Dweller on the Threshold (39 page)

“Hurry up,” I muttered between my teeth. Sweat dripped between my breasts and pooled under my arms and over my lip. My jeans had dried—the material stiff and uncomfortable. The forest had gone eerily silent again—as if all birds and insects knew what was coming and waited with bated breath. Bees hovered around the edges of the clearing, but even they had managed to mask their noise.

My ears rang and I wasn’t sure if it was the rush of blood in my veins or what, but it distracted me in a way that was
so
not good right now.

Dooby and Blythe argued over the meaning of the words and I resisted the urge to dance in place. Or kick them. I really, really needed to kick something. Tension was eating me alive.

 
Nikolos sighed loudly and leaned over the book. “It means blood.”

“Any blood?” Blythe asked. “It’s hardly ever just any old blood—it’s usually important blood.”

“Do we really have time to discuss the differences in blood type?” I scanned the forest again, knowing in my gut that something was about to happen. Adrenaline raced so fast through my body, my stomach churned.

“Ancient. It’s ancient!” Blythe clapped her hands. “Blood of an ancient.”

“To raise a fire elemental?” I looked at the book, seeing gibberish as usual.

Nikolos must have lost his patience. He held his knife over his arm. “Perform the ritual.”

Blythe opened her mouth to protest and that was when I knew we’d run out of time.

The rustling came from four separate areas around us. It wasn’t butterflies, snakes or even gators. No, whatever this was—it was much, much bigger. Or
they
were.

“Shit, Blythe! Just do the spell. And all of you stay in the circle while Nikolos and I take care of this.” I looked at him, silently asking if he had the strength.

He inclined his head.

I stepped from the circle, feeling nothing yet knowing I’d just lost the outer edges of protection. Not that it would have helped much. I turned, hearing the crashing sounds behind me, and met the gaze of each person. “Do not, and I repeat
not
let anything hurt my sister.” I met Castor’s eyes. “You stay in the circle, too.”

He didn’t answer and I didn’t have time to worry about it.

Four bodies lurched out of the different parts of the woods. One, a female, was nearly naked. Her clothes looked as if they’d been ripped to shreds in the woods. The second one was a tall black man with floppy arms that swung by his sides. Looked like he’d been in an accident because wounds already peppered most of his body. When the skin on one of his arms dropped to the ground, I realized the demon was pretty far through. I gagged when that sour, vomit smell saturated the entire clearing.

The third body was a bulky redheaded male with tattoos covering most of his obviously beer-fed upper body. He crashed into a tree, then into the fourth body, sending it to the ground.

The fourth body was that of a child.

Horror blinded me, narrowed my world to sweat and a thundering heartbeat. It drowned everything out. I focused, unable to look away from such complete and utter wrongness. Blythe started crying behind me.

Shaking my head, I gripped the knives, sweat making the bone handles slick against my palms. It was a young boy. Maybe ten—his blond hair shiny in the sun as he crawled on all fours. He scrambled to his feet and stumbled toward us.

“The boy is gone, Beri,” Nikolos said, his voice low and close to my ear. “That is no longer a child.”

“Oh man. Oh please. I can’t—” I choked as stomach acid flooded my mouth. The taste seared my tongue.

I felt Nikolos touch my arm and then he jumped in front of me, his yell of fury breaking the creepy silence of the forest.

I stared at the child, then at the redhead who was obviously blind. He crashed into the child again, sending the skinny body flailing into the air.

This snapped me back. I pushed aside my feelings and pulled on every scrap of anger and fear, using the emotions instead of bowing to them. First thing I did was call the bees. I could not fight that child’s body. I couldn’t. I knew Nikolos planned to do it for me, but he was fighting the black man—the one who now had Dweller Demon arms with long claws. Nikolos jumped back to avoid the acid rapidly burning through the body, slashing so fast his arms moved in graceful arcs. His braid swung around his head.

I wished I’d braided my hair as I had to sweep it aside. I turned my back on the child and sent the bees his way. I went after the blind one, who wouldn’t be blind for long if the smell was anything to go by. Sour and rancid—it burned my nose and eyes.

Behind me Blythe and Dooby were yelling, spelling—I didn’t know what. I caught Castor leaning over my sister out of the corner of my eye but I had to keep my mind on this fight. I rushed the big one.

Don’t let the acid touch you
, Nikolos had said. There wasn’t any acid on this one yet. In fact, the horrible odors didn’t seem to be coming from him after all.

What if he isn’t possessed yet? I needed to get into the astral plane to see for myself.

Terror strengthened the bile taste in my mouth. I looked at Nikolos only to find him fighting off two of the pre-demons. I didn’t look at the boy but I could hear the thrashing from his direction.

Nikolos couldn’t knock me out this time. I needed to astral project and I still didn’t know how to do that awake.

Running back to the circle, I eyed Dooby. Yeah, right. Like he had the power to knock me out.

“Castor!” I kept one eye on the lurching, carrot-topped threat and jumped into the circle. “Hit me in the head. Hard.”

He didn’t even ask why—just stood, balled up his fist and slammed it into the side of my head.
Good one
was my last thought before I found myself hovering over my body as Castor dragged it into the circle. One hand was outside the circle, but I didn’t think it would matter. He laid me next to Elsa, then looked up and winked.

I was
so
going to love getting to know my brother. If we made it through this.

Floating around, I saw that the demon seemed to be struggling in the redhead’s body. Its spirit, pissed and aware, saw me coming. This time I knew what to do. I sailed toward it, gripping my silver cord, and wrapping the cord around the neck twice before shooting up into the sky.

I dragged that fucker completely from the body and snapped its metaphysical neck. Not even waiting to see what happened, I went for the spirit over what was left of the boy, careful not to look at the body.

Nikolos shouted, yanking my attention. He was bleeding from the chest. Badly. He had one hand over the wound and the blood was coming so fast it was soaking his fingers even through the shirt. He staggered and fell on one knee. It occurred to me that I still didn’t know if a wound like that could kill him.

He’d dropped his knife.

Cord wrapped around both hands, I zoomed toward one of the demons standing over him and nearly cried in relief when I saw Castor jump from the circle to fight the other. The human bodies were gone—the blue and black Dweller Demons fully emerged and powerful. “Can you hear me?” I yelled to my brother.

He nodded as he bent to grab Nikolos’s knife.

“Go for the ears, eyes or throat!”

He was strong but he was no fighter. All I could do was hope as I sailed toward the demon lifting Nikolos into the air. Its spirit only had time to gape as I dispatched it by strangulation—as I had the one in Nikolos’s woods. That left two.

Castor was doing a pretty good job of occupying the one that had been in the female, so I flew over to the child’s body to find that something had gone very wrong there. The possession wasn’t working. The Dweller Demon’s spirit struggled, stuck between dimensions as the body on the ground could only flop around.

The bees had covered every inch of him. At first I thought they smothered the body, but the masses of dead ones falling to the ground told me they were stinging.

Blythe suddenly screamed and everything in me went cold. I turned.

Castor was down. And worse…
Elsa had started twitching
.

Terror raced through me so hard and fast I snapped back into my body. Disoriented, I lay there for a couple of seconds. Blythe and Dooby were both yelling so loudly they’d drowned out the sounds of battle. I heard my name and something about a circle. I blinked and sat up.

The movement ripped a gasp from my throat as pain seared deep into my side. I could still feel aches out of my body but not with the intensity I did in physical form. Tears—born more of fury than pain—burned the backs of my eyes as I forced myself to my feet. Standing seemed to take forever but it couldn’t have been long since Elsa’s body was still in the twitching phase.

Holding my hand over my bleeding side, I took a step and felt pain in my left thigh as well. Looking down, I saw the rip. Torn muscle was visible and blood soaked the shredded threads.

What the hell? I’d been fine when Castor knocked me out.

Only I wasn’t in the circle and Castor lay still on the ground. I turned to face a grinning Dweller Demon and realized he’d grabbed my hand and pulled my body from the circle while I was hovering over the kid. He must have ripped open my leg while hauling me out.

Castor’s guides stood around him and one-by-one, they solidified. He still breathed in their center. I hoped they had enough energy to hold for a while.

Those damned butterflies were back—one of them fluttering around my face, its puss-filled wings turning my stomach. I leaned on a thick tree, feeling the scrape of bark on my elbow. Taking a couple of deep breaths, I stood, one eye on the strangely still demon. I think I’d confused it when I’d come back into my body.

My knives were about four feet away.

I dove, slid along the ground, grabbed my knives, and jumped to my feet. My thigh was going numb which scared the shit out of me. I stumbled—feeling dizzy from the loss of blood, but pulled on every inner resource I had left. The demon picked that moment to stop being confused and fight again. He rushed me. Gritting my teeth, I turned on my heel and slammed the knife into the thing’s throat. It flailed, claws whizzing past my face. I yanked out the knife and slammed it in its eye.

When my sister sat up and looked at me, I screamed.

It smiled using her mouth. It winked using her eye. When it moved, it wasn’t lurching or stumbling like the others. It stood and put Elsa’s hands on Elsa’s hips.

Heart in my throat, I didn’t bother to peel the dimensional layers. I didn’t even bother lying down. With pure force of will, I turned and slammed my head into that tree.

I just flew out of my body, high into the air, spinning, spinning, spinning until I grew dizzy with the endless motion. I didn’t know how to control it enough yet and it took every bit of effort I could scrape together to stop twisting. I hung there, the damned silver cord tangled in the branches of a cypress tree below me.

Shit.

I shot toward the tree. Quickly tugging on the cord, I finally looked toward Elsa and what I saw sent me spinning toward the ground once again. I stopped in time—partly due to my own freaking will power but also because the damned cord was still tangled.

The Dweller had gone into my sister. And unlike the others, his spirit looked like a normal everyday human.

The spirits of the Dweller Demons had resembled their counterparts on the ground.

This thing was just a man. He watched me, tilting his head to the side. Below, my sister tilted her head in the exact same manner. I wondered if my metaphysical self could throw up.

Nikolos was right about the eyes. Flat, black and filled with something that made me feel as if they’d crawled into a thousand nightmares. Evil, cunning and hungry.

Keeping the Dweller in sight, I quickly scanned what was happening below. Blythe and Dooby stayed in the circle, the witch on her knees, chanting. Dooby was frantically searching the book. Castor, back inside the circle, was awake and quivering with fury. He stared up at me, looking as if he would step out of that protective ring any second.

Nikolos lay on his back, obviously weak—his dark skin unnaturally pale. Yet he watched me too, his gaze intense with something that made me want to win this for more than just my sister, my newfound brother… Hell, the world. I gave him a small intimate smile, glad he could see me.

Slowly untangling the cord, I schooled my features as I met the Dweller’s black eyes. “What do you want?”

I couldn’t believe how human he looked. The demons had all been horrifying inhuman creatures, but this looked like a man who could live next door. The irony wasn’t lost on me. All serial killers looked bland and ordinary… they like to blend. The only things different about this man—the things that made him surreal—were the eyes.

They held a thirst for power, hatred and a curiosity about me and my presence on what he must have thought of as
his
plane. Even here, though, he smelled like rotting meat.

 
I was scared that my cord wouldn’t work with this thing. My mind busily went over everything we’d talked about in the translation but I was coming up blank. I could feel my damned pulse in my throat as I looked down to see Elsa also looking up at me.