CHAPTER FORTY-TWO #2
But the demon became so intoxicated by Dez’s pain, she didn’t see Emmery coming. It was her first and last mistake.
Emmery leapt at Senka. Her khaos flame flared as her hands curled around the demon’s throat. Her fire trailed her arms, joined Senka’s body where their limbs met, but the demon's magic kept its grip on Dez.
And as he screamed and screamed and screamed, it was Emmery’s name he cried, until she was sure his vocal cords shredded. The need for destruction tore through her, wrenching loose a desire she could no longer contain.
Senka’s skin charred beneath her grasp, flaking off in black sloughs. “I see you,” the demon hissed. “I see what you have done. Who you are. What lives inside you. You are a monster like me.”
If she was a monster, so be it. She would drag this one to the depths of the Hollow with her if it meant the demon’s end.
The shadow inside Emmery reared its head, as if awoken from a long rest. The same shadow that had edged her vision the day Dez was attacked by Hollowhounds, and the day she’d fought the siren in the dark water.
It claimed her, blocked her sight, severed her control from her body.
Untethered her.
Her subconscious banged on the barrier, but the shadow trapped her within walls of darkness, stole her body, and looked through her eyes.
The dark presence swelled inside her and licked its lips as it took control.
She couldn’t shake it. Couldn’t push it back into the gaping hole inside her soul it had crawled out of.
Rest now, the shadow purred. Rest now, vessel. Let me take control.
And Emmery was … exhausted. She didn’t want to fight anymore. She was so damn tired of being angry. Of hurting. And the darkness soothed her.
The shadow smiled.
Emmery yielded.
And she let go.
As the shadow claimed its vessel, magic ripped through its body in a torrent of golden flame. Even as the khaos flame purred and stole its breath, it wielded it without abandon. Without restraint. Delectable.
The demon in its hands withered like paper in an open flame. Such a pathetic, vile thing. Demons had always been inferior.
As the demon disintegrated in its hold, the braziers flared to reveal the massacre of bodies in a splatter of gold and crimson.
The shadow grinned at the sight. At the bloodshed.
But it wasn’t enough. It was never enough.
A few paces away, a man lay collapsed on the floor. A soft whimper left his lips. He was weak too. Pitiful. But then, although he wobbled, he shoved himself to his feet. His black eyes widened as he took in the carnage. The man crept toward the shadow’s vessel. “Emmery?” he said, voice low.
The shadow ignored him and leaned into the unending anger ripping through its veins, blocking any light in its soul, stirring the hurricane of fire, and becoming one with the khaos, as everything should. The shadow would make the whole world bend a knee.
The man’s hand shielded his face from the raining flame. Molten winds swirled, relished in victory, and the shadow’s vessel spun on him. Its lips pulled back over its teeth with a hiss.
But he was—
Familiar, somehow.
Though he was coated in blood, with his face torn open, dark curls and stubbled jaw soaked in red, the vessel recognized the man.
Trapped behind the shadowy wall, the girl fought to reach him, but the shadow shushed her, told her to rest, told her everything would be alright if she sank into the darkness.
The foolish man drew toward the fire like an insect ravenous for light. Ready to die for it.
“It's alright, Em. You’re safe,” he said, his voice a soft, warm thing.
The girl wanted to savour that voice, wanted to soak in it like the blood that coated him and streamed from his arm.
Maybe the shadow would make her taste his blood, lap it up like the sacred water of the spring.
But the man did something, reaching into its mind though it had claimed this vessel. It belonged to the shadow.
Even so, the weak girl clawed at the walls in a feeble but admirable attempt.
“What did you do with her?” the man whispered, his calm splintering. “Where is she? Bring her back.”
His skin scorched as he thrust his arm through the golden blaze, and though he gritted his teeth against the burn, he did not falter. The shadow retracted the khaos flame. It couldn’t bear it if anything happened to this man, though it knew it was the girl’s will bleeding through.
Because the girl knew him. Felt him. But even as the shadow fought that nature, the man called to something inside it. Some burning, glowing thing that refused to die.
He grasped the vessel’s hand, and a cold wind passed over its burning flesh. It shivered. The shadow’s vessel closed its eyes. Tried to hold on and stay. Consume. Feast. Destroy.
“Emmery.” The man caught the vessel’s fingers and squeezed, though his skin blistered, a mottle mess of flesh. He fought and failed to keep the pain from his voice. “Look at me.”
Gaze fixed on where their hands met, the shadow’s chest rose and fell raggedly. Its gaze lifted to his, but its hold slipped, falling back into that place it lived inside this vessel.
“Come back,” he whispered. Their fingers tangled and his dark stare bored through the haze of the khaos flame. “I have you, Em. Come back to me,” he said, impossibly soft.
The walls crumbled, and a violent tug cast the shadow back to whence it came.
Emmery gasped as she lurched back into her body, her limbs reclaimed and—
Oh gods, her heart pounded. When she glanced down at her hand and saw Dez’s arm, tears flooded her eyes. She’d caused that, and had hurt him, or whatever that thing was had. And she didn’t know where she’d gone or what that dark space she’d fallen into had been.
“Dez?” she whimpered, finally finding her voice.
Emmery’s eyes rolled back and her knees buckled.
He lunged and caught her before she hit the ground. He grunted from the strain, but he held firm, even as his burnt flesh and steadily bleeding arm weakened him.
“There you are,” he breathed. And even through the pain and the terror and this insane heartache, he gave her a sunshine smile that could banish any darkness. Despite the thick blood slathering him, he was a beacon. He exhaled a long, shaky sigh. “I—I thought I lost you.”
Her teeth chattered, the rest of her body trembling, too.
“I’m sorry,” she managed. She wrapped her arms around him and pressed her face into the crook of his neck, not caring about the blood or about anything but him. “I’m so, so sorry. I couldn’t control it. I don’t know where I went. It took me away—”
“It’s alright. It doesn’t matter.” He stroked her hair in a soothing rhythm and held her until she stopped quivering.
Emmery pulled away only to sway like a dandelion in the wind.
He caught her by the shoulders and surveyed every fleck of crimson splattering her, the nasty slice down her cheek, Senka’s fleshy goo coating her hands, and he caught a dribble of blood from her nose on his thumb then eyed it like poison.
His hands skimmed to her elbows. “Can you walk?”
She nodded though fatigue gripped her as the world spun. Dez led her to the red chair Senka had sat in and shoved it aside. An open doorway lay behind, the same strange portal as when they’d entered the outskirts of the Hollow.
Emmery’s heart pounded as she fought the urge to sprint for the door as fast as her legs would carry her, for fear it may be some cruel trick and she’d exit it to find the same shadowed corridors in an endless, infinite maze.
She took a wobbly step forward. Dez muttered something she didn’t recognize that sounded equivalent to fuck it, before he scooped one of his arms under her knees and the other around her waist to lift her into his arms. Emmery sank easily into his embrace.
He wasted no time. As they breached the exit, a burst of aged dust flared as if this threshold hadn’t been crossed in hundreds of years.
And together they descended into the Hollow.