Dog Eat Dog World: Limited Edition Bundle (Black Dog)

by Hailey Edwards

  I shattered the final ring of mist and spotted him sitting in the basin, elbows locked behind him to brace himself upright. Water sloshed against his chest as he struggled with the nebulous entity. His incandescent eyes, brilliant and merciless, were fixed on a thick black mask. Denser than the surrounding haze, it levitated at the heart of the churning mass.

  Carter wielded his magic to subdue her, but he was losing ground fast.

  Swinging the flashlight in a wide arc, I sliced through the tendril shoving him backward, earning him a second to breathe before her will slammed against him.

  “We are the same, you and I. Sisters,” the throbbing air hissed in my ear. “You have been touched by death, marked for vengeance.”

  “No,” I growled a fervent denial. “I’m nothing like you.”

  No hurt I had caused was intentional. No wrong I had done was malicious. This thing was evil. I might hesitate to call what was left of me a good person, but I wasn’t this. I wasn’t her, and I never would be.

  “I gave you a chance to see. I showed you my glory.” Her voice rattled, dry leaves stirred by the wind. “So much anger. So much rage. So much power.” Crackling filled my ears. “All of it wasted.” A hiss. “You hate him, what was done to you, but you direct it inward instead of targeting all that sweet fury.”

  My gut curdled at learning the reason why my locks had been popped over and over. Worse than using my link to Charybdis against me was the disgust I felt that she had imagined me as protégé material. She had seen herself in me, wanted me to applaud her, hoped I might turn to her and be anointed with blood.

  “Charybdis is dead.” I didn’t pretend to misunderstand her. “Who else should I target? Innocents? Those who have done me no harm?” Others’ crimes were not mine to punish. “I know my own guilt, and I hold myself accountable. That’s all any of us can do, all any of us should do.”

  The rattling snarl whipping the air in a frenzy around me sounded nothing like her usual compelling ballad, her magic cracking under the strain of maintaining a multifaceted offensive.

  “It won’t work,” Carter called without breaking his stare-off with the monster. “She’s too strong.”

  “What can I do?” I yelled over the creature’s rising voice.

  “Find who’s feeding her.” For one blinding second that stuttered my pulse, our gazes collided. “Cut off her supply.”

  “Bianca,” I whispered, lurching into action. I shredded my way through the nightscape fabric of the creature and raced back to the pregnant warg’s side. “Bianca.”

  “It’s almost over now.” She reached a trembling hand toward me. “You’ll be free soon.”

  “You have to stop this.” I dropped to my knees in front of her, sliding our palms together in a show of solidarity that spoke to her need for touch, for pack. “Please. Carter is a good man.”

  Bianca’s expression crumpled around the edges, but I pushed harder. Nudging her into a shift—assuming she could while so heavily pregnant—spelled out a death of slashing agony for me. Warg claws weren’t for decoration. The only other choice I had was to knock her unconscious, and that blip as Bianca lost control might allow the creature to slip her leash.

  “They’re all good in the beginning.” The void of her gaze pitied me. “It’s later you see who they really are.”

  “You’re wrong.” Words weren’t enough. I wasn’t getting through. Something had to give. “Some people are worth saving.”

  “I was shown his sins, Harlow. I know what he’s done, what he did to that poor girl. She loved him, and he broke her heart, wielded that love against her. He must pay for his crimes.”

  In order to heal, to forgive myself, I had to believe in redemption, and I did. For him.

  “Punish me instead.” I flung my arms out to my sides as I stood before her. “I’ve killed too.”

  “No.” She cocked her head, seeing right through me. “I see your grief and the burden of guilt you carry.”

  “I caused a good man’s death by pretending to be something I’m not.” I pounded a fist against my chest. “His death is my fault. His wife’s tears, his children’s sobs, all of those belong to me.”

  Appearing torn, she shook her head after a moment’s consideration. “It’s not my place to pass judgment.” Her focus shifted. “It’s hers.”

  Here in the muffled silence of the maze, it was easy to pretend a man wasn’t fighting for his life several yards away, but he was, and I had one last chance to break through to Bianca before this ended in death. Though whose was yet to be decided.

  “This is about your mate, isn’t it?” The answer didn’t take long in coming. Bianca sucked in a gasping breath as if she was surfacing and whispered his name. Jensen. “He loved you more than his own life.” It was the way of wargs, their mates adored, their children cherished. “He never would have hurt you. He never would have hurt the baby.”

  “He tried to kill us.” A shudder rippled through her frail shoulders. “He was rubbing my belly, talking to the baby, and then—” The force of her sob bent her spine. “Suddenly he had a knife. He was going to cut out our child and then slit my throat. He told me so. How could he…?” Liquescent eyes pleaded with mine for understanding. “I thought he loved me.”

  “Jensen wasn’t himself. Deep down, you know that wasn’t him.” I offered her the words of absolution Cam had spoken to me the night she almost died saving me. “What he did while Charybdis possessed him wasn’t his fault. His mind was not his own. His body betrayed him. That monster drove Jensen to do things he never would have done, never would have forgiven himself for doing. Not to you, and not to your child.”

  “I loved him so much.” That raw whisper shattered her. “He was my whole world.”

  “Right now you’re grieving. You’re hurt, and you’re angry.” Anger I understood. In small doses it did more good than all the hugs and well-wishes combined. “You’re pissed off at him for leaving. Pissed because your baby will never know his father. That’s normal. It doesn’t make you a bad person. You can’t let that thing convince you otherwise.”

  “I miss him.” Tears flowed like twin rivers over her sunken cheeks. “So much.”

  “Don’t let hatred twist the love you had for him. Jensen deserves better than that. You do too.”

  The clouds hazing her mind must have parted enough for reason to shine through. As I watched, Bianca set her jaw and gripped the bench until the wood splintered.

  “Go,” she snarled, teeth bared. Not in aggression but in pain. “I can’t hold her off long.”

  She didn’t have to tell me twice. I whirled on my heel and flew toward the heart of the darkness, plunging through the black mass with a swipe of the flashlight. I fought my way to the basin and leapt into the fountain, hauling Carter upright while the creature beat at my head and shoulders with weakening fists. The tendrils grasped my ankles while I fought to get Carter to safety, and yanked my feet out from under me.

  Water closed over my head, and my skull rang from impact with the concrete base. The burn in my lungs reprimanded me for not taking a full breath, the pressure forcing bubbles from my nose and lips. Bands of steel clamped down on my chest, and I thrashed.

  A single galvanizing thought pierced the bubble of my panic.

  I didn’t have to outlast the creature, and she knew that. I just had to outlast Carter. He was the one she had marked to die, not me. At least, not yet.

  One option remained, and my gut twisted to consider it. I could escape the fountain, but it was risky.

  Carter had splashed enough as he struggled that there was a direct line from the water in the fountain to the water pooling on the pavers. But there were also puddles from where the pipes had burst connected to the fountain by the pumps that regulated the flow. Meaning one wrong move might rocket me into the plumbing. Slipstreaming into a metal pipe several feet belowground was not how I wanted to go out. There wouldn’t be enough left of me to use as fish bait if that happened.

  Sh
oving out the panic fizzling in my chest, I centered myself as best I could while fending off a homicidal puff of smoke. With details remembered from last night, I sketched myself a mental map of the two target locations. The first where Carter floated, and the second on the pavers outside the basin. Sketched jumps were much more reliable than the blind jump I’d done earlier, but they required either a visual map or intimate knowledge of an area and its water source.

  Bones liquefying in a rush, I flowed through the current kicked up by Carter’s thrashing legs and blasted over the edge, skipping puddles like a stone tossed across a lake. I shocked back into existence mired ankle-deep in mud and boxed in by hedges. The fountain was nowhere in sight.

  Cursing a blue streak, I wrenched my legs from the muck and ran counterclockwise through the maze. Heart banging against my ribs, flashlight held in a death grip at my side, I prepared to go toe-to-toe with the darkness yet again. Only to find the square empty, the air clear and perfumed with night-blooming flowers.

  Not slowing to locate the creature, I sprinted to the edge of the basin and hauled Carter out onto the coarse pavers. He might curse me for the scratches and bruises, but at least he would be alive to complain.

  CPR was a necessary life skill for aquatic fae with an adopted human daughter. I had learned from my parents how to do chest compressions and rescue breathing, and I applied that knowledge with ruthless efficiency now. The taste of Carter’s chilled lips beneath mine turned blood to ice in my veins. Fending off the tightness in my own chest, I fell into the rhythm for what felt like days but could have only been seconds.

  Silver eyes shot open in a blinding flash then crushed closed as Carter coughed and bucked, rolling onto his side to heave up the water that had filled his lungs.

  “She’s…” he gasped, “…an onryō.”

  The name ignited instant recognition from horror stories I had read as a kid. The onryō was a vengeful spirit who used the living to enact their revenge fantasies. Mostly they paired up with humans or lesser fae, usually those who had experienced the same loss or abuse as the spirit, and that communion of souls was the gateway to possession.

  Based on Bianca’s breakdown, and the deaths of the men in the institution, I was guessing this particular spirit was of the woman-scorned variety. Odds were her death was violent, and that ache drove her to punish others like the one who had harmed her.

  “I can’t leave Bianca out there alone.” Not when she was so vulnerable to the creature’s brand of persuasion.

  “Go.” He got his knees under him, bracing his palms on the pavers to steady himself. “I’ll be right behind you.”

  Hating to make the call about who to protect but knowing I had to, I trusted Carter to take care of himself. Bianca wasn’t as strong as him. She also wasn’t where I had left her. It took several minutes of searching, following that gnawing tension in my gut, to find her strolling through the rose gardens. A wraithlike figure dressed in a billowing gown of smoke walked beside her, their arms linked and heads bent together.

  “She belongs to me now.” Smug in her victory, her voice carried on the breeze. “Thrice she has guided my hand, and her vengeance has not yet been sated. She is a worthy apprentice. She and I will hunt until my thirst is quenched, and then she will taste her own sweet retribution.” The creature spared me a pitying glance. “You could have joined us. Now you will waste away in this place with its false comforts and empty teachings.”

  “Bianca—” I ignored the insidious murmurs and called out, “—you can fight her.”

  The warg’s easy gait slowed, the creature’s attempts to drag her failing against Bianca’s strength.

  “Think of the baby.” That tiny spark was the touchstone of her life now. “Think of the life you want for your child. This isn’t it. Don’t let that hag break you.”

  “My son,” she whispered, hands cupping her rounded belly. “My sweet boy.”

  Bianca was too strong—even broken as she was—for the onryō to nudge her over the finish line, to complete the transformation that would seal her utter damnation and end her unborn child’s life. I had to believe that. Not even her mate’s death had been enough to turn her mother’s heart against her baby, to wreck the future they might share. All the onryō’s cunning lies would fail to rip away that one final mooring, to shove Bianca past this dark precipice where she surrendered fully to the creature’s whims, because the poor woman deserved to catch a break, damn it.

  “You can do this, Bianca.” Using her name, over and over, I anchored her in the moment, to herself. I fisted my hands at my sides, unable to reach her though I ached to shore up her courage. “Fight back.”

  The distance between us forced me into the role of voyeur. She had to fight this battle alone, a hard lesson I had struggled to learn myself. There was no such thing as recovery without struggle, healing without pain, redemption without surviving a crucible. Carter was alive, the final victim unclaimed, but that meant nothing if Bianca didn’t wrest control of herself away from the creature.

  “Harlow.” Tearstained eyes held mine as she rubbed her chest, right over her heart. “It hurts. So much.”

  The hag yanked Bianca closer, fingers encircling her throat as she whispered in her ear. The pregnant warg screamed and tossed her head, shoving the creature away as she clamped her hands on her temples and fought past the fog blanketing her mind.

  “Heads-up,” a hoarse voice called from behind me. Carter. He tossed me the flashlight I had forgotten in my haste to resuscitate him.

  “Bianca.” I lobbed it to her. “Catch.”

  Alarm painted the creature’s obsidian features, and she screamed a song both beautiful and hideous.

  The flashlight was heavier than it looked, the handle wet, and it slipped out of Bianca’s grip to clank on the pavers. Bianca hit her knees, grasping for the weapon, fumbling with the switch while the wraith at her side unraveled. Seeking tendrils of malevolence unspooled from her core and reached for us, the fine point of one limb tickling over the spot where my heart beat.

  Defiance, it seemed, was a crime more readily punishable than murder in the onryō’s book.

  “You can do this, Bianca.” Agony speared me as the magic fingers ripped into my chest, blood hot and wet on my skin as my heart gave a terrified thump. “This thing doesn’t stand a chance, not against a mother’s love.”

  Head buzzing, I dropped to my knees, hands clutching the wound.

  “Harlow.” Carter cried out my name from a million miles away.

  “My Jensen loved me.”

  A faint click perked my ears as if the sound was one I had waited on my whole life.

  “He was my first love, my only love.” A swath of light blasted the creature’s masklike face, splintering her expression. “He was so proud to learn I was pregnant that he cried. My big, strong mate, and he cried.”

  “He would have killed you.” The creature ramped up the musical quality of her voice. “That is not love.”

  “It wasn’t him.” Bianca’s devotion to her mate’s memory shined through brighter than the beam. “He would never have hurt me. Charybdis attacked me. Not Jensen. Never him.” A growl pumped through her throat. “The evil you do is your own. This is not me, this is not who I am. Killing those men didn’t bring you back, didn’t give you peace. I’m done hearing your lies.” One palm shaped her stomach, and her snarl did me proud. “You will not taint the one good thing I have left.”

  Every rebuke tugged at the ragged threads of the onryō’s influence. Every ounce of love in Bianca’s speech counteracted the hateful pulse of malignancy that had sought to entrap her. Watching her face down her demons, I would have cheered as she excised the caustic anger that had kept her from mourning Jensen as a beloved mate if I hadn’t lost too much blood to stand.

  Strong arms steadied me before I face-planted into the mud, and Carter’s scent wrapped me up tight, warm and familiar, blurring the lines, dulling the pain until the sweet respite prevented me from lashing
out at his use of magic. Trust made the difference, I realized distantly. I knew him now, knew he would never hurt me, never use his magic to harm me, and it galvanized my resolve.

  Good might not always triumph over evil, but we put up one hell of a fight.

  The light worked to immobilize the onryō for the precious seconds Bianca required to slash out with her hand and rip away the creature’s mask, revealing an onyx skull with empty sockets that exploded into a fine powder when exposed to the naked beam.

  Tossing back her head, Bianca howled a note of such purity that tears pricked the backs of my eyes. Joy writ large on her face, she took one staggering step toward me only to drop into the muck a heartbeat later.

  “Help me up.” I clawed at Carter, and he let me use him as a walking stick to reach Bianca. That’s as far as I made it before my legs buckled, and I hit the pavers. “I’ve got this. I’ll stay with her.” No way would this battle have gone unnoticed unless the grounds had been compromised far worse than I had imagined. That meant dividing our resources. “Go for help.”

  “Stay safe,” he ordered me, bolting for the rear entrance to the guest quarters.

  “Hey, you did good out there.” I wiped mud from Bianca’s eyes. “You were so brave. Jensen would be proud.”

  Faint lines bracketed her mouth, and her voice came out thick with pain. “You saved me.” Eyes shuttered against the stabbing contractions rippling across her stomach, she groped blindly until I clasped hands with her. “Charybdis,” she panted. “He didn’t break you. You’re not broken.”

  Her form wavered in front of me as heat trickled down my cheeks. “Bianca…”

  “Say it,” she snarled, eyes of hammered gold glaring at me. “Say he didn’t break you.”

  Razor-sharp nails pricked my hand, a threat issued from the feral wolf under her skin, and my voice came out an octave higher than usual. “He didn’t break me.”

  Nodding, she relaxed her grip. “Remember what we talked about?”

  “You wanting to go home?” I braced on my palm to keep from keeling over beside her. “Home sounds good right about now.”