by Red, Lynn
Quickly glancing at Damon, I saw him gripping the sides of his head, clawing at his own face. “Lily… I can… I can feel you in me, Lily… get out! Don’t let them hurt you! She’s… that woman is ripping my mind apart!”
“You leave him alone,” I growled at Carrell as I slid around another of his wild, flailing punches. Somehow, it was like he was moving in slow motion, or that I had sped up. “Get out of his head!”
Slashing with Hunter’s claws, I caught Carrell on the side of the face, dragging my elongated nails down his jaw. He screeched and turned away just in time to catch a knee in the side.
“You have no power in this world, child,” Carrell hissed. “No power at all.”
I shot my hand out as fast as I could, wrapping my fingers around his throat and squeezing as hard as I possibly could. The way he strained and groaned, I thought I finally had him, but then a second later I felt a hard thump in my stomach, one knee and then the other slammed into me, knocking my breath out in a violent whoosh that burned my lungs.
“Why do you fight? What is the point to all this? You can’t win!”
Another hard kick to the ribs made me bite down on my tongue. I tottered, rasped in pain, but somehow kept my footing. Once again, the smell of Damon’s pain reached my nostrils, but instead of feeling pity that time, nothing but pure, seething rage coursed through me.
It was like adrenaline mixed with gasoline and then lit on fire. Every nerve in my body flared with each new cry, each new yelp, that came from Damon’s mouth.
“Danness! Make the Alpha hang himself! This girl is getting out of hand, time is short!”
My stomach lurched all the way into my mouth.
Damon threw the chain with such force that it broke through the cheap plaster ceiling and wrapped around a support beam. “Lily,” he grunted, gasping for any air he could get inside his lungs. “Lily, go… go and tell… the pack…”
Hellfire flashed in my eyes. I wasn’t going to leave him. Not then, not ever.
Sweat ran down the sides of my lupine face. I clenched my jaws so tight my teeth ached with strain. I imagined biting into him, of all the things, sinking my teeth in and…
Damon shrieked again, wrenching himself harder up into the air and broke my concentration. It also broke Carrell’s.
“Yes! Yes! Stretch his neck!” he squealed like he was in the throes of the deepest pleasure imaginable.
He threw back his head, laughing. The pendant dangled between his collarbones.
With my vision blurred, and tinged with red, I lunged.
The second my clawed hand closed around that little purple jewel, I yanked as hard as I could.
In one instant, the entire world exploded, melted, and twisted. I was the epicenter of an eight-point-five earthquake, the singularity of a black hole in the middle of the universe. I squeezed my eyes shut and held the purple gem in the center of my hand.
It burned, but not like silver on Damon’s skin. Not like putting my hand in a fire.
The flames licked my insides, slid along the back of my eyelids and when I opened my eyes, I felt the color leaking out of me and onto everything I looked toward.
Carrell howled a laugh, then howled in agony.
A fist – Damon’s fist – connected with his jaw and sent him sprawling.
“Lily!” Damon shouted. “Lily! Come back to me, come back to…”
It’s you. You’re you again. What’s happening to me Damon? I can’t see, can’t feel, I’m… slipping.
As he grabbed me and shook my shoulders, I felt myself moving off the floor, standing up and wobbling back and forth. A second later, leaves crunched under my knees.
My vision swirled backwards and with a crack that must have been audible, I was back in the scrub trees outside the cabin. I looked over at Wilton with my mouth hanging wide open.
“Lily,” he whispered. “The doll, where is it? You’re—”
“Quiet!” I snarled, despite myself.
The voice wasn’t mine.
I was a puppet. My arms moved without my thinking, but I knew everything that was going on.
“How does it feel?” a voice echoed in my head. “Good?”
It was that woman, that demon, whispering in my mind.
“It’s about to get a lot better. Give in,” she said. “Stop fighting me. You can’t anyway, all you’re going to do is hurt yourself.”
“Lily!” It was Damon’s booming, savage roar I heard that time.
And then the crack of splintering wood.
And then purple flames, gliding along my fingertips, behind my eyes.
And then… nothing.
Fourteen
Damon
Rage ran through Damon, his veins all full, pumping in his head, throbbing behind his thoughts. That goddamn demon was out and loose and he was going to murder it before it hurt Lily.
Damon’s fist smashed into Carrell’s jaw again, just to make sure he wasn’t getting up. The old wolf stirred, then went still.
Running to the window, he stared out the cracked glass, wondering if he’d been the one to break it, but not caring all that much. On the outside of the clearing, just past the start of the scrub trees around the cabin, was the old man he vaguely remembered from the pack meeting, and next to him, he saw Lily, who was floating.
Every muscle in his body ached.
Looking down at his chest and forearms, he winced at the burned scars that still prickled with pain even though his memory failed after the demon appeared in his mind, drowning out his beloved before the chains seared him for the first time.
“You okay?” Damon crouched beside Hunter, rolling his friend over onto his back.
Hunter shrank before his bones creaked and twisted back into his more familiar human shape. His pulse was fine, he wasn’t bleeding, and Damon had other things on his mind.
“Damon?” Hunter said. He stirred as the Alpha turned to peer back out the window. “What the hell happened?”
He shook his head. “No time to explain. Are you okay? Anything broken?”
“Jaw feels like hell,” he answered. “How’d I get in here? I don’t remember—”
“Lily possessed you and used you to try to save me from the demon.”
Hunter snorted a laugh. “Businesslike in the worst of times. Is she okay? Is everything—”
“No,” he interrupted Hunter. “Somehow the demon switched from me to her. I don’t really understand what’s going on, but there’s only one way to solve problems that’s never failed me.”
Damon cracked my knuckles.
“Stay here. Watch him – make sure he doesn’t do anything. I have a feeling that after I get rid of this demon, the rogue wolf won’t be much of a problem, but since I’m not so clear on exactly how to get rid of her without killing my mate, there might be a few tense minutes.”
Hunter nodded and pulled himself up with Damon’s help. He had a slight limp when he crossed the room to check over Carrell, but seemed otherwise fine. “Damon,” he said.
“You’ve got a way of interrupting me right when I’m about to jump out the window,” Damon said back, desperate to get to Lily.
“I don’t care what anyone says, what anyone does.” He urged me to turn to face him. “Anyone who would go through this for their friends, for love, or whatever other reason you have for chaining yourself to a chair and letting yourself be burned to absolute hell like that… you’re the only Alpha I’ll ever answer to. As far as I’m concerned, you are the Skarachee.”
Damon froze momentarily.
“Really?” he asked. “You mean that?”
Hunter nodded.
“How long have you known me and how many times have I lied?”
Damon studied his friend’s face. “Thanks,” he said. “For some reason, when Lily tells me that, or Poko does, it feels like they have to. With you…”
“Go,” Hunter said. “I’ll watch the asshole. You go help Lily. Something’s going on out there.”
Damon turned away from Hunter and finally ran to the window. Lily hovered about six inches off the ground, with her head laid back and her brown curls cascading down the sides of her head. Wilton was fighting to hold her down.
He drew his claws into fists and edged closer to the cracked pane.
“Help!” the old man shouted. “Damon! Anybody! Help!”
A switch clicked in Damon’s brain. Unleashing a roar so wild that it shook the house, he backed up two steps, and charged. Damon hit the window like a furry cannonball.
Glass exploded around him, spraying the ground in front of his landing, and crunching when his feet hit. A thousand tiny cuts dug into him, but there was no time for that, no time to think.
As he charged his levitating mate, his skin contracted around the shards of glass, pushing them out and closing the wounds they left behind.
With the moon overhead, he felt a little surge of energy. But the reality of not knowing what he was going to do to save his love hit him hard in the stomach as soon as he saw her prone, helpless body begin to rotate.
“Damon, oh Alpha, thank the spirits you’re safe… those scars… are you hurt?” Wilton extended a hand which Damon ignored.
“I’m fine. What do I do?”
The old man’s hand shook, hanging there in mid-air between them. “I don’t know, I… I just don’t know. I’ve never actually seen someone with an ability like Lily has. Heard plenty of stories, of course, but never seen…”
“She was inside Hunter,” Damon said. “Lily snapped back to her own body.” He shook his head as he tried to make sense of what was happening, listing everything he could think to list. “The rogue is in the house, unconscious, Hunter is back on his feet, I’m back in my own head, and we know the demon has Lily. What else do we know?”
Wilton just shook his head in disbelief and Damon grabbed his shoulder, jolting him out of his stupor. “Talk! You’re the shaman.”
“Yes,” Wilton said. “But you convene with spirits. I’ve not known a spirit-talker since the elder Pokorann. When the answer isn’t clear, let those before guide your hand, Alpha.”
“There can’t… there’s not enough time,” Damon said, with a break hitching in his throat. “I’ll just—”
“Just what? Attack her? Ravage her body in hopes that somehow shredding your mate will save her?”
Damon looked down, still trying to think. He closed his eyes, but no voices came.
“Let them come to you, Alpha,” Wilton said. “Open your mind and listen to the voices, to the trees. The only way to save Lily is to disturb the demon, but for that we must find the object that binds her to the present reality. Without it, she—”
Damon’s eyes snapped open, flaming with rage.
“Hunter!” he shouted. “Can you hear me?”
“Loud and clear,” Hunter replied.
“There’s something… some kind of gem or pendant. I only have vague memories but the warlock rubbed it when he came into the cabin. I remember him playing with. The demon threatened him and he pointed it at her, and she shrank away from it. Could that be what we need?” his question was half directed at Wilton and half at Hunter.
“Well,” the old man scratched his neck as he dug in his satchel for some kind of vegetal-smelling powder. “It could well be, if she fears the object, it could be what he uses to control her but—”
“No good,” Hunter shouted across the clearing. “No necklace, no pendant or stone or jewelry up here.”
Damon’s gaze flickered back to Wilton and then to Lily’s calmly rotating body.
Thoughts, all jumbled up and confused, rattled in Damon’s head. They all came in disjointed, nonsensical patterns with no discernible chronology or order to them. One thing happened, then another, then another, but in his head it was all just one big montage of confusion.
Why can’t I think?
“Trust yourself.” a familiar voice flooded his mind, clear as anything he’d ever heard. Instantly, he felt comfort, though it was tinged with the sharp bite of danger.
“Poko? Is that you?” Damon asked, aloud.
“Pokorann?” Wilton whispered, looking back and forth before understanding dawned upon him and he went back to sprinkling the herbal mixture in a circle around Lily’s dangling form.
“I’ve little time, young one,” the ancient elder’s voice caressed his ears. “Very little. Spirits can talk freely to those of your – of our line, but for others of us, it’s very difficult to… to maintain. For…”
“I’m listening, Elder,” Damon said. “A warlock has summoned a demon to help him start a war between us and the Carak. The demon has taken Lily.”
Pulsing from deep in his chest, Poko’s words faded for a moment, then returned. “I sense… flames. Purple flames – a succubus? It doesn’t matter. When you unseat the demon, she will briefly return to this world, and fight. The place from where she comes is such that she’ll do anything to escape it. Understand?”
“I don’t care,” Damon said. “As hard as the demon will fight, I’ll fight harder.
Lily’s everything to me, she’s—”
“Clear your thoughts Damon,” Poko whispered into Damon’s soul. “Let your feelings control your actions. Let them guide you. You can’t see thing the way Lily can, but through her, you can sense them. She will tell you everything you need to know if you…” his voice faded.
“Poko!” Damon shouted. “Help me! I can’t do what you’re telling me to do! I’m too weak, too…”
He fell to his knees and grabbed two handfuls of gritty dirt, squeezing them until the grains bit underneath his fingernails. “Come back,” he demanded. “Help me Poko!”
But he was gone. The voice in his mind faded with a rattle. Damon was, once again, alone. He drove his fist into the ground, then the other, and pushed himself up to his feet.
Vibrations pelted his body like wind through a tunnel.
“Alpha!” Wilton shouted. “Did you get your answer? Do you know?”
“No,” Damon said through gritted teeth. “But he told me to listen to my heart. And that’s what I’m going to do.”
“No!” Wilton cried out, grabbing for Damon as he strode toward the protective circle the shaman had laid on the ground around Lily. “If you break the circle, the demon will be unleashed! You’ll curse all of us.”
Damon snarled. “Not if I kill the demon after I let her out.”
He pushed Wilton back, and strode toward Lily’s floating body.
“Lily,” he whispered. “You give me strength. I know that now.”
His eyes were closed tight. He was guided not by reason or thought or fear, but only by the purest, deepest love. “I’m allowed to need you,” he whispered. “Being an alpha isn’t about being alone. It’s about trusting the people you can trust. There’s no way to get through all this otherwise.”
An unearthly shriek pierced Damon to the core, then an aftershock – some kind of magical wave – sent him to his knees, but he dragged himself back to his feet. He shook his head. “You won’t win,” he said. “No matter how hard you try.”
Wilton shouted something behind him, but Damon’s mind was only on one thing. Once he was back to his feet, “forward” is all he thought.
The closer he got, the worse it burned. Unseen energy flayed him, screaming through Damon’s mind, threatening to shred his sanity, but he pushed forward. Against the beating tide, against the pain shooting through his brain and his muscles, Damon strode onward until he was within a foot of his spinning mate.
He reached out, his hand beginning to smoke as he did. White-hot agony shot through him, but he wasn’t going to stop.
“I’m not stopping,” he winced. “If you kill me, I’ll haunt you in whatever hell it is you call home.”
One of his eyes went blind, and vertigo pulled at Damon’s stomach, twisting his consciousness.
His fingers on Lily’s hand brought him back, through the agony that wrenched him. He felt himself yanked violently dow
n a tunnel.
“My… hand…”
“Lily?” Damon said, staggering to the left, trying to keep his balance. “Is that you?”
“Take… my… hand…”
Damon closed his blind eye and grabbed one side of his head. He fell to one knee, but on the way, managed to grab Lily’s hand, knocking it open.
In slow motion, he watched the little purple gem fall from her hand, and he grabbed it mid-fall before he fell backwards, out of the invisible force field surrounding her, out of the flames and the fire that had blackened his hand.
“That’s it!” Wilton screamed. “Shatter it! Break the stone!”
“If you break that, you’ll kill your mate.”
“Who are you?” Damon demanded, snapping his head back and forth. “Answer me!”
“You know who I am. You’ve seen me once or twice. You want me, don’t you? Everyone seems to want me.” The voice he heard was soft, velveteen, but with some teeth in the background. “Hold on to that stone, and I’ll do whatever you want for as long as you want it, you big, savage wolf. None of these other people mean anything to you, not really.”
“No, no, no!” Damon stood, defiantly, holding the flickering pendant at arm’s length. “I won’t listen to this, demon!”
The screaming in his head returned, increasing in intensity as he squeezed the rock. Behind him, Wilton shouted something he couldn’t hear, and in the distance, he heard Hunter struggling, but the only thing on Damon’s mind was the woman spinning in the air in front of him, not inches away.
“I won’t let you down, Lily,” he said.
Purple blurred his vision. Flames licked the skin of his hand.
“I’m not going to be weak. I’d do anything for you.”
Like she heard him calling, Lily turned her head toward Damon, smiled, and opened her eyes. She reached for him, and just like when he put his hand inside the invisible bubble around her, Lily’s skin burned when her hand left it.
“Squeeze… it…” she whispered. “You won’t hurt… me…”
Her voice was so weak, so vulnerable and cracking that the mighty wolf had to fight himself to keep back his emotions. He had to force himself not to burst through the forcefield to feel his love one last time before being engulfed.