Or someone came to get us.
Above, the ground shook and a sharp wind whistled down and through the mine, bringing us Blaz’s roar.
His pain lanced into me. I went to my knees, “Blaz hang on, I’m coming.”
You better hurry then, I’m about to have my ass handed to me alongside Pamela.
“Lark, send me and Alex through the earth, can you do that? Please.”
She tottered as she knelt. “Stand next to that wall there.” She pointed to the right. “Hang onto him, and hold your breath.”
Berget and Faris were arguing that I couldn’t go alone. I grabbed hold of Alex and he wrapped his long arms around me. “Here we go!”
“Close your eyes, Alex,” I said as the earth reached out and jerked us into it. I’d done this once before, and while it had been a long time ago, the memory was somewhat fresh. The ground churned as it pulled us upward in a wave of tiny organisms all working to push us where Lark directed.
Three hundred feet was a long fucking way to be shoved through dirt. My clothes tore and Alex’s back rumbled under my hands. Hang on, I wanted to tell him, we’re almost there. Ten seconds later and we were shoved into the bright North Dakota summer sun.
I couldn’t see, though. Around us the wind was whipped into a frenzy that looked like three tornados going at once. And inside one of them was Pamela. I latched onto her threads and my heart stuttered.
She was dying.
CHAPTER 26
Pamela
I jerked awake, my body on the ground at a weird angle. I wasn’t dead. How was I not dead? I put a hand to my head, the lump there evidence that I had been hit, I recalled that much.
Blaz roared, his snarls tearing at my ears.
Pamela!
I stumbled to my feet to see Nimbus floating above Blaz, directing a windstorm around the dragon.
He’d broken Blaz’s wings, ripped one part way off. Peta, Eve, and Marco were being held at bay within a tornado that danced off to one side, spinning them almost lazily.
I lifted my hands, Nimbus wasn’t even looking.
A voice came behind me. “Oh, no. That isn’t going to happen, my witch.”
I spun, shock hitting me almost as hard as the spell that wrapped itself around my body, holding me down. “Orion!”
He stood there, in Milly’s body, grinning down at me. “You didn’t think we were done yet, did you? Frank here was able to raise a nice, compliant spirit that knew where the Tracker went. Didn’t you, boy?”
She flicked her fingers, and Frank stumbled forward. His glasses were broken and he had cuts all over his face. Three of his fingers on his right hand were missing, the stumps dripping blood, the others were broken and hung at strange angles. My heart thumped. “Frank, I’m so sorry.”
“No, you did the right thing. Rylee is all that matters now.” His words were slurred and I realized his jaw was swollen and hung awkwardly. Orion had tortured him for the information. For the help he wanted.
I didn’t move, didn’t do anything but look over my shoulder. Deanna had taught me so many things. Things I didn’t think mattered. But I was wrong, they all mattered. I didn’t need to move my hand to direct my magic. I looked straight at Nimbus, throwing everything I had into knocking him flat. My power erupted out of me, shattering the hold Orion had.
Nimbus was hit square on, and flipped out of the sky. He hit the dirt hard, and lay there.
I spun to face Orion, but already he had recovered. “You will abide by your vow. To serve and obey me, on pain of your soul being cast into the deepest level of the veil.”
A gut wrenching pull yanked through my body. “No. I will not serve you, I renounce my vow!”
“It was made in blood, you fool!”
I shook my head, grabbed the fire elemental’s knife from the ground and slashed it through my left wrist. One last tool from Deanna. I could only pray it would work. “I renounce my vow, blood to blood, fire to fire.” I called up a bloom of fire and let it dance down my wrist. Searing, scorching pain lit my nerve endings, but I didn’t care. Orion screamed his fury, but only got one step forward. Hands shot up out of the ground grasping the demon around the ankles. “Leave her alone,” Frank said, standing beside me. I touched his back, sending everything I had through him in a desperate attempt to heal him. He straightened his back and I knew I’d at least helped a little.
The zombies continued to pull from the ground, clamoring over each other to get to Orion. They would pull him apart, limb from limb.
Milly’s voice cried out. “Wait, please, not like this!”
Frank made a fist with his hand and the zombies pulled her flat to the ground and dragged her partway under the dirt.
“Orion has fled her body again,” he said.
I looked around us. “Are you sure?” A quick nod from Frank.
“That’s good, isn’t it?”
“I doubt it.”
I would have asked another question, but I wasn’t given the choice. A wild gust of wind swept me up into the air to face a very, very angry air elemental.
Nimbus glared at me, lightning forking over his head in time with the flash in his eyes. “I was going to keep you for my own, train you, and use you to my own devices. I do believe I’m just going to kill you now.”
He spun me up into one of his tornados and I thought at first it wouldn’t be that bad. I might throw up on myself, and landing might hurt, but . . . it took me a minute to realize I couldn’t draw breath. The wind tunnel sucked the air from my lungs, collapsing them.
Blaz roared and I tried to make eye contact with him. But everything happened so slowly, I couldn’t think. Couldn’t do anything.
“I did my best,” I whispered. And that was all I had left.
Crossbow in hand, I fired a bolt into the head of the elemental with his back to me. The bolt slammed through, brain and bone exploding through the other side. The body twitched once and fell from the sky.
I dropped the bow and ran to where Pamela fell. “Eve!”
“I’ve got her!” The Harpy swooped in and scooped Pamela before she hit the ground. Eve’s eyes met mine. “She isn’t breathing.”
Dropping to my knees, I flipped Pam over and put an ear to her chest. No heartbeat. But she wasn’t gone yet. I could feel her, there, just on the cusp of dying. I blew a breath into her mouth then did chest compressions. Air, compressions, air, compressions. “Come on, Pam. Don’t you fucking give up on me!”
I screamed the words as I pounded on her chest.
Her eyes opened, but they weren’t hers.
They glowed red and black, staring at nothing.
“She’s mine, Tracker. And now you will die at her hands.”
Rylee tightened her arms on me. “Orion, you can’t have her. I won’t let you.”
My voice rippled, the words not my own. “She let me in, Tracker, and now I own her. Another step or two and I won’t have to use Milly’s body to do my work. I’ll have the little witch all to myself.”
As if my body already wasn’t my own, my hand reached up and called down a bolt of lightning. A natural element, and while driven by my magic, it wasn’t in and of itself magic. And in that instant I knew it would kill her.
Unless I stopped Orion from using my body. My eyes found Rylee’s and I willed her to understand. “I’m not strong enough to stop him this time. You have to kill me.”
She drew me to her, so our foreheads touched. “He doesn’t own you, Pamela. No one does. But we love you, and it’s love you have to hang onto if you’re going to defeat his hold on you.”
The lightning bobbed and arced over our heads, lighting up the sky as if it were mid-day. Orion jerked on my power, forcing it away from me.
“Rylee!”
“I’m here, Pamela. We’re all here, and we aren’t going anywhere. We love you.”
Behind her, I saw him. Liam. His face blurry, but his eyes as bright as ever. “Come back, Pamela. Leave the darkness behind. It isn’t for you. I�
�m sorry I asked you to wield the knife. More so than I can ever say.”
They were wrong. I felt it in my heart. I wasn’t worth saving.
And then a black, clawed hand gripped my leg and Alex peered around her body. “Pamie, come back to us.”
And Blaz put his head over Rylee’s shoulder.
Come back, little witch.
Peta crept close and laid her head on my legs.
Marco and Eve ducked their heads.
Frank knelt beside me, holding my hand. “Pamela, come back.”
But I wasn’t really seeing them. I knew I was in trouble. My heart still wasn’t beating. Orion was keeping me alive.
Rylee held me tightly. “You are family, Pamela. We are your family for good or bad, we are stuck together.”
A sob slipped from me, and something around my heart cracked. A shell of pain I’d built. “I’m not good. I was going to hurt you.”
Rylee laughed softly. “But you couldn’t. We could all see that. And you’re right, you aren’t good.”
The tears flowed in earnest. There, I knew it. I wasn’t good. I was evil through and through, the darkness had claimed me.
“You’re fucking amazing, Pamela, so far beyond good that the word doesn’t hold a candle to your flame.”
I wrapped my arms around her and held onto her for all I was worth. “I love you, Rylee. I love all my family and I don’t want to hurt them. I just wanted to be strong enough, strong enough to save you from being hurt again. Strong enough that no one would have to die anymore.” The words, my truth spilled from me. “I thought Milly could help me.”
“She could have, if she were in control. Milly isn’t evil, any more than you are, Pamela. Orion tricked you both. He’s good at that.”
She stroked my hair, and it made me think of a time in London when she had braided my hair for me, soothing away the fear of what was surrounding us.
I blinked away tears. “Rylee, I can’t hear him.”
“Who?”
The tension in my muscles slowly faded. “Orion has gone quiet.”
She nodded and put me from her so she could look right into my eyes. “Then you’ve done it. You kicked his demon ass out of you.”
A laugh bubbled up in me and for the first time in what seemed like forever, I was happy. “He’s gone.”
And then a powerful urge gripped me and the lightning arced over our heads, and I screamed. He wasn’t gone.
He was there, just under my skin. Waiting.
And now he had a hold on my power. “Rylee, run! He’s got my magic.”
CHAPTER 27
Rylee
Dodging lightning bolts—not as easy as it sounds. Which was why I didn’t even try.
Pamela had her eyes closed and I had my hands on her shoulders. “Pamela, I can’t outrun him, you have to stop him.”
She clamped her hands over top of mine. “He’s too strong, and I’m afraid.”
Not really the time I wanted to give her a lesson, but it looked like now or never. “Love is the key. You love me, you love Alex. You love Frank and Blaz. Just focus on that.”
Her body convulsed and tears leaked out from under her eyelids. “But I’ve done so much wrong.”
A bolt landed in the tree, lighting the branches on fire with a huge whoosh of flame, the trunk splitting with a crack that sent us to our knees. “That is life, Pam. I’ve made mistakes. Liam’s made mistakes. We all do. It’s the choices we make after those mistakes that count.”
The wind howled around us, and below us the ground shook, a low level tremor that grew with each passing second.
“I killed him. I didn’t want to.”
A roll of earth slammed into us, like a wave, knocking us flat. I didn’t let her go.
How did I explain this to her? That it wasn’t her fault? None of this was her fault. Well, okay, she fucked off on her own and that was stupid, but she was a teenager. I had to shout to be heard over the blowing wind, the rain that slashed at our faces. “That was Liam’s choice. And the only reason it would even work was because he knew how much you loved him. How much you loved me. What you did, you did because you cared for all of us so much you were willing to sacrifice everything you had. You were willing to give up everything.”
Alex wrapped himself around us, holding us tightly together, his fur blowing every which way, but his eyes never left her face. “Fight darkness, Pamie.”
The storm grew to a screaming pitch, and in the tumult, Orion’s voice grew.
“YOU WILL NOT HAVE HER. SHE IS MINE.”
Lightning slammed into the ground, right at our feet, the electricity tingling along my skin, my hair rising with the charge. Alex threw back his head and howled. Orion’s voice rocketed through the air.
“I WILL KILL YOU ALL.”
I ducked my head so that my mouth was against her ear, our whipping hair making it impossible to see. “The answer is love, Pamela, it always has been.”
Her body shook, and even over the storm I heard, or maybe I just felt, the groan roll through her. “I love all of you.”
“That’s all you need.”
She tipped her head back, a scream pulling from her throat, deep and horrible. I didn’t let go of her. “Fight him, Pamela.”
As the rain fell in slamming pelts, and the lightning snapped to the ground at our feet, missing us by mere inches, Pamela’s body jerked in my arms.
“DAMN YOU, TRACKER.”
“No,” Pamela said, her eyes finding mine. “I won’t let him hurt our family.” Her eyes fogged over and her body slumped.
“Pamela!” I shook her hard, her head snapping back and forth. “Pamela!”
Her body sagged and the lightning stopped flickering through the sky.
Alex peered around me, his eyes wide, tears trembling on their rims. “Pamie gone?”
Frank let out a groan that turned into a sob.
Frantic, I put my fingers to the side of her neck. A faint thump, and then nothing.
“Shit, shit, shit!”
I laid her on the ground and started CPR, breathing for her.
She had to pull through this.
She had to. “I’m not giving up on you, Pam, don’t you fucking well give up on us!” I screamed at her, slamming my fists into her chest then breathing deeply into her mouth.
This couldn’t be happening.
I stood in the darkness, felt it rise around me, and I knew this was where I would truly make my choice.
The darkness rising in me had never been about being good or evil, it had been about choosing to live . . .or choosing to die.
“You don’t deserve life, little witch,” Orion said.
“Orion.” I pulled my shoulders up and straightened. If I died to save my family, then I made the right choice and with that knowledge, my heart calmed. My fears eased.
Milly slid into view completely naked, skin glowing and flushed. I stumbled back as she approached, her hands cascading over her breasts and hips and back up again. She stretched her hands over her head, showing off the curve and length of her bare body. “There is only one good thing about using Milly’s body. Do you know what it is? No, you are too young to understand those things. But I am going to show you.”
Horror swelled my throat shut, and I had to force myself to stand there. To hold my ground. “You can’t have me, and I won’t let you hurt Rylee. Milly, if you’re in there, you have to help me stop him.”
A tip of the head, the dark brown hair cascading over her bare shoulders. “You think to appeal to the witch? Her soul has been mine for far too long to truly fight me anymore.”
I lifted my hands. “I will die before I let you have my body.”
“Ah, but that’s the trick.” Orion smiled at me, Milly’s smile. “I want you to die. I want your spirit to flee and then I can have your body. How many humans will follow a child savior, one who can bring them out of the darkest hour they’ve ever faced? One who will show them how to save themselves? A beautiful, blonde-haired
, blue-eyed little girl, with a sweet smile to hide the demon within. They will never suspect you. And then we will find the two children who escaped me, and I will have their bodies too. A trinity of power I can use.”
He spoke of Rylee’s child. Rylee’s and Milly’s. Tears welled in my eyes. “No, you can’t have any of us. Milly wouldn’t want that.”
“You don’t know what the witch would want, do you?”
She approached me, hips swaying, one hand sliding down to the juncture of . . . I averted my eyes as a soft moan slipped between her lips. I thought about the Milly I’d known. How she tried to protect me when we’d been on the other side of the veil. How she made sure I was as safe as I could be. At the cost of her own safety.
“Milly loved me,” I whispered.
“She didn’t.”
I opened my eyes, certainty growing in my heart. “She did. And she loved Rylee. It’s why she tried to stop you. She told me all the things, little things, she did to slow you down. To keep you from hurting Rylee.”
Somewhere in the distance, I heard Rylee call to me. Breathe, Pamela, damn it, BREATHE.
Orion grinned at me. “Your body is dying. Soon you will be mine to play with, too.”
I took a deep breath, filling my lungs. “No. I won’t let you. And neither will Rylee.”
I turned my back on the darkness, on Orion and Milly. Somewhere, Rylee was waiting for me. “Rylee!”
Come on, Pam!
Without a glance back, I ran toward her voice. There was no light to see, no steps to avoid. I ran with all I had. “Rylee, I’m coming!”
And then I heard someone else. Let her go, she’s gone.
She’s not gone! Pamela, you fight, damn you, fight!
“I’m here, I’ve not gone!” I screamed the words as my legs sunk down to my knees. Slogging through what felt like mud, I flung myself forward, reaching. “I’m here, I’m here!”
But my words were fading and my strength flowed from me. I didn’t dare a look behind, dreading what I’d see.
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