by Raquel Lyon
Sophie was over by the woods with her snout dipping down to the grass as she sniffed her way closer to the treeline—and who knew what that was lurking inside its dark depths. Did she know? Had she caught a whiff of something?
“Soph!” I called as I ran towards her. “Soph, wait! Don’t go in there!”
She kept on moving as if she hadn’t heard me.
“Sophie, come back!” I yelled, actually pointing a finger and stabbing it at the ground as I shouted.
This time she did hear me. She saw the finger, too, and bared her teeth as if to bawl me out for expecting her to heel like a dog before she vanished into the trees.
Fuck it! Why did she always have to be so damn stubborn? It was as though trouble pulled her towards it like a magnet. I hurried after her, praying to God that I found her first.
Chapter Twenty-Six
I was so focused on seeking out Sophie that I didn’t notice the body until I tripped over it. Letting out a string of expletives, I picked myself up and brushed something slimy from my jeans. When I looked back at the body, I knew immediately what it was. Entrails spilled from an open chest cavity and spewed out over the grass. Ugh. I squatted to turn the body’s flaccid neck from its unnaturally twisted position.
Mr Northrup.
I should have guessed from the suit.
Fuck.
If this was what became of someone who’d known me for five minutes, Christ only knew what suffering would befall those I lived with.
My fists clenched into balls as I straightened up and continued towards the treeline. I had to find Sophie. No way was that shit happening to her.
Looking left, then right as I entered, I searched desperately through the jumble of tree trunks. Was it too much to ask that I saw something: a shadow in the undergrowth, a glimpse of russet fur, my mate actually doing what she was told for once in her life? Any of those would have been preferable to my night vision locating nothing beyond vegetation. My ears, on the other hand, were all over a sound: fighting. And some of the grunts and cries were recognisably female.
Charlotte!
Twigs snapped under my desperate feet, and I tallied every step as though I were counting down the last minutes of her life as I wove through the trees at breakneck speed. I pulled up at the sight of her taking on two opponents at once in a small clearing.
From the way one demon was struggling to stay upright and the trails of blood striping his face, it was obvious that Char had laid into him pretty good with the large tree branch she was gripping protectively in front of her. But the fight had clearly taken its toll. Tiring, she uncharacteristically backed away from her other challenger as he continued to advance, and when she swung the branch out blindly, it missed him completely as his body arched inhumanly from the strike. What the fuck?
Careful not to reveal my presence, I snuck up behind the injured demon, grabbed him by the neck, and then swung his face sharply into a tree trunk. His body cracked and fell in pieces like a broken statue as his mate twisted to face me—and when I say twisted, I mean twisted. His feet stayed firmly in position as the top half of his body did a full one-eighty.
Gross. If I’d had the time to eat, my food would have resurfaced as I faced one of the ugliest fuckers I’d ever had the displeasure of encountering. There were Supes, and then there were just plain freaks of nature who shouldn’t be allowed to walk in any dimension. This guy was most definitely the latter.
His face looked like a half-melted candle, and a pungent odour rippled the air as his elongated jaw stretched wide to display spiked teeth longer than my fingers. The top section rose so high that it covered the vertical slits practically concealing his eyes, and his foot-long tongue wobbled like day-old blancmange as he growled, “You!”
I snuck a look behind him to Charlotte crouched on one knee, her chest heaving as she braced her hand on the ground to catch her breath.
It’s okay, love. I’ve got this.
I held my palms out. “The one and only. Let’s get this over with, shall we?”
The bottom half of the demon’s body turned to align with the top, and his jaw lowered. “If only I could. Shame I got orders to bring you in, not kill you on sight.”
“Aren’t I the lucky one? But I’d like to see you try either of those options.”
“Oh, you’re going down, dickless.”
Dickless? Me? Ha. That was rich coming from a mutant like him, whose dick was likely as flaccid as the rest of him and probably meant he reproduced through the spores on his breath or something. I beckoned him forward as my claws extended. “Have at it, big boy.”
He rushed me while I was still mid-transformation, but I leapt high to avoid his lunging jaws and landed in a tree to complete my shift.
I didn’t expect the jaws to follow me.
The demon’s head thrust through the maze of branches, his mouth snapping wildly at my limbs. I backed away and slid around the trunk to jump from the tree at the other side. When I hastened back round to the front, the demon’s neck was still stretched high into the canopy. I swiped a claw to sever it, but its fleshy length curved away from my attack without the slightest nick of skin as it shortened, and then retracted into his body.
“You think you can touch me?” he snarled. “Try again. See how close you get.”
Cocky bastard. He might be flexible, but could he avoid this?
I lowered my head and bared my fangs with a growl, then pounced straight for his head. His arms stretched out like whips and one caught me around the waist, mid-air, and flung me back against the tree trunk.
Son of a bitch.
I shook my head to clear a fog of confusion as I slid to the ground, and then blinked rapidly to bring a curious russet blur at his feet into focus.
Shit! Sophie!
She’d clamped her jaws around the demon’s leg and was hanging on for dear life as he attempted to shake her off.
So not the legs, then. Interesting. But not in the least bit useful, unless I wanted to go the slow-death route by chopping them off. Although the thought was tempting.
What the hell did Sophie think she was doing? She was no match for him. Any second now, that neck could lunge out and the teeth would make mincemeat of her.
I scrambled to my feet, ready to fly to her aid, but behind the pair, Charlotte had found a new lease of energy.
Dagger at the ready, she ran forward, and before I could warn her not to waste her strength, she took a flying leap and thrust the blade towards the demon’s back. She landed, rolled, and then looked up from her crouched position as the dagger dropped to her side. She frowned at it, more puzzled than I was that it had bounced straight off its mark, then snatched it back up. It flew from her hands again, the instant she got to her feet as Mr Stretch Armstrong extended his arm and hooked it around her waist.
That was it! That was how to stop the bastard.
Charlotte fought against his grip, gasping for breath. Her eyes pleaded with me to do something. I answered with signalled instructions of my plan, then let out a roar to remind the demon he hadn’t got rid of me yet. He turned to face me with Sophie still annoyingly tugging at his leg.
Close enough to tempt him, yet far enough away for his other arm to require a good stretch, I waited for him to take the bait. And like an A-1 sucker, he did.
When his limb lashed out to encircle my body, I grabbed on tight, gave a quick nod to Charlotte, and ran around the tree. I met her at the other side, and before the demon could react, Char and I crossed paths, and I jumped through the looped arms to tie them together.
We hurriedly repeated the move two more times to ensure his limbs were well and truly knotted around the trunk. Then, I swiped a claw at the section of flesh holding me captive—safe in the knowledge that it would shrink in defence—slid from its grasp, and freed Charlotte. She took a minute to catch her breath as I regained my human form.
“Why don’t you leave it a bit longer next time? I might actually die!” she said as she stormed off.<
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“A simple ‘thank you’ would do,” I called, chasing after her.
When she stooped to retrieve her knife, I noticed Sophie sitting a few feet away. She licked her lips and looked up at me expectantly.
“Yeah, nice teamwork, babe. Good job on the leg-grabbing thingummy.”
My compliment garnered no response as she stood, showed her tail, and began sniffing around the leaf-covered ground.
The sound of angry teeth grating together, accompanied by a low growl, caused me to turn my attention to our subdued prisoner.
“Don’t think this will hold me,” he snarled. “I’ll be coming for you, if she doesn’t get to you first.”
“And who is ‘she’, pray tell? Please… enlighten me. I like to know who I’m killing.”
“You’ll find out soon enough. And then it will be you who’s the dead meat.” He laughed, a thick, throaty sound that ended in a hiss. “Literally.”
“Yeah? Well, we’ll see about that,” I challenged, fixing his eye slits with a hard stare I wasn’t even sure he could see. It broke when a leaf whipped across my face.
More leaves quickly followed the first, and I spun around at the rustle of a whole bunch of them stirring from the abundance littering the ground. They rose high, spinning and entwining until a shape began to form—an oddly human shape as high, as the trees around it.
Another demon?
I’d come across some sights in my time, but this psycho bitch won the trophy for amassing the queerest motley crew I’d ever seen.
I approached the curiosity with caution as Charlotte reclaimed the tree branch and took up stance. She glanced over to me, her brows pulling together. I answered her silent question with a shrug as the shape segregated into thousands of leaves and swirled faster and faster, until a virtual tornado whipped a dirt cloud into my eyes, my mouth, and up my nose.
I bent away from the maelstrom, an arm shielding my face. Its force sucked me towards it, and it took all the strength I could muster to keep my feet grounded as I choked and struggled to breathe through the dust invading my airways.
How in the world were we expected to take on a demon that had no physical form?
The velocity decreased its pull on me, and I risked lifting my arm to seek out the girls. It wasn’t until I looked up that I saw them—bits of them, anyway. A leg here, an arm or tail there, intermittently protruding through the leafy wall of the whirlwind now rising high into the night sky.
I had to stop it.
With one swift leap, I bounded as high as I could in a futile attempt to latch onto one of them, but they were too far up. I couldn’t reach them. I landed as the whirlwind shrank, folded in on itself, and vanished with a pop, leaving Sophie and Charlotte nowhere to be seen.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
I sank to my knees, refusing to believe that my eyes saw nothing but stars in the night sky, but I couldn’t deny it. It was all over. I’d failed. One by one, the list was getting shorter, and with Sophie crossed off, I might as well be next. I had nothing left to live for. If he wasn’t dead already, Seb would never forgive me. Hell, I’d never forgive myself. I deserved to suffer in the pits of Hell for all eternity. I cradled my head in my hands as the tears welled. I should have let the wind take me, too. At least then, we would all have faced our day of judgement together.
I’m sorry, Soph.
Behind me, a soft chuckle intruded into my thoughts.
“You see,” the demon said. “You can’t win. You think you’re a big man, a big scary wolf. But you never stood a chance. None of you did.”
Bastard.
How dare he belittle their deaths as if the whole thing were some two-bit game? It wasn’t a game to me. This was my life, my family’s lives, and theirs meant something, even if mine didn’t.
Anger rippled through my core and stole away my tears. My fate might already have been written, but I wasn’t dead yet. I still had time to avenge their deaths before meeting my own, and if the Reaper did come calling, I would damn well take the heinous witch responsible down with me. With renewed energy, I jumped up and swung around.
“You said you had orders to bring me in. Where to?”
“Suicide mission?”
“What do you care?”
“I don’t.”
I pulled my knife from my jacket and let him see the blade up close. “Then tell me where to. Now! Or this knife is gonna slice your sorry ass a new pair of eye sockets.”
He swallowed a laugh. “Try it.”
I lowered my weapon and prodded it against his knee. “How fond are you of your legs? Like walking, do you? Enjoy pain?” I raised the knife to his crotch area and pressed harder. “Or maybe I should start here. Then we’ll really find out which one of us is dickless.”
His head jerked back against the bark as he flinched.
“Yeah, that’s right. I’ve figured out the fifty-fifty thing you’ve got going on. So, what’s it to be? Information? Or slice and dice?”
An indistinguishable sound mumbled from his lips.
“Sorry? What was that? I didn’t quite catch it.”
“The house. She said to bring you to the house.”
“Bring? So, she’s there?” I received a shallow nod in response. “Good. Wise move, bud,” I said, stowing my knife away. “I guess you get to keep your bits.”
I couldn’t get back to the house fast enough. From a distance, everything looked perfectly normal, but I pulled up short when I noticed the smear of blood trailing up the steps. At the top, Mac and Will’s bodies lay in a bloody tangle.
Christ, not them, too!
I paused for a second to lament over the senseless loss of more lives. How had it come to this? The Towers was supposed to be a safe haven, somewhere immune from such horrors, and in less than an hour, it had become a war zone—one that wouldn’t exist, were it not for me. I should never have come back. If I’d stayed in Hell and let the Devil do his damnedest, none of this would have happened. My family would have gone on with their lives perfectly well without me. But I just had to rock the boat and bring death and destruction to their doorstep, didn’t I? Well, no more. I couldn’t change the past. I couldn’t bring those I loved back. But I could find out who the woman was and why she had it in for me so bad, and make damn sure she didn’t reap the same suffering on another family.
I turned to enter the house, but before taking a step, I heard a faint moan. When I twisted back to investigate the source, Will’s eyes shot open. I crouched down and lifted his head.
“I thought you were dead, mate.”
“Don’t go in,” he croaked, staring blindly as he gripped my arm.
“I have to, bud.”
“Too dangerous.”
“Maybe, but I have to end this. Hang in there. If things work out, I’ll send help.”
I started to lower his head, but it began to shake and his eyes grew wider as he raised a quivering finger. “Run!”
“What?” I half-swivelled to see what he was pointing at, when a bolt of pain ripped through my body.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
I knew where I was even before I opened my eyes. I could already feel the soot permeating my clothing, and the odour seeping into my pores was unmistakable, thick and acrid, as if a dry-cleaning shop had been set alight. I’d never forgotten it, but I had hoped to keep it firmly in the past.
Salty trails ran down my cheeks as I prised open my lids and attempted to blink away the eye-watering sting stabbing at my eyeballs. I didn’t need to see through the blur of unwanted tears to picture my location, but gradually, the familiar scenery became clear.
Ash drifted in the stagnant air as a latticework of iron walls burned with everlasting fire, flame plumes licking the pattern like a thousand hungry snake tongues. Beneath me, a flagged floor shimmered with a heat I didn’t feel. There was only one place where I could be inside a virtual fireball, and yet not burn.
Hell.
I pushed to sitting and ran a hand over the back o
f my head. It had been whacked pretty hard, but strangely, I felt no bump, no pain… nothing. I guessed it came with the territory—what with being dead and all.
At the sound of a cough, I shot to my feet. Sebastian stood before me, sporting an evil grin.
“Seb?” I gasped. “Please, no! Not you, too?”
His grin widened as he sat down in an iron chair, stretched out lazily, and linked his hands in his lap. My guts knotted at the fact that he looked altogether too pleased to be in Hell’s waiting room. Something wasn’t right.
“You do know you’re dead, right?” I asked.
His answer was a soft chuckle that rippled through my neck hairs. What the fuck was wrong with him?
“I should do,” he said. “Been that way for three millennia.”
What did he say? Was it possible…?
“Welcome back, Connor Lovell. Don’t you just love family reunions? They’re my favourite.”
“You!” I spat. I’d heard mention of the Devil taking my own face when Sophie and Seb had gone to retrieve my memories, and looking at the abomination before me, I could see how disconcerting that must have been for them. Not only did he look like my cousin, he had his accent down to a T. How dare he? “You’re not my family.”
“Who said I was talking about me?” he said, his smile continuing to goad me.
“Then, what family are you talking about? Or are you just spouting shit, as per usual?”
Ignoring my question, he rose and turned his back to walk over to a desk of twisted metal. “Were you not having fun in the new life I gave you? Or did you miss me so much, you had to return?”
I watched him warily. Miss him? Like fuck I did. “If only you’d given me the chance.”
“Well, you know me. Always an angle.”
He got that right. When it came to the king of the underworld, there wasn’t a curve in sight. “What are you doing disguised as my cousin? Is he here?”
“Sadly, I have yet to have that pleasure.”