by Naima Simone
He’d missed her skin’s perfume the moment she’d left the living room and house. As soon as he’d realized her intent, he’d almost shot his arm out to keep her there with him while he fed. He’d wanted her there—needed her there. He’d longed to stare up into her face, imagining, pretending… Though it had been Cyra’s flesh he’d punctured and drawn from, her blood that poured down his throat, his soul had cried out at the wrongness. His beast had been satiated by the life-giving nourishment yet his hippogryph still howled and clawed the inside of his skin, infuriated, demanding. The wrong cruxim fed them. His lips were attached to the wrong female. The man understood Sinéad couldn’t supply what he and the hippogryph so desperately needed, but the beast didn’t care. The scent that filled its nostrils wasn’t Irish rain. The fragrance that lifted off Cyra was cruxim lightning striking earth. It didn’t call to him, rouse a hunger in him nothing—not even the rich blood he drank—could sate. This craving only Sinéad could satisfy. Because only she created it.
His gaze settled on Sinéad. The shadows clung to her as if they too wanted to enfold her in their arms, whisper a caress over soft skin. He moved down the paved drive to the sidewalk where she stood, arms crossed. Her head lifted when he was several steps away. She remained silent and her eyes gleamed, catching the light from the tall streetlamp. Drawing closer, he studied the resolute line of her lush mouth, the stubborn tilt of her chin and clenched slant of her jaw.
He cocked an eyebrow. “What’s wrong?”
She uncrossed her arms, allowed them to fall by her sides. Her eyes narrowed. “Nothing.”
Oh shit. Masculine unease crept through him, leaving a trembling, anxious trail of nerves in its wake. He was a hippogryph, but he was also male. And some things crossed the lines of race and species. When a woman claimed nothing was wrong a man knew he was in trouble. Deep-shit trouble. The astute male also knew to let. It. Go.
“Okay,” he said and prudently switched the subject. “Are we headed to Boston now? Or did you want to leave tomorrow?”
“How long will it take you to contact your friend?”
“Not long at all. I can contact Lukas on the way there.” Lukas Gallo, a member of the krinos, interim Dimios and a close friend, Bastien could reach him through their telepathic connection as long as the other hippogryph hadn’t left the United States. The bond wouldn’t extend that far.
“Then I don’t see any reason we can’t leave now. The sooner we reach Boston the better.”
Bastien nodded, fury flaring in his chest. He couldn’t wait to meet the traitorous Ryn and the bitch who ruled the Cardei sânge trib. More specifically, he couldn’t wait to rip the bastard’s head from his shoulders and tear the blackened heart from the regina’s breast. His lip curled in an eager snarl. He’d lived on this earth for one thousand years, and the atrocities and violence he’d seen would be forever burned into his memory. The evil cruelty mortals and immortals alike could do to one another was unimaginable. Wars, genocides, senseless killings. Before King Janus had regulated and restricted contact with the world outside the hippogryph kingdom, Bastien had traveled to those places and people who had need of him. And with the wickedness the creatures of this world were capable of, there had been a great need of his gift.
He’d witnessed carnage in the name of religion, ideologies, politics, revenge and land. But the viciousness Cyra had described—the indifferent death of innocents—was in the name of power. No other reason than the cold, metallic taste of power… He wanted blood, roared for blood in retribution for that spilled with such pitiless callousness.
“Let’s go,” he growled and Sinéad fell in step beside him as they strode toward the end of the street where the dark pockets of space would provide more cover for their departure. They paused under the long-reaching branches of a tree that wouldn’t have been out of place under the burning sun of an empty sierra. The developer had probably figure the tree—an obvious transplant—would lend ambience to the subdivision. He’d been wrong, but the thick trunk and limbs did provide adequate concealment for Sinéad and himself. He cast a gyges around them, taking extra precaution to shield them from any prying eyes.
“Ready?” he asked, already summoning the magic simmering beneath his skin and always waiting to make its appearance.
A sudden, sharp intake of air snagged his attention and the power retreated, forgotten for the moment.
“Sinéad.” He stared down, confusion and astonishment muddying his ability to process her bowed figure. A shudder quaked through her body, arching her back and dragging a moan from her lips. Fear skittered across his skin. Holy hell. The dark groan sounded as if it’d crawled from the depths of her soul.
Clarity snapped into place. Understanding plowed into his brain with the force of a pile driver. Her delicate frame convulsed as if grasped by an unseen hand and shaken like a rag doll. He snatched her arm, halting the momentum less she crash face-first into the asphalt. Shifting behind her, Bastien released her arm and wrapped Sinéad’s arms around her waist, his hands splayed wide across her taut abdomen, supporting her in the only way he knew—with his body, his presence.
He’d witnessed minor demonstrations of her gift with both him and Cyra, but this…this episode surpassed those occurrences of emotional soothing. He kept one hand pressed to her stomach and lifted the other to her head, ran a smoothing caress over the dark strands, brushed the backs of his fingers down her cheek. Undoubtedly she’d experienced empathic attacks of this intensity before during her long existence, but never with him. And he would be damned if he let her suffer through this one alone.
After several painful moments, her harsh gasps evened to hoarse breaths and the seizure-like tremors calmed to shivers. Sinéad slowly straightened, her cautious movements like those of a person who’d been unmercifully beaten.
“Help her,” she rasped then exploded forward like a bullet shot from a gun. The chocolate tail of her hair streamed out behind her, a dark, waving banner. Her arms and legs pumped and she streaked down the street with a speed that cast her humanity into question.
“Shit,” Bastien muttered before bolting after her disappearing figure. Though she had a head start, he caught up with her in seconds. He followed Sinéad until she turned, veered onto another road onto an adjoining road and came to a stop in front of another cookie-cutter house. She dashed up the walkway and front steps, her stride never faltering, grabbed the knob and twisted it. The front door didn’t budge.
“Damn,” she whispered, staring at the red-painted wood. “Bastien,” she whipped around, “kick the door in. Please.”
The desperation in the plea squeezed his heart in a tight fist. Without questioning her reasons, he murmured, “Step back.” He raised his leg and rammed his foot against the door just beneath the knob. It gave under the force of his blow with a loud crack. The door swayed inward as if inviting them into the yawning, stygian interior. A sense of foreboding skated down his spine and an image of flesh-hungry zombies emerging from the darkness flashed across his mind. In no way was this good.
As soon as the door swung open, Sinéad darted up a staircase that stretched to the second floor. The moment her foot hit the top step, she reached behind her and removed her sword from under her long, lightweight jacket. The meager beam of pearlescent light filtering through shadows from a single high window in the hallway glinted off the broad, flat blade, a steel sail gliding through the dark at a fast clip.
Some ingrained radar guided her to the second room off the corridor. Without bothering to lower the sword, Sinéad kicked the partially closed door and rushed inside, Bastien seconds behind her.
No.
He barely registered Sinéad’s gasp. He had a hard enough time breathing. The stench permeating the room crawled up his nostrils, invaded his mouth and clogged his throat. Decay. Rot. Death. Terror unlike any he’d experienced in his long existence choked him, barreled into his chest. Even as a child, his vivid imagination couldn’t have conjured this nightmare, couldn�
��t have inspired the horror gripping him with merciless talons and ripping a hole in his brain.
The large, airy bedroom tapered down to a narrow tunnel focused on the comatose young woman lying on the bed. Her blonde hair was a sweat-dampened, tangled mess on the white pillow, her wan features drawn into a tortured mask. Bastien couldn’t haul his eyes away from her—or the bald creature on the opposite side of the bed, kneeling next to the mattress…gnawing on her arm.
“Wendigo,” Sinéad breathed. The battle stance she’d assumed remained steady and resolute—her arms didn’t waver, her crouch as menacing as the gladius held aloft and ready near her ear. But the slight tremble in her voice belied her steely pose.
He’d heard whispers of the wendigo—insatiable cannibalistic demons that fed on the flesh as well as the fear of their victims. Yet in all his years he’d never glimpsed one and, fuck, he could have gone without the experience. They were said to be elusive creatures that lived in caves and other underground dwellings, only emerging from their dungeons to feed. And the more they fed, the more immense in size and power they grew.
Judging from the height of this one, it’d been indulging in a fucking smorgasbord. The wendigo rose to its full towering length and the demon’s shoulders wedged against the ceiling. The serpentine, thin neck and oval-shaped head hung down to its concave chest like a misshapen, repulsive pendulum. Obsidian, bulbous eyes protruded from large sockets and bloody, cracked lips peeled back from jagged, dirty teeth. Skeletal limbs jutted from beneath taut gray skin and matted fur that covered the wendigo’s emaciated frame like a knotted, scruffy coat. Bony fingers ending in long, lethal points scraped the floor like ten daggers ready to claw and capture its prey. The digits clacked against one another in an eerie melody of death and agony.
“Cruxim.” The demon sneered, its black gaze fixed on Sinéad and the sword proclaiming her identity. An outraged hiss escaped the wendigo’s lips. “You cannot attack me. Cardei promised no Black Angel would interfere.”
A strangled scream erupted from Sinéad as comprehension dawned on Bastien. Cardei…promise…Black Angel. Shit.
Sinéad charged forward at the same time the wendigo surged forward. Fingers slashed forward and down, clashing against her steel blade. Bone met steel with a hollow clang. The creature’s torso stretched across the bed and yet its weight caused Sinéad’s arms to quiver. As an immortal, she might’ve stood a fighting chance, but human…
The wendigo raised its other arm, sharp nails slicing toward Sinéad’s chest. Rage and horror clenched his gut. Bastien’s talons pierced his fingertips, tearing free as he hurtled toward the bed. A growl roared from his throat, burning the lining as he lunged, blocked the fingers that would have impaled Sinéad on their points. Bastien swiped his other arm out in an arc. His talons glanced off the wasted body. A quiver shuddered up his arm. A frigid pain numbed the curved tips of his claws. Damn. The fucker was much stronger than he appeared.
The demon rolled his head around and spit at Bastien, contempt on its gaunt face. Keeping his focus on Bastien, the creature shifted, bearing down harder on Sinéad as if sensing her waning strength. In the corner of Bastien’s eye, her legs bent even further, her arms shuddered more visibly.
With a bellow of fury, Bastien ducked under the arm that lashed at him and plunged forward like an engine fueled by wrath. His shoulder plowed into the wendigo’s side. The rot-and-maggot stench overpowered him and he gagged but wrapped his arms around its withered body as the two of them pitched sideways—toward the comatose woman. At the last second, Bastien twisted his hips, propelling them backward. His back slammed the floor with an audible crack.
Bastien groaned but quickly shoved the demon off him and flipped to his feet. The wendigo stumbled back several steps, it enormous height tipping it off balance for a few moments. Bastien took immediate advantage, ducking in low for several strikes before leaping away from the demon’s knife-like fingers.
“Don’t let it bite or cut you,” Sinéad called, her voice breathless. Then she disappeared. Though he didn’t remove his attention from the monster, Bastien heard her leave the room and bound down the stairs. Relief swept through him. Hopefully Sinéad had fled the house, gone for Cyra. Whatever. As long as Sinéad—and her vulnerable humanity—was out of harm’s way, out of the demon’s reach.
Bastien bared his teeth, snarled. The wendigo bent at the waist in a macabre bow. Extending its freakishly long arms, it jabbed at him as if seeking a weakness or an opening where it could slash and claw. They engaged in a waltz of life and death. Twist. Dip. Bow. Come together, draw apart. Sweat poured down Bastien’s spine, dampened his brow and rolled down his temples. Yet he continued to pour every ounce of his power into the battle. If he failed on this front, Sinéad and the woman on the bed were lost.
“Bastien!” As if his thought had conjured her, Sinéad rushed back into the room. He growled and redoubled his efforts with the wendigo. Damn it! He should’ve known she wouldn’t have left. This woman—cruxim or not—would never run away from a fight. “Quick! Over here!”
He didn’t question. He lifted his leg, kicked and caught the creature in its thigh bone. The contact reverberated up Bastien’s calf, leg and vibrated in his hip. Cursing, he spun on his heel and bounded over the bed. Landing in a crouch, one knee and hand on the floor, he glanced up as Sinéad hurled a flaming piece of paper across the room. The demon emitted a furious shriek as it tried in vain to dodge the makeshift torch.
Fire exploded over its body, racing down its legs, up its torso and shooting down along its arms. The shrieks elevated to piercing screams and howls of pain and rage. The greedy blaze ate at the demon and great plumes of white and gray smoke spiraled to the bedroom ceiling. Straightening, Bastien stared, awed, as the fiery blaze consumed the wendigo, touching nothing else in the room but the demon. It slowly melted, its body shrinking until nothing but a huge puddle remained on the floor. The flames dissipated, eventually flickering then extinguishing completely.
Silence hung in the room along with the lingering wisps of smoke. He turned his gaze to Sinéad whose chest rose and fell on quiet, heavy breaths. Sweat darkened the hair around her forehead and temples to nearly black, rolled down the tired lines of her face and dripped from her chin. She glanced at him, her silver gaze running down his body as if checking him for injury. When their eyes met again, she gave him a small nod before heading across the room toward the bed.
The female. He strode around the foot of the mattress, skirting the wide pool of water—all that remained of the wendigo—and stood on the other side of the bed. Both of them stared down at the unconscious woman. Her pale skin had taken on a grayish tint, the flesh over her cheekbones so thin and tight Bastien glimpsed the white cast of bone beneath. His inspection flicked to her arm and he barely stifled a flinch. The area where the demon had gnawed had blackened. The edges peeled back from pink, rapidly decaying tissue, the radius bone clearly visible. Blood, disease, wounds—they didn’t bother him. But this…this tragedy struck him in the heart like a ham-sized fist. What had once been a young, vibrant woman was wasting away before his eyes.
“Wendigo fever,” Sinéad murmured.
“You’ve seen this before?” Bastien asked. Again, he’d heard of the disease a wendigo’s infectious bite had on a body—had read about it—but had never witnessed the effects.
Sinéad nodded, her lovely features grave.
“She’s already turning into one of them. There’s no saving her.” Her eyes lifted to him and sorrow and anger lit them like furious lightning strikes. “I wasn’t in time.”
“Sinéad,” Bastien whispered. He wasn’t an empath, but her pain called out to him, rubbed him and his beast raw. Both man and hippogryph wanted to go to her, pull her close and soothe the grief creasing her face. “Sweetheart, from what I’ve read about these demons, we were too late before we arrived in Las Vegas.”
Wendigos spent hours with their victims, poisoning them before sending them into coma-like stat
es where the creatures fed off the fear and pain induced by nightmares their prey couldn’t wake from. Only after hours of torture did the demons begin to eat their victims’ flesh.
She didn’t refute or concur with his opinion. Instead she leaned down, stretched her arm out over the woman who hovered on the verge of living death. Already a noxious odor seeped from her decaying skin, polluting the air. Still Sinéad threaded her fingers through the limp, graying hair on the pillow. When she drew her hand back, several strands clung to her skin. Clenching her fist tight around the brittle wisps, Sinéad shut her eyes, her lashes like dark fans across her cheekbones.
Say something, a voice cried in his head. Do something, his beast roared. His throat worked, thoughts and words tumbled in his brain, searching for anything capable of easing her of this burden she’d unjustly taken on as her own. He came up empty-handed. Helplessness crashed through him.
“I’ll need to,” she opened her eyes, met his, “finish this.” A soft whisk cut through the still, rapidly fouling air as she reached behind her and withdrew her sword. “Before she becomes more wendigo than human.”
“I’ll do it,” Bastien said, holding his palm up, the fingers curled, mutely requesting her weapon. But Sinéad shook her head, shifting the blade behind her.
“No. You’re a healer,” she reminded him. Again she shook her head, harder, more vehemently. “You give life. Preserve it, not take it. I won’t allow you to bear that mark on your soul and conscience.”
His throat closed, his breath blocked by a heavy ball of wonder and a fierce reverence. For months he’d considered himself a monster, but in one moment she treated him as a male of honor, a male of worth. The man he used to see when he peered in the mirror. Coming from this female who would sacrifice a piece of her spirit so his would remain intact… She humbled him.
