by Trina M. Lee
Though my heart hurt under the knife of his scathing accusations, I saw his desperation for what it was. Willow was suffering. Alone. It wasn’t really about me. The ghosts of his past would not die.
“If anyone is the whore, it’s Falon,” Arys seethed, refusing to stay quiet. “You have no right to blame Alexa for your baggage or to judge her for having her own.”
“Arys, please. Just don’t.” Though I appreciated his need to protect me, this was not one of those times when he could.
Willow tore his hateful glare from me to fling it at Arys. It crumbled on his face as sorrow broke through. The former angel was a mess. I wanted so badly to comfort him, yet there was nothing I could offer him right now.
With an anguished cry he jerked away and headed for the balcony where he stood holding the railing, head bowed and wings flared. The rest of us gaped after him. All except Jez. She hugged herself tight and stared at something I couldn’t see.
“Jez?” I drew closer to her, wary of touching after what had happened when I touched Willow. When she didn’t react to my voice, I looked to the others for help. “We need to get out of here.”
“Yeah.” Shaz shuddered and gazed at something unseen. “We really do.”
The horrors my mind had shown me resurfaced as debilitating terror. That was the point of this room. On the surface it was harmless, just a fancy bedroom with a snack table. Deceptive.
Briggs was the first to beeline for the balcony. With Brogan in tow, he moved like a man being chased by the things that lived inside his mind. One by one this room was affecting each of us.
We filed from the bedroom, but Jez remained rooted to the spot. When she was the only one left, I went back and took her hand.
“Jez? I’m here. Whatever you’re seeing, it’s not real. It’s in your head.” I gave a gentle tug, fighting against the frightful energy that tried to jump from her to me.
“That’s what makes it so fucking scary,” she said, grabbing me with a hand tipped with claws that punctured my skin. She was oblivious. “I don’t want to end up like that. I can’t. I just fucking can’t. My entire life I’ve tried so hard to just be me. A shifter. A lady-loving woman who can kick ass and keep going. I don’t want to be a demon. I’d rather be dead than be anything like my father.”
Tears streamed down her face. Her lungs heaved as she gasped between sobs. Jez was going into full meltdown mode.
“You’re not him, Jezzy. You never will be.” Perhaps I shouldn’t have been making promises that were not mine to keep. The pounding of her heart reverberated in my ears as her terror sought to work its way inside me. I had to get her out.
“I can’t,” she sobbed. “I just can’t.”
Arys watched from the balcony door. Everyone else was already out there, gazing out upon the maze. I could just glimpse the edge of it through the window from where I stood.
Despite the tremor that shook me, I pulled Jez into my arms and hugged her close. Sharing in her fright was all I could offer her. It pulled me back to that dreadful place where everyone I loved died horribly while I was forced to watch. Blood tears streaked hot paths down my cheeks.
Strong arms encircled us both as Arys ushered us from the room. Oddly enough he was unaffected. The fear running rampant through us never touched him. Once he’d pushed us out onto the balcony, the painful spell fell away, and my mind cleared.
Wiping a hand through my tears, I gawked at him in wonder. “Why didn’t it affect you?”
He shook his head and sadness flashed through his midnight eyes. “I’ve already lived through my greatest fear. Nothing that room can throw at me can be worse than that.”
Two more tears escaped my eyes, coaxed forth by his declaration. Killing me. That had been Arys’s greatest fear, because he’d had to live with the certainty of it for over a hundred years. If I’d had any doubt before, it was gone now. It was most definitely time to move past what had happened to us both that night. Neither of us had come away unscathed.
I pressed a kiss to the palm of his hand before pressing one to Jez’s temple. I truly adored these people I was blessed to cross paths with as we all took this uncertain journey.
“So what now?” Briggs asked. He stood at the railing as far as he could get from anyone other than Brogan.
I turned to take in the full expanse of the maze. It was quite breathtaking. A lavender sky hung over it, evidence that we were in a place that existed beyond reality. The hedges were green and full, taller than anyone could reasonably climb. I wondered if the winged beings could fly over. Doubtful. Shya wouldn’t leave a loophole like that.
The balcony was high, and there was no way down but to jump. The rest of us could do it just fine, but Briggs and Brogan would break their legs. Maybe their necks.
“Willow?” I asked, afraid to get too close after the way he’d lost it on me.
He stared at the maze without turning. He responded in a dull, listless tone, like he already knew what I would ask. “I can take them down.”
Gabriel studied the maze, nodding to himself. “There’s no way out of that thing. Every path that doesn’t lead to a dead end leads to the center. There’s a pentagram there. It’s got to be a vortex. That’s the exit.”
When I searched the maze with that in mind, I was able to see it. On the ground level it would be impossible to figure out. It was nothing short of miraculous that none of us had wandered in there alone. Going in as a group would be safer.
Willow flew Brogan and a reluctant Briggs down to the ground, one at a time. The rest of us made the jump with little trouble. After a test run we discovered that Willow was only able to fly so high before an unseen force thrust him back down, keeping him from flying over the maze itself.
As a group of eight we approached the entrance. Shya had acted as if he expected us to turn on each other, but had he really anticipated that we would find each other, had he planned for us to enter the maze together? Assumptions were dangerous, as I was discovering.
The entrance to the maze was like a large, gaping mouth about to swallow us whole. Gabriel had tried to get a feel for the maze, but as we moved through it, it seemed to shift around us, never staying the same long enough for us to figure it out.
Our human companions tired quickly.
Several times we turned a corner only to find a dead end and a pack of hellhounds waiting to drive us back the way we’d come. The ugly beasts gave chase, snarling and snapping. Their eerie red eyes glowed like two small flames in their black faces. We beat them back with little trouble. Together our group had more than enough power and weaponry to take them out. They were little more than a delay to keep us busy while the maze rearranged itself once again.
Gradually the pale purple sky above us began to darken. There was no sun or moon, just a smattering of purple stars against a blackening sky.
I couldn’t shake the feeling that we needed to hurry.
Every dead end stripped away our persistence little by little. Surprisingly, it was Briggs that kept us moving, barking orders at us like we were his team.
“We didn’t come this far to give up, did we?” he demanded, still shouldering most of Brogan’s weight. “Keep your eyes on the sky. Use the stars to navigate. They aren’t shifting too, are they?”
Gabriel did his best to feel his way through the maze’s magic, but unlike the house it was erratic and misleading. He grew frustrated, which only made him more sullen than usual.
“I can see why Shya left the maze for last,” I said. “It’s fucking discouraging.”
“Screw that.” Anger had replaced fear for Jez. She stalked each path with a dagger in hand and a glower. “Briggs is right. We didn’t make it out of that house to throw in the towel at this point. I’m not giving up.”
Giving up wasn’t an option. However, I was growing increasingly concerned with Falon’s continued absence. We needed him to trap Shya. Of course Willow could always take his place, but would he? Or more importantly, could he handle it? Rec
ent events led me to doubt that.
When we turned into yet another dead end, Jez lost her temper and hacked away at the maze wall while spewing venomous obscenities. The green, unidentifiable foliage grew back as she chopped, angering her further.
“Don’t waste your energy,” Arys advised. “You may need it.”
A breeze ruffled my hair though there was no wind. Power. Reaching out to feel the maze’s essence I was overcome with the stifling sensation of demon. It reached inside me to grab hold of the demonic energy I held barely contained in my core and attempted to rip it from me. I fought to hold on tight to what I considered to be mine.
“Lex?” Next to me Shaz noticed right away that something was wrong. “What’s happening?”
I shook my head, unable to speak as pain stabbed through my brain. It took all of my concentration to keep from having the power I held stripped from me. Arys and Gabriel reacted fast, coming to my aid. They each grabbed one of my hands and combined their strength with mine.
The sudden connection was uplifting and a little dizzying. I drew on the vampires, using their power as my own. The rush of drawing on two incubus vampires brought a wicked laugh bubbling up from me. They were mine and I wanted them.
The power ran two ways between us, and they were equally influenced by me. Gabriel especially reacted to the twin-flame connection he was now tapped into. He pressed close, his free hand on my face as if he might kiss me. I turned my head, offering him my neck. His lips moved over my jugular, followed by the wet touch of his tongue.
Although I was able to break the maze’s hold, the demonic power I held urged me to claim Gabriel. All he had to do was taste my blood.
“Alexa, don’t. You don’t want to do that.” Arys didn’t mean what he said. He wanted me to do it, just as he’d wanted me to enslave Jenner. I could sense the lie in his cool energy as it tore through me.
A blur, Shaz knocked Gabriel away with a body check that flung him to the maze floor. My white wolf grabbed the hand Gabriel had just held and squeezed. My anchor.
With great reluctance I released Arys, needing to clear my head of the influential rush of his power.
I gripped Shaz like the lifeline he was. “Thank you.”
Shaz stayed close, holding tight to my hand like he would never let go. I hoped his view of me didn’t change when he saw what I had to do to Shya.
As we ventured on, Gabriel kept his distance.
The power I’d sensed grew until it was a roar of white noise. Shielding against it grew more difficult with each step. We had to be getting closer to the center. I wasn’t the only one feeling it. Arys, Gabriel, and Willow all grew tense. It felt like fire under my skin, scorching me from the inside out. Like the force I struggled to contain, it was both pain and pleasure, a twisted little mix of delight and depravity.
At last we turned a bend in the dark maze and found it: the center of the maze. Blue fire outlined a large pentagon. It was the center of the pentagram surrounding us. Leaning against the maze wall just outside the flaming perimeter was Falon.
Arms crossed and smirk in place, he said, “Took you longer than I expected.” There was no mistaking how pleased Falon was with himself to have been the first to make it to the heart of the maze.
I wasn’t rewarding that with acknowledgment. “You seem to be yourself again,” I noted with a wince as I clenched my teeth against the next onslaught of agony. “What gives?”
“Oh yeah…about that. Oops?” Falon shrugged, offering me nothing else. His silver eyes drifted over each of us in turn before settling on me once again. “So…are you ready?”
Chapter Twenty-Two
I would never be ready. That, however, wasn’t an option.
“Time to summon our host. This has to be fast.” Gabriel walked right through the blue flames to the middle of the pentagon. To my utter shock, they parted to let him pass. He produced a bag of salt and quickly set to work making a salt circle. He paused only long enough to look up at Shaz. “Whatever it is you do that keeps Alexa from losing her head, you’re going to have to do it again. When I let blood from her to twist the spell, it will suck me in.” To Arys he said, “Don’t let me taste her blood. Please.”
Gabriel’s words came in a rush, and I knew it was because we were being watched. There was no way that Shya wasn’t keeping an eye on our progress. Could he hear us though? There was no way of knowing for sure.
Latin tumbled from Gabriel’s lips. He stepped out of the salt circle but stayed inside the blue fire, and a sudden wind picked up. It threw his long hair into his face and whipped the flames about.
Tension filled me. Any moment now Shya would be summoned into that salt circle, and he was going to be pissed.
I could do this, right?
“I hope you guys know what you’re doing.” The reflection of the fire shone in Jez’s eyes. She stood as far as she could get from the flaming circle without disappearing back into the maze.
I nodded and sucked air into my lungs. “Me too.”
The air rippled, and the stink of sulfur announced Shya before he materialized. When he did the flames roared, reaching toward the sky before settling back down to a height of just a few feet.
Knowing he was trapped in that circle did nothing to ease my worries. Demons were crafty. He might find a way out. Demons were not infallible though, and I had to cling to the reassurance in that.
Shya’s grim smile was in place, but his eyes revealed the depths of his wrath. His gaze landed on Gabriel first. He nodded to himself, and then looked at us each in turn, ending with me and then Falon.
“I suppose you’re all feeling quite proud of yourselves,” he said. “You found the way out. Evidently, that’s not enough for you. So why don’t you tell me what’s going on here?”
He didn’t know? I’d expected him to know, to be a step ahead. But mostly I’d expected that because I didn’t trust Falon or Gabriel.
“You know what this is,” Gabriel said, cold and hostile. “You thought you could make us all your slaves. Guess again.”
Shya pointed a finger at him and hissed, “You were such a mistake. Nothing but a pain in my ass. Nobody wants you, Gabriel. Not your mother. Surely not Alexa and her family of freaks. And now, not even me.”
“Fuck you, Shya,” I spat, unable to contain my temper. “You don’t speak for me.”
Leveling an ice-cold stare on me, the demon clasped his hands together and nodded. “I knew you would be the hardest to break. I should’ve killed you after the shit you pulled with Lilah’s key, but I was weak. I wanted to play with you, make you suffer.”
“Oh you’ll get to play with me, Shya. Don’t worry about that.” No effort was required to inject my tone with the promise of payback. Now that he was standing in front of me wearing that smug expression, I was ready. Shya’s reign of hell on this city would stop tonight.
I felt like I was about to burst. The demonic power strained against the mental cage I’d wrestled it into, fighting to break free. Ultimately, it was stronger than me. At some point it would win, but I hoped to be well on my way to making Shya my bitch when that happened. Yet it had to happen soon.
“What are you waiting for?” Shya taunted. “Obviously I was not the only one with plans for this night. Show me what you’ve got.”
We both knew that I would have to enter that circle. Once I was in there with him, anything could happen. Now came the greatest test. I had to put my trust in Gabriel and Falon, believing they could and would do their part. First, I had to do mine. Oh God.
Hesitating would only show weakness, so I forced my feet to move. As I strode up to the blue flames, they parted for me as they had for Gabriel, closing again when I’d passed through. The ground beneath my feet hummed with the vibration of the vortex. It was right where Shya was standing, but Gabriel’s summons and circle kept him trapped. It would trap me too.
Shya watched me like a snake in the grass, patient, waiting for the right moment to strike. Waiting for the pre
y to come to him, unawares of what lay in wait for him. Yet I did know what came next, and I approached willingly anyway.
The weight of so many sets of eyes upon us almost made me falter. There was a very real chance they would all watch Shya turn me to dust. Power rose up in me, my own hybrid mix wrapped around the demon force. The pressure in my head was immense, threatening to blind me.
Careful not to touch the salt circle, I stepped over it, anticipating the stifling sensation of being sealed in. I braced for an attack, but Shya merely stood there watching me with cold amusement. Oh, how I loathed that expression. I wanted so badly to wipe it off his face.
Shya spread his arms and lifted a brow. His black wings were tucked against his back, taunting me with the feather I needed. In his trademark dark suit and slick, black hair, he was so deceptively human in appearance. Yet the dragon shone in his eyes. I saw it there, lurking. I was profoundly grateful that the salt circle was too small to contain that form.
Knowing he wanted me to make the first move threw me off. Surmising that was why he waited, I had no choice. I tried to slowly let the power slip from me rather than burst forth, but once I loosened my hold there was no controlling it. It rolled out like a wave, crashing against Shya before surging back toward me.
Oh, crap.
I’d been a vessel for this demonic energy, but it wasn’t part of me. Controlling it was ridiculously difficult. Flavored as it was with my succubus thrall, the backsplash tried to pull me under as I inadvertently almost enthralled myself.
That didn’t stop me from seeing my goal and going for it. I directed the flow the best I could, pushing it back to Shya again and again. His smug expression faltered as confusion took its place. His eyes began to glaze over as he slipped under my spell. No way. It couldn’t be that easy.