by Lisa Ladew
A spurt of flame shot through a crack next to him, six feet in the air and Trevor jumped away from it, fear replacing despair. Don’t straddle the cracks, got it.
He began walking, just for something to do. Khain would come get him when he was ready. As long as Ella was released, Khain could do whatever he liked.
On the horizon, slightly to his left, a large shape shimmered and seemed to come into view as he walked. Trevor shifted his direction to head toward it. In another twenty minutes he could tell what it was. A house. Or more accurately, a palace of some sort, stuck in the middle of nowhere, flames surrounding it on all sides, like some sort of backwards moat.
Gray towers and parapets rose above the flames, making Trevor think of a castle, instead of a palace, but then they shifted and a drawbridge appeared. Trevor looked away. Khain was playing tricks on him, but there was no doubt that was where he was to go.
He walked faster, but Khain’s home seemed to move farther away. Fuck it. Trevor let loose of the shackles on his wolf in his mind and shifted as he walked, dropping to the hard ground, his clothes, badge, and gun, falling off of him. He would not need them where he was going.
He loped across the harsh landscape, setting a comfortable pace, springing out of the way easily as more fire blasts shot up through the ground. Now Khain’s home looked bigger with every passing mile Trevor covered. When he drew close enough to it that the wall of flame around it threatened to singe his whiskers he stopped.
Trevor turned left, then right, his wolf looking for a way in. Trevor had hoped that shifting would make what he was about to do easier, would make saying goodbye to Ella easier. But no, his wolf was just as in love with her as he was. The yearning and sadness hadn’t lessened at all.
What had changed was his plan. His wolf was more bloodthirsty than he, willing to wait until Ella was safe, and then he would go for Khain’s throat. Better to die with his fangs buried in Khain’s jugular─ or whatever was under that foul skin─ than to sit passively by and let Khain carry out whatever plans he had.
A loud horn blared, startling Trevor, but his wolf held his ground, ears ticked high, hackles raised, tail straight out behind him, moving slowly. A wall of flame approximately three feet wide dropped into the ground, exposing a path for him to follow.
The smells came at him thick and fast, of burnt skin and rotten things, making Trevor realize if he had been in his human form, he would not have been able to continue, but his wolf was made of stronger stuff.
Trevor passed through the very small opening into Khain’s home.
The flame shot up again behind him, locking him in. No matter, as long as Ella got out.
Ella. He could smell her.
He turned toward the scent and headed in, ever deeper.
***
Trevor wandered around inside the strangely circular… building for thirty minutes without finding Ella. Her scent never got stronger or weaker, just stayed the same, like he would find her around the next turn, which he never did. He reached out with his mind and was so disheartened when only an empty whooshing sound came back that he almost couldn’t try again. But he did, to his brothers. He got nothing from them either. It was like the Pravus sucked the communication right out of him and burned it up before it could get where it should go.
The marble-looking floor was hot beneath his feet, but he ignored it, just as he ignored everything else. His mind was completely focused on one thing only: finding Ella.
To his left, as he wound his way ever downward on the seeming marble corkscrew into the ground, a large metal enclosure sat suspended in the air, how Trevor couldn’t see, but it did not steal his focus.
He continued to walk quickly, purposefully, until finally he came to a great door. The door was taller than any door had any right to be, stretching up as far as he had walked, to the upper sections of where he had just come from.
Trevor looked up. Sat back on his haunches. Waited for something to happen. When nothing did, he decided to try to contact one more being.
I am not impressed, he sent to the Great Destroyer himself.
Thick laughter filled his head and Trevor knew he was about to finally get what had long been his greatest wish.
A face to face with his species’ greatest nemesis.
Chapter 43
Ella paced back and forth in the large clear enclosure she and her sister were confined in. She shuddered as she looked around. More like a cell, with a bed and a toilet and a sink, but some see-through material surrounding them on four sides and even over the top as a kind of ceiling. It reminded her of Hannibal Lecter’s cell in the Silence of the Lambs and the comparison was what made her shudder. She had found that movie to be super creepy and never made it past the part where the guy in the cell next to Lecter had thrown his jizz on Jodie Foster.
Lucky her, she was now living in her own personal horror movie. She stared at her sister, unconscious on the bed. She was so stupid! Of course Khain wasn’t going to release her sister and of course she was now trapped down here, too. If she were in a real horror movie she would have been the first to be killed, the stupid bimbo who says, “What’s that noise?” and goes off to investigate it all by herself, all the while laughing and telling her boyfriend, “knock it off, it’s not funny anymore,” all the way up until her─
Ella pulled her thoughts away from that line of thinking. Trevor would get her out of here. She had to believe that. And if he or his brothers or his teammates got killed trying to, it would be all her fault. She would carry that guilt for life as the stupid girl who trusted the demon─
“Argh,” she said, pounding her fists into her thighs and turning around. She had to quit whatever trips her mind kept trying to take her on and find a way out of this. She wouldn’t be able to carry her sister out, but she couldn’t just sit there and wait to be rescued, either.
She ran her hands over the wall in front of her again, looking for a crack, a seam, anything. Some part of her mind still drifted as she worked, attracted to the metal cylinder she’d seen in the center of the castle on her way in. The pull of it was strong and she thought she knew why. No, she knew she knew why. Her father was in there.
Her father the angel. Which made her half angel. Which was still incredibly hard for her to believe. She didn’t have wings or a halo and she didn’t glow in her sleep or anything like that. She seemed 100% human and totally vulnerable.
A horrid, twisted laughing filled her mind, making her freeze and look down towards the rest of the room. Her… cell was perched on a balcony on one side of what was big enough to be a dungeon, although she would call it a laboratory of some sort, with large monitors covering the walls, even though she could see no computers. As she watched, the room shifted with the laughter, losing its light, modern look and becoming something else altogether. A lair of a monster, with cobwebs brushing the walls and a molten pit for a floor. She blinked and the image retreated, showing her the laboratory again.
Queasiness swept over Ella, since she couldn’t believe what her eyes were showing her. She felt the floor vibrate under her feet as the colossal door to the far end of the room began to open and Khain appeared in the center of the room as if by magic.
But not the Khain she had seen before, who had walked her there in the bubble with the flames brushing at the soles of her shoes. He had been eight feet tall, max. Taller than any human, tall and wide enough to be terrifying, but what stood before her now was a giant. Fifty feet tall with dark hair that brushed the ceiling and hands that could pick up semi-trucks like a child’s toy.
Ella sat backwards on the floor with a thump, unable to keep her footing. If this was the real Khain, they were doomed. Wolven did not grow like that. A hundred wolven could not hurt that monstrosity.
Her eye was drawn to the door, which had opened fully. On the other side of it, one wolf. Her wolf. He had come, and with a sudden, cold clarity she knew how and for what.
He was sacrificing himself for her.
“Trevor, no!” she screamed, scrambling to her feet and throwing herself against the wall of her enclosure. “Go back! Get the others! I’m fine. I’ll be fine. You can’t…”
Her wolf twisted his strong, warrior’s face towards her, and she swore she could see the love shining out of his eyes, even from so far away. Tears streamed down her face. She’d just found him. She couldn’t lose him already. He couldn’t be taken from her because of something she did, some horrible decision she’d made under duress. She was nothing without him. Just some awkward girl who always made the wrong choice, did the wrong thing.
Khain raised a hand towards Trevor, making Ella scream at the top of her lungs. A bolt of thick red light shot out of his hand straight at Trevor, lifting him off the floor and crumpling his body in pain.
Ella screamed louder, helpless in the face of her mate’s torture and oncoming death, reaching her hands to her head to tear at her hair as her scream raised in crescendo, rebounding off the walls and coming back to her.
Her voice cut off as a thick pulse of invisible energy shot out of her body, knocking the walls of her enclosure flat and pushing the ceiling up into the air where it hit the wall behind them and rebounded toward Khain, the pulse of energy that had come out of her pushing it faster and faster until it and the pulse hit him and his red light, blasting the red light into nothingness as Khain staggered backwards, his skin and clothes pushing in with the invisible shockwave.
He turned toward her, eyes blazing in their sockets, bleeding black blood from a thousand tiny cuts, the ooze dropping to the ground and incinerating instantly in what now looked only like a monster’s lair, Khain’s feet submerged in the red lava. Surprise showed on his face but he did not waste time verbalizing it.
Khain lifted his hand again, toward Ella, and she knew she had only a second before he struck.
Chapter 44
Ella tried to force her body to send out the energy again but she didn’t know how she had done it. She tried to gather, to send, to defend herself in some way but it was not coming to her.
She looked around wildly for somewhere to hide and her eyes fell upon her mate, still outside the door, his body limp, on its right side. Even from so far away, she could see his renqua, a white boomerang against his black fur. She longed to touch it just one more time. Feel the sleek of his fur under her fingers. What she could not see was if he was breathing.
The scent of burnt wolf fur reached her and a hot anger spread through her. She faced Khain, hands clenched into fists, opening her mouth and with a sudden stiff outrage, she screamed out the anger at what he had done. No words, only a primal scream that was a poor substitute for the pulse of energy she had somehow emitted before.
In front of her, Khain’s hand pulsed brightly and the energy shot out of him towards her.
With her scream, her own power came, full and powerful, shooting out from her body, meeting Khain’s light as it left his fingertips and pushing it backwards towards him, then making him stumble and fall as the full force of her energy hit him.
Ella didn’t wait around to see exactly what kind of damage she had done. She had to get to Trevor. Had to protect him anyway she could. She scrambled to the edge of the balcony that now looked like a rocky outcropping, sensing she was seeing the true nature of the room now, and that the laboratory had only been an illusion. Rough, wooden stairs were built into the edge of the rock. She scrambled down them, wanting to run two at a time, but afraid she would fall and tumble all the way to the bottom, breaking her neck.
She chanced a glance at Khain as she ran, pleased to see he had shrunk to almost half his former size, which still put him at twenty-five feet tall, and that he was running his hands over his skin, possibly healing the cuts that covered him.
Ella ran for her life, and for the life of her mate, to the bottom of the stairs. When she got there, she saw a small man cowering in what looked to be a large crack in the wall. She almost stopped, but she just couldn’t. Trevor was all that mattered.
She skidded to a stop just outside the door and dropped to her knees next to her mate. His fur, his beautiful black and gray and silver fur was burnt to the skin in places and badly singed in others. His eyes were shut and sunken and his ears were burnt and curled in on themselves. “Oh God, no,” she breathed, holding her hands over his body, not daring to touch him, not wanting to hurt him. “I’m so sorry. It’s all my fault.” Worse, she still couldn’t tell if he was breathing. If he was, it was shallow.
Thick, fat anger, hot enough to burn the place down, filled her soul. He’d been so beautiful, so perfect, so strong and noble. And now he was twisted and burnt on the floor. All because he’d wanted to help her.
“I do love you, Trevor, I just didn’t know it until now.” she whispered, feeling it inside her, strong enough to force the anger aside for just a moment. She placed one chaste kiss on his burnt muzzle, then stood and faced the demon. Time for her to find out exactly what she could do.
Could she kill him? Avenge her mate?
Or not?
Chapter 45
Troy picked his way slowly through the woods over the bluff as night fell and the sun disappeared from the sky, Trent beside him. He couldn’t help but feel that they were on a foxen’s errand, one doomed to fail. But he was willing to try. Graeme had schooled them both for hours on exactly what to do, until Troy had snapped at him and told him if they didn’t do it soon, there would be no sense anymore. None of them had been surprised when Ella had never appeared at the appointed time.
Graeme and Kalista walked ahead of them, talking softly, Kalista occasionally pointing to an area of the ground and Graeme always shaking his head.
Choose, Trent rumbled, apparently as ready to be moving as Troy was.
Graeme stopped and looked back at them. You’re right. I choose here. It’s as good a place as any.
He turned to Kalista. “Thank you, Madame, for your help. We must prepare now.”
She nodded, all business, no flirtatiousness, which was rare for her. “I would like to come.”
Graeme’s eyes narrowed. “Come, to the Pravus?”
“To the fight. I have fought him before, which is more than you can say for any of the rest of you.”
“You have not heard of the battle of Loch Bee, then, Madame?”
“Just Kalista, please.” She turned her head to look at him from just one eye. “That was you?”
“Aye, and my brothers.”
“But that was, what, six centuries ago?”
“Dragen live longer than other shiften.”
She nodded. “Consider it. I won’t be leaving until it’s done.”
Graeme bowed slightly, looking every bit the Scottish lord, even in his work boots and clothes. “Thank you Kalista of the felen, I shall talk to Wade.”
Trent and Troy stopped on exactly the spot where Graeme stood. Troy whined and tossed his head.
“Calm, gentle wolf. We will move soon enough.”
Troy flashed his teeth at Graeme, but the male was already moving through the underbrush, gathering up the rest of their team.
Within a few minutes, Harlan, Mac, and Beckett stood near them, the three of them stomping their feet and swinging their arms as if warming up for the Olympics.
Wade arrived with Graeme. “Just shift already, you aren’t going over there like that and nobody’s getting any gold medals.” The three males did what they were told, dropping to the earth, their clothes falling off in small, messy piles.
An earthquake shook the area, making the tree limbs rustle and the ground move under their feet. Troy looked around guardedly. Small earthquakes were not entirely rare in Illinois, but there had been no warning, no disturbance that any of them had noticed beforehand, and that was unheard of. Mac sat on his haunches and howled away his agitation.
Wade squared his feet, holding up a hand until Mac stopped, then spoke loud enough for Kalista, waiting twenty feet away in the woods, to hear. “No, you say only six can go, it’s going to
be this six. All KSRT.” He waved Kalista over. “If all six go through the portal and it’s still open, you can go through, but be warned, if it shuts on you, you will be cut in half.”
Kalista nodded and Troy could almost see her ears twitch.
Graeme stepped in the center of the wolves. “I go first, then Troy, then Trent. I am certain we will be able to open the portal, but there is a chance we won’t be able to hold it open long enough for everyone. If it starts closing you get through fast or stay on this side. You don’t want half of your body here and half there, believe me. The three of us must go together and first or we won’t be able to make a big enough portal to get back if one gets stuck over here. Once over there, ruhi does not work there, for us anyway. Our communication will be nil. We stick together. We grab Trevor and the one true mate.”
Ella, her name is Ella, Trent interrupted.
“Ella, of course. As soon as we have them, we will open the portal. You three, if you have to hold Khain off of us while we are doing that, you do so, but keep an eye on the portal. You three leave first and take Trevor and Ella. If they have to be carried, you’ll have to shift. We three will come last. We could be under heavy fire so it will have to be quick.”
He stopped talking and looked around for agreement. All the wolves nodded. Mac barked his approval.
Wade stepped forward. “If you can only bring one back, it must be Ella. Is that understood?” he said, his voice apologetic, but firm as he stared at Trent and Troy.
Don’t worry about Troy and me, Trent said. We love Ella like we love Trevor and we understand the stakes.
Troy shook his head till his ears flew. Trent was eloquent as shit. But damned if he was going to leave anyone. Even Mac.
