Page 78 of Last Gift: Supernatural Battle

Mother’s blue eyes were filled with pain. Pain for me. Pain for what might happen. Fear. So much fear.

“No,” I whispered as Grandmother’s white-gold power began to fade. From outside the car, she stared directly at me. Her hard, gray gaze then shifted to where Mother’s magic was fading as she gave too much to me. What little Syera possessed was fading too.

Black magic shattered the windows and poured into the car, covering Syera.

I screamed her name.

There was no answer.

Grandmother whisked her power back from her attack on the demon outside and redirected her magic into me. Every bit of it. Directly into my chest.

Mother was gripped by the dark power outside. She clawed at the frame of the car door, losing the fight to remain by my side.

“Goodbye.” I moved my lips as she moved hers, speaking her silent farewell to me. Why was she protecting me from the blackness when Syera was covered in the stuff?

“Why not Syera?” I sobbed.

Why not? Because Syera was already gone. I could feel the emptiness within already.

“Tempest!” Wild roared.

Wild. I sucked in air. He wasn’t in the car. Where was he? I had to get to him. He was the only one left.

Mother was screaming outside. “You won’t have them!”

I dragged myself over shattered glass, but my crawl stopped as abruptly as my mother’s scream as I was seized around the throat and lifted.

I stared into a face edged with red scales, scales that seemed ten different hues of red the color was so rich. This supernatural was powerful.

The demon king.

Why? I thought at him.

His magic poured into my throat, and I couldn’t think or say or do anything then. His scalding magic squeezed around my heart, poison to me, but something else demanded my attention.

Within me, deep inside a channel of magic I’d never noticed before, swirled a fury of black smoke. A woman stood in the midst, and she and I locked gazes. I knew so much about this woman, and nothing too, as though someone close to me had spoken about her for years, but we were only just meeting.

I gasped as the woman shoved a dagger under her ribs, and an unfathomable sorrow filled me at the loss of knowing her. Her blood spilled into the new channel of magic, filling it.

She bent her knees and jumped.

The demon king’s magic was forced out of my body and throat. His hand was loosened, and I fell through the air, powerless to stop my descent. Looking up as I hurtled downward, I saw the demon king’s hand was now wrapped around the throat of another.

Around the throat of the woman who’d been inside me. Now she was outside of my body, and I could see that she was a demon too. Her black scales were a stark contrast to his scales of myriad red.

Strong arms caught me, and Wild’s soothing magic filled me.

“You’re safe, my love,” he whispered.

We looked up at the demon king, who seemed distracted beyond reason. He looked at the demon woman in his grip, then down at us, and then to the swirl of black magic surrounding the car where my family had been minutes before.

The demon king regarded us again, and then his lips curled.

Inclining his head to us, he dragged my limp demon through a dark doorway I hadn’t noticed. As he went, he yanked every bit of his black magic, car and all, through it and into his evil realm after him.

I jerked, my eyes opening wide. A scream built inside my lips.

“You’re in the moss forest at the Buried Knolls coven,” Rooke said rapidly. “You’re safe. You just journeyed to your past. The past is where it should be, and you’re in the present.”

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