Page 87 of Cast in Shadow
I was caught in an internal loop of warring priorities when Shay shook her head. It was a tiny movement, so small I wasn’t even sure I’d seen it until she mouthed a single silent word.“Go.”
Hot tears spilled down my cheeks. She really did know me better than anyone.
“I’ll find a way back,” I whispered past the lump in my throat. “I promise.” Then I turned and dove through the disappearing rift.
31
Violent energy wrapped around me like a fist, and the power of the Alius wrenched me through the tear in the veil. It twisted me up and turned me around, before I hit something hard enough to knock me out cold.
When I pried my eyes open, my head a throbbing mass of black spots and scattered thoughts, I was face down in the dirt with no idea how much time had passed. But there was no question where I was. Raw magic infused the air, dancing across my skin and sinking into my bones, along with a soul-deep sense of dread.
I tried to move, until an explosion of pain in my hip snatched the breath from my lungs. There were other things that needed healing too, a whole mess of things, but my first point of order was to push through the misery threatening to drag me under and get on my fucking feet.
The Alius wasn’t the kind of place where a soft, squishy mortal like me could simply lay down and wallow. Not if I had any intention of surviving for more than a few minutes.
An animalistic growl sent a new rush of adrenalinecareening through my veins.The demon.That had to be his gravelly voice, and he was way too close.
I couldn’t quite feel his breath on my neck, but that might have been because nothing much existed beyond the agony pulsing through my hip and leg when I tried to get up. I couldn’t even drag myself to my knees.
To make matters worse, it’d been over a century since I’d learned to heal myself here. The magic in the realm warped my innate powers in unpredictable ways, and I wasn’t entirely sure I remembered how to make it work.
Not that I had time to worry about it.
A huge taloned hand wrapped around the back of my head like it was palming a basketball and lifted me from the ground. My head and hip screamed, and I screamed right along with them, unable to bury the pain. It was too fresh. Too serious. Too much.
Angry red eyes searched my face. A cruel smile curved the corners of glossy black lips. I might have been in a world of agony, but if that asshole was waiting for me to start begging, he was shit out of luck.
Instinct had me kicking with my good leg to get away from him even as fire burned through my skull and down my body. I gripped his wrist, digging my nails into his sickly brownish-green scales.
It was no use. The darkness bloomed, growing thicker and darker as more and more pain engulfed me.
Another growl pierced the space between us, and the demon jerked at the sound, releasing his grip.
Saved by the beast.That was the thought that followed me down as I crumpled to the ground. I had enough sense to roll away from the first demon, despite the flames scorching my joints and mudding my thoughts. It was so blinding that I barely noticed when I rolled right into a soft body.
Megan.
She was sprawled beside me, with her head kinked at an unnatural angle and her open eyes as dull and lifeless as the pitted gray stones that littered the ground around us.
Even if she’d managed to survive the trip through the veil, the demon had made sure she wouldn’t give him the same kind of trouble I intended to give him. Assuming I lived long enough to figure out how to heal myself again.
He hissed a string of monstrous syllables that sounded a lot like demonic curses, and my vision slowly adjusted to the dusky light enough to make out the scene.
He was facing off against another demon, but the two looked nothing alike. Where the one who had grabbed me had two dark green horns twisting from his misshapen skull, the other demon had a straight row of short spikes stretching from his broad brow, over his head, and dwindling in size as they reached the middle of his back.
The green demon reminded me of one of Picasso’s abstract paintings, with sharp, unbalanced features and dull scales, the color of dying moss. His beady red eyes were the only pieces of him that had any kind of symmetry.
I couldn’t see the second demon’s face, since he was between me and what I assumed was the Megan demon, but he sported scales that ran the gamut from a shimmering gunmetal gray to a deep indigo. In another world, another life, I might have called them pretty. The way they picked up the dirty orange light barely shining from the horizon and amplified it was mesmerizing. It gave him an unearthly glow in the fiery twilight, almost like the fire that fueled the universe lived inside him.
When he crouched, he moved like an enormous panther, his long tail swishing and flipping behind him. And the power pulsing from him like a primal heartbeat felt almost…
I shook my head to clear it of that dangerous thought before I could finish it, and instantly regretted moving. The ringing in my ears swelled into a symphony of deafening bells that had me curling in on myself and cradling my bloody head in my hands.
The gunmetal demon cast me a hungry look before it issued another command. There was something familiar about him. Like I’d seen him before, but I would have remembered scales like that.
What if that’s Emerson?
I dismissed the fleeting question. It couldn’t be him.
