19
H e wa s l o s i n g h i s m i n d.
Losing control. Of his voice, his arms, his. self.
Christ. The word lashed like a bright crack of lightning along his abused nerves.
Iestyn sat trapped on the toilet seat, trapped in his unresponsive body, fat, fiery ripples of power coursing through his veins and along his bones, coiling in his heart and bowels, as the demon burrowed and twined deeper, farther, into its host.
“Iestyn?” Shock in Lara’s voice.
Horror in her eyes.
Freed from hiding, the demon who had been held captive by the heth’s power tightened his borrowed arms around Lara’s hips, enjoying her panicked struggle to be free—
free, free, after days of concealment, of confine-ment—
savoring the soft, yielding flesh of her bel y against his stubbled jaw. His cock swel ed. Twitched. He wanted to turn his face and bite her, fuck her, eat her, have her, while she jerked and bled and moaned.
No.
No.
Iestyn loosed his arms.
Lara stumbled back a step, reaching behind her for the support of the tiled wal. “Iestyn, what’s wrong? What happened?”
Silly bitch. He could smel her fear. She knew. She had to know.
Iestyn exerted control, fighting for his voice. “Get away from me.” A guttural growl.
“What is it?” Shaking, Lara stood her ground. “Let me help.
Let me help you.”
“Can’t.” The word burst from Iestyn’s throat. “Go. Now.”
“What happened to you?”
Angels and their fucking explanations.
A great wave of love and despair swept over him. His head throbbed. He couldn’t think. The demon hammered iron spikes into his brain, punishment for his disobedience.
He could feel his skul splitting, his mind yielding, his identity failing and fal ing away like ice chunks dropping from a glacier, caving into the sea. Lost.
“Demon. You may call me Cudd. ” Iestyn shivered. Had he said that out loud? He licked his lips. “Inside me. In Norfolk.”
Lara’s back pressed the wal. “How?”
Cudd fed on her disbelief, fed on her fear.
“You know what they say.” The demon jerked Iestyn’s mouth into a grin. “Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas.
He real y shouldn’t have passed out on a dead man after our little al ey fight.”
“But in the car. ”
“Wasn’t I clever?” Spinning, weaving, plotting, planning, biding his fucking time. “Or perhaps you were just very dumb. We wanted to get inside Rockhaven. Inside the wards.
Our merfolk friend’s shields provided the means. And you provided the way.”
Iestyn heard the demon’s words coming out of his mouth, his throat. He flailed inside his head, trapped inside his own body. He couldn’t move. His strength was drying up.
Like a beached whale, beyond help or hope of the sea.
“Zayin. ” He forced the name through stiff lips.
Damn him, curse him, eat him. “Bound it.”
The demon’s spite flared. Like being in a box, blind, deaf, dumb. Hate it. Hate him. Hate.
Iestyn spasmed and went rigid.
Cudd shook his borrowed body like a dog, once more in control. “But I’m here now. I’m free. Thanks to you. The merfolk aren’t quite as attractive a target as the nephilim, of course. But stil, my master wil be pleased.”
“Why?” Lara asked.
Why didn’t she run? Run, thought Iestyn.
“Their wards have been nearly as inconvenient as yours. I must reward you for that. Although perhaps you won’t enjoy your reward. You’re such a good girl, Lara,” the demon crooned. “But that just makes it more delicious for me.”
Her face went white.
“No,” Iestyn said simply and stood.
This son of a bitch would not touch her. He would not touch her.
Not while he lived.
“Go,” he said clearly. “Get away.”
Her eyes narrowed. “I can’t leave. You need me.”
Need you to be safe, he thought. Need you to go.
“Get help. Get. ” He searched through the haze of pain, the stink of decay and death rising from his brain. “Dylan.”
But instead of moving away, she took a step toward him.
“There’s no time.”
No time, he accepted. No guarantees, no hope.
“Iestyn.” Another step closer. He could smel her hair, sweet as lilies over the stink of blood. He clenched his fists.
“Do you trust me?”
He met her eyes, deep shining gray like the sea at sunset or the sky at dawn.
“Yes,” he said.
Lara’s heart slammed against her ribs. Her stomach was trying to crawl up her throat.
She didn’t kid herself she knew what she was doing. But Simon wasn’t going to rescue her this time. Rescue them.
She knew the damage a thwarted demon could inflict on a reluctant host, wreck his body, scramble his brains. She couldn’t run away and let that happen. Not to anybody. Not to Iestyn.
Her knees shook.
Maybe, if he believed in her, it didn’t matter so much that she had so little faith in herself. Maybe together.
She thought she understood what had happened. By opening himself to Lara, by al owing her to tap his elemental energy, Iestyn had left himself vulnerable to the demon trapped inside him. When their conjoined magics shattered the heth, Cudd had rushed along the open channels of power to take swift possession of his host. With the demon already lodged inside him, Iestyn could not tear free of Cudd’s control. Not alone.
A frisson of uncertainty shook her spine. She was drained and sore, tired and afraid. She didn’t have the training or the power for what she was about to attempt. She didn’t have an anchor.
She didn’t have a choice.
Framing Iestyn’s face in her bloody hands, she pressed her mouth to his mouth. A fetid whiff of demon made her pause.
But under it, she could taste Iestyn, his flavor, rich, salty, reassuring.
What must be.
Closing her eyes, she poured out her soul, spirit casting into his body.
Hot. Bright. Like swal owing the sun. Light burst in Iestyn’s skul, burned behind his eyes. He could not see. An enormous bal of gaseous energy seethed inside him. It radiated from the center of his chest, shoving aside his internal organs, spleen, liver, lungs. He was stretched ful, what was left of his mind and wil stretched as thin as the latex of a bal oon.
If he so much as breathed in, Iestyn thought, he would pop.
His boundaries wavered. He could not feel the limits of his body, could not find his fingers and toes.
But he felt Lara, moving inside him, offering up her strength for his use, giving shape to his body, giving form to the brightness. Lara, breathing with his lungs. Lara, seeing out of his eyes.
He squinted. Focused.
And saw Lara’s body crumpled against the wal, her black hair spread on the white tile.
The sight snapped him back to himself.
What had she done? Was she dead?
But he could feel her with him. Inside him. With the demon.
He was in the bathroom. They were. Lara and the demon, inside his body, naked, in the bathroom.
He looked at the shel of her body, motionless on the floor.
Not dead, not dead. But empty. She had emptied herself for him.