A blur of black fur streaked across my vision, and then I was flat on my back.
It’d happened so fast, no more than a blink.
My chest heaved under its weight. The smell of rot and ruin clogged my nasal passages.
The beast was back.
No. Not like this.
If this unholy beast was going to tear me to shreds, so be it. But I wasn’t going out without a fight.
I slammed the heel of my hand into the bottom of its jaw, grabbing a fistful of matted chest fur with the other hand…
* * *
“Don’t move!”
“I’ll get it!”
Voices filtered in from some faraway place.
“Haley!” someone else shouted. “Don’t get near that thing!”
“Ronan, she’s awake.”
“Back off!”
My eyes snapped open at Ronan’s sharp voice, taking in the scene. I was back in my bedroom, covered in mud and sweat and grime, surrounded by four familiar faces.
Asher. Haley. Ronan. And Death—rather, Liam—solid in his new human form.
All eyes stared down at me.
And at the rotting black beast in my bed.
Forty
Gray
Liam struck first, leaping onto my bed and wrestling the beast to the floor.
I bolted upright, panting and trembling. My shirt was torn again, the bandages Ronan had patched me up with last night soaked through with fresh blood.
“Do what you need to do, demon,” Liam warned Ronan. “I can’t hold him much longer.”
Ronan placed his hands on the beast’s head, whispered some ancient incantation, and then the foul monster was gone, vanishing into nothingness. Liam got to his feet and dusted himself off, and then he was gone too, leaving the signature black feather in his wake.
“It’s the same thing I saw in my nightmare last night,” I said. “It attacked me again, but I tried to fight back this time. How did I… I… I brought ithere?” I looked around my bedroom in disbelief. It was daylight now, probably late morning. How long had that beast been in my bedroom? What if it’d attacked one of the guys? Or Haley?
Ronan slumped onto the edge of my bed, shoulders sagging with exhaustion. I had no idea when he’d gotten back, or where he’d been, but it was obvious he hadn’t slept. “It wasn’t attacking you, Gray. It was protecting you.”
Haley came around the other side of my bed, inspecting my torn, blood shirt. “This isn’t protection, Ronan. It’s mutilation.”
Ronan’s jaw ticked. “They’re not the most conscientious creatures.”
“I don’t understand,” I said. “Protecting me from what?”
“From whom, more likely,” he said. “If you’re encountering these creatures in your magical realm, someone is there that shouldn’t be.”
