by Lucia Ashta
They should have turned Alek against me before I even arrived to rescue him. The beast’s great denouement should have been having Alek kill the woman he loved. The demon would have relished a scene like that, for it would have stayed with Alek for the rest of his life, tormenting him, continuing the cycle of darkness demons specialize in.
But that wasn’t what had happened. Nothing like that had happened. Why?
I stared at the pieces of sparkling coal that passed for eyes in the beast, trying to see beyond the red which glowed behind them. What was he—it, for he no longer looked much like a man—up to?
As if he sensed what I was considering, he pushed against my scrutiny. Ow. I subdued my wince a second too late.
“You can’t match me. Stop trying.”
The demon beast looked like a giant stripped of his flesh. Long bands of muscles, a painful-looking pink and red, wove around his frame, bulging and twitching with every one of his movements. His face was more skull than visage. Had I allowed myself the luxury of fright, his dark burning eyes rattling in empty-looking eye sockets would have sent me running, and if they hadn’t, surely the two dark holes that passed for a nose and a gaping, lipless mouth would have done the job.
He no longer had ears... but he seemed to hear my thoughts.
“You should be worrying about lover boy over there instead of admiring how impressive I am. Sure, I’m the one who will have the pleasure of killing you, but first you’ll have the pleasure of watching me skin your boy alive.”
His words were fouler for the container they spilled from. Half of my brain struggled to reconcile the smooth, educated voice with the face; the other half told the wondering part to shut up and focus.
Something was off. If only I could put my finger on what it was....
“Shocked into silence by my size and mastery?” It grinned.
Bile swept upward until I gained control of myself and swallowed it back down. Finally, I found my tongue. “It’s more to keep myself from vomiting all over myself. Let me tell you, this experience of watching a living skull talk is not my thing.”
He rushed toward me so quickly I wasn’t ready. I stumbled backward and he caught me.
He wrapped an arm, which felt strong enough to hold up an industrial bridge, around my waist. He towered over me while I struggled to break free. It was useless; I stopped. Berating myself for being stupid was useless too, so I didn’t.
I closed my eyes against the sight of a hellish nightmare before I could figure out if he meant to crush me to death or eat me. This was where my real training would kick in.
The sword fighting was elegant and empowering because it made me feel like I had some control—in truth, I had little to none. My grandiose imaginings felt far too much like one big, fat ruse.
I didn’t panic, I didn’t worry. What would be the point? My mind dropped its defenses against the demon beast’s invasion and pulled all its power toward my center. I’d need every speck.
I roughly pushed away the encroaching image of Alek, bound by shadows. His bindings and gag weren’t of this world, that much was evident even from across the stage. But although he was close enough that I could run to him and find comfort in his arms in seconds, he was effectively a world away. He couldn’t save me, and if I died right now, I wouldn’t save him.
Encumbering thoughts and images vanished in a second, skittering away like vermin.
“How about I push here? Seems like a grand idea, doesn’t it?” The fiend crouched to breathe in my face. His breath was so hot it masked its foulness.
When he pushed on the putrid flesh of my left forearm, I pretended I wasn’t in this body. I am spirit in human form.
He prodded at raw bone. I blinked away tears of pain with ferocity, worried I might pass out before I could manage what I had to do.
I’m not in this body. He can’t do anything that affects the real me.
But it sure as hell felt like that was a gigantic, ridiculous, terrible lie as he scrounged around in my gaping flesh like he was digging for gold.
I can... do this. Damn. I was going to pass out.
He pulled me against him. My spine crunched as vertebra popped in and out of place.
My only advantage now was that he believed he had me. He was toying with me like a cat plays with a mouse before he eats it.
He should’ve known better. This wasn’t my first rodeo in the demon corral, though it sure seemed like it. I felt like one aching, gaping noob.
“Ha ha ha.” The sound was so deep it rumbled through my chest. His laughter vibrated up my body and I feared I’d never—in my whole life—forget how disgusting it felt when his laughter caressed my skin.
My current circumstances suggested my lifespan wouldn’t be long enough to worry about the trauma I was suffering. I awarded a lonely point for fast death by a giant demon. There was no such thing as PTSD when you were dead.
“Ha ha ha ha.” He rumbled some more and I tried again to twist away from him. My body did it seemingly without my consent, a natural reaction to being in the grips of a hellish savage. “I have you, and you know it.”
He jabbed at me with a single gnarled finger. A long blackened nail poked me in the breastbone hard enough to draw blood through my shirt. “I deserve to have some fun with you before I end you. Even a demon can appreciate the finer sides of beauty.”
I’d thought there was no way the beast could get any creepier; I’d been wrong. I reeled while he ogled me like a lecherous drunkard in a seedy bar.
But I couldn’t afford to react—not to the pain, not to the taunts, not to all that was at risk here.
I was almost there. I almost had enough power concentrated to blast him.
He proceeded to dig a nasty claw into the gash on my forearm. I furiously blinked the cobwebs of blackness away from consciousness.
With another flashing image of Alek, arms, legs, and mouth bound with swirls of impenetrable darkness, standing in the middle of those circling wraiths, I released all that I’d managed to gather.
Everything my mentor had taught me, and everything I’d always known deep within myself, pulsed out of me... straight into the colossus.
Chapter Six
The demon beast roared like a stuck bull. He threw his giant skull back and howled his pain and fury.
He’d had me, he’d known it.
He didn’t have me anymore.
His bulging arms released me and I stumbled half a step backward.
His flesh disintegrated. He didn’t instantly melt into an inoffensive puddle as I would have liked. Instead bits of him flecked off as if I were a large industrial fan and he were made of particles as small as a single granule of sand.
At once parts of him blew away. They floated around him for a few moments of hesitation, and then faded until they finally disappeared from this world.
The first burst of my power shaved ten percent off him. What was already bare, raw flesh whittled down, leaving painful-looking muscle and sinew behind.
I burst again, reaching for bone or whatever structure held together a demon beast like this one.
Light streamed ahead of me, a wave of golden light, brighter even than the stage lights overhead.
More of him flecked off, hovered around him, then exited this dimension.
His roar tempered to a growl. He was no longer the stuck, pained bull; he was the bull who prepared to charge and exact his vengeance.
He was beyond the taunts and games of words. All terrifying, flexing dark power. All promises of a world of hurt.
Fire flared from the holes where his nostrils should be. He flexed both arms in front of his torso, no less powerful-looking because of their trimming. He pawed at the wooden stage, all bull, all demon, no humanity.
He charged straight at me. He wasn’t that far away. I had a couple of seconds to blast him again.
It was enough. I knew what I was doing now. I was in my element. As little as I wanted this to be my life, this was what I’d always t
rained for. Every choice I’d made, each hour I dedicated to training with the katana, and later with my mentor, delivered me here, to this moment.
A moment of truth. Perhaps even a moment of destiny or another abstract notion equally outlandish as my fighting a hellish beast from the underworld.
I pulled on every single speck of reserve left to me. I culled and scraped and pooled. Then, an instant before the bull’s outstretched paws mauled me to pieces, I released.
The glow that burst forth was bright enough to blind me. I resisted the urge to stumble backward or throw my arms up to shield my eyes. The mass of writhing shadows in the periphery of my vision, guarding Alek, completely vanished from sight. The imposing size of the demon beast vanished too, two black beady eyes the only thing to pierce my light.
I registered his scream but kept my focus on the struggle to remain in my body.
His anguish no longer a roar but the high-pitched shriek of an opera falsetto, he seemed to disintegrate behind my light. I wasn’t sure how much of him remained.
I fell to my knees, where I knocked the hand of my injured arm against the floor. The pain of that jarring impact was enough to push away the blackness for an instant, before the pain that flared from my arm rushed it back like an ocean wave.
I sank to my butt.
Even if I’d managed to banish the demon beast, I couldn’t close my eyes. I couldn’t allow myself to black out. Sure, the giant was the worst of all the envoys of darkness who invaded this dimension, but the demon wraiths circling Alek weren’t cuddly puppies and kitty cats.
Stay awake. Gods, stay awake.
But I was losing the fight with myself. The pain was too great. My arm might need to be amputated. I’d strained my brain too far. My energy was drained to nothing.
Don’t lie down. Don’t you do it!
I laid or plonked down, one of the two, I wasn’t sure anymore. I was in too much pain for it to get any worse.
Don’t you dare close your eyes.
My eyelids drifted shut.
Damn. If they cut off my arm, I won’t be able to fight anymore. My love for the katana will draw to an untimely end.
Alek!
I flickered my eyelids open, searching for a glimpse of the man I loved. For the one mistake I’d allowed myself to make after all these years of resisting that one weakness—and that’s what love was, weakness enough for the demons to draw me out in the open.
But I’d already lost this fight.
My eyelids closed with the finality of a coffin lid. With demon wraiths everywhere around me, and Alek among them, I blacked out.
Chapter Seven
Had I been an ordinary person I would have woken up screaming. But the ship of Ordinary sailed long before I was smart enough to realize that being normal was actually a blessing and that ignorance was truly bliss. An ordinary life, a boring one even, where demons didn’t hunt you to claim your soul whenever you dropped your guard, suddenly sounded like a damn fine life. Certainly, life expectancy would be longer.
I blinked into wide animal eyes and figured I’d woken up in the wrong world. Maybe I’d died and ended up in some kind of afterlife reserved for people who fought demons even though it was the last thing they wanted to do. I’d been stabbed by a demonic blade. Last I’d checked, my arm looked bad, barreling its way toward worse. It would make sense that I’d be dead.
What didn’t make sense was that the animal eyes I stared into brimmed with worry. And they were the wrong shade of blue. They were a human blue, one I’d been content to stare into for hours when Alek and I would spend the day making love, resting in each other’s arms, and then making love again.
On days like those, I’d believed that color divine, a color so unique that it could only come from the heavens as a reward for all I put up with on this Earth.
I’d recognize that blue anywhere. So when thick, inhuman eyelids blinked across stormy, sky blue eyes, I shut my own.
There was no point to any of this. I was either dead or I’d lost my damned mind.
For the first time since arriving at the old, musty theater, I willed the blackness to come and claim me.
Wouldn’t you know it? When I actually wanted it to come, it refused.
I stubbornly held my eyes shut. Damn life, never giving me what I ask of it.
But soon I grew tired of pretending I was asleep. My arm throbbed and ached so hard that I was sure I wasn’t dead—unless I’d somehow ended up in Hell where torment was extra credit. I hoped the Fates wouldn’t be so cruel as to send an exorcist demon huntress to Hell.
A bearish whine and something that felt remarkably like a big, hairy, animal paw nudged at me.
I sighed—a big, heavy one—and opened my eyes.
There they were. Those eyes of recognizable blue set in a hairy bear face hadn’t gone anywhere.
Bears weren’t supposed to stand by a human woman and whine. Nor were they supposed to urge her to wake up.
The bear looked at me so intently that a crazy thought sparked in my mind. This large bear looked at me so much like my Alek did.
The logic was there, it was slapping me in the face. A part of me was going there long before the rest of me could catch up.
I pushed to my elbow on my good arm and looked for where I’d last seen Alek. The man my heart had betrayed me for was no longer there, nor were the circling wraiths of darkness.
Hunh.
I looked to the massive animal in front of me. His fur was thick and nearly a pure white. He was as large as a compact car, one of those that cramped your legs if you were too tall—not a problem I’d ever had. If this bear spread himself out, he could trap an entire car beneath his body.
My foggy gaze traveled across his body. His paws were the size of my face. He looked fierce and powerful, yet he was a gentle giant at my feet.
The notion was insane. I was reeling to believe it, but I wasn’t one to disbelieve what was staring me in the face. I fought demons, didn’t I? It’s not like I could get away with being a squeamish girl who flustered and refused to accept the reality that was poking her in the belly.
“You’re my Alek?” The words were crazy, no doubt, but there they were, the obvious poured into sound.
The bear nodded his giant, heavy head.
Even though I’d asked, the truth slammed me in the chest so hard my breath and heart skipped a beat. I debated whether I needed to lie down again.
My eyes swept what I could make out of the theater without moving much. The wraiths were gone, nothing but a pile of clothes marked where they’d been. The demon beast appeared to be gone. He might be directly behind me, where my body hurt too much to turn, but I doubted it.
I refused to look at my arm just yet and craned my neck back around. “Alek?”
He nodded again.
“So you’re a... bear.” The words slid across my lips thickly, drizzled in crazy sauce.
The giant animal nodded.
“Right.” Surely life couldn’t get more bizarre. After years of denying myself love, I’d fallen for a... what? A shapeshifter, if lore was to be believed. A changeling. A werebear. Werebear, sounds like Care Bear. I almost started giggling. It was evident I’d become unhinged, a professional hazard of being a demon fighter. I knew the time might come. Care Bear. It was funny, it really was. My man was a caring bear.
A giggle erupted from me like a hiccup. I tried to curb my insanity before its progress became inevitable. I pushed myself to sitting and brushed my good hand against the katana that rested against that thigh. It did me no real good, but I still felt better knowing one of my swords was still there. At least they’d serve me in a human battle, even when I’d only seriously fought in otherworldly ones.
“So you, uh, become a bear, huh?” I stared into those blue bear eyes and ignored how much I sounded like a loony bin escapee.
Alek nodded, but this time he looked sad, as if Eeyore were a bear instead of a donkey.
“Did you break out of your binds a
nd send the wraiths away?”
He did a more-or-less kind of nod, along with what sounded too much like a whimper, and I wanted the man not the animal.
“Uh, can you turn back into a man or something?” I’d been raised by my grandparents, who’d conserved much of Japanese culture despite their outward denial. They’d refused my pleas to teach me the old ways, but I’d still managed to observe enough to understand that my ancestors accepted the unseen in a way the western world, where my grandparents had brought me to live, didn’t. Plus, I fought demons. Regardless, I was in no way prepared to ask these kinds of questions. “Can you, um, shapeshift back so we can talk?”
He looked at me so intently I realized he was trying to communicate something. What? Who knew? Not me. I studied languages with a passion all my own, but I didn’t speak bear.
He looked at me with purpose then lumbered around the stage, now empty of anything but us. He was trying to tell me something, but I couldn’t help but study the way he moved. Every step was efficient. Each coil and release of muscle vibrated with power. Had the demon beast been of this world, Alek would have taken him on and possibly won. My bear was a match for a giant.
He looked back at me, staring, nodding his head.
I stared back.
He jumped around and the whole stage shook when he came back down.
A game of charades with a bear, who’s my lover.
He groaned in frustration but it came out as a ferocious growl. Even though I didn’t fear him, the fine hairs that covered my skin stood on end—probably an ingrained survival instinct.
“I have no idea what you’re trying to say, sorry. It’d be easier if you turn back into a man so we can talk. We’re safe now so there’s no reason to stay like that.” At least none that I knew of. But what do I know? Nothing, less than nothing maybe, if I hadn’t even realized the man I shared my bed with was a shapeshifter!
The bear stalked back across the stage toward me.
In mid-step, he changed.
My face grew slack.
One moment he was a bear, the next he was a man—a very naked, very sexy looking man.