Page 76 of Witchbane

Another thorn dug into my side, like a nail slammed into the wall of my ribs, digging deep, and finding a foothold in my flesh and soul, trying to reach my heart. I howled. Tore at the vine again. It kept trying to wrap around me, drag me downward, as though it planned to add me to the writhing mass of monster goo it had created.

If it took me over, Liam wouldn’t survive. I knew that; instinct giving me fight. I snarled at the monster, snapped at the vine, the grip of Underhill, and leapt forward. I wasn’t going to wait for it to attack. Wasn’t willing to let it take everything from me. I used what I had left. The hunger, the pain, the rage that it dared touch what was mine, and landed on top of the monster, ripping into it with everything I had.

I worried at the mass beneath my teeth, tugging and pulling until it bled a foul and bitter liquid. It tasted old, stale, and tainted, like blood mixed with metal and darkness, left in the sun too long. Rot, I realized. Gross.

Yet I refused to let go, even as it screamed. Not with Liam injured and needing me to protect him. And rather than toss the pieces aside for Underhill to reclaim, I devoured them, taking them for myself. Each wriggling, nasty bite. Gone were the dreams of sweet bread and delicate cakes. And all that remained was darkness expanding over my vision while I continued to rip, tear, and eat. Underhill would have nothing left to attack Liam with if I ate it all.

Liam’s voice screamed in my head, though I couldn’t make out the words. He seemed far away and I hoped he escaped. Wouldn’t want him to see me this way anyway, a mindless demon of destruction and pain. I felt like a throbbing wound, open and tainted. The vine continued to crawl up my side, curling around me, digging in more thorns and it didn’t matter how many times I ripped them away. I fought, tore, and ate. Rather than tossing the vines away I devoured them too, taking it all.

The weight of the darkness made it hard to breathe. The cold rot seeped into me, a familiar feeling, a bit like that awakening of the kitsune the first time. Rather than the rage heat, which had been soothing since I’d returned to Underhill this time, it was an icy freeze.

Too much, something within me said. We wanted warmth, not cold; it was why we clung to Liam. He was heat, safety, and love.

We have to save him, I told myself, thinking maybe I was speaking to the kitsune. We kept eating, intent on taking it all, because only then would he be safe, even if it meant our own destruction. There was no way I could hold it all.

The cold began to form a layer inside me. Almost like the forest god had done, creating a box to lock me up. A chill freezing my lungs and my breath came out in a mist. The mass of cold rot churned in my gut, building and building until I thought I’d explode. I continued to eat, unable to stop.

I stared into a swirling ripple while I ate for a few seconds before realizing it had to be the rift we’d come to find. The portal, gate, or whatever the fuck it was, flickered, as though the power keeping it open was dying. The other side looked like regular forest, but I couldn’t do more than stare as I continued to swallow down the vile ranks of the last roving monsters of Underhill. The pattern of world unwove for a moment. A bit like when we’d been in Kiran’s cave. I could see the strands of everything, tied together to create an existence, and yet unraveling as I devoured them.

Huh, I was devouring the magic that made up Underhill. Maybe that’s why it was fighting me. It rolled and wriggled in my gut like a living thing, trying to find a grip, only the more I swallowed, the less of a hold it got. But it was too much for me, I couldn’t hold it all.

Let go!Liam’s voice echoed in my head.

My kitsune fed on the ice, sucking down the power and the bitter edge of cold until I could feel it pulsing inside me. Expanding slowly until I felt like the walls of my own existence would burst. Too much, too full, no place left to go.

It hurt. Its need to be free was deafening me to everything else. Like if I let it go in that moment it would destroy everything, because when the kitsune ate death and destruction, it became death and destruction.

Seb! Can you hear me!Liam cried.

A little. I turned my gaze his way. He knelt on the ground and sketched out things with a broken piece of some rock that made a dark outline like chalk. Nick took a stand between me and Liam, sword ready, as if to defend Liam from me. But Liam was mine.

I am.Liam promised.Do you trust me?

I did. But I hurt. Never knew I could hurt like this. Physically wrapped up like a vice in the grip of a vine covered in thorns bigger than daggers. Even when I tore away the vine, it regrew over and over. Constricting tighter until I had to really fight to move, sending the thorns deeper into my flesh.

And emotionally attacking me with all the rolling waves of memories of failures. Even down to my soul, where the magic tried to pry its way between the bonds that tied Liam and me together. Soul bond and scion bond, I realized that if I’d been missing either, he’d have been peeled from me like old wallpaper. Sticky and painful, it didn’t hurt any less to have a thousand sharp fingers ripping at the edges.

Let me have it,Liam said.

What? The power? It was too much for me, how could he hope to contain it?

Trust me. Let go, my mate told me.The cold is too much.And I could see it then, how the ice was beginning to cover him, freezing him inch by inch on the outside, much as it was doing inside me. It was destroying the heat, that tie of warm safety was being eaten away. More than a sensation of warmth, it was Liam’s life that kept us from being frozen solid.

I cried out, horrified, and I wasn’t sure what to do.

Give it to me, Liam called.

What did he mean? I wasn’t about to sacrifice him. I couldn’t live without him—didn’t he understand that?

He stood and held out his arms as if asking for me to hug him. If I weren’t a thousand times his size in that moment, I might have. His hands glowed with power, bright enough I could barely see him beyond the pulsing light. Yet I pressed my nose to his face, my snout bigger than him, and breathed him in.

Sweet bread, vanilla, and Liam.Mate.

I sucked in air as the vine constricting me, digging in, began to shatter, heat flooding me to my core. Like a furnace it burst in a fiery wave through me, sliding through the mate bond and into Liam. I heard him gasp, saw the ice around him crumble and felt him begin to heal. He seemed to be holding the power in his hands, like he was gathering it, yet it grew and grew, while I began to shrink.

Trust me. Let me have it all,Liam said through our bond. His gaze focused on me rather than the magic he held. It would be too much for him too, wouldn’t it? How could anyone hold an entire world of power? I was a demon, what chance did he have of containing that power?

Always beautiful, Liam said.Mine first. Before the power. You will always be mine.