23. Never
Everything hurt. It wasn’t like when you take a nasty spill that jars your bones and rattles your teeth. Everything, every cell in my body, every thought in my head, was laced with agony.
I barely had a chance to register that this was the kind of pain my brother had been dealing with for weeks fighting the shadow in his body before Leo’s enormous paw tensed, digging those deadly claws even deeper into my weak human chest.
Mother fucker.
And the worst part? That fucking shadow was giddy about it. It was getting off on it. Probably because the worthless piece of shit knew when I died, it wouldn’t.
We were sharing a body, and in some ways, even a brain. But everything that came through from that evil oil slick was primitive. The thing could barely form coherent words. Actual sentences? That was out of the question.
Oh, but I could feel it. Its intent came through loud and clear.
Destruction.
That was the name of the game for Petra’s shadow. Well, that and reuniting with its demon host. Which it was about half a second away from getting to do, if Leo had any say in it.
His snarling face lowered to within an inch of mine. I could smell his strange feline breath as his snarl buffeted my skin, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t do a damned thing about it.
Pain surged as his weight on my chest increased to the point that I didn’t dare let out the tortured scream building inside me. If I did, I would never draw another breath.
Would that really be so bad?
I’d done my job, hadn’t I? The shadow wasn’t inside Matty anymore, and I was pretty sure Lily hadn’t made the trip back to the Nassa with us. That meant she was still in my world, and I was sure she would stick around and take care of him until he figured out how to take care of himself.
In fact, she would probably stick with him even after that, because that was the kind of companion she was. Only ‘companion’ didn’t really fit anymore, did it?
Friend? Getting closer.
Sister?Nailed it.
That was the kind of sister she was. Blood ties be damned.
The fucking shadow cackled at that thought.
I swear to all the gods, if I ever get my hands on you…
But I would have to live to make good on any threat I threw at it now. A surge of fury hit me, filling me up from the inside. Weirdly, that raw, angry energy wasn’t mine, but I wasn’t about to let that stop me from latching onto it and riding the wave.
I felt a kind of opening in my mind, a chance to take control. Shoving my hips off the ground as hard as I could, I managed to plant one foot firmly on the ground, then I kicked up with the other. It was really anyone’s guess if racking a tiger would have the same effect as kicking a guy in the nuts, but either way, it was enough to knock Leo off balance.
Off balance led to surprise, and surprise to recognition.
A split second later, those claws retracted from my flesh and his weight was gone. I squeezed my eyes shut, wheezed out the foul air burning my lungs, and shoved back against the shadow’s next attempt to regain control as I sucked in as much fresh air as my body would allow.
It was not impressed. For all the fun it was having in my body, it hated that it was limited by the fundamentals of human life. Namely, the fact that I needed oxygen. It didn’t care about breathing or life.
Destruction was the drum beat of the shadow’s existence, its purpose.
Destruction and power.
It’d been hiding the power bit from me earlier. That or I hadn’t noticed that detail in the red sea of pain my mind and body had become.
I rolled to my side, swallowing back a groan at the pain pulsing from the four puncture wounds in my chest. That inky bastard tried to retake control in that moment of weakness, but I dug my fingers into the dirt, clenched my teeth, and shoved it back again.
All that did was piss it off more.
Welcome to the club, asshole.
A new thought filtered in through the chaos. The thing wanted me dead. It didn’t want to be trapped in a human body anymore.
Trapped.
Eureka.
If this realm was anything like mine, the shadow was stuck with me until I died. That alone would have been enough incentive for me to live for-fucking-ever, but its unchecked base urges kept circling back to power.
With my body and my blood—and all the damned time in the universe—what were the odds it would eventually figure out how to access the magic of the pendant?
My stomach knotted. If Petra was in the human realm and the shadow was in the human realm, it wouldn’t need me.
And what would stop it from using the pendant’s magic to send itself and Petra right back to my world?
Me.
I rolled to my feet, wavering as the shadow increased its mental assault to regain control. It was like the worst headache ever jacked up on meth and steroids. My vision blurred and pain screamed through me.
Or was that me? Was I the one screaming?
It was too much. I felt my knees buckling, but another blast of white-hot rage pulsed from somewhere inside me, blinding me to at least some of the pain.
“Take her.” I heard Petra’s command and wheeled around to see those soulless fucking frat boys closing in around me.
The blood-curdling sound of growling and snarling rushed in from behind me, followed by more screaming that I was pretty sure wasn’t coming from me. I dared a glance over my shoulder to see Leo slashing those deadly claws across the face of one of the frat boys.
Wild didn’t even begin to describe him in this state, and I was honestly terrified to turn my back on him.
A rough hand landed on my shoulder, jerking me forward, and wouldn’t you know it, the damned pendant started to glow. Fresh panic washed over me, sending a stinging wave of ice over my very raw nerve-endings. Glowing meant working. Working meant…
Trouble.
I couldn’t let the shadow use it. I couldn’t let Petra get it. If I died now, I couldn’t do anything to stop them. Before I could talk myself out of it, I yanked it off, and hurled it as hard as I could at the first hard surface I could.
It hit the stone behind Petra’s throne and shattered in a gut-wrenching display of amber light. The explosion illuminated everything in the area, tearing away the glamour and revealing Petra in her true form. Her alien-looking skin seemed to absorb the light, like she was a void in space rather than a physical being. Except for the multiple rows of small, pointed teeth glistening in that impossibly large mouth, and a pair of eyes that would put the darkness in the depths of the sea to shame.
She—It—was hideous and fucking massive compared to what I remembered. In my world, Petra had stood roughly seven feet tall. The creature before me was nearly twice that.
Terror bled through me at the sight even as a wicked, hateful feeling seeped through the cracks forming in my mind.
My control was slipping.
“Leo, run!” He needed to get as far away from me as he could because I was as good as dead after what I’d just done.
Just thinking about it made me sick to my very core. Yes, I’d kept a powerful demon from using the pendant to get to my world, but it was more than that. That pendant was my only hope of getting back home, back to my little brother, and I’d destroyed it.
Then there was Hook.
He’d trusted me with that piece of himself, and I’d smashed it into tiny little pieces.
What kind of monster did that make me?
Hands grabbed at me, yanking me this way and that as the frat boys dragged me toward a furious Petra. She wasn’t even trying to hide behind the island beauty glamour anymore.
Behind me, another fight was in full swing. My heart sank when I heard Leo’s voice, his very human voice, groaning in pain.
This isn’t the way this was supposed to go.
The shadow laughed inside me, and a new realization hit me: It wasn’t fighting anymore. I could feel it slithering, but it wasn’t trying to wrestle control. It was just watching and waiting for the demon to kill me and release it from this weak human cage.
Someone kicked me from behind and I reeled forward, landing on my hands and knees at Petra’s taloned feet. I didn’t even have a chance to drag in one measly breath before her grotesque hand wrapped around my neck and hauled me back up. And up. Until my feet were dangling several feet off the ground, and I was hanging face to face with the thing that had haunted my most recent nightmares.
I clung to its fingers, nails digging into that nasty skin just below my chin. Despite the litany of colorful phrases flooding my mind, I didn’t dare try to talk. Hell, I could barely suck in enough air to hold myself up and keep myself conscious.
But I could glare at that evil bitch.
“Do you realize what you’ve done?” she asked in a snakelike voice. A gross, yellowish tongue slithered out between flat lips.
Yeah, I had a pretty good idea. I’d stopped the wicked witch of the enchanted island from moving in on my turf. Suck on that.