7. Never
“Three weeks.” I shook my head, letting myself sink into the frustration and despair that had been trying to drag me down since the day my brother disappeared. “How the hell has that thing avoided me for three weeks? In my city?”
Lily gave me a pitying look. In the beginning, she’d been somewhat patient. Now? She was buzzing with anxious energy, too. “You get that this is different, right? Whatever the demon’s shadow is up to, it’s found some way to stay in this realm without being pulled back to the Nassa.” She sat in one of the two remaining kitchen chairs and kicked her bare feet up on the table. “That matters.”
I didn’t disagree, but facts were facts. My brother was still out there. And it wasn’t like that fucking shadow was keeping a low profile while it was dressed up in my brother’s body. The opposite, in fact. That evil bastard was wreaking havoc on Charleston.
On the surface, the killing and destruction appeared to be random, until you dug a little deeper. Occult shops were ransacked. Self-proclaimed witches were slaughtered. There was a pattern, and every attack had something to do with magic or the paranormal.
“What is it looking for?” I asked again, for probably the fifteenth time in as many days. The obvious answer was magic, but it had to be something specific because it was still out there, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake.
Lily just shook her head again, for the fifteenth time.
“When is Leo supposed to be back?” I jabbed the enter button on my laptop, bringing the screen to life. The browser window was open with the same five tabs I’d had open for weeks; four for local news stations and one for social media so I could check in on my brother’s friends.
The friend thing was a long shot. I was operating under the assumption that the shadow could access my brother’s thoughts and memories. Whether I was right?
Hey, it was a fifty-fifty chance. Better safe than sorry.
“Any time now,” Lily answered.
Which could mean in two minutes or five hours. Or longer. The guy had adapted to moving through the city well enough, but he was shit with time.
I huffed out an irritated breath. I should have been out there investigating the last known sighting of my little brother with him, but try telling that to a six-foot-something Adonis who’d made it his mission in life to keep me safe.
It was sweet. Even I could admit that, but I was the last person who needed to be handled with kid gloves.
I was just about to flip the laptop shut again when a Breaking News banner flashed red across the screen. The video cut to a shaky, half-blurry image of an attack in progress. It was probably being filmed by some coward on their cell phone who was more interested in making a buck or getting a few—
“Fuck.” I shot up out of my chair and glared at the screen. “This is happening right now.”
Lily moved around beside me. Even with the condition of the video, I recognized my brother. On the plus side, I knew exactly where he was. I brushed past Lily, snagged my jacket off the hook by the door, and headed out.
“You’re not going alone,” Lily called after me.
“And I’m not waiting,” I threw back. I charged down the hall at a run, taking the stairs down as fast as I dared, dodging neighbors I didn’t recognize as I worked my way to the ground floor.
By the time I was shoving through the dingy glass doors at the front of the building, Lily was right on my heels.
“That was fast.” I glanced down to see her sporting a new pair of tennis shoes without socks.
“Would’ve been even faster if I wasn’t in this form,” she grumbled.
I wanted to tell her she could shift back into a dog anytime she wanted, but we both knew she couldn’t. She’d tried to shift into her tiger dozens of times. Leo had tried to shift too, but all he’d managed to do was make his eyes glow an eerie yellowish-green and elongate his canines a little. It was enough to put my hackles up, but that was about it.
“Speaking of,” I started, breaking into asteady jog. “Have you tried again recently?”
When I was met with silence, I tossed a glance over my shoulder. She was glaring at me like I was an asshole for even asking.
“Every day, Never. You don’t get how frustrating it is not being able to shift. It’s a basic, fundamental part of what we are. For you, it would be like not being able to, I don’t know, skip. In your head, you know how to do it. You’ve done it a million times. But no matter how hard you try, your muscles just won’t work the way they’re supposed to.”
Skipping? I hadn’t even tried skipping since I was a kid. We’re talking elementary school. Still, I understood the point she was making. “I’m sorry. I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”
At least it wasn’t just her. The fact that Leo couldn’t shift either had to offer at least some consolation.
“How far?” she asked.
“A few blocks up. Five minutes or so at this pace.”
She picked up speed, passing just far enough ahead of me for my competitive streak to kick in, but I caught myself before I got carried away.
“I need to be able to breathe when I get there,” I called ahead. She ignored me, naturally. “Do you even know where we’re going?”
Lily proceeded to flip me the bird.
Yeah, I deserved that.She’d been in the city as long as I had, and she’d spent plenty of time wandering the streets. It didn’t really matter that she’d done it as a dog, aside from the likelihood that it had given her a different perspective compared to mine.
Both she and Leo had said there was still a wildness in them when they were shifted. If a shifter didn’t learn how to control that wildness early on, they could become feral in their animal form. It was rare, supposedly, but I could help wondering what decades trapped in her animal form, the wrong animal form, might have done to Lily.
Something about the human world had twisted her magic. That or Wendy had done something to her to lock her in that form. After what she’d told me about my family, I wouldn’t put it past her. Lily had seen it all, literally. From my great-grandmother to my grandmother to my own flighty ass mom; she’d been there.
It was strange to think about just how much she’d seen in her life, including things I probably wouldn’t have let another human see. She’d seen me at my lowest. Comforted me when I was in tears.
A few weeks wasn’t even close to enough time to reconcile all of that with the woman I was dealing with now.
“Lily, could you slow down?” It wasn’t just that I didn’t want to be completely winded when I got there. I also didn’t know what to expect. Would Matty even recognize me at this point?
She must have heard the concern in my voice, because she fell back until we were keeping pace. Yes, I wanted to sprint. I wanted to be there already, but I had to be realistic. I’d already charged into a half-dozen situations where I expected to find my brother, only to be met with destruction and bloodshed. No brother in sight.
The constant failures were wearing on me.
We rounded the corner and skidded to a halt. My hand moved automatically to where the pendant hung from a chain around my neck. I tucked it inside my shirt, but it wasn’t like the demon wouldn’t know what was dangling at the end of that chain.
I’d taken the thing off once, and the pull to put it back on had clawed so strongly at me that I’d caved halfway through the night.
“Matty?” His name was out of my mouth before my brain had enough time to come up with a plan for dealing with the situation. Or before it even had a chance to really assess the situation.
It was the first time I’d seen my brother in the flesh in weeks, but when he turned at the sound of my voice, I wasn’t dealing with Matty.
“You.” The thing all but hissed the word at me.
“Me.” I nodded. This would have been the time for some clever, snarky remark, but I had nothing. Just seeing my brother with those ink black eyes stole the air from my lungs.
How the hell was I going to get that thing out of him? Would my brother still be there, even if I somehow managed that feat?
Lily moved away from me, not-so-subtly lining up to flank him. He didn’t seem to care. Those black eyes zeroed in on me, then slid down to my chest. He took a slow, predatory step forward, and that was when I saw the blood coating his hands.
A quick glance behind him showed me at least three bodies on the ground. It might have been more, but it was hard to tell with all the pieces scattered here and there.
My stomach rolled. Not because of the sight or the death, but because if Matty was still alive, and awake in his own body, he’d seen himself doing all of... that.
My brother was a lot of things, but he wasn’t a killer.
“What is your deal, shadow? What the hell are you looking for?” I asked, unable to bear even a second more of the staring contest.
“Give. It.” He reached out with one red-streaked hand, opening and closing his fingers.
A shiver rippled across the back of my neck. “Come and get it.” It took every ounce of my focus to keep my eyes on Matty when I caught Lily moving in my periphery.
With the demon’s shadow attention on me, maybe we could—
“Stop.” The thing shot a glare at Lily.
Lily stilled, keeping her eyes trained on my brother.
Okay, so the thing wasn’t an idiot. That didn’t mean we couldn’t manipulate the shit out of it.
“Why don’t you come with us?” I asked. “We can get you something to eat, give you a nice soft bed to sleep in.” Maybe slip a shit ton of sleeping pills into his food and chain him down.
A wicked, toothy smile split my brother’s face into something monstrous. “Not hungry.” He motioned to the bodies behind him, and it was all I could do not to react when my stomach churned violently at what the creature had just implied.
Swallowing hard, willing the bile back down, I eased forward a step. “Matty? Can you hear me?” I was done talking with the shadow. That thing was as evil as anything I’d seen, but if I could just get through to my brother.
His black eyes narrowed, then his head tilted to one side. “Not here.”
Ice sliced through my heart. Was that piece of shit saying what I thought it was?
“Don’t listen to it, Never,” Lily warned, inching closer. “He’s still in there.”
I wanted to believe that. Really and truly, with every fiber of my being. If I could just get a glimmer of proof. Anything.
I took another step toward the creature. Its gaze darted between me and Lily like it was deciding who was the bigger threat.
Honestly, it was Lily. Because as long as that bastard was camped out in my brother’s body, I was at a disadvantage.
I didn’t know if I could kill it if it came to that. Not if it meant killing my brother.
The yawning pit of sorrow in my middle reinforced that truth.
“Matty, come on, kid. Talk to me,” I said quietly. “Give me something.”
The expression on his face softened, just a touch, before his eyes melted from black to blue. “Never, don’t—”
The next twenty seconds were a blur of action and screaming and panic. He charged me, and despite my years of fighting demons, I let him drive me back because my brother was in there.
Lily launched at him from my right, tackling him to the ground with a vicious snarl. I crouched, snagged my blade from my boot, and then I just stood there, frozen, knowing what I needed to do but unable to act.
A pained yelp filled the air, and Lily scrambled back, blood pouring from a wound on her shoulder. Matty’s mouth was dripping red. That was what snapped me out of my cowardice. I didn’t want to kill him, but I couldn’t let that thing keep hurting and slaughtering people.
I darted forward, slicing low with the blade, feeling equal parts satisfied and horrified when I felt it drag across my brother’s thigh.
The bellow that echoed off the neighboring brick walls was anything but human, and I had only a second to register the sound before I was on the ground, with Matty on top of me, using his newly superior strength to grab my wrist and twist until the blade in my hand was pointed directly at my chest.
“No,” I ground out, gritting my teeth and putting everything I had into pushing back against the force trying to drive that blade into my heart.
His face was twisted in a cruel, gleeful expression that made my skin crawl. Then again, that might have been the panic racing through every vein in my body. My arms shook with the effort to keep the blade from plunging into my chest, but I was losing the battle.
The tip of the blade slid into my skin, burning as blood welled around it.
“Mathew Michael Hinkins,” I hissed. “Get your ass out here this moment.” It was the only thing I could think to say that might drag my brother forward.
Probably wishful thinking.
He laughed. He still sounded like a stranger, but then there was a flicker of... something. Just a tiny moment of hesitation. I shoved with everything I had. At the same time, Lily crashed into Matty, driving him into the wall beside me.
The blade clattered to the concrete, and I scrambled to my feet, snagging it off the ground despite the blood pounding so hard through my body that my heartbeat was the only thing I could hear. Matty was on his feet a split second later, charging me, and I did the only thing I could do.
The blade caught him first across the chest, but it didn’t even seem to faze him. I stumbled back, and when he came at me again, instinct took over. I drove the blade hard into his stomach. The motion of twisting the blade was pure muscle memory. Acid burned up my throat, but still, the monster driving my little brother’s body barely flinched.
I backed away, feeling woozy. Had I really just stabbed Matty?
A deep red patch bloomed across his middle, matching the slice on his chest and the gash on his thigh. The other two wounds were superficial. The stomach wound? That was a little more serious.
My knees threatened to fail me. Hot tears pricked my eyes, but I refused to let them fall. “Get the fuck out of him!”
The shadow cast a curious glance down at the blade protruding from his middle. The same blade the creature had stabbed me with just a few weeks earlier. In a movement too quick for my brain to process, it yanked the blade free and hurled it at Lily.
“No!” I lunged.
Too late.
Her cry of pain bounced off the walls. She fought to pull the blade out of her already mangled shoulder. “Goddamn, that burns.” The blade hit the ground again as I rushed to put myself between them. The thing hiding in my brother would have to go through me before it got another shot at her.
But he was gone. Not like running down the sidewalk in retreat, either. Actually gone.
I scanned the street in front and behind us, letting my gaze trail up the walls and trace the lines of the rooftops, just in case. But there was nothing.
“How the hell did he do that?”
An angry growl sounded from behind me, and I turned to find a full-grown tiger crouching in the place of Lily.
“Oh, fuck me.” I grabbed the amulet around my neck.
Could I catch a single fucking break? Just one. Or had I offended the universe so deeply that it saw fit to thwart me at every turn?
Tiger Lily stalked forward, a low growl rumbling from her.
Of all the thoughts that should have filled my mind—like wishing for help, or for the universe to turn Lily back into a woman, or to bring my brother back without that fucking shadow camping out inside him—the only thought in my head was of Hook. His amber eyes and dark hair. His fucking smirk that I would never forget, no matter how hard I tried. Even the look of fury on his face when he’d charged into his room just before I’d landed in my living room.
I missed everything about him, and a weak, heartbroken part of me just wanted to run into his arms and pretend my life wasn’t falling apart.
Warmth spread through my palm, and when I dared a glance down, that goddamned glitchy pendant was lit up like a jar full of fireflies.