Haunted by the King of Death (25 page)

She was on dangerous ground.

She couldn’t focus on Payne, Snow and Grave as they talked. She didn’t notice Snow taking hold of her other arm, linking all four of them together. She didn’t see the darkness as it swallowed her.

There was only Grave.

Holding her hand in a way that shook her, because it made her aware of a fear that had slowly wormed its way into her heart, deep enough that she couldn’t shake it.

Fear that the feelings she sensed in him, the ones he showed her in his eyes and in his actions, were born of a need to be strong enough to protect his family and a need to punish her for the things she had done. Was he making her fall in love with him all over again so he could break her heart this time?

Isla pushed back against that fear, but she couldn’t destroy it. It lived within her, festering inside her heart, whispering poisonous words to her.

She raised her eyes to his chest, to the sliver of silver visible through the open top of his black shirt. The pendant.

Did he really wear it to remind him of the things she had done?

She forced her eyes up to his and found him looking down at her, a soft but steady look in his eyes, one that boosted her courage and confidence, and quietened the insidious voice.

He wore it because it meant something to him.
She
meant something to him. She believed in that and in him, and she wouldn’t allow her faith to be shaken again.

Grave wasn’t intent on breaking her heart.

He was intent on mending it.

He wanted to fix things and she wanted that too, and she wouldn’t allow anything to stand between them.

Dark power rolled over her and Grave’s hand tensed against hers.

Isla looked off to her left, to the source of that incredible power, and reached for one of her blades.

Vengeance would be hers.

A
n orange glow lit the night sky in the distance, silhouetting the sharp tips of the pine forest ahead of her.

Isla locked her eyes on that glow, racing towards it, bone-deep aware that the demon was there. So close. The smell of smoke hit her nose as she entered the forest, darting between the thick rough trunks of the trees, leaf litter dancing around her feet as she sped past.

She could feel Grave and the others hot on her heels, pursuing her as she pursued her prey, but she refused to slow and let him take the lead, even when she knew he wanted to be ahead of her, burned to reach the demon first and deal with him. She silently apologised to him and redoubled her effort, pushing past her limit.

If she had been incorporeal, she could have simply willed her form to materialise at a point in the distance she could see, and then willed herself to the next one. She couldn’t teleport like many species, but she could move quicker than most.

The forest disappeared around her and she stumbled a few steps, managing to stop just short of hitting the broad trunk of a pine.

Isla looked back over her shoulder, her eyes widening as she saw the huge gap between her and Grave.

No.

She looked down at her hands and breathed a sigh of relief when she saw they were solid. She had lost one of her blades, but not her form. She glanced back at Grave as he closed in on her again and then in the direction of the fire. She had willed herself to travel a great distance though, and something deep inside her warned that wasn’t a good thing at all.

The hold the phantom world had over her was growing stronger despite the time she had spent with Grave.

She vowed that once they had dealt with the demon, she would spend every waking and sleeping minute close to him until their bond was strong enough to stop them both from fading.

Right now, she had a demon to fight though.

She kicked off, twisting around at the same time, her right boot skidding on the thick gathering of pine needles at the base of the tree, and darted towards the blaze.

The forest began to thin as she caught up with Grave and her eyes darted around to take in the scene.

It was a mansion. The one she had seen through Grave’s eyes.

The entire pale stone building was ablaze, the inferno so intense that it heated her skin even though she was still more than four hundred metres from the house.

Grave skidded to a halt on the dewy grass as the right wing of the mansion collapsed, hurling a tempest of sparks high into the dark sky and showering the land around it with dust and rubble.

“Night!” Grave yelled and launched himself forwards, little more than a blur as he shot towards the house, the blade he wore strapped to his waist bouncing with each long stride.

Isla knew that Night was apparently his brother, a fact that was new to her together with the discovery that he had cousins, but she was damned if she was going to allow Grave to get himself killed by rushing into the building in search of him. Pain beat fiercely in his heart, echoing in hers, telling her how desperately he needed to find him though, warning he was liable to do something stupid if she didn’t stop him.

She sprinted after him and managed to catch him close to a hundred metres from the house, snagging his arm and dragging him to a halt. He snarled and lashed out at her, his right hand slamming hard into her forearm, knocking it away from him. Fire and lightning zinged along her bones and she grunted as she staggered backwards.

His crimson eyes shot to her face and the darkness in them lifted for a heartbeat, replaced by a tender light that bore an apology.

She rubbed her arm, easing the pain, and looked towards the house. He could apologise for striking her later, once they were alone.

Snow ground to a halt on the other side of her, his blue eyes darting over the mansion.

“There’s no one inside. No trace of vampire blood in the air either.” His voice was little more than a deep growl in the night, laced with the anger etched on his face, slowly turning his eyes scarlet. Those eyes leaped off to the right, to a point beyond Grave, and he grunted, “Company.”

Grave was moving before Isla had even spotted the five demons emerging from the shadows, slowly walking into the sphere of golden light surrounding the blazing house. That light shone along their black ram-like horns as they advanced on her group, long muscular black-metal-clad legs eating up the distance between them.

Which was the leader?

She scanned each of them from head to toe as she ran towards them, her right hand reaching for her remaining blade. As she looked them over, something dawned on her, something that made her blood burn as fiercely as the building to her left.

The sensation of dark power she had felt when they had arrived in the area was gone.

The demon prince had left, leaving them with five of his minions.

Grave clashed with the one furthest to the right of the group, a male with only one black horn curling from his shorn head, slamming hard into him and driving him back as he began to attack, slashing at the demon with his claws.

Isla targeted the one next to him, a bare-chested male with wild black hair and blazing gold elliptical pupils.

She had met demons from the Devil’s domain before, and had quickly learned it was best to avoid them. They were taller than she was, easily seven foot in height, and all muscle, power that was beyond what she could tackle and hope to defeat in her corporeal form, and every single one of them had been trained for combat, honed in the art of war. Warriors. Powerful, dangerous, and deadly. Befitting of the Devil.

And here she was rushing one.

He smirked and a black broadsword appeared in his left hand. His black eyes narrowed on her, their gold pupils seeming to glow brighter as he hefted his sword and swung it at her.

Isla hurled herself forwards feet first, sliding across the golden gravel beneath his blade as it sliced through the air where her body would have been. She snarled and lashed out with her small curved blade, catching the brute across his shin, leaving a long groove in the metal plate of his armour. She huffed. It seemed she needed to attack somewhere a little softer if she was going to take him down.

He roared, twisted at the waist and stabbed at her.

She let out a gasp as she rolled swiftly out of the way, narrowly avoiding being skewered, and came to her feet behind him.

Snow and Payne reached the fight, taking on two of the demons together, working as a team to battle them.

She had never experienced that sort of solidarity in battle. It was beautiful to her. A phantom led a lonely existence, even if they had family as she had. It was a solitary life, but she had never thought she was missing anything, not until she had become corporeal and had been accepted into that world by her brother-in-law and Frey, and then by Grave.

Her senses blared a warning and she turned on a pinhead towards the source of it. A blade zoomed towards her, a dark blur as it cut through the air. Another blade struck it before she could get her head together and find the will to move, the silver katana knocking it off course, sending it swinging back the way it had come.

“Pay attention,” Grave snapped and then roared as he grasped his blade in both hands and slashed upwards, attacking the demon who had come close to cutting her down.

The male staggered backwards, blocking each fierce strike of Grave’s blade with his own, on the defensive.

The demon Grave had been fighting snarled and picked himself up off the floor, and Isla ran at him. She swept her leg around, slammed the heel of her boot into his face and knocked him back down onto the gravel. He grunted and flashed fangs as he shook his head, but she didn’t give him a chance to recover.

She lunged at him with her blade.

Someone grabbed her from behind, hauling her up into the air. Her legs flailed for a moment as she got her bearings and then she lashed out at the bastard with her elbow, driving it hard into the side of his head. The other demon finally found his feet and grinned as he advanced on her.

Isla gritted her teeth and narrowed her eyes on him as she kicked with both feet, pummelling him as he attempted to get to her. He tried to grab her legs and she fought harder, a wild thing as she battled both the male who held her and the one trying to get hold of her.

That male managed to snag one of her legs and pain shot up it as he twisted it hard. She bit down on her tongue to stop herself from crying out and narrowed her eyes on him, fury pouring through her veins as he fought to catch hold of her other ankle. She kicked him hard in the face, knocking him back, but he kept hold of her leg.

The male behind her chuckled into her ear.

It was the last straw.

She cursed her corporeal form. Weak. Pathetic. It inhibited her phantom powers too much.

Cold crawled through her, slowly at first, creeping up from her feet and her hands. It travelled faster as the demon finally grabbed her other leg, engulfing her and wiping the smirk off his face as the iciness reached the surface of her skin, chilling his hands. The male behind her grunted and she called on more of her power, let it wash over her and through her, coaxed it until it built inside her and destroyed the last of the warmth, leaving only frigid cold behind.

Hunger rose within her, a fierce craving that consumed her.

With an unholy snarl, she locked her feet around the second demon’s neck and dragged him up to her. His wide eyes met hers as they came face to face, a split second of him staring at her as if she was his worst nightmare, and then he screamed as she clutched both sides of his head and pulled him closer still, until their mouths were only inches apart.

Light and heat rushed through her, energy that crackled and burned, flooded her tired body and renewed her strength. She moaned as she devoured it, sought more of it and found it as she pressed her lips to his, and devoured that too, savouring every drop she could get as it filled the space that had been inside her, satisfying the gnawing hunger.

The male slumped and she pressed her feet into his body as he fell and kicked off, using the momentum to flip over the head of the other demon. She looped her arms around his neck and whipped around from his back to his front, coming to face him. He didn’t have a chance to block her.

He didn’t have a chance to even blink.

No sound left his lips as hers pressed against them and more light and heat flowed into her, making her head spin and body tingle. Gods, she had never felt such a rush. She wanted to laugh as her entire being came alive, seemed filled to the brim with so much power that she couldn’t contain it.

She needed more.

She turned cold eyes on another male, one whose white hair and blue eyes matched hers. Powerful. Strong. She wanted to devour him too.

“Isla!”

That name, spoken in a familiar male voice, snapped her back to the world and she looked over her shoulder at the owner of it.

His pale blue eyes held hers, his dark hair and sculpted face splattered with the glistening blood of his foes, and the sight of him stole her breath away.

Her mate.

Her fierce, beautiful mate.

She reached for him and stilled when her hand came into view, not the one she had grown to love seeing, but a ghostly white form that shimmered in the golden light from the blaze. The cold inside her increased, a chill skating over her body as she swallowed hard and looked down at it.

Looked through it.

No.

She floated above the floor, the ragged hem of her corseted white dress ending almost two foot from the gravel. She shook her head, tears burning her eyes even though none could fall when she was like this.

A true phantom.

Her eyes sought Grave again.

She screamed as he shimmered right before her and she could see through his entire body for a moment, no sound leaving her lips as she poured out her fear and her pain.

It was her fault.

He turned solid again, but his skin seemed paler, his complexion drawn and gaunt as he stared at his hands and then at her.

It was her fault.

She had allowed her phantom nature to consume her and it had given it more power over her, and in turn over Grave, accelerating his demise.