A Cursed Embrace
Page 8

The image of the woman’s body hit me like a sack of rocks. She’d been gnawed on by her babies. Okay. I was officially done with my questions then.
The wolves and I whirled around, growling at the sound of approaching steps. “It’s just us,” Koda snarled from the front. Our not-so-happy feelings and the aroma of mutilated-demon-consumed body parts had peeved his wolf. And he’d yet to get a gander at the bodies. Good times.
“Keep the girls there,” Gemini ordered. “We’ll come to you.”
That was Taran’s cue to storm out of the house of decomposing corpses. I chased after her, more out of worry than anything. The presence of the four wolves eased my tigress’s fury, but not her vigilance. And every sense I possessed told me my sister needed me. “Don’t go outside without us,” Koda warned.
Taran did anyway, followed by Emme and Shayna. Taran didn’t stop until she reached the center of the path. She bent forward, placing her hands on her knees as she took in huge gulps of air. The air continued to carry the heavy scent of death, but paled in comparison to the bowels of the mill. Shayna knelt in front of her, her blue eyes wide as she took in Taran’s pallor. “Dude. Are you okay?”
Taran’s glare knocked Shayna back on her butt. “No, dude. I’m not okay. Fighting evil is horseshit!”
Emme covered her mouth and glanced over her shoulder. She probably worried Taran’s oh-so-accurate description would offend the wolves. They’d all returned indoors with the exception of Gemini’s furry half. He sat on the porch, his coal eyes bright as he watched over us. Shayna stood and dusted off. I placed my hand on Emme’s elbow and nudged her forward. “There are a few dead bodies inside. Try healing Taran’s emotions; it was a lot for her to take in.” Hell, it was a lot for me to take in. But bless my tigress’s heart, she had a way of helping me through pain, and in this case, revulsion. My urge to bolt and shriek lessened with each passing breath. Still, that didn’t mean I desired to hang with the wolves within the confines of the mill.
Emme cautiously stepped forward. She continued to watch me as she placed her palms on Taran’s back. “A few dead bodies?”
I nodded. Shayna veered toward the porch, fast enough to make her long black ponytail whip behind her. “Koda probably won’t let me see.” Her grimace trained on Taran. “Not that I really want to. How many were there, Ceel?”
“Four men drained of blood and a young woman . . . na**d with her uterus torn open.”
Emme’s pale yellow light receded from her hands as she took in my words. Her power sputtered as she took a breath. She closed her lids tight. “D-d-did you say her uterus was torn open?”
Taran dropped her head lower. “She’d given birth, Emme. To twin demons. They freaking ate their way out of her belly.”
Shayna unzipped her blue jacket and alternated fanning each side out like a cape. Her fingers skimmed over the hilts of the eight daggers fastened around her leather belt. Shayna often counted her weapons to soothe her. Or in this case, to make sure she had enough to kill whatever could burst a stomach open like a rotten tomato. “Um. Uh. Did you kill—you know—the twins?”
I only told them because I wanted them to stay sharp. “No. We didn’t find them yet.”
Once more she counted her weapons. This time, she unsnapped the holsters keeping them in place for easy access. “So, what do you want to do about dinner?” she asked with an underlying tone of hysteria to her voice.
Taran homed in on her like a hawk on a band of bunnies with broken legs. “I’m seriously trying not to puke all over my new shoes. Do you really think I want to talk food right now, Shayna?”
I stepped in front of Shayna. If Taran had the ability to shoot laser beams from her eyes, poor Shayna’s body parts would have littered the forest floor in diced chunks. “Stop it, Taran. Shayna’s just trying to think about other things.” Taran didn’t have a beast or possess a power like Emme’s to soothe her. She hated being scared. So when terror showed its face, her protective instincts called anger and attitude to the surface, unleashing her emotions like a rising inferno. It’s how she rolled. But that didn’t make it okay to sick her hyenas on Shayna. She needed a distraction. I stroked her black waves and tried to sound encouraging. “It’s not such a crazy idea, you know? I think the wolves plan to hang out with us tonight, including Gemini. I couldn’t help noticing how he tried to comfort you in there. It’s like his shyness dissolved. All he cared about was seeing you through your trauma.”
Taran’s menace erased, softening the criticism lining her face and bringing out her beautiful exotic features. My sister didn’t fall for men. They fell for her. Hard. This time, though, she’d met her match. I turned my head to Gemini, knowing he’d heard me.
He stood with Aric and the other wolves. “We need to track the demon children,” Gemini said. “The scent of the woman’s death is too fresh for them to have gone far, and they’ll need to feast soon.”
“We’ll need more noses,” Aric said. “Call Paul and the other team.”
“I can change and help, too.” It’s not like I’d forget that festering smell soon.
Aric sighed, moving toward me. I tried to meet him halfway until an odd sense of cold shoved at my chest like a pair of enraged sports fans. Gemini the wolf leapt to his feet, snarling at the same time my tigress snapped to attention. An earth-shattering scream cut through the silence. The twins had found their next meal.
I charged toward an overgrown path leading deeper into the woods only to be yanked back by Aric. “Stay here,” he growled.
He released my arm and changed, joining the rest of his pack already jetting into the dense forest in beast form. Only the original Gemini wolf remained. His hulking body blocked mine when I ignored Aric’s request. “Damn it, Gem!”
“Celia?”
Emme’s shaky voice kept me from barreling through Gemini. I didn’t want to leave Aric to fight this thing alone. I glanced back at my sisters. Shayna already palmed two daggers. Taran’s blue and white flames danced along her fingertips. No, I didn’t want to leave Aric. But I also couldn’t abandon my family.
“Wh-what is it, Celia?” Emme stammered.
“I don’t know.” I paused. Something dropped onto the roof of the mill from one of the overhanging branches. One. Two. Like softballs . . . with feet. My ears perked. Whatever it or they were pushed between the splintering shingles and scrambled into the building. Gem crept toward the door. He’d heard it, too.
“Stay here,” I muttered.
“Like hell,” Taran shot back.
Gemini’s tail batted against my stomach as I followed him back into the dust-filled and moldy building. The nauseating stench returned, this time with greater potency. We passed into the first large room, the one with the broken office furniture. I froze. Something scurried across the second floor. Just above where we stood. It scratched the battered wood with sharp little nails as it scampered from one side to the other.
“A squirrel?” Emme asked hopefully.
I really wanted it to be a squirrel. But squirrels didn’t move as fast as this thing did. Nor did they hiss. Gemini tore pass me and up the stairs. Garbled screeches followed angry snarls. Dust and pieces of mold pelted us as Gemini’s powerful paws pounded the ceiling above. He’d found one of the demon children.
So then, what the hell was Aric hunting . . . and where was the other twin?
A dark blur the size of my shoe scuttled like a crab above our heads. Then to the right. And then quickly down the wall and behind the armchair in the corner. I couldn’t make out what it was. Just that it had wings. Bat wings.
“Oh, Jesus,” Taran whispered.
Emme clutched my arm as I inched toward it. “Celia, don’t.”
Gemini’s paws continued to beat down more dust and his roars shook the building. The thing was fast enough to keep him busy, and small enough to fit into cramped spaces. Like underneath the chair. “We need to kill it, Emme. No telling how big this thing will get. Shayna, Taran, knife or blast it as soon as I move the armchair.”
I didn’t dare avert my stare to see if they nodded, but their hard swallows affirmed they’d heard me.
I stalked my way to it, slowly. Considering that the bulky piece of crap rested just a few feet from me, it seemed to take a long time for me to reach it. Not that I was in a rush, mind you. Creepy crawlies from hell had that effect on a gal.
The swoosh from Taran’s fire signaled her readiness to burn the thing to cinders, if Shayna’s daggers didn’t find it first. Shayna slid the blades she held against each other—her way of challenging the thing, and urging her inner mistress of all things sharp and deadly forward.
They were ready. I was ready. And now I’d reached my destination. My shaky hands extended toward the armrests. Dust poofed out in brown little clouds as I gripped the thick and torn fabric. I took a breath to steady myself and lifted.
The other twin poked its head from the bottom.
And clenched its mouth around my instep.
My lids peeled back and I screamed. Boy, did I scream! But only on the inside. I watched in shocked horror as this sickly gray creature pierced its yellow fangs through my sneaker and into the bones of my foot with a hair-raising crunch.
It hurt like the stab of hot needles, but I could handle a great deal of pain. What I couldn’t handle was a demon child biting through my shoe and slurping my body fluid like a thirsty dog. My blood ran cold. I dropped the damned chair and jerked my foot in my own freaky version of the Elaine dance.
“Did you get it, Ceel?”
I whirled around to show Shayna that no, I didn’t get it. It. Had. Me. My sisters screamed. The demon child held tight, flapping its long leather wings as it continued to feast.
“Get . . . It . . . Off . . . Me!”
They screamed once more, because that was really helpful. Finally Shayna came to her senses. Sort of.
“Keep still, Ceel.” She lifted one of her blades. “I don’t want to cut your foot off.”
Neither Shayna’s comment nor the fact that the demon child continued to suckle motivated me enough to stop prancing around. I kicked out hard, flinging the thing off me. It bounced off the wall, using its thick little frog legs to propel itself toward where my sisters huddled.
They jumped. But then it vanished. Shayna spun around, daggers out. “Where’d it go?”
Taran’s head jerked in all directions. “Goddamn it. Do you think it has the power to disappear?”
My eyes scanned the room as my heart continued to make my rib cage its bitch. “I don’t know. Aric said their time on earth is limited. Maybe it got summoned back to . . .” My voice trailed off as I caught Emme’s blanching skin. She stood still, staring blankly at one of the metal chairs leaning against the wood-paneled walls. “Emme. What’s wrong?”
Emme failed to answer, at least with words. She pirouetted carefully until her back was to us, revealing the demon child digging the claws of its hands and feet into her red wool coat, its tail whisking back and forth. It zipped up her back, tangling into the strands of her honey-colored locks before I could blink.
Taran jumped back. “Holy shit!”
I lunged at Emme, only to freeze when the demon child’s ears perched back and it reeled its head to face me. Quarter-size red eyes narrowed over a toadlike head and mouth. It screeched, protruding and elongating its serrated yellow teeth.
I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know how to fight it.
But Shayna did.
The blade of her knife caught a trickle of light filtering in as the gamut of her power rose in one tremendous sweep. She elongated the cutting edge of her dagger with her gift, manipulating the metal until it lengthened into a giant sword.
Before I could shout a warning to Emme, Shayna two-hand-gripped the hilt and brought it straight down Emme’s back, slicing a large chunk of her hair along with the demon child’s appendages. Four sets of claws remained attached to Emme’s coat and hair. One of them crawled along her shoulder and caressed her cheek before dissolving into a maggot and falling at her feet. Emme’s eyes rolled into the back of her head just before she crash-landed into Shayna.
The demon child hissed and lurched onto the ceiling. Taran blasted it with a jagged bolt of lightning, then another, and another, as it flew from one section to another. Gemini yelped above us. He nudged his head through one of the holes, his powerful jowls holding the limp body of the other twin.
The remaining demon child swooped down, clutching an old wall calendar with mutilated limbs as a rapid beat of paws arrived on the other side. Taran gathered her magic and screamed, hurling a tremendous ball of fire at the wall.
I roared, “No!” The side of the building exploded, the force knocking us back. Taran’s great ball of fire took out the entire section, missing the demon child and thankfully our wolves. One by one they poked their human heads through the cindering edges. “What the f**k?” Koda growled.
I didn’t have time to explain. The creature dove at Taran’s neck, its fangs exposed. I caught it midair, piercing its toad body with my protruding claws. Its slimy, cold-leather flesh made my skin crawl. Emme came to in Shayna’s arms, just in time to join my others sisters screaming as they watched the demon child writhe beneath my grip. Its strength surprised me, especially given its small size. My hand jerked and shuddered as it tried to escape. And yet the more that I stared at it, the more the little bastard pissed me off. Not just because it bit me, or attacked my sisters, but because it lived. Something this evil didn’t belong in my world.