Page 26 of Hellish Witch (Playing with Demons #3)

Chapter 25

T he soft breathing beside me finally evened out. I waited a few more minutes until it deepened to a soothing, slow rhythm.

Killian was asleep.

I cracked my eyes, peeking at him through my lashes. He rested on nothing but a bed of fallen leaves, since he’d insisted I take all the blankets we’d purchased from the inn. He clutched his sheathed onyx sword even in sleep, half-hidden beneath his wings, draping him like a blanket.

My stomach churned at the thought of what I was about to do.

Cookie was nowhere in sight, but I swore I could feel her, like a bright blip of energy, way up in a nearby tree. No doubt surveying her domain like the queen she thought she was.

Alpha’s signature was a little murkier, but there was a rippling disturbance only a few metres beyond the small clearing Killian and I had bedded down in. His trace seemed to circle us in a slow patrol.

My plan was crazy.

I knew it.

But that didn’t mean it wasn’t my best option. The only way I knew to keep everyone I cared about safe.

With a steadying breath, silent as a shadow-walker, I rose from my nest of blankets.

Pulling my knife free, I winced at the light scrape of metal. When the incubus didn’t stir, I leaned over his sleeping form.

I hovered there, knife poised in my shaking hand for a single second.

There was no undoing this.

His words from this morning hit me all over again.

I have to.

I struck.

Stormy eyes flashed open as my blade descended, but it was too late. The tip sliced through the meat of his forearm, opening a thin line through the chains inking his skin.

Confusion furrowed his brows a second before betrayal flooded silver-flecked eyes.

He tried to sit up but barely rose an inch.

My special poison was fast-acting. Already racing through his bloodstream, paralysing his nervous system in a numbing wave.

“Why?” he rasped through clenched fangs.

Moisture wavered my vision. I sheathed the blade at my hip and notched my chin. “I won’t let your loyalty to Rex get you killed.”

A growl rumbled his chest, but the sound was faint. Only a few more seconds and unconsciousness would drag him under.

Alpha padded from the shadows, moonlight bathing him as he entered the clearing. His head cocked as his hell-fire gaze jumped from me to Killian.

“Keep him safe,” I pleaded but I could already sense the denial from the hellhound before he even made a sound. “Please, Alpha. He needs you more than I do. The Bloodwood is no place for the unconscious. He’s free meat otherwise.”

The hellhound snapped his fangs at the air, but I knew he’d do what was necessary. Zoella and Rex would be devastated if Killian died. I’d left the familiar with no choice. I wasn’t the one defenceless and unable to protect myself in a place filled with hungry predators.

I was just the witch who’d left him like that.

My heart ached as I took one last look into Killian’s eyes, sparking with silver like the flash of lightning. Anyone else would have been unconscious minutes ago.

“Goodbye, Killian,” I whispered.

I gently pulled his wing back over him to keep him warm, resisting the urge to give his soft feathers one final caress.

I might never see him again.

Before I lost my nerve, I turned my back on the demon I’d cared more about than I should and hurried away from the clearing, plunging into the darkness of the forest proper.

Any stupid fantasies I’d had about us lay in ashes. We were never going to be together. Never going to become mates. Never have a family together.

I let it all go.

We wouldn’t have worked out, anyway.

He was a blood-soaked enforcer, and I was a healer. He was an incubus who loved to feed. He’d never give up sleeping around to settle down with one person. He was my brother’s closest comrade. They were practically brothers.

We weren’t even friends.

But a small voice in the back of my mind screamed at me to return to his side. He’d doled out brutal justice to anyone who’d hurt me. He’d buried a body for me, no questions asked. He’d carried me home and stayed to make sure I was okay. He’d visited me in my dreams. Ripped a man’s tongue out for insulting me. Remembered my birthday. Made me a cake in the middle of the Bloodwood.

He’d always protected me. No matter what it cost him.

If I’d just told him how I’d felt all these years, could we have made it work? Maybe he felt something for me too.

But how could he?

I was barely even his kind. I most certainly wasn’t his type. And he’d never tried anything with me before this cursed trip, despite the countless times he’d have felt my desire for him over the years.

My chest heaved. Tears fled down my cheeks. I furiously swiped them away as I hurried amongst the sea of trees, angling towards the border of the dark forest. I needed to focus, or I was going to end up as dead as my dumb dreams of being with Killian.

The bleeding bark suited my mood as I swept between the slender redwoods in the heavy night. This close to the edge, they were getting fewer, some of the smaller trees taking their place in sparse copses.

Undulating plains opened in the gaps, spreading far into the distance. Short grasses had dried out to a crisp wheat with the warmth of summer, but some patches of green still hid near the edges, the colours barely visible under the light of the full moon.

A flat swirl of colour, the size of a small cabin, smudged the air about half a mile beyond the last tree. It glowed with ribbons of pinks, blues and golds, all merging in a beautiful eddy that called out like a siren’s song.

I ducked behind a trunk just wide enough to conceal myself and scanned the dangerous territory between the forest and the portal.

The pretty smear tearing between realms sat in a hundred-metre radius of nothing. Just bare earth surrounded it on all sides until it met the dead grass beyond the barren circle, swaying lightly in the breeze.

It may seem abandoned, but it was a blood-soaked graveyard. There were always demons watching this place.

The shadow-walker kingdom lay beyond the plains, a dark beast crouched on the horizon, visible only in the red flames guarding their walls. They were our closest neighbours, and we’d only just brokered a trade agreement to allow safe passage for all hybrids crossing past their lands or using the portal.

Ironically, we traded life for death. Each month, we delivered a cart-load of our finest poisons from the Bloodwood. Half of which I’d designed myself.

Everything was quiet now though. I’d run out of reasons to stall, but the last I’d been to Earth, it hadn’t exactly gone well for me.

Taking a deep breath, I rechecked my poisoned daggers, securely sheathed at my hips and down my outer thighs, and took the plunge.

The grass gave way beneath my pounding boots as I sprinted from the trees, thuds echoing through the night. Wind whipped my crimson hair behind me as I ran.

The portal loomed closer.

Silver flashed on my right.

Instinct had me ducking into a roll. Something thumped into my shoulder blade, knocking me askew. Pain throbbed down my back as I caught sight of the feathered shaft sticking out behind me.

Yank it free and stab out your enemies’ eyes!

I sprang to my feet with gritted fangs, ignoring the arrow embedded in my flesh as much as the violent voice, and focused on survival. I weaved as I ran, trying to shake the archer’s aim.

I wasn’t too keen on getting a second arrow I’d have to rip from my flesh, even if I should be able to heal the damage.

Unless I was dead before I knew it.

I ran faster.

The portal loomed closer, pretty colours beckoning me. The air buzzed with power, even with the long metres between me and the dead zone.

Green streaked through my peripherals. A troop of orcs flowed across the plains, further along the tree-line.

My heart stuttered as it pumped liquid panic through my veins. I put on a burst of speed, ignoring the screaming pain in my torso. A few orcs in the group shot more arrows in my direction, barely pausing their loping strides.

I ducked and swerved to avoid the deadly missiles. It slowed my pace dramatically, though, and with the ground they were eating up, they’d beat me to the portal.

There was no way I could fight off this many demons. Not alone.

I reached for my dark power, pleading with the hungry beast to lash out as the group loomed closer.

Nothing happened.

“That’s the magic bitch!” the orc in front crowed, lifting his sword overhead with a victorious roar. “Take her alive.”

He must be one of the slavers that had escaped my massacre.

Terror made me miss a step, and my ankle rolled painfully in an unseen dip. Another spike of pain thudded into my upper back, hitting close enough to my spine for my nerves to spasm. Hissing a ragged breath, I stuffed the pain deep and shoved myself on.

Even if it came to a fight, I might be able to slip through before they could actually get their claws on me.

The logical voice in the back of my head called me a liar, but what choice did I have? If I didn’t get through now, Killian would catch up to me.

He’d get hurt fighting these brutes, or my magic would take him down.

Determination pushed my legs that bit faster despite the agony ricocheting through my body with every jarring step.

Shadows materialised around the portal, dark wisps almost impossible to see in the gloom.

They condensed until a group of shadow-walkers emerged, wreathed in smoke. Their eyes glowed like molten metal. I sucked in a ragged gasp but didn’t stop.

“Hey!” I screamed, breathless. “I’m a hybrid!”

We were allies, dammit. They might not take on an orc horde for me, but they’d at least let me past while they glared with glowy eyes at the orcs trying to murder me.

Another arrow whizzed by my head, nicking my ear.

I just had to get there.

The orcs loomed closer until I could see the bright-white tusks of the male in charge. He leered at me, arms pumping as his thundering steps shook the ground.

I crossed into the dead zone, smothered by a blanket of crackling power. Barely a hundred metres separated me and the shadow-walkers.

But I wasn’t going to make it.

The demons guarding the portal drew onyx swords, angling them towards the oncoming horde.

The female shadow-walker in the front roared, “Defend the hybrid!”

The slaver leaped towards me, his hand lashing out. I ducked, and his claws passed overhead, yanking out a few strands of hair instead of tearing my face off.

He snarled, sprinting behind me, and reached out again. In my periphery, an arrow sailed towards my head at the same time.

I made the split-second decision to lurch away from the arrow rather than the claws.

They sank beneath my ribs.

I hissed at the pain but managed to stay upright, momentum propelling me forwards. The orc tugged back, and my hiss ended in a scream as he pulled me to a halt with a handful of flesh in my side.

He snarled in my ear, “You’re going to regret killing my fucking brother, you filthy abomin–”

His claws yanked free in a flare of agony as he was knocked aside, his words cut off.

The overwhelming pain finally triggered the monster inside me.

That starved power burst free. It lashed outwards, invisible whips striking into friend and foe alike.

I cried out, blood pouring down my side. Darkness bled everyone on the plains.

Shock gripped me as I took in the downed orc. An enormous hellcat pinned him to the dirt, her claws mauling his chest as the demon screamed.

Narrowed blood-red eyes met mine. Go, before your power knocks you out. I’ll hold them off.

The sound of a familiar raspy voice snapped me out of the shock, my power stuttering right along with it.

“Thank you,” I choked out, unable to process that the violent voice in my head this past week had actually been her .

And what it must mean.

I lurched towards the portal before the darkness inside me could surge with a vengeance. Or the rapid blood loss could take me down.

The shadow-walkers swayed back to their feet as I staggered past, too many wounds cracking open their flesh.

A few of the stronger orcs recovered too, growling aggressively as they snatched up their weapons and faced off with Cookie and the injured shadow-walkers.

Guilt strangled me as I limped up to the pane of swirling colours, its magic already tugging me closer. Reeling me in like a fish on a hook.

I clutched my side, trying to stem the bleeding. Pain bit chunks out of my energy as my body frantically tried to repair itself.

My vision swam dangerously, but I managed a final glimpse of the proud hellcat baring her fangs at the advancing horde, and stepped back into the portal. “I’ll see you again…my familiar.”