Chapter 18
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The Bahamian lockstone chamber explodes with the invasion of demons. They hemorrhage from all angles, all around us. They arrive, not through a door, but through the stone itself.
Tharuzel’s minions ooze out of the cracks like runny oil that solidifies mid-pour, limbs assembling at odd angles, clawed hands and fanged mouths slashing through the air. As quickly as one appears, another follows. Then, three more. Then, more after that.
"Protect the lockstone!" Khylie shouts.
The Life and Death Brigade are already in motion.
Clara throws both arms wide, and the sea water answers her. It surges forward in two roaring columns that slam two demons into the far wall hard enough to leave craters.
When they fall, the sluice of water washes over them and pulls them across the sand floor and back out to sea.
Rowan shouts from my left as a demon grabs her arm. Its inhuman fingers wrap around her wrist three times, like the rope of a whip. Its grip smokes as her skin blisters. “That fucking hurts, asshole.”
The shadows in the cavern lurch toward her like dogs answering their mistress’ call. They pile onto the demon in dense, smothering layers, and the thing is consumed.
Rowan twists her arm free as the shadow-mass collapses inward, folding the demon back into the darkness it came from.
I spin and throw up a wall of blue spirit fire, blocking off access to the rune circle of the lockstone. The demon that had been going for it turns his attention to me. Fine with me. Bring it.
Orion is also in the thick of it. He thrusts his palm out, and a wave of ice blasts across the cavern floor, catching two demons mid-charge and encasing them from the knee down.
They thrash, but he’s already moving, reaching back and driving an ice spike through a third with the kind of force that definitely comes from his shifter side.
Then, his shift rolls through him, and his white-and-black striped tiger takes form. The tiger that hits the ground is enormous, twice the size anything natural has a right to be, and when it roars, the demons closest to it actually flinch.
Good. They should.
My opponent is still screaming and on fire when Asher materializes beside me in a crack of displaced air. His shaggy blond hair is wild, and he’s grinning like he is freaked out but refusing to show it. "I'm here, I'm here. Where do you want me?—Fucking hell. He’s here.”
I follow his gaze and curse as Tharuzel steps out of the far wall.
Not through the cracks like his minions, no. The wall simply parts for him, stone peeling back like stage curtains as he makes his grand entrance.
Ten feet of emaciated, blackened mass, the rune-script beneath his skin burning red-hot, the vertical mouth splitting open as the chorus of stolen voices hisses through the cavern in his upper body.
Every light dims. The turquoise from the lockstone gutters as his fingers reach for the carved circle.
"No." I'm already moving. I throw everything I have at the space between Tharuzel and the rune wall. Spirit energy rips out of me in a shockwave, silver-white and furious, and it hits him with the force of a battering ram.
He doesn’t even falter. He turns his head and presses his hand against the stone.
The turquoise light that poured from the lockstone rune stutters, dimming in pulses like a dying heartbeat. The carved circle that was flawless minutes ago now has a thin fracture at the bottom where the stone is crumbling.
No. This can’t be happening. Not again.
Wylder is at my shoulder, the earthy pulse of his magic rising, plant matter pushing up through the limestone floor. Vines thick as rope erupt from the cracks and coil around Tharuzel's ankles, his knees, heaving upward toward his waist.
Tharuzel tears through the first wave like it’s nothing more than a flimsy spiderweb, but the second catches, and the third.
"We need to keep him off the wall," Wylder grits out, sweat breaking out on his forehead.
Asher flanks left, both arms up, and the golden shimmer of his shield snaps into place in front of the lockstone. It holds the first pulse of Tharuzel's energy back. "I'll shield the wall. Someone figure out how to get rid of him.”
Yeah, that’s the big question, isn’t it? How do we fight a major demon without weapons? How can we possibly stop him?
“You can’t, little witch. And the sooner you accept that, the better it will be for the both of us.”
I shake my head as his voice echoes in my mind, pulling my mental shields up to keep him out of my head.
Spirit energy burns hot and powerful in me, and I drive it at Tharuzel in a sustained beam. It doesn’t force him back, but he doesn’t step forward either.
Wylder layers more vines, thicker, faster, rooting them through the cracks in the floor with everything he has.
Behind us, the battle is chaos and noise. Clara's water roars. Orion’s tiger snarls loud enough that it vibrates in my chest. Rowan's shadows hiss and swallow two more opponents. Khylie's voice rises in something that makes the demons nearest her stumble, confused and disoriented.
But no matter how hard we’re fighting, the stone of the rune circle is still crumbling.
"Wylder—"
"I see it."
Tharuzel lowers himself, and I watch as the scarlet script on his arms pulses, shifting like a living tapestry of horror.
My heart hammers. This is what happened in my vision of the Ireland chamber.
Behind him, the massive floor-to-ceiling rune circle of the lockstone remains obscured behind Asher’s shield. Hopefully, his angel essence can counter Tharuzel’s demon strength.
But to my horror, he doesn’t seem daunted.
He draws the hook of a clawed finger across his arm and then starts drawing on the stone floor in front of the wall, in careful, deliberate strokes with his own blood.
The lines go on, dark and wet, and catch the faint bioluminescent pulse of his own runic glow and gleam. The rune-script on his skin burns brighter, hotter, and he turns that smooth bone mask toward me.
I feel his stare hit me like a physical blow.
And then the blood bond detonates.
Power punches through my shields like a fist through glass, not his voice this time, not a vision—his will, raw and invasive, flooding my veins and locking every muscle rigid.
My vision goes white at the edges. I can't move. I can't cast. I can feel him in the architecture of me, pressing into every corner like he's measuring how much room he takes up.
"There you are," the chorus whispers, all of it aimed at me alone.
I glance around the cavern, but whatever is happening isn’t there, it’s inside me.
The blood bond pulls tight, sharp and sudden, and my breath catches.
"You’ve done well, little witch."
The world tilts. I’m falling.
And then… nothing.
I surface from the darkness, slowly becoming aware, the curtain of confusion lessening as my dread increases in equal degrees.
Limestone… salt air…
I’m in Khylie's cavern…
The Bahamian lockstone chamber.
But the light is wrong. There’s no beautiful turquoise filtering through cracks, no sea waves lapping at the smooth sand floor, no battle between my friends and Tharuzel’s minion army.
Everything beyond the pool of space where I stand is black. I'm in a chamber, which is equal parts grounding and confusing.
In every other nightmare Tharuzel has pulled me into, I arrived like a ghost—drifting through his consciousness like smoke through a keyhole.
I watched, but wasn’t present. A passenger in something that wasn't mine.
Except the time the wolf called me to the forest. That time… oh, no… I was possessed.
My heart begins to race as realization overwhelms me. I have weight. My feet press against stone. My hands are my own.
I am entirely myself… aren’t I?
I turn in a slow circle, letting my eyes adjust to nothing. The cave around me is rough-walled and low, the ceiling close enough that I can feel it without touching.
No carvings. No shelves of relics. No light source I can identify. Just cold, damp rock and the distant sound of something dripping.
Okay, maybe this isn’t Khylie's cavern.
Well, it’s not Ireland's lockstone cave either.
All right, I’m somewhere new. Somewhere he chose.
I exhale a breath of relief. At least if he’s here, the people I care about are safe. Aren’t they?
I press my palm flat against the nearest wall and start moving along it, feeling for a gap, a crack, anything that might be an opening.
The stone is slick and cold under my fingers, but I keep moving.
I sense the presence of another before I see him. My legs stiffen, and a low growl vibrates at a frequency that races up my spine.
The darkness before me parts, and the giant ebony wolf steps forward. It’s massive, its gleaming black coat matted and lying flat against muscle and bone as it prowls closer.
It looks up at me, its red eyes level and burning.
This is Tharuzel's wolf.
The piece of shit monster that killed Asher.
My hands are already moving, spirit magic rising fast and hot through my chest, to my arms, and pooling in my palms. I intend to throw it, but something stops me.
It’s not an external force but something internal.
I press my hand against my sternum, and my magic dims, not by choice but by confusion. There's something in the bond—the blood bond that's been blessedly quiet for weeks—that keeps me from attacking.
It’s Tharuzel.
It’s not the vibration of him I feel during his rituals. Not the distant pulse of his satisfaction we share when I see through his eyes. This is closer.
This is inside me. He is inside me.
My stomach lurches. And fragments of the battle I was fighting flicker through the waves of confusion fogging my mind. No. This can’t be happening.
I feel him shift, and it’s like a hand moving inside a glove. I’m his puppet.
Through every other nightmare I've been a passenger in his head—riding along behind his eyes, watching through the glass of his consciousness. But the direction of observation has flipped.
I’m not inside his mind—he’s inside mine.
The wolf circles, but I barely see it. All of my attention collapses inward, feeling the shape of him moving through my thoughts like he's reading them.
The sensation is oily and cold and intimate in the worst possible way. My skin crawls from the inside. "Get out. Get out of my head!"
His laugh doesn't come from the cave. It comes from inside my chest, rolling through my ribcage like thunder from below. "Oh, I’m not going anywhere, little witch. I’m exactly where I want to be."
The voice is everywhere and nowhere, all his borrowed souls speaking at once, and I feel each word like a stone dropping through still water.
I press both hands to my temples like I can physically push him out. "Get out!"
"You are not strong enough to stop me, Poppy. You never were." His smug amusement makes me ill, which makes him all the more amused.
"This will go better for you if you accept the inevitable. The lockstones will be destroyed. I will release my master. You are an unwilling participant, but make no mistake, you have been the key to my plan all along."
"If you think I’ll help you, then you haven't been paying attention." I grind the words out through clenched teeth. "We know about the lockstones. We know they can be reinforced and repaired. You’ll never win."
He lets off another laugh, and the fondness he feels for me makes my skin crawl. "Do you honestly believe that will be enough?"
"We'll make it enough."
"You would need to reinforce every lockstone before I reach it. Every stone. Every seal." The voice settles, certain and cold. "Even if you knew where they were, it would not be enough. Because I have the key."
I go still. The key?
The words spoken by The Nine come back to me in a panicked rush.
“The key must be separated from the stones. If the secret of its importance is discovered—"
Fucking hell. Here we’ve been focused on securing the lockstones, but he already knows about the key.
"Why are you so surprised?" He sounds almost disappointed. "I am a supreme being, Poppy. Of course, I know about every aspect of a ritual that bound my master. Especially the one person the Nine used to secure the lockstone prison."
My blood runs cold.
No, no, no… "You know who the key was? From the original ritual?"
"I’ve known from the beginning. My master was there, after all." Satisfaction saturates the words as my stomach sinks. "I simply waited for the right moment to free myself from purgatory once I was able to secure the key."
“Well, we’ll figure out who it is and make sure that doesn’t happen.”
He laughs again. “Oh, little witch, it’s much too late for that. The moment I marked the family line, I had my in. The moment you signed my blood contract, I won.”
What? No. How could… I can’t think.
“No, that’s not possible. My family is descended from The Nine."
"Why can’t both things be true? You are descended from The Nine and your ancestor was the Key to it all.”
The cave tilts, and I drop to my knees.
The Key to it all? Not just a descendant. My ancestor was a spirit witch who—what did they do? I still don’t know enough about what happened in that ritual centuries ago to figure out how to stop this.
"Why do you think I marked your bloodline? I tried to secure your mother, but was foiled. Still, I made my claim and then, all I had to do was wait for one of you girls to come into your power."
No. This can’t be happening. I can’t be the key.
I won’t be. I wrench back, throwing everything I have against him, slamming inward through the bond and driving my will forward like a battering ram.
He barely rocks. He registers my effort the way a mountain would register the impact of a thrown stone.
I need to get him out of me.
I need to fight my way back to reality.
I'm fighting with everything I have. My magic surges, but it’s uncoordinated, wild, panic-bright. The wolf circles closer. My body no longer obeys my will.
“I won’t help you.”
"You will… simply by being who you are. You are the anchor, Poppy, and the two of us have been building toward this for months."
He takes control of my hands and they raise. Spirit magic answers the call and rises through me. It’s mine but not directed by me. It builds in my chest and channels through my palms, aimed straight upward at the cave ceiling.
His demon magic braids itself into mine, entwining the ancient darkness he commands with my affinity until the combined force of it punches upward through solid rock.
I scream. My cries echo off the stone walls and tear at my throat, but I can't feel my body anymore.
Stop stop stop stop—
I claw for any handhold in the bond. Any crack in his control. The magic he’s creating explodes through me. It’s too much, It’s all wrong.
His will is burning through my affinity like a glut of power. I'm drowning in it, still screaming, as the wolf sits at my feet and smiles like it's won.
Birdie, help me. Asher? Why isn’t anyone here to help me? I can’t do this all alone…