Demon Marked

Any lingering doubts about the existence of demon spells and dark magic faded as Emma spoke words in a language Andre couldn’t identify, then opened her mouth, releasing a shimmering stream of... flies.

Tiny black, buzzing dots rushed toward the blood circle and the men standing inside it, swarming over their bare skin, covering them until every man looked like a shadow of himself. Shadows that writhed and screamed, colliding with one another in a desperate attempt to run from the biting, stinging specks of black.

But there was nowhere to run. The blood glowed bright red on the floor, creating some kind of invisible fence. Each time one of the men drew too close to the markings, he was repelled back to the center, back into the heart of the swarm.

You’re losing your mind. Andre closed his eyes and shook his head, struggling to clear it. Surely he was hallucinating. The Hamma in his bloodstream was making him see things that weren’t happening, making him imagine all this. He swallowed against the nausea rolling through his midsection, blinked away the spark-infused sweat rolling into his eyes.

“Holy fucking—Shut it down! Shut it down!” Andre looked up in time to see Francis lunge for Emma, grabbing her by the shoulders and shaking her like a doll. Her head snapped back and forth, her eyes rolling back in her head. “Stop that shit. Now!”

Andre struggled against the rope binding him to the chair, rage banishing the effects of the drugs for a moment as he fought to gain his freedom. He was going to kill Francis for touching Emma, then kill him again for ripping their family apart, then kill him again for murdering his father and poisoning him with Hamma claws, then—

“Fuck this shit.” The man who’d been dragging Andre’s chair toward the circle bolted for the door, knocking Andre over in the process.

He hit the ground hard, shoulder bruising, breath rushing from his chest, making him even more highly aware of his racing heart. He felt about ten seconds away from a heart attack. He needed that antivenom, but he wasn’t a fool. Francis didn’t intend for him to live. Whatever Dr. Finch was bringing up here, it was probably another breed of poison. His only chance of survival was to grab Emma and run for the door and hope they could find a cab willing to take them to the nearest ER.

Shoving away the rotten feeling spreading through his insides, Andre brought his knees to his chest, caught the bottom of the chair with his heels, and shoved. Simultaneously, he lifted his arms as high behind him as he could, silently thanking his trainer for making him stretch after every lifting session.

One try, then two, and finally the chair flipped beneath him, the back digging into his spine for several painful inches before it completed its turn from right side up to upside down. He was still bound to the middle and unable to use his hands, but his feet were free. He could run. Or at least walk. He rolled onto his stomach and scrambled into a standing position, swaying as his guts cramped hard enough to make him moan. The rush of the Hamma was coming faster now. The pellets must have burst in his stomach. He had to hurry; he had to get to Emma before he was too sick to be of any help to her.

He stumbled across the room, dragging the chair behind him. Francis now had the woman he loved by the neck, his thick hands squeezing so tightly that Emma’s face had flooded red and her veins stood out in sharp definition. He was strangling her to death. The realization gave Andre the strength to run the last few steps. He hurled himself at Francis headfirst, ramming into his cousin’s rib cage hard enough to send a flash of light streaking behind his eyes.

They fell to the ground, and Emma collapsed beside them, coughing as she struggled to breathe. Andre slammed his head into his cousin’s, barely noticing the pain as skull knocked against skull. He didn’t have the use of his hands; there was no choice but to use his head.

He was rearing back for another attack when a burst of electricity exploded inches from his face. He looked down to see Francis’s eyes bulge wide. His cousin had been hit with a stun gun. A gun set to full strength if the bowing of his spine as the pulse surged through his body was any indication. When he fell back to the floor, he was completely motionless but for the twitching of his eyelids. Francis wouldn’t be a danger to Emma or anyone else for several hours. It was time to get out of here, time to—

“A little to your left,” a male voice said, one Andre recognized but didn’t fear. Who was it? If only his reeling head would clear. “She’s right by your—”

Andre spun toward the hands busy at his wrists, and the world spun along with him. His vision wavered, and it took several seconds for his eyes to focus in on the face of the man untying him. When he did, his relief was so profound, he could have cried like a goddamn baby.

Jace finished freeing him from the chair and pulled the gag from his mouth. “Francis gave me an overdose of Hamma.” Andre forced the words out, though his tongue felt thick and unwieldy in his mouth. “He said Dr. Finch had some antivenom, but—”

“Fuck, I stunned him on the way in. Let me go see if he had the antivenom in his bag and I can shoot you up myself.” Jace slapped Andre on the shoulder before turning to where his wife knelt by her sister on his other side. “Sam, I’m going into the hall. I’ll be back in two. Maybe less. Francis is down at about sixty-three degrees, and the rest of them are trapped in the—”

“I can see them, all of them,” Sam said, her usually brown eyes glowing an eerie blue. Just like the blue light that came from her sister’s hands when she was feeding her demon mark. “Just hurry and get something for Andre.”

Andre met Sam’s strange eyes and, for the first time, those eyes connected with his, holding his gaze for a tense moment before she turned her attention back to her sister. She could see him. Despite the fact that she’d been blind since she was a child, Sam could really see him. If the stories he’d heard were correct, that probably wasn’t good news. Sam could see only people who were on the verge of a major transition in their lives.

“Emma. Sweetie, can you hear me?” Sam brushed the hair out of Emma’s face, but Emma only twitched in response. Her eyes were rolled so far back in her head that only the whites showed. “Emma, talk to me. Emma, what did you do?” Sam raised her voice, struggling to be heard over the men still moaning in pain inside the circle. At least the screams had stopped, but the low, pitiful moans were almost worse. There was more than defeat in those sounds; there was death. “Honey, you have to—”

“She cast a spell,” Andre said, the room tilting and the ground waving beneath him when he tried to move closer to Sam and Emma. He swallowed hard, fighting the nausea that threatened to turn him inside out.

“She was ... trying to save my life. They were going to take me into the circle.” Andre willed his racing heart to slow. He had to hold on, had to do whatever he could to help Emma. “She sent those flies ... they came out of her mouth.” He sucked in a deep breath that only made the sickness spreading through his body worse.

Sam sighed and cast sad eyes toward the circle. “Well, they should be coming back soon. Looks like they’re almost finished.”

It took several seconds for his body to respond to his brain’s command, but finally his arms and legs cooperated in helping him turn just enough to see the men who had betrayed him. Or what was left of them. Inside the circle, only two men still moaned and writhed. The rest of them were already still and motionless on the carpet and didn’t look like they’d be getting up again.

The flies had abandoned the dead, who lay shriveled and deformed, twisted into shapes human bodies should be incapable of making. For a moment, Andre was certain it was his own wavering vision that made the corpses appear so distorted, but when the room steadied, the horrific view remained the same. Worse, even. Because now he could see the men’s faces, see the expressions of terror and agony that spoke of the nightmarish pain they’d endured before they were allowed to die.

Emma had done that to them. She’d killed nearly twenty men in a manner any court in the world would deem torturous, monstrous.

He’d been prepared to kill his cousin seconds ago and threatened to kill Anthony for shooting Emma, but the truth was that Andre had never taken a human life. Ever. He’d never even seen a dead person outside of a funeral home. The rest of the Contis dealt with the disposal of inconvenient corpses. He was the man who worked within the law, who bent it and stretched it and occasionally broke it, but never in a way that would earn him the death penalty.

The reality of that hit home with a vengeance, making the sight before him even more horrible. It wasn’t just a murder scene; it was a testimony to the fact that the woman he loved really was two different people.

“Which arm do you want this in?” Jace had returned and was kneeling by his side with a prepped syringe and an alcohol swab.

“Is that ... the real—” Andre broke off as a wave of bile rose in his throat. Whether it was caused by the Hamma overdose or the slaughter he couldn’t seem to tear his eyes away from, however, he couldn’t say.

“It’s not what he had prepped. I mixed it myself. That’s why it took so long.” Jace helped him peel off his jacket and roll up the sleeve of his shirt. “I’m ninety percent sure this is the antivenom.”

“That’s going to have to be good enough.” Jace swabbed the crook of his arm. The sharp, astringent scent of alcohol cut through the air, helping clear Andre’s mind enough for him to force his eyes away from the circle, where the last man had finally stopped moving. “You need this. The sooner the better.”

The fear lurking in Jace’s usually shuttered features told him he must look as horrible as he felt. He and Jace had always been close, best friends as well as cousins. Seeing Jace in a coma last spring had torn him up inside. Silently, he prayed Jace would be spared the experience of seeing him hooked up to a dozen machines, fighting for his life. Grieving Uncle Francis’s passing would be hard enough. The elder Francis had been everything to Jace: an adopted father, a mentor, and a friend. It was going to kill him to know that he was gone, murdered by his own son.

Andre nodded, watching with strange detachment as the needle pierced his skin and the silver liquid flowed into his vein. Even knowing the pain that would hit in a few seconds as the venom and antivenom waged war on the battlefield of his internal organs couldn’t seem to penetrate the fog that had settled around his mind. He couldn’t think—or feel—much of anything. He knew only that he was numb and strangely cold and sore all over. He was probably going into shock.

The buzzing of the flies drew closer, and a black cloud streamed over his head—close enough for him to see that the specks of black weren’t flies at all, but tiny drops of black liquid that sparkled as they drifted by. Still, he couldn’t seem to summon an appropriate response. He simply turned his head and watched the droplets merge together, becoming a thin stream of oil that flowed down to Emma’s mouth and slipped through her parted lips.

By the time the antivenom began to burn through his arms and legs, the blackness had disappeared inside of her, tucked away like a secret. But the dark wasn’t a secret anymore. It was a very real, very terrifying reality, one he wasn’t sure he knew how to deal with.

He loved Emma, but ... Could he build a life with a woman who lived with a monster locked away inside her? He didn’t know. He only knew that a part of him was almost relieved when his racing heart finally hit the wall. The stillness in his chest was oddly peaceful. Calming. Seductive.

Andre was dimly aware of Jace shouting and guiding him onto his back on the carpet, but soon his eyes slid closed and the outside world faded away. And then there was only himself, alone, slowly being burned away by the drugs whispering through his system.

Emma came back to herself just as Jace began rescue breathing. On Andre. Andre wasn’t breathing. She hadn’t saved him. And now the darkness inside her was more formidable than ever. She could feel it surging through her blood, pressing against the inside of her skin, shoving at the boundaries of her flesh in an attempt to make more room for itself.

“Calm down. You’re going to be okay.” Sam tucked her hair behind her ears, ran soothing hands in circles on her back.

Sam. Sam and Jace were here. Everything was going to be okay. Emma glanced back at Jace, who was performing chest compressions on his cousin. No. Everything wasn’t going to be okay. Inside her, the darkness squirmed into the base of her brain, making clear thought almost impossible. She’d murdered an entire room full of people, and a few feet away, the man she loved was dying. Nothing was okay.

“Jace already gave him the antivenom. Now, give him space. He knows what he’s doing.” Sam held her in place with a hand on her arm. “We’re going to figure out a way to undo this.”

“When I talked to Andre this morning, I could tell something was wrong. We booked a flight right away and were deboarding the plane from Seattle when we got a message from the family Francis was supposed to meet in Vancouver. The crash is all over the news. Then we got your message and headed straight here. I’m just sorry we didn’t get here sooner. Before ...” Sam trailed off, but Emma could guess how her sister would have completed the sentence.

“Let me go, Sam.” Something in her voice must have told Sam that she wouldn’t be taking no for an answer. Her sister released her arm with a sigh, and Emma was off, crawling across the carpet to Andre, a part of her surprised to find that her knee no longer hurt. What the darkness had stolen from those men had healed her, a small drop of goodness in the midst of the awful.

“Andre. Andre, can you hear me?” She crouched near his head, running a soft hand through his hair, whispering into the shell of his ear. He was so beautiful, even sweaty and covered in spark. It was impossible to imagine a world without him, without his smile and his smart-ass remarks and his touch.

God, his touch. He might never touch her again. She was a repulsive freak. But that was okay. It would be worth it if Andre lived. He had to live.

“Andre, please. You have to fight this.” Panic pulsed inside her chest as Jace moved in to give Andre two strong breaths, then moved back to his chest for more compressions, with no noticeable response from his cousin. Andre wasn’t breathing; his heart wasn’t beating. It was only a matter of time before he was gone forever.

Tears spilled down Emma’s cheeks while the darkness churned and frothed inside her. She could feel the demonic presence pushing at her thoughts, her feelings, her memories, trying to replace her fear with hatred, her sadness with hunger. Connecting to the magic of the spell had given her demon link an incredible surge of power. But it couldn’t consume her completely, not while there was still a chance for Andre. She loved him too much to let the darkness take her over. She had to fight back, had to cling to the human part of her and do everything possible to save his life.

“I’m going to try to pull some of the drug out of him and into me,” Emma said, threading her fingers into Andre’s hair, hooking up to his mind in the same way she had a few hours before.

Sam’s blue eyes flicked from Emma to Andre, supposedly looking for some sign that Emma’s touch was helping or hurting. It was only then that Emma realized her sister was seeing her. Her and Andre. It was a bad sign, but one she struggled to ignore. She had to try to save him, and this was the only thing she could think of that might help.

“I pulled the drug out of two other men. One of them died, but the other one ... I’m not sure about ...” Emma trailed off as she focused her attention entirely on the man beneath her fingertips.

Memories flowed in from his mind—Andre catching her sneaking out of the strip club, Andre gagged and bound and watching her crumple to the floor after she was shot—but she pushed past them. She didn’t want his memories; she didn’t want to feed on him. She wanted to feed on something else. ...

Emma closed her eyes, ignoring the sweat that had broken out on her upper lip, struggling to find the toxin floating through Andre’s body. She pictured the pellets of drugs in her mind’s eye, imagining what they must have looked like as they traveled down to Andre’s stomach. For the first few seconds, the visualization did nothing, but then, slowly, Emma became aware of a knot in Andre’s energy, a place where the flow of life force had slowed and cramped around a foreign invader.

Carefully, holding on to the sensation, Emma psychically encouraged the knot to open, to give up the poison locked inside. She coaxed and cajoled, kneading at the place with her mind until finally the cramped energy released with a spasm. Emma pounced on the fistful of Hamma, pulling it toward her, imagining the gold poison seeping into her fingers, flooding her with the venom.

At first, she felt nothing, not even the usual jolt of energy she received from a feeding, but then ... her heart began to speed ... and her stomach cramped, balling into that familiar pit of nasty. Faster and faster, until her pulse beat behind her aching eyes and the world spun in great, throbbing circles.

Inside her, the darkness howled, protesting the invasion of the poison, screaming that silent scream only she could hear. It rocketed through her mind, fracturing her thoughts, destroying her focus, biting and scraping and clawing away every psychic wall she’d ever erected. Soon, she was aware of only the pain, a pain so horrible there were no words to describe it. And then, even the pain faded as something within her threw up one last frantic barrier, protecting her from the sensation of her brain being shredded to bits.

She was outside of her body, outside of time, locked away in some secret inner space she hadn’t known existed. But even from that padded room deep in her own mind, she was dimly aware of the sound of a man drawing a deep breath and calling out her name.

It was her last thought before she collapsed onto the cool, hard floor of her inner prison and fell into a sleep deeper than she’d ever known, so deep she wasn’t sure she’d ever wake up.