Page 101 of Legendary

His eyes bugged out with his will to try and not answer me, but theresistance was futile. “Yes,” he got out in one breath. I let thick ropes of dark magic thread out of my fingers and around his neck, squeezing. His face started to turn a different color and I yanked his head back further, making him to look at me.

“Fucking with me twice was your mistake. Dimitri did you dirty.” I started to press the dagger into his neck, but he caught me with his final words. Words that he had to get out between breaths from how hard I was gripping his throat.

“Do yourself a favor and submit, Soul Seether. Lilith plans to see you soon, you have too much to lose if you don’t.” He started laughing as best as someone could when their esophagus was being deflated. I looked over his head at Nick who was beside himself on the ground, his hands over his face. He was in the fetal position and my brow furrowed, narrowing my eyes down at the demon at my feet. I had nothing to say to him. I bared my teeth, dark smoke coming from my hair and wrapping around my body and hands. Instead of cutting my dagger across his neck, I shoved it into his throat, hooked end up. I walked around to his front as he gurgled on his own blood. Grabbing the hilt of my weapon, I tilted my dagger up and pulled down, hearing ripping sounds from the inside of his throat. I removed my dagger from his neck and watched as he slumped over, his eyes rolling back and then my dark silhouettes descended on him, doing whatever they did to rid me of my problems.

I’d never called on them or anything like that before. It was new to me, but it wasn’t something I could dwell on at this moment. I willed my dagger away and ran over to where Nick was on the ground. Elise limped over, pressing her hand to her side, blood coming out from between her fingers. I knelt down and placed my hand on his shoulder. He flinched away from me before looking up and seeing my face. His breathing was labored, and his face was so distraught, like the pain and agony he felt prior to this moment wasn’t gone. I kept my hand on his shoulder and started rubbing it. “Hey, it’s me. I’m right here.”

I heard a groan from my right side and noticed Leah finally waking up. As big as Garrett was, Beetee seemed to have no problems carrying him against herself as she slowly came over to us, sitting him down next to his wife. Reese leaned against Axel who softly licked his face, but the giant hellhound also crowded over Nick, seeming to shield him as much as he could. Nick blinked a few times as if he was seeing everything normally for the first time. My stomach boiled with renewed disgust for Dimitri and Lilith, for what they put him through. He was so close to breaking and I almost hadn’t been able to stop it.

I brushed his hair from his forehead as I helped him sit up. He looked so scared, so much younger than I knew he was. I didn’t know what the darkness showed him, I didn’t know what it manifested in his mind, but he was shaking, and it looked as if he wanted to cry but he didn’t let tears fall. Maybe he needed to. I placed my hand gently over his heart, it was beating so loudly that I was surprised it didn’t explode from his chest. He blew out an unsteady breath and closed his eyes, immediately opening them, probably afraid of what he would see when left in the dark.

I spoke softly and didn’t pay any attention to those around me. Nothing mattered right now, but this angel and his pain. “I’m going to take care of you.”

NICK

Everything felt like a blur. It felt like the room was spinning, but unlike all the other times, I didn’t feel sick. My head throbbed and I felt so confined, like I couldn’t get enough air or that my mind didn’t have room to expand and let loose. I felt trapped in my own head and where I was—where my head was at—was dark and manipulative. It was the type of mental prison that made your thoughts worse or manipulated something good into something ugly. I felt like a thousand rocks were on my chest and every intake of breath was rough and felt like my throat was being rubbed raw. I had never been afraid of the dark, not as a child, but now, it was the scariest thing I knew.

I felt myself being picked up and watched as bodies I recognized, friends of mine walked around me. I knew Reese anywhere, could feel him place my weight into him as he held me up. I smelt the familiar scent of cinnamon and a calm rushed over me in a way nothing else could. It didn’t change how my insides felt at the moment, as much as I wished it did. Dani might quiet my head at times, but she couldn’t quiet the rest of me. They were talkingaround me and some of it was too fast, but at other times I could hear them perfectly.

“What happened to him?” Reese pressed.

“What I was afraid would happen to him,” Dani explained, the nervousness in her tone hard to miss.

I felt myself being pulled in one direction and then turned in another. “He isn’t going into that recovery room. That’s close to too many people right now. We’ll take him to my room.” Dani’s voice was stern.

“Are you sure?” Beetee’s high pitched voice had a delicate softness to it right now.

“Let Dani and Blondie take him upstairs and we can see about everyone else down here. We’ll reconvene later…” Elise trailed off, the sound of her footsteps fading away from my ears.

I heard running around me, tiny feet stomping. Their voices were small and the sound of them crying for their parents was vibrating around me.

We were walking again, up the stairs, one foot after the other. I felt the plush softness of a pillow under my cheek. My feet were lifted and placed on the bed as well and I wanted to relax, close my eyes, but I couldn’t. I didn’t know what that would mean for me, for my mind. My body started to shake from the chills I felt, even though from what I could see neither Reese nor Dani looked cold at all.

“You can go. I got him.” I heard Dani say.

“I’m not going to leave him alone like this.” Reese’s words sounded scared and fearful.

I watched Dani step up to him and squeeze his shoulder. “I got this. Please just let me do this.” I blinked and saw Reese’s shoulders lift up and then down as he submitted to her plea and nodded. He looked over at me and took a few steps in my direction, leaning down so his head was hovering over mine. He smelled like sweat. “We got you.” He took my hand and squeezed it, the pressure of it sending a wave through my arm, letting me know I was here. This was real, I was okay.

He walked out, closing the door behind him. Dani sat on the bed, the small weight of her not even causing it to dip a little. Her breathing was soft and careful. She shifted so that she could bend her knee and stretch it out so that it was angled onto the bed, her other leg dangling off the side. She was looking down at me, her mass of curls shadowing the sides of her face like a curtain. I saw blood on her neck and near her hands and arms. I wondered if it was hers, or theirs. So much blood, so much blood that I spilled. There was an orb of light in the corner of the room that I remembered creating, giving the light I knew some sort of tether, but the tether was weak and fragile.

Did that make me fragile and weak as well?

“Nick.”

I stared off into the distance, hearing her voice but not knowing how to answer her.

“Nick,” she repeated. I peeked over at her. “Nick, how do you feel?”

I looked away from her immediately. “Fine.”

“Answer me.”

“I just did.”

She huffed out a breath. “No, you didn’t. You gave the same answer you always do.”

“Dani, just stop,” I pleaded, stuffing my cheek into the pillow more. It was so soft and inviting that I could have just stayed here forever. Maybe I could try to hide from what was chasing me, what had my mind spinning in circles.

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