“Your head is mine,” Hunter said, taking short lunges to terrorize the evil being that had wreaked so much havoc.
“If you touch me, you will be cursed for a hundred generations!”
“Don’t touch him, Hunter!” Sasha shouted.
But Shogun left her side to begin circling with Hunter.
“MacDougall?” Sir Rodney said, pushing past the wolves. “Me own damned bodyguard-me best man? What is this madness?”
“Kennan Kiagehul MacDougall! Did you even know my Unseelie name, Kiagehul?” the Unseelie shouted, holding his wand out before him. “Disinherited! Abused in your Seelie Court because of who my father was… Never in line for what was rightfully mine-well this time I decided to take it!”
“Treason!” Sir Rodney shouted, his fingertip sparking as he pointed hard at Kiagehul. “You were my most trusted, because of who your mother was to my court!”
“As though my father’s Unseelie line never mattered?” Kiagehul said, his eyes narrowed with hatred. “Had the Fae wars waxed differently, I would have been in line to rule.”
“But they didn’t… and I gave you a high post nonetheless-for your Seelie mother!” Sir Rodney shouted, veins of rage now standing in his neck and at his temples. “You take up your fate and lack of inheritance with your cold hearted queen, not me! She was the one who passed you over because of your father’s ineptitude in battle. I gave you asylum!”
“Dead man walking,” Hunter said, snarling.
“It’s like watching a foxhunt when the quarry is finally at bay, eh Kiagehul, you rat bastard?” an archer shouted from the trees, and then spit out the twig he’d been chewing on. “Only I’d like to see these dogs of war leave nothing of your stinkin’ carcass to bring home.”
“Did your queen know?” Sir Rodney paced along the perimeter of the black magick circle. “Out with it!”
“My queen will benefit greatly from your fall,” Kiagehul sneered.
Woods and Fisher finally caught up to the group, but all the Fae backed up as Kiagehul began to scream.
“Thrash him with the rowan branches to strip him of his power,” Sasha ordered. “Then cross his pentagram with the iron, gentlemen, and make sure you put a piece in his pocket so there’s no chance he’ll get away. This SOB is going to court tonight.”
Bear Shadow stood in the mist beside his pack brother, nerves taut, gaze sweeping. Crow Shadow held the implements to break the curse; his job was to walk point and call the spirits. But something was wrong as he called Hunter’s name. Only strange silence came back… Then he saw it. Hunter’s wolf with red glowing eyes, a demon version of his courageous alpha.
The beast lunged so quickly that he didn’t have time in his human form to evade it. It was not pure mist but was dense, had weight, its jaws savaging his skin, tearing his flesh. Crow leaped in and tried to stab it with an iron stake, but it grabbed his arm between massive jaws, almost snapping bone, but Bear had climbed on the beast’s back to force it to turn its attention away from Crow.
There was no time to see with Silver Hawk’s eyes or listen to Clarissa’s shrieks. Crow Shadow gored the beast as it reared on its hind legs, standing Hunter’s wolf height of seven feet tall. Iron plunged through the beast, exploding it to cinders. Bear Shadow hurled a handful of rowan berries over Crow Shadow’s shoulder, screaming for him to get down as Sasha’s wolf charged out of the nothingness.
But that only burned away her fur, leaving a scorched demon wolf skull with glowing red eyes and a mangled, bloody coat. She stalked both men, circling them and waiting for Silver Hawk to enter as a demonic version of his Silver Shadow self.
“Something’s gone wrong!” Bear Shadow shouted out loud. “They’re not etheric doubles, they’re demons!”
Crow Shadow backed up with him as both warriors took a stand, surrounded.
“Pull them out!” Clarissa shouted, breaking the trance. “Something’s happened, Bradley.”
Doc shook Silver Hawk as he slumped forward on the table. Bradley jumped up from the table with Winters and dashed to the computer.
“The spell’s been changed, reinforced somehow. The one who cast it had to have been tipped off!” Bradley began searching through screens.
“They won’t last that long,” Clarissa shouted. “They’ve got one demon down; call Sasha’s cell! See if you can get through to Hunter to go in there and get his men out!”
Sir Rodney handed Sasha the cell phone as his retinue of soldiers blended into the trees. “It’s for you,” he said, puzzled. He nodded as she accepted the unit and pressed it to her ear.
“What?” Sasha grabbed Hunter’s uninjured arm as the retreat came to a full stop.
“I don’t mean ta rush the lady,” one of the archers said, “but we’ve got to get this bag of rot back to the dungeons and us out of the humans’ way, posthaste… And problem is we need a wolf to carry ’im through the forest, due to his iron-clad condition.”
“Hunter’s men are trapped in the shadow lands,” Sasha said quickly, relating the drastic events. “They’re up against my dark shadow self and Silver Shadow’s evil etheric, as well as Shogun’s, all alone… And who even knows how formidable the others will be?”
“It’ll take me a half hour to forty minutes to go back, assuming I’m not stopped,” Hunter said, beginning to pace.
“They’ll be dead by then,” Kiagehul called out, laughing a hysterical laugh of the criminally insane.
Sasha went to Hunter. “No. You were the first etheric double they put down. You go in there, focus on killing mine, and call me-I will hear you in my soul. Then let me go in there and fight with you to kill the rest. Your arm, baby,” she said, gently touching the edge of the tape. “Trust me to be by your side… Call me in there with you and don’t you dare die on my watch.”
She didn’t care if she’d just made an open declaration, a clear choice with witnesses all around, and didn’t care if Shogun or Sir Rodney was offended. She didn’t want to hurt them, but it was what it was. Something was lifting, breaking up like the congestion of a bad cold… The haze was gone. Hunter stared at her for a moment, his inner vision clear for the first time in days-she could feel it inside her like she knew her name, and that private knowing anchored her.
Hunter nodded. “I will call you as soon as the shadows are yours again.”
“Hunter,” Woods said, tossing him a semiautomatic. “This might not work, but it’s worth a try. Silver bullets might kill demons, who knows? At least they could slow ’em down.”
“FYI, Winters and Bradley brought back iron bullets, handcuffs, a bunch of shit from the occult shop,” Fisher said, outright worry thick in his tone. “If you’re jumping shadows, thought you’d like to know.”
She watched Hunter take a running leap into the shadow of a huge weeping willow tree and enter it. She closed her eyes, suddenly realizing how precious a gift she’d had and how it had been robbed by a foul hob goblin of a creature.
Sasha walked over to Kiagehul and backhanded him. “If he dies, I’m going to make you eat rowan berries for lunch, I promise you!”
CHAPTER 22
Running, pure velocity, pain shooting through his arm, hair lifting off his shoulders, the hunt had Hunter in its jaws. He sailed over the rock-hewn cavern, his focus on the battle so the shadow lands would bring him directly to it. But it took a moment for his mind to sync up with what his eyes witnessed.
Sasha… his beautiful, silver-coated mate, was hideously transformed. Her face was mangled and half burned away; his men were huddled back-to-back and brandishing rowan and iron pikes to keep her away while she tried to rush them. His grandfather was a massive wolf, a maggot-ridden demon transfiguration of his former regal shadow self. Bear Shadow and Crow Shadow were even forced to fight themselves, as copies of their wolves were snarling, hideous beasts.