Suddenly, Deidre’s shrill screams stopped, and the silence cocooning me turned into a loud buzzing. Everything around me was dark and hazy.
I blinked, and Johnna’s face appeared above mine, her eyes filled with horror.
“Oh my gods, Niki, she’s bleeding. How? This isn’t supposed to happen!” Johnna’s voice pierced my fuzzy brain. “Malachi is going to kill us,” she cried.
“You mean Malachi is going to kill you. This was your idea.”
“Oh, shut up and help me heal her. Quick. He should be back any minute.”
I cracked open my aching eyelids and saw her kneeling by my side, one finger hovering above the area where Deidre impaled me. Through my agony, a thought struck me. Since I was back in this realm, it shouldn’t have been this painful, but what did I know?
“Unless you have some really powerful drugs, please stop whatever it is you’re about to do,” I croaked. “You wouldn’t believe how much it hurts. My pain has pain. Can I pass out now?”
“Stay strong for just a while longer and hold very still, Willow.” From the sound of Niki’s soft voice, he was sitting close to Johnna, whispering words in a language I’d never heard. The sound was musical as his voice flowed up and down. My body tensed when he poked into a sore spot. His touch surprised me because it was as soft and gentle as his whispered melody.
Until he pulled the blade from my side. Yep, it was official. From the pain taking over my body, I was definitely in Hell. They might call it Dark World but in my mind? Hell.
I sucked in as much air as I could until my lungs wouldn’t hold any more. My body had a mind of its own as it rose against the intense pain pouring through me, swamping every nerve and organ. I’d become a spectator of my own story, watching my arms flail around in defiance against the person responsible for creating the pain. Through a fog, I heard Johnna call my name. Focusing on her voice, I reached out with my mind and followed the gentle sound back to reality.
“Gods, you scared us, Willow.” I met Johnna’s teary gaze, her face upside down as she loomed over me. Her blue eyes swirled with emotion, and it took me a few seconds to realize she was worried. About me. I watched the vortex of fear deep in her eyes, and eyes didn’t lie.
She placed her hand against my cheek, and her mouth curved downward. “That didn’t work out very well, did it?”
“If I could laugh without hurting, I would. You just said a mouthful.” I took a tiny breath to test the pain and found it wasn’t as bad as it had been moments ago. Whatever Niki was doing seemed to be working. I hoped. “This time even I was worried. The nightmare took on a life of its own.”
“Worrying is a useless emotion. It drains your strength, leaving you defenseless when you need it the most.” Niki’s gaze held mine. “But for you to be injured and almost killed from an event in your distant past, something in this realm is horribly wrong.”
Niki cradled my shoulder as Johnna lifted me from behind into a cross-legged position. Scooting forward until she sat beside me, both her and Niki’s hands rested against my back for support.
“Relax. I want to make sure your bleeding has completely stopped.” She concentrated on my middle, her stare vacant as she worked whatever voodoo she did. My skin tingled, the sensation increasing until a mild burning sensation skipped down my body.
“Now I know what an electrical outlet feels like,” I muttered.
“Am I causing you more pain?” she asked. If I hadn’t been so close to her, I wouldn’t have heard the slight tremor in her voice. We had just met, yet I couldn’t believe she’d be so worried about me or how I felt. Nothing in my past had prepared me for this. She reminded me a bit of Tish. At heart, Tish had been a good person, considerate of others to a point. Until it affected her. Surely, Johnna was just worried about Malachi’s reaction to her plan. Wasn’t she?
The burning in my side increased, reining in my thoughts. It didn’t hurt as much as when the blade had gone in, but it still hurt—like pouring alcohol over an open wound. I gasped and held my breath, trying to will the pain away. As it faded, I could have sworn my blood tingled. I stared up at the eddies of unusual magenta hues mingling with the dull gray sky and lost myself in the waves of sensation gyrating in my gut.
Sounding tired, Johnna’s soft voice finally broke the silence. “We need to find a safer place than this for the night, so you’re going to have to move, but slowly. I don’t want you reopening the wound.” She crawled onto her knees and with Niki’s help, raised me to my feet.
The gray horizon dipped to one side for a brief second then righted itself as my dizziness faded.
“There. How does that feel?” she asked, her arm firmly wrapped around my waist.
I mentally assessed my various aches and pains. “My shoulder, elbow, and hip don’t hurt anymore. When Deidre flung the knife at my head, I did the only thing I could. I threw myself to the floor.” I chuckled humorlessly. “Both guaranteed to cause the maximum amount of pain.” With my fingers laced, I pushed my arms out in front of me and slowly stretched. It felt amazing. “My side still throbs but I can handle it. The flip side of what could have happened, not so much.”
Johnna nodded. “I’ll give you another healing in a while. For now, take it easy.” She looked up at Niki who’d moved to her other side. “Do you know of somewhere safe where we can get some sleep? If such a thing even exists here. I’m exhausted.”
He caressed her cheek with his thumb. “Excellent idea. When we leave this realm, we might not get many chances to sleep.” He bent down and picked something up from beside my feet. Two somethings.
My gaze landed on the broken lance and the knife. “Are those . . .”
“I had to pry the knife from your hand,” Niki said. “The blade? Let’s just say you were lucky. The girl either had no training or was too weak to maneuver the weapon well. Otherwise, you’d be dead.”
I closed my eyes, shrugging one shoulder after the other in a useless attempt to soothe my sore muscles. I concentrated on keeping my feet moving forward, but my emotions were all over the place. I wasn’t just scared anymore. I was terrified. And from what I’d just been told, I had every right to be. “Niki, I don’t get any of this. I’ve never been hurt before in my stupid nightmares. They always followed the exact sequence of events I lived through while growing up. What I experienced this time never happened.” I pressed my palms against my stomach. “I know this sounds crazy, but I think I changed it.”
“What do you mean?” Niki asked.
“When the nightmare began, I didn’t want to relive it, so I did something different. When my foster sister—Deidre—stormed into the kitchen of their house, I asked her why she was pissed off.”
Niki frowned. “Did you say anything to her in the real event?”
I shook my head. “No. In the original version, Deidre came into the room threatening me. I couldn’t have gotten a word in edgewise in the real event. She never shut up.”
“Was anything else different?” Niki halted, pulling Johnna to a sudden stop as well. His military posture relaxed from rigid to less rigid as he crossed his arms over his chest and widened his stance.
“Well, yeah. Her stabbing me was different. The real event ended when she threw the knife. Her friends had arrived by then and had me cornered. Their words made me so angry.”
I stared at my lap, not wanting to see their expressions or their disappointment. “Whenever something happens, when I’m really angry and scared at the same time, I can’t control anything. It’s as if there’s a living entity inside me, fighting to escape. Anyway, in the real event, I never touched the knife but somehow it flew back toward Deidre. I remember hearing someone—a guy, I think—calling for an ambulance. They got her to the hospital in time. Thankfully, nothing ever came of it. Her parents didn’t want a scandal so I was moved on to my next home.”
“Difficulties? I don’t think nearly killing someone, including myself could be considered a difficulty,” Niki muttered.
Their silent staring into each other’s eyes told me there was more to Johnna’s previous admission. I bounced my gaze back and forth between them, wondering what they were thinking. When neither shared, I let out a loud sigh. “What happened?” I asked, hoping one of them would quit staring at the other long enough to fill me in.
Johnna laughed, lightly slapping Niki’s arm. “Oh, get over it, will you? I’ve apologized so many times I sound like a broken record.” She wrinkled her nose at him and gave me a crooked grin. “He was teaching me how to fight with a sword, and I may have stabbed him in the stomach.”
Niki grumbled under his breath. “There was no may have about it. You did stab me. I almost died.”
“Wait a minute,” I interjected. “I’m confused. How is stabbing Niki anything close to what I’ve done?”
“When I stabbed him, I used my magic to change the metal alloy in my sword. Unknowingly, of course. Looking back, I can see where I’d used magic my entire life and never knew that’s what I’d been doing. I was lucky my dad and Grumble-Buckets here figured it out before I really hurt someone.”
“While you two do the female-bonding thing and continue to insult me, I’m going to take these to Lucien.” Niki held out what was left of the two weapons. “Maybe he knows something we don’t about all of this.”
“Why not leave them here?” I asked.
“I’m not taking any chances.” He disappeared just as Malachi had.
“I really do hate it when they do that,” I groused.
Chapter 11
“Johnna?” I whispered, listening to the complete silence surrounding us like a heavy blanket. Was she really asleep? Why could she sleep in this stupid place, and I couldn’t? “Johnna?” I asked a little louder.
“What?” she mumbled.
“Are you awake?”
“Seriously? Why do people ask that? If I answer, I’m awake.”
“Sorry. I never thought about it before. If you want to sleep, it’s okay. I just needed to talk.”
There was no mistaking the exasperation in the sigh she exhaled. “You should try to rest.”
“I’ve wanted to curl up and sleep for so long. Guess the no-sleeping rule hasn’t changed. Just my luck, the one thing I really needed to be changed never will.”
“Fine.” Johnna rolled over, propping her head on one bent elbow. “So, what’s on your mind?”
I wrinkled my nose and shrugged. “Nothing. Everything. Shouldn’t Malachi be back by now?” I knew I’d sworn off men and demons, but somehow he’d crawled beneath my skin, and I couldn’t seem to get him out. His scared-slash-worried expression after I was stabbed still haunted me, and I wasn’t even sure he’d really seen anything. For all I knew, I could have been channeling guilt when I thought I saw his face. All the same, it was still gnawing at my subconscious.
“Not necessarily. If Lucien needed him, he’d have to stay. My uncle is nothing if not demanding. In a good way though. For a king.” She yawned.
“Lucien is your uncle?” I exhaled, awed by the knowledge little ol’ me now knew royalty. “Does he have kids?”
Johnna chuckled. “No. And if he doesn’t start looking for a mate, he never will.” She paused. “And I just got a wonderful idea.”
“Uh oh,” I groaned. “I’ll admit I don’t know you very well, but even I don’t care for the sound of that.”
“Oh, shut up. I thought we might help him find his true mate.”
In my opinion, the idea sucked, even without understanding the terminology. I wasn’t a dating service for lonely demon kings, but I wasn’t about to tell her as she prattled along about several nice demonesses she’d recently met.
“What’s a true mate?”
She paused, pursing her lips. “You’ve heard of a soulmate, right?”
I nodded.
“It’s sort of like a soulmate but more. A lot more. Usually, a demon only has one true mate in his lifetime, which I find hard to believe. Demons are immortal, or close to immortal. Eternity is a long time to spend alone if a true mate is never found.” She laid back and stared up at the sky. “And what happens if one of them dies? Are they doomed to be alone forever? Seems like a cruel punishment.”
“Makes sense. I take it you don’t want the throne?”
She rolled onto her side and regarded me for several minutes, unblinking. “Excuse me?” Her voice raised an octave.
I shrugged. “Well, if Lucien has no heir, wouldn’t you be in direct line to the throne if something happened to him? Unless you have an older brother or sister. Or a cousin, maybe?” I couldn’t be sure in the dim light, but I think she turned an odd shade of green.
“Oh, my gods. That so can’t be possible,” she moaned. “Wait! My dad is Lucien’s half-brother. He would be next in line, wouldn’t he?”
I chuckled at her panic-stricken expression. Her saucer-sized eyes glistened and her mouth had dropped open then quickly snapped shut. She flopped to her back, and I might have seen a couple of chin trembles. “I hate to burst your bubble, but your dad’s still missing, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Until he’s found, I’m afraid you’re it—at least according to my poly-sci professor.”
Johnna threw her arm over her face with a loud wail. “This is so like my father. He’s probably doing this on purpose to teach me some kind of lesson.”
I let her wallow in self-pity for a while longer, but guilt sat like a rock in the middle of my chest for causing her grief. I was kind of glad, though, for the first time it wasn’t me suffering. What kind of person does that make me?
With no end in sight to her constant moaning, I decided to add another squirt of fuel to the fire. “Uh, Johnna? Not to interrupt your rendition of a dying cow, but where do you think Al and DC are? I mean . . . how long can they chase each other?”
She swallowed her groan and sat up so fast it startled me. “Now that you mention it, I’m not sure where they are. Other than popping in and out for the occasional quick message mission or when we sent him to look for Lucien, Al hasn’t left my neck.” She absently rubbed her neck the entire time she talked, the repetitive motion familiar since I’d seen her do it several times since Al left. She must miss him as much as I missed DC.
“He’s never been gone this long before. He’s still a baby—maybe he got sidetracked. How long do you think it’s been? Three, maybe four hours? Longer?”
“I really don’t know. Since I was thrown into the Nightmare Realm, I haven’t had any sense of time, so everything’s off for me.”
I sat up and crossed my legs, fidgeting with the hem of my jeans. “Johnna, there’s something else I probably need to tell you. I wasn’t entirely truthful about everything that happened during my nightmare. Right before it ended, I saw Malachi’s face. The look on it . . . Gods, he seemed angry, but there was something else. I saw worry, too. At the time, I was in a lot of pain. I thought it was just my imagination and I was hallucinating. But the more I think about it, I know it wasn’t a hallucination. He saw me and saw what happened to me.”
“How can you be sure?”
“He looked at the spear.”
Johnna groaned. “I’m dead. He’s going to kill me.” Then she yawned, nearly cracking her face in two. “Since this will probably be my last night alive,” she said, “can we get back to pretending to sleep? You never know, it might actually happen.” She didn’t wait for my answer and lay on her side, leaving me to stare at her now dirty r
ear end. “I want to enjoy what little time I have left to live.” Several seconds passed in silence. “Willow?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m sure Al and DC will be fine. They’re both smart, and if anything goes wrong, they’ll have each other. Survival trumps petty feuds.”
I laid back down and stared at the dark sky, a million thoughts racing through my mind. Would they really be okay? Were we going to be okay? My eyes slowly closed. The question bothering me the most, the one refusing to go away no matter what else I pondered over, was Malachi.
Why hasn’t he returned?
I inhaled a strong scent of cinnamon, or maybe it was patchouli, but whatever the scent, it was overpowering. Opening my eyes, I stared into the purple gaze of the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. My breathing faltered, and my brain finally zeroed in on the obvious. I was still lying on the ground as she hovered above me like Aladdin’s flying carpet.
Since Tish’s death, I’d seen some really strange things but this time, I knew I was in trouble. When the woman smiled, instead of normal pearly whites shining back at me, her mouth was filled with the sharpest teeth I’d ever seen.
I opened my mouth to scream but nothing happened. No sound. Call me slow, but it took a few seconds to realize my lips hadn’t parted. So, I did the next best thing. I punched her in the nose.
Of course, I immediately regretted it when her sharp, talon-like fingers closed around my throat.
Nose to nose, she hissed, “Do not do foolish things, Watcher spawn. If you want your pets returned alive, you will listen to me. We seek freedom from demon rule, and you are going to help us get it.”
She either read the confusion in my eyes or she could read minds. Was there such a thing as mind rape? My nostril hair was on fire, burning from her rancid breath. Ugh. Ever hear of a toothbrush with lots of refreshing toothpaste?
Saved by the Spell (Of Mystics and Mayhem Book 2) Page 11