A Cursed Embrace (WG 2) (30 page)

Emme, who was already shaking, grabbed my arm. “Celia, what’s going on? I don’t see anything.”

“I don’t know. Emme, stay close to me. Shayna, grab some wood.”

Whatever it was, it was closing in. My hackles rose, and my claws protruded. An unearthly growl escaped my throat just as screeching erupted around us. My heart leapt into my throat as a horde of demon children broke through the surrounding trees. They flew overhead, scurried on the ground on all fours, and crawled on the trunks of trees like creepy toddlers with wings and arachnid legs.

“Celia, get out of here,
now!
” Aric yelled before he and the wolves
changed
and attacked.

I
shifted
the girls the moment they grabbed me, traveling beneath the soil as far and fast as my gift allowed. We surfaced a couple of hundred feet away from the fight. A quick glance back temporarily stunned me. The creatures crawled and flew everywhere, traveling in clumps thick enough to veil our four wolves.
My God
.

The reality of our situation smacked the fear out of me. We hadn’t destroyed the demons. We’d only given them time to breed.

A cluster of demon infants attached themselves to the wolves’ furry backs, clawing at them mercilessly and saturating the forest floor with their blood. The metallic scent of their essence burned my nose and still Aric and his Warriors shredded through their opponents like paper, seemingly unaffected despite the wicked pain their twitching muscles revealed.

I sprinted back toward the fight. “Shayna, get those things off their backs!”

A stream of long silver needles flew past me. They knocked the creatures off the wolves’ backs and impaled them into trees like frogs in biology class.

A demon spotted me. His heavy clawed feet stomped along the soil before he expanded his wings and flew at me with his arms outstretched. I leapt and smashed into his body, twisting him in the air and decapitating him in one smooth move. I crashed to earth and dusted off his crawling remains. I needed to reach the wolves, and none of the damn flying monkeys were going to stop me.

The two Geminis fought a demon well over seven feet tall and almost as wide. Stone gray skin covered his humanoid form and sickly yellow eyes narrowed with challenge. His long leather appendages slapped at Gemini and shielded him from the wolves’ snapping jaws. A good offensive maneuver, but not enough to guard his back.

I jumped on his shoulders and
shifted
him up to his neck. He jerked his head around, hissing when saw me. My leg swung back and connected with his head, sending his skull to roll like a soccer ball into the ferns. Wet, pulsating insides spilled from his neck, shriveling once exposed to the fresh breeze.

Three smaller creatures shoved me against a tree. Two held my arms while the third dug his talons into my shoulders. A serpentlike tongue slithered through his fangs and wrapped around my throat, halting my screams and robbing my breath. I gasped from the need for air while his clawed hand yanked at my shorts.

Anger forced me to act. I brought my arms together, slamming the creatures on either side of me into the third. I sliced off the tongue that strangled me with my claws and kicked each in the groin before smashing their heads into the tree like spoiled watermelons.

I drew in ragged breaths as I crushed the heads of small butterfly-size demons crawling along my flesh.
Damn it
.
Where did they come from?
I scanned the skies. More flew above in a V formation, similar to geese until they dove straight down, landing inches from the battle.

Shayna sliced three into confetti in a whirlwind of swinging blades. Maggotlike intestines littered her face, but she managed to sever the arms of a large demon who’d landed in a squat behind her. Poor Shayna, though, had taken on more than she could handle. The immense creature encircled her wrists with his tongue and dragged her away into the thick brush.

I fought my way through the remaining horde to reach my sister, killing anything that got in my way. When the monster saw me approach, he released her and traded for me. We wrestled, his razor-sharp fangs biting into my shoulder as I attempted to puncture his chest with my claws. I screamed from the pain of his teeth piercing through my bones and gagged from his hot, rotting breath. My head spun as his saliva sizzled against my skin, eating its way through my muscles and tendons. I tore his wings to force his release, only to have him clamp down harder.

Shayna was near, but she didn’t seem able to strike. So I continued to roll on the ground while my blood smeared the earth and the creature’s tongue eagerly licked my wound. I screamed in agony as flesh tore from my bones. I thought he was eating me alive until the weight lifted off my chest. Above me, Aric held the decapitated head in his hands. He threw it aside, then gingerly pulled me to my feet.

Aric’s face shone chalk white. But his obvious worry for me quickly turned to rage. He held tight to my hips.
“What the hell were you thinking? I told you to run!”

I pushed away, angry at him for yelling at me, only to cringe. My thrust caused a ghastly pain to shoot through me. I hunched over and instinctively grabbed where it hurt. My fingers sank into the large bloody chunk missing from my shoulder. I shouldn’t have looked. I really shouldn’t have, because the ruptured blood vessels and mangled flesh caused me to become abruptly faint.

Aric caught me before I hit the ground and yelled for Emme. I barely heard the last few splatters of demon remains drench the earth. We’d won the fight. By some miracle, we’d all survived. My sisters hurried over, screaming when they saw my condition. You know you’re in bad shape when women who’ve decapitated vampires can’t bear the sight of you. They pleaded with me not to close my eyes, but the horrible ringing in my ears made it hard to understand their speech. My eyelids drooped as if lined with tar, despite my struggles to keep them open.

Aric continued to hold me while Emme touched my skin with trembling hands. “Hang in there, baby,” he whispered. “Don’t leave me.”

Emme’s soft yellow light surrounded me. Slowly I regained my strength. My head began to clear, and the horrible pain receded. The moment I healed, I broke free from Aric and put ample space between us. Damn, I was furious. “It’s not okay for you to yell at me!”

Aric’s expression went from shocked to glaring. He yanked on the shorts Liam tossed him while narrowing his eyes at me. “Those things could have raped or killed you because you didn’t listen to me!”

I threw my hands in the air. “Did you honestly expect me to leave you?” He didn’t answer. “My God, I don’t believe this!”

Gemini interrupted calmly as his other wolf leapt into his back. “The girls were a great help, Aric. They fought well and valiantly.”

Gem’s words did little to calm Aric. His jaw clenched tighter as he continued to lock eyes with me. “That’s not the point.”

Koda held Shayna, who leaned heavily against him as if barely able to stand. “Enough of this. We need to get the girls to safety.”

I couldn’t keep the bite out of my voice as I stalked past Aric. “By the way, you’re welcome!”

I stormed off, leaping over the creatures’ body parts and limbs that now mimicked dead branches. I paused when I reached the last one. Frustration inveighed me to stomp it to dust. It crumbled easily. Another hour and the remains would probably disintegrate. The knowledge brought me no comfort. More were out there. The attack had proved that much.

My arms crossed as I continued forward. I ignored Aric when he caught up to me. He didn’t say anything, and no longer appeared angry, but the anger heating the space between us made it clear neither of us was in the mood for chitchat.

The smell of fear and death stopped me less than a mile from the car. I ran toward the source with Aric at my heels, horror-struck by what awaited beneath a steep incline.

A herd of beautiful deer had been mutilated by those hideous monsters. Some were still alive, twitching and bleating in pain. Others were just chunks of leftover flesh. The bucks had fled, but not the does. They’d apparently chosen to stay with their dying babies. I froze in place, torn between crying and screaming. But it wasn’t until Emme and Shayna gasped behind me that I was finally able to pull myself away.

“Koda, don’t,”
Shayna pleaded when he and Liam approached the herd.

“Please, Liam,” Emme begged, “I can help them.”

The wolves ignored my sisters’ desperate pleas and stalked toward the suffering beasts. The bays and whines amplified. The deer had sensed the arrival of new predators and realized their inevitable end. I felt my breath quickening, knowing what was coming and unable to slow my racing pulse.

The sickening crunch of necks being snapped echoed like gunshots in the silence of the forest. I focused on Gemini comforting Taran. She buried her face in his chest and covered her ears. “They’re coming for me,” she whispered in a trembling voice. “I know they’re coming.”

Shayna and Emme openly bawled. Aric tried to reach out to me, but I wrenched away from him and moved toward Emme and Shayna. I wrapped my arms around them and led them away from the horror.

No one said anything until we reached the car. But when Koda tried to hold Shayna, she released me and climbed into the backseat with Taran and Gemini. She wouldn’t look at Koda. Koda dropped his head and stepped into the driver’s seat.

Liam held out his arms to Emme. Emme focused on his large hands, the same ones that had just finished the deer. Koda and Liam had acted in the name of mercy. I knew that, and I was certain my sisters did, too, except that didn’t mean their actions were any less disturbing. Brutality and death constantly lingered in the wolves’ existence. Not in ours. At least, not now.

“Go to him, Emme,” I urged quietly. “None of this is his fault. He did what he had to.”

Emme approached Liam slowly. He gathered her in his arms and told her he loved her. And just like that, they were back to their normal selves. Aric and I, not so much.

Aric blocked my way when I attempted to get into the front passenger seat. “You’re not sitting with me?”

I met his frown with a glare. “
No
.”

“Fine,”
he snapped.

“Fine,”
I snapped right back.

Taran broke the uncomfortable silence on the ride home. “For shit’s sake, where the hell did all those demons come from?”

Gemini’s tone was dark when he answered, “We didn’t destroy all the demon lords. There must have been more.”

“No shit,” she muttered.

Emme spoke softly. “B-but there haven’t been more bodies—or missing people or anything—since the fight in Death Valley. Even the rogue vampires haven’t presented themselves.”

Aric answered from the back. It hurt to hear him speak. “They’ve probably been lying low, especially since they realized we could call them forth. Either that or they’d gathered enough food to last them.”

We’d reached the highway. “Pull over, Koda,” Taran yelled. “Shayna’s going to be sick.”

Koda scrambled out of the car with me right behind him. He held back Shayna’s hair while a multitude of cars sped past us. When she finished, he took off his shirt and handed it to her.

Shayna’s tears streaked her trembling frame. She twisted Koda’s shirt between her long fingers. “I’m sorry, puppy. The gore was just too much. And those poor deer, I couldn’t take it.”

“It’s okay, baby. Just don’t be afraid of me. I love you. I could never hurt you.”

Shayna wrapped her arms around Koda’s waist. “I’m not afraid of you,” she choked between sobs. “Please don’t think that.”

Koda picked her up and carried her to the car, tossing Aric the keys along the way. When we climbed back in, Emme switched seats so Koda and Shayna could continue to hold each other. It was such a sweet moment between them. I couldn’t help envying their love.

Aric sat next to me and cranked the engine. He glanced my way. I turned to look out the window and rested my forehead against the glass, not ready and not willing to speak to him.

We arrived home to find Danny cooking in our kitchen and Bren lounging on our couch. Bren jumped up, growling, as soon as he got a whiff of us. “What the hell happened? You smell like evil.”

I kicked off my shoes and strode into the kitchen to wash my hands. Yeah, like that did much. “We were attacked by a horde of demon children.”

Danny placed the spatula down on the spoon rest and gripped the sides of the counter. “When you say horde . . . ?”

“Fifty, maybe sixty,” Liam answered. He took a beer out of the fridge, twisted the cap off with his teeth, and chugged it.

“None of this makes sense,” Danny said. “It would take an entire army of demons to produce that many offspring, and there are only a few strong enough to leave hell.”

Liam stood against the wall with his arms crossed. He glanced over at Emme, who sat on the couch quietly. “I think they were after our girls.”

Aric shook his head. “They have no reason to hunt them.”

“How can you be sure?” Liam argued. “They’ve been stealing women for months.”

“They’ve been stealing
human
women for months,” Gemini clarified. “The girls smell of magic and power. They’re not easy prey. What could they hope to gain by attacking them?”

Aric stood from the kitchen chair, hard enough to make it slide. “I don’t know what’s happening, but we can’t just make assumptions. We have to go to the Den and call a meeting with the Elders.”

Koda didn’t move right away, despite Aric’s direct order. He continued to hold Shayna on his lap as if afraid she wouldn’t still be there upon his return. Aric walked over to them. “Koda, the only way to keep them safe is to understand what we’re facing. To do so, we must arm ourselves with knowledge and join together as a pack.”

Gemini stood and took his place beside Aric. “Don’t be afraid, old friend. Bren and Dan will stay and protect them in our absence.”

Bren stretched his tensing muscles. “Yeah, don’t sweat it, man. I’ll protect them, and they can protect Danny.”