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The three giants of men wrestled my brother’s lanky frame to the ground, and I watched, biting my tongue as they tore my brother’s shirt off him. He writhed in the dirt. His mouth was twisted in a scream or a bellow. Still, all I heard was the rising thump of my heart and the short, shallow breaths I was managing to suck in.
Little by little, as Hook and Emerson held my brother down and Theloneus straddled Matty’s harrow hips, his bare chest took on a deep red glow. Without warning, Theloneus struck, shoving his monster-sized fist into the center of his chest.
Panic erupted inside me. “No!” I screamed, even though I knew this was supposed to happen. Somewhere, deep in the back of my mind, I remembered the two primordial beings explaining this moment to me.
Hearing about it and seeing it were two very, very different things.
My body moved on its own, reacting to the violence. I crossed the barrier of the circle a half-second before I was hit from the side by a powerful force and driven to the ground.
Sound rushed in, a deafening melee of yelling, inhuman screeching, and a scream that hit me right in the fucking feels. I bucked, fighting to break free of the Adonis pinning me to the dirt.
“They’re killing him!” I shoved and twisted, but everything I tried seemed to give Leo better leverage.
“Think, Never,” he snapped. This was not my calm, somewhat reserved Leo. This guy was fighting his own battle for control. “Calm down and remember what they said.”
I remembered all right. It was going to hurt both of them, shadow and boy. There was no way around that. But the scream I’d heard wasn’t just pain.
Wrenching my body around, I gawked when I saw the thing Theloneus was pulling out of my brother’s chest. It was slick and black, and it was fighting them with everything it had.
“We’re losing him,” Emerson bit out, barely loud enough for me to hear.
Was he talking about Matty or the shadow? Hook cast a worried look my way and my heart sank. Then my brother let out an agonized wail—a very human wail—and I was done. The pendant flared to life, burning against the sensitive skin of my chest. When I shoved at Leo again, fully expecting to hit an unmovable wall, it took me a moment to realize I’d succeeded in throwing him off me.
And not just by a little. He was lying in the dirt a good four feet away.
I scrambled to my feet and started forward, only to have a lithe, snarling tiger skid into my path. “Out of the way, Lily,” I warned.
She growled, dipping her head low, clearly intent on standing her ground. A half-second later, she was joined by another tiger. This one was slightly larger, with a broad head and a thicker neck. Where Lily’s fur was a deep reddish-brown offset by rich black stripes, Leo’s was tinted a brilliant gold, and even his stripes held a golden hue.
“Get the fuck out of the way,” I said again, adjusting my grip on my blade.
“Get back in the circle!” Hook boomed. He moved like he meant to get up and force me, but the minute he took his hands off Matty’s body, it went right back to writhing and bucking.
“Hold him!” Emerson commanded.
Leo and Lily stalked forward, driving me back a step, until Theloneus pulled on that shiny black being, and Matty let out a sound that I would never be able to scrub from my memory.
We all froze.
He was dying. Matty was still in there and whether it was the shadow doing the damage or Theloneus, I didn’t care. This was killing him, and I refused to let that happen.
Grabbing the pendant, I did the only thing I could think of, and called the shadow to me. It was a split-second decision. I didn’t weigh the pros and cons or consider the consequences, because it was the only move I had.
“Come on, you piece of shit,” I bit out. “Come play with someone your own size.”
The shadow broke free of Theloneus’s hold, tore free of my brother’s chest, and slammed into me hard enough to send me stumbling backward. My foot landed on something hard and round. I had barely a moment to register that it was one of the candles marking the points around that protective circle before I lost my balance entirely and crashed into the dirt.
A flash of golden light filled the clearing. It blinked out just as quickly, leaving me half-blind and with a pounding headache as I scrambled to my feet. I tried to take a step forward. I could see my brother laying on the ground, his chest rising and falling. Only my body wasn’t responding.
That was when I felt the pressure. The weight of something else taking up space inside me. It was heavy in a sickening way. Greasy. Like I’d been injected with a few gallons of used motor oil laced with wicked, violent intent.
Then the pain hit, tearing through my mind. I was still moving. I could see and hear and feel what my body was doing, but when I tried to force it to do what I wanted, that searing agony sliced through me.
22
HOOK
Horror bled through me, poisoning my thoughts and thickening my blood.
