Page 40 of Shifters Unifying (Shifters Destiny: Willow Creek Shifters #2)

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

emma

Somewhere in Louisiana

My ankle bones crunched on landing, and my legs folded as I slammed into the earth in the clearing in front of the cave. The ground shook from the impact of a thousand pounds of bear, and I fell backward onto my furred bottom with Marcus clutched in my furry arms.

Hell. That hurts.

Pain shot through me as I scooted back into the cave, hoping desperately that none of our attackers had yet gone inside.

As softly as I could, as gently as bearly possible, I placed him on the ground beside me and jumped up back onto my rear paws.

Freaking everything from my bear tail down screamed in pain.

So much for magic keeping me safe. My bones had to be broken.

I shifted to my human self, summoned a flood of power, and began hastily crocheting magic into the strongest shield I could, fitting it to the mouth of the cave.

With my hands stretched toward the entrance, I knit as fast as I could.

Shadows rained down from the ridge, over the sheer rock face, and landed on the ground in front of the opening.

Figures raised out of the ground, and one stuck its arm into one of the gaps, its fingers stretching into long shapes, clawing their way closer and closer.

Whimpering, I trembled and leaned away from the slow-motion attack. Finally, I pulled my magical weave tight, effectively chopping off the inky limb.

The figure screamed, a tormented sound. It recoiled.

The appendage dropped into the cave and squirmed on the ground like a headless snake before it disappeared in a puff of black smoke, leaving only an ashy residue on the ground.

Four of them threw themselves at the see-through wall I was erecting and spread themselves over the surface.

More shrieks echoed through the woods as they broke down against my magic, turning from shadow to blackened skeletons to nothing.

The pressure from their sacrificial attack weakened the strength of my wall, and I trembled as the weave broke in several places.

Six more mages took the place of the first four.

“Darkness is no match for light,” I snarled.

At my feet, Marcus moaned. “Emma? What’s happening?”

“They found us,” I wheezed and glanced at him. “I need you. Link with me.”

He reached for his head, panting. “I’m not sure I can. The cave’s spinning.” He rolled to his side and retched, the watery vomit making little rivulets in the dirt floor.

But I didn’t budge.

“Just shift back and forth until I can syphon off of your energy,” I commanded.

A puff of wind, a breeze, and a gust followed as Marcus had to be changing from one form to the next in rapid succession. I kept building, thread on thread, layer upon layer.

He shifted back to his human self and grabbed my ankle. A rush of new energy exploded into me, and the latticework came together, faster than before.

The shadow mages continued their onslaught, striking the shield and destroying themselves against it. Their suicide mission kept on, breaking small holes in the exterior layer of our defense.

“How long can you hold that?” Marcus asked, climbing to his feet and swaying as though the room still spun. He pressed his hand to the rock wall to steady himself.

“I don’t know.” Beads of sweat broke out on my upper lip, and my heart pounded in my ears. “As long as I have to.”

“What’s that mean?”

“I have to keep adding interior layers as fast as they break down the outer one.” Nine took the place of the six, and the muscles in my shoulders burned.

“So not forever.”

“Until I run out of strength. Or they do.” Unsustainable. They were using me against myself. They didn’t care how many of them died. They only had to wait until I lost strength, lost focus and slipped up. “Let’s hope there’s not a back way in. I sure as hell can’t maintain two of these.”

“Then we have to change the equation.” His head swiveled on his neck. “We made it to the cave.”

“Let’s hope the relic trove is still at the rear. How far back?”

“Not far.” He stumbled toward the rear of the cave. “What are we looking for?”

“Cubed. Shaped. Rock,” I panted, still on my knees directly in front of the cave opening.

He disappeared, hugging the wall for support.

One figure rose from the ground, its red eyes staring into mine.

You’ll never make it. Acheron’s wheedling voice leached into my mind. You will die. Logan will die. And I will devour them all.

No. Get out of my head. But I dropped to my knees and cried out as another layer of magic broke lose. Logan will live. I can’t live without him.

Marcus shuffled back toward the front of the cave, leaning against the rocks and lugging a cubed stone about eighteen inches by eighteen inches. “Is this it? Doesn’t look like anything, but straight lines and corners aren’t natural.”

“Fuck if I know,” I rasped.

More shadows slammed into our shield.

Glowing crimson orbs burned in my thoughts. You will lose.

More hateful threats echoed in my head, and I braced against the onslaught of despair which threatened. My shoulders slumped.

Marcus pushed off the wall and struggled to cross the space between us. With a grunt, he dropped the stone behind me. He shoved it against my bottom. “Sit on that.”

When it connected with my skin, the stone brightened until it glimmered like a crystal, and Marcus staggered back and slid down the rock. “Fuck.”

“What is it?”

“It’s syphoning more energy through me.” He shook on the floor, and his wounds opened wider, blackened pieces of him pealed back from the gashes, and fell to the ground. Blood spilled from him and stained the dirt beneath his writhing body.

“It’s… killing… you.”

“No, no, it’s not. She’s in my head, trying to take control,” he gasped. “Do what you have to, Emma.”

I repositioned until I could sit on it and gasped at the heated flood. Between the two of us, it was twice as much energy as I’d pulled through the squirrel shifters back in Nuttal. Warmth and light poured through me, nearly obscuring my vision.

Call it instinct. Call it know-how.

But in that instant, I knew what I had to do.

“When I release the shield, don’t move. Stay down,” I barked. “Or you’ll be dead.”

He grunted, still convulsing beside me.

A moment later, I allowed as much power to fill me as I could and abruptly released the shield.

It exploded in a fireball of rainbow brilliance.

Shards flew outward from the cave and into the forest, landing in a glittering coating on the ground.

I dropped down, pressed my palms to the earth beside me, and opened myself to the primal energy of the ancient shifters.

Thunder rolled beneath the topsoil, and I drew the shards of my shield into the earth. The magic seeped in and burst out. The ground lit up as white, blue, red, and green flames danced over it and destroyed nothing. Except…

Twenty more shadow figures rose, moving over the surface, attempting and failing to outrun my fire. They screamed and flailed as the light consumed them. Instead of us being devoured by Acheron’s dark magic, I’d consumed them with mine.

But Marcus’s anguished shriek joined the shadow mages, and he clutched his head, rolling side to side. He tugged at his ears and eyes and nose.

I kneeled beside him, caught his shoulders, and put my full weight on his chest, attempting to hold him in place. “Marcus, can you hear me?” I yelled into his scrunched face. “Tell me what’s happening.”

But his eyes remained tightly closed, and he didn’t respond to anything I tried to ask him. Instead, he wailed and screamed and tried to break free.

I don’t know how long we stayed like that. Seconds, hours, I couldn’t tell. Sweat covered us both. Killing the mages had sent him into some kind of seizure, and I could only guess at what it meant.

Long after the last of our attackers vanished in a puff of black smoke, Marcus took a long, shuddering breath and finally laid still.

Scratches marred his cheeks and his forehead, injuries he’d caused himself.

But the gashes in his arms had closed, leaving only a reddish hint of what his sister had done to him.

I couldn’t carry Marcus and the stone back to Six-Mile, so he needed to wake up. Maybe I wasn’t great at delving, but I decided to risk it for the sake of his brain. I dragged the amplification stone close to his side and took a seat on it.

Carefully, I pressed my hands on either side of his head, determined to find out what had happened to him. With the stone touching me, it was easier to sort through the intricate mess in his mind, and I tried to effect healing in the broken places.

Acheron had done this to him, bonded to Marcus somehow, using his sister.

Had that been what Marcus had meant when he said she was in his head?

Had that been what had been troubling him on our journey?

Dammit. How awful. His sister had been scrambling his mind. Fuck Acheron.

Suddenly, an image, a spot on a map, flashed through my thoughts…. A location.

But it wasn’t something from Marcus’s mind. It had a different feel than his memories. This one had been placed there, deposited inside him, against his will.

I gasped and dropped my hands. It was the location of Acheron’s hiding place.

So… even as his sister had been obeying Acheron’s commands, she’d been planting her own clues, planning for Acheron’s demise. What a freaking civil war had to have been in the alpha’s head.

Marcus stirred, rapidly blinking. He groped at the air. “Emma? Is that you?”

“I’m here,” I said, catching his hand and giving him an encouraging squeeze. “Wasn’t sure you were going to wake up anytime soon.”

“Me either. I was a little lost in there… at least until you showed up.”

I shrugged. “You weren’t awake to ask permission, but I delved you. Healed what I could. Brain work is a bit more complicated than body work, and I’m nowhere nearly as good as Torbin.”