Chapter ten
The man, this stranger my survival seems hinged to, grabs my hand and none too gently tugs me into a run, and I let him. I let him because there is no ice sliding down my spine and no warning bells. That alone wins me over. He’s not like Jeremy or Ryker.
And he knows how to kill demons.
It’s the right move, despite my grandfather’s voice yelling in my head that anyone who seems too good to be true usually is, and I really don’t need him pointing out my potential missteps right now.
As an added bonus, the stranger hasn’t killed me and doesn’t seem to have that plan in mind, at least not yet.
As far as I’m concerned, he’s my Prince Charming.
We exit to the porch in a gust of wind and snow that I feel all the way down the front of my body, bare skin exposed by way of my ripped shirt.
A storm is blowing in that I either didn’t read about or wasn’t predicted, and I fear that storm is Jeremy.
As if proving this true, we step to the edge of the porch and are greeted by two yellow-eyed demons charging up the icy steps in front of us.
My rescuer shoves me behind him and, with no hesitation, plows a path toward them.
I, unfortunately, do not hold my position.
My tennis shoes slide along the newly formed ice hidden beneath a patch of fluffy white snow, and I twist about, looking for anything I might grab hold of that is not a yellow-eyed monster.
Considering I all but smack into the wooden banister, I wrap myself around it, trying to halt my plunge down the eight wide steps leading to the yard and the war unfolding.
Even then, I slide to the right, then back toward the left, struggling for stability, all the while witnessing the battle between my hero stranger and the demons in complete, utter horror.
Whoever this stranger is, he fights like a trained warrior, and I’m thankful for it.
If not for him—I don’t want to think about what Ryker would have done to me.
Still clutching the banister for dear life, my gaze lifts and scans, landing in the beam of a motion detector.
There, illuminated in the bright light, at least a half-dozen yellow-eyed monsters dot the yard, fighting a handful of leather-clad men while I just stand and watch.
I need to help. I need my gun, if bullets even matter at this point, but I have to try.
I rotate to face the cabin, draw in a breath, and push off the banister with a thrust forward meant to be a dash toward the front door.
My feet fly upward, and I gasp, bracing myself for the impact that doesn’t come.
His arm slides around me, my body anchored to his harder body, and in what feels like the same moment, he throws some sort of gold star, landing it smack in the forehead of a rapidly approaching yellow-eyed monster.
And he does all of this without either of us landing on our asses.
The yellow-eyed monster—no, demon—the demon fades into ash, puffing all over the pearly white snow.
A rush of bodies gathers in front of us, lining up side-by-side, placing themselves between us and the demons.
The stranger, my would-be hero, snatches my hand again and presses a star in my palm.
His pale blue eyes are really damn beautiful right about now for no reason other than the fact that they’re not yellow.
“Anywhere you pierce their skin pretty much does the trick. But remember, it only works on the lower-level demons.”
“As if I’d know the difference. And I’ve seen their numbers. I’m going to need more gold.”
“I’m running low,” he says, flinging another star without even looking, and I cough as ash puffs into my lungs, which I’m fairly certain means I just inhaled a demon, and I hope like hell it’s not lethal.
I’m still trying to recover when a roar of engines sound at the rear of the house.
“That would be our ride,” he declares, literally lifting me and setting me down at the bottom of the steps on the walkway.
The instant my feet are set, he’s tugging me into motion.
Still struggling with the demon ash suffocating my lungs, I’m running on nothing but pure adrenaline.
I’m all in with this stranger, blindly following him even as my grandfather punches into my mind again, and I can almost hear his voice as he says, Anyone who seems too good to be true usually is.
I can’t afford to elevate my rescuer from stranger to hero.
He’s a stranger. No more. No less. And for all I know, he’s just another variety of those demons that I will soon call enemy.
My fingers tighten around the star in my hand, but it offers cold comfort when the now familiar icy sensation slides down my spine in warning, and utter terror fills me.
It’s him. Jeremy. I don’t know how I know how he feels, but I know.
I open my mouth to scream, but it’s too late.
We round the corner of the house, side-by-side and hand-in-hand, only to screech to a halt.
Jeremy stands in front of us, between us and several snowmobiles, one of which I assume is meant to be our ride.
My stranger, once again, shoves me behind him. “Run!” he orders, releasing my hand to draw two handguns he unloads on Jeremy.
I don’t run, and not by choice. I simply can’t run, can’t move.
My body is not my own, and neither is my mind.
Bloody images of the women Jeremy killed seize me, cascading through my mind, paralyzing me, pain knifing through random parts of my body.
My throat constricts. I can’t breathe. My legs crumple beneath me, and I’m a moment from falling to my knees when my stranger grabs me, snaking an arm around me, his hand branding my side, warming me where I’ve been cold.
I don’t understand that sensation or any other right now.
The ice slides away from my mind. I suck in a breath, my lungs contracting, my vision clearing.
Somehow, this man manages to hold me, sheltering me from the mental attacks, while still firing on Jeremy with his one free hand. And somehow, impossibly, Jeremy absorbs each bullet, his flesh ripping open only to re-form perfect skin the next moment.
The fingers at my waist flex and tighten. “At the count of three, I’m firing and you’re running the other way. I’ll catch up.”
“How? You have no way to fight him.”
“One,” he says, counting down and ignoring me, “two.” A short pause. “Three.”
“I won’t let you die for me. No, I—”
“Fucking run, Ember. Run!”
I have no idea why him saying my name, knowing my name, jolts me into action, but I obey. The instant he fires on Jeremy, I rotate out of his arms, turn the opposite direction, and gasp at what stands in my path.
Demons—monsters—whatever they are, have formed a line behind us and any path of escape.
He steps to my side, curses, and then twists around to fire several additional shots at Jeremy.
I plant my back against his back, the star digging into my palm, and wonder which of the twelve or so demons dies before I do.
A cursed mumble behind me, and the silenced weapon tells me he’s out of bullets. “What now?” I whisper urgently, only slightly comforted by the fact that we are both still standing, both still alive.
“They call you Micah, the great warrior Seer,” Jeremy bellows at my stranger, “and yet, you believe gold-plated bullets will hurt me.”
I do not know what a “Seer” is, besides Micah, apparently, but Jeremy speaks the word as a jeer.
“You’re an insult to your kind,” Jeremy adds, a rumble of laughter following, and the sound is as soft and gentle as it is brutal and destructive to the ears—a devil’s song.
I swallow the bile gathering in my throat, glaring at the demons before me with a viciousness and facade of confidence that I pray convinces them I have limitless weapons. I consider running. It’s stupid. I know it’s stupid, but the urge is powerful—overwhelmingly powerful.
As if he’s read my mind, Micah captures my hand by our sides. “Stay where you are,” he orders, his tone sharp and nonnegotiable.
His touch is fire—a burn I do not understand, but it’s not unpleasant. I don’t pull away. “Please tell me you have a better plan than standing here and getting eaten.”
“Patience is a Seer’s best virtue.”
“What is a Seer?!” I shout, trying to understand what’s happening, but I never get the chance.
Action blows up around me, as in literally.
The demons in front of me explode into ash—an excessive amount of ash—covering me and choking me.
Three of the men I’d seen fighting the monsters at the front of the house appear where the demons had stood, clearly responsible for the ash cloud I’m currently, and once again, ingesting into my lungs.
Logically, I should run toward them, but my instinct in this moment is to stay with Micah.
I whirl around and step to Micah’s side.
Jeremy is surrounded by four men, two of whom are holding what look like small rocket launchers—if I can trust my obsession with action movies as expert opinion.
The men fire the weapons, striking their target, and some sort of hooks attach to Jeremy’s body, to a leg, and to his chest, ropes yanking him down and onto his knees with the impact.
Jeremy snarls, the sound is not animal or man, not anything I’ve ever heard. It echoes—two voices, not one—and climbs inside me and twists, sharp and cutting in its intensity. He isn’t dead, as I’d hoped, though I am not sure I’d call Jeremy alive, either.
Jeremy’s inky black eyes seem to expand and find me. “So glad we could play together, Ember. I’ve missed you.” He laughs that devil’s song again, and now the men who launched on him fall to their knees, both gasping for air as if attacked by some invisible force.
Micah captures my arm. “Let’s go.”
But I can’t move because of the shooting pain in my scalp.
Somehow, even with Micah touching me and attempting to shield my mind from Jeremy’s influence, Jeremy still holds my mind in a crushing grip.
And I can hear him. I can hear Jeremy talking to me in my mind.
Running away will be painful, Ember. You will stay by my side where you belong, he commands, and a second wave of pain shoots through my body, all but rattling my bones.
I fall to my knees, and Micah goes down with me, beside me.
On some level, I’m certain that his collapse is the definition of the word screwed in any dictionary.
Jeremy is controlling us, driving us to destruction.
Only Micah isn’t down because he’s in pain. Micah is with me, here for me. He grabs my shoulders and drags our foreheads together. “Breathe through the pain,” he orders. “You’re strong enough.”
“I’m not…like you,” I pant out.
“You’re stronger. You just don’t know it yet.”
Gunfire explodes, and Jeremy roars again. I can feel Micah using the distraction, pushing into my mind. He breaks Jeremy’s hold on me, the splintering through my head lessening. Micah must feel it, too. He releases me and heaves himself to his feet.
“You’re writing your own death sentence, Crystal Seer,” Jeremy hisses at Micah, who ignores him and hikes me to my feet—something I know only because I’m standing, though I can no longer feel my extremities.
I’m numb, frozen to the bone. Whatever filter I had protecting me from this knowledge is now gone.
Micah drags me into a run toward the snowmobiles, and I stumble.
I really can’t feel my feet. He catches my waist, anchoring me against him, and we never miss a step.
We’re directly beside Jeremy now, and impossibly, I feel him shove himself into my mind again and sliver about, and suddenly, I’m reliving that moment when his tongue slid over my cheek.
I can’t breathe, and then he’s just…gone.
I glance over my shoulder, and we’re behind him now, and I wonder if this works in our favor, perhaps misdirecting his magic.
Jeremy laughs, and it snakes through the air in our wake, the sound echoing inhumanly, evilly, as he proclaims, “I’m going to enjoy watching her kill you. You and all your pathetically weak cronies.”
I don’t know if he means me or Micah, and it doesn’t matter.
He’s still not dying today. That much is vividly clear.
This isn’t over, but at least for now, we’ve reached the snowmobile, and Micah straddles the seat.
I don’t have to be told to follow. The minute I’m behind him, he pulls my arms forward and shows me a handle on each side of him. I grab them, and he shouts, “Hold on.”
It’s a warning of the wild ride to come, I have no doubt, but I’ve never been so cold and so relieved in my life as I am the instant Micah shoots us into action.
Still, I cast one last furtive look over my shoulder, assuring myself Jeremy can’t follow.
I don’t find what I’d hoped to find, whatever that might be.
The anchors are lying in the snow, and so are the men who’d shot them.
Jeremy is gone. My gaze jerks everywhere and anywhere, frantic to find him, to know if he’s coming after us, but Micah launches the snowmobile off the road and into the wooded, snowy terrain.
The jolting movement slides me to the left.
I scream, and Micah reaches behind him, grabs my arm, and pulls me back onto the seat.
To heck with looking behind me and to heck with cautiously holding these stupid handles.
I fling myself forward and press myself against this stranger, who I am suddenly becoming more intimate with.
But at least for now, he is safe, and his body heat is warm where I am cold.
I don’t bury my face in his jacket, thankful the snow has stopped falling, though the wind is still wicked.
Its surface lashes, biting at my skin like little shards of glass.
The dull hum of engines roaring behind us permeates the wind’s guttural howls, telling me we aren’t alone.
It’s Micah’s men. I feel this. I sense this.
I also sense that many are fighting for their lives.
I don’t know if the men by the anchors will live to see tomorrow, and I want to go back to save them, but we do nothing but push forward.