scaled the wall like a fucking pro rock climber. I’d done some rock climbing at the academy but never without a harness and ropes. I grabbed handholds and footholds in a blind panic as Brock pushed my ass when I got stuck in parts. I had to make sure I didn’t scrape by big-ass belly. I was way too pregnant to be doing this shit. Cass urged me on, and we made it. We fucking made it to the top! Thank God the climb wasn’t fully vertical or there was no way I could have managed it.
Wasting no time, I leapt through the crack where I could see the trees of our property in Oregon.
Home sweet home.
“So nice of you to finally join us,” a male voice called over my shoulder, and I swallowed hard.
Turning slowly, my gaze landed on three Akuma, one of them holding a knife to my father’s throat.
Oh fuck. Take me back to the underworld.
19 Akuma douchebags
“Drop the knife and back away from my dad,” I snarled, drawing my katana, sensing Brock climbing out of the gate behind me with Cass on his back a few moments later.
The Akuma demon threatening my dad only sneered, its ugly black teeth on full display. “Not until you open the gate to let our demon army through.” He ran a gray tongue across sharp teeth, and bent further over my dad in his wheelchair, pressing the black blade against my dad’s throat until he drew a few droplets of blood.
I squeezed the hilt of my sword, working to remain calm. There was no way in hell I was going to let anything happen to my dad, especially not now that I finally had a chance at a life with him in it. But I also wasn’t opening that damn gate.
I edged farther away from the gate, closing the distance between me and the fucker threatening my dad. There was no easy move here. The three Akuma were much like the ones who had tried to kill me at the selkie cave. They looked almost like humans, if said humans were strung out on pure evil. The two men and one woman were hulked out, bulging muscles straining through minimal clothing. What looked like black sludge circulated through their veins, visible just beneath the surface of their flesh. But the worst thing about them were their eyes. This particular set of demons had black, pupil-less eyes, rimmed in red; dirty, black, stringy hair framed them.
The other two demons threatened Cho and Tianna. Each held a similar obsidian blade pressed to the witches’ throats. Neither woman appeared afraid, but rather biding their time for the opportunity to rip the fucking Akumas’ throats out. Even the composed Cho revealed murder in her gaze.
The Akuma threatening my dad bent his face closer to him, but his stare remained on me as he spoke. “Open the gate, kitsune, and we’ll let all of you go.”
There was no chance they would. The Akuma weren’t the kind of snuggly demons to leave survivors behind. Besides, I was going to kill every single one of them for coming here and threatening the people I loved. My patience was at an all-time low. We’d only just managed to recover Cass, only to return to this...
“T,” Cass whispered, edging around me, his gaze jumping across all of the threats.
Tianna’s eyes brimmed with emotion as she took in her little pink lover. This should have been a happy reunion. The fae-witch smiled at Cass, and my bestie took another measured step toward her. Like me, he was moving into position to take the Akuma down.
“Don’t fucking take another step,” the Akuma seethed.
Oops. Guess we weren’t being very sneaky.
Brock was poised to move in the opposite direction as Cass, but now he froze, broadcasting through my mind, making an announcement to the entire pack: ‘Wolves, we have a situation. Three demons are on pack land, and two very pissed-off sirens will be trying to make their way through the gate to us any minute now, a demon army right behind them. I need all hands on deck. Wherever you are, whatever you’re doing, head to the gate immediately.’
Had I not been able to hear him, I wouldn’t have realized he was communicating. A few moments later, Brock spoke just to me. ‘Ray is getting Haru, Reo, and Molly. We’ll have more than a hundred wolves to back us up in minutes.’
I didn’t reply in any way. Brock didn’t even look at me, his eyes pinned on the Akuma. Some of the more intelligent of demons, it was better for them not to get overly suspicious. If we moved fast, maybe we’d have the chance to take them out before they could hurt my dad.
I had no doubt Calista was on her way. If the bartender demon had managed to walk out of the underworld without a problem, the gate wouldn’t keep her out. She’d slither her way through the crack, and she’d bring her scary-ass sister with her, even if the other siren was wounded.
Calista had been bad enough before. Now that I’d killed one of them, and Brock had shot the other one, she was worse. She was going to be a pain in my ass until I lopped her head off too.
‘Let’s kill these assholes before they hurt my dad and the sirens can get up here,’ I said to Cass, and then Brock.
“Open. The. Gate,” the Akuma growled a final time, pulling the blade tighter against my dad’s throat. A small rivulet of blood rolled down his neck and I swallowed hard.
“Okay, okay. I’ll do it,” I lied, half holstering my katana and placing my hands palms up. “I need to connect with the earth,” I told him. Bending down, I placed my palms over the earth and tried like hell to come up with a plan. I didn’t know how to open or close that damn gate, but my dad’s life depended on it.
My dad was the only one without some sort of supernatural powers, and he was the only one bound to a wheelchair. Cho and Tianna looked ready to tear their captors limb from limb the first chance they got, and I was pretty sure Cho was hoping to punish the Akuma hunched over my dad.
But the blade was too firmly pressed against my dad’s throat. And the witches had no leeway either.
We needed a distraction, and if there was anyone who was good at distracting, it was Cass. With his hot-pink fur and sparkling personality, there was no one better.
‘Cass,’ I mind-messaged. ‘I need a big distraction. Can you handle that with the cuffs still on?’
‘Oh I can definitely handle it. I’m going to strangle that nasty demon for daring to touch my woman.’
‘Brock,’ I said. ‘Cass is g
oing to distract them. Be ready to move in.’
Brock cracked his neck, the fingers of both his hands wiggling, ready to grab the guns at his sides. He could have them drawn, aimed, and shot in seconds.
‘Ready?’ Cass asked me.
‘Go for it.’
And go for it Cass did. I wasn’t sure what I’d been expecting since I hadn’t really thought things through. But if I had thought of it, I’d probably have pictured Cass using his illusion magic to project a threatening monster or something. He didn’t have his hoverboard, so he couldn’t zip around them to distract, and with his hands bound maybe his magic was limited—his signature red magic balls all originated in his palms.
Regardless, I hadn’t expected what he actually did, and I was pretty sure I could say the same for every single person and creature gathered in the clearing next to the gate to the underworld. As one, we all stared at my furry best friend, whose cuffed hands were above his head while he undulated his entire body side to side. He started to hum his own music while wiggling his hips to the beat. With his shiny gold Speedos in place, it was hard to miss any of his movements.
“Badum, badum, badum,” he sang, eyes closed as he danced to the beat of his own drum, stepping into full view of the Akuma. He flicked his pelvis forward a few times in moves that would have made Michael Jackson proud, circling his hips while he did a slow turn for his captive audience.
Cass made his hot pink fur, potbelly, horns, and tiny wings work to the max for him as he gyrated.
‘W-what is he doing?’ Brock spluttered into my head.
‘Isn’t it obvious? He’s distracting.’ The only problem was that I’d also let him distract me.
Shaking every part of his body at once, he really got into his groove, humming even louder, working his booty like he was born for the role. He was moving like a tiny demon imp stripper, and for the first time I was glad that his hands were bound. If not, he might have taken his task of distraction to levels none of us but Tianna were ready for.
“What the hell?” The Akuma holding my dad watched my bestie in horror, his knife hand slackening as the shock of seeing a random stripper imp settled into him.