CHAPTER 47
Mark wanted to grab Dean and shake the life out of him.
What had possessed him to make such an offer?
That Dean would be the one to kill Zeke had not been in question, but when he’d envisioned it, it looked more like an execution, not a Prime Challenge.
Those were unpredictable at best, and although he was confident in Dean’s strength, he couldn’t get over the recklessness of it.
The plan had been to torture Zeke to submission, not offer him the very thing he wanted.
He glanced at his brother, careful to communicate his disapproval with his look, but Dean shrugged and smirked.
Mark narrowed his eyes. There was something going on that his brother didn’t want to share with him.
He forced his focus on the task at hand.
Whatever it was, it could wait until they had dispatched the witch.
With her in their world, there was little hope of a future.
The Prime Challenge, as significant as it was, was a future problem.
Summoning the witch was the easy part. Someone found Zeke a clean shirt; there was no reason to broadcast their violence, not when they needed her to believe their ruse, and he reached for his phone, staring at Mark as he made the call.
Their initial plan had been to use magic, but Pierce had amended that part of the plan.
His sound logic was that magic was unpredictable and would call to her attention the two things they wanted to keep hidden: Riley’s power and his presence.
“I have him…” Zeke said into the device when it connected.
The smooth voice of Ethel’s reply reached Mark’s ears, but would not penetrate the roar in his mind.
He held his eyes shut as the rest of Zeke’s convincing lie floated across the silence in the space.
Mark reached for his wolf, surprised to find the animal calm, but ready.
Both sides of him coalesced their strength into one.
This would be the fight of their lives, the fight for their lives.
Zeke hung up with a nod and then smiled at Mark. “She’s smarter than you think. She is also more powerful, now.”
His calm assurance brought a bit of fear into Mark’s conviction to fight, but he brushed it aside. Pierce had already warned that her power had grown, that it would be unlike anything they’d faced before, and they were all prepared for the fight.
The low growl from Dean’s Alpha filled the room, just as his own animal sensed the danger, warning him with a howl. She was coming.
He glanced at Caster. It was time for Marcus to destroy her allies.
Caster grabbed his hand, squeezed it once, and let go.
The toxicity of Ethel’s darkness reached his senses, and Mark let the animal through as Riley’s power concealed the others in an invisibility spell and they vanished, leaving him and a still bound Zeke in the middle of the room.
He was in wolf form in a split second, the world around him narrowing to his animal’s impeccable senses.
The door burst open, and she stood a few paces away, her smile indulgent, even a little warm.
Mark wanted nothing more than to rip her throat out, but even in wolf form, he was bound to stick to the plan.
Hello, my beautiful wolf.
Her voice grated on his mind, but he resisted the revulsion it brought. She glanced at Zeke and her face froze mid-smile. She tilted her head to the side, but her realization of the trap she’d walked into came too late.
His wolf senses were aware of the moment the others came to view before Ethel could process her predicament. She stepped back as Zeke called out to her, trying to warn her. But they’d had a contingency for that as well. Riley’s spell wrapped around his neck, choking his words.
Mark’s paws twitched, his muscles flexing with the enormous effort it took to stay rooted to the spot.
His animal saw its tormentor and wanted to rip her to shreds; the human in him saw the rational plan.
Pierce’s power filled the space in his mind as his senses became aware of his presence.
In the second it took him to step around Mark and closer to the witch, Mark saw their victory.
Her power, darker, more potent than it had been before, surrounded her in a black halo, surging when she saw the demon.
Mark became aware of Caster at his side, the weight of his hand on his head a distraction he didn’t wish to give in to.
The potential of the witch’s demise, his impending freedom, was more enticing than anything else.
Come back to me now, my love.
Caster’s voice called to that sense of freedom, and he allowed the transformation back to human form.
He’d needed his wolf’s more potent life force to convince the witch of his intent, but now that part of the plan was done, and if he got the chance, he wanted to look her in the eye as the life drained from her.
“Why hello there, my little witch.” Pierce’s many voices crawled over his skin, made more sinister by the growl he infused into the odd choice of words. “My… how you’ve grown.”
Their plan, before Pierce modified it, would have failed.
Until he’d enlightened them, they were unaware of the demons holding her power, of the cauldron that held the reserves of the power she’d gathered from the Underworld.
He’d drained that cauldron when they’d taken Zeke, and now all she had was the power she’d gathered before coming here.
Ethel’s fear brought immeasurable joy to Mark. Her power was still palpable, stronger than even Riley’s, its darkness enough to destroy them a hundred times over. But it was matched by Pierce and his inexplicable darkness.
Pierce laughed, his many voices now deeper, startling Mark enough to cause him to step back.
The power he seemed to wield with minimal effort tore from his human form and cloaked his body in a yellow haze.
“What’s wrong, my dear witch?” He tsked, his casual demeanor in sharp contrast with the intense power he threatened to unleash. “No words?”
Ethel’s own power surged, and she stepped back as Pierce approached. She gathered her darkness in her hands, the potency in it enough to ignite the air, but when she threw the fireball at Pierce with all her strength, he caught it and laughed again, the sound anything but joyous.
Her whisper of words Mark didn’t understand reached his ears, and her demons appeared, more red-eyed creatures than Mark had ever seen congregated at one spot, as the darkness of midnight covered the day with its toxicity.
Night, the unnatural night her power brought, blanketed the front lawn, and he had to strain to see her, although the red eyes of the demons flanking her remained potent.
The others stayed within the confines of the house, Pierce having assured them that her ally’s magic wouldn’t cross the threshold.
He’d said until he’d dispatched her ally and torn her dark power away, this was his fight.
The demons growled at Pierce, but he didn’t seem fazed.
He unleashed more of his power, its scent reaching past Mark’s human senses to awaken his wolf.
The animal, sensing a danger it couldn’t fight, retreated to a corner, as Caster dragged him past the threshold of the cabin, back into the safety of the protection spell Riley had begun as soon as the witch had materialized.
In the paltry safety of the house and the growing security of the protection spell surrounding it, Mark watched Pierce step closer to the witch and her demons. The demon’s eyes glowed a deep orange, a roar emanating from them only to die down to a low whine when Pierce held up his hand.
Mark gasped when the red-eyed demons moved away from the witch towards Pierce as a dog would to its master.
He glanced at Caster to find the same awe he felt.
The demons and the darkness they carried abandoned the witch, light reclaiming the land the closer they got to Pierce.
His power surged again once they were within touching distance, and he clenched his fist, reducing the demons to a puff of smoke.
The significance of his action became clear with Ethel’s scream.
Her dark power diminished as Pierce continued to destroy its source.
The darkness around her lost its terrible hue, a rainbow of colors forming at its edge, swallowing the blackness in a slow advancing kaleidoscope.
The colors began a slow dance as Ethel struggled against her considerable loss.
She formed more of those fireballs with her hands, throwing each one at Pierce, who all but ignored her as he continued to destroy her demons one after another.
Their whines of pain as they disappeared into the yellow smoke surrounding Pierce seemed to enhance the color collage around Ethel.
Her screams gained an otherworldly quality, the same sickening male voice she’d unleashed the last time she’d attacked them replacing the gentle female scream.
Its rhythm and volume grew, acquiring the same chorus Pierce’s voice had. Was that her ally?
This time when she gathered her weapon, it was larger, darker, more considerable.
She tore her attention from Pierce and his continued destruction of her cohorts and turned to him with such precision that Mark stepped back.
Her eyes were gone, replaced by impossible darkness in the bottomless pits they’d become.
They didn’t have time to scramble away from the last of her dark power.
She hurled it at them with a riotous roar.
Caster stepped in front of him, and a memory of the last time he’d done that flashed in the foreground of Mark’s vision.
He grabbed Caster’s arm, and gathered all his strength to draw him away from the surge of the power sailing across the lawn.
It hit the barrier that was Riley’s protection spell with enough force to shake the cabin to its foundations.
Mark fell, Caster on top of him. He took a breath, ready to check for any significant injury to Caster when a second shockwave landed with considerable force.
The protection spell crumbled as the cabin gave way, crashing on top of them.
He braced for pain, but a sweet smell infiltrated his lungs, his stomach flipped, he closed his eyes against his dizziness, and eerie silence took over.
When next he dared open his eyes, Caster’s tight grip on both arms was the first indication he was still alive. They were in Marcus’s study again, all breathing hard from yet another close call with the witch, but all, even Zeke, intact.
The Alpha tried to move, sensing a tiny chance for escape, but Dean was much faster, and Zeke’s fight died in a defeated sigh.