21. Never
“You’re sure this is it?” Leo asked, scanning the trees and shrubs surrounding us.
The six of us were gathered in a small clearing that looked vaguely familiar. I mean, the first time around, I’d been fighting for my life. Admiring the landscape hadn’t exactly been high on my list of priorities.
“I guess it looks like the right place,” I said.
Lily sidled up next to me. “This is it.” She inhaled deeply. “The shadow’s stench is still here.”
Leo mirrored her inhalation before wrinkling his nose. “Oh yeah, there it is.”
“See, it’s shit like that just makes me glad I don’t have any superpowers,” I said, trying to lighten things a shade. It was that or give into the anxiety clawing at my brain and making it hard to breathe.
What we were doing was risky. That was blindingly fucking obvious. And the sick feeling swimming in my stomach wasn’t helping the situation.
It’ll be fine. We have two ancient know-it-all demons here to help. Nothing bad will happen to Matty.
I had to choke down a bitter laugh at that less than reassuring thought. Something bad had already happened to him. A big, nasty bushel of bad. The best I could hope for at this point was that nothing worse would happen.
How about we focus on making sure this works? We’ll get that thing out of Matty and send it right the hell back to where it came from.
That was where Hook’s pendant (my pendant?) came into play. I reached up and clutched the thing like it was a string of pearls.
Did I love the idea of using that shard of magic to lure the shadow into our little trap? Nope.
Did the big, bad primordials think it was our best bet? Yep.
Guess who won that debate?
“It’ll be okay,” Hook said reassuringly, startling me out of my thoughts.
It was strange getting this kind of treatment from him. Broody, I could handle. Bossy? That was doable. Sweet and understanding?
Who even was this guy?
He rolled his neck first one way, then the other. “How about we get into all that later?” Then he dropped a devious wink.
And just how the hell was he doing that? Was it some godly power he possessed now that he was in my world?
“We’re almost ready,” Emerson said from the center of the clearing.
The two ancients had dragged a stick through the dirt in roughly the shape of a circle, with eight candles sitting on the ground at about equal spacing. Everything with them so far was like that. Roughly, about, good enough.
“I take it this kind of magic isn’t an exact science? I mean, do we need to wait until a certain time of night? That’s the way it works in movies,” I said, already feeling like I was woefully out of my element.
Theloneus chuckled. It was a strange sound, coming off somehow amused and deeply threatening at the same time. “Magic is never an exact science. And time? That’s relative in the human world, at least in the way you’re referring to it. Magic is not bound to a clock in any realm.”
“But the timing does matter, doesn’t it?” It wasn’t like I’d ever seen a group of women casting spells over Sunday brunch. Then again, I’d never seen anyone cast a spell in real life.
“The flow of power matters. In this world and this time, it is commonly known as the ribbon. It is, in a way, an extension of the veil that separates the Alius from this plane of existence.” He knelt, lit a candle, and stood to move to the next. “The ribbon is a source of power that magical and non-magical beings can draw on, though most humans don’t have the slightest clue that it even exists.”
An invisible magical ribbon of untold power? Yeah, count me among the ignorant on that one. “And this ribbon is always... somewhere?”
I felt Hook’s warm hand settle on my shoulder. “Yes, but it travels, weaves through the human world.”
“So, you can’t see it, you don’t know where it is, and it moves? And somehow, we’re supposed to tap into it to draw the demon here?”
“Not you,” Emerson said with a grim shake of his head. “All you need to do is stand in the circle and do as we say. The circle should keep you and the amulet safe while we dispatch the demon.”
My hackles rose at that last bit, and that sick feeling intensified. “And by dispatch, you mean pull that thing out of my little brother, leaving him safe and whole in the aftermath, right?”
“We will do everything in our power, Never,” Emerson said. His voice carried a reassuring determination, but it wasn’t enough to put a dent in the dread curling inside me.
Theloneus lit the last candle and stood. “It’s time.”
I moved to the edge of the circle with Hook by my side. He took my hand and turned me to face him. Then he kissed me like the world was ending. Toe-curling and full of the kind of emotions I wasn’t ready to feel for another person. When he pulled back, a smile played at the corner of his lips.
“Deep breath, love.”
I did as he said, doing my damnedest to inhale without sucking air. I only kind of failed. But any calm the move was meant to bring me vanished when deep, otherworldly chants filled the clearing.
“Make sure Lily and Leo stay clear unless the Brethren absolutely need them,” I said, meeting Hook’s confident gaze.
“They know the plan.” He cupped my face in his large hands and dusted my forehead with a feather-light kiss. “Are you ready?”
I turned back to the circle without nodding. I would never be ready to draw my possessed brother into a trap where two ancient demons and one heart-stealing demigod were waiting for him. Stepping over the line and into the circle was like sealing a door shut in an airtight room. The light breeze disappeared, and everything around me went dead silent.
“What the fuck?” I whispered, a little surprised that I could hear my own voice.
Kneeling, I snagged my dagger from my boot. Then I stood and spun in a slow circle. “I guess that means it’s show time.”
Grabbing the pendant, I thought of Matty. I thought of bringing him to me, of seeing him in the clearing, of hearing his smart-ass voice for the first time in weeks. That last thought triggered the sting of tears, but I blinked them back.
A few excruciating heartbeats later, the pendant finally lit up, kicking off that warm, golden glow that had seemed so incredibly threatening just a few weeks earlier.
Looking up, I locked eyes with Hook. He gave me one last longing look before turning his back to me, leaving his cutlass sheathed as he took up a stance that said he would destroy anything that tried to come after me, with or without his blade.
The threat rolling off him should have frightened me, especially considering he was bracing for a fight with the thing inside my brother, but it didn’t.
He knew what Matty meant to me.
A flicker of movement had me whipping my head around. My foolish heart leapt at the sight of my brother. Even the varied shades of rust coloring his clothes and streaking damned near every visible inch of his skin did little to dampen the hope that sprung to life in my chest.
Those eyes, on the other hand, were enough to douse that brief flare of optimism in a flood of icy reality.
Black and bottomless. That was the only description that fit those dead eyes.
No, that wasn’t quite right. They weren’t dead. Heartless. Without conscience. That was closer. Even soulless didn’t fit the bill, because the thing was Petra’s soul.
The shadow took three lumbering steps into the clearing, almost like it was in battle to move itself forward. It licked its lips and sneered at the demigod and demons that had created a defensive wall between us.
It said something I couldn’t hear, lips moving silently even as those vile eyes glared at me. Then it launched itself at Hook and my heart catapulted to my throat. Emerson and Theloneus moved as one, boxing my brother in, but he was fast and wily. He twisted out of Hook’s grip and lunged for me. Instinct had me backing up a step and throwing my hands out to defend myself, but when the thing hit the edge of the circle, it was like it hit a flexible wall. The invisible barrier gave maybe six inches before it repelled him, wide eyed, right back into the waiting arms of the immortal power trio.
The fight was vicious enough that Leo and Lily both moved in close enough that I could see them lurking in the shadows of the nearby trees.
I would have killed to hear what was happening. Was my brother in the mix somewhere? I found myself hoping he was, but also secretly wishing he wasn’t. Because what if he was there, aware of what was happening? Or worse, what if he was feeling everything that was happening?
I shook with a mixture of worry and fury.
“Be strong,” I said to myself. “We’ve got to be fucking ruthless if we’re going to get him back.” Weakness wouldn’t help anyone right now.
Emerson and Theloneus had prepared me for this as best they could. They’d warned me it would likely be a brutal fight, and that it was nothing compared to what my brother’s body was likely to go through when they moved to pull the shadow out.
“Come on,” I whispered. My fingers tightened around the pendant with one hand and gripped my blade like my life depended on it with the other as I urged Hook and the others on.
I’d felt helpless before, but this was a whole new level. Every bone and muscle in my body wanted to be out there. The need to act pulsed through my veins, and my fingers tingled madly, like they were somehow half-asleep and connected to a car battery at the same time.
The three giants of men wrestled my brother’s lanky frame to the ground, and I watched, biting my tongue as they tore my brother’s shirt off him. He writhed in the dirt. His mouth was twisted in a scream or a bellow. Still, all I heard was the rising thump of my heart and the short, shallow breaths I was managing to suck in.
Little by little, as Hook and Emerson held my brother down and Theloneus straddled Matty’s harrow hips, his bare chest took on a deep red glow. Without warning, Theloneus struck, shoving his monster-sized fist into the center of his chest.
Panic erupted inside me. “No!” I screamed, even though I knew this was supposed to happen. Somewhere, deep in the back of my mind, I remembered the two primordial beings explaining this moment to me.
Hearing about it and seeing it were two very, very different things.
My body moved on its own, reacting to the violence. I crossed the barrier of the circle a half-second before I was hit from the side by a powerful force and driven to the ground.
Sound rushed in, a deafening melee of yelling, inhuman screeching, and a scream that hit me right in the fucking feels. I bucked, fighting to break free of the Adonis pinning me to the dirt.
“They’re killing him!” I shoved and twisted, but everything I tried seemed to give Leo better leverage.
“Think, Never,” he snapped. This was not my calm, somewhat reserved Leo. This guy was fighting his own battle for control. “Calm down and remember what they said.”
I remembered all right. It was going to hurt both of them, shadow and boy. There was no way around that. But the scream I’d heard wasn’t just pain.
Wrenching my body around, I gawked when I saw the thing Theloneus was pulling out of my brother’s chest. It was slick and black, and it was fighting them with everything it had.
“We’re losing him,” Emerson bit out, barely loud enough for me to hear.
Was he talking about Matty or the shadow? Hook cast a worried look my way and my heart sank. Then my brother let out an agonized wail—a very human wail—and I was done. The pendant flared to life, burning against the sensitive skin of my chest. When I shoved at Leo again, fully expecting to hit an unmovable wall, it took me a moment to realize I’d succeeded in throwing him off me.
And not just by a little. He was lying in the dirt a good four feet away.
I scrambled to my feet and started forward, only to have a lithe, snarling tiger skid into my path. “Out of the way, Lily,” I warned.
She growled, dipping her head low, clearly intent on standing her ground. A half-second later, she was joined by another tiger. This one was slightly larger, with a broad head and a thicker neck. Where Lily’s fur was a deep reddish-brown offset by rich black stripes, Leo’s was tinted a brilliant gold, and even his stripes held a golden hue.
“Get the fuck out of the way,” I said again, adjusting my grip on my blade.
“Get back in the circle!” Hook boomed. He moved like he meant to get up and force me, but the minute he took his hands off Matty’s body, it went right back to writhing and bucking.
“Hold him!” Emerson commanded.
Leo and Lily stalked forward, driving me back a step, until Theloneus pulled on that shiny black being, and Matty let out a sound that I would never be able to scrub from my memory.
We all froze.
He was dying. Matty was still in there and whether it was the shadow doing the damage or Theloneus, I didn’t care. This was killing him, and I refused to let that happen.
Grabbing the pendant, I did the only thing I could think of, and called the shadow to me. It was a split-second decision. I didn’t weigh the pros and cons or consider the consequences, because it was the only move I had.
“Come on, you piece of shit,” I bit out. “Come play with someone your own size.”
The shadow broke free of Theloneus’s hold, tore free of my brother’s chest, and slammed into me hard enough to send me stumbling backward. My foot landed on something hard and round. I had barely a moment to register that it was one of the candles marking the points around that protective circle before I lost my balance entirely and crashed into the dirt.
A flash of golden light filled the clearing. It blinked out just as quickly, leaving me half-blind and with a pounding headache as I scrambled to my feet. I tried to take a step forward. I could see my brother laying on the ground, his chest rising and falling. Only my body wasn’t responding.
That was when I felt the pressure. The weight of something else taking up space inside me. It was heavy in a sickening way. Greasy. Like I’d been injected with a few gallons of used motor oil laced with wicked, violent intent.
Then the pain hit, tearing through my mind. I was still moving. I could see and hear and feel what my body was doing, but when I tried to force it to do what I wanted, that searing agony sliced through me.