22. Hook
Horror bled through me, poisoning my thoughts and thickening my blood.
Never blinked at me, but gone were those feisty blue eyes and that snarky little smirk she wore so well. In the space of a few moments, mere seconds, the blue was replaced with inky black, and that smirk had twisted into a familiar sneer. All that was missing was the creature’s monstrous teeth.
“No,” I growled under my breath.
The shadow looked around the clearing like it was seeing it for the first time. When its gaze landed on the boy in the dirt behind me, it hissed.
Leo and Lily were still in their tiger forms, and the five of us formed a circle around Never.
“Can we do the spell again?” I asked. It should have been no different from pulling the shadow from Matty.
I dared a glance over my shoulder, but he was still unconscious. Considering the way his big sister looked at that moment, it was probably for the best.
Emerson and Theloneus exchanged a look.
“It won’t work,” Emerson said in a tone that left no room for argument.
“It’s the same spell, is it not?”
The shadow was ignoring us, choosing instead to study the scratched circle and the candles littering the dirt like nothing else in the universe mattered.
“We have a bigger problem,” Emerson said, pitching his voice low. “The amulet. She still has it.”
Dread slithered across my already raw nerve endings. He was right. It was there, dangling from her slender neck. It was as dull and dead as any other stone in this world, but it was only a matter of time before the shadow realized it was there. Once it did...
As though the thing heard that worrisome thought forming, it glanced down at the pendant. There was a chance it wouldn’t know how to use it. Hell, there was a chance it wouldn’t be able to do anything with it, period.
It reached up, turning the pendant in Never’s fingers. Then it glared directly at me. “Power.”
I felt a kick of rebellion rise up inside me, only it wasn’t coming from me. The creature’s eyes flashed from black to blue.
“Take it,” Never said. She sounded panicked, and she moved like she intended to yank the necklace free of her neck. Before the chain reached its breaking point, the shadow was back, clutching it in a white-knuckled fist.
It shook its head.
I stepped forward, and the thing shook its head again as it brought the blade in Never’s other hand to her throat.
Ice flooded every inch of me, turning my feet to stone. “Don’t.”
Please, don’t.I threw that plea out to the universe.
We both knew what would happen if the shadow killed her now. It would be pulled back to the Nassa, where I would make it my mission to make every remaining moment of our eternity together a living nightmare.
But Never would be dead, and her soul would be trapped in the Alius where I didn’t have a chance in hell of getting to her.
The shadow grinned, showing far more teeth than the woman it was holding hostage ever would. When I took another tentative step, it pressed the blade harder to her flesh, releasing a thin trail of blood that spilled down her neck. I stared in grotesque awe as that tiny stream of ruby liquid followed the path of the fine chain down to the only piece of me that mattered anymore.
My heart was tripping in my chest, thundering and racing, stopping and starting. Every cell in my body wanted to act, but one wrong step and that monster could ruin everything.
A fury unlike anything I’d ever felt burned through my better judgment in a flash. Even when I’d been cast into the Nassa and disowned by my father, the anger was but a whisper compared to the war chant drumming inside me.
“Let her go,” I commanded, throwing power into the booming order.
The creature faltered for a moment, then that evil grin spread wider.
“Let her go,” I repeated, feeding more power into the demand. “And leave this realm.”
The thing shook its head, and to my horror, the pendant started to glow.
No!
It was bad enough that the thing had slithered its way into her body. For that alone, I would make it pay. The pendant, though, made the situation a thousand times worse.
The shadow couldn’t take a human host on its own, even with the sprinkling of demon blood running in Never’s veins. But coupled with the power from that piece of me? That was what had given it the power to jump into Matty during their trip back here. It was also the thing that had let the monster invade Never’s being.
If it could bring that power to life, it would summon Petra into the human realm. And if the demon ever made it back to this world in its complete form, it would lay waste to everything in its path, including the human host currently housing its shadow.
The Brethren would eventually find a way to deal with it, but that was little consolation when I knew Never would be dead within seconds of its arrival.
That left me with two options: Kill Never myself and send the shadow back where it belonged or…
The pendant glowed brighter.
“Out of time,” I said, more to myself than anyone.
I charged the shadow at full speed, catching it by surprise as I slammed into it, sending us both crashing to the ground. It tried to fight its way free, kicking and clawing viciously. When I reached for the pendant, it sank Never’s teeth into my flesh hard enough to draw blood.
On instinct, I took a swing, catching it in the jaw. My stomach twisted the second my fist connected. It was Never’s body that was taking this beating. The beast screamed in her voice and bucked beneath me so violently my grip faltered.
A cloud of dust rose around us as we each grappled for dominance, until the shadow’s eyes flashed black to blue, and time stopped.
It was Never who pinned me in place, not the creature. She glared down at me with an expression so filled with pain it hurt just looking at her. She dipped her head to look at the bloody pendant swinging between us, then flashed me a snarky smirk that was a tortured imitation of the one I’d come to adore. “Come on, pirate,” she ground out between clenched teeth. “That all you got?”
She had moxie, not to mention the kind of mental strength most beings could only dream of. And I was almost certain she was telling me to use the pendant.
Hope lit a fire inside me that could have put the sun to shame, but the moment was shattered when that heartbreaking blue shifted back to black in a blink. I grabbed for the pendant. The shadow beat me to it by a hair, so I wrapped my fingers around its wrist—Never’s wrist—and unleashed the full force of my power.
It bucked violently against the onslaught, until a pair of large, familiar hands caught it by the shoulders and shoved it down. A deafening, inhuman bellow drove daggers into my eardrums, but it was too late.
Light spilled through its fingers. The world around us shimmered in and out of focus, growing impossibly bright as night shifted to day. The ground beneath me softened, and I thanked the stars that we hadn’t ended up flailing in the sea as Never had when she’d arrived in my world the first time.
As the cool air thickened and warmed with that familiar, salty humidity, I got the first sense that things might turn out all right. Until the trees and shrubs circling us morphed into a web of twisted vines and overgrown rope bridges.
No.I twisted my head from one side to the other, confirming what all my other senses were telling me. We weren’t just on the island, we’d landed smack in the middle of the demon’s camp, and leagues away from the beach where I’d tried directing us.
The shadow snarled and wrenched free of my grip, throwing Leo off in the process.
Gods, the thing was strong. Far stronger than I’d ever seen it.
Was it Never’s blood—or worse, her soul—that was feeding the shadow that kind of power?
“Captain.” I would have recognized Petra’s deceptively sultry voice without having to set eyes on the creature, but she was hard to miss lounging across that ridiculous throne of vines.
If I’d been expecting some witty discourse or lively banter, I would have been sorely disappointed. She tipped her face to the sky and let out a feral howl. Every one of her soulless minions took up the call. It was a battle cry I’d heard a thousand times, and I lurched to my feet, drawing my cutlass as I moved.
Without a word, Leo shifted back into tiger form. He cut a threatening profile in the human realm, but with the magic of the Nassa bleeding from the ground and hanging in the air, his true form was easily twice as large.
A throng of young men with dead eyes circled us, darting in and away before I could take a swipe with my blade. I’d long since lost any notion of mercy for those taunting boys, because they weren’t really boys anymore. Or men.
They were nothing. With no soul to speak of and no conscience to weigh them down.
In any other realm, they wouldn’t even exist. The moment Petra had taken their souls, their weak human bodies would have begun to wither. Every man standing in front of me should have been nothing more than dust.
One of them charged forward, and I removed his head. Another lunged at Leo, but when he slammed the would-be attacker to the ground and ripped out his throat, even the man’s gurgling scream wasn’t enough to drive the rest of Petra’s army back.
They were blood thirsty and quickly working themselves up into a frenzy.
Petra, on the other hand, was studying Never with perverse pleasure. She motioned her shadow over with a lazy roll of her fingers. Then she reached out and stroked Never’s cheek, looking deep into those black eyes as though they were lovers.
“I would love to know how this happened,” she said sweetly.
The shadow leaned into that touch, rubbing its face along Petra’s palm. It was strange, to say the least. Petra and the shadow were two halves of a whole, separate and the same. Yet, somehow, they also seemed to share some twisted attraction for one another.
Wasn’t that the absolute pinnacle of narcissism? Falling in love with one’s darker side? Only there was no telling which was the darker of the two.
Three more of the Lost attacked before I could give it any more thought. My blade sliced through two of them, and Leo dispatched the third, tearing the man’s arm off in a gruesome display of his raw, animalistic power.
Petra glared between us, throwing a disgusted glance at my partner in crime. “Leo.” She clucked her tongue like a condescending school marm. “I should have known you would be trouble. That conscience, it only ever gets in the way.”
She flicked her wrist, and the shadow moved Never’s body through the agitated crowd of soulless soldiers.
“I am curious, though,” she purred. “How deep do those noble intentions run?” A quick flick of her fingers was all it took to demonstrate what she meant with that ominous question.
The shadow launched at him, tackling him to the ground in a cacophony of grunts and snarls that amplified the wild energy pulsing from the Lost. The two rolled in the dirt, Never’s smaller frame twisting and striking. Leo was clearly trying not to hurt her, but when he was shifted, the wildness in him rose dangerously close to the surface.
The shadow landed a painful blow that sent the sound of Leo’s ribs cracking echoing through the crowd. He yelped, but what followed was a growl that set every hair at the base of my skull on edge.
He was losing control.
“Stop!” I yelled, sending the booming command reverberating out from my center.
Adrenaline pumped through me like a drug at the thought of Leo killing Never. It didn’t help that I could only feel her faintly now. She was still there, still fighting for purchase and control of her own body, but the longer the shadow remained in control, the harder it was for me to find that link to her in the chaotic rush of worry, anger, and unadulterated hatred churning inside me.
Leo stilled. The shadow didn’t. It lunged at him again, and his tenuous restraint snapped. He leapt at the creature, teeth bared and claws out.
I charged forward but was shoved violently back by a flicker of turquoise.
Anya.
There was only one reason she would get involved. Fury rode up my back because I knew what was coming, and I was helpless to stop it. With my next blink, the world before me started fading rapidly, but not before I saw Never pinned on her back, with blood seeping from the wounds where Leo’s claws were digging into her chest.
His lips pulled back, revealing his deadly feline teeth, as he let out a menacing snarl that could only mean one thing.
“Never!” I lunged forward, but my next step landed with a hollow, wooden thud.
I stumbled forward, reeling physically and emotionally, and crashed into the railing of my ship. Staring out across the open water at the island, rage multiplied inside me at a truly terrifying rate.
“No!” I slammed my fist down on the enchanted wood, and it buckled with a deafening crack under the force of the blow.
“Captain?”
I wheeled around, ready to tear every living thing between me and Never limb from limb. A fact that must have shown clearly on my face because William eased back one step, then another, holding his hands up in front of him.
The men behind him also shuffled back. It was a useless retreat. If I wanted to end them all, I could. There was nowhere to run in the middle of the sea, and even if a lucky few managed to find their way to one of the islands, there was nowhere to hide in this realm that I couldn’t find them. But they weren’t my concern.
Leo was.
If he killed Never, I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from destroying him.