Page 31 of Cast in Shadow (Drenched in Darkness #1)

Violent energy wrapped around me like a fist, and the power of the Alius wrenched me through the tear in the veil. It twisted me up and turned me around, before I hit something hard enough to knock me out cold.

When I pried my eyes open, my head a throbbing mass of black spots and scattered thoughts, I was face down in the dirt with no idea how much time had passed. But there was no question where I was. Raw magic infused the air, dancing across my skin and sinking into my bones, along with a soul-deep sense of dread.

I tried to move, until an explosion of pain in my hip snatched the breath from my lungs. There were other things that needed healing too, a whole mess of things, but my first point of order was to push through the misery threatening to drag me under and get on my fucking feet.

The Alius wasn’t the kind of place where a soft, squishy mortal like me could simply lay down and wallow. Not if I had any intention of surviving for more than a few minutes.

An animalistic growl sent a new rush of adrenaline careening through my veins. The demon. That had to be his gravelly voice, and he was way too close.

I couldn’t quite feel his breath on my neck, but that might have been because nothing much existed beyond the agony pulsing through my hip and leg when I tried to get up. I couldn’t even drag myself to my knees.

To make matters worse, it’d been over a century since I’d learned to heal myself here. The magic in the realm warped my innate powers in unpredictable ways, and I wasn’t entirely sure I remembered how to make it work.

Not that I had time to worry about it.

A huge taloned hand wrapped around the back of my head like it was palming a basketball and lifted me from the ground. My head and hip screamed, and I screamed right along with them, unable to bury the pain. It was too fresh. Too serious. Too much.

Angry red eyes searched my face. A cruel smile curved the corners of glossy black lips. I might have been in a world of agony, but if that asshole was waiting for me to start begging, he was shit out of luck.

Instinct had me kicking with my good leg to get away from him even as fire burned through my skull and down my body. I gripped his wrist, digging my nails into his sickly brownish-green scales.

It was no use. The darkness bloomed, growing thicker and darker as more and more pain engulfed me.

Another growl pierced the space between us, and the demon jerked at the sound, releasing his grip.

Saved by the beast. That was the thought that followed me down as I crumpled to the ground. I had enough sense to roll away from the first demon, despite the flames scorching my joints and mudding my thoughts. It was so blinding that I barely noticed when I rolled right into a soft body .

Megan.

She was sprawled beside me, with her head kinked at an unnatural angle and her open eyes as dull and lifeless as the pitted gray stones that littered the ground around us.

Even if she’d managed to survive the trip through the veil, the demon had made sure she wouldn’t give him the same kind of trouble I intended to give him. Assuming I lived long enough to figure out how to heal myself again.

He hissed a string of monstrous syllables that sounded a lot like demonic curses, and my vision slowly adjusted to the dusky light enough to make out the scene.

He was facing off against another demon, but the two looked nothing alike. Where the one who had grabbed me had two dark green horns twisting from his misshapen skull, the other demon had a straight row of short spikes stretching from his broad brow, over his head, and dwindling in size as they reached the middle of his back.

The green demon reminded me of one of Picasso’s abstract paintings, with sharp, unbalanced features and dull scales, the color of dying moss. His beady red eyes were the only pieces of him that had any kind of symmetry.

I couldn’t see the second demon’s face, since he was between me and what I assumed was the Megan demon, but he sported scales that ran the gamut from a shimmering gunmetal gray to a deep indigo. In another world, another life, I might have called them pretty. The way they picked up the dirty orange light barely shining from the horizon and amplified it was mesmerizing. It gave him an unearthly glow in the fiery twilight, almost like the fire that fueled the universe lived inside him.

When he crouched, he moved like an enormous panther, his long tail swishing and flipping behind him. And the power pulsing from him like a primal heartbeat felt almost …

I shook my head to clear it of that dangerous thought before I could finish it, and instantly regretted moving. The ringing in my ears swelled into a symphony of deafening bells that had me curling in on myself and cradling my bloody head in my hands.

The gunmetal demon cast me a hungry look before it issued another command. There was something familiar about him. Like I’d seen him before, but I would have remembered scales like that.

What if that’s Emerson?

I dismissed the fleeting question. It couldn’t be him.

Could it?

The demon who’d just stared at me like I was his next meal looked nothing like the man I knew. But would he? When he crossed through the veil into this realm, could he even keep his human form or would he shed it like a snake shedding its skin?

What did I really know about that side of him anyway? It wasn’t like I’d ever seen him as a demon.

Another snarl. Another lunge and snap. Another pulse of adrenaline sailed through my blood, and just like that, my brain clicked back into survival mode.

I knew only three things for sure: I was seriously injured, I had a throbbing concussion that was messing with my mind, and if I had any hope of surviving long enough to find Emerson, I needed to find a safe place to heal myself.

The demons prowling the Alius were nothing like the Brethren. There was no underlying humanity keeping their darker urges in check. And even if the gunmetal demon was Emerson in my world, there was no guarantee that he would be the same “man” I knew here.

What if the things that made me fall in love with him were stripped away with his human body?

It was a crushing thought.

The only advantage I had was the creatures’ current preoccupation with each other. There was a hierarchy in the Alius, a pecking order, and fresh blood standing between two feral monsters was a sure-fire way to trigger a fight.

The Megan demon growled low as he and the other demon circled each other slowly, and I used their distraction to reach inside myself and search for the thread of power I needed to heal my hip. I found one that felt promising and tugged, but nothing happened.

The green demon lunged for the other with a roar, and the two grappled violently, slashing with deadly claws that would slice right through my tender human flesh like a hot knife through butter.

I searched within myself again, following the densely braided strands of magical power until I found another one that felt like it might be the right one.

It wasn’t.

A snarl ripped through the air, and the demons crashed together again in a tangle of talons and claws and teeth and horns. My pulse doubled down. I tried to shuffle away from the violence, but the pain made dragging myself more than a few feet nearly impossible without passing out.

Focus, Senna.

I needed to be able to fight off whichever demon won the battle, and I couldn’t do that if I couldn’t at least stand.

Come on. I can do this. I gave myself the little mental pep talk as I sifted through my power again. The next strand I pulled on sent a trickle of healing magic through my system. It was minimal, barely enough to heal a scratch, but it was the one I needed.

I closed my eyes and fought to remain perfectly still, despite the violent, bloody chaos happening a few yards away. The less attention I drew, the better. So, I focused all my attention on funneling as much of my power into that single strand as I could.

The injury to my head healed first, and the way the fractured bone weaved back together reignited my nausea, but I managed to swallow the acid back down. Then it was time for my hip. My burning desire to stay conscious faltered when the head of my femur popped back into place with a sickening thunk , but once it was seated, the relief made it possible to draw a full breath. Next, my magic went to work tackling the hairline fracture and the inflammation surrounding the joint.

When I opened my eyes, the gunmetal demon had the other one on the ground, and he was tearing into him with black claws that shined in the dim light. Part of me desperately wanted to believe that violent creature was Emerson, but what if it wasn’t? If I gave an inch without being absolutely sure, that would be the end of me. I would never see Shay or Nguyen again. I would never see the man I loved again. And he would be trapped in this hellish realm until the end of time.

I couldn’t risk it.

I guess that’s good enough, I thought, releasing that tenuous thread of my healing magic. If I managed to get away—and that was already a damned big if—I could finish healing the less pressing injuries later.

Pulling myself to my feet as quietly as I could, I gave Megan’s twisted body one last glance and took off into the twilight.

My heart was galloping in my chest even before I’d started running, and it didn’t take much to kick it up to the point where my lungs burned almost as much as the rest of me. Twisted branches reached from the shadows, snagging on my clothes, scraping against my skin. A trickle of fresh blood worked its way down my cheek, but I didn’t waste any effort wiping it away. Not when an unearthly howl rent the air, sending a wave of goosebumps tearing across my skin .

That howl wasn’t enough to tell which demon had won, but it didn’t matter. Whatever was coming for me, I just had to keep moving. Had to keep breathing.

My uneven steps faltered when something beat against my mental walls, and damn, it was strong. Unlike the scrape of the Megan demon’s magic, sharp and stinging, this one pounded. Hard. Like a battering ram on a castle gate.

Every impact reverberated through me.

There was no way I was letting my guard down, even to try to reason with the big gray beast. Reason didn’t exist in the Alius. It was too wild for that, and survival was the name of the game.

I ran for what felt like an hour, though it was probably only minutes, quickly slipping into a limping gate that became more pronounced with each step. The trees grew more dense the farther I hobbled, stretching so high into the dusky sky that I couldn’t tell where they ended and it began. They were just great wooden pillars rising into the nothingness.

The idea of scaling one of those towering trunks to buy myself a much-needed reprieve skipped through my mind, and I almost laughed at the absurdity of it. No, thanks to the state of my hip, I was definitely ground bound, which meant I was stuck weaving around those giant trunks and shoving through thorny bushes with my arms up to protect my face.

I was so focused on getting away that I didn’t even notice the mental pummeling had let up. At least, not until it started up again with a vengeance.

“Fuck!” I stumbled to a stop, pressing my palms to my temples in a feeble attempt to blunt the assault.

A quiet escape was clearly out of the question. That thing would just keep hammering at me until I was curled up on the ground in the fetal position trying to keep it out. Which reduced my options to hiding and hoping it didn’t find me or fighting a monster when I could barely walk.

Since I’d been trying to find a place where I could slip into the shadows and go unnoticed with precisely zero success, that left door number two.

Every breath I drew was laced with razor wire. Every step I took sent a wallop of ache ricocheting through my bones. And every attempt I made to conjure any of my magic as I ran fizzled.

But maybe I still had enough left in me for one more fight.

That was what I told myself as I scanned my surroundings for anything I could use as a weapon. What I settled on was a stick. Well, it was more like a tree limb, and heavier than it looked, but it still didn’t do much to boost my confidence.

Then I hobbled to the nearest giant tree and hid behind it. The bark was rough against my jacket. It was probably crawling with insects too, but I buried that thought and turned my attention to catching my breath.

I breathed in and out, as slow and steady as I could. With each exhale, some of the fog cleared, and more of the world came into focus. A dull, orange mist moved lazily along the ground, swirling here and there as a breeze cut through it.

For all the darkness in this world, it was unusually warm. Not fires of hell hot, thankfully, but warm enough that at least I didn’t have to worry about freezing to death.

As I waited, I tried to find anything that looked familiar. After more than a century, or however long had passed on this side, it was a long shot. But hey, what did I have to lose?

The mental clobbering picked up again, and I winced. It was like the thing was getting stronger.

Or I was getting weaker.

Nope. I refused to let self-defeating thoughts like that take up space in my brain. I was a hell of a lot stronger than the first time I’d landed in this place, and I’d taken some brutal beatings back then. So many that I’d lost count of how many times I’d healed myself while shaking with fear and fatigue, curled up in the smallest dark hole I could find.

I’d survived then. I could do it again.

Right?

Beneath the gentle sough of the breeze moving through the trees, I heard the beast stalking me. Awareness prickled my skin. I searched inside myself, gathering as many glitching threads of magic as I could.

It prowled closer.

I opened my mouth half an inch and breathed as silently as I could manage with the way my heart was racing.

Closer still.

Tightening my white-knuckled grip on the branch, I braced for what was coming. And yet, when something crunched to my left, it was close enough to have me biting back a yelp.

I swung with everything I had. The limb collided with the demon’s face, catching him squarely across the jaw, but instead of a bellow of pain, I was met with a startled snarl.

Shit.

His nostrils flared as he inhaled deeply. His red eyes narrowed.

Everything in me screamed for me to run, but that wasn’t an option. So, I gathered whatever sparks of magic I could conjure and swung again.

I was fast, but he was faster. And fucking huge. Even on all fours, he was still taller than me at the shoulder. He caught the limb and ripped it from my grip, wrenching me sideways as he did. Pain ricocheted across my ribs and down my leg, and I stumbled, going down hard.

He tossed the branch aside like it was nothing and glared down at me. Fear flooded my system as I scrambled backward on my hands and heels, but I only made it a few feet before he reached out one powerful arm, caught me by the leg, and yanked me toward him.

“Get off!” I tried to hit and kick and twist my way out of his grip.

My whole body howled in protest. My magic flickered and sputtered beneath my skin. But it was no use. It was like fighting a brick wall with a feather.

And when an enormous hand came down on my chest, pinning me to the red dirt, I forgot how to breathe. For one fleeting moment, I thought of Emerson and the way he’d pressed me against my Jeep days earlier, but the image dissolved in a haze of fresh pain as big black claws dug into my skin.

No matter how I moved or how hard I fought, I couldn’t break his crushing hold. Couldn’t budge his suffocating weight.

The demon lowered his face until it was barely an inch from mine. His breath scorched my clammy skin. Those glowing crimson eyes bore into me. With a low growl that set every one of my nerve endings on fire, the pounding against my mental barriers started again. And this time, running wasn’t an option.

Think you've seen the worst of it with that cliffhanger? Oh, babes… you're not ready for the ruin ahead.