by Marie Hall
Cold unlike anything Mila had ever felt before engulfed them, making her teeth clack and her head hurt. She’d not experienced any type of cold since turning, and it sent her body into chaos. Heart pumping like a fist in her rib cage, she jumped off of Frenzy’s body, twirling on her heels, knowing immediately that they were no longer alone.
* * *
Frenzy’s need to protect his woman was an all-consuming obsession. The skin of his arms prickled as fire shot down his left arm, turning his hand to bone.
The shadow hovered just in front of the door frame, nothing more than a thin band of darkness.
“Get behind me, Mila,” he growled.
They’d been prepared for this ever since Lise instructed them that this was how it was supposed to be. The black box rested on the floorboard just beneath their bed. All they had to do was get to it without alerting the shadow to what they were doing.
Mila didn’t take her eyes off the creature as she backpedaled very slowly, like one would when trying to escape a rabid beast.
“And so we meet again, death.” The shadow’s voice was reed thin, nothing at all like the nasally scratch he remembered from his apartment. She was still little more than a streak of darkness; perhaps death’s kiss had weakened her more than he’d anticipated.
Experiencing a short but quick thrill that this might be easier than they’d thought, he yanked on Mila’s arm, dragging her fully behind him. Kicking his foot backward into her shin, he hoped she understood that he was silently urging her to get her hands on the box.
“Why are you here, creature?” he hissed, playing dumb and acting as if he didn’t know the queen had set the shadow up.
The faint scratching of Mila’s toes dragging along the hardwood floor told him she was slowly bringing the box toward her. And if the shadow heard, she’d never be able to suspect it was anything other than the tiny scampering of a rodent. All they had to do was get in close, open the box, and it was all over.
His woman would be safe.
Satisfaction flowed hot through his veins.
“You bastard,” the shadow hissed. “You lied to me. Her stench clings to you.”
All he had to do was distract her for a second longer. Just to give Mila enough time to secure the object.
Taking a tentative step toward the band, which was now beginning to lengthen and swell, take on the appearance of what it’d been back at his apartment, he beckoned her closer with the bone of his hand.
“None can resist death’s lure, apparently not even you, creature.” He toyed with the bony edge of his pinky finger. “Did you really think I would want you?”
The shadow quivered as the appendages began to finally take on form. He had to get her mad enough to attack, get her in close so that when Mila popped open the lid the shadow would be sucked back into the darkness.
“I will consume you both,” she whispered, a terrible, shivery sound that filled the room like killing frost, making his pulse stutter from the unbearable cold wafting out of it.
Frenzy desperately wanted to turn around, look to see that Mila now had the object in hand, but to do that would give away their endgame. Focusing all his fury into the shadow, he leered.
“Death is master of his own destiny. You cannot touch me unless I will it.”
Clenching his jaw, he took a step closer, stomach filling with fury that the damned creature wasn’t taking the bait. She stood in the doorway still, fully formed as she’d been in his apartment.
The eyes had appeared all over her, blinking and gazing back at him and Mila mournfully. Cocking her head, the slit where the mouth should have been opened and a terrible peal of laughter issued forth. It was a dry, sandpaper kind of sound that rubbed against his body abrasively.
“Fool me once, shame on you.” She drifted closer, but her body was continuing to swell. Become round and oblong, pulling and stretching like a ball of taffy. “I know the truth, reaper. I am no fool. The queen has given her my box.” The slit stretched apart into a macabre version of a grin. “She means to destroy me. It will not happen.”
With a flick of her wrist, a shot of black bolted from her palm, and then he heard Mila’s cry. Frenzy twirled just as the box flew to the other side of the room well out of their reach.
Bounding back to his woman, he grabbed her, tugging her close to his side. “Frenzy, I…” she stuttered, and he hushed her with a kiss to her temple.
“Not your fault,” he murmured.
“How touching.” The giant mass of shadow continued to spread throughout every corner of the room, laughing as it went. “Did you know, death, that I have a talent?” she asked in a breathless sort of wonder.
Mila trembled beneath his touch and he knew he’d been a fool to believe they could so easily bring a creature of the wild hunt down.
But he hadn’t lost hope; he couldn’t. Because the only way to protect his woman was to destroy this creature. He wouldn’t lose her, not like this. Not ever. He’d lost love once and it’d almost ruined him. But he knew Mila’s death would be one he’d never return from.
“What is your talent, you stupid piece of shite?” Mila growled, and though she trembled still in his arms, Frenzy now knew it wasn’t from fear, but from fury.
Hissing, the shadow swirled all her attention on the slight woman in his arms. A rumbling sound tore from his lips as several sets of eyes focused on Mila alone.
“To give you what you crave most,” she whispered, and then the air became dense. A strange shimmering sprang up between them, like a heat wave rippling on hot asphalt.
Suddenly Adrianna stood there. Brown curls piled high atop her head as the amber eyes that’d haunted him for centuries turned in his direction. She was nude, and he knew this was how she’d looked the night she’d been murdered by the Earl’s valet.
“Why weren’t you there, Frenzy? Why?” Her haunting whisper echoed through his skull.
Swallowing hard, telling himself this must be a mirage, he turned his head to the side, trying to blink away the image. But Adrianna wouldn’t let him, floating toward him. A shocking trail of cold traveled up his wrist and forearm, and across his bicep in a familiar caress.
He shuddered, remembering how she’d loved to touch him in such a manner. How that touch would signal a precursor for more.
A strange noise vibrated in his ear. A low pitched sort of humming, distracting and unfamiliar. But Adrianna wouldn’t let him focus on it, because her hands were now on his face and her velvety lips were so close to his own.
“Why weren’t you there, Frenzy? Why?” Luminous amber eyes ensnared him and his breathing increased.
Where was he? What had he been doing? Those two thoughts kept hammering at his skull because something important was happening, something he knew he should be focused on. But all he could see was Adrianna. All he could smell was the soft scent of roses perfuming her body.
“Adrianna.” A choked cry dropped off his tongue.
Her smile was wide and radiant. “My darling,” she cooed. “Why did you abandon me? Why did you leave me to him?” A visible tremble rippled through her.
Frenzy sensed something was wrong. Sensed the bindings of a spell encapsulating him. This wasn’t real.
But she was crying. “Adrianna, do not cry. I came to you, I did.”
“Oh, Frenzy, what did you do?” she sobbed, and the fight to hang on left him. He’d never been able to handle seeing her cry. Not then, not now.
Holding his arms out to her, he fell headlong into the memories.
Chapter 15
Mila gasped as she witnessed Frenzy’s slow descent into madness. He was talking to thin air, holding out his arms and shushing softly, over and over again.
“What have you done to him?” she growled, twirling on the advancing shadow, whose eyes twinkled with mirth.
Opaque eyes turned back toward her. “I’ve given him his heart’s desire.”
Adrenaline speeding thick and hot all throughout her, Mila tried to shi
eld Frenzy from the shadow’s gaze as best she could. “I am his heart’s desire. He told me. He bonded with me. We’ve become one.”
The shadow scoffed as the slit of her mouth curled upward into a snarl. “Is that what you think? You poor, pathetic soul. What he sees now is his Adrianna.” She practically purred the name.
It was like a punch to Mila’s gut, because she’d seen the vision. Seen the love shining in Frenzy’s eyes for that woman. The woman he felt such guilt for, the one for whose murder he blamed himself.
“No.” She shook her head, trying in vain to deny it.
The shadow tossed her head back. “You truly are a worthless creature, aren’t you?”
Being stubborn, she lifted her chin high as she tried to hang on to Frenzy’s arm, but he kept tugging it away from her, following the invisible Adrianna around the room.
“A vision can only work if the soul desires it to be so,” the shadow taunted.
Heat prickled the corners of Mila’s eyes because a horrible realization was dawning on her. She didn’t trust the shadow as far as she could toss it, but she’d known how torn up Frenzy was about Adrianna’s death, how the nagging feeling was always in the back of her mind that he cared more for the ghost of Adrianna than he ever had for her.
“The bastard is correct,” the shadow continued. “I cannot kill him. Death controls life, but,” she hissed, undulating her neck like a hypnotic cobra, “I could not get to you with death in the way. This isn’t hard, little seer. It won’t even hurt. Won’t you come to me?”
The cadence of her voice, the dulcet, shivery tone of it, it did something to Mila. Washed away the fear hammering away inside her veins. Made her claws retract and the panicking need for flight or fight dissipate.
And now when she stared at the shadow, she didn’t see a nightmarish sight of sagging skin and a slit for a mouth. Instead, there was a voluptuous woman garbed in a diaphanous gown of midnight, with long black hair hanging well past her waist, full, plump lips and a curvaceous figure. She was beautiful and exotic and Mila began to wonder how it was that she’d always feared this creature.
“Do you not want to see your gran? Your mum again, little seer?” The shadow curved her finger in a beckoning gesture, luring her further in.
Throat squeezing tight, and not trusting herself to speak, Mila could only nod. And like magic they appeared before her just as they’d last been.
Gran was wearing a blue slip dress that fell past her knees. Her snow-white hair pulled up into a fashionable bun. Kind, crinkly brown eyes smiled back at her. “Ach, wee one, ’tis good ta see you again,” she said, and it dragged tears to Mila’s eyes, made her throat clog up.
Taking a stuttering breath, Mila nodded. “And you, Gran.”
“Mila,” her mum’s sweet, sweet voice echoed through Mila’s head. Salt-and-pepper hair was swept back into a ponytail. Her jeans and red blouse hugged her slim body to perfection. Her mum had always been conscious of appearance, practical, but beautiful in a classic and timeless way.
“Mum!” she squealed and let the tears drop finally. “I thought I’d never see you two again. After that night, when the shadow…” Just saying the name caused her heart to pound again and an awful nagging to prick away at her.
“Nay, lass, nay.” Gran held up a soothing hand and, stepping in to Mila, she wrapped frail arms around her neck, breaking her out in an immediate wash of goose bumps. “The shadow isna so bad as all that. She’s been good to us. She only wants what’s best for the—”
A strange sensation began filling Mila’s limbs, like she was slowly being leached of energy. The first faint fluttering of tiredness filled her bones. She shook her head. “But I thought you said to stay away from the shadow, that it would kill us all. I saw you die, Mum. Saw it take you up in its tentacles and suck you dry. I saw—”
Gran’s smile was sweet, full of joy and suppressed laughter. “A vision, lass. Only a vision. It wasn’t truth. The shadow’s been protecting us. Guiding us, teaching us how to properly use our powers to their fullest potential.”
Head beginning to feel a little fuzzy, Mila tried to understand what her gran was saying. How was it possible? All her life her mum and gran had warned her to never let the shadow get her. Now they were saying that it was okay?
Why was it so hard to focus? Vision blurring slightly, she shook her head as her stomach began to churn with something close to anxiety. But how? Why? Wasn’t this what she’d always wanted? Her gran and her mum back again? Their love, their arms wrapped around her one last time?
“Mum?”
“Hmm?” Eyes so similar to her own smiled up at her. “Yes, lovie?”
“Is Da still alive?” Why had she asked that question? She’d wanted to ask her mum for a hug, wanted to ask her if she loved her, not that. Not about Da. But something was bothering her, nagging at her.
“Of course he is, love.” She tsked as if Mila were a silly thing. “He lives in Ireland, as you well know.”
She blinked, because it wasn’t true. If these were the true spirits of her relatives, they should know that.
Heart raging in her ears, the vision of gran and mum wavered. “Mum,” she said softly.
“Yes?”
Suddenly, as if listening to noise through a tunnel, she heard a horrible slurping noise, a buzzing that drowned out the happy smiles on her family’s faces.
“Da’s dead.”
Mum’s smile wilted, the beautiful amber eyes became hard as cut glass, and then Gran burst out with a horrible, grating sound of laughter.
* * *
Frenzy had his arms wrapped around Adrianna, inhaling her scent of roses, when another scent intruded. Fresh earth and a sharp burst of frost. It was powerful and all-consuming and filled his heart with such need that Adrianna wavered in his arms.
Her wide eyes grew large. “Frenzy?” She clutched at his back. “Where are you going? Don’t leave me, don’t leave me. You cannot leave me!” she snarled.
And all at once he knew this wasn’t his Adrianna. His Adrianna was gone and buried. He’d mourned her loss, he’d let her go. He’d moved on and fallen in love with the woman who shared his soul.
“Mila,” he whispered, and it was like someone took a hammer to a sheet of glass.
The ghost in his arms shattered into a ball of light. All at once the cabin was restored, as was the reality of their situation.
The shadow was stretched throughout every crevice of the one-room cabin. Pulsing tentacles of darkness were wrapped around his lover’s body, one shoved down her throat as a glimmering, golden radiance emanated from within Mila’s mouth.
The creature was pulling out her soul.
“Mila!” he cried, rushing toward her.
But the shadow was everywhere. It hissed as it looked up at him with glowing red eyes. “You should have stayed down, reaper! Now you’ll get to watch her die.” And then a thick wave slammed into him, tossing him against the farthest wall and knocking the air out of his lungs.
Panting, he grabbed hold of his chest as the pain radiated like a spider’s web throughout his limbs. The darkness held him down in a choking, punishing grip.
At first Mila wasn’t struggling, she was lax in the creature’s arms, but after a second he began to notice her twitching and jerking, as if coming to her senses. The shadow returned its attention back to her, letting off some of the pressure bearing down on him.
Knowing he didn’t have much time, he frantically searched around for something, anything, to distract it, when he spotted the box, lying not ten inches in front of him.
He couldn’t move too fast; if he did he feared the shadow would become aware of what he was trying to do. Inching his fingers painfully slow across the floor, he felt like it took an eternity rather than the few seconds it did to latch on to the cold piece of wood.
Clutching it in his hands, it dawned on him: it was finally over. All he had to do was open the box.
Snapping it open with fumbling fingers, he sho
ved the box into the bit of shadow that held him pinned to the ground.
Nothing happened.
The lid was open; the wood was still cold. Fear slammed a tight fist into his gut.
And as much as he wanted to roar to the heavens and go insane with his need to reach his woman, he shoved the panic down and tried to think it through. Lise had insisted many times that Mila had to be the one to do it. Maybe the magic within the box would only respond to the touch of a seer.
The thought gave him hope. Not much, but enough to realize that maybe there was still a chance.
Frenzy winced as Mila’s screams cut through his skull. Her eyes were open and she was crying as she struggled to free herself of the shadow’s hold.
“Mila!” he roared again.
This time she turned her eyes to him. They were wide and frantic.
The sight was horrible, and one that would live with him forever. He saw her clutched tight to the shadow, a good five feet off the ground as a thick, shadowy tentacle snaked deeper and deeper down her throat.
He was going to lose her. Trying to wiggle himself free of the shadow’s absolute hold and not being able to, no matter how hard he tried or how he maneuvered, he knew there was only one way. He’d not be able to hand the box to Mila himself, nor could he throw it—the shadow could snatch it out of the air or swat it out of his reach.
He’d have to send it through a rift in time and into her hands directly. He’d never done anything like this before, and it made his hands slick with sweat, his throat dry, and his fingers numb. What if it didn’t work? They’d traveled through time to get here; Lise had fixed the tampering the queen had done, but what if he couldn’t do it?
Mila twitched, her fight was growing weaker.
Knowing he had no other recourse and, running out of time, he tore open a rift in the fabric of time and shoved the box inside. Squeezing his eyes shut, he focused all his energy on sending it directly into her hands.