Chapter 39 Ditch
Ditch
“Your dam was a Hollenbrut,” the wolf grated in disbelief. He blinked at Ditch as she unveiled her demoness half to him.
Her fangs had lengthened as her face had grown even more angular. Her lips would have gone black, her eyelids smudged like soot. “Yes, a hell-spawn demon.”
The Hollenbruts—born of Pandemonia’s volcanos.
“And nothing brings out my demoness like battle.” Except sex. Though she’d never allowed that part of herself to surface then.
“You’re…mesmerizing.” Gaze enthralled, he let his sword dip.
“I am. Literally.” Her eyes locked on his, her enchantment shimmering. Apparently, Lykae weren’t immune. The trance usually lasted only moments, just long enough for her to gain the upper hand against a foe.
He tore his eyes away. “That’s why you like the river here. Hell is your preferred landscape.”
“It did amuse me when you said I’d go to hell with you.
Oh, wolf, my line sprang from sulfur and carnage.
” Her tail ignited into a ribbon of fire, coiling like a living whip.
“Never say Mother gave me nothing. And Father? He was a warlock who dabbled in fire alchemy. My every hexshot becomes a hell shot.” Instead of pure battle beams, Ditch’s consisted of lava, flame, and acid.
She was overflowing with magic tonight, but she didn’t usually show off like this. Was she trying to…impress a male? The taste of fawning polluted her tongue.
Groans echoed outside the cave. “Get ready, wolf.” She flexed her hands, her palms superheating for hexshots. The smell of brimstone filled the air.
A dozen ghouls swarmed the cave mouth. Their green skin was luminous, their claws dripping contagion. They crowded the landing, eyes burning yellow with rabid instinct: infect and multiply.
Their moans deepened into a chorus as they charged.
Thane met them head-on, roaring, sword flashing. Ghoul blood sprayed. Ditch joined him, unleashing volleys of molten sorcery that seared faces.
“Blinding them with lava?” he said. “You fight dirty.”
“Filthy. Like sex. Like my slate.”
He decapitated another with a snarl. “They’ll keep coming till their heads are off. I’ll clean up after you.”
“No one cleans up after me.” Her magic flared brighter. The lava and acid grew, scalding away flesh until heads tumbled off in spurting fountains of green gore. “Hell spreads,” she said simply. Her worldview.
“What else are you packing?” His sword never slowed.
Her horns flared forward, and she rammed them into a ghoul’s face. “Horn kisses,” she crowed, delighting in the kill.
When the creature clutched its throat and staggered, Thane said, “Poison?”
“Yes. My tail too.”
Even as he beheaded a trio, she caught the flicker of his thoughts—where that tail had been, where it might go again.
Straightening, he repeated his earlier words: “We’ll discuss later.” Then he cleaved another.
She found herself laughing. Fighting beside him was fun.
They moved well together, his skill and might intertwining with her well-aimed chaos. Corpses piled high, green blood sloshing around their boots until the floor was slicked like swamp water.
Too soon, the ghoul numbers thinned. Thane allowed her to burn the last one—chivalrous—and then quiet fell over the area.
They stood facing each other, breaths ragged, boots calf-deep in steaming gore.
Immortal bodies were slow to give up life, and all around them, green corpses writhed, claws blindly puncturing each other in a last hope of infection…
Thane wiped his blade and sheathed it. “Why didn’t your appearance mesmerize the ghouls?”
Ditch’s fire dimmed, and her tail cooled to its spry loveliness. “It only works on certain species, usually fully sentient beings.” She canted her head. “You might be disgusted with my powers, but you appreciated them.”
“No’ disgusted, lass. Just surprised.”
“I thought you were turned off that I’m a witch, but your expression when you saw my demonic visage was priceless.” Maybe that was why she’d shown off—because he was the first male who’d found her lacking.
“I’m no’ turned off. It was just…”
Before he could finish his answer, Pemphre’s singsong voice slithered from the shadows. “You earned your answer, wolf.”
Ditch stepped over a corpse, careful not to get a scratch. She smiled when she realized Thane no longer worried about her leading. I might be light on morals, she thought, but I make up for that in lethality.
“Come on,” she said. “Let’s hear this answer—the one you won’t welcome.”
***
Thane
On edge from his mate’s transformation, Thane accompanied Ditch back into the cave. She still sizzled with power, had demonstrated at least three new caste abilities tonight.
The enchantress with her demonic face. The warrioress hurling hellfire. The conjurer who stole magic.
A blessed witch, dangerous and dazzling. And yet even that might not save her in the Witchwood. Her coven had other talented practitioners, working in tandem. If the Riders alone targeted her…
He and Ditch returned to find the three sisters standing in the same places, unmoved, as if they hadn’t just dodged a ghoul attack on their home.
By way of greeting, Deina said, “This furious mother seeks her spawn, turning darkest night to brightly dawn.”
Pemphre sighed behind her mask, then said, “We enjoyed your bout, wolf. Ask. Receive.” The dead glow in her pupilless eyes brightened.
Thane didn’t bother circling. “Ditch and I have many obstacles between us. How can we be together as mates?”
Pemphre’s eyes flared even more. “You cannot.”
His gut clenched. Beside him, Ditch gazed on as if watching a play that didn’t really move her.
“No bond will quicken here in the Skein,” Pemphre went on. “Not as our world is now. The House of Witches intends to take this realm, making you and all Lykae into their subjects, something you will never allow.”
He glanced at Ditch and back. “I can convince her not to go through with that.”
“You cannot change her mind on this. Or anything. If you want to be with her, you must leave this realm.”
Abandon his pack and gift Straegan the throne? “Where—how?”
“A door.” Pemphre’s voice steadied, as if she channeled a more coherent speaker.
“Old prophesies told of a portal to the mortal dimension—that heaven realm of ease and plenty—appearing every third Accession. At midnight on the night of the Hunter’s Moon, a threshold will open atop Mount Nothrior for a brief window.
Beyond the Skein, King Thane and his mate will inherit no war between their kinds. ”
A way to be with Ditch? Spiriting her away from the danger of her coven? His beast roiled inside him, all but saying, I will take her through that portal if you don’t.
The Hunter’s Moon was less than a month away!
Even as nothing could tempt him more, the Queen’s answer was unwelcome. Thane could never leave his people. “Is there anything else you can give me?”
“Come see us again.” The three chimed, “So many years. So few visitors.”
Stunned, he turned for the exit, ready to leave this fetid cave. At least Ditch followed him as he picked his way through heaps of green. He couldn’t even look at her without feeling as if she was already lost.
No. He would find another path. And keep seducing her in the meantime.
“Wait,” Pemphre called.
He stopped, jaw tight. “What?”
“So few visitors. How did you learn about us?”
“Aye, I was supposed to tell you an archwarlock named Baelor the Unraveler sent me.”
All three jerked. Pemphre tore off her mask—revealing melted skin and weeping sores—and hissed, “He stirs. He stirs!”
Enya: “We hate. We fear. He pulls at loose threads!”
Mind on his own issues, Thane said, “I’ve never met him. Have nothing to do with him.”
Pemphre’s cracked lips ran with pus as she cried, “You’ve been unraveled! Everything he touches unravels! We have been unraveled. The Skein will fall this Accession! The braid must be healed or we all burn!”
“So be it.” He’d had his fill of doom-singing Sorceri.
Nothing had changed between him and Ditch. He would have to continue his imprisonment each full moon and plan for the coming conflicts.
He glanced back at her. Part of him wished he’d never met his mate. But he held on to memories of last night—and even their chemistry in that earlier skirmish—like he might hold on to his sword in the All-Battle.
On the descent, Ditch said, “Pemphre’s right. Enemies to lovers is not so easy a feat when battle lines have already been drawn. A reset world would be the only option, which is no option for you at all.”
“As promised, an unwelcome answer.”
Amusement flickered in her lovely face. “You never even considered it, did you? Spending time with you would quash the ego of a lesser female. I’m used to provoking mindless obsession in others, yet a male fated to me refuses to punch his ticket to live with me in a heaven realm.”
“It’s no’ an option for a king. And what about you? You’ve forgotten the other side of this equation. I dinna consider it because I canna force you to go, and I know you’d refuse me.”
“True. I like the Skein, and I believe that I am meant to be here. So no, I’m not giving up my new home and my coveted position for a wolf I vaguely tolerate and will eventually ruin.”
“Then why did fate pair us?” He let her see his frustration. “To punish me?”
“Knowing me? Likely.” She arched a brow. “Have you done something that deserved this kind of punishment?”
“No. That’s what maddens me.” He stared out into the red mist of a hellish world, then back at her. “You feel no destined draw toward me? No disappointment from the sorceress’s words?”
She lifted a slim shoulder. “My emotions were twisted at a young age. Love is hate, retribution is divine, vulnerability is death. I won’t feel things the way you want me to.”
“Because your dam abandoned you to perish?” The words slipped out, but he wouldn’t call them back.
Instead of the outrage he expected, she said, “Maybe. Those formative years were…educational.”
“Why was a demoness in Akelarre, the home realm of witches and warlocks?”