For some terrifying reason, the identity of my assailant slipped from my mind. I grasped that it was someone I knew, but I couldn’t for the life of me remember who he was. Or even what we’d just talked about.
Crossing over uneven terrain, I searched the woods, wondering where the invisible person was taking me. Wondering if he’d done something to Asher.
Up ahead, a body lay face first on the ground with wrists tied behind his back and his ankles tied together. Asher’s tall lankiness and blond hair was an immediate give away.
“Asher!” I jerked free of the invisible and rushed forward. Collapsing to my knees, with my heart pumping, I pushed Asher over to his side. He was so lifeless. Please don’t be dead. Dirt smeared his face with tear streaks down both cheeks. He breathed but wasn’t conscious. “What did he do to you?” I said in a hushed voice and tried to undo the ropes binding his wrists. So much dark source loomed through me, and it made my hands shake. My empty stomach growled with a piercing pain.
Frustrated with the knots, I pounded the ground, releasing dark source into it. It created mixing-bowl-sized holes in the ground. My hands were a little more steady.
Throughout the woods as I worked, no sign of my assailant could be found.
“Wake up,” a voice hissed.
Groaning, Asher’s eyes flickered. “Tara—Ferdinand is the one—”
“Ferdinand?” He’s my attacker. How did I not know that? “He’s here in the woods.”
Grimacing, Asher sat up and began to undo the ropes binding his ankles. “I was an idiot and confronted him on my own.”
Already, I was forgetting who he was, and that knowledge sent bolts of fear through me stronger than any I’d ever felt. Someone had brought me to these woods. Someone had tied up Asher—and I was positive I should know who it was, but I couldn’t.
“I didn’t realize what he was capable—” Asher cut off and looked at me with narrowed eyes. “You don’t know who I’m talking about anymore.”
I choked up, trying to hold back the flood trying to break free from me. Today had already been emotionally and physically exhausting. “What’s going on?” I asked.
He wiped a tear from my cheek. “There’s an extremely jealous alv after you.”
I nodded slowly, and he wrapped an arm around me.
“For a second, I thought you were dead,” I whispered. “I have some good news, though.”
He frowned.
“I found out why Emma was drunk, and you aren’t at fault.”
Hope sparked in his green eyes.
“She was.”
Hanging vines shot at me, twisting around my arms and torso before jerking me away from Asher. Terror stole my breath and ability to scream.
“Tara!” Asher lunged for me but the earth broke up under him, making him fall.
I slammed into the trunk of a tree, and the vines immediately twisted around me, securing me to it. A thin one wrapped around my neck and constricted, and I began to have a hard time breathing.
“You have five minutes to defeat my dragon,” a disembodied voice echoed all around, laughing at us. “Or she dies.”
A sword appeared in front of where Asher struggled to get to his feet.
Behind him, a creature the likes of which I’d only seen in pictures and movies rose its green reptilian head. It was no bigger than a cow but its neck was as long as a giraffe’s, with its spiked tail about the same length. This could not be happening. Dragons didn’t exist.
“Asher,” I gasped, unable to scream. He hadn’t seen the beast yet.
The dragon silently swung its tail and knocked Asher to the ground. He rolled several times, lying stunned.
“Dead already?” Ferdinand’s voice laughed. “That was quite boring.”
The dragon rose on its back legs, looking directly at Asher, but it didn’t attack, giving Asher time to get to his feet. He rushed to get to the sword, and the dragon grinned, watching Asher seize it and take up a defensive stance.
This is not actually happening.
They began to circle around each other, waiting for the other to make a first move. The dragon flung out its tail at Asher, and Asher fended it off. Next, the beast snapped at Asher’s head, and Asher barely managed to duck away.
Ferdinand materialized next to me.
Ferdinand? The realization was jarring, because I knew I should remember him.
“Is that really a dragon?” I hissed at him, struggling against the vines that captured me.
He laughed. “No. It is my pet lizard, enhanced with source and empowered with a thrall fiend. He doubly responds to what I want him to do.”
My mouth dropped open. “You’re insane.”
“Didn’t you ever wonder if there was truth to the story of St. George and the dragon?” Ferdinand said.
I shuddered. “No.”
“Well, I did.” He brushed the back of his fingers down my cheeks, making my insides crawl with disgust. “Maybe we should change the stakes a little bit.” He pressed close and lowered his lips within an inch of mine.
I turned my head from him in time to see Asher retreat behind a tree with the dragon roaring after him. Lunging with the sword at the dragon, he made it back off. Asher glanced in my direction, and I’d never seen a more determined expression on his face.
“We could have had so much fun,” Ferdinand growled.
“The moment you used your source to lure me was the moment you lost my friendship.”
With a snarl, he scratched my face, and I gasped in pain.
“Leave her alone!” Asher shouted. He abruptly changed his course to come after me, but the dragon hurled its tail at him, wrapping around his waist and yanking him into the air.
“I wanted you to like me!” Ferdinand cried.
He sounded so broken in that statement. The intensity of that emotion flashed through my mind the years of watching others bully him, and my own faulted attempt to befriend him.
“Time to watch him die,” Ferdinand said.
All the dark source in Ferdinand. Years full of loneliness. My darkness out of control had made me do some horrible things, but never anything like this. Still, would he act like this without it in him? Maybe he would change if I drained him of it.
Plus, if I wanted to stop the dragon, I needed to stop the source of its power.
Using the negative source spiraling inside me, I focused it all at once into the vines around me. Immediately they rotted, and I pulled out of them, leaping at Ferdinand.
He was taken off guard, and I used that moment to punch him in the gut then kick him to the ground. As he struggled to rise, I shoved him down and placed a hand on his forehead.
“Let me help you!” I cried, pulling dark source from him.
His eyes widened.
This darkness. It tasted both of his stored pure alv source as well as the restless, chaotic source of a changeling, which meant a changeling had given it to him.
While Asher and the dragon still dueled each other nearby, I reached my other hand for the tree’s trunk and directed Ferdinand’s years of stored source mixed with the changelings’ filtering through me into it. Having somewhere for it to go, the transfer out of him happened faster than it had with my uncle or Jerrick. The tree groaned, and I felt it die under my hand.
A cry of grief rolled through me, and I took my hand off the tree, holding the rest of the dark source in me.
Ferdinand stilled, giving up any fight. “Tara, let me go.”
Seeing sadness in his eyes, I scrambled off him, and Ferdinand stood.
“Back off!” he shouted, running after the dragon. “Back off!”
The dragon posed with its tail in the air ready to strike Asher, who lay beneath it. The dragon didn’t respond.
“No!” I screamed.
Ferdinand didn’t have source anymore to control it.
“Asher!”
Jack came out of nowhere, grabbing Asher’s sword from where it had fallen, and blocked the dragon’s tail as
it was set to impale Asher.
Ferdinand rushed forward with a branch and thwacked the dragon on the side. With a roar, it turned on Ferdinand and knocked him into the cliff, where he crumpled unconscious. Jack thrust with the sword, stabbing the creature. Meanwhile, Asher hadn’t moved, and the dragon, now injured, was thrashing around more chaotically.
Asher was going to die.
I had enough of Ferdinand’s dark source in me to stop the dragon. Rushing forward, using Jack’s assault as the distraction, I leapt up onto its back and rested my hands onto its neck, then shot the enhanced-demon possessed lizard with both mine and Ferdinand’s dark source.
As it grew ill, the dragon mewed in pain, lifting its long neck upward and shrank back to a lizard.
Releasing source into the dragon, I attracted the demon within it. As it shrank back to its lizard form, the fiend surged out of it. I fell to the ground on my back. The fiend hovered over me. It had a dark-angel form, with bat-like wings and wide, spidery-eyes.
“Tara!” Asher gasped.
Where was Jack with his dagger?
The fiend’s bony fingers gripped my shoulders and sank into me.
“No!” Jack’s scream was loud in my ear.
Positive source. That had prevented the flock imps from taking complete control earlier this week, giving William time to help me. I had so little in me but being held by Asher last time had inspired it. Stumbling to my feet, I looked to where Asher struggled to get to his feet, his determined gaze fixed on me. His shirt was soaked in blood.
No.
Dark source thrived.
The thrall fiend settled in. I could feel it shifting, like it was sitting down into a cozy chair, sipping the last drops of positive source.
“Asher,” I whispered, then collapsed to my knees. He was too far. Despair flared inside me which only made the darkness grow, giving more permanence to the fiend.
The fiend would take control and who knew what I would do.
Jack was at my side, saying something I couldn’t understand, but it was a siren blaring in my head. He wrapped his arms around me, and his warmth, his friendship, memories of our past childhood and present school year flashed through me, inspiring a positive source that felt of joy.
The fiend did not like it at all, feasting on it ravenously. Its control over me loosened, shifting like its seat was no longer comfortable.
“We need to get Tara to William,” Asher’s voice broke through the haze.
“I agree. And looks like we need to get you to Ozzy.” Jack lifted me into his arms.
“Ozzy?” Asher asked.
“My truck,” Ferdinand’s quavery voice carried through from a distance. “I can drive.”
“Why should we trust you?” Asher growled.
“I never meant for it to go this far,” Ferdinand whispered. “My mom and aunt are changelings. They gave me their dark source, thinking it would strengthen me. It warped me instead. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”
Sensing that Jack was a demon slayer, the fiend raised its initiative to claim me. The contact with Jack wasn’t enough. The fiend latched on tight to my spirit, molding to it. I felt my sense of control weaken.
“Jack,” I gasped.
Fiend controlled, I grabbed his neck. A thin sliver of my agency remained, and I forced my hand not to grab too tight.
“Demon slayer,” the fiend growled through me.
Ferdinand grabbed my wrist and forced me to let Jack go. It’s taking hold of her.”
The fiend laughed through me. “She’s already mine.”
I cried out in despair.
Asher came into my field of vision. “Tara.” He stopped to kiss me, stirring an influx of positive source that was more of an annoyance than a threat to the fiend.
“It’s too late,” I hissed then kicked him.
When Ferdinand tried to intervene the fiend expected it and forced me to roll free from Jack and rise to my feet.
“This changeling is mine,” the fiend said.
Jack stood up in front of me.
Clutching his bloody torso, Asher staggered beside him. A light radiated off both of them that I’d never noticed before, and the fiend did not like it. It made me back away from them.
The fiend began to thrash inside me.
“I’m not leaving,” the fiend snarled.
“You will not control me,” I said.
Its presence shifted like a shadow to my spirit. My stomach knotted with the dark source the fiend’s continued presence created. A semblance of control returned to me.
35. Beauty in Being Possessed
“Tara?” Asher said. Asher and Jack cautiously approached me.
Looking around, I realized my eyesight had sharpened. The orange autumn leaves of the trees had stronger edges, and I could see further into the forest, making out details that I previously wouldn’t have noticed, like the moss growing on a distant tree. My hearing too picked up on things I’d previously not noticed, like the whispering of the breeze among the branches or distant traffic.
There was beauty in being possessed by a demon. The realization sent a feeling of pleasure reeling through me. One that was simultaneously horrifying and addicting.
An engine roared to life nearby. There was a strong smell of iron, and I realized it was Asher’s blood.
The dragon had run its claws across his torso, leaving several gashes across it; his leg too was bloody and bitten.
I gasped. “Asher.” The sudden influx of negative source the sight of wounded Asher inspired was too agreeable to the fiend, and I fought against its control over me.
The throb of an engine approached through the woods, growing louder.
“Someone’s coming,” I said.
“Yeah, that’s Ferdinand,” Jack said. “In his truck. He’s the one who attacked you.”
As Ferdinand backed his truck around the hill, Asher glanced at Jack. “You forgot about him again,” Asher said.
I clenched my jaw, focusing on Ferdinand’s profile as he parked the truck. “Have I done that a lot?”
“Too many times for me to describe,” Jack said.
Opening the door, Ferdinand jumped out and opened the back door, “Come on.”
Jack whispered something to Asher, who nodded, then came over to me and taking me by the arm, like he was afraid I was going to run away.
“You’re glowing,” I told Jack.
Ferdinand gave Asher a hand as he got into the truck.
“Glowing?” Jack said.
“Yeah, you have a light about you the demon doesn’t like.”
He gave me a curious look, then helped me into the truck. He slid in beside, sandwiching me between him and Asher. Positive source grew, and the fiend’s presence slunk even more to the background.
I breathed a sigh of relief.
Ferdinand jumped into the driver's seat. “Whatever you do, Tara, don’t talk to the demon.” He drove back around the hill, the uneven terrain making the drive bumpy. “Where to?” he asked as we drove out onto the parking lot.
Jack leaned forward and whispered to Ferdinand.
My enhanced hearing picked up on it.“Stop by her house.”
“Got it,” he said.
Drained of his dark source, Ferdinand was intent on righting his wrong. He was the author of all of this, but I wondered how much the way I had treated him in the past had influenced his jealousy and pain. He had his guilt, but I had my own.
It reminded me of something Dad had told me once when I was jealous of him taking Holden on a trip without me, and feeling hurt, like I’d been abandoned.
“If you look at the fairytales of old, when elves were jealous, they caused evil mischief. Don’t let jealousy take over your source. It’s a wild and dangerous force when you do.”
Yes, it was. Especially paired with loneliness.
Jack pulled out two smartphones and tossed one to Asher. “Found this at Tara’s, but the battery is almost dead.”
Grimacing, Asher
picked it up.
Jack texted, and Asher’s phone buzzed a second later, and he tilted the screen so I couldn’t read it.
“Are you talking to each other?” I asked. The fiend inside me started to rise.
“Yes,” Jack said. Still texting, he angled sideways so I couldn’t see it.
“So, it’s a secret I can’t know about?” Drawn to my irritation, the fiend toyed with it, stirring the feeling toward anger.
“A surprise,” Asher said. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Why are we stopping at my house? We should be taking you straight to the hospital.”
“William is at your house,” Asher said. “He can fix this up as well as anyone at the hospital. Relax.”
“William?” The question was the fiend’s, not mine. They were plotting something, and the fiend didn’t like it. It dove into my memories, filtering through to find out who William was. I tried to block it, but the fiend flittered around, subtly influencing my will. Relax, sweet one. We can be a good team.
Ahh. It purred a few seconds later. So the young man sitting to your right is your boyfriend. Clingy, isn’t he? It’s a wonder you stuck with him after finding out he could have killed his best friend.
That wasn’t his fault.
But you didn’t know that at the time.
Get out of my memories.
Oh, wow, and what a past he has. You really stuck with him after finding out how crude he was to your brother?
He’d changed.
Changed? The fiend laughed. Or maybe he seized on the first girl willing to look over all his faults because he knew no other girl would. I wonder what he’ll do when he finds out the truth. That he has been innocent the whole time. A young man of his athletic caliber will undoubtedly set his sights higher than you.
“Go away,” I said. It was as though my dark source was talking to me.
“Are you talking to it? Don’t talk to it, Tara!” Ferdinand said, but I felt like we had a sound barrier between us.
And this is the street you grew up on? And that must be Miss Darcy in person. The fiend laughed again. To think you thought she was actually your friend.
The Changeling's Source (Evedon Legacy Book 1) Page 39
