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It was bad enough that the thing had slithered its way into her body. For that alone, I would make it pay. The pendant, though, made the situation a thousand times worse.
The shadow couldn’t take a human host on its own, even with the sprinkling of demon blood running in Never’s veins. But coupled with the power from that piece of me? That was what had given it the power to jump into Matty during their trip back here. It was also the thing that had let the monster invade Never’s being.
If it could bring that power to life, it would summon Petra into the human realm. And if the demon ever made it back to this world in its complete form, it would lay waste to everything in its path, including the human host currently housing its shadow.
The Brethren would eventually find a way to deal with it, but that was little consolation when I knew Never would be dead within seconds of its arrival.
That left me with two options: Kill Never myself and send the shadow back where it belonged or…
The pendant glowed brighter.
“Out of time,” I said, more to myself than anyone.
I charged the shadow at full speed, catching it by surprise as I slammed into it, sending us both crashing to the ground. It tried to fight its way free, kicking and clawing viciously. When I reached for the pendant, it sank Never’s teeth into my flesh hard enough to draw blood.
On instinct, I took a swing, catching it in the jaw. My stomach twisted the second my fist connected. It was Never’s body that was taking this beating. The beast screamed in her voice and bucked beneath me so violently my grip faltered.
A cloud of dust rose around us as we each grappled for dominance, until the shadow’s eyes flashed black to blue, and time stopped.
It was Never who pinned me in place, not the creature. She glared down at me with an expression so filled with pain it hurt just looking at her. She dipped her head to look at the bloody pendant swinging between us, then flashed me a snarky smirk that was a tortured imitation of the one I’d come to adore. “Come on, pirate,” she ground out between clenched teeth. “That all you got?”
She had moxie, not to mention the kind of mental strength most beings could only dream of. And I was almost certain she was telling me tousethe pendant.
Hope lit a fire inside me that could have put the sun to shame, but the moment was shattered when that heartbreaking blue shifted back to black in a blink. I grabbed for the pendant. The shadow beat me to it by a hair, so I wrapped my fingers around its wrist—Never’s wrist—and unleashed the full force of my power.
It bucked violently against the onslaught, until a pair of large, familiar hands caught it by the shoulders and shoved it down. A deafening, inhuman bellow drove daggers into my eardrums, but it was too late.
Light spilled through its fingers. The world around us shimmered in and out of focus, growing impossibly bright as night shifted to day. The ground beneath me softened, and I thanked the stars that we hadn’t ended up flailing in the sea as Never had when she’d arrived in my world the first time.
As the cool air thickened and warmed with that familiar, salty humidity, I got the first sense that things might turn out all right. Until the trees and shrubs circling us morphed into a web of twisted vines and overgrown rope bridges.
No.I twisted my head from one side to the other, confirming what all my other senses were telling me. We weren’t just on the island, we’d landed smack in the middle of the demon’s camp, and leagues away from the beach where I’d tried directing us.
The shadow snarled and wrenched free of my grip, throwing Leo off in the process.
Gods, the thing was strong. Far stronger than I’d ever seen it.
Was it Never’s blood—or worse, her soul—that was feeding the shadow that kind of power?
“Captain.” I would have recognized Petra’s deceptively sultry voice without having to set eyes on the creature, but she was hard to miss lounging across that ridiculous throne of vines.
If I’d been expecting some witty discourse or lively banter, I would have been sorely disappointed. She tipped her face to the sky and let out a feral howl. Every one of her soulless minions took up the call. It was a battle cry I’d heard a thousand times, and I lurched to my feet, drawing my cutlass as I moved.
Without a word, Leo shifted back into tiger form. He cut a threatening profile in the human realm, but with the magic of the Nassa bleeding from the ground and hanging in the air, his true form was easily twice as large.
A throng of young men with dead eyes circled us, darting in and away before I could take a swipe with my blade. I’d long since lost any notion of mercy for those taunting boys, because they weren’t really boys anymore. Or men.
They were nothing. With no soul to speak of and no conscience to weigh them down.
In any other realm, they wouldn’t even exist. The moment Petra had taken their souls, their weak human bodies would have begun to wither. Every man standing in front of me should have been nothing more than dust.
One of them charged forward, and I removed his head. Another lunged at Leo, but when he slammed the would-be attacker to the ground and ripped out his throat, even the man’s gurgling scream wasn’t enough to drive the rest of Petra’s army back.
They were blood thirsty and quickly working themselves up into a frenzy.
Petra, on the other hand, was studying Never with perverse pleasure. She motioned her shadow over with a lazy roll of her fingers. Then she reached out and stroked Never’s cheek, looking deep into those black eyes as though they were lovers.
“I would love to know how this happened,” she said sweetly.
