Page 30 of Cast in Shadow (Drenched in Darkness #1)

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“What the…” My voice faded, my brain stalling on the impossible.

Was Megan really kissing Shay?

No. Not even close.

Megan’s hands cradled Shay’s face, but there was nothing tender in her touch. Shay tried to push away and wrench back, but the witch’s fingers and jagged nails dug into her youthful skin, holding her captive. And then I saw it, a barely perceptible stream of energy flowing from my daughter into Megan.

Something inside me cracked. It might have been my heart. My soul. Or maybe my humanity. Whatever fractured, it released an inferno of licking flames that narrowed my vision and burned away the cold that had been sinking into my bones. Until all I could see was a dead woman with her blood-stained hands on my daughter.

“Let the girl go,” I ordered, letting my power roll through the command.

The witch’s treacherous mouth twisted up in a sneer. She spun Shay around and hooked an arm around her neck, using her as a shield as she walked them backward toward the gleaming infinity pool. “Come and get her,” she taunted.

My fingers twitched around the gun in my hand, but I didn’t raise it.

“Take the shot,” Nguyen whisper-shouted.

“Negative.” I was a good shot, but with the amount of magic charging the air, I couldn’t risk it. Not with Shay in the witch’s grasp. “We need to separate them first.”

“If you won’t do it, I will,” Nguyen growled, raising his own pistol.

“No!” The word was barely out of my mouth before my SIG was ripped from my hands by an invisible force.

Nguyen’s gun went flying too, clattering across the stone-gray tiled terrace.

Shocked, I stared at the smug expression on Megan’s face.

Telekinesis? This witch—this moral abomination—had the power to move things with her mind?

A whimper sliced through my outrage, and the momentary superiority was wiped from Megan’s expression, replaced by a grimace. Behind her, hovering a few feet above the gently rippling water, a sliver of orange light glowed, like a streak of fire trapped in midair, and it was growing.

My heart stuttered to a stop.

She’d actually done it.

Megan Navali had touched the veil with her magic.

She released Shay with a gut-wrenching scream, her hands flying to her head. She sank to her knees as panicked fingers clawed at her temples and yanked out tufts of dull brown hair. “Get out!” she screamed. “Get it out!”

I knew that feeling. Well, kind of. The demon who’d tried to latch onto me all those years ago had never quite made it into my head, but I understood the panic and that sick feeling that went down into the very pits of a person’s soul .

Unfortunately for her, I had no help to offer. No mercy to grant. Either she would keep the thing out or she would fail.

My money was on fail, so I rushed forward. “Shay?” She was dragging herself away from the writhing witch, with a look of horror draining the color from her cheeks.

Then Nguyen was there, hooking his big arms beneath hers and hauling her up and back. Not realizing it was him, she yelped and twisted away in surprise. Megan’s hand shot out, wrapping those treacherous fingers around Shay’s ankle.

“No!” I lunged for them both.

Shay kicked out as Nguyen got his hands on her again and pulled. They managed to break the witch’s hold, but when she glared up at them, pulling herself up to all fours with her long dress sliding across the smooth tile, her eyes weren’t black anymore. They were glowing a deep, dangerous crimson.

Dread sat like a stone in my gut. The demon had won, and it had taken all of a few seconds.

Megan’s body rocked back onto her feet, keeping her hands planted on the ground, like an angry cat getting ready to pounce. I pulled as much of my power to the surface as I could and dove for her before she could make her move.

A deafening snap charged the air when I made contact. Megan’s body collapsed beneath me. For a moment, she fell still. The energy drain was quick and violent, but the ribbon went to work refilling the well the next instant.

Then she moved.

Shit. I stayed where I was, pinning her down with my weight and my magic. That pulse should have been enough to incapacitate just about any living thing. Any mortal thing, anyway.

Had I just hallucinated that little twitch?

No, because she twitched again. Then her body bucked hard. She fought to throw me off as I pooled every ounce of power the ribbon was feeding me and turned it into a weapon. I didn’t have time to focus it into more than a pea-sized ball of pure light, but when I hit her with that charge, far stronger than the first, her body convulsed violently.

But even before the shuddering stopped, a muffled hiss ripped the short hairs along the back of my neck to full attention.

That isn’t good. I barely had time to think the words before I was thrown backward and collided with the hard terrace floor a few feet away.

There was bad, then there was worse.

The demon figuring out it had access to Megan’s magic definitely fell in the worse category.

I shot a glance to my left in time to see a heavy wooden deck chair smash into Nguyen from behind. He stumbled forward. Shay screamed.

Why the hell hadn’t he already thrown her over his shoulder and hauled her to safety?

I launched to my feet. “Get her out?—”

Something hard crashed into me from my right, knocking me off balance. I reeled like a drunk on a bender before I found my footing. When I did, I didn’t bother yelling at Nguyen or Shay again, I just shot toward Navali.

My magic might not be enough to put down the demon taking up space inside her, but I could at least buy my people time to get clear of the immediate threat.

I was nearly there, just three feet shy of her, when I was lifted off my feet by an invisible force. I twisted and wrenched my body in unnatural ways trying to break free, but it kept lifting until I was six feet off the terrace. Then ten. Then fifteen.

Terror etched lines in Shay’s sweet face below me before the energy pulling me up shifted and shoved me back down. I braced as best I could, but it wasn’t enough. Pain ricocheted through me when I hit, the designer tile cracking beneath me. Or maybe that was my ribs. Or my skull.

Agony exploded in my head.

“Senna!” Nguyen’s furious voice sliced through the ringing in my ears. I looked up, blinking the blurriness from my vision in time to see him shoving Shay behind him as Navali advanced on them.

“Run!” I yelled.

I tried to get to my feet, but my head was a mess of fuzz and pain. Warm blood leaked down my neck. Nausea rose like the tide in a storm inside me. I took two steps, stumbled over nothing, and landed hard on one knee.

Come on. I can do this.

My pulse was erratic. Every nerve was on edge. And worry and panic threatened to overwhelm me. I’d been through a hell of a lot worse physically, but I’d never been this fucking terrified in my life. Because I wasn’t scared for myself.

When Shay tried to push past Nguyen, yelling at him that they needed to help me, my heart swelled even though I wanted to scream in frustration.

“Run,” I yelled again, but it was too late. One second, my second-in-command was on the terrace, and the next, he was hurtling toward the glowing rift. “No!” My chest locked up tight.

I had half a second to imagine what would happen to him if he ended up in the Alius before he splashed safely into the pool below that strip of orange firelight, sending a wave of water over the glass wall on the far side.

The relief that swarmed me was short-lived, however. Shay was on her own, which meant I needed to keep that goddamned demon’s attention on me.

“Hey!” I yelled, waving my arms. “Over here, asshole!”

I lumbered forward, pumping what magic I could into my limbs to make them move faster, until the creature twisted around with a menacing snarl and hurled one of the metal firepits at me. I dove to the side, gritting my teeth against a fresh wave of pain. The thing missed me by inches, the heat coming off it searing into me as it streaked across the terrace and smashed into the half wall behind me, exploding in a shower of sparks and embers.

“You’re going to have to do better than that,” I taunted, my voice coming through confident and cocky despite the maelstrom of emotions whirling and whipping inside me.

I hauled myself up into a sprinter’s stance and shot forward as fast as my magic would carry me. Megan’s eyes narrowed a half-second before I slammed into her, and as we crashed to the unforgiving tile, I called on every ounce of power I had left and let it rip.

It wasn’t pure light, but it was enough to keep the demon down until I could hook an arm around its neck and start dragging it backward toward the rift.

“Senna!” Nguyen bellowed, pulling himself up out of the pool.

“Get Shay out of here!” I shouted back.

I was nearly to the edge when the demon inside Megan growled. It was the kind of sound that incited a primal fear no amount of logic or reason could temper. It tore through me just as something dark and feral launched an all-out assault on my mental walls. Clawing, digging, pounding, scraping.

The raw violence in the attack yanked me back in time to my first experience with a wild demon trying to break into my mind, and for a second, just one goddamned second, my hold on the monster faltered.

Megan’s body twisted out of my grip lightning quick. Those wiry arms wrapped around me. In the space of a breath, I was on the losing end of our grappling. I tried to call power from the ribbon to hit her with another pulse of energy, but it was weak at best.

Keeping the demon from getting inside my head and tearing my mind to shreds was taking too much of my focus.

The creature lifted me off my feet and slammed me into the tile.

More pain. More black spots dotted my vision. The tang of copper filled my mouth, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t drag enough air into my lungs.

Megan’s unnaturally strong hands pinned me down. Hot, fetid breath washed over me as she knelt, digging her knee into my ribcage. Fresh agony spidered out beneath her weight, making it nearly impossible to breathe. Or think.

And the ribbon? It wasn’t feeding me power anymore. It had pulled back, like it had to protect itself from the demon too.

Like it knew I was going to lose.

It was wrong.

My muscles screamed as I fought to break free, but the powerful demon inside Megan was relentless. It forced me down, magic clawing at my mental walls, scraping, digging. A sick parody of what I’d felt from Emerson a hundred times before.

Emerson. His name shot through my mind, not as a plea, but as a snarl.

I wasn’t finished. Not like this. Not when there was still a demon to kill. Still a daughter to protect. Still a man waiting for an answer I should have been brave enough to give him that morning.

For one blessed second, silence cocooned me.

Then, a bellowing, inhuman roar shattered it.

It wasn’t just in my mind. Megan’s head snapped up, her human teeth bared in a feral snarl before she was ripped off me.

I rolled to my side, gasping and gagging, fighting not to vomit. Sounds of a vicious battle surrounded me. Furniture was smashed to kindling. Grunts and growls permeated the night.

My first terrifying thought was that Nguyen had left Shay alone to shift and fight the demon on his own, but when my vision cleared, I saw him. He was locked in a struggle with Shay, holding her back as she fought to run to me. And beyond them, a whole different animal was in the fight now.

Emerson.

He was barefoot and dressed in nothing but a pair of worn blue jeans. Just like he’d been last night. Like he’d been waiting for me. And he’d stepped straight from that moment into one of my worst nightmares.

I blinked a few times in disbelief. Was it really him or was I actually unconscious and having some vivid hallucination?

I dragged myself up, the countless points of pain blossoming with every inch of movement. Yeah, I was definitely awake, but the mental clawing was gone, and Emerson really was there, with a familiar, threatening red glow in his eyes.

The fight moved almost too fast to track after that. Every time the Megan demon threw Emerson off, he flashed right back. Every time her smaller form slipped or twisted out of his grip, he shifted and caught her.

He lifted her up and smashed her into the ground. She yanked him down with her, threw him off, and rolled to her feet. And he grabbed her again. It was dizzying to watch, and not just because I could still feel the hot trickle of blood leaking down the back of my neck. They were both moving at supernatural speeds.

The demon eyed the brilliant orange rift and shoved Emerson toward it.

“Watch out!” I thought, practically screaming the warning as I moved closer. A fresh wave of panic rocked me. If she shoved him through into the Alius, he’d be lost to me .

I couldn’t lose him. Not after we’d just found each other again.

Understanding spilled through our link half a second before the demon twisted, reared back, and tore free of Emerson’s grip. She lunged for me, clawed fingers reaching. My weakened magic surged to the surface in defense, but Emerson caught her, wrapping one muscled arm around her neck and anchoring her in a choke hold.

Then he arched back, lifted her feet clear off the ground, and in a blink, they were closer to the edge of the pool. Closer to the rift. I rushed forward to help him shove her through, my innate magic tingling in my fingertips, but she kicked and twisted, nearly breaking free again.

One second, everything was chaos. The next, when Emerson and I locked eyes, the world slowed to a crawl.

“Forgive me.”

It took me a beat to catch his meaning, and when I did, my heart twisted in my chest. He wasn’t asking for forgiveness for the past. Not with the softness in his voice or the sadness in his crimson eyes.

He was saying goodbye.

“No.” I shook my head, blinking back stinging tears. But when I tried to close the distance, my legs refused to cooperate. My feet wouldn’t budge a single step, and he was the reason why. “Don’t do this.”

He hauled Megan’s writhing, screaming body back another step. “This demon is too powerful.”

I wanted to beg him to stop. I would have bartered my soul for more time—a second, a minute—just long enough to find another solution. Except deep down, I knew he was right. Someone had to hold the thing and drag it back through, but that didn’t mean everything inside wasn’t screaming at the universe to make someone else do it .

He wrestled the Megan demon back one more step, right to the edge. The glowing tear in the veil swelled and pulsed, as if reaching for them both.

“I love you, Senna.” His voice in my head was calm. Quiet. But the words cracked through my chest like a whip. “Then. Now.” He closed his eyes for a beat, and when he opened them again, I could have fallen into that ocean of blue and happily drowned. “Always.”

We stared at each other for gods only knew how long, thoughts and emotions swirling between us without barriers. It was probably only seconds, but a lifetime of longing threatened to crush my bruised heart.

Then, with one final nod, he hauled the Megan demon back through the veil.

The moment his magic released me, I lunged, my heart hammering in my throat. I skidded to a stop at the water’s edge, my hands grasping at thin air as the magical streak of fire flared in front of me.

“Senna, get back before that thing pulls you in too!” Nguyen’s voice cut through the horror and heartbreak churning inside me.

The idea of going back to the Alius turned my blood to ice in my veins. It had taken me forever to find a way out the first time, and once I’d finally broken free of that damned realm, I swore I would never step foot in it again.

Now Emerson was there, and no matter how powerful he was, he couldn’t escape that place on his own. His demon blood would keep him trapped for eternity. He’d sacrificed his life here to keep me safe. He’d given up any hope of a future with me to protect my world and the people in it.

And the only way to get him back would be to go back.

Bile burned up my throat. My fingers trembled as I watched that eerie orange sliver of light begin to fade .

Could I do it? Could I go through that hell again with no guarantee that I could bring him home? That I could even survive long enough to find him?

“Senna?” Shay’s voice slipped through my thoughts, bringing with it a jolt of reality.

I turned to look at her. Nguyen had his arm wrapped protectively around her slender shoulders, holding her back from coming closer. I couldn’t leave her, could I? She was an adult, technically, but barely.

What kind of mother would it make me if I left now?

“Come on, Senna,” Nguyen said, his voice gentle. He held out a hand, and I was so goddamned tempted to take it. That way was safety. That way was the life I’d spent decades building, and it was a life I knew well.

Following Emerson was guaranteed pain and suffering, but it was also the only chance I would have to feel whole again.

I was caught in an internal loop of warring priorities when Shay shook her head. It was a tiny movement, so small I wasn’t even sure I’d seen it until she mouthed a single silent word. “Go.”

Hot tears spilled down my cheeks. She really did know me better than anyone.

“I’ll find a way back,” I whispered past the lump in my throat. “I promise.” Then I turned and dove through the disappearing rift.