The wounds wept with black pus, ruby red mixed with agonizing pitch. Marta’s white light emanated into them in sputtering pulses, but she must have been weak from the spell it took to push the demon into the liminal.
“Here,” I said, holding my hand out to her. “Use me.”
She ignored it, clenching her eyes shut and continuing to chant.
“Fuck you, Marta. Now’s not the time for your bullshit.” I shoved my hand in her face. “Pull from me!”
When she opened her eyes, they glowed bright white, the pupils and irises completely disappeared. With her squared jaw and lips pulled back in a grimace, she looked damn near as formidable as the monster we’d just defeated.
But she didn’t argue. She grabbed my hand, interlaced our fingers, and started the spell again. Nothing happened. She didn’t pull on me. When I spotted her wide eyes and open mouth, I realized she was trying.
“I can’t—” She shook her head. “The bond isn’t working. It isn’t?—”
“What do you mean it’s not working?” I cut in. “Fix him!”
“Shut up,” she said, breaking the contact between us to return to her work. Pale wisps trickled from her palms in sputters, hardly the power she’d had during our first fight with the demon. My heart nearly pounded out of my chest as I waited for her to kick her magic into high gear.
More obsidian ooze leaked from my brother’s chest until it finally ran red, and once it was gone, the wounds stitched back together. She kept chanting until a translucent patch of purple skin knitted over the claw marks, and Wes’s eyes opened.
“Fuck,” he murmured as he arched off the ground, clearly in turmoil.
“Wes!” I grabbed his cheeks and stared down into his dark brown eyes, the gnawing ache of relief flowing through my nerves as I brushed the hair out of his face.
Wes tried to sit up but groaned and fell back, thumping his head on the ground. I moved around him to wrap an arm under his shoulders, helping him into a reclined position on my knees.
“What happened?” His strangled voice nearly brought me to tears, and it wasn’t until I heard it that I realized how close I’d come to losing him.
No. That wasn’t a possibility. I wouldn’t let that happen. There was no world in which Wes didn’t exist, and if there was, I didn’t want to be a part of it.
“That’s a good question,” Marta said, looking at me.
“You nearly became demon bait,” I explained, shaking my head in disbelief. “Good thing I was there to pry him off you.”
“Pry him off?” Marta raised her eyebrows, opening her mouth. “You touched the demon?”
“I touched a demon, not the one you were shoving into a liminal.”
“We were trying to shove all of them into the liminal.” The accusation in her tone raised my hackles. “What did you do?”
I looked around. We were still in the woods, probably the same forest where we’d done the ritual. But the other Harlots were gone. The circle, the candles, the demons, all vanished. Save for the wind in the trees and the birds chirping overhead, we were the only sounds in the place.
“I don’t know.” I tried to remember, but it all happened so quickly. Had I stepped over the salt line? Had Wes? How had the demon been able to grab him in the first place?
“Are we dead?” Wes wheezed.
“If we are, we’re certainly in hell.” Marta let out a sad laugh and bent her knees so she could rest her arms over them. “I doubt any heaven would put the three of us together for all eternity.”
I tried to act like the insult didn’t sting. After all, I hated her as much as she hated me, but worse things were waiting for us in hell, me especially.
“You should be so lucky, witch,” I snapped, grabbing my cellphone out of my jeans pocket to check for a signal. When I had none, I held it up higher and hoped it was just the trees fucking it up.
She shifted that angry gaze to me, her eyes narrowed into tiny slits.
“What the fuck did you do, Atlas?” she snapped. “We were chanting. The liminal was opening. And then…” She closed her eyes, seemingly remembering the last moments before we went ass over teakettle into whatever this was. “You knocked into me.”
“No,” I snarled. “Your shitty wards fell. One of those fuckers got Wes. I had to protect him.”
“You were supposed to be protecting me.” She tried to push to her feet, only to slam back on her ass with a resounding thud, almost like she’d lost her balance or stood up too quickly. “And if it weren’t for those wards, we all would be dead. No thanks to you.”
