Page 88 of Cast in Shadow
Could it?
The demon who’d just stared at me like I was his next meal looked nothing like the man I knew. But would he? When he crossed through the veil into this realm, could he even keep his human form or would he shed it like a snake shedding its skin?
What did I really know about that side of him anyway? It wasn’t like I’d ever seen him as a demon.
Another snarl. Another lunge and snap. Another pulse of adrenaline sailed through my blood, and just like that, my brain clicked back into survival mode.
I knew only three things for sure: I was seriously injured, I had a throbbing concussion that was messing with my mind, and if I had any hope of surviving long enough to find Emerson, I needed to find a safe place to heal myself.
The demons prowling the Alius were nothing like the Brethren. There was no underlying humanity keeping their darker urges in check. And even if the gunmetal demon was Emerson in my world, there was no guarantee that he would be the same “man” I knew here.
What if the things that made me fall in love with him were stripped away with his human body?
It was a crushing thought.
The only advantage I had was the creatures’ currentpreoccupation with each other. There was a hierarchy in the Alius, a pecking order, and fresh blood standing between two feral monsters was a sure-fire way to trigger a fight.
The Megan demon growled low as he and the other demon circled each other slowly, and I used their distraction to reach inside myself and search for the thread of power I needed to heal my hip. I found one that felt promising and tugged, but nothing happened.
The green demon lunged for the other with a roar, and the two grappled violently, slashing with deadly claws that would slice right through my tender human flesh like a hot knife through butter.
I searched within myself again, following the densely braided strands of magical power until I found another one that felt like it might be the right one.
It wasn’t.
A snarl ripped through the air, and the demons crashed together again in a tangle of talons and claws and teeth and horns. My pulse doubled down. I tried to shuffle away from the violence, but the pain made dragging myself more than a few feet nearly impossible without passing out.
Focus, Senna.
I needed to be able to fight off whichever demon won the battle, and I couldn’t do that if I couldn’t at least stand.
Come on. I can do this.I gave myself the little mental pep talk as I sifted through my power again. The next strand I pulled on sent a trickle of healing magic through my system. It was minimal, barely enough to heal a scratch, but it was the one I needed.
I closed my eyes and fought to remain perfectly still, despite the violent, bloody chaos happening a few yards away. The less attention I drew, the better. So, I focused all my attention onfunneling as much of my power into that single strand as I could.
The injury to my head healed first, and the way the fractured bone weaved back together reignited my nausea, but I managed to swallow the acid back down. Then it was time for my hip. My burning desire to stay conscious faltered when the head of my femur popped back into place with a sickeningthunk, but once it was seated, the relief made it possible to draw a full breath. Next, my magic went to work tackling the hairline fracture and the inflammation surrounding the joint.
When I opened my eyes, the gunmetal demon had the other one on the ground, and he was tearing into him with black claws that shined in the dim light. Part of me desperately wanted to believe that violent creature was Emerson, but what if it wasn’t? If I gave an inch without being absolutely sure, that would be the end of me. I would never see Shay or Nguyen again. I would never see the man I loved again. And he would be trapped in this hellish realm until the end of time.
I couldn’t risk it.
I guess that’s good enough,I thought, releasing that tenuous thread of my healing magic. If I managed to get away—and that was already a damned big if—I could finish healing the less pressing injuries later.
Pulling myself to my feet as quietly as I could, I gave Megan’s twisted body one last glance and took off into the twilight.
My heart was galloping in my chest even before I’d started running, and it didn’t take much to kick it up to the point where my lungs burned almost as much as the rest of me. Twisted branches reached from the shadows, snagging on my clothes, scraping against my skin. A trickle of fresh blood worked its way down my cheek, but I didn’t waste any effort wiping it away. Not when an unearthly howl rent the air, sending a wave of goosebumps tearing across my skin.
That howl wasn’t enough to tell which demon had won, but it didn’t matter. Whatever was coming for me, I just had to keep moving. Had to keep breathing.
My uneven steps faltered when something beat against my mental walls, and damn, it was strong. Unlike the scrape of the Megan demon’s magic, sharp and stinging, this one pounded. Hard. Like a battering ram on a castle gate.
Every impact reverberated through me.
There was no way I was letting my guard down, even to try to reason with the big gray beast. Reason didn’t exist in the Alius. It was too wild for that, and survival was the name of the game.
I ran for what felt like an hour, though it was probably only minutes, quickly slipping into a limping gate that became more pronounced with each step. The trees grew more dense the farther I hobbled, stretching so high into the dusky sky that I couldn’t tell where they ended and it began. They were just great wooden pillars rising into the nothingness.
The idea of scaling one of those towering trunks to buy myself a much-needed reprieve skipped through my mind, and I almost laughed at the absurdity of it. No, thanks to the state of my hip, I was definitely ground bound, which meant I was stuck weaving around those giant trunks and shoving through thorny bushes with my arms up to protect my face.
