Chapter 7 - Conan
There’s an hour left until we get to Bitterroot, and the little girl hasn’t said a word. But she hasn’t stopped staring at me with eyes as curious as Hannah’s once were, and as fierce as she portrays herself now.
There’s a depth to the little girl’s curious stare, but I can’t make out what it means. I have many questions, though, like if she knew her father, who he is, what he is, and what happened to him.
Questions that plague me in the silence where Hannah has fallen asleep against her hand on the window.
It infuriates me that she moved on in the blink of an eye, that she disregarded the promise I made to her that night, eight years ago.
What was she playing at, anyway? Except acting like the damsel in distress, being chased by a mob of bullies, but for what?
So she could get my sympathy? So I could lay myself bare, just for her to destroy me when she left?
I curl my hands into fists, troubled but not forgetting that she is my luna now, tied to me by the mating ritual performed by the High Priestess.
There’s no going back. And it’s what my inner wolf seems content with, even if that contentment is doused with jealousy. It’s hard to be angry when the little girl doesn’t stop staring at me, and all I’m reminded of is Hannah at that same age, when we first became friends.
I remembered what it was like to be her friend.
How determined I was to become her friend when I was eight, and pack politics and hierarchies didn’t matter to my innocent mind.
How we’d grown so close after one game of dominoes, and across the years, my feelings developed into much more than platonic love.
It took one moment of weakness, of doubt, for her to throw it all away, and it still hurts like a bitch after all these years.
Especially now, breathing the same air as her.
Sighing irritably, I turn to the window behind me, but without leaving the little girl’s eyes. I can’t fault her when none of this pain is hers to account for. Opening my hand where I’d cut my palm for the mating ritual earlier tonight, I decide that making a friend again won’t be such a bad idea.
After all, she’s only a kid.
So I reach up to the window—the metal sheets with sigils and wards that kept Marcus Hale as a prisoner from Bitterroot to Augusta have been removed and used to keep him locked in the witches’ cell—and I let out a breath that fogs the glass.
I draw lines in the misted window for a game of X’s and O’s, drawing one X in the top left corner.
The little girl catches on quickly, her lips playing into a smile as she glances at her mother to make sure she’s still asleep before joining me on the bench. She plays along, and within seconds, before the fog on the window can disappear, she emerges victorious in the game.
“Nice one, kiddo,” I whisper with a grin, holding out a fist that she bumps triumphantly.
She’s beaming with pride and skepticism in her eyes as she tilts her chin. “So, you’re Mommy’s husband now…” she comments as she stares at me squarely. “What does that mean for me?”
“Well, it depends on what you want it to mean. Have you ever met your father?”
“No,” she shrugs. “Mommy never said anything about him.”
“Are you not curious?”
She shrugs again. “I trust Mommy to tell me whatever I need to know. If she didn’t say anything about him, there was a good reason. She will tell me when the time is right.”
“Right,” I nod thoughtfully, trying not to let my mind wander too far off or I’ll become enraged by the thought of whoever Hannah made a child with. I sigh as I glance at her before returning my attention to the little girl.
She’s still watching me with that curiosity and fierceness that feels too familiar. She reminds me so much of Hannah, but that ferocity…
Hannah wasn’t like that when she was younger. Curious, yes. But not fierce.
Perhaps it’s circumstance that shaped the young girl, but I can’t help but feel like I know that ferocity as if it were my own.
“So, what is your name, kiddo? Surely it’s not Bug.”
She giggles under her breath and shakes her head. “No. My name is Clarissa.”
“Clarissa, huh? That’s a lovely name. So tell me, where did ‘Bug’ come from?”
She giggles again. “Mommy calls me that because of my fascination with insects.”
My smile fades as a memory is unlocked—a time when I was younger, carefree, and had a pretty unhealthy obsession with small creatures despite being a wolf.
I gulp hard, but there’s no indication that the child is wolf-like, instantly dousing my suspicions.
I’m about to tell her about my own fascination when the fine hairs on the back of my neck prickle with sharp awareness, as if my wolf’s hackles have risen on the brink of an attack.
At the same time, Simon slides the partition window open.
“Alpha—”
“You feel it too, don’t you?” I ask, curling my hands into fists as I glare out the side window. The night air outside the van—beyond the hum of the engine and tires rolling over tar—is awfully still. Too quiet. Too unnerving not to notice.
“Step on it, Beta,” I command Simon, then turn to the little girl. “Wake your mother up, Clarissa.”
She nods once and does as she’s told, rushing to Hannah’s side and shaking her shoulder to wake her. Hannah’s eyes fly open, and she immediately curls Clarissa into her arms.
“What’s going—”
Hannah doesn’t finish her sentence when a black mass pounds into my window, shattering the glass and sending the van tumbling to its side. The world flips upside down, and Clarissa lets out a terrified scream.
Metal shrieks and groans as the van rolls violently off the road, glass exploding inward while Hannah is thrown against the steel wall with a cry of pain. My own shoulder slams into the roof hard enough to crack bone if I were fully human, and Simon curses from the front as the van tumbles again.
The realization that the demons have found us hits before the van even stops rolling.
The pressure in the air is wrong—thick and rotten, like breathing in burning smoke and blood at the same time. Their presence slithers beneath my skin, cold and familiar in the worst way possible.
The van crashes onto its side with a deafening slam and finally stops moving. Everything goes still, except for the petrified cries of a child, and my heart lurches violently.
“Mommy!”
I frown, looking up to search for her when she doesn’t immediately respond to her daughter. “Hannah?!”
My wolf surges forward before I can think, acting purely on instinct, bones snapping in place beneath my flesh as I shift mid-motion, agony ripping through my spine while the confined space becomes impossibly too small for my massive form.
Fur erupts across my skin just as another impact dents the side of the van inward.
Something claws against the metal outside, a screeching cry tearing through the air.
The sound is inhuman enough to make Clarissa whimper, her eyes widening with horror. I shove my body over both Hannah and the child as claws rip through the side paneling.
“Stay down!” Hannah gasps beneath me, and the only relief is hearing her voice, knowing she’s still conscious.
Another slam rocks the van. Then another. The scent hits next, infiltrating the confined space with sulfur and rot. Burned, decaying flesh is like poison that wants us dead.
Simon shifts somewhere beyond the divider between the cargo and passenger sections, snarls erupting through twisted metal as he tears his way out through the windshield.
My wolf snarls viciously at the side panel, at the demons clawing through metal, my protective instinct drowning out everything else as I brace myself over Hannah and Clarissa. The black claws puncture through the roof, and one long, jagged tendril reaches for Clarissa.
That’s when I lunge.
My jaw snaps around the creature’s wrist with crushing force, black blood spraying across the inside of the van as the demon screeches loud enough to split the air. The thing’s skin burns like acid against my mouth as I rip its arm clean off.
The van erupts with shrieking, and the demon’s limb and the rest of its form fizzles, burning through the air like black, molten lava.
“Conan!” Hannah cries out.
But I don’t wait to see what happens next to the demon. I know their previous pattern—get attacked, then morph into an apparition that can easily escape with the wind. With a furious roar, I hurl myself at the back doors of the van.
The metal explodes outward, cold night air crashing into me as I burst free of the wreckage in full wolf form, landing heavily on the dirt road.
Three demons surround the overturned van—not possessed humans, like at the warehouse when we took down their military operations, but true demons.
Tall, skeletal creatures with elongated limbs and charred black skin split open by glowing red fissures beneath their flesh.
Their eyes burn molten obsidian in the darkness, mouths stretching too wide as they hiss in my direction.
One lunges instantly, and I barely dodge, my mouth burning from when I ripped the other’s arm off.
But what surges through that burning sensation in my mouth is my power—air power—almost restored to its full capacity and bursting instinctively from my body in a violent gust that sends the creature smashing sideways through a pine tree.
I freeze, realization washing over me in waves. I just used my air power after years of feeling it falter, feeling it leave until there was nothing left but my breath. The power hums beneath my skin—not whole, not steady, but alive.
Because of the mate bond.
Because of Hannah.
A savage thrill tears through my chest, prideful and natural. The demons feel it too, and their screeching intensifies.
Simon bursts from the wrecked front cabin in a massive silver-gray blur, blood coating his muzzle as he barrels into another demon hard enough to crater the dirt.
“Watch Hannah and the girl!” I command through the mind link.
Simon tears his teeth through a demon’s throat before answering.
“What the hell happened to your air magic?! It’s back?”
“Later!”