Page 64 of A Study of Blood and Ichor

The darkness consumed her. And it wants to take me next.

I jolted back to my senses with a sputtering gasp. The trunk of the ginkgo tree sliced into my bare back and the stench of Ilo’s rotten breath invaded my nostrils, clawing down my throat. The burning ache radiating from my mark was an insistent throbbing pulse that matched the racing beat of my heart. Ilo’s wide slimy grin churned my stomach as the demon’s fingers clutched both sides of my face.

He let out a contented exhale against my cheeks, and I gagged at the stench. “Your fear is so sweet. I will very much enjoy having you all to myself.”

Ilo curled a hand around the nape of my neck as if I were a stray dog, then reached down with the other to yank Dru up by her ponytail. No magic I had left would have been strong enough to fight against him. I kicked his legs and clawed at his arms, but every blow felt weak, and Ilo chuckled darkly at my futile efforts.

He gripped me tight, and I could feel his power gathering, knowing exactly what he intended, and yet I was still unprepared for when it happened. In seconds, we shifted, and it felt as if my soul were being cleaved in two as the world fell away around us.

I couldn’t tell when we landed, or where.

I had no sense of the ground beneath my feet or my surroundings. There was nothing except the mind-shattering pain ripping through my entire body.

The agony shredded through me, tearing me apart from the inside. I screamed.

It wasn’t just my wrist. It was every inch of me. I was being set on fire. My bones hammered beneath my flesh like they were being pulverized to dust.

I wanted to die.

The only sounds I was aware of were my wailing cries and the blood whooshing loud against my eardrums.

The tether between Vain and I was hair-thin, stretched so far that I knew there was no chance of the connection holding for much longer. When it finally broke, it might very well kill us both.

“Shut up, you stupid cunt,” Ilo hissed through my screams and then wrenched me off the ground as the tremors wracked my body. I writhed against his hold. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

Dru’s hands grasped for me as Ilo managed to yank me up.

I couldn’t hold onto consciousness much longer. My vision was starting to go dark, and an icy numbness seeped into my bones, hollowing out my chest. I wanted it to end. I wanted it to stop.

A deafening crack sounded from behind us, breaking through my screams, followed by a wave of soothing calm that enveloped all my senses as if all the pain had been nothing more than a bad dream. It was like a band had snapped back into place, and I gasped. The dark fuzzy edges of my vision receded, and the seedy alleyway where Ilo had shifted us came into view.

Dru whimpered as she clawed her way over me before she buried herself against my chest.

A familiar energy radiated from somewhere close by. And for the first time, I was relieved to feel it. I craned my neck back to look toward the source. An imposing, dark figure stood in the mouth of the alley. Shadows, furious and deadly, whipped around him, licking at the ground like flames.

I only caught a glimpse of Ilo’s shocked expression before Vain threw himself on the demon in a blur of movement, slamming him against a far wall with such force that a crack split through the brick facade. Vain snatched Ilo’s throat and squeezed hard enough that the veins in his hand bulged.

“Only I,” Vain spoke with a vicious snarl, “can leave a mark on that witch. I laid my claim to her. And you still touched what is mine.”

Ilo trembled under Vain’s grasp. “A mistake!” The demon pleaded. “It was a mistake, Vain.”

“You mistake my warning as mercy.” A low growl rumbled from deep within Vain’s chest. “It is not. It is a promise of vengeance.”

“Wait, wait. Wait!”

The voice that ripped out of Ilo’s throat was…desperately raw and human and lacked that slick rasping quality from before. Ilo had handed control back to his vessel, and the young man’s blue eyes searched Vain’s for any shred of leniency.

“Please don’t,” he pleaded, lips trembling. “I don’t want to die. Kill him. But please…don’t kill me.”

Vain’s eyes narrowed on the human, but it felt as if he was looking straight through him. His hands shook as he fisted them in the young man’s collar. “It’s too late for you, boy. You’re already dead.”

The man paled before his eyes filled with black as Ilo wrenched back control of his vessel to fight Vain. But Vain’s hands were already at the demon’s throat, and the terrifying speed at which he clawed into the soft flesh was inhuman. Red blood spurted from Ilo’s vessel as the demon’s screams tore through the night. Teeth quickly replaced hands as Vain ripped into Ilo’s jugular with all the preternatural strength and brutality he possessed.

There was no stopping him, not even when he dug deep into the man’s chest with savage animalism, fury etched into every line of his face and glinting off his bared, bloody teeth.

I stared, awed at the pure violence of it. The monstrous cruelty. How in the moment, I couldn’t see Rory at all. There was nothing human about him. All of the rage and the brutal tearing and ripping of flesh, that was all Vain.

All I could do was hold Dru to me, even after Ilo’s vessel slumped down and the last bits of life in him drained at his feet in a river of crimson. Amidst the blood and bits of flesh, a dark smoke poured from the man’s mangled corpse, slinking along the pavement until the dark shape coalesced into something material and Ilo’s true form became visible.

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