by Melody Raven
As soon as the words left her mouth, she covered her lips with the palm of her hand and gasped. “What did you just do to me?”
He shook his head and stepped back. “Sorry, I—”
Her fist shot out and slammed into his stupid beautiful cheekbone. The crack echoed through the room.
He groaned in pain, but she wasn’t done. She threw another right hook at him, but he was more prepared this time and grabbed her wrist. But her knees still had a clear shot. She purposefully avoided the groin and showed him just how flexible she was and went for his gut instead.
But instead of folding over in pain, he threw his weight into her and pushed her against the door. “I get it!” he bellowed as he tried to immobilize her. “I won’t do it again.”
“Damn right you won’t,” she said, right into his face. “What the fuck gives you the right to invade my mind? I’ve done nothing but help you, you son of a bitch.” She wanted to go on for hours about how pissed off she was, but she didn’t see the point right now and clenched her jaw.
“I’m going to let you go,” he said carefully.
“You think I couldn’t get out of this if I wanted to?” she snapped. “I’m a detective for fuck’s sake and—”
He let her go and she had to regain her balance and tried not to fall right on Claire, who was still out cold. She stared in annoyance at Dante and tried to figure out whether she should’ve hit him more. But then he would try that brain thing with her again and she sure as hell didn’t want that. Derek said mind control was a thing, but experiencing it was a violation she never thought about.
Especially considering she was alone in a room with this guy for who knew how long. She glanced at her watch. If she was here for another hour, she’d revisit the idea of killing him.
The door flew off its hinges and across the room. Sam said a silent thanks that it didn’t hit anyone she knew on the other side. She and Derek stepped inside and glanced around the dark, abandoned bank, looking for any sign of Dante and Claire. They should’ve beaten her and Derek there. She snapped her fingers and held some fire in her palm as they moved farther into the room. She’d been pretty depleted after her encounter with Abigail at the ruins, but the drive back, even at breakneck speed with the siren on, had given her a little bit of time to recharge.
The adrenaline of the evening had helped charge her up too. What would really help would be a few hours alone with Derek, but they didn’t really have time for that right now.
He glanced to the flame in her hand. “You’re getting better at that.”
“Slowly but surely,” she said as they moved farther in. “Did you text Angela to tell her we’re in?”
“I will.” She realized he had his gun drawn and ready, so she assumed he didn’t want to distract himself with his phone. It was comforting to have him with her. Not just because he was her boyfriend, but because he was a cop. He knew how to go into dark rooms and react when things came running out of the dark.
Even so, she stayed right by his side, careful not to let him walk in front of her. If they saw the hounds, theoretically they’d be reasonably safe. The dogs hadn’t killed them right away back at the ruins. They were focused on Claire.
She glanced around the abandoned building. “How has this stayed unoccupied for so long?”
“It’s evidence in a fraud case.”
“The building is evidence?”
“The joys of the judicial system and an overpriced lawyer.”
“They’re not all bad,” she said, thinking of her mother. The way her mother used to be. Would she ever see Abigail again? The real Abigail?
Heather had seemed as if she could be saved, but Claudia obviously didn’t agree. And didn’t Claudia know better than anyone about what the darkness was capable of?
Her magic did absolutely nothing to Abigail. Derek’s bullets didn’t damage her at all. Claudia was…. She had no idea what Claudia was doing. So what options did they really have? Just run away and hope Abigail didn’t destroy the world?
Maybe if this was anyone else, but this was her mother. This was family and one of the few family members she had left now that Heather was gone.
“Sam,” whispered Derek next to her.
She jumped and looked over her shoulder at him.
“Keep focused,” he said.
She wondered how he knew her mind had wandered to a dark place and then she realized that the fire in her hand had expanded to a pulsating ball. Oh.
She pulled back to keep it just enough to light up the room. She moved her arm around to light up the corners and the four glowing eyes seemed to jump out at her. The hounds, which had been dead silent before, took a step closer to her, and she screamed, “Claire!”
At that moment, something slammed shut and Sam could make out a barred door that Claire was behind while the hellhounds charged. After glancing over to make sure Derek was out of the way, she released the fire and sent a blast right at both dogs.
Sam had always considered herself an animal lover, so the idea of burning the creature alive, even as ugly as he was, was abhorrent. But not as abhorrent as the idea of being eaten alive by a demon dog.
But she shouldn’t have worried. The hounds didn’t seem to feel the fire at all. But it did distract them from Claire for the moment. They gave up on charging the metal door and instead they started to charge at her. Sam was sure she was done for when the shots rang out. Derek got the first one in the chest twice before he turned to the second one, which he got at least once, but Sam stopped paying attention.
The first hound was pushed back by the bullets but didn’t stop. It bowed its head on the ground and all of its muscles seemed to stiffen; a second later, a metallic clink hit the floor.
Derek grabbed her arm and she jumped. “We have their attention,” he said. “Let’s go.”
She nodded even as she started to back up before she turned and they took off running. A few seconds later, she could hear the pounding of paws on the ground and knew the hounds were chasing them. She went through the entire roster of curse words she knew in her mind as they twisted down a hallway. The hounds were ten times faster than either of them, so they needed to get behind something now.
The first door she saw, she turned in to and shoved the door shut. It was a janitorial supply closet. Nowhere to go from here. Derek pulled one of the metal shelves away from the wall and she helped him. The metal just touched the door when something slammed into it. The shelf was pushed back, but Derek and Sam didn’t let it go far.
Sam put all of her weight into keeping the door shut and squeezed her eyes closed. Was this how she was going to go? In a supply closet?
But when her eyes opened, she saw Derek and she wasn’t quite as afraid anymore. They’d faced worse odds than this before. Hell, just last night they’d managed to get out of an impossible situation. They’d get out of this too. She reached over and took his hand in hers.
Another crash hit the door, and this time it was powerful enough to send both Derek and Sam flying back. Sam’s back hit the brick wall behind her hard, and her breath flew out of her body.
The door had burst open, barely hanging on by one of its hinges, and the knob section was ripped in two by the force of the hellhound body-slamming the door.
Both of the hounds stared into the room. Sam met the glowing orange eyes and stared them down. She wasn’t about to show fear. Instead, she used the adrenaline to take one of the metal shelves and, using her magic, flung it at the hounds.
Her fire might not hurt them, but the shelf hooked around their necks and slowed them down.
Derek pulled her up, but she didn’t look at him. She flung anything and everything she saw at the hounds, trying to slow them down any way possible. Derek pulled her out of the closet and they had to squeak by just a few feet from the snapping jowls of the black dogs. Sam threw a paint can at them for good measure before she and Derek took off at full speed down the hallway.
She could hear the hounds back o
n their tail, but there was nothing around her she could think of to throw anymore. There was no furniture or paintings in the abandoned hallway. Just doors to who knows what that would never hold off the hounds for long.
They were about ten feet from the end when the doorway in front of them flew open.
Derek and Sam both came to a skidding stop as Claudia stepped out. But she didn’t look at them. She stared right past them and stared down the hellhounds.
Claudia tilted her head as she considered the hounds, which had stopped in their tracks. The second Sam realized what Claudia was about to do, she took Derek’s hand and tugged him out of the way right as Claudia sent a blast of blue flame straight down the hall.
The flames immediately engulfed the hounds. Sam thought they would have no effect like when she tried, but the hounds instantly let out an unearthly scream as the flames caught on. Then they both took off running in the other direction.
Sam was still catching her breath as Claudia approached. “Where is the soul sucker?”
Pain. It was all Claire felt. She opened her eyes, but nothing looked familiar. Was she underground? A second later, a plume of orange fire shot out of the wall next to her and she leapt away from the heat, crawling on her hands and knees as fast as possible over jagged rocks and stones to get to a wider part of the cave.
When she put weight on her right hand, a burst of pain shot up her arm, but when she squinted in the dim light, she didn’t see anything wrong with it.
Wait, that wasn’t right. Wasn’t it cut? The dogs. There had been dogs and she’d been inside a… what? Some old building….
Something warm brushed her ankle. Claire jerked away, looking all around her, but she couldn’t see anything. She blinked a few times and tried to see through the darkness, but everything seemed to be fuzzy around the edge. How was she supposed to survive if she couldn’t focus?
She kept crawling forward, the only option she really saw. She put everything she had into her efforts, and after a few minutes of darkness and more sensations she hoped to never relive, she finally reached a wider section of the cave.
Once she could stand, she looked right and left. She had to pick a direction to go, but she had no clue which. Come on…. Wind? She should focus on what direction the fresh air was coming from and go that direction.
Except the air wasn’t moving at all. Shit. She was about to say fuck it and go right, but something wrapped around her waist and pulled her back. She opened her mouth to scream, but a big hand covered it.
“What are you doing here?” snapped the angry voice in her ear.
The angry, familiar voice. She started to struggle in his hold, but it might as well have been a steel band around her. She was going nowhere until he wanted to let her go, and she had a sickening feeling she didn’t want to be screaming or drawing attention to herself wherever she was.
She tried a different technique and grabbed his arm. Except it wasn’t smooth skin. It was rough and ragged. She couldn’t see it, but she could feel that the strong forearm was covered with old and new scars. He finally let her go and she was quiet. Finally, she said it. “Jackson, what happened to you?”
Bright light flooded Claire’s vision and she blinked to clear her line of sight as she sat up. “Jackson!” she called, but Jackson wasn’t there. She jumped up and looked around her as the people surrounding her came into focus. She wasn’t in some dark and dangerous cave anymore. It was the beautifully decorated library at Claudia’s. She’d been on a couch and everyone was there.
Dante, Sam, Derek, Bastian, and Angela all surrounded her. Claire’s chest rose and fell as she tried to catch her breath and reconcile her present with the dream that had seemed so all-encompassing. “What happened? Where am I?”
Sam stepped forward and held out her hands in a nonthreatening way. “It’s okay. You’re at Claudia’s. One of the hounds bit you and the venom has potent symptoms. Claudia said that the effects would wear off on their own, though, so you should be feeling better now. And you’re awake, which I think is a good sign, but you look like you’re about to attack me at any second, which makes me less happy.”
Claire’s heart pounded in her chest and she realized everyone was looking at her as though she were crazy.
“You said ‘Jackson.’” Derek stared at her intently. He wasn’t accusing, but he was using that stupid cop voice where he was digging for information.
“It was a dream,” she said, probably a bit too quickly.
Dante walked around the couch until he could wrap her in his arms, and Claire hugged him back tightly, thankful for the warm, strong presence. “I was so worried.” He pressed a kiss to the top of her head.
Claire was quiet as she stayed there. Her legs were shaky and having someone to lean on was nice. Someone who wasn’t asking her questions about Jackson or the strange dream.
The clacking of heels warned her that someone else entered the room, and Claire pulled away from Dante. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Angela looked at her skeptically, but she couldn’t wonder about it too much before everyone turned to face Claudia.
“I’m glad you’re awake,” said the dignified woman.
Unconsciously, Claire stood up straighter in front of the powerful witch. “Thank you.”
“How are you feeling? What did you see while you were out?”
Claire shifted her weight, and Dante must’ve seen her discomfort because he reached down and intertwined his fingers with hers, offering silent support. She smiled her thanks at him, but the smile quickly evaporated when Claudia said, “Claire, come with me. Maybe it would be best if we had this conversation in private.”
As horrible as that idea sounded, she found herself incapable of declining Claudia. It wasn’t mind control. It was just that Claire was so intimidated, she literally forgot how to say the word “no.”
She found herself moving, one foot in front of the other, until she was in Claudia’s office. Claudia started to shut the door behind them, but Sam’s hand shot out and she stepped inside. Sam and Claudia stared off for a moment, but eventually, Claudia stepped aside and let her granddaughter inside. Then all three women moved to the desk and Claudia sat at her rightful spot behind it.
“How much do you know about a hellhound bite?” she asked.
Claire glanced down to where her hand was bandaged. The venom must’ve mostly made its way out of her system because it barely ached anymore. “I know it hurt like a bitch,” she said, not looking up.
“Those visions you had weren’t just a dream. The hounds themselves offer a doorway to hell. What you saw was real.”
A chill shot down her spine and she really wished she wasn’t hearing this. “I saw Jackson,” she said softly.
“I know,” said Claudia. “That’s why I’m telling you this. What did he say to you?”
Out of nowhere, tears welled up behind Claire’s eyes and she wiped them away. “I don’t…. It all happened so fast.”
Claudia leaned forward on her elbows and stared at Claire until Claire finally lifted her gaze and met the woman’s eyes. “This is important. Did he tell you anything we can use?”
“No.” She thought back to the few seconds she’d been with him. She hadn’t even managed to see his face in those seconds, let alone have a conversation. “He wanted to know why I was there and then I was gone. I never even had a chance to answer him.”
Claudia leaned back, the disappointment evident on her face.
“Why?” asked Sam. “What did you think Jackson could tell us?”
“It doesn’t matter now, does it?”
“Yes, it matters. Can he help? Do we need to find some more hellhound venom? Because I’m sure I can manage it. Claudia, you need to give me something I can help with here. Even when I try to stay out of things, I end up getting dragged into this. You can’t keep me in the dark anymore. I won’t let you.”
“She’s going to kill me, isn’t she?” asked Claire.
“Don’t be dramati
c,” said Claudia.
“No. I mean, no matter what, I’m going to die. She wants me dead because she knows I can hurt her. But you haven’t tried to recruit me to attack her because you know I won’t survive it.”
“Don’t worry,” said Sam. “We’re not going to let anything happen to you.”
But Claudia was conspicuously silent and Claire knew better. “I can do something, can’t I? I can stop Abigail.”
“You have abilities that are very unique in our world,” admitted Claudia. “But the darkness in my daughter, that kind of power, it’s angry. And vengeful. And if you try to remove it from its host, it will lash out.”
“But I can get it out, right?”
“You’ll never survive.”
“But I can get it out.”
Sam stood abruptly and looked between the two of them. “Can we please stop talking about last resorts and get real. There has to be a way to get this done without my best friend dying.”
Claudia stood as well. “What do you think I’ve been doing, Samantha?” The words didn’t feel like a shout, but they echoed through the room. Sam was silent as Claudia continued. “I have spent the last day looking for anything and everything to save Abigail, and I hit dead end after dead end. If Claire were anybody else, I would’ve approached her days ago. But how many of us, how many humans are going to have to suffer before we admit what has to be done?”
Sam’s jaw clenched and Claire could just see all the ways her friend was trying to avoid the truth. “We don’t know if Abigail has hurt anyone,” she bit out.
Claudia looked at Sam with sympathy in her eyes. “Those witches she took control of are in pain. You’ve been infected by the darkness before. You know exactly the toll having your free will taken from you can wreak. And if you think the darkness will sit back and lead a simple life, you’re reaching.”
“Whatever.” Sam moved away from the desk and shook her head. “We’ll keep Claire dying as a last resort, but I’m not going to give up that easy, okay?”
