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“Stop, Aidan!” She clapped her hands over her ears, her head threatening to split with the sudden pain, stomach rolling in sour waves, throat closing around a cold knot of fear. Terror had Cat out of her seat and across the room before conscious thought kicked in. She grabbed his arm. Sought to shake him back to awareness. He tore free of her. Shoved her away, sending her sprawling over a stool. Her elbow banged the floor, her wrist twisted painfully beneath her.
“Drot peuth a pystrot esh a dewik spyrysoa.”
The creature gained supremacy. Aidan’s grave, pensive features giving way to a violent evil. A blood thrill lit his eyes, a leer of greedy defiance twisting his face into a mask of hate.
She scrambled to her knees. “Aidan! What are you doing? For the love of the gods, stop!”
As the spell reached its crescendo, the air within the library thickened to a greasy haze, the fire leaping from its grate to claw at the hearth rug. Within the smoky miasma, a form emerged. A squat, muscled torso with a wrestler’s low-slung gravity. A face that might pass for human should it remain hidden by twilight or shadow.
It craned its short, thick neck as it surveyed this new plane. Settled a milky, opaque gaze on Cat, its mouth peeling back in a snarl before latching its eyes on the man who’d summoned it.
It approached the earl, Aidan meeting the unblinking malevolence of the monster with no sign of fear upon his face.
Cat watched horrified as the beast slid one fist and then another into the earl, his flesh parting then sealing around the monster’s limbs.
Aidan flinched but made no move to fight back. Instead, he almost seemed to welcome the monster’s possession. His features sharpened over the angular bones of his face, even as his skin faded gray as death.
She’d one final hope to break the possession before Aidan was lost to the Unseelie demon.
On her feet, dashing for the desk, Cat snatched up the page Aidan had been reading. Tossed it onto the fire.
Both the creature and Aidan screamed their agony as smoke thickened around them. Keening ripped through her skull like claws across a thousand slates. Her eyes burned with a sickly yellow fog. It clogged her throat. Filled her ears.
The house rocked upon its foundation, a grinding of stone and plaster, a shattering of glass, the shrieks of frightened maids and the housekeeper’s bellow for order.
And the monster disappeared.
The library door burst open. “What the bloody hell?” Jack shouted. “Are you trying to bring the house down around us?”
His puzzled gaze took in the dissipating fog, the tumbled books and scattered portfolios, the globe upended in its stand, the floor dirtied with chunks of frescoed ceiling, and Aidan slumped on the floor, gray-faced and shaky.
He shot Cat an accusatory glance as he shouldered Aidan upright and helped him to a chair. “Damn it. Can I not leave you alone for a few hours without worrying you’ll try to kill yourself? Again?”
“It was incredible, Jack,” Aidan muttered.
Incredible? Try incredibly horrible.
Jack looked from Aidan to Cat. “Will one of you please explain what happened?”
Cat shook her head, pointing at the space where the creature had stood only moments before. “Something. Something stepped through.”
“Something stepped through what?”
Aidan straightened, the man once again in control, though his eyes still glowed with success. “A spell from the book. It . . . it worked. I made it work.”
Jack’s grim features moved over Aidan as if seeing him for the first time. Flashed Cat a silent question.
But she couldn’t answer. What would she say that would make sense to anyone who hadn’t watched the change in Aidan as he read those horrible words? Who hadn’t witnessed a creature surfacing behind his eyes? Dragging Aidan toward a possession. A domination.
Yet something of what she’d seen must have been evident in her face. Jack nodded as if he understood. She wished she did.
“Aidan, listen to me. You need the Amhas-draoi,” Jack said.
“We’ve had this discussion. I’m fine.”
“This is magic beyond your ability. You have to see that.”
Aidan’s expression hardened to stubborn anger. “Thank you for pointing out my deficiencies—”
