Page 63 of Her Tortured Beasts

I turn into shadow again, soaring over the gap between us and become corporeal as I land on the fake grass by the pool. Savage leaps to standing and saunters over, frowning at me. Lyle and Scythe are both behind him and the rippling fluorescent blue of the pool makes them glow like the dead.

“You missed the party,” I say. “Don’t worry, I brought cake.” I throw my little present at Savage and he catches it. “That’s hers.”

“That’s not hers, you sick fuck!” Savage cries, waving the charred toe in the air like a baton.

“Oh yeah, you’re right, it’s not,” I chuckle. “Wait, are you sure? I must have gotten them mixed up. Shit. So many missing limbs these days.” It’s actually from one of the serpents who got shot and I took it as a souvenir, but they don’t need to know that.

“What do you want, Ghoul?” Scythe asks, hands in his pockets to tell me he doesn’t find me threatening. Brave shark.

“Anyway,” I say as Savage throws the toe into the pool where it lands with a little plop. “Shesent me to tell you that she wants you to stop your murder bender.”

Lyle narrows his eyes at me, stepping forward. “You’re lying. She could have told us herself.”

I take off my glove and hold up my fingers where some dried blood is there for all to see. It’s hers, scraped off the floor from when she’d grazed her knee. “She doesn’t want to talk to you.”

Savage punches the brick wall to his right, and Lyle snarls.

But it’s Scythe, the cold-hearted bastard, who makes my heart pound. He takes a step forward, and with a deathly seriousness that makes the back of my neck prickle, he speaks in that slow, measured rasp. “Tell her she doesn’t get to choose what happens.”

“Yeah, she has to be here for her to regina-order us,” Savage says like a lost puppy. “Otherwise it doesn’t count. Also, we need Raquel back.”

“Don’t know of a Raquel.”

Savage drops his head back and groans.

“The Drakos family has a wolf anim telepathically hostage,” Lyle explains. “Their body is at the academy, but their mind is stuck here. We need them back or it could kill them.”

“Dark magic,” I muse. Just my style. “Well, that’ll cost you,” I say reasonably, hooking my thumbs in my belt.

“Coming here without my regina is going to cost you,” Scythe says. It’s so funny that he looks so much like the snakelet when she went cold. I wonder how well this is working for him.

“What of the traitor?” Savage pipes, baring his teeth at me.

My chuckle is dark, thinking back on what I’d seen today. “Oh, he’s having a good old time, that’s for sure. He’s?—”

I should have seen the attack coming from a mile away, but honestly, these three males are perhaps the only creatures in existence to jump me unexpectedly.

Savage sinks his canines in my leg, while Scythe’s teeth find my neck. The lion grabs me around the torso from behind, aiming to take me to the ground.

“You guys are nuts,” I say, grinning with my fangs as we soar through the air and land with a gigantic splash in the pool. There’s only one thing left to do: shift.

Chapter 35

Savage

Wrestling with Ghoul is like wrestling with a big old boulder, until he has to go all snakey and shift.

We crash into the pool with a big splash, white bubbles all around us, a mess of beastly limbs, and the bastard suddenly expands. The three of us brothers shoot away from each other as we’ve all got one part of his body, which is now ten times as long.

None of us let go.

Nope, we’re all feral and manic from missing our regina. Plus, I’ve had ten whole lamb shanks for dinner two hours ago and am ready to rumble. I’m hanging onto what is a suddenly massive trunk of reptile muscle, covered in large jet-black scales.

I get the sudden urge to climb on and ride him like a bull, with one hand in the air, and see how long I can stay on. Except nobody ever told me that basilisks thrash more madly than bulls.

I’m whipped through the water and slammed into the concrete side of the pool. Even underwater, it blows the wind from my lungs and I have to kick upwards, choking on water and air. I scramble out of the pool and whirl around, holding my side and getting my lungs back as I watch.

I’ve never seen Ghoul in his shifted form before. In fact, I think few people have. He’s easily the size of Xander, only his body is slimmer and has no wings. They could be brothers, though, with how similar they look.

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