Nineteen
“No…”
I whisper, none of the humor in Maddox’s tone making it into mine. I don’t give a shit about the wolves. They’re not the ones who raped me, and the cage was made to withstand the monsters in the Shadow Domain. As long as we stand in the middle of it, they can’t touch us. Varius and Dayne are coming for me, and they’ll slaughter every last one of these fuckers if they need to.
But it isn’t just werewolves that have arrived.
It’s Eduardo.
The witch who teleported me here.
“Keep looking at her,”
my brother-in-law says as he steps in front of me, blocking me with his body, misinterpreting why I’m afraid, “and I’ll turn your head into a bowling ball.”
Eduardo’s eyes narrow, but he doesn’t stop. We’re stuck in a cage. I don’t have any magic, and Maddox is the baby of the family, with a lot left to learn. If he tries to hit him with a spell, the fucker will just block it. The summoning circle has been destroyed, meaning the demons can’t come back, and over a dozen more guards have just entered the gym and taken up guard by the door. If anyone comes in, they’re fucked.
“You have to get out of here,”
I urge as I grab Maddox’s arm. “He’s a teleporter.”
Antonio wants me alive for breeding, but they’ll just kill Varius’ brother on arrival – if he’s lucky. Thoughts of him being tortured in medical experiments, of being cut open and stitched back together in an attempt to turn him into a chimera makes my fingers tighten on his arm. “Now.”
“No.”
“Maddox.”
“I’m not leaving you, sis.”
I want to both hug him and hit him. If I could shove him out of the cage, I would, but the werewolves would just tear him into pieces if he’s not in his shadow form.
“Find Varius and lead him here,”
I say. But we both know he won’t make it in time. Varius can feel me now that his curse is broken. He knows exactly where I am, and it’s been about ten minutes since the explosion. If he could be here right now, he would be. Maddox making him panic will only distract him, but it’s my only chance of convincing his baby brother to leave.
“He won’t make –”
Maddox starts, only to be cut off as the room breaks out into utter chaos. The werewolves howl and snarl in pain as they start sinking into the floor, like a row of dominos being knocked over, starting at the door and spreading out. Sau’s shadow races across the floor, and she has opened herself up to the monsters within.
“Yes!”
Maddox shouts, but I’m not feeling his same flare of hope.
Eduardo throws up a ward around all three of us. He’s a strong witch, and although Sau might be stronger, it’ll take her time to break through his defenses. Time where he can complete the teleportation spell and take us all away from here.
Shifting into her human form so she can use the rest of her magic, but keeping the shadows spreading out at her feet to force the werewolves to still give her space, Sau starts to bring out her monsters. They don’t pour free like they did at the house though. Only three of them step out: a giant spider-like thing with two heads and crab claws, a dog with three heads full of shark-like teeth, and a large flying beast that has the upper body of a bat, the bottom half of a serpent, and ‘hair’ made up of wriggling snakes.
As terrifying as they look, they don’t seem capable of taking on seven wolves each.
“What’s wrong?”
I ask, my panic increasing. If Sau is already struggling, what’s going to happen when Antonio finally rocks up?
“Nothing,”
he says as he launches a series of missiles at Eduardo. The red streaks of magic pass through the bars of the cage, aiming straight for the fucker’s head. They explode against a shimmering blue shield. Eduardo didn’t even look up as he cast it, his attention on the teleportation spell he’s drawing on the floor. With two fingers, he pours his magic into two thick black lines as he circles the cage.
Fuck.
It’s only going to take him one or two minutes to get us out of here. I look at Sau as she starts hammering her magic at the ward, but there’s a paleness to her skin, too much sweat on her brow. She’s used a lot of magic recently, and even if she wasn’t cursed, the amount she’s used would be dangerous for anyone. With every spell, there’s a backlash of magic, and if we use too much too soon, the buildup will kill us.
Blood trickles out of her nose, then starts to gush, and I know that even if she makes it through the ward on time, she isn’t going to be able to kill him. Maddox’s missiles aren’t doing shit. There’s too much of a power difference between them.
A werewolf comes at her from the side, having slipped past her monsters, but she blasts it in half without ever breaking the rhythm of her attacks on the ward. Her magic is already getting hard for her to control. More blood gushes down her face, coming out of her ears now, her eyes. She starts to sway, but she doesn’t stop throwing energy at the ward, her magic such a dark-red that it looks black.
“Maddox, get out of here,”
I repeat, forcing myself to think of the worst. “You can help me more by rescuing me after.”
“I’m not leaving you.”
“Don’t be an idiot.”
“Can’t help it.”
He throws another flurry of missiles, but this time he aims for the ward where his mother is attacking it. He doesn’t have the power to match her blows, but if he can help her get through by even a second, then it might be enough to save us.
I clench my fists, hating Varius so fucking much right now. If he didn’t torture me, if he just trusted me despite all the evidence against me, then I would be able to help him. I would be able to help them save me.
But the fucker took that from me.
Part of me almost wishes Eduardo succeeds in his spell out of spite, wanting Varius to fucking suffer over what he caused.
But then I remember how much I love the damn fool. How much he has tried to make up for what he did over this last month. He has already suffered, is still suffering, knows he will suffer for the rest of his life even if I’m saved today. Not a day has gone by that he hasn’t apologized since we got married.
He’s seen to my every desire, giving me foot rubs and back rubs, leaving meetings early to go get me random ass foods when my pregnancy cravings hit. Stopped me from eating dirt when they took an even weirder turn. He spent an hour every day with me, helping me bond with my wand faster. He’s told me secrets he’s never revealed before, tried to open up, to trust me even though I can feel his fear, his panic at doing so. He has been betrayed his entire life by those he trusted and loved. Being ruthless and paranoid has kept him alive, but he is trying to change his very makeup for me. Trying to ignore all his screaming instincts.
And I’ve found him researching late at night when he thought I was asleep or in the day when he thought I wasn’t paying attention. He’s still trying to find a way to give me my magic back. He’s looking into calling an audience with a fucking god even though those never go well for the caller. He is looking into ways of stealing magic from another. Dark magic. Forbidden magic, outlawed by the archangels themselves.
He will risk his life for my happiness.
A tear slips free as Eduardo nears the start of his circle. He’s so close to connecting it, to ripping me away from a future with the man I love and sending us into hel.
Zita’s words, her promise of what will happen to me if I’m not saved today slam into my skull, my very soul. I start to shake, and the panic I have been struggling so hard to contain breaks free.
“Get out, Maddox,”
I try one last time, my voice cracking and high-pitched. I don’t wait for him to move before I start calling on my magic. The air crackles with uncontrollable energy.
Dangerous.
Chaotic.
Desperate.
It burns my hands, making the area smell like a BBQ.
“What are you –”
Maddox starts.
“I’m not letting him take me.”
“Fuck! Don’t!”
He turns to me, tries to throw up a shield around my hands, but my fire eats magic, and I am a lot more powerful than he is.
“Micha!”
he screams in a panic as he throws up another useless shield, but this one is consumed just as fast.
“I won’t be able to control it,”
I say as the fire burns up my arms, wanting out. Eduardo finally looks up from his fucking transportation spell, and his eyes widen. He can’t see the purple flames building on my fingertips –they are visible only to me– but he can feel their heat. Once I release the spell, this entire bubble is going up in flames.
I don’t know if the fire will die once I do, or if it’ll carry on burning until an archangel stops the inferno, but I don’t care anymore.
I’m not going back to that hel.
I’m not going back to Sadist.
To Eduardo.
To Antonio.
“Get out, Maddox!”
“She’s through!”
he shouts as the ward crashes down, and Sau launches a black ball of power at Eduardo. He’s forced to stop his transportation spell in order to defend himself, and with a cry of relief, I stop trying to pull on my own magic.
The fire disappears, but my arms are burned raw all the way up to my elbows. I fall to my knees, and Maddox is immediately beside me, trying his best to heal my wounds.
“Never give up hope like that, Micha,”
he says as white light flows from his fingertips. “We will always come for you.”
“I can’t go through that again,” I rasp.
He looks up at me as his magic helps dull the pain. He can’t heal me completely, hasn’t learned enough, so my skin is still puckered and raw. “Listen to me. If the worst happens today, you keep yourself alive however you have to.”
I shake my head.
He grabs my hands and squeezes. “You have your sister to yell at and protect from a demon prince, and you still need to kick my ass, then Varius’. So you survive, Micha. We will never stop coming for you.”
I stare at him, the panic in my throat making me mute. He knows I might not be making it out of here today. Sau is struggling to stand up, healing herself almost as much as she is attacking Eduardo. He’s still on the defensive, unable to get a blow in, but if he can just hold out, eventually, she’ll weaken too greatly to heal. One of her monsters has been killed, the other two are struggling to keep the werewolves off Sau, and more wolves keep pouring into the gym.
“I’m stepping out to pull your cage into my shadows now, okay?”
He releases my hands. I have a sudden urge to hold on to him, to not be alone, but I wipe my sweaty palms on my thighs and nod. “It might be a while until I can bring you out, but if something happens to me, my brothers will find you. Never give up hope.”
My pulse spikes at the idea of being trapped in this cage on the Plane of Monsters, not being able to move from the middle of it without being torn to shreds by beasts I cannot see. I’ll be lost in a pitch-black world, slowly and painfully starving to death.
But it’d still be better than my fate with Antonio.
I nod, stronger this time. “Do it.”
He squeezes my hands, then slips from the cage, but just as his shadows start to swirl on the floor beneath his feet, one of the werewolves rushes him. A growling black ball of fury tearing up the ground behind him.
“Maddox!”
Sau turns and blasts the werewolf in the face, but it’s left her open to an attack from Eduardo. His crimson magic arcs towards her, and she only just manages to throw up a shield. White light flows from the fingers of her other hand as she presses it over her heart. She can’t heal any damage the use of magic is doing to her, but she can remove the pain.
If it’s in her heart though, how long can she possibly survive?
Smirking like the sleazeball he is, Eduardo attacks her again.
Relentless.
Powerful.
Not letting up to give her a chance to go on the offensive.
Her blue shield wavers under his red blasts of magic, and for a second I wonder why she doesn’t just take him into her shadows. Then I see the shield he has erected all around his feet – a circular wall about six inches tall, three feet in diameter. Her shadows can’t scale vertical surfaces. There’s always a counter to magic if you can find it.
Another werewolf charges Maddox.
Two more.
Three.
He keeps trying to fight them off with one hand as his other pulls on his shadows for me, but every time they fully form, he’s forced to use both his hands to protect himself. Then they disappear, and I’m still here.
Refusing to just stand here waiting to be saved though, I drop my eyes to the double-walled circle around the cage. If I can disrupt it, it’ll force Eduardo to start his spell all over again. If Sau’s here, the boys can’t be far behind. Buying another one or two minutes could save my life.
Dropping to the floor, I reach an arm through the bars and bring forth my fire so it crackles in my fingertips. I’m not trying to let it out this time. I know I can’t control it, but if I can just get it to burn through me, perhaps that’ll be enough to smudge the black lines.
Enough to break the spell.
To save myself.
But I never get the chance to try it.
Sau goes down, her shield shattering, her face covered in blood.
Eduardo blasts my arm sideways, breaking it backwards against the bars of the cage and snapping my bone out of my skin. As the werewolves keep Maddox off him, he starts to complete his spell.
I scream in pain as I try to move.
To stop him.
To save myself before it’s too late.
Another shadow streaks across the floor, bypassing all the wolves, and Rudy materializes in front of me. An army of giant spiders arrive a second later and start attacking the wolves.
He swirls his shadows around the cage.
Hope wars with panic inside of me as I try to do the math, seeing who will finish first.
Eduardo is only a few inches, a few seconds away from completing the circle.
Rudy, like Maddox, is now being forced to fend off a pile of wolves. He’s having a better time of it, able to keep one hand on calling out his shadows, but Maddox has just gone down, sliced into pieces – hopefully not dead, just shifting like he did before, and the wolves that were fighting him now turn to his brother. The spiders can only stop so many.
Rudy’s tackled from the side, his concentration broken. He kills the wolf quickly, but as another of Sau’s monsters go down, torn apart by teeth and claws and suicidal guards, Antonio enters with three full chimeras.
They tear their way across the gym. Rudy’s trying his best to stop them, manifesting giant snakes, wasps, rats, any and every horror he can pull on, but he’s also trying to fight Eduardo, stopping him from completing the spell or erecting a ward. He throws ball after ball of magic.
But he can’t concentrate on four different foes at once, especially one with Antonio’s speed.
A soundless scream erupts from his lips as Antonio bites him on the shoulder and shakes him hard. Another chimera grabs him on the leg, and they rip him apart at the waist.
Eduardo’s breathing hard as I’m screaming.
I stick my other arm out of the cage, try to use my magic to burn through his line, but a wolf just steps on my fingers, crushing them. Making them useless.
Eduardo finishes the transportation spell.
Antonio and his remaining men step inside it.
But as he starts the incantation needed to send us out of here, Rudy’s shadows swell across the floor. His magic is keeping him alive even though he’s in pieces.
I don’t know if he can heal from that. Don’t know if he’ll live an eternity as severed parts.
But right now, he is saving me, and I will dedicate the rest of my life to figuring out how to heal him.
Antonio grabs hold of the cage, trying to keep it from sinking into the Plane of Monsters.
Rudy’s magic is stronger though.
It pulls me down.
Down.
Down.
Into safety.
Into hope.
But just as my head is about to go under, the Boss of the Death Hunt lets me go. Then he grabs both halves of Rudy and brings him into the transportation circle.
I scream in utter terror, knowing that when I come out, it will be at another of Antonio’s compounds. Rudy will hold out as long as he can, but eventually, they will torture him until he breaks.
Everyone breaks.
And then he’ll pull me out of his shadows and deposit me right back into Antonio’s lap.
“Micha!”
Maddox’s voice calls out to me, coming from near the door. It sounds the same as always, but somehow I know it isn’t him this time. It’s my best friend wearing his face.
The man who will do anything to save me.
A flair of hope rushes through me as I scream, “Dayne!”
But the shadows consume me.
Then I am gone.