A Cursed Embrace (WG 2) (28 page)

I waved my hand to get her attention. “I’m sorry. What’s your name?”

“Rita,” she said slowly, like it would be too hard for me to pronounce.

“Then shut up, Rita,” I snapped.

I’m not sure what she saw in my face. Or Aric’s, who’d wandered to my side. But it was enough to make her back the hell away. Fast. “My apologies,” she muttered.

“She was saying the words wrong.” Danny spoke barely above a whisper, enough for me to hear, but not enough to risk pissing off the witch.

I grabbed a few pages that had swept near my feet and joined him. “Could you read them? Would that work?”

Aric glanced between us when Danny froze. “He’s not of magic, Celia.”

Danny hurried to organize the pages. “No. But I’m not summoning a demon from hell. I’m summoning him from the immediate vicinity. It should work if it’s—I mean, he’s close by.”

Aric hit Gemini’s number on his phone. Scorpions crawled along the ground like ants. The sun cut into our backs like laser beams. We tasted every dry bit of dirt, sand, and disintegrating piece of grass the roasting breeze slapped in our faces. I wanted more water. My beast demanded blood to quench our thirst. Both needs made me cranky as hell. But I refused to gripe. I got what I asked for. I’d joined Aric in his hunt.

“Anything on your end?” Aric said into the phone.

“Son of a
bitch
,” Taran shrieked in the background. “Is that a goddamn tarantula?” She must have been standing near Gemini.

I heard a
squish
just before Gem answered, “Ah, nothing here. Should we move inward toward your location?”

Aric let out a breath. “The problem is the perimeter is just too damn wide. Dan’s going to try to read the pages. I’ll stay on. Tell me if anything happens.” His stare cut to Danny. “You ready?”

Danny shuffled through the pages, his breath panicked enough to steam his Coke-bottle glasses. “Yeah, just give me one . . .” He righted the stack of pages, scribbled with more images than anything that resembled letters. “Got it. I got it right here.” He squinted at the unrelenting sun, took two paces back, one forward, and one more to the right after another glance at the paper.

The witch dug her hands in her hair. “What is he doing?”

Danny pointed to the page. “You have to face where the moon might be. It says so right here.”

I glanced at the page. All I saw was something shaped like Mrs. Mancuso’s lawn jockey and a bird with two beaks. I didn’t read old dead languages for fun like Danny. And based on the image of a man with a snake eating his head, I had no desire to learn.

“Suhaka,”
Danny said, sounding more Jabba the Hutt than Indiana Jones.
“Su. Ha. Ka. Ma nee bo so hee dah. So. Hee. Dah.”

Danny’s words didn’t resemble anything close to what the witch had chanted. The snickers among the crowd told me they agreed. Aric’s baby browns met mine, flickering with more than a little doubt. His decision to bring me, a
lone
wolf, and a human had been a bold move. And one that could cost him his reputation.

“Don’t fuck this up, Dan,” Bren had said when Aric first invited them along. I hadn’t said anything of the sort. But damn, I was thinking it now.

I moved closer to Danny in a show of support. So did Bren. But the way Bren’s tail drooped demonstrated that he, like me, had started to doubt our spindly pal.

“Hee-ho. Hee-ho. Ha.”
Danny squinted at the sun again and nodded. “There. That should do it.”

Aric pinched the bridge of his nose and swore. Twice.

I clutched his arm, red from the sun and just as blistering. “He meant well, Aric. Maybe we could go back to the Jeeps and—”

Thunder shook the gorge despite the lack of clouds and darkness. The dirt in front of Danny spiraled out like a cyclone, sending gravel, sand, and more dried soil to smack and scrape against our exposed skin. Cold burrowed through my bones, chilling me down to the marrow and making me beg for the waves of heat to return.
What the hell?

Growls spread like wildfire. The dirt funnel widened, overtaking the land around us. “What’s happening?” Gemini shouted on the other line.

Aric tossed the phone away from him and shoved me behind him. He
changed
as we retreated from the expanding conduit. My tigress urged me to move closer to the threat, but Aric’s beast held me back. Koda grabbed Danny and flung him like a ragdoll behind Bren before his red wolf replaced his human form. Something was coming. And it was pissed we’d called.

The earth blackened and crumbled like charred wood into large chunks. A high-pitched scream burned through my eardrums like liquid fire. Another cloudless crack of thunder broke and shook the earth beneath our feet. Shayna fell on her butt next to me. I quickly hauled her up to stand just as the air imploded in front of us and the demon lord emerged.

Iridescent red scales cloaked his leather body and bat wings. His raptor head whipped my way, followed closely by his four, very developed, very descended testes. His fork-tongue spit out through his needle-thin, yellow fangs.
“Ceeelia,”
it hissed.

Holy shit.

Before me stood the demon lord Misha had warned me about. The one who possessed him. The one who knew who I was. The one who . . . Holy
shit
.

The
weres
pounced on the demon in a massive heap of fur and claws. The creature spun his expanded wings, slicing and cutting into their large bodies. Howls and shrieks erupted and bounced off the dirt walls. The werecougar slammed against the rock slide next to me, his stomach protruding through his skin like a wet tube sock and his head twisted behind him. Wings flapped hard enough to blind us with dirt, and just like that the demon took flight.

He sailed through the air like a massive glider, soaring upward as the
weres
gave chase. Shayna grunted as her thin arms flung her knives with all their might. The blades whistled through the sky and found their mark, piercing through the demon’s webbed appendages. The demon screamed again, this time in pain. She’d hurt him, disabling his speed and impeding his ability to climb higher into the sky. Aric and Koda leapt after him, their deadly jaws inches from reaching his talon feet. I started to run, the shock from the demon knowing my name fading fast. But Bren barreled in front of me. I crashed into his side and bounced back. “Bren!”

He sneezed and motioned behind me. Danny’s and Shayna’s stark white faces kept me from
changing
and scaling the rock hard walls. They were terrified. I couldn’t justify leaving them, especially with the amount of backup Aric had.

I retreated hesitantly, and knelt beside the injured cougar. He shook his head and shut his lids tight as he willed his beast to heal him. An ounce of his magic reached my flesh and pricked along my burning skin. I managed not to react when his stomach bobbed back into his body and his head crunched on its return home. Danny couldn’t stop his response. He staggered back and tripped over a rock, disturbing a band of scorpions that fortunately chose to scurry in the opposite direction.

The cougar pushed onto his paws. The witch hastened to mount his back. The light from her turquoise amulet turned the cougar’s fur blue as he charged to join the other beasts.

I watched diffidently as they faded into the distance with Aric and the rest of the pack. My tigress paced restlessly. She wanted to join the hunt. She wanted to tear evil in two, and give Aric’s wolf the other half. But neither Aric nor his wolf needed protecting. Nor did they fear. I couldn’t say the same for my little sister and Danny.

“That thing knew your name, Celia.”

Shayna’s voice shook as if the earth continued to tremble. I tried not to think about what she said. Something from hell itself knowing me by name wasn’t just creepy; it numbed and froze my very soul. Bren agreed.

He
changed
behind me, returning to his human form. “Ceel. I gotta give you props. If that mutant freak had called me by name, I would have pissed out a kidney.”

The thought had crossed my mind. Good thing my bloodcurdling terror had distracted me.

Taran’s swears bellowed near Danny’s foot. He picked up Aric’s iPhone, while Taran continued to curse. “We succeeded in summoning the demon lord. Aric and the others went after him.”

“Where?” Gemini said on the other end.

“East toward Badwater Basin,” Bren said without much thought.

“Is it just you and Bren?”

“No, Celia and Shayna are here, too,” Danny answered. “Don’t worry about us. We’re safe and nowhere near the fight.”

Danny disconnected the phone prematurely. The cyclone of earth churned once more, bringing forth that biting, unnatural cold.

And another demon lord.

C
HAPTER 22

The demo
n’s skin shone lime green. Like his brother, he bore wings the size of sails and clawed hands and feet. Except he had four arms, and four legs, and a tail as thick as a baseball bat. A white stripe of fur covered the top of his wrinkled and turtlelike face. He grinned with four very long and extra-pointy teeth. His tongue slurped across them as if he could already taste our livers. Somehow I thought we’d gotten the short end of the demon stick.

The clang of Shayna’s sword as it left its sheath cut through the sounds of Bren’s roars. But I paid them no mind. All my thoughts and instincts focused on attacking and making it bleed.

I
changed
, barely feeling my form shred through my clothes and how the tattered bits of sweat-soaked cotton fell against the earth. My tigress made contact first, slamming the demon into the side of the gorge, one paw against his throat while the other ripped an arm free from its socket. My aggression enlivened my beast until the long wet maggots slithering through the amputated limb left the demon and crawled along my back. That’s when my inner girl rose to the surface. I jerked back, narrowly missing his seven other angry limbs before Shayna sliced a leg off at the knee and Bren’s fangs crunched through the bone of another arm.

More maggotlike entrails exploded out like confetti as the demon shrieked. Dirt coated the insides as they scurried along the ground before quickly shriveling in the baking sun. We gagged like idiots and backed away. But we’d injured the demon. And now he needed to eat to replenish its strength. Like a true predator he picked the weakest among us.

Danny.

The demon tackled him and took flight. Shayna screamed,
“No!”

Bren and I jetted after him. My claws dug through the hard soil and up the steep incline. I pushed harder and quicker than I’d ever moved, urging my legs to dig deep. Within seconds I passed Bren. He snarled with panic and frustration. He didn’t think I could fight this thing alone. And neither did I. But I owed it to Danny to try.

The demon soared higher and faster, his need to escape with his feast making his wings flap harder. I was keeping up, but just barely. He’d soon leave me far behind. I needed to act before he vanished with Danny. Thankfully I spotted a stack of boulders and cut right, passing the demon above me. I clambered up and used my hind legs to propel me forward seconds before the demon veered in the opposite direction. My jaws clenched onto his tail and I jerked my body hard, trying to use my weight to bring the demon down.

The demon tilted upon feeling the mass of my body, but recovered as my back paws hovered inches aboveground. Yet even my hard pulls weren’t enough. His wings remained intact and incredibly strong. He flapped them left, right, compensating for the odd angles in which I twisted his body.

The miles passed in a rush below me as we fought. The demon’s remaining limbs expanded their talons and grabbed at my body. I answered with my claws. There was no strategy, no perfect choreographed strikes, no smooth fighting techniques. There was only survival. I batted, I kicked, I scratched, wildly, while holding tight to a mouthful of leathered nastiness my jaws beseeched me to abandon.

My fangs held tight to the demon’s tail in order to hang on, but their sharpness eventually sliced through the demon’s thick hide. The muscle and tendons split and began to pull from the bone. I
changed
, keeping my claws and using them to scale up his back in human form.

Danny hollered with gut-wrenching terror and agony, “Help me!
Help me!
”

I threw out my arms and pierced my nails through the upper arch of the demon’s wings, forcing them to tilt down. The wind slapped at my body and dried my eyes, making it hard to see. He was brutal and attacked any way he could. But, damn it, I was brutal, too. I hung on tight and pulled my legs beneath me so my back claws stabbed into his shoulder blades. I ground my teeth, cursing and grunting until I finally forced his rapid descent.

My long hair belted me in the face and blocked my vision. I threw my head back, allowing the wind to whisk it behind me. I managed just in time to see the mountain of boulders we were about to crash into. I leapt off the demon’s back and
shifted
into the earth. The speed plummeted me deep into the mountain. I couldn’t slow quickly enough and buried myself deep before I could begin to surface
.
My lungs shrieked from the pressure and demand for air. I broke through the ground just above my breasts, coughing and wheezing. The stress against my ribs and diaphragm made it hard to draw a breath. I finished my
shift
in short spurts, clawing my way along the searing and jagged rocks.

Oh God
. I didn’t know where I was—just far, far away from where the demon had first emerged. And crap, the traveling, winged, evil monster assured the
weres
wouldn’t be able to track our scent.

I forced myself to a kneeling position, scanning the area in search of the demon. Splattered blood dripped from a collection of boulders high above me. My lids peeled back, hoping my attempt to save Danny hadn’t killed him. I staggered to my feet and forced myself to climb, still too oxygen deprived to call forth my beast.