Page 105 of Bewitching the Wolf

“The runes woke her, Marsha. I merely escorted her out of your evil grasp.”

“Give her back.” She thumps the desk, her hand turning into a hideous claw. “Her knowledge belongs to me, and so does that book she stole.”

I smirk, just to annoy her.

“The three books of runes are all together now, their power far greater than yours.”

“You’re lying,” Marsha spits again. But her face pales. She knows exactly what the three books are capable of once reunited.

I sweep my arm behind me. “As we speak, there are scores of wolf warriors and shifters slaying your demons. And after this batch are destroyed, there will be no more. Your ability to summon dark forces has been curtailed by the runes of the Dawnwrought Coven.”

Marsha scrabbles on her desk and grabs the phone, hits the button over and over, calling into it, “I need backup. I said BACKUP. Answer me, you lowlife.” She starts screaming obscenities into the receiver.

“If that’s how you talk to your staff, you don’t deserve their support,” I point out smoothly. I’m feeling powerful, in control. The cape stands behind my shoulders, steady and supportive, casting a warm glow around me.

Marsha’s features twist. “I thought I’d dealt with you. I had you locked away, but you kept coming back for more. You just wouldn’t give up searching for your mommy, would you? You were a liability, a risk to everything I’d built if you found Aurora. I couldn’t let you do that. So I made you my slave instead, put you in charge of my minions. What an irony eh, that you’ve worked to further my master plan. I thought Aurora might wake up when she saw you suffering. But no, she just kept up the sleeping beauty act for fifteen fucking years.”

“Not any more,” I retort grimly. “Your reign is over, Marsha.”

“Bah, you honestly think you can stop me? Look what I’ve created, just look at my beautiful city—” She stops abruptly, her mouth gaping as she turns to the window and realizes there are no lights anywhere. “What the fuck have you done to Sparkle?” she screams.

“Merely destroyed the illusion, Marsha.”

She lets out a blood-curdling howl. “Put the fucking lights back on.”

“No Marsha, I will not. Sparkle is an illusion. Just one big dirty lie. You promised humans happiness, but you’ve delivered a prison instead.”

“Prison! Yes, you’re right.” She cackles hysterically. “You think I care about humans and their stupid little lives. Of course I don’t. Sparkle only exists until we demons have found a way to take over Earth and claim it as ours.”

“It will never be yours,” I say quietly. “Those who walk on Earth are merely its custodians.”

But she’s on a roll now, her voice rising hysterically. “I’ve built this place out of nothing. Those sniveling humans scraping an existence inside this dome were never going to achieve anything. I made this place beautiful; I made it glitter. I made sure everyone was having too much fun to question me. And I’ll do the same to Earth. I’ll build palaces and resorts and theme parks. I’ll turn it into a playground for demons.”

“That’s never going to happen, Marsha. Admit defeat and our Angel Ariel will show you mercy.”

“Tell her to get fucked. This is just a set-back,” she mutters, scowling out on the shadowy dark towers. “I’ve had plenty of them before. When that stupid little book proved useless and Aurora put herself into a coma, I had to invest in human research. Do you know how fucking slow that is? How many wrong turns and false starts there’ve been? All those know-it-all humans in their white coats with their test tubes, telling me that modern medicine could solve the problem, telling me to put my faith in science. It’s all a load of crap.

“They promised they could bring Aurora out of the coma so I could steal her magic. Fifteen years and nada, then they promised they would get that hybrid baby and farm its cells so we could work out how to breathe Earth’s air, but Sammy Buggins slipped through their useless fingers. And now you…messing everything up, just like your fucking mother. Another Dawnwrought hippy spouting on about sharing Earth with everyone. Well fuck that, I’m not sharing. Stupid bloody Ronald thinks I’ll help him and his buddies return to Earth. Fat chance. None of it was for them. I did it for us…” She thumps that hideous claw into her chest. “US! The demons of the hell realms. We deserve to escape the darkness, the brimstone pollution, the constant smoke. We deserve some fucking sunshine.”

As she rants, I watch Marsha’s body start to blacken at the edges. Her hair falls out in patches. She looks at a strand that lands on the desk, horrified.

Her body is morphing back into its demon form. Right in front of my eyes.

But then she rallies, drawing herself up like she is summoning one final vestige of the darkness left in her. Her eyes bore into me, the steel gray of her irises turning a weird brownish red, like the churned-up waters in a swamp.

“You!” She rounds the desk and stalks toward me. “Jax fucking Summers. You’ve just screwed up everything I ever wanted. If I can’t have Earth, I will never, ever let you or Aurora or those monsters have it.”

She flies at my neck, claws extended. The cape jumps around me and tries to ward her off, but she’s using the last drops of her evil on me, concentrated into one final hideous act of hatred.

I reel back as her claws dig into my skin, her energy filling me with a well of darkness. I squeeze my eyes shut to ward her off as I struggle to free my psyche from her grip, but I can’t seem to access my strength.

Or my wolf’s.

I try to recite the incantation that will send her to hell, but the words are glued to the back of my throat. And instead, the horrors of my childhood swirl in front of me in vivid detail. All the memories of losing Mom, of trying to find her, the miserable years at remand school, Marsha’s face leering over me as they drilled the chip into my neck… it’s all there, all at once.

Desperately, I reach for the secret pocket in the cape. I grope inside and locate those three soft strands from Tippy’s tail. I grasp them tightly in my fingers, and with all the energy left to me, I howl for my wolf to help me.

For long moments there is nothing, and I feel myself slipping, sliding, losing my grip on sanity. And then… I detect a distant sound. Not outside of me. But inside. A rumble that vibrates at the deepest level of my being, surging through my blood, erasing the dark memories one by one.