The Return
Page 40

“Wait,” the woman spoke.
Something about the voice was like wire dragging over my nerves. Tiny hairs on my body rose. I didn’t wait. I started to turn the knob when the deck creaked under footsteps that weren’t mine.
I didn’t even have a second.
A hand clamped down on mine, yanking it back from the door as another hand smacked down on my mouth, smothering my startled yelp of pain. Immediately, a metallic taste flooded my mouth, my senses. My lips burned as they were forced back against my teeth, but the scent of blood…it wasn’t from me.
It was the man holding me.
My feet were lifted off the floor as he turned away from the door. Real fear, such I’d never felt before, exploded like a buckshot, pinging around inside me. Instinct kicked in, and I went wild, clawing at the hand around my mouth and swinging my legs back, digging my heels into his legs.
“Get her legs,” he grunted.
The woman moved up the two steps and reached out to grasp my ankle. Her grip was startlingly strong, but I still kicked out, catching her in the chest with my other foot.
Dropping my ankle, she stumbled back as she hissed. She actually hissed. Like a pissed-off cat, lips pulled back and teeth bared. Terror punched through my stomach. Not normal. Not normal at all. I dug my fingers into the cold, clammy man’s hand, trying to pry it away from my mouth as he neared the steps of the deck.
“Gods,” snapped the man, and my heart dropped. Gods. Oh crap. “She’s just a stupid mortal and you can’t even grab hold of her legs. You’re fucking helpless.”
Horror swamped me as I grabbed for anything to slow him down. My fingers slipped over the plastic privacy wall, digging into the raised edge. With all my strength, I held on as he moved down the steps. Muscles in my arms stretched, screaming out as he tugged harder with his arm around my waist and the hand at my mouth, wrenching my neck back until I thought for sure he was going to snap my neck.
“He’s inside,” I heard the woman say, her voice dipping in a whine. “I can sense him. Why are we messing with her? I can feel him. I need—”
“Because,” he said, yanking again. “She smells of the Apollyon. We’ll use her to get him out here. Unless you plan on going in there after him. Be my guest.”
The man dropped me, cutting off whatever the woman was saying. Losing my grip, I fell into empty space, swallowing a scream as the deck steps rose up to meet me. Pain exploded as my knees cracked off the ground and the side of my head smacked into the corner of the steps. Light burst behind my eyes. Stunned and jarred to my very bones, I couldn’t move as I was roughly flipped onto my back and yanked the rest of the way down. I was sprawled in the damp grass before I could get my lungs to work again.
He was over me and on me in a second, and there was nothing I could do as he wrapped a hand under my chin, pushing my cheek into the grass. His nails scraped along my neck as his fingers caught the collar of my sweater and ripped it to the side.
“She’ll bring him out,” he said, lowering his head. His cool lips brushed the same area Seth’s had only a few hours earlier. Nausea twisted my insides as his mouth moved to the space between my neck and shoulder. “Won’t you, darling?”
My heart jumped and then faltered as something ripped through my skin. Had to be a knife, because it couldn’t be what I thought it was—it couldn’t be his teeth. Red-hot pain blasted through me like a cannonball as I opened my mouth and screamed—really screamed.
I was on fire. Someone had dropped a match inside me and my veins were full of gasoline. I was burning up—I had to be. Sharp pinpoints of pain shot out from every cell and there was this tugging deep inside me, this wrenching that came from my very core and burned a mixture of fire and ice. The woman was saying something, but I didn’t understand her words. They sounded like they were a different language.
The thing jerked off me, his legs slipping over mine as he planted his hands in the grass beside my head. I blinked his face into focus. Blood—my blood—smeared his lips. Then my vision blurred back out, and…
“What…what are you?” he asked, voice slurred, sluggish.
Icy fingers wrapped around my arm and then there was that tearing feeling again, above my wrist, and I wasn’t screaming. I couldn’t make a sound.
No more than a minute after I stepped out of the shower and dried off, glyphs raced across my skin. I exhaled as I snatched the briefs and jeans off the sink. The feeling curling down my spine was a signal, just like the appearance of the wards on my skin.
Tugging the briefs and then the jeans on, I threw open the door. The room was empty, and as I took a step forward, I felt the wicked sixth sense kicking in. The glyphs moved quicker.
Daimons were near and Josie….
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” I whirled, grabbing a titanium dagger off the nightstand. The handle warmed to my touch.
Her stuff was still where I’d placed it, near the front door. The chain-lock was also set. My gaze swung to the back door. In less than a second, I was throwing it open and stepping out into the night, and into a nightmare.
Two daimons had Josie pinned on the ground. A female was at her wrist and a male was on her, his face buried in her neck. Both were tagging her, feeding from her in a way meant to cause pain. And the male daimon, his body covered hers completely. All I could see was a still leg. Not moving. Nothing.
Rage like I’d never known before detonated like a nuclear bomb, becoming a metallic, bitter taste in the back of my mouth. The world tinted amber as I flew forward off the deck. Landing beside the female, I grabbed a chunk of her hair and ripped her head back, seeing right through the glamour that hid them in the mortal world.