Page 8 of Another Damned Storm (Another Damned #3)

NEVER

How long should I wait? That was the question burning in my brain as I studied the eerie landscape sprawling around me.

At least I could see farther than ten feet in front of me.

The tropical forest on Hook’s island was dense and claustrophobic.

This weird ass place was a different kind of forest, with giant trees and a boatload of open space.

There were clusters of smaller, spindly trees with pale, waxy bark and yellow leaves filling in the yawning space in places, and little thickets of brush here and there.

If I squinted, I was pretty sure I could see for miles. Or as far as the dim light allowed. “I bet this place will be kind of pretty when the sun comes up,” I mused.

Not that I was planning on sticking around long enough to see it.

Since the moment I realized I might be causing the chaos in the Nassa, I’d been guarding a handful of my thoughts. Now that I was locked safely away where the fates wanted me, I figured it was safe to let them run.

Which brought me back to the question of how long I should pretend to be the good dead girl before putting my power to the test. I needed to check on my brother and Lily.

If they were okay and safe, I would try to take them to the Nassa.

Then I would bite the bullet and find a way to drag my sorry ass back here for good.

I really didn’t want to do that last part. Everything inside me wanted to leave this place and slip back into Hook’s life like nothing was wrong. But something was wrong. That much was painfully obvious from the storms and general upheaval.

The catch was I couldn’t flash to my world from the Nassa. Not with Hook’s magic anchoring me there. I’d tried a hundred times. A thousand, maybe. Eventually, I stopped counting because all it ever earned me was a big old pile of bupkis.

Hook had managed to get us back to the Nassa from my world after the shadow embedded itself inside me, but that had more to do with the fact that the realm had been trying to drag him back there anyway. Nerebis, on the other hand, had flashed in and out of the realm easily enough.

I already knew Hook and his magic were cursed to that place, but what if his power was only limited in the Nassa? If that was the case, logic said I just needed to be outside the limits of his realm to flash to mine. At least, that was how it worked in my head.

But I was hesitating. What if Nerebis or Tenebris were watching me?

It was best to wait at least more than half a minute, right?

A branch snapped to my right, and I jerked around, but I didn’t see anything. Another sound like a cross between a growl and a laugh had me spinning to look behind me.

My breath caught. Not one, not two, but three demons were coming toward me.

Adrenaline rocketed through my blood. When the one on the left, with his nasty green scales and oversized head, growled, a strange rumble vibrated my chest, and another unearthly growl answered the first.

We all froze.

Where the hell did that come from? Three sets of eyes bored into me. Or were they glaring at something behind me?

I risked a quick glance over my shoulder, but it was just miles and miles of empty, crimson-tinted forest. What the fuck?

I backed up a step. Probably not the smartest move when I was squaring off against three hulking demons, but nothing about this place felt right.

Plus, anxiety did weird things to a person. Maybe that was why my pulse was all over the place. But would that also explain why, all of a sudden, my skin was hot and too tight?

What if there are demons here that can fly? I cursed the errant thought and tipped my head to the sky on instinct.

The green demon took advantage of the momentary distraction and launched at me.

I managed to tuck and roll in time to avoid his claws, but it was close.

I popped back up onto my feet to find the other two closing in around behind me.

They reached and slashed, snarled and snapped, but as I twisted and spun to keep them in sight, I realized they weren’t getting closer.

“What? Are you three big baddies afraid of a little human?” I taunted. Again, not the smartest move, but I had things to do. Like trying to figure out how to use my handy new magic to get me back to my world.

The pinkish-red demon, sporting a smaller extra set of arms below the first, hissed.

“Come on, pop tart,” I said.

Why did I call him that? Because the color of his skin reminded me of the filling of a strawberry pop tart. And I was hungry. Go figure.

He shot forward, no doubt expecting me to bob or weave. Fuck that. With a fresh stream of energy pulsing into my muscles, I charged him head on. He was strong, but somehow, I was stronger. I drove him backward, his clawed feet leaving gouges in the dirt.

Pain exploded across my back, and I screamed. It welled up out of me in a rush, only that scream didn’t sound like me at all.

In fact, it didn’t even sound human.

Hot blood spilled down my back, but I could barely feel it through the fury building inside me. It was a truly wild feeling. Animalistic at the core.

I let out a warrior’s cry, and in the stillness of that half-dead forest, all I heard was the roar of a powerful beast.

Holy shit. Was that me?

I stilled. Blinked. Tried to remember how to breathe.

The demon I’d driven backward was on the run, scampering like a frightened puppy into the wilderness. The other two were more bold, apparently, but they were still keeping their distance.

My blood, my skin, even my bones vibrated with more power than I knew what to do with.

I held out my hands and stared in shock as I balled them into fists and opened them again.

They still looked human, mostly, if you ignored the fact that my skin was glowing a bright amber.

The same color Hook’s eyes turned when his power rose to the surface.

“Okay, this is kind of cool,” I whispered. The pain in my back was a distant memory, so I shifted my gaze to the two demons. They were staring at me like they had no fucking clue what to do with me. I glared back. “Boo.”

They both flinched, another one took off running, and a ripple of excitement lit me up inside. Was I actually having fun with this?

Maybe a little .

Don’t get cocky .

I still didn’t really know how to wield my power. A scene from the first Ghostbusters movie popped into my head. The one where Spengler, Venkman, and Stantz were all riding the elevator up to catch a ghost, but they’d never had a successful test of their proton packs.

I might not be sporting an unlicensed nuclear accelerator on my back, but I had something that was putting the fear of god into the demons.

Wow. I felt like an idiot for taking that long to put it together.

Of course I was putting the fear of god into them. Only it was more like the fear of one particularly broody god.

The last demon standing dropped to all fours and prowled back and forth in front of me.

“What are you waiting for?” I’d barely asked the question when, in the distance, a chorus of demonic battle cries rose. Every hair on my arms rose with them.

The demon in front of me tipped his head to the sky and let out a howl that could only mean one thing: I’d miscalculated. The other two demons hadn’t scampered off in fear. They’d gone to rally the troops. Now, backup was coming, and this asshole was telling them all exactly where to find me.

“Sonofawhore,” I muttered under my breath. The primal urge to battle it out with the creature in front of me was a force of its own, and I might have given in to the swelling need to inflict violence, if I hadn’t turned my head and spotted the tiny army barreling toward me.

I wasn’t a total dummy. They were only tiny because they were still a good distance away. And I had just enough common sense left in me to run.

Barely.

I sailed through the trees faster than I’d ever been able to move before, but every step only seemed to enrage the wild animal caged inside me. She was fucking feral—clawing, scraping, and biting at the bars to get out.

Honestly, it was kind of terrifying.

She was some deep, repressed part of me. I could tell that much. I just didn’t know where she’d been hiding all these years.

What would happen if I let her out to play?

I toyed with the idea as I ran. How many of the charging demons could she take down? Confidence and challenge swelled inside me, filling me to the brim.

This crazy bitch was convinced she could take them all on. And while I was loving the “fuck around and find out” vibe she was putting off, I knew it would be a waste of time and energy when my real goal was to get the hell out of this place.

I dared a glance over my shoulder. The last of my welcoming party was in hot pursuit, but he was falling behind fast. If I could lose him?—

“Shit!” I hauled to a stop when I saw another group of demons closing in from a different direction. There were dozens of them, all moving in a synchronized herd like a flock of ground bound starlings.

Okay. New plan. At a dead run, I thought of my world.

I pictured Matty, with his blue eyes and boyish smirk.

Then I pictured the park near our apartment.

I’d never tried to flash while I was running, and I had a feeling if I tried to think of our actual apartment, I would end up crashing through a wall.

Of course, that was assuming I succeeded.

“Come on,” I gasped. My speed might be incredible, but I was running out of air fast. I gathered all the power I could find inside myself, crammed it into an imaginary ball, thought of home again, and wished on a goddamn star.

For a second, nothing happened. Then in a blink it felt like I was being torn in half.

The light winked out, pain ripped through me, and the next thing I knew, I was careening through a sea of dead brush.

The sturdy ground beneath my boots turned to slick mud, and I only made it a few more steps before my ankle twisted and I went down hard.