Chapter 15 Hector #2
When he lifted his gun and pointed it at me, I refused to turn away. I faced the barrel, staring down its eye with my own, knowing that whatever pain was promised in the moments to follow, it wouldn’t lead to death.
After all, Tomin needed me. He’d made that clear.
“I’m waiting,” I said, jutting out my chin.
Tomin’s grip was steady, the mouth of the gun staring me down. “Shall we get some practice out of that scream of yours, Hector?” Tomin asked, finger slipping onto the trigger. “The more believable the better.”
A serpent of pure shadow shot across the floor. No, not a shadow but a spear of fury, fang, and scale. I caught the movement out of the corner of my eye a beat before it sprung up, long teeth bared, and sunk them into Tomin’s wrist.
Tomin’s scream was a call to my soul, as was the clatter of the gun as it hit the ground.
Emon, who’d finally revealed himself, was dropped to the floor, Hunter blood dripping over him like rain.
With a great swish of his tail, the gun skidded in my direction and thudded against my knee.
I reached for it with both hands, hissing as the bindings tightened.
All the pain meant little to me as soon as my hands held the handle of the gun steady and aimed at the man I hated.
“I think I preferred your scream over mine,” I said, pulling the trigger and unloading a bullet into Tomin’s chest.
The room exploded into chaos.
Death might not shock Tomin anymore, but that didn’t mean he was without pain. He clutched his bloodied arm to his punctured chest, gasping like a fish out of water.
So I hit a lung, good.
Before Tomin dropped to his knees, the Hunters swelled like a wave. Eyes trained on me. I prepared to be met with a shower of bullets in return, but it was Verena that cried out a command.
“Stand down,” she cried out, placing her body before mine like a shield. “No one harms the Briar witch. We need him. Hold steady.”
Most slowed, but there were a few of the Hunters who decided they were stationed above this woman’s authority.
Unfortunately for them—but fortunately for Emon—they’d made a big mistake. The demon was already slithering after them, ready to spill more blood.
“Have your way with them,” I forced the command out across our bond.
“I take it that I do not require your acceptance to tear through these people?” Emon’s question thundered through my head. “No rules, no limits?”
“Knock yourself out, and enjoy the feast,” I spat aloud, fumbling with the gun in my hand to put a bullet back in the chamber.
“That may be the first thing you have said to me that I can stand behind, witchling.”
I focused my attention on the back of Verena’s head just as the bullet finally clicked into place. Instinct was telling me to lift the barrel and blow her skull to smithereens. Perhaps she sensed it, because she looked over her shoulder and offered me a single warning.
“I really don’t suggest you do that, Hector,” Verena said, danger littered in her eyes.
“Why?” I laughed. “Do you have a phobia of staying dead too?”
She shook her head. “You kill me, these Hunters will have their way with you before Tomin revives himself. I’m the only thing keeping you from death’s door.”
“You’re wrong.” I shook my head with the brightest of smiles on my face, courtesy of the gargled bellows of Hunters clutching throats that Emon had just torn out. “Actually, I think I’ll do just fine without you.”
Verena risked a glance at the carnage Emon left in his wake, but also to something beyond it. Back to that bastard corner in the room where light didn’t reach, as if expecting someone to be born from it.
“Where are… the others?” Verena asked as she looked back to me, tears filling her hazel eyes.
Shocked to the core, I opened my mouth to ask her who she spoke about when the room broke apart with the sounds of pure horror.
Growls, hisses and the keening song of claws over stone shattered over the room.
Everyone stopped, even Emon who retreated to my side, curling his obsidian body by my knee.
The sounds came from every possible place of shadow, as if they were no longer mundane puddles of darkness but doors to a demonic realm.
Deep inside of me, where the light hadn’t touched for years, the shard of wrongness and evil jolted to existence, reacting to the display around me.
Before I could understand what was happening, someone began to scream.
“He’s here!” one Witch Hunter bellowed, drawing the room’s attention towards him. I flinched as a few bullets were shot, cracking against stone. “Someone, help me. Help!”
A tentacle of pure darkness had wrapped around his ankle, dragging him to the shadows where he disappeared. As he passed out of sight, his screams were gagged. Severed as if he’d never even existed.
“Arwyn,” Verena choked as more tentacles burst from the darkness, reaching and clawing for Hunters who were helpless against them.
He’d come.
Besides the way that dark part of me confirmed it, there was something different to the air that was beyond evil magic. Arwyn was here. I sensed it as if his bright eyes graced my skin, or his lips brushed my ear and whispered.
There was no denying how my body reacted to his presence.
I longed to cry out for him, but refused to show weakness. I didn’t need him. Not before, and certainly not now. In fact, him being here was exactly what Tomin wanted which in turn wasn’t a good thing.
Verena shot from in front of me, and placed her body behind me. Emon reacted, fangs bared, but Verena showed no sign of fear to my serpent. Instead, she placed herself at my back, and pressed a cold blade to my throat.
“Sorry about this,” she gasped as the blade nicked my skin.
I couldn’t move my hands anymore without the bindings completely severing them, so the gun was left trained ahead of me.
Hunters, frightened for their life, ran around the basement trying to evade the tentacles of shadow.
Some stayed stationed around Tomin’s lifeless body, but his protection was thinning the more the darkness attacked.
“When you apologise it should actually come across as sincere,” I replied.
“Listen. If your familiar attacks, you will die, and I really don’t want that to happen, Hector.” Verena stiffened as she muttered her warning into my ear, the athame steady and gentle as the sharp edge tickled my Adam’s apple. “Be smart. Call the demon off.”
Emon paused, sensing my own hesitation.
“Now why would I do that?”
Verena took a deep breath in, and listed off her reasonings in quick succession.
“You must convince Arwyn to give Bahmet up. Send the demon back to his realm. If we destroy the gates, there will be no more trials, and Bahmet will be stuck. If you don’t, Tomin will use you to claim Bahmet for himself, and such power in his hands will lead to destruction you’ll never begin to comprehend.
He doesn’t want to destroy it, he wants to harness it. ”
“Are you suddenly on our side?” I asked. “Clearly you think I’m stupid or something.”
“No time. Consider me Switzerland, Hector Briar, for I have no side.”
I didn’t believe her, not one bit.
I laughed, to the detriment of my neck, because the reaction caused the blade to nick skin. “The knife at my neck suggests otherwise.”
“Ask your demon for the truth,” Verena spat, desperation clinging to her tone. “See if I’m lying or not.”
Emon took his chance to filter into my mind and answer before I could ask the question. “This witch speaks the truth.”
“Tomin wants to destroy Bahmet,” I replied internally.
“Lies. You are suddenly quick to believe the man that took everything from you? Although, until that Hunter comes alive again, I will not be able to confirm otherwise. I can say the witch currently holding a blade to your neck is speaking the truth. It might work if you—”
“Take your hands off him,” came a voice from the darkness, rough as aged stone and ancient as the deepest parts of the oldest lake.
It was Arwyn, but it wasn’t, at the same time. Two voices spoke in tandem, one mortal and one demonic.
“Steady now.” Verena’s firm hand on my shoulder softened a little, but the athame stayed in place. “Arwyn, why don’t you come out and we can talk about it… calmly.”
A growl rose from the darkness, a song of violence.
Shadows parted like curtains of velvet night, revealing Arwyn Hopkin in their midst. He walked on steady feet, boots crushing over a littering of bodies that his tentacles had dragged, attacked and killed.
My breath caught in my throat as I laid my gaze on him. Unlike before, he wasn’t resisting the power inside of him.
He was one and the same.
Dominance incarnate. One of Arwyn’s eyes glowed a violent red whilst the other spun with a band of azure. Both witch and demon, good and evil. I didn’t know whether to rejoice that he was here, or demand Emon conceal me in shadows and keep me safe.
Verena held the blade firmer the closer Arwyn got. “Think carefully about your next move.”
“I told you to take—your fucking hands—off him,” Arwyn commanded, taking his time to lash each word at Verena. “That’s the last time I will ask.”
That time, Verena listened. She withdrew the blade from my neck, keeping both hands up at her sides.
“Bahmet feeds off death,” she said. “The more you offer him the harder control will become, Arwyn.”
He cocked his head to the side, flashing straight white teeth that looked almost sharp at their ends. “I didn’t know you were so well-versed in the matters of demons, Aunt.”
Aunt? The word soured in the air. Verena was familiar, but I’d never thought it was because she was related to Arwyn. Even though now the secret was laid out before the room, it made sense somehow.
Verena didn’t refuse the title either. Instead, she stood up and continued to back away. Not before offering me a final warning out the corner of her mouth. “If you want to end this, you know what you need to do.”
I refused to look anywhere but at Arwyn. His expression softened as soon as Verena was at a distance. Brows furrowed over sorrowful eyes—eyes that drank every inch of me in. “What have they done to you.”
It wasn’t a question, but a statement.
Arwyn lifted a hand, and the pressure around my wrists faded to smoke. I looked down, gun in my now-free hands, dark bruises encircling my skin like a bracelet.
Arwyn extended a hand for me. “Come, Hector. It’s time to leave. If you take my hand we can leave this behind.”
A spark of fire erupted just behind Arwyn, the red as violent as his single demonic eye. He didn’t notice; to be honest I didn’t think he would’ve cared about anything but me in that moment. But I saw it, and the face the flame illuminated.
“He’s not going anywhere with you, Arwyn.” Romy Bailey’s bud of conjured fire rose into a pillar before she thrust it out in Arwyn’s direction. Old magic. I couldn’t help my traitorous scream of panic as the fire singed through his shoulder, causing Arwyn to drop on his knees.
Kai ran from Romy’s shadow, straight towards me, hands extended to get me off the floor.
“You found me then,” I said, breathless. “About time.”
“I will take that as a thank you,” Kai replied. “But next time you deviate from the plans, warn us both beforehand, okay? I’d prefer if we didn’t cause Romy unnecessary anxiety.”
My eyes looked up to Arwyn cowering beneath Romy’s flame.
Arwyn rose, the side of his shirt singed, revealing burned and blistered skin. His lip curled over definitely sharpened teeth. Any second and he would’ve used Bahmet to hurt Romy.
“Hey, dick-face!” I shouted.
Arwyn’s strange gaze turned at my voice, distracted. He fixed his eyes, not on me, but on Kai’s hands on me.
Fuck. This isn’t good.
Arwyn reacted.
“Stop!” I shouted, pushing Kai to the side with all my might just as a bolt of dark power was sent spearing towards him. “Arwyn, enough.”
Kai scrambled backwards across the floor, frantically putting distance between himself and Arwyn. I raised my hands up as if I was in a cage with a lion, attempting to tame it with nothing but my will alone.
“No one touches you,” Arwyn hissed, tongue lashing. “Never again.”
An explosion of gunfire answered Arwyn.
I didn’t know who fired the gun at first, not as the tension split beneath the sharp crack of the bullet.
Arwyn’s brow rose into his hairline, Kai lifted a hand to shield his face and Romy doubled over and screamed.
For a second I thought she’d been hit. But then they all looked at me expectantly, Romy with a hand to her mouth, Arwyn so still that it was the first time I was frightened of him.
He took a cautious step towards me, hand outstretched just as the pain blossomed throughout my body.
My legs gave out from beneath me, a deathly numbness spreading up from my toes until that spark of pain was severed.
I fell to the side, body crashing into the arched gateway, my bloodied hands clawing for purchase in the stone. But it was pointless; the ground had been taken out from beneath me, and I fell.
“Next bullet is for the witch’s head,” Father Tomin said, panting as he walked out of his circle of Hunters, gun aimed in my direction. “That is unless you finally give me what I want, my son.”