Satina and Huntsman rushed to my side, tugging at my arms as though they were going to help me. No one could help me now. I swatted their hands away and glared up at them.
“Get him out of here!” I hollered. “Go!”
Huntsman backed off with a short, solemn nod and hurried to Abram’s side. He scooped Abram’s arm over his shoulder and lifted the large man easily. I had little doubt he could have picked him up and carried him all by himself, but there must have been some unspoken man-code about that, because he didn’t help Abram any more than he absolutely had to.
Satina was still at my side. “Get up,” she ordered. “Or are you going to leave Abram’s fate to a stranger?”
“I thought you would help him,” I said, glowering at her.
“I am, by helping you. Now get up.”
“Don’t you think I would if I could? My body literally does not work right now.”
She grabbed my arm and started to pull me up. “God, you are simple, aren’t you? Use the damn magic!”
Huntsman was leading Abram toward the door, but Abram resisted, pulling him toward me.
“Char, come on,” he said, wincing. “I’m not leaving without you. You can do this.”
The groaning siren increased to the point my ears ached, and my mind started to shut down. “We don’t have time. You need to go now!”
Abram ripped from Huntsman’s support and fell to his knees in front of me. He cupped my face in his hands, tears dampening his face. “Don’t do that to me, Char. Don’t save me just so I can live a life dead on the inside.”
My throat constricted. I could barely get out the words. “I can’t. There’s no time to figure this out.”
“Damn it, Char!” he rasped. “The only thing we don’t have time for is your self-doubt! We all know you can do this. Hell, Ameena knows it, too. That’s why you’re here now, when you had hours left.”
Usually I hated when he was right, but this time, it felt good. A new determination swept through me, and I wiped my face with back of my wrist and nodded.
Huntsman returned to Abram’s side to help him back up, and Satina nudged me with her foot.
“Done feeling bad for yourself?” she asked.
“Shut up and tell me what to do.”
“I already did,” she said, rolling her eyes. I’d almost forgotten this life-and-death situation wasn’t as pressing to her as it was to the rest of us. “Think magic, not muscle. I’ll help you do the rest.”
With that, she pulled me up, holding my weight against her with my arm draped over her neck. My legs were still dead weight, though, and we needed Huntsman to help Abram.
“Magic, Charisse,” she scolded, and I closed my eyes and tried to will the magic coursing through me to do something.
I envisioned the magic as sort-of helium in my limbs, taking place where my muscles would normally function. I could nearly stand now, but I would probably tip over sideways or back if Satina let go.
“Come on,” she said, moving toward the door. “Let’s get some fire under our feet.”
“Interesting choice of words for a witch,” Huntsman said, carrying the brunt of Abram’s weight.
“Be that as it may, if we don’t get out of here, unintended puns will be the least of our problems.” Satina pulled the door open, and we were all immediately hit with a gust of icy and very unearthly wind.
Ameena was here. She was in the wind. She was in the air. And soon enough, she would be in the room.
We were too late.
Chapter 31
“Hurry!” Satina screamed over a howling wind, her eyes growing wide. “We have to move faster!”
She must have felt it, too—the magic permeating every inch of this place like an encroaching shadow falling over everything, over all of us.
Satina’s body twisted. Her face went white and lost expression, and she lifted off the floor, leaving me nearly floating and wobbling in place like a lost balloon.
“Go,” she said, gasping for breath as the wind crashed into her. “Get Charisse out of here. It all depends on—”
Before she could finish, she flew out of the room, disappearing into the darkness as if pulled by some unseen hand. The door slammed shut behind her and, perhaps to replace the light made by both me and Huntsman’s ax, a bright red illuminated the room.
I nearly fell trying to get my limbs to move in a way that made sense, inching closer to Abram and Huntsman and using Huntsman’s shoulder to support myself as things got eerily quiet.
“Is Ameena here?” I whispered.
Huntsman shook his head. “I believe she took Satina and left.”
My whole body trembled with uncertainty. “That doesn’t make sense. I thought I was the one she wanted.”
Abram mumbled something. He must have used all of his strength earlier to convince me to try to leave with them, because his words were nearly inaudible again.
I focused on getting my body to move to the other side of Huntsman, so that I could be closer to Abram. “What are you saying?”
“Divide…and…conquer,” he choked out.
Huntsman nodded. “She’s toying with us. She didn’t expect all of us here, so she’s picking us apart piece by piece. She still wants you—she just wants you alone.”
Abram’s hand came up to my arm, drawing my attention back to him, to his battered and bloody body that twisted me up inside. “She’s still…here.”
As if to prove him right, the room began to spin. Ameena had placed us onto the head of a top and given it a twirl. The walls started to melt away and all that was left was a blur and the sick spinning. I held onto Abram, my anchor in a troublesome sea. If I lost everything else—if I lost the rest of the world in total—I could keep hold of his hand and be content.
But the spinning didn’t slow, and my body was already out of sorts from being supported by nothing but magic. I sank down to my knees, using the entirety of my magic to hold tight to Abram. His body acted as little more than a frayed tether to Huntsman—the only person here functioning in their normal capacity…aside from Ameena.
The red flashed brighter, and the room jerked faster. In the sudden shift, I lost sense of my footing and, in a moment horror, my hand slipped from the man I loved.
I was alone, spinning and lost. I turned, hoping to see him, hoping to see Huntsman or anything at all. But all I could see was red.
And then the pain started.
It ran into my gut first, like a hot knife searing into my flesh. I would have fallen from the pain, except I had no idea which way the floor was.
The agony intensified, sloshing waves of fire through my insides. Between the spinning and the hurt, a roiling nausea became the undercurrent to everything I felt.
My mind flashed back to New Haven’s country fair and a ride called The Gravitron. It did the same thing, spinning us around and around until we couldn’t think straight. I hated it then, too. But Lulu always told me that all I had to do was lean back.
“Keep your head against the wall, Charisse. Close your eyes, take a deep breath, and think of home. And then you’ll be there.” That was what she said.
So, with Lulu’s words roaming around in my head, I pretended we were back at the New Haven County Fair.
“Keep your head against the wall,” I muttered, leaning back…though it took me a while to actually reach a wall. “Close your eyes. Take a deep breath.” In through the nose, out through the mouth. “And think of home.”
Mom. Abram. Lulu. Dad. New Haven. New York. Myself.
A pulse rushed through me and, when I opened my eyes, the world was still again.
Abram was lying on the floor beside me, and Huntsman stood half dazed with his ax in hand.
Ameena, every bit the bull-monster she had been back in the cave, stood before us. Luca, the beast from before, crouched in front of her in a protective stance.
But there was something in the air. A deeper red shimmered against the crimson illumination. And it was floating tow
ard Ameena.
I looked down and saw that it was coming from me. The pain from before had been real. It came from a gash in my side, a gash that was now bleeding. Ameena was feeding off me, and her power was growing by the instant.
“Before you die, let’s try something new” she said, mouth unmoving. Her voice was a demon-like whisper ebbing through the room. “Imagine how many more of your kind I can lure here with your blood tonight. Imagine if I made you the new Sleeping Beauty.”
“No…”
“It wasn’t a question.” She tilted her head. “You still think you can stop me.”
“I can,” I said, but my tremble in my voice belied my confidence.
“No,” she said, a smile in her voice despite the bull-head’s consistently expressionless face. “You’re out of time. Your powers are better suited for a real Conduit, where your abilities won’t go unrealized and wasted.”
I didn’t want to think what she could do with what magic I had figured out, let alone all the abilities of mine that were still untapped.
I stepped toward her, but with a flick of her wrist, she contorted Abram’s body into an angle that was just short of breaking him in two. “Freeze, mutt.”
During the course of our conversation, Huntsman had made his way around the room and was now standing behind her. The bull-headed Conduit laughed bitterly. With another wave of her hand, fire burst from the floor in a circle around him.
This bitch was impossible. She strolled forward, her pet beast-boyfriend at her side. The gap between us shrunk. Abram’s body twisted more. Chills plucked the fine hairs on my skin all the way up my spine, and my body ached with desperation.
A stream of my blood still floated between us like a ribbon, and her power was now swirling around the room and sparking at her fingertips.
I looked from her to Luca and back again. “Does he even really love you?” I asked. “Do you ever wonder if he would love you without your magic binding him to you?”
She froze for a moment, then charged at me. I managed to dodge her horns, but one still grazed my side, creating another wound for her to feed from. I slammed into the wall with such impact that we bounced forward again. I shoved her off of me with unexpected force. The push did little more than send her stumbling back.
With a low growl, she thrust her hand out toward Abram and began to lift his body from the ground. “You thought your friends would help you? That’s why you are a failure as a Conduit! All you’ve done is get your friends killed, and your boyfriend is next!”
I choked on the air. That couldn’t be true.
Except, it could be. It could be the truest thing ever, and certainly the most likely. Had she killed Ramsey? Surely she hadn’t killed Briar. She needed Briar. And not that I was starting to consider Briar a friend. Was I? If she’d killed Satina, had she found a way to make the death permanent?
The truth was, we had no idea what this Conduit was capable of. With the alterations on her magic granted to her by The Company, no one had any way to prepare me for what I was up against.
“You’re running out of time,” Ameena said through a growl. “But before you go, I’d like you to experience what I did when I lost the man I loved.”
Fear shuddered through me, but it was quickly replaced by an anger so severe that, with a flash, it switched the deep red of the room to a hot white.
“No!” Using nothing but magic to move my limbs, I flung my hand up, breaking the connection between us. The remaining stream of blood dissolved into a puff of smoke. “You are done taking what’s mine, you loathsome bitch!”
She huffed at me, lowering her bull-head. I remembered the horns, the way they pierced Abram’s flesh. That wouldn’t happen again, not while breath was still in my body.
Abram’s body plummeted toward the ground, but I was able to slow his body to decrease impact. With Abram safe for the time being, I sent out my magic to create a film-like barrier that I doubted would keep her trapped very long. But if it was long enough to save Abram, then it would have to do.
Huntsman appeared in front of me, his clothes seared from the fire. “Your lover, can he stand?”
“I don’t think so,” I admitted, taking in the way his body lied crumbled on the floor.
“Then he’d better fly,” Huntsman said.
With that, he struck the floor with his ax. A small crack appeared and quickly spread until the floor was crumbling pieces. It shattered beneath us, and we went sailing through the air.
I tensed my body, but then I remembered what Huntsman said.
“Fly,” I murmured. I’d seen Abram do it before in New Haven, but he couldn’t in the condition he was in now, and it was still new to me. But then again, nothing more than magic was keeping my body upright at this point anyway.
I willed the magic to hold my body the same way I had used it to lower Abram’s body back in the red room, and the magic obeyed. I stopped in midair and, with a flick of both my finger and my heart, Abram did, too. I held him there, above the carnage of long-ago fallen bodies and raining debris.
We were literally falling toward her own little hell, toward a pile of discarded supplicant bodies. This was Huntsman’s great idea for an escape?
Although we had magic on our side, gravity was a solid contender. Abram and I hit the ground with more force than desired, just feet away from the pile of death. Huntsman tucked and rolled, getting to his feet, all in one swift motion.
Ameena lied to one side of the room, impaled by a pole that stuck from the ground.
Huntsman rushed her, glowing ax in hand. Could this be it? Could he just strike her and cut her in half like he wanted? Would it be that easy?
As he reared back, ready to strike, Luca jumped in front of him, crouched and growling. He was ready to take the hit, ready to die for the awful creature he still somehow loved. Or thought he loved. Or whatever was going on there.
Huntsman stopped short, jerking the ax up inches before it hit his brother.
“Luca! Let me end this!”
Luca growled and swiped at his brother, and Huntsman pulled away.
“I will not let her destroy you, brother. If I have to die to save you from this, I will do so gladly. But this witch’s hold on our family ends today. It ends now.”
Huntsman rolled past his brother and readied to strike Ameena again, but Luca clawed his back and yanked him away.
Our magical-ax-wielding comrade flew through the air and slammed against the wall. From the corner of my eye, I saw Ameena begin to twitch back to consciousness. God, she was going to get back up from that?
“What are you waiting for?” Huntsman screamed at me. “Be gone!”
I blinked hard, my heart breaking for what was happening in front of me. A family was being destroyed forever, and there wasn’t anything I could do about it.
“Good luck,” I whispered under my breath as I contorted the magic.
As Abram and I flew upward and then back through the door, I tried telling myself Huntsman would have done the same thing. We all had our own battles to fight today, and he’d only been at our side to arrive at his own.
I guided us through the hallway, but Abram became too heavy and, after a few minutes, I couldn’t hold him anymore. The Conduit must have siphoned more magic than I realized, and that blast back there took away what was left. My body was destroyed from breaking the chains earlier, and Abram still hadn’t healed.
We both fell, and I hoisted his body up against my shoulder. We had nothing left. Nothing but a thin thread of hope that Huntsman was ending things right now.
The room was dark again, and with my power depleted, I could only emit enough light to break slightly through the darkness.
After a few deep breaths, I used what physical energy I could to try to start dragging myself and Abram away from this hell. I stumbled around for what felt like an eternity, and with each moment that passed without Huntsman returning to our side, I became more and more convinced we wouldn’t make it out of here ali
ve. She’d killed him, and she was coming for us next.
God, this was how it ended.
I pulled Abram close to me, resting against the darkened wall. If I was going to die here, I wanted it to be with him. He seemed worse now, and I was starting to think this castle was messing with all of us in more ways than one.
“Abram?” I whispered.
His hand crawled to mine and gave it a gentle squeeze.
I smoothed my thumb over his knuckles. “I love you.”
“Don’t,” he rasped. “No goodbyes. I want to spend the rest of my life with you.”
I smiled sadly, thinking how he would probably get at least that much. “Me, too,” I said quietly, resting back against the wall. “Me, too.”
And then we fell hard, tumbling in a downward spiral.
We hit grass and dirt. Moonlight shone against my skin, and a cool dry breeze danced across my skin.
It had been a door. I had leaned against a door, and now Abram and I had fallen ass backward into salvation.
Thank heaven for unintentional favors.
“Abram,” I said, both startled and relieved. “We need to go. We can make it. We can actually—”
“I’m sorry,” came a woman’s voice I knew all too well. Standing before me was Briar…or her spirit, anyway. Her face was sullen and sad. Her eyes were repentant. “I know you might not believe me, Char, but I really am.”
The moment hit me like a nightmare. A very familiar nightmare. I spun in a slow circle, though the world around me seemed to spin much faster, and my mind whirled even faster than that.
Oh God. We were at the cliff—the cliff where I would die.
Chapter 32
This was it. The time had come. Briar was about to guide me off the edge.
I felt it immediately—the pull Briar had over me. It was strange. When we were younger, back in our modeling days, I absolutely hated this woman. Nothing in the world could have gotten me to sit in the same room with her for even an hour. And now I found myself drawn to her, unable to stop my feet from moving toward her, toward the edge of the cliff.
Sleeping with the Beast: an Adult Paranormal Shifter Romance (The Conduit Series Book 2) Page 22
