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“Not you,” Emerson said with a grim shake of his head. “All you need to do is stand in the circle and do as we say. The circle should keep you and the amulet safe while we dispatch the demon.”
My hackles rose at that last bit, and that sick feeling intensified. “And by dispatch, you mean pull that thing out of my little brother, leaving him safe and whole in the aftermath, right?”
“We will do everything in our power, Never,” Emerson said. His voice carried a reassuring determination, but it wasn’t enough to put a dent in the dread curling inside me.
Theloneus lit the last candle and stood. “It’s time.”
I moved to the edge of the circle with Hook by my side. He took my hand and turned me to face him. Then he kissed me like the world was ending. Toe-curling and full of the kind of emotions I wasn’t ready to feel for another person. When he pulled back, a smile played at the corner of his lips.
“Deep breath, love.”
I did as he said, doing my damnedest to inhale without sucking air. I only kind of failed. But any calm the move was meant to bring me vanished when deep, otherworldly chants filled the clearing.
“Make sure Lily and Leo stay clear unless the Brethren absolutely need them,” I said, meeting Hook’s confident gaze.
“They know the plan.” He cupped my face in his large hands and dusted my forehead with a feather-light kiss. “Are you ready?”
I turned back to the circle without nodding. I would never be ready to draw my possessed brother into a trap where two ancient demons and one heart-stealing demigod were waiting for him. Stepping over the line and into the circle was like sealing a door shut in an airtight room. The light breeze disappeared, and everything around me went dead silent.
“What the fuck?” I whispered, a little surprised that I could hear my own voice.
Kneeling, I snagged my dagger from my boot. Then I stood and spun in a slow circle. “I guess that means it’s show time.”
Grabbing the pendant, I thought of Matty. I thought of bringing him to me, of seeing him in the clearing, of hearing his smart-ass voice for the first time in weeks. That last thought triggered the sting of tears, but I blinked them back.
A few excruciating heartbeats later, the pendant finally lit up, kicking off that warm, golden glow that had seemed so incredibly threatening just a few weeks earlier.
Looking up, I locked eyes with Hook. He gave me one last longing look before turning his back to me, leaving his cutlass sheathed as he took up a stance that said he would destroy anything that tried to come after me, with or without his blade.
The threat rolling off him should have frightened me, especially considering he was bracing for a fight with the thing inside my brother, but it didn’t.
He knew what Matty meant to me.
A flicker of movement had me whipping my head around. My foolish heart leapt at the sight of my brother. Even the varied shades of rust coloring his clothes and streaking damned near every visible inch of his skin did little to dampen the hope that sprung to life in my chest.
Those eyes, on the other hand, were enough to douse that brief flare of optimism in a flood of icy reality.
Black and bottomless. That was the only description that fit those dead eyes.
No, that wasn’t quite right. They weren’t dead. Heartless. Without conscience. That was closer. Even soulless didn’t fit the bill, because the thingwasPetra’s soul.
The shadow took three lumbering steps into the clearing, almost like it was in battle to move itself forward. It licked its lips and sneered at the demigod and demons that had created a defensive wall between us.
It said something I couldn’t hear, lips moving silently even as those vile eyes glared at me. Then it launched itself at Hook and my heart catapulted to my throat. Emerson and Theloneus moved as one, boxing my brother in, but he was fast and wily. He twisted out of Hook’s grip and lunged for me. Instinct had me backing up a step and throwing my hands out to defend myself, but when the thing hit the edge of the circle, it was like it hit a flexible wall. The invisible barrier gave maybe six inches before it repelled him, wide eyed, right back into the waiting arms of the immortal power trio.
The fight was vicious enough that Leo and Lily both moved in close enough that I could see them lurking in the shadows of the nearby trees.
I would have killed to hear what was happening. Was my brother in the mix somewhere? I found myself hoping he was, but also secretly wishing he wasn’t. Because what if he was there, aware of what was happening? Or worse, what if he was feeling everything that was happening?
I shook with a mixture of worry and fury.
“Be strong,” I said to myself. “We’ve got to be fucking ruthless if we’re going to get him back.” Weakness wouldn’t help anyone right now.
Emerson and Theloneus had prepared me for this as best they could. They’d warned me it would likely be a brutal fight, and that it was nothing compared to what my brother’s body was likely to go through when they moved to pull the shadow out.
“Come on,” I whispered. My fingers tightened around the pendant with one hand and gripped my blade like my life depended on it with the other as I urged Hook and the others on.
I’d felt helpless before, but this was a whole new level. Every bone and muscle in my body wanted to be out there. The need to act pulsed through my veins, and my fingers tingled madly, like they were somehow half-asleep and connected to a car battery at the same time.
