Chapter 45
Chapter
Forty-Five
Elijah
T he second Uttu stepped into the clearing, my entire world screeched to a halt. Every muscle in my body turned to cement. I knew I had to run, that was part of the plan, but my legs wouldn’t move. My mind raced and sweat began pouring off my body. The pounding of my heart as loud as cannon fire at the sudden intrusion of the demoness’s thoughts. Bile climbed up the back of my throat at the images flashing through my consciousness.
“The fly has returned to his mistress. Uttu is pleased at your return, if only you were alone. Tell all your little fly friends to join us. I’m quite hungry.”
Her voice had me recoiling, and it snapped me out of the trance I’d fallen under. I spun on my toes and raced for the line of magic users that had come out of the trees. From the corner of my eye, I saw her lick her lips. I fought like hell not to vomit as more memories of my torture flashed in my mind.
All the times her mouth had touched my skin, her fangs piercing, the snap my flesh made as it parted, and the burn of the venom in her bite. But those weren’t the things that haunted me the most and made me sick to my stomach. No, the sounds of pleasure she made as she drank my blood or ripped out strips of flesh that she ate in front of me, my blood running in rivulets from the corners of her mouth. And the way she ran her tongue over the bites and slashes as she made the most uncomfortable eye contact with me. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t close my eyes or look away, the venom had compelled me to watch her actions.
The sounds of animal calls filled my ears as I kept running. The shifters once hidden in the trees screamed their battle cries as they dropped to the ground in attack mode. As soon as I broke the line of magic users, I dove into the trees and kept going. I couldn’t stop to throw up yet, but at some point it would become inevitable. I had to make it to the safe zone otherwise I’d put Kainda in danger, and that I refused to do. She meant too much to me and I could protect her like this, even if I hated every minute of it. I ran until my sides burned, and my heart felt like exploding.
When I couldn’t run another second without passing out and landing on my face, I braced myself against a tree and finally threw up. It didn’t make me feel better, but the vile taste in my mouth distracted me from those wretched memories. Falling to my knees, I crawled off the opposite side of the path we’d made on our hike to the clearing. Leaning back against another tree, I fought to slow my heart rate and to catch my breath.
Sitting on the sidelines of the battle chafed. Hiding in the trees almost a mile away to keep my promise to Kainda tested my patience. I wanted to throw in the towel and run headlong into the fray. But that would only hurt our efforts, as I didn’t possess a single useful skill to lend them. The truth that I was a giant liability sucked. There you go, Elijah, focus on those feelings and not the old horrors.
I lost track of time sitting there when my body finally felt back under my control. Climbing to my feet, I moved back onto the trail. I prayed their efforts worked. Hearing the battle without having the visual context tore at my gut and had me pacing anxiously. Knowing that Uttu would target me if I returned to the clearing kept me from giving into the urge to go back.
E! Where are you? Are you okay? Kainda’s voice, even faint in my head, shocked me.
Her voice cleared some of the terror from my mind, and I could finally decipher what I’d seen and felt in Uttu’s thoughts earlier. Those images came back to me, no longer jumbled and blurred together in the speed at which they came to me. It almost made me dizzy at the intensity.
The demon paced inside of her cave, day after day, night after night. Her screams of frustration and rage echoing in the caverns, only making it worse. The horrible cramps in her empty stomach and the overwhelming craving for my blood and flesh. She fought with herself about coming after me or finding a new fly. Glimpses of the hospital I’d been committed to mocked her because she couldn’t get to me. She’d watched me for weeks, but hadn’t found a way inside.
Then came the desperation and the men she’d attacked, unlucky enough to hike too close to her lair. Their screams as she ripped into them, much like she had the first night she’d tasted me, drowned out quickly by her screams as she spit out their blood. But it was too late, the damage she inflicted on them had ended their lives and she enjoyed the life leaving their eyes, even as their blood burned like acid in her mouth and throat.
When she finally realized no other human would satisfy her, she moved onto a different kind of prey. The carcasses of all manner of woodland creatures littered the floor of her cave. But none of them had stopped the gnawing hunger in her gut. Their blood didn’t cause the same pain as that of the humans, but it didn’t taste good. She couldn’t understand, what was wrong with her, why I was so special.
Then because she needed to keep tabs on me, so she could snatch me up the second I got free, she sent her minions to watch me. She looked through their eyes at me, watching my every second. A scream of frustration would split the air whenever I’d kill one of them, cutting her off from me for even a second. The oily, sick need of her addiction to me and her longing thoughts further assaulted me.
Finally, her utter, endless rage when I disappeared from the hospital and she couldn’t find me at first. It only grew when she did find me, but in the company of a witch, who could protect me from her. The impotent feeling she got, knowing that her inability to feed on other human men had weakened her to the point that she couldn’t take on the witch to reclaim me.
Holy shit!
Even from this distance, I could still feel that connection to Uttu, and she weakened further every second. Each new bite, slash, and potion ticked away at her strength. This might turn the battle in our favor. She craved my blood and life force, nothing else could compare. Her body could no long function like before. Not just any human man could give her what I had, despite her numerous attempts.
‘ Kainda! She’s not been feeding! It’s why she’s weakening so quickly! You need to have everyone redouble their efforts for one big, final attack. It’ll take her down! ’
That little revelation shocked the hell out of me. I’d felt her thoughts the second she entered the clearing. Her hunger had slammed into me like a race car into a wall at a hundred miles an hour. Hunger, followed quickly by insanity. Flashes of my own face sped through my mind in various states of the torture she’d inflicted on me. I remained her sole thought, and it made me sick. Once again, I fought the urge to puke, this time determined not to give in. She would get even one more win from me.
‘ I can still feel her psychically like I can with you, but it’s one-sided now. She can’t hear me or sense my thoughts, and she’s furious. I can feel how hungry she is, and I can feel her power weakening. Her connection to me was so strong, she couldn’t hunt, and no other food source fueled her.’
My connection with Kainda popped, leaving me with a deep sense of emptiness. I paced between two what I assumed were pine trees. The need to go back gnawed at my gut, making focusing difficult. I tried to feel for the connection to Kainda, but came up empty. My patience started to wear thin.
The world exploded to my right, several yards away. It knocked me off my feet at the shock wave as something huge struck the earth. The wind blasted past me, carrying dirt stinging my face and ripping the leaf litter into the current. Trees cracked, split and toppled, temporarily drowning out the sounds of battle. Slowly, I crept toward what had to be a Texas-sized crater in the woods.
Coming through the trees, I saw the crumpled form of a black dragon. I’d met the man version of this guy two days ago, and he’d been a kind, funny, charismatic guy. To see him in this way had my hopes for our team’s efforts falling for a moment. He lay on his side, and it appeared he had skidded across the ground for several yards— more like a football field or two— from the site of initial impact. One wing bent awkwardly beneath his big body.
Cautiously, I approached the injured dragon, and I noticed smoke curling from the fist sized nostrils on his long snout. The closer I got, I could see spiderweb sealing his mouth shut from what looked like the inside out. Big guy’s eyes popped open and zeroed in on me, regarding me carefully. Backing away slowly, I lifted my hands in surrender. I didn’t want him hurting himself further by trying to escape or attack. Truthfully, I was more worried about him attacking me.
“It’s okay buddy. I’m going to help you out of that webbing. You remember me, don’t you?”
He blinked at me slowly, the only acknowledgement I got. Figuring if he planned to attack or flee, he’d have done it by now, I approached him again. His head as big as my entire body. I inspected the web closer as I knelt on the ground, and sure enough it came from inside his mouth. “Can you open your mouth at all?”
His lips curled back, showing me the sticky stuff wrapped around wickedly sharp teeth. He raised his foreleg slowly as if painful and used one of his long, silver claws to pry off a scale from his shoulder. The heavy scale thudded into the ground next to me, causing dirt to puff in a little cloud around it. I went to pick it up, but he stopped me, putting his foot over the scale. He pulled it back, showing me the thin cut across the fleshy pad. Note to self, scales are razor sharp.
“Thanks for the warning. I’m going to do my best to help you out.”
Careful to avoid the blade like edges of the scale, I brought it up to the sticky silk protruding from his mouth. The scale went through the silk like a hot knife through butter. Working as quickly and carefully as possible to remove all the silk. Thunder rolled, and the skies opened up, drenching us and the ground in seconds. As more silk fell to the ground, the dragon slowly opened his mouth wider and wider for me to get to more of the silk. It was an unnerving feeling sticking my entire arm and my face inside a dragon’s mouth surrounded by fangs as long as my fingers.
The second the last ribbon of silk hit the dirt, the dragon rolled onto all fours and shifted in a flash of light. Several scales hit the ground like apples from a tree. Next to me stood a naked man with bruises across his left shoulder. His fingers snapped and a black robe poofed into existence around his body. “Thank you for your assistance, my friend.”