Dark Spirits (17 page)

Chapter Seventeen

Nathan

My senses were alert and my movements swift as I ran through the forest straight to my truck. I wouldn’t have been surprised if a dark spirit lurked at a safe distance with a pair of night vision goggles. Apparently Ameerah felt the same way. After she’d told me to take care of Paige, she lit out of there as if under gunfire, ducking and crouching down the trail in the opposite direction from me.

I carefully arranged Paige in the front seat of my truck and brushed a lock of hair off her face. Under the dome light, she looked ghostly pale and dead to the world. I hesitated. The pounding of my heart drummed in my ears. I told myself she was immortal, but the familiarity of the twisted knot in my stomach reminded me of when she had passed out after her mom’s funeral and the fear of her never returning.

A flash of anger went through me.

Ameerah had to have known this would happen to Paige. Or
might
have known–if I were to be so generous to give her the benefit of the doubt.

But right now, as I backed up my truck, I wasn’t feeling very charitable. The sound of crunching rocks beneath the tires made a connection in my brain to my house that was deep in the woods. I debated whether to take Paige there instead of her house. But the thought was quickly forgotten when the headlights whipped around the trees, briefly highlighting pockets of darkness between them and their brown trunks, and then landing on a figure standing in the middle of the road.

I stopped and clenched my jaw, narrowing my gaze. The figure didn’t flinch or shield his eyes against the brightness of the headlights. He hadn’t changed since I’d last seen him: short dark hair, but long enough on top to be untidy, a muscular frame, shoulders set in self assurance.

Brayden.

What the hell was he doing here?

I glanced at Paige and laid a hand on her forehead. She didn’t stir beneath my touch. Her breaths were deep and came out a bit ragged.

I had to get her home.

I looked up and Brayden had disappeared. If that son-of-a-bitch thinks he could threaten me, then he . . .

Bang!

Involuntarily, I leaned away from my door, my fighting instincts fueling the rage toward Brayden. I turned the truck off, and then reached over Paige’s still form, locking the passenger side before flinging my door open. The heavy metal smacked Brayden in the chest. He stumbled backwards, his shoes scraping against dirt and rocks. His back bent in an arch as he fell to the ground. But then he leaned back on his hand and pushed himself up. In a flash, I had him by the throat, high against a tree along the shoulder of the road.

“You’re lucky I didn’t bash your head in the night you put your filthy hands on her.” My voice was low and fierce. The image of him fondling Paige and her struggling against him engulfed my mind. A growl rumbled out of my chest. Brayden tried to bend my hand away from his neck. It was a fruitless act because I was stronger. But then he clocked me on the side of my head with his knees, causing my grip to slacken. He took advantage of the opportunity and yanked my thumb backwards, snapping the bone. A sharp stabbing pain, instantly radiated throughout my hand. I released him, and he rolled away from me.

“I’m not here to fight,” he said, jumping to his feet in a lithe motion, rubbing his neck.

“You could’ve fooled me.” I turned to him, feeling the bones in my thumb already healing and the pain subsiding.

“Where’s Paige?” He looked around, and I realized he’d been too preoccupied to take the time to really listen to what was around him. If he had, he could have heard her heartbeat and breathing. He glanced over his shoulder at the truck. “Paige,” he whispered and zipped to the passenger side. I beat him to it and stood like an imposing sentinel in front of the door.

“Stay back,” I warned, watching his every move.

“What the hell did you do to her?” he demanded, looking like he wanted to rip my throat out, which pissed me off.

“I didn’t do
shit
to her,” I said, shoving him backwards. “Paige means everything to me, and if you cared about her, you’d leave her be.” He fell this time, landing on his butt.

“What kind of bullshit talk is that?” He slowly rose in a human-like manner, picking pebbles out of his palms. “Paige and I were destined to be together, just like you were destined to be a tracker.”

For some reason I imagined Anwar saying something along those lines. And then, as if I conjured him up by the simple thought, in my field of vision I caught a tall silhouette walking along the dark road ahead of us. I knew it was Anwar by his stride: long and graceful.

And then my ears rang.

A tall pale-haired man who looked of Nordic descent seemed to materialize between the trees. The backdrop of the pitch black forest behind him gave the illusion of him being an imposing force not to be reckon with, like a Viking god straight from Valhalla.

 He stood there and fixed his ice blue eyes on mine. For a second they glowed like flames peering out of a bone-white skull. There was no doubt in my mind. It was Volac. Brayden stepped away. I bowed my head and slowly shook it, the corner of my mouth pulled down in disgust. What a yellow-bellied, worthless piece-of-shit. If Tree were here, he wouldn’t have tucked tailed and left my side. Then something sparked my intuition, some kind of connection between Brayden and Anwar. But I lost it when Volac’s feet shifted. I drew myself up, my survival instincts kicking in. My brain automatically assessed Volac’s vulnerable areas: his windpipe. I could grab it around his visible Adam’s apple and squeeze the larynx, and then strike a blow across it with the edge of my hand. His knees and chest were another vulnerable area. Hell, his whole damn body was an open season.

“You didn’t think I’d come here without reinforcements?” he said, his thin lips twisting into a smirk. He stuck his index fingers in his mouth and blew a high-pitched whistle.

I knew my mind was the primary weapon in a combat situation. So I stood there in a perfectly balanced stance, prepared to utilize all my strength.

I listened.

In the far distance were heavy footfalls, behind and in front of me, deep in the forest. Ameerah was calling my name, fear and desperation strangling her voice. As they gained on us, the ringing in my ears elevated to a squeal.

I looked around, assessing the situation.

Like a ghostly apparition, Anwar disappeared, and I found myself questioning whether I had actually seen him or not. Brayden stood on the other side of the truck in a fighting position, like a boxer in a ring, minus the raised fists, his head jerking about.

Then they emerged, shadows growing pulses beneath the pale moonlight. All six of them were males, and the seventh was Ameerah. Three of them surfaced from the forest in front of me with Ameerah. The other three stepped out on Brayden’s side.

Volac made an abrupt whistling sound and raised his palm, halting them. He motioned to the ones behind him to join his side. They moved at his command and stopped when they reached him. Standing shoulder to shoulder, they formed a line in front of me. The brown-haired man at the end with the wind tunneled hairdo and Polo shirt had Ameerah’s hands behind her back in his tight grip. When my eyes connected with hers, she mouthed,
“I’m sorry.”
At this point, I didn’t know what to think.

Did she set us up? I wondered.

I could feel Volac’s eyes pressing on my face and met them with a defiance a caged tiger would have toward his captor.

“Thanks to Ameerah,” he said as if he were presenting her the medal of valor, “we were able to follow her and observe your little rendezvous from afar. Of cour--”

“I didn’t know, Nathan. I swear.” Ameerah shook her head, pleading with me to believe her.

Although Volac’s stone face twisted in agitation from her interruption, he nodded in agreement. “She didn’t know,” he confirmed, then rubbed his chin, contemplating something. I shot a glance at Ameerah. She was looking at the man behind her. She jerked her arms back, trying to break free from his grasp, cursing at him in Latin in a high whisper. “But I had a feeling she was up to no good when she’d sought me out, only to pluck answers from me about Paige.” He laid a hand on his chest and feigned devastation. “I was quite crushed when her arrival on my doorstep was for purely selfish reasons. I thought I meant more to her than an immortal girl who has the ability to imprison our kind.

 “And then riding on my suspicion regarding the nature of Ameerah’s visit, I sent my bloodhounds and myself out tonight to follow her trail.” He paused and leaned over to frown at Ameerah. “I’m disappointed in you, consorting with the enemy.”

“You’re wrong about them,” Ameerah said. “They’re more against what the ‘old one’ plans to do than you are.”

“I doubt it. Stupid girl.” He turned to me, his eyes boring into mine. I could have easily ripped his throat out right then, but something in me told me to wait. However, if he came any closer, I knew I would because nobody was going to get near Paige. “We didn’t hear what was said between you three. However, we did observe some sort of ritual you performed.” He placed his palms together and slowly rotated his hands. “And interestingly enough, it snatched consciousness away from Paige. So you might have done me a favor because she may never return.”

“What?!” Brayden said, appalled. “Is that what happened to her?” He had an accusing pissed off tone to his voice aimed directly at me, wordlessly saying this would have never happened if she’d been with him.

A blaze of anger roared through me. He didn’t realize what Volac was doing, yet he implied Paige would be safer with him! I could feel the heat in my ears and hear the uncomfortable shifting of the group in front of me. I looked at each one individually, and I don’t know what they saw in my eyes, but they all flinched, and their hearts were racing.

“He didn’t know that would happen to her,” Ameerah spat at Brayden, coming to my defense. “And Paige wanted to.”

“Bullshit!” Brayden hollered. “If he wasn’t so obsessed with getting revenge on Aosoth, he would have paid more attention to Paige and figured out what she can and can’t do”–I whipped my head around, just in time to see him jerk a finger at me– “this would have
never
happened!”

Chaos erupted.

Brayden was now in my face, and Volac was laughing. I shoved Brayden aside and right when I lunged for Volac’s throat, Anwar appeared behind him and dragged him away from me. I didn’t have time to wonder what Anwar was doing because the dark spirits on the other side of the truck were trying to get inside it. One of them had hold of the door handle, trying to force it open. He looked like a vampire wannabe with jet black hair and a white painted face. Another one was standing on the hood, aiming his biker boot at the windshield directly in front of Paige. An image of it breaking, spraying shards of glass on her, infuriated me. I snatched his raised foot and twisted it. He howled when the bones snapped and fell on his back, his head smacking the hood with a loud thunk.

Agonizing wails echoed around me. At the edge of my vision, I saw Brayden casting the spirit out of the preppy-looking male who had Ameerah. The man on the hood kept gasping for air. I elbowed him in the gut. He raised his shoulders off the hood in response, half-sitting. His arm flung across his stomach and he curled to his side. I flipped him on his back and placed my palm on his forehead and said a quick incantation. He didn’t have enough air in his lungs to scream, and I could hear his heart sputtering. This soulless human was dying, and all I could think about in those few seconds was
good, one less vessel to occupy.
I felt the dark spirit leave, and the human died. I leaped on the hood, picked him up, and dropped him on the male still trying to get inside the truck.

“Brayden, behind you!” Anwar yelled.

I didn’t bother looking because I was on a mission to send those dark spirits to an agonizing hell similar to Aosoth’s. I flipped into the air and landed beside the man struggling to push the human off him. I lifted the body by the head and torso and tossed it into the forest. It smashed against a tree and fell to the ground in a heap.

“No. Please,” he begged, scrambling to his knees.

 I felt movement behind me. My arm flicked out, my hand encircling a scrawny neck. I swung my arm back around with a handful of throat. I came face to face with a lanky teenager with dark helmet hair. His brown eyes were wide with panic. He grasped at my fingers in a desperate attempt to release my death grip. Slowly, I squeezed his larynx, and then he made the foolhardy mistake of trying to kick me in the groin. I blocked his kick with my knee and crushed his windpipe with a quick pinch of my fingers. Without thought, I tossed him in the forest as well.

Flick.

An acute, searing pain ripped up my shin. I looked down at the idiot still on his knees, but now he held a switchblade. In one swift move, I kicked it out of his hand, grabbed him by his black T-shirt and slammed him on the ground.

“Please. Please. No . . . I’m sorry.”

I smacked my palm on his forehead, feeling the blood sticking to my jeans. Someone was screaming. Ameerah?

“I’ll tell you about the ‘old one.’ Just don’t cast me out.” He started to weep.