Sixteen
I’m shoved back into the room. As soon as Antonio steps inside, noise radiates from every pod. They can smell their alpha and are hurrying to see what he wants.
Eleven doors open around me.
Chucky shouts, “The bitch killed Michael.”
The hairs on my neck rise. My adrenaline spikes, and I’m twitching at every noise, every movement. The violence in the air is damn near suffocating.
I take a step back as Zita and Antonio advance, but all the other men push in from every angle.
“I’m going to take you with me when I escape,”
I say as I glare at the woman in front of me. “Then I’m going to cut you up better than Maddox did.”
“Maddox never laid a hand on me, so that’s a pathetic threat. But here’s one: I’m going to pretend you’re Maddox when I torture you. That fucking asshole has so much shit coming, and I’m going to practice everything I want to do to him on you.”
She pulls out a knife. “Starting now.”
“Khalid is going to kill you.”
Maddox has definitely kept her DNA, but our supply of alexandrite is limited and super precious. I don’t know if my threat is fact, but I face her like it is.
“No, he won’t.”
She smiles with utter certainty. “Because I’ve already been killed and brought back with necromancy. He doesn’t have my complete DNA anymore, which means no soul doll.”
When a person is resurrected, they’re given a bit of the soul of the necromancer, changing their genetic makeup just enough for Khalid’s magic not to work.
“And the thing about soul dolls is that once their victim dies, the alexandrite becomes useless. Talon stole their main stash, which means they don’t have much alexandrite left, and they’re going to use every last stone on you.”
She cocks her head to the side. “You hearing this, Khalid? We know how to bypass your creepy magic.”
Her eyes focus back on me. “Now, since you’re bonded with Varius, necromancy is out. It makes it too complicated to bring you back, and Antonio here doesn’t want to risk you dying for good.”
She starts to undo her belt. “So we’re going to strangle you, then bring you back with CPR. Over and over and over again until we use up all their precious backup.”
My heart rate jumps as someone grabs me from behind. A wet tongue slides across the side of my face, and I know it’s Sadist before he even speaks. “I’m going to fuck you while you’re dead,”
he whispers in my ear.
I throw an elbow into his side, but he takes a page out of my fucking playbook and latches his teeth around my ear. I scream as he rips it off my head, the tearing of flesh felt all the way down my jawline.
Instantly, the building rocks with an explosion. The boys are here, and Khalid is watching through my eyes, but I feel no sense of relief.
If they kill me before my bond with Varius is complete, will that destroy it? The idea of losing it when I’ve already lost so much is damn near crippling.
I fall to my knees as the ground shakes beneath me, and the loss of my ear fucks with my balance.
“That’s Varius,”
Zita says as she stands over me with a cruel smile. “We’re going to go kill him real quick, then be right back for you.” She turns to Antonio. “You’ll need all these men. He’s finally hit his ascension.”
I gasp at the idea of his curse having broken. There is a part of me that’s so happy he’s come to kick their asses, but there’s another part of me, a colder part that hates him out of envy. He took my magic. How dare he get his own. And what the fuck? He told me he’d have to be okay with giving me up for the curse to break. If he’s thinking of saving me only to try to leave me so I’m “safe,”
I’m going to kick his ass.
“Strap her back to the table,”
Antonio says.
Sadist hauls me to my feet, then backhands me across my missing ear when I try to fight him off. My vision blurs, the edges going black as my head rings with pain. I’m forced onto the table.
“Cut off her circulation,”
Antonio says.
I scream as I get my second wind, fighting tooth and nail, but there’s too many of them, and they are well rested and healed, whereas I am not. As the straps tighten painfully on my elbows and ankles, I scream for all I am worth. The building doesn’t rock this time though. Khalid is no longer watching me, no doubt preoccupied with whoever it is they’re fighting.
“Let’s go,”
he says, satisfied that I’m not going anywhere. Zita starts to leave with the men, but he stops her. “Stay here.”
“They tortured me,”
she seethes. “I want to help kill –”
She cuts herself off and bows her head. He’s her alpha, and he’s just given her an order. Her jaw tics as he leaves. As soon as the door shuts, she turns to me.
“Knife or belt,”
she says as she gestures with one, then the other. “I’m hurting someone today, and oh, look, you’re the only one here.”
“Touch me, and –”
My words die as her eyes widen in horror, right before she stabs herself in the stomach. She twists the blade around as she falls to her knees. The belt slips from her fingers. As panic carves itself into her face, I wonder if she’s being touched by Rudy’s madness. Pulling out the knife, she drops it onto the floor, then shoves her hand inside the hole.
“You fucker…”
Zita bites out as she falls onto her ass, her face pale, her body shaking. The pain she’s going through must be intense. If I didn’t hate the bitch, I might have been impressed. But she isn’t looking good, her body already too frail from Maddox’s torture.
“Get out of me,”
she seethes as she yanks her arm free, and in her hand...
Is a fucking tapeworm.
Her horror infects me. My stomach twists with the idea of having one of those things inside of me. It wriggles in her grip, but I don’t think it’s trying to get free. Magic electrifies the air, and my horror intensifies as I realize that fucker is Maddox.
Using her other hand, Zita drags more and more of the worm out of her digestive tract.
The fucker is long.
Three or four feet at least.
Swaying on her knees, she tries to grab the knife she dropped as Maddox wriggles on the floor, his shapeshifting magic starting to amp up. His eyes and ears pop out along the top of his length. His shadows swirl beneath him as he draws on the extra meat he keeps in his locker to increase his size.
Zita manages to touch her knife, but she’s too weak to actually grab it. Her eyes roll back in her head as she falls to the ground, blood pouring out of her stomach.
Maddox finishes shifting into his full naked form. Then he turns towards me with a crooked smile. “You so owe me,”
he says as he walks towards me.
“I’ve never been more happy to see you.”
“It’s because I’m naked, isn’t it?”
His smile falls as his eyes rove over my naked form. He takes in the breeding table I’m strapped to, the bruises and cuts on my face, my missing ear. A darkness cloaks him, wrapping him in its arms like an old friend, and I shiver despite myself.
I’ve never seen him so serious before.
“I need to do something before I get you out of there,”
he says softly, “but you’re going home tonight Micha.”
I take a deep breath, my chest quivering as I bite back my pleas to please get me out of this damn thing first. They have a plan. If Maddox says he needs to do something, it’s to help get me out of here and all the boys back home alive.
“How’s Dayne?”
I ask as I watch him move over to Zita. He kneels down beside her, dips his fingers in her blood, and quickly starts sketching out a summoning circle.
“Alive.”
His tone tells me he’s busy concentrating, so I bite back the rest of my questions even though I really want to know about Varius and Rafiki. Varius is here. Dayne will be too. Neither of them would have stayed behind. I can ask them myself soon enough.
I study the circle Maddox is drawing as best as I can from my position. I recognize a few of the runes as ones my sister created. She’s a progeny in summoning demons, and I damn near had a heart attack whenever she asked me to check for monsters under her bed or in her closet when she was little. Nine times out of ten, they were real.
How she managed to survive all this time is the world’s greatest mystery, especially since she’s the clumsiest person in said world.
Maddox steps back once his circle is done. Funneling his magic, he chants for a solid minute, and the hairs on my neck rise as I wonder who the fuck he’s summoning. Most demons only need one or two sentences to call them forth. Given the amount of limitations and power he is pulling on to bring this fucker forth, they must be powerful. An arch demon perhaps?
The urge to yell at Maddox to free me already increases with every second that passes, with every building of power in the circle of runes. I keep telling myself I’ll get out of my binds soon, but it’s getting harder and harder to stay calm. I feel so vulnerable on this table. So helpless and weak. If he can’t control the demon, I’ll be at its mercy just as much as I was at the wolves.
The summoning circle hums with an influx of power. The runes turn black, and a swirl of dark-blue smoke fills the area. Glitters of gold twinkle in and out of the haze, like a galaxy of stars. He’s clearly calling forth a pride demon. They always like to make an entrance. In a blinding flash of gold light, the smoke clears, and in its place is an eknor pride demon.
Their kind can take many shapes and forms, but this one is a towering bipedal male with sleek dark-blue fur all over his body. Like the smoke from before, he is dusted with bits of gold – an entire galaxy of stars from a world far away from here. He has the mane of a lion, and two strands, one on either side of his head, have been braided before ending with a golden feather. A tail with multiple heads flicks lazily behind him, like a cat o’nine tails whip. His thick arms are crossed, showcasing his muscles, and behind his back are folded feathered wings.
A loincloth is the only clothes he has on, but there is a golden cuff around his right bicep and a necklace of teeth hanging between his collar bones. It’s the cuff that draws my focus. Engraved within its metal –something far more valuable than gold– is a depiction of the sun beside a pretty detailed bird, like an archaeopteryx of sorts, its wing-arms spread, its beak to the sky, its talons wicked and sharp.
He isn’t wearing it though.
No.
The cuff’s been melted into his skin.
Which means this pretty boy is one of the seven princes of Sin. He is the Prince of Pride. They have no king.
His power makes my heart flip.
Now I no longer feel helpless.
I feel insignificant.
Like an ant in front of an elephant.
Normally, this is when the summoner brags to the demon about how powerful they are and why they must listen to them before giving the demon very detailed and extremely exact instructions on what they are to do. However, Maddox just draws another picture on the floor.
Not a rune this time.
The callsign of my sister. She has a bit of a reputation in the eknor kingdom…
The demon’s entire demeanor changes. He’s no longer puffing out his chest in a warrior’s pride. Not a peacock strutting his power. Now he stills like the true predator he is. His strength is quieter, more lethal, like a lion stalking through the grass.
Maddox points to me, and the demon’s head follows his finger. His eyes, gold and burning like the sun as it dips below the horizon, land on me.
I shiver even as I lift my chin.
“She wants you to kill any werewolf you find inside this building for the next thirty minutes,”
Maddox says.
“But no kids,”
I add. I’m pretty certain the ‘she’ Maddox mentioned is Lou, not me. He won’t use her name though, doesn’t want to give the demon that power over her. But the eknor is still staring at me, so hopefully that means he will listen.
The demon prince inclines his head, his mane shifting like moonlight through an ancient forest. “Sister,”
he says, his accent heavy and thick, his dialect nowhere from earth.
As I stare at him in utter bafflement, he steps across the line of runes, his arms dropping to his sides. “You are not as good as her,”
he says to Maddox, letting him know the circle did shit all to contain him.
My nerves spike as my eyes dart between them. If he wants to kill Maddox, there is nothing I’ll be able to do.
“Yeah… She said I might get myself killed…”
he says, not a single waver to his voice. In fact, he looks fucking pleased with himself. Proud.
The demon grunts, then heads for the door. Sleek like a panther, his muscles rippling beneath his fur.
“All the witches are her friends!”
Maddox calls out.
Except for Eduardo. But I don’t tell him that. I want to be the one to kill him.
The demon makes no sign of having heard him. As the gym door shuts behind him, Maddox hurries over to me and starts to undo my binds.
“Why did he call me sister?”
I ask warily. That is not a name of address for them.
“So that’s a funny story,”
he says as he frees my arms. I try to sit up to help him remove the straps on my feet, but my limbs are too numb and tingly to listen to me.
“I could use some humor right now,” I say.
“Mmm. Well, short story, that’s going to be your brother-in-law. I think. I think he’s planning on kidnapping her now that she’s pregnant with his child, but –”
“What?”
I shout. “She’s sixteen! What did you do?”
“Hey, why is it automatically my fault?”
“She was so good until she started hanging out with you.”
He grins, proud of himself.
“Maddox…” I growl.
Finished untying my ankles, he helps me off the table. My legs refuse to hold my weight, so he sets me on the floor, well away from Zita.
“What. Did. You. Do?”
I grit out.
“Well… I might have, theoretically, allegedly told her to have hot, dirty sex with a more powerful guy than Rudy so she wouldn’t have to marry him?”
“Maddox,”
I growl. My savior or not, I’m going to kill him.
“In my defense,”
Varius’ soon-to-be dead brother says as he starts to pull on his shadows, “I thought she was asking for a friend. She said, and I quote, ‘What would you advise for a friend of mine who’s getting married for their virginity to someone she doesn’t want to –”
“She doesn’t have any friends getting married!”
I yell. “She’s sixteen!”
“Yeah, I hear you, but she clearly wasn’t talking about herself because we don’t care if she’s a virgin.”
My eyes narrow at him as he pulls out the cage he kept Zita in. “No one who says I’m asking for a friend,”
I bite out, “is ever asking for a fucking friend.”
I’m so pissed at him that it takes me a few seconds to clock what his plan is. Then my eyes widen. “Oh hel no. I’m not getting in that.”
“You won’t survive in the Shadow Domain until the bond is completed, and you’re not fit to walk, let alone fight. So in you go.”
I grit my teeth. I hate this plan so much.
“Don’t you want to survive long enough to yell at her and kill me?”
he asks sweetly.
My eyes are fucking slits at this point. “Fine. But when you bring me out, I don’t want anyone there. I want to get dressed and showered first.”
If I’m yelling at my sister, I’m sure as hel not doing it naked. She’ll twist the conversation around with all her concern for me, and I’m not having it.
“Varius –”
Maddox starts.
“Varius,”
I spit, my anger at him coming back now that my rescue is imminent, “got me into this fucking mess. He can damn well wait for me to get showered and dressed before he goes all neanderthal.” I swallow hard. My voice lowers. “Don’t let him see me like this. Please.” If he’s going to try to send me away for my “safety,” then I’m going to look like a fucking lady.
His lips in a tight line, Maddox nods. Then he helps me into the cage. He shuts the door, but before he can seal it with magic to keep the monsters out, the gym’s door bangs open.
“Shadow form!”
I scream as three chimeras race towards his back. They’ve changed into their monsters, and they are moving fast. There’s no way Maddox is going to be able to turn in time.
The only way he can survive this is if he shifts into his shadows. They can’t touch him then.
But the little shit tries to pivot anyways, not wanting to disappear long enough for their attention to turn to me.