Chapter Forty-Two #2
Another scramble got me away from its teeth a second time, but not by much.
WAKE UP! I screamed at the Beast. I needed its strength, not to mention its speed.
Nothing. I couldn’t even manifest the Beast’s claws when I tried that next.
The Beast was out cold. If my body was reflecting its injuries, I could understand why.
I didn’t even know how I was still conscious, but I was starting to wish I wasn’t.
Then I wouldn’t see death coming in the form of those huge reptilian jaws getting closer and closer.
I crawled faster. Something hard stopped me. I looked up, seeing one of those jutting rock formations. Dammit, I’d been so busy looking at the dragon that I hadn’t noticed the big fucking rock in my path! Now I had to maneuver around it to get away.
Those huge jaws parted in a hideous smile. The dragon knew I couldn’t make it in time. So did I.
A shadow fell over top of me. The dragon’s gaze lifted the instant before a green-coated monster leapt onto it, both clawed hands stabbing too fast for my gaze to follow.
Remy!
Blood hit me like emerald rain as Remy tore into the dragon’s neck. It tried to bite him, to swivel away, but it couldn’t. The dragon had been too weak to chase me beyond sliding its head after me. Now that fully extended neck was getting hacked to pieces by Remy’s berserker claws.
The other Beast suddenly jumped on Remy. I hadn’t even heard it approach. Hadn’t felt it, either, probably because my Beast was still unconscious. Oh God, no!
Remy twisted around, abandoning his devastating assault on the dragon. One of his abnormally thick arms wrapped around the Beast’s chest while the other arm gripped the Beast’s hips. Then those thick muscles bulged as Remy ripped his arms outward.
The other Beast tore in half at the waist.
I froze. No one had the strength to do that! It took several seconds for me to accept that the other Beast’s body was now in two separate pieces on the ground.
Remy turned back around, raising his clawed hands to tear into the dragon again.
The dragon’s huge body disappeared. Remy landed in a puddle of green where that long neck used to be. Daegal was now ten yards away, covered in his red blood and the dragon’s green. He held out a hand to Remy as he tried and failed to rise.
“Stop!” Daegal gasped out through a throat so torn, I was shocked that he could still speak.
Remy kept coming.
Daegal tried to get up again. He only collapsed back into the same green blood that I was also coated in.
“Let me live,” Daegal urged as Remy grabbed him by his hair. “The Resurrection Stone is on your lands! That’s why I wanted them. Let me live, and I’ll tell you where—”
Remy’s claws slashed all the way through Daegal’s throat.
Daegal’s head stayed in Remy’s hand while the rest of his body pitched forward. Then Remy hurled Daegal’s detached head to the ground and stomped on it.
I must have made a sound. A gasp, a pained breath, something. Remy’s frenzied golden gaze landed on me next.
My Beast finally woke up. I saw Remy through its eyes without asking for that power. Maybe I was too weak to hold it back. Maybe it sensed the living nightmare coming toward it.
Scarlet exploded from Remy’s aura, haloing him like flames from every wildfire nightmare I’d ever had. No threads of white broke through that roaring red wall, either. It was like staring into blood-soaked fury.
I finally understood why Remy’s aura marked him as the most violent person I’d ever encountered while also lacking the dark grays that truly evil people had. I hadn’t really been seeing Remy’s violence when I’d looked at him through the Beast’s eyes. Instead, I’d glimpsed the berserker inside him.
I found myself holding out my hands in much the same way Daegal had, although that hadn’t done him a bit of good.
“Remy,” I said in as calm a voice as I could manage. “It’s me, Raine. I’m not your enemy.”
Those steps didn’t falter. Neither did the seething violence in the berserker’s golden gaze.
What I become will harm anyone, friend or foe.…
“Remy!” He’d called me out from under my Beast before by repeatedly saying my name. I had to try the same with his berserker. It was my only hope. He’d catch me before I could crawl even a foot away. “I know you’re in there, Remy.”
Did his pace slow a fraction?
“Remy,” I said again. “It’s over. You won. You can stop.”
Shit, he was still coming. Was the Beast recovered enough where I could drain Remy’s violence without killing him?
Claws, I thought.
The barest tips came out of my fingers. Dammit, too small to form a tether. I could only scratch Remy’s back with these.
Remy noticed the claws. Puny or no, they made the red in his aura explode like an atom bomb. Shit, shit, shit, bad idea!
“Remy!” I shouted as he yanked me up. His arms crushed my ribs and his clawed hand swung toward my neck. “Remy, wait!”
Those claws stopped an inch from my throat.
“Remy.” Now I could barely speak with his brutal grip, but I forced the words out. “Remy, it’s me. Raine.”
Was that a hint of blue in those burning golden eyes?
“Remy.” Each word felt like razors. The pain in my chest spread. Dark spots started to dance in my vision. “You know me, and you don’t want to do this. Come back to me, Remy.”
His grip loosened, but those claws stayed poised at my throat. One slash, and I’d be as dead as Daegal.
“Remy.”
I stared into his eyes while trying to will him back to the surface. When I saw another flash of blue, I touched his blood-soaked claws. Slowly, I moved them away from my throat.
He didn’t stop me.
I slid my fingers through those deadly claws in a mime of the way Remy had entwined our hands before I fell asleep in his arms last night.
“Come back to me,” I gasped out. “You’re not the monster who kills me. You’re the monster who protects me now, remember?”
I felt the burn from those claws as Remy yanked his hand away. Either I was about to lose my head, or …
“Yes,” Remy said, his voice still animalistically low. “I am.”