A Cursed Embrace

by Cecy Robson

  Growls spread like wildfire. The dirt funnel widened, overtaking the land around us. “What’s happening?” Gemini shouted on the other line.

  Aric tossed the phone away from him and shoved me behind him. He changed as we retreated from the expanding conduit. My tigress urged me to move closer to the threat, but Aric’s beast held me back. Koda grabbed Danny and flung him like a ragdoll behind Bren before his red wolf replaced his human form. Something was coming. And it was pissed we’d called.

  The earth blackened and crumbled like charred wood into large chunks. A high-pitched scream burned through my eardrums like liquid fire. Another cloudless crack of thunder broke and shook the earth beneath our feet. Shayna fell on her butt next to me. I quickly hauled her up to stand just as the air imploded in front of us and the demon lord emerged.

  Iridescent red scales cloaked his leather body and bat wings. His raptor head whipped my way, followed closely by his four, very developed, very descended testes. His fork-tongue spit out through his needle-thin, yellow fangs. “Ceeelia,” it hissed.

  Holy shit.

  Before me stood the demon lord Misha had warned me about. The one who possessed him. The one who knew who I was. The one who . . . Holy shit.

  The weres pounced on the demon in a massive heap of fur and claws. The creature spun his expanded wings, slicing and cutting into their large bodies. Howls and shrieks erupted and bounced off the dirt walls. The werecougar slammed against the rock slide next to me, his stomach protruding through his skin like a wet tube sock and his head twisted behind him. Wings flapped hard enough to blind us with dirt, and just like that the demon took flight.

  He sailed through the air like a massive glider, soaring upward as the weres gave chase. Shayna grunted as her thin arms flung her knives with all their might. The blades whistled through the sky and found their mark, piercing through the demon’s webbed appendages. The demon screamed again, this time in pain. She’d hurt him, disabling his speed and impeding his ability to climb higher into the sky. Aric and Koda leapt after him, their deadly jaws inches from reaching his talon feet. I started to run, the shock from the demon knowing my name fading fast. But Bren barreled in front of me. I crashed into his side and bounced back. “Bren!”

  He sneezed and motioned behind me. Danny’s and Shayna’s stark white faces kept me from changing and scaling the rock hard walls. They were terrified. I couldn’t justify leaving them, especially with the amount of backup Aric had.

  I retreated hesitantly, and knelt beside the injured cougar. He shook his head and shut his lids tight as he willed his beast to heal him. An ounce of his magic reached my flesh and pricked along my burning skin. I managed not to react when his stomach bobbed back into his body and his head crunched on its return home. Danny couldn’t stop his response. He staggered back and tripped over a rock, disturbing a band of scorpions that fortunately chose to scurry in the opposite direction.

  The cougar pushed onto his paws. The witch hastened to mount his back. The light from her turquoise amulet turned the cougar’s fur blue as he charged to join the other beasts.

  I watched diffidently as they faded into the distance with Aric and the rest of the pack. My tigress paced restlessly. She wanted to join the hunt. She wanted to tear evil in two, and give Aric’s wolf the other half. But neither Aric nor his wolf needed protecting. Nor did they fear. I couldn’t say the same for my little sister and Danny.

  “That thing knew your name, Celia.”

  Shayna’s voice shook as if the earth continued to tremble. I tried not to think about what she said. Something from hell itself knowing me by name wasn’t just creepy; it numbed and froze my very soul. Bren agreed.

  He changed behind me, returning to his human form. “Ceel. I gotta give you props. If that mutant freak had called me by name, I would have pissed out a kidney.”

  The thought had crossed my mind. Good thing my bloodcurdling terror had distracted me.

  Taran’s swears bellowed near Danny’s foot. He picked up Aric’s iPhone, while Taran continued to curse. “We succeeded in summoning the demon lord. Aric and the others went after him.”

  “Where?” Gemini said on the other end.

  “East toward Badwater Basin,” Bren said without much thought.

  “Is it just you and Bren?”

  “No, Celia and Shayna are here, too,” Danny answered. “Don’t worry about us. We’re safe and nowhere near the fight.”

  Danny disconnected the phone prematurely. The cyclone of earth churned once more, bringing forth that biting, unnatural cold.

  And another demon lord.

  CHAPTER 22

  The demon’s skin shone lime green. Like his brother, he bore wings the size of sails and clawed hands and feet. Except he had four arms, and four legs, and a tail as thick as a baseball bat. A white stripe of fur covered the top of his wrinkled and turtlelike face. He grinned with four very long and extra-pointy teeth. His tongue slurped across them as if he could already taste our livers. Somehow I thought we’d gotten the short end of the demon stick.

  The clang of Shayna’s sword as it left its sheath cut through the sounds of Bren’s roars. But I paid them no mind. All my thoughts and instincts focused on attacking and making it bleed.

  I changed, barely feeling my form shred through my clothes and how the tattered bits of sweat-soaked cotton fell against the earth. My tigress made contact first, slamming the demon into the side of the gorge, one paw against his throat while the other ripped an arm free from its socket. My aggression enlivened my beast until the long wet maggots slithering through the amputated limb left the demon and crawled along my back. That’s when my inner girl rose to the surface. I jerked back, narrowly missing his seven other angry limbs before Shayna sliced a leg off at the knee and Bren’s fangs crunched through the bone of another arm.

  More maggotlike entrails exploded out like confetti as the demon shrieked. Dirt coated the insides as they scurried along the ground before quickly shriveling in the baking sun. We gagged like idiots and backed away. But we’d injured the demon. And now he needed to eat to replenish its strength. Like a true predator he picked the weakest among us.

  Danny.

  The demon tackled him and took flight. Shayna screamed, “No!”

  Bren and I jetted after him. My claws dug through the hard soil and up the steep incline. I pushed harder and quicker than I’d ever moved, urging my legs to dig deep. Within seconds I passed Bren. He snarled with panic and frustration. He didn’t think I could fight this thing alone. And neither did I. But I owed it to Danny to try.

  The demon soared higher and faster, his need to escape with his feast making his wings flap harder. I was keeping up, but just barely. He’d soon leave me far behind. I needed to act before he vanished with Danny. Thankfully I spotted a stack of boulders and cut right, passing the demon above me. I clambered up and used my hind legs to propel me forward seconds before the demon veered in the opposite direction. My jaws clenched onto his tail and I jerked my body hard, trying to use my weight to bring the demon down.

  The demon tilted upon feeling the mass of my body, but recovered as my back paws hovered inches aboveground. Yet even my hard pulls weren’t enough. His wings remained intact and incredibly strong. He flapped them left, right, compensating for the odd angles in which I twisted his body.

  The miles passed in a rush below me as we fought. The demon’s remaining limbs expanded their talons and grabbed at my body. I answered with my claws. There was no strategy, no perfect choreographed strikes, no smooth fighting techniques. There was only survival. I batted, I kicked, I scratched, wildly, while holding tight to a mouthful of leathered nastiness my jaws beseeched me to abandon.

  My fangs held tight to the demon’s tail in order to hang on, but their sharpness eventually sliced through the demon’s thick hide. The muscle and tendons split and began to pull from the bone. I changed, keeping my claws and using them to scale up his back in human form.

  Danny hollered with gut-
wrenching terror and agony, “Help me! Help me!”

  I threw out my arms and pierced my nails through the upper arch of the demon’s wings, forcing them to tilt down. The wind slapped at my body and dried my eyes, making it hard to see. He was brutal and attacked any way he could. But, damn it, I was brutal, too. I hung on tight and pulled my legs beneath me so my back claws stabbed into his shoulder blades. I ground my teeth, cursing and grunting until I finally forced his rapid descent.

  My long hair belted me in the face and blocked my vision. I threw my head back, allowing the wind to whisk it behind me. I managed just in time to see the mountain of boulders we were about to crash into. I leapt off the demon’s back and shifted into the earth. The speed plummeted me deep into the mountain. I couldn’t slow quickly enough and buried myself deep before I could begin to surface. My lungs shrieked from the pressure and demand for air. I broke through the ground just above my breasts, coughing and wheezing. The stress against my ribs and diaphragm made it hard to draw a breath. I finished my shift in short spurts, clawing my way along the searing and jagged rocks.

  Oh God. I didn’t know where I was—just far, far away from where the demon had first emerged. And crap, the traveling, winged, evil monster assured the weres wouldn’t be able to track our scent.

  I forced myself to a kneeling position, scanning the area in search of the demon. Splattered blood dripped from a collection of boulders high above me. My lids peeled back, hoping my attempt to save Danny hadn’t killed him. I staggered to my feet and forced myself to climb, still too oxygen deprived to call forth my beast.

  My fingertips were slipping over the first traces of blood when I heard the demon’s hiss echo. I clambered faster, ignoring my racing heartbeat and the alarm pooling my palms with sweat. The demon hissed again. It was then that I saw his head jutting into a crack between two boulders. A stick protruded from the small opening and nailed the demon lord in at least three of his testicles.

  I launched myself on top of him and ripped off one wing, then the other, before it wrenched me off and threw me against the side of the mountain. My spine cracked like a pile of falling LEGOs. For a moment I thought two demons stalked toward me before my vision merged them into a single, mangled, royally pissed entity.

  Shit.

  I dug my heels into the rock and tried to rise. The demon was nice enough to help by grabbing me by the throat and hauling me upward. My power had returned enough to shift his three legs into the stone. He was trapped up to his knees, enough to momentarily confound him, and prevent him from crushing my larynx.

  My limbs flailed wildly and my energy had wavered down to mere trickles when Danny’s warrior scream blasted from the crack in the boulders. He rushed out, gripping an old tree branch in his hands, and struck the demon with all his might. The wood splintered in his grasp, but he wouldn’t abandon me. He jumped on his shoulders and pounded his angry fists into the demon’s head. The demon ignored him. After all, to him, Danny was just another morsel waiting to be eaten.

  The red irises of his turtle gaze glowed as his maw opened wide and his tongue slithered out to lick my chin. I ignored his taste, gathered my remaining strength, and punched through his chest. His head lolled forward in shock as his heart pulsed one last time in my hand.

  The demon dropped me as his body bopped and rolled like some sinister and twisted Weeble. I landed hard on my side, shaken, severely oxygen deprived but alive. Very, very much alive.

  Danny fell backward, groaning when he hit the slab of stone and gagging when the demon burst in an explosion of moving innards. He rolled onto his side and crawled toward me, fighting back his nausea. Maybe I would have had to beat down bile, too, if I hadn’t viewed the blast of guts as the equivalent of drop-down balloons to our very nasty, very gruesome victory.

  “Oh Gawd. Gawd,” Danny spit. He trekked across the squirming intestines, slapping a few of the more ornery ones away, until he reached my battered body. He froze, realizing clothing was something my tigress had long since pooh-poohed. I’d crossed my legs and covered my breasts, but that didn’t matter, did it? Fact remained, I didn’t enjoy anyone but Aric seeing me naked. And hell, I didn’t even want him seeing me covered in demon organs.

  Danny jerked his body away and yanked the shirt off his lanky frame. “Here. It has some demon snot on it, but I think it’s okay.”

  “Thank you, Danny.” I didn’t just mean for the shirt. He’d fought for me, despite knowing he might die. I didn’t have many friends. But the ones like Danny were worth having.

  I sat up and pulled the polo over my head. The shirt thankfully covered all the important female parts. I leaned against the boulder, trying to ignore the shower of sweat pouring down my body and the blinding pain that leadened my lids. I didn’t remember Wonder Woman ever ending up covered in demon bowels. But maybe I’d missed that issue.

  Danny inched to my side, panting. The lenses of his glasses spiderwebbed out. It was a wonder he could see at all. “We asked to do this,” he said with stunned disbelief.

  “Yup.”

  He angled his head. “Do you think Aric will ever let us tag along again?”

  I took in the scent of my blood leaking behind my skull, the withered demon parts, the body fluids coating my skin and hair green, and thought about how close we’d come to becoming demon kibble. “Oh, hell no.”

  “Yeah. I didn’t think so.”

  Danny and I stopped moving, stopped speaking, the effort it took to breathe robbing us of our remaining stamina. The sun dragged across the mountain, brightening the rock walls to orange and eventually stealing our shade. Bastard. “We need to get back,” I mumbled. Too much time had passed. The sun, although grueling, was nothing compared to the chilly desert night that awaited us. And despite the tough exterior with which my tigress blessed me, my injuries needed to be tended to by my youngest sister.

  Danny peered over the edge. “How are we going to get down?”

  “I’ll shift us down and change at the bottom.” At least I’d try. “You can ride me if you’d like.”

  Danny shook his head. “No way. I’d rather take on another demon lord than risk Aric finding me on top of you.”

  The sound of roaring engines cut off my laughter. Danny bolted to his feet and hurried to the ledge. “It’s the pack. They must have regrouped and doubled back to the Jeeps. Bren! Bren!” He waved his arms.

  I scrambled to my feet on wobbly legs, digging my disgusting claws along the indentations of the rock to help me stand. By some miracle my back wasn’t broken and my legs still semiworked. But damn, I resembled nothing short of a chiropractor’s wet dream.

  I ignored my pounding head and focused my topsy-turvy vision on the horizon. Sure enough, the wolves and my sister had arrived. Shayna maneuvered the lead Wrangler. They’d been desperate enough to find us to allow her to drive. She powered through the inclines and ditches, leaving the other Jeeps to trail in the far, far distance. Bren and Aric stood in the backseat, their gazes taking everything in despite the hard jerks and skull-chattering bounces. Bren pointed to us and shouted to Shayna, “Over there. Near those damn rocks!”

  Shayna stood in the driver’s seat and threw her fists in the air to “Woo-hoo!” before sliding back and taking control of the jolting vehicle. She tore through the underbrush and skidded to a halt at the base of the boulders.

  Aric leapt off the Jeep before it completely stopped and scaled to the top within seconds. His hands swept over my face, back, shoulders, and head. When he yanked them back, they were covered with my blood. “Jesus, Celia.” He pulled me tight. “Stay with me, okay? Emme and Gemini’s group are almost here.”

  I clutched him against me, my body trembling from the adrenaline continuing to ride my body like a bull. “Did you get the other demon?” He nodded but urged me to save my breath. “I’m okay, wolf, just a few bumps and bruises.” And possibly some head trauma . . . and tissue damage, and a battered spine.

  Bren clambered up next, growling, “Where�
��s the turtle-necked little prick?”

  Danny removed his black-framed glasses and wiped the sweat from his eyes. “Gone. Celia pulled out the big guns and killed him.”

  Aric held me at arm’s length, only to cradle me when I wobbled. “You killed the other demon lord?”

  A sense of pride warmed my unnerved, and strangely cold, skin. “Yeah. I did.”

  “Shit, don’t you ever do anything like that again!” he bit out. He lifted me in his arms and jumped off the cliff. He landed in a crouch and carried me to the Jeep. I didn’t complain. Especially since I’d slurred my last words. More Jeeps ground to a stop around us. My sisters rushed me, and the remainder of the pack spilled out of the dusty cars. They raced to us, their chests rumbling, ready to fight, ready to slaughter.

  “It’s over,” Aric told them. “The demon lords are dead.”

  Silence swallowed all of Death Valley until the howls of triumph broke through, loud enough to collapse its hard walls. Aric’s proclamation sent everyone into a frenzy of celebration.

  Too bad he was wrong. Dead wrong.

  CHAPTER 23

  “I love you, Aric.”

  He stopped caressing my back. The air around us stilled, and his breath barely registered. I kept my cheek against his chest and continued, despite his silence and the tensing muscles beneath me. “I know you’re probably used to hearing it, but I want you to know, I’m not used to saying it.”

  Aric leaned into me, meeting my lips before he spoke. “I have heard it before, but it’s never meant anything . . . until now.”

  Aric’s expression lacked the happiness I’d wished for. Only sadness and worry creased the planes of his face. I waited for the words that never came, and that I eventually realized he had no intention of sharing. He didn’t move when I inched away from him. So I continued, until I slipped out of bed.