“We can’t hold him off forever,” Darius pants. “He’s trying to wear your defenders down because he knows we can’t fight him.”
“Then let’s get it over with.” I dart under his arm as he holds off the demon. Cleo shifts into a whip so I can snake it out and grab around the demon’s bloodied stump of an arm, which Ryker just sliced off. I yank it forward, fully anticipating that he’ll keep his ground. With a twist of my wrist, the tendrils of the whip shimmers into the cut of a blade as I slash out, hoping to score a hit.
I open another bloody gash across the demon’s body as his wings lash out, trying to knock me off balance. My feet kick off the leather appendages, briefly sending me shooting in the air before Cleo shifts back into a whip. I crack her toward the still-stable rafters above me, pulling up and out of the way of the demon’s reach. Once I reach the highest part of the arch, I urge Cleo back into a sword as I plunge downward. To my frustration, the demon’s wings act as a shield, catching the sword and keeping it from getting any closer to his horned head.
I fall back to the floor, but as I blur past, I use the built-up momentum to slam my head straight into his face. We both stagger back from the impact. I groan as his good hand covers his face.
Fuck, that hurts! Ryker makes it look so easy. The world suddenly flips as something snags around my ankle and jerks me to the floor, a loud crack echoing across the room as my skull connects. Dazed, I find myself being dragged into the air upside-down as the demon bares its terrible teeth in a grin. Through a spinning headache, I follow the whip-like thing around my ankle to the back of the demon. “You have a fucking tail?”
Dirk responds by slamming my body against the floor again.
Wind knocked out of me, I try to roll onto my feet, but his foot catches my wrist. Cleo’s throwing a fit in my hand, twitching and trembling as she tries catch his ankle. Before she can, a sickening crunch sounds as his foot bears down, the pain turning my stomach. He kicks Cleo to the side before I even realize I feel nothing but a numbing throb in the hand I once held her in.
“You should have come quietly, Jade,” the demon hisses as his tail wraps around my waist. He jerks me to my feet, his clawed hand wrapping around my neck as he holds me in front of him like a shield to keep my protectors away. “The Mistress won’t be happy that you damaged her favorite.”
I can barely breathe, my magic raging to do something—anything—but my body not sure it has the strength to go on. I send it out, searching for a way to use it against the demon, knowing the others can’t use their magic against the darkest of all beings. I feel my magic pouring into Cleo, and I will her to my hand, but she refuses to budge. She knows I can’t wield her with the crushed bones in my hand, and I don’t have the time to heal myself because the demon is about to finish me. He stares down at me with black, burning eyes. The corners of my vision start to blur, nothingness creeping closer and closer as his claws sink into my flesh.
Consciousness is about to blink out when suddenly I see the demon’s horned head falling toward me. Ryker stands behind him, Cleo in hand, blade gleaming with black blood.
The demon’s hand convulses around my neck, and blackness swallows me whole.
Chapter Thirty
A moment later, my vision begins to clear. I sit up, aware I’m now sitting in the arms of both Rocco and Thorn while Asher kneels in front of me, healing magic pouring from his hands into me.
The moment my eyes flutter open, Rocco crushes my lips with his. “Thank fuck,” he murmurs through the kiss. “Don’t scare me like that.”
“Are you alright?” Thorn asks, equal concern in his voice. “This portal opened behind him, and—”
“We need to help Darius close it,” Ryker snaps, interrupting our moment of peace.
He grabs me by my arm and pulls me to my feet, roughly pushing Cleo into my good hand. If I didn’t know him better, if I didn’t know that he charged me with the magic to fight the demon, the magic that I put into Cleo before he sliced off the demon’s head, I might be mad. If I didn’t know that he converts every emotion into dickishness, including fear for his loved ones, I might snap back.
But I do know. So don’t react to his abrasiveness. I take Cleo, and the boys scramble to their feet.
On one side of the room, the demon’s body stands rigid, his head lying next to his feet as his decapitated body is lit up by a terrifying vortex behind him. A snakelike black chord, the consistency of smoke, slithers from his body and toward the portal. When I stand, it snaps its attention back toward us. Suddenly, it races across the room like a ravenous hunter desperate for fresh meat.
How many incarnations does this fucker have? He just won’t die.
“What the—” My shriek catches in my throat as Ryker throws me across the room. I crash onto the bed.
“Jade, get inside,” Darius cries. He stands on the other side of the room, maintaining a glimmering shield just barely wider than the span of his arms. His teeth are gritted, and sweat trickles down his cheeks. “The demon’s lost its true form. It will possess one of us if we don’t get to safety.”
I stumble off the bed, and my hand passes through the barrier. But I can’t leave my guys.
Darius’s hand snags mine, trying to pull me in. “Wait,” I cry, reaching out. “I’ll give you magic to fight him.”
My fingers just barely touch against Ryker’s. Rocco grabs his brother’s hand with one of his own and reaches for Thorn with the other. All five of us are connected now, my magic racing across as if creating a feedback loop.
“Join your magic with Jade’s,” Darius says. “With all our magic together, we can defeat it and keep it from possessing us.”
“Get Asher,” I cry as the smoking tendril slithers for the unprotected wizard who lies on the floor in front of Rocco, who can’t break the chain without risking all of us.
But fuck that. It’s one for all and all for one. I yank my hand free of Ryker’s and lunge for Asher. The smoke shoots upwards, striking at me like a snake. Something hot begins racing through my veins, burning my very blood, but I blast it with so much light magic that it retreats. It can fuck right the fuck off. I’m not losing them.
I’m not losing any of them.
In a split second, my fingers connect with Asher’s, and the smoke veers back as if burned by our combined magic. In that second, I see that Ryker didn’t try to grab me when I pulled away. He grabbed Asher’s other hand, keeping the chain intact. Tears of gratefulness blur my eyes. I don’t know how I ever doubted Ryker. He may make bad choices on where he puts his dick, but he’s never wavered in his loyalty to all of us.
Magic surges through us—Darius’s shield magic, my bright, burning life magic, Asher’s light magic, Ryker’s intense magic, Rocco’s solid magic, and Thorn’s mysterious magic. Together, we form an unbreakable chain of power.
“Where’s Elowen?” I ask, my eyes darting around. And then I see her, standing next to the portal with a faraway look in her eyes, her little figure so waiflike and insignificant I almost missed her entirely.
“Elowen, no,” Asher cries, trying to pull his hand from mine. But she’s far across the room. He was right in front of us. If we let go now, the demon will get him, too.
“I need to find Topher,” she mumbles, stepping in front of the portal.
“No!” I scream. I unleash my magic, and it floods into the room as if from a broken dam. The smoking tendril was trying to wrap around Thorn’s leg, but it suddenly explodes into a burst of steam. My magic courses over each man before crashing against the demon. An otherworldly shriek claws at my eardrums as the smoky tentacle retracts back into the demon’s body, infecting every inch like a cancerous disease before devouring it.
“Elowen, run,” Darius urges, reaching out for her with his free hand.
Before our eyes, Dirk’s human shell is reduced to muscle, then bone, then dust. The demon body bursts into flames, its inky black smoke rising to swirl around Elowen’s body like a tornado.
She slowly shakes her head at us, her eyes sad. Her brown hair whips out, her eyes filling with hellfire as she stands still, willingly letting it take her over. She steps backwards and lets herself fall.
The portal cracks and fragments, shattering into jagged pieces that cut through the air like knives, shooting toward us. I throw my magic up against it, and the deadly arrows dissipating into fine powder that swirls and seethes angrily in the air like a dust storm before sucking back into the tiny fracture left in the air where Elowen stood. My magic pulses out, consuming the dark, racing toward the entrance to the spirit world and sealing it closed. And then there’s nothing but pulsing, living energy in the room, my magic sweeping over us, sprouting a grove of flowers from the pile of ash where Dirk’s human body lay.
“Take your magic back, Jade,” Darius says, his voice low and defeated. “She’s gone.”
I don’t want to take it back. I want to reach down the throat of the Spirit World and yank my friend back out, to shake her awake from the trance and remind her of all she has to live for. But there’s no entrance now, and I don’t know how to make one. Too stunned and exhausted to argue with Darius, I begin to spool my magic in, the way I’ve done each time before. Finally, the room is empty of even our magic, and we’re just six battered, exhausted people clinging together like we’ll never let go, like we’re all that we have left in this world.
Chapter Thirty-One
“Are you going to accept my father’s invitation to come in for dinner this year?” I ask Thorn, leaning across the car to give him a kiss. We’re parked outside Silas’s manor saying our goodbyes before the holiday break. It’s been a long six weeks since the fight with the demon, and I’m ready to see my dad and rest, even if this place will never be home to me.
“You sure you don’t want to come to my family’s for Christmas?” Thorn asks. “I know they’d love to meet you.”
“You told your family about me?” I ask, pulling back.
“Well, yeah,” he says. “You’re my girlfriend.”
He gets a goofy little grin on his face when he says that word, and his bashfulness puts a smile on my face. “I’ll come over during the break, but I have to see my dad for Christmas,” I say, squeezing Thorn’s hand.
“Okay,” he says. “Fair enough. One day, I’m going to make sure you both come over for the holiday.”
I don’t have the heart to tell him that my dad will probably never be up for that. I already checked with him when Rocco invited us for dinner over Thanksgiving. Dad has settled into his life as a servant, and I hate to say it, but it suits him pretty well. He doesn’t want to make decisions or worry about anything, and this job allows him to simply follow orders and know he’s done a good job. Silas’s routine gives him direction, and the monotony that I found so maddening gives Dad comfort. Not only that, but he likes feeling like he has a purpose, that he’s taking care of me by serving my sentence for a few years.
Thorn gives me a long, lingering kiss before pulling away. “I’ll see you in a few days,” he says.
My door opens, and I step out into Rocco’s waiting arms. He pulls me in for a deep, passionate kiss, grabbing my ass so Thorn can see good and well that he won’t be letting anyone monopolize my time. I expect Ryker to stay in the car and pretend he doesn’t want a goodbye, but a second later, I feel his body slide behind mine. He pulls my face around toward him, angling his mouth to mine. His tongue thrusts roughly against mine, and for a minute, we battle each other the way we always do, but this time with our tongues dueling inside my mouth instead of directing hateful words at each other.
It hasn’t been so bad for the past six weeks, but we’ve been tiptoeing around each other. It took a week or so before the ‘official’ story was given to the rest of the academy. Some faulty pipework led to a gas buildup under Asher’s room, causing a devastating explosion to go off and destroy the west corner of the male dormitory. There were minor injuries, but luckily, only one casualty resulted—a freshman student of the Dark Arts who was visiting Asher when it happened.
Ryker finally releases me, and Rocco steps back. “Be thinking about that for the next few days,” Rocco says with a wicked grin. “We’ll pick back up there when we see you next weekend.”
I glance at Ryker, since he still hasn’t made another move since that night. “You, too?” I ask.
He shifts from one foot to the other. “We’ll get there,” he says. “I might have to prep you like I did last time.”
I swallow hard, remembering his hand inside me. Is that what he was doing? Stretching me out to get me ready for his cock? I gulp at the thought, and Rocco laughs out loud. He claps Ryker on the shoulder and gives me a wink before sliding into the back seat of the town car from the Academy, the same one that picked me up before my very first visit. It seems like ten years have passed since then.
“As much as I love being snuggled up against all these muscles, can I get out and say goodbye to Jade first?” Asher asks. “I was giving you a minute alone with her, not saying I didn’t want a goodbye.”
“Are you hitting on my boyfriend?” I ask.
“I’m appreciating him,” Asher corrects. “I’m sure he enjoys the flattery.”
“I’m sure he’d rather not be objectified,” I say.
“Oh, am I making you uncomfortable?” Asher teases Rocco.
Rocco shrugs apologetically at me. “He’s right. It’s flattering. I’m secure in my masculinity. I’m not about to turn down a compliment, no matter who’s giving it.”
“Pig,” I say, but I’m laughing as I slam the car door.
Ryker rubs the back of his neck and clears his throat. “Jade…”
“Not here, okay?” I say, taking his hand and squeezing.
“Then when?” he asks, a frown creasing his brow as his sapphire eyes pierce into mine.
“I don’t know,” I say as the door flies open. “Give it time.”
Ryker looks like he’s about to argue, but then he glances at the car and sees my point. He leans in and presses a kiss to my forehead before climbing in the passenger seat. Asher climbs over Rocco instead of getting out the other door, which I’m sure is just for show because I said that. Rocco slaps his ass on the way, and Asher yelps. Since the incident in which our magic mingled, we’ve been… Closer. Not only because of the trauma bonding over fighting a demon, but because our magic intertwined for a moment.
It’s nothing like when I gave Ryker so much magic it brought him back to life, but it’s there. An ease with each other, an acceptance. Thorn and Rocco don’t fight about me the way they used to, and everyone accepts Asher like he’s one of us. Ryker… Well, he’s the same with me. We’ve shared enough magic that probably nothing can erase our bond. But he’s gentler with Asher, less critical. And sometimes, I catch him looking at me in a way that makes my core tremble.
And then there’s Darius…
“And what about your bestie?” Asher says, nudging me in the ribcage. “Do I get to see our resident Sex Goddess over the holidays, or is that honor reserved for dudes who want their dicks inside you? No judgment either way. No one likes a dry spell.”
“Not sure a month qualifies as a dry spell,” I say, rolling my eyes. “But of course I can see you.”
A month apart seems like forever now that we’ve shared so much. And I know he doesn’t have Elowen to keep him company this time, and the Ren fairs are reserved for summer.
“Not that I’m getting laid any time soon,” Asher says. “I mean, I’ve had offers. Look at me? Is it any wonder?”
“Not a bit,” I say, laughing. “If there’s one thing that’s attractive in a man, it’s confidence, and you’ve got it in spades.”
Asher’s smile fades. “I’m not sure anymore, Jade. I mean, look at my taste in men the last two semesters. I don’t think I can be trusted to find my own man.”
“You’ll find one,” I say. “I know it. You’re amazing, Asher.”
“Can I have one of yours?” Asher jokes.
“That might be a repeat of the Great Topher Crush of Freshman Year,” I say.
“To think I wasn’t friends with Elowen half this semester because her boyfriend wasn’t gay,” Asher says with a shake of his head. “I’m such an ass sometimes.”
“Sometimes,” I agree. “But I don’t think she or a new boyfriend would hold it against you.”
Asher’s quiet for a second. We decided not to avoid the topic of Elowen, to speak of her as if she’s alive. Because somewhere, we’re sure that she is. We talk about her like she’s alive and there’s no reason to avoid the topic.
“I’d better go in,” I say. “If I let my dad and Darius chat too long, they might become besties.”
Silas was all too happy to have a powerful member of the magical community over for dinner. Not that Darius told him the reason why. But we wanted to have dinner together, even if we can’t tell anyone why he’s there. It’ll be our little secret, which makes it even more naughty and delicious. I’m planning on teasing him mercilessly all through dinner, so he has reason to come up to my room and spank me later.
Asher grins. “That awkward moment when Dad finds out his new BFF is fucking his daughter…”
He pulls me in for a quick hug.
“Don’t worry,” I whisper in his ear. “We’ll get her back.”
“Next semester,” he says.
“Just go home and relax and take a break from it all,” I say. “There’s no shame in needing to recharge.”
With a final wave, I head inside, turning to blow kisses to my three guards on the way. Now we know the truth. There is no safety for me. I’ll never be done with my guards because Lilith will never stop trying to get me. After she failed to get me herself, she tried to get me through Headmaster Orville. When that didn’t work, she sent a fucking demon. I’ve had enough.
Shadow Magic: Year 3 Page 26
