A Cursed Embrace

by Cecy Robson

  I tugged on a shirt and cotton shorts, not bothering with underwear. Aric sat up and leaned forward, a thick white sheet covering the lower half of his body. “Come back to bed, baby.”

  My hand rested against the thick footboard, barely registering the feel of the smooth wood as I stared blankly at the closed window. “I need some water.”

  I shut the door to our room, but it failed to muffle Aric’s curse. My feet moved fast. Too fast. I stumbled over Koda’s industrial-size shit-kickers at the bottom of the steps. I picked them up to toss them aside, only to stop and stare at them.

  The more I examined Koda’s boots, the more my soul hurt. Koda was the scariest thing in a size 17. Yet Shayna had easily won his heart. Perhaps my sisters were wrong, perhaps I wasn’t deserving of such love, and all I was capable of waited upstairs in my room.

  I filled a glass with water but couldn’t bring myself to sip the cold liquid. Without shoes, I hurried out the back door toward the beach and into the warm August night. Tonight I needed Tahoe’s magic to hush my inner turmoil and silence my tigress’s mournful growls. I only hoped that she’d answer me and grant me the peace I sought.

  My fast movements turned into a swift jog. I neglected my worries that someone would see me, and raced along the dirt path and across the road. I stopped at the top of the short wooden pier leading to the beach. The full moon’s reflection danced along the waves of the deep blue water, luring me to it, and promising to help me.

  My bare feet kicked the sand behind me, my steps urgent as I reached the water’s edge. I took a breath, and waited. But all the energy did was bounce off my skin, no longer wanting or needing me.

  I waded into the cool water until the soft waves brushed against my thighs. I refused to allow the lake to dismiss me. Don’t you cast me aside, too.

  Tahoe’s energy teased around me, not quite touching yet letting its strong presence be known. I bowed my head and hugged my arms, feeling abandoned . . . until Aric’s scent stimulated my beast.

  Water splashed against my legs as he came up behind me and encircled my waist. He bent and kissed my head. “I wish I could tell you what you want to hear, but I can’t.”

  Despite the stir of the waves, I heard my tears fall against the water.

  Aric tightened his hold and whispered words in French. And while I normally would have melted, this time I wouldn’t allow myself to be tempted by the softness and fluidity of his words. I broke from his grasp and backed away toward the shore, keeping my arms against me. “I don’t want you to say anything you don’t feel, but I need you to understand why it hurts me.” More tears trickled down my cheeks. “I won’t be used, Aric.”

  Anger and pain flared in Aric’s eyes as he advanced toward me. When he reached me, his body trembled violently. “You are the most important being in this world to me. More than my brothers, more than my pack. I need you to believe that . . . no matter what happens.”

  I gasped, unsure and frightened by what he thought the future held. The demons were gone, weren’t they? And his Elders . . .

  I remained silent. Heat lingered in Aric’s gaze, cementing us where we stood. I started to shake, not from fear or cold—something else. Tahoe. Tahoe’s energy hit me with one hard sucker punch. It was strong, primal, and my essence welcomed it like a lost loved one.

  My back plunged into the quickly warming water and lolled above the surface as if the very lake held me to keep from drowning. When I blinked my eyes open, Aric was carrying me along the wooded path back to our house. Water dripped from his long hair onto his face. His eyes remained fierce, but his focus was unusually distant. “You’ll always be mine,” he whispered. “And I swear to always be yours.”

  • • •

  “Do you want to stop for lunch or keep going?” Koda slipped his arm around Shayna as we continued our hike through Eldorado National Forrest, not the ideal way to trek through the thick vegetated woodlands, but Shayna didn’t seem to mind.

  Shayna leaned into him. “Let’s keep going until we reach the creek. It’ll be a nice place to picnic.”

  The destruction of the demon lords had satisfied the Elders enough to give Aric and his Warriors time off. We’d spent the remainder of the summer at the lake, boating and Jet Ski–ing. I even managed a romantic getaway alone to celebrate Aric’s twenty-seventh birthday. I’d kept all my “I love yous” to myself. And while my admission had caused a strain between us, Aric’s vigilance, affections, and kindness soon helped repair the hurt he’d caused.

  I breathed in the scent of fresh pine, happy with my surroundings and the fact that we weren’t competing with the tourists for beach space over the Labor Day weekend. I took in the trees thick with lush green leaves, the small fragrant flowers waiting to be devoured by deer, and the rolling hills littered with stones and wild ferns.

  Aric admired his own view behind me. “Damn, sweetness. I love the way you walk.”

  I turned back to grin at him. “My eyes are up here, wolf.”

  Aric wrapped his arms around me and nibbled on my ear. “I know, but I’m having a hard time getting the image of you naked in the woods out of my mind.”

  “Well, maybe we can sneak off later,” I said quietly.

  Aric’s entire body stilled. “You mean it?”

  Cold and terror suddenly chilled the warmth between us, and goose bumps skittered up my arms like insects on a festering corpse. At first, I thought I was the only one affected until the wolves threw their packs on the ground and surrounded us protectively.

  Taran’s irises turned almost white. “Shit. What the hell is that?”

  Emme, who was already shaking, grabbed my arm. “Celia, what’s going on? I don’t see anything.”

  “I don’t know. Emme, stay close to me. Shayna, grab some wood.”

  Whatever it was, it was closing in. My hackles rose, and my claws protruded. An unearthly growl escaped my throat just as screeching erupted around us. My heart leapt into my throat as a horde of demon children broke through the surrounding trees. They flew overhead, scurried on the ground on all fours, and crawled on the trunks of trees like creepy toddlers with wings and arachnid legs.

  “Celia, get out of here, now!” Aric yelled before he and the wolves changed and attacked.

  I shifted the girls the moment they grabbed me, traveling beneath the soil as far and fast as my gift allowed. We surfaced a couple of hundred feet away from the fight. A quick glance back temporarily stunned me. The creatures crawled and flew everywhere, traveling in clumps thick enough to veil our four wolves. My God.

  The reality of our situation smacked the fear out of me. We hadn’t destroyed the demons. We’d only given them time to breed.

  A cluster of demon infants attached themselves to the wolves’ furry backs, clawing at them mercilessly and saturating the forest floor with their blood. The metallic scent of their essence burned my nose and still Aric and his Warriors shredded through their opponents like paper, seemingly unaffected despite the wicked pain their twitching muscles revealed.

  I sprinted back toward the fight. “Shayna, get those things off their backs!”

  A stream of long silver needles flew past me. They knocked the creatures off the wolves’ backs and impaled them into trees like frogs in biology class.

  A demon spotted me. His heavy clawed feet stomped along the soil before he expanded his wings and flew at me with his arms outstretched. I leapt and smashed into his body, twisting him in the air and decapitating him in one smooth move. I crashed to earth and dusted off his crawling remains. I needed to reach the wolves, and none of the damn flying monkeys were going to stop me.

  The two Geminis fought a demon well over seven feet tall and almost as wide. Stone gray skin covered his humanoid form and sickly yellow eyes narrowed with challenge. His long leather appendages slapped at Gemini and shielded him from the wolves’ snapping jaws. A good offensive maneuver, but not enough to guard his back.

  I jumped on his shoulders and shifted him up to his ne
ck. He jerked his head around, hissing when saw me. My leg swung back and connected with his head, sending his skull to roll like a soccer ball into the ferns. Wet, pulsating insides spilled from his neck, shriveling once exposed to the fresh breeze.

  Three smaller creatures shoved me against a tree. Two held my arms while the third dug his talons into my shoulders. A serpentlike tongue slithered through his fangs and wrapped around my throat, halting my screams and robbing my breath. I gasped from the need for air while his clawed hand yanked at my shorts.

  Anger forced me to act. I brought my arms together, slamming the creatures on either side of me into the third. I sliced off the tongue that strangled me with my claws and kicked each in the groin before smashing their heads into the tree like spoiled watermelons.

  I drew in ragged breaths as I crushed the heads of small butterfly-size demons crawling along my flesh. Damn it. Where did they come from? I scanned the skies. More flew above in a V formation, similar to geese until they dove straight down, landing inches from the battle.

  Shayna sliced three into confetti in a whirlwind of swinging blades. Maggotlike intestines littered her face, but she managed to sever the arms of a large demon who’d landed in a squat behind her. Poor Shayna, though, had taken on more than she could handle. The immense creature encircled her wrists with his tongue and dragged her away into the thick brush.

  I fought my way through the remaining horde to reach my sister, killing anything that got in my way. When the monster saw me approach, he released her and traded for me. We wrestled, his razor-sharp fangs biting into my shoulder as I attempted to puncture his chest with my claws. I screamed from the pain of his teeth piercing through my bones and gagged from his hot, rotting breath. My head spun as his saliva sizzled against my skin, eating its way through my muscles and tendons. I tore his wings to force his release, only to have him clamp down harder.

  Shayna was near, but she didn’t seem able to strike. So I continued to roll on the ground while my blood smeared the earth and the creature’s tongue eagerly licked my wound. I screamed in agony as flesh tore from my bones. I thought he was eating me alive until the weight lifted off my chest. Above me, Aric held the decapitated head in his hands. He threw it aside, then gingerly pulled me to my feet.

  Aric’s face shone chalk white. But his obvious worry for me quickly turned to rage. He held tight to my hips. “What the hell were you thinking? I told you to run!”

  I pushed away, angry at him for yelling at me, only to cringe. My thrust caused a ghastly pain to shoot through me. I hunched over and instinctively grabbed where it hurt. My fingers sank into the large bloody chunk missing from my shoulder. I shouldn’t have looked. I really shouldn’t have, because the ruptured blood vessels and mangled flesh caused me to become abruptly faint.

  Aric caught me before I hit the ground and yelled for Emme. I barely heard the last few splatters of demon remains drench the earth. We’d won the fight. By some miracle, we’d all survived. My sisters hurried over, screaming when they saw my condition. You know you’re in bad shape when women who’ve decapitated vampires can’t bear the sight of you. They pleaded with me not to close my eyes, but the horrible ringing in my ears made it hard to understand their speech. My eyelids drooped as if lined with tar, despite my struggles to keep them open.

  Aric continued to hold me while Emme touched my skin with trembling hands. “Hang in there, baby,” he whispered. “Don’t leave me.”

  Emme’s soft yellow light surrounded me. Slowly I regained my strength. My head began to clear, and the horrible pain receded. The moment I healed, I broke free from Aric and put ample space between us. Damn, I was furious. “It’s not okay for you to yell at me!”

  Aric’s expression went from shocked to glaring. He yanked on the shorts Liam tossed him while narrowing his eyes at me. “Those things could have raped or killed you because you didn’t listen to me!”

  I threw my hands in the air. “Did you honestly expect me to leave you?” He didn’t answer. “My God, I don’t believe this!”

  Gemini interrupted calmly as his other wolf leapt into his back. “The girls were a great help, Aric. They fought well and valiantly.”

  Gem’s words did little to calm Aric. His jaw clenched tighter as he continued to lock eyes with me. “That’s not the point.”

  Koda held Shayna, who leaned heavily against him as if barely able to stand. “Enough of this. We need to get the girls to safety.”

  I couldn’t keep the bite out of my voice as I stalked past Aric. “By the way, you’re welcome!”

  I stormed off, leaping over the creatures’ body parts and limbs that now mimicked dead branches. I paused when I reached the last one. Frustration inveighed me to stomp it to dust. It crumbled easily. Another hour and the remains would probably disintegrate. The knowledge brought me no comfort. More were out there. The attack had proved that much.

  My arms crossed as I continued forward. I ignored Aric when he caught up to me. He didn’t say anything, and no longer appeared angry, but the anger heating the space between us made it clear neither of us was in the mood for chitchat.

  The smell of fear and death stopped me less than a mile from the car. I ran toward the source with Aric at my heels, horror-struck by what awaited beneath a steep incline.

  A herd of beautiful deer had been mutilated by those hideous monsters. Some were still alive, twitching and bleating in pain. Others were just chunks of leftover flesh. The bucks had fled, but not the does. They’d apparently chosen to stay with their dying babies. I froze in place, torn between crying and screaming. But it wasn’t until Emme and Shayna gasped behind me that I was finally able to pull myself away.

  “Koda, don’t,” Shayna pleaded when he and Liam approached the herd.

  “Please, Liam,” Emme begged, “I can help them.”

  The wolves ignored my sisters’ desperate pleas and stalked toward the suffering beasts. The bays and whines amplified. The deer had sensed the arrival of new predators and realized their inevitable end. I felt my breath quickening, knowing what was coming and unable to slow my racing pulse.

  The sickening crunch of necks being snapped echoed like gunshots in the silence of the forest. I focused on Gemini comforting Taran. She buried her face in his chest and covered her ears. “They’re coming for me,” she whispered in a trembling voice. “I know they’re coming.”

  Shayna and Emme openly bawled. Aric tried to reach out to me, but I wrenched away from him and moved toward Emme and Shayna. I wrapped my arms around them and led them away from the horror.

  No one said anything until we reached the car. But when Koda tried to hold Shayna, she released me and climbed into the backseat with Taran and Gemini. She wouldn’t look at Koda. Koda dropped his head and stepped into the driver’s seat.

  Liam held out his arms to Emme. Emme focused on his large hands, the same ones that had just finished the deer. Koda and Liam had acted in the name of mercy. I knew that, and I was certain my sisters did, too, except that didn’t mean their actions were any less disturbing. Brutality and death constantly lingered in the wolves’ existence. Not in ours. At least, not now.

  “Go to him, Emme,” I urged quietly. “None of this is his fault. He did what he had to.”

  Emme approached Liam slowly. He gathered her in his arms and told her he loved her. And just like that, they were back to their normal selves. Aric and I, not so much.

  Aric blocked my way when I attempted to get into the front passenger seat. “You’re not sitting with me?”

  I met his frown with a glare. “No.”

  “Fine,” he snapped.

  “Fine,” I snapped right back.

  Taran broke the uncomfortable silence on the ride home. “For shit’s sake, where the hell did all those demons come from?”

  Gemini’s tone was dark when he answered, “We didn’t destroy all the demon lords. There must have been more.”

  “No shit,” she muttered.

  Emme spoke softly. “B-but
there haven’t been more bodies—or missing people or anything—since the fight in Death Valley. Even the rogue vampires haven’t presented themselves.”

  Aric answered from the back. It hurt to hear him speak. “They’ve probably been lying low, especially since they realized we could call them forth. Either that or they’d gathered enough food to last them.”

  We’d reached the highway. “Pull over, Koda,” Taran yelled. “Shayna’s going to be sick.”

  Koda scrambled out of the car with me right behind him. He held back Shayna’s hair while a multitude of cars sped past us. When she finished, he took off his shirt and handed it to her.

  Shayna’s tears streaked her trembling frame. She twisted Koda’s shirt between her long fingers. “I’m sorry, puppy. The gore was just too much. And those poor deer, I couldn’t take it.”

  “It’s okay, baby. Just don’t be afraid of me. I love you. I could never hurt you.”

  Shayna wrapped her arms around Koda’s waist. “I’m not afraid of you,” she choked between sobs. “Please don’t think that.”

  Koda picked her up and carried her to the car, tossing Aric the keys along the way. When we climbed back in, Emme switched seats so Koda and Shayna could continue to hold each other. It was such a sweet moment between them. I couldn’t help envying their love.

  Aric sat next to me and cranked the engine. He glanced my way. I turned to look out the window and rested my forehead against the glass, not ready and not willing to speak to him.

  We arrived home to find Danny cooking in our kitchen and Bren lounging on our couch. Bren jumped up, growling, as soon as he got a whiff of us. “What the hell happened? You smell like evil.”

  I kicked off my shoes and strode into the kitchen to wash my hands. Yeah, like that did much. “We were attacked by a horde of demon children.”

  Danny placed the spatula down on the spoon rest and gripped the sides of the counter. “When you say horde . . . ?”