Chapter 25
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The forest on this side of the old mill is thick enough to offer cover, and with the day growing long, the fall of darkness will do the rest. Our group moves in from the juncture of the road, and when I start to feel the pull of the darkness grow, I crouch low behind a fallen log.
Asher takes a knee to my left, and Wylder settles in on my right. From this vantage point, we still aren’t close enough to see the mill, but I don’t need to see it to know what we’re facing.
It may be three stories of rotted wood and broken windows now, but the old mill played a big part in Emberwood over many years: first as a working mill, then as a fancy restaurant, and finally as a community gathering place for country dances.
I rub at my sternum, the darkness inside me rattling against the confines of my mental jewelry box. I push it down, refusing to acknowledge Tharuzel’s influence on me.
The others spread through the surrounding trees—Rowan melting into shadow, Clara's form barely visible behind a cluster of birch, Izzy keeping low with Sebastian near the treeline.
Somewhere in the darkness, the shifters move. I can't see them, but I feel the energy of their presence. At first, it was only Orion and Reid, but then I glimpse the blur of fur as it races past.
Orion circles back to check in after a moment. He’s still in human form and, undoubtedly, eager to let his tiger loose to join his shifter family on four legs. “Half the pack is fanning out in a wide perimeter for containment. The other half will join us for the breach.”
“Awesome, thanks.” That makes me feel a lot better.
With that settled, I edge forward, my boots silent on the forest floor. I’ve only made it twenty feet when Asher grips my arm and pulls me to a stop.
I follow his pointed finger and find a sigil burned into the dirt. Demonic script twists in arches and jagged line, smoking faintly at the edges. The pattern hurts to look at directly, makes my vision blur at the corners.
"We think they’re security wards," Rowan whispers, appearing at my elbow. "I was coming to warn you that we found a couple over there, too.”
I take another look at the sigils and am surprised. “Until now, Tharuzel and his demon minions have only pushed through with vile intentions and brute force. This is the first time we’ve seen them using a defensive strategy.”
“What do you think has changed?” Asher asks.
“Maybe they’re being more careful because their big boss can bleed now,” Rowan says.
Asher grins. “Then I vote we make him bleed.”
Rowan high-fives him. “I like the way you think, Hendrix.”
I love the sentiment and all, but…
“Back to the demon alarm system. Will it trigger if we cross it? I’d rather not alert our enemy to the fact that we’re closing in.”
Rowan shakes her head. “Sebastian thinks it’ll only go off if we trip it, not if we cross it.”
Asher crouches beside it, studying the lines. "How confident is he of that?"
Rowan shrugs. “I can’t say, but I think I can trick them. I think I can use my shadows to make the wards think we're part of the scenery while we cross them.”
“Can you hold it long enough for all of us to cross?"
"Only one way to find out." She flashes us a reckless grin and then drops to one knee and presses her palms against the forest floor. Shadow magic pours from her palms, pooling over the sigil like oil.
At first, I’m not sure it’s having any effect on the ward, but then the sigil flickers like a faulty streetlight and stops smoking.
We cross as quickly and quietly as we can, and then Rowan sets her shadows to continue to trick the sigils for those who follow.
Twenty feet later, we find another. Then another. And each time we find another ward sigil, Rowan does her thing and cloaks our forward approach.
It’s a slow and arduous task, but Rowan is in her element.
Orion’s tiger appears between the trees, moving with liquid grace, his eyes gleaming silver in the darkness. He crosses the ward with us, followed by two wolf shifters and a black bear.
We’re close enough to see the break in the trees now and the weathered structure of the mill beyond.
Izzy kneels to examine a track in the dirt. Well, it’s less like the track of an animal and more like massive gouges in the earth. The five deep claw marks rake straight through the soil and across the roots.
Her animal magic flares briefly, and then she jerks her hand back like she’s been burned. "There’s nothing natural left in whatever made these. Wylder and I will need to cleanse this whole area once we’re done here.”
“So, let’s get done.” I want this over, and I want my friends to be safely back at Hallowind House.
I press a hand to my sternum, breathing through the spike of dark connection that flares hot beneath my ribs. The closer we get, the worse it burns.
It’s not painful, exactly. Just present. Insistent.
It calls to the darkness of Tharuzel’s blood tie within me. If I’m being totally honest, it’s thrilling and I like it.
Except I hate that I like it.
We crouch against the mill's eastern wall, tight to the rotted and gaping boards. Through the cracks, a faint red glow pulses bright enough for us to see inside.
I lean close to look through the gap.
The interior is a cavernous space, with wooden pillars reaching up to a network of support beams crisscrossing high overhead. The old plank floor is empty of debris but looks rotted through in places, the furniture of the restaurant long ago cleared away.
In the center of the space, captive civilians kneel in a sigil circle, their wrists and ankles bound with rope that gleams wetly in the crimson light.
But there are more than the six we saw brought in.
I cast a horrified glance at Asher and enclose our group in a quick and dirty privacy spell. The pressure in my eardrums pops, and the subtle buzz of the spell encompasses us. “What the hell? There are close to thirty people in there.”
Asher looks as anxious about that as I feel. “They must’ve gathered people to fuel him up for the last leg of his coming to life.”
Wylder shrugs. “It doesn’t change the plan, just makes it more complicated. Our numbers and strength were bolstered by the shifters joining us. Let’s hope that’s enough.”
Yeah, let’s hope.
I turn my attention back to the clusterfuck that is our night. The sigil ring that surrounds the captives consists of dozens of interconnected demon marks, all feeding into the heart of the containment circle.
At the room's heart, in the center of the circle, an ebony shadow towers over the group like a black hole nightmare threatening to consume everything. The souls of the sacrifices laid out before him, hope, and life as we know it.
And just like the first time I saw him in the Hell Realm, the red script that covers his blackened, leathery skin shifts and writhes.
Tharuzel the Soul Thresher.
I stare at the horror of where his face should be and find only a bone mask. His mouth is two feet north of there, a jagged vertical slit that splits his chest from crown to sternum.
My stomach twists with revulsion, but the darkness inside me hums in joyous recognition, pulling against my control.
I look away from him to the shadows surging and heaving with figures. Stalking around the sigil circle, moving between the pillars, seething in the darkness are Tharuzel’s lesser demon minions. Hunched and misshapen, but still deadly.
Red light flares, and my attention snaps back to Tharuzel. Through the cracks in the wooden wall, we watch as he reaches forward with impossibly long arms and grabs one of the hostages.
The middle-aged woman lets out a whimpered yelp, tears streaming down her face.
Tharuzel lifts her, holds her in the air in front of himself, and the slit running up his sternum opens.
Tentacles, slick, black, and barbed, surge from the cavity. They wrap around the woman, impale her flesh, and drag her toward the gaping maw in his chest.
Her frantic screams and struggling don’t deter him. Actually, they only make the red script on his skin pulse brighter.
But before I can straighten and get to my feet, the woman is pulled inside and her scream cuts off.
The crunch of bone and the blood bursting from the seams of his mouth make the other hostages shriek and thrash against their bonds.
“No!”
Tharuzel reaches for the next captive, and we’re all up and running. Chaos erupts behind me. The air fills with shouted orders and the sound of growls and snarls.
The others charge after me.
All I see is the door.
All I feel is the dark bond yanking me forward. Tharuzel's presence is a blazing beacon in my chest, and now that he’s taken form, it’s so much more powerful. The darkness thrums in my veins like never before.
It’s seductive.
I burst through the mill's warped door, spirit fire already crackling across my palms.
The space opens before me—cavernous, gutted, and transformed into a demon nightmare.
Rusted restaurant equipment hulks in the background, shadowed by a writhing horde.
The stench of char and death is rank in the air and burns my eyes.
And every inch of the floor and walls crawls with dark sigils, all pulsing in rhythm with my blood-bond.
Tharuzel holds another hostage by the waist, his gaping mouth hole open, his tentacles jutting out to wrap around his next victim.
The hostages remain in the circle, screaming and fighting against their restraints.
Tharuzel turns, fully manifested. His tentacles claim his next snack and before we get two feet into the building, a second person is lost to the cavernous mouth.
The red script on his black, leathery skin bursts to life and writhes. Tharuzel turns, blood still oozing down his body.
He meets my gaze, and his voice comes from everywhere and nowhere, a chorus of the damned. "Finally, you come to me, Poppy Hallowind."
I picture Asher torn apart and bleeding to death, and throw spirit fire straight at his stupid face. He thinks he can lay claim to my soul, but he can’t—because Asher is my soul.