A Cursed Embrace

enough to risk pissing off the witch.

I grabbed a few pages that had swept near my feet and joined him. “Could you read them? Would that work?”

Aric glanced between us when Danny froze. “He’s not of magic, Celia.”

Danny hurried to organize the pages. “No. But I’m not summoning a demon from hell. I’m summoning him from the immediate vicinity. It should work if it’s—I mean, he’s close by.”

Aric hit Gemini’s number on his phone. Scorpions crawled along the ground like ants. The sun cut into our backs like laser beams. We tasted every dry bit of dirt, sand, and disintegrating piece of grass the roasting breeze slapped in our faces. I wanted more water. My beast demanded blood to quench our thirst. Both needs made me cranky as hell. But I refused to gripe. I got what I asked for. I’d joined Aric in his hunt.

“Anything on your end?” Aric said into the phone.

“Son of a bitch,” Taran shrieked in the background. “Is that a goddamn tarantula?” She must have been standing near Gemini.

I heard a squish just before Gem answered, “Ah, nothing here. Should we move inward toward your location?”

Aric let out a breath. “The problem is the perimeter is just too damn wide. Dan’s going to try to read the pages. I’ll stay on. Tell me if anything happens.” His stare cut to Danny. “You ready?”

Danny shuffled through the pages, his breath panicked enough to steam his Coke-bottle glasses. “Yeah, just give me one . . .” He righted the stack of pages, scribbled with more images than anything that resembled letters. “Got it. I got it right here.” He squinted at the unrelenting sun, took two paces back, one forward, and one more to the right after another glance at the paper.

The witch dug her hands in her hair. “What is he doing?”

Danny pointed to the page. “You have to face where the moon might be. It says so right here.”

I glanced at the page. All I saw was something shaped like Mrs. Mancuso’s lawn jockey and a bird with two beaks. I didn’t read old dead languages for fun like Danny. And based on the image of a man with a snake eating his head, I had no desire to learn.

“Suhaka,” Danny said, sounding more Jabba the Hutt than Indiana Jones. “Su. Ha. Ka. Ma nee bo so hee dah. So. Hee. Dah.”

Danny’s words didn’t resemble anything close to what the witch had chanted. The snickers among the crowd told me they agreed. Aric’s baby browns met mine, flickering with more than a little doubt. His decision to bring me, a lone wolf, and a human had been a bold move. And one that could cost him his reputation.

“Don’t fuck this up, Dan,” Bren had said when Aric first invited them along. I hadn’t said anything of the sort. But damn, I was thinking it now.

I moved closer to Danny in a show of support. So did Bren. But the way Bren’s tail drooped demonstrated that he, like me, had started to doubt our spindly pal.

“Hee-ho. Hee-ho. Ha.” Danny squinted at the sun again and nodded. “There. That should do it.”

Aric pinched the bridge of his nose and swore. Twice.

I clutched his arm, red from the sun and just as blistering. “He meant well, Aric. Maybe we could go back to the Jeeps and—”

Thunder shook the gorge despite the lack of clouds and darkness. The dirt in front of Danny spiraled out like a cyclone, sending gravel, sand, and more dried soil to smack and scrape against our exposed skin. Cold burrowed through my bones, chilling me down to the marrow and making me beg for the waves of heat to return. What the hell?

Growls spread like wildfire. The dirt funnel widened, overtaking the land around us. “What’s happening?” Gemini shouted on the other line.

Aric tossed the phone away from him and shoved me behind him. He changed as we retreated from the expanding conduit. My tigress urged me to move closer to the threat, but Aric’s beast held me back. Koda grabbed Danny and flung him like a ragdoll behind Bren before his red wolf replaced his human form. Something was coming. And it was pissed we’d called.

The earth blackened and crumbled like charred wood into large chunks. A high-pitched scream burned through my eardrums like liquid fire. Another cloudless crack of thunder broke and shook the earth beneath our feet. Shayna fell on her butt next to me. I quickly hauled her up to stand just as the air imploded in front of us and the demon lord emerged.

Iridescent red scales cloaked his leather body and bat wings. His raptor head whipped my way, followed closely by his four, very developed, very descended testes. His fork-tongue spit out through his needle-thin, yellow fangs. “Ceeelia,” it hissed.

Holy shit.

Before me stood the demon lord Misha had warned me about. The one who possessed him. The one who knew who I was. The one who . . . Holy shit.

The weres pounced on the demon in a massive heap of fur and claws. The creature spun his expanded wings, slicing and cutting into their large bodies. Howls and shrieks erupted and bounced off the dirt walls. The werecougar slammed against the rock slide next to me, his stomach protruding through his skin like a wet tube sock and his head twisted behind him. Wings flapped hard enough to blind us with dirt, and just like that the demon took flight.

He sailed through the air like a massive glider, soaring upward as the weres gave chase. Shayna grunted as her thin arms flung her knives with all their might. The blades whistled through the sky and found their mark, piercing through the demon’s webbed appendages. The demon screamed again, this time in pain. She’d hurt him, disabling his speed and impeding his ability to climb higher into the sky. Aric and Koda leapt after him, their deadly jaws inches from reaching his talon feet. I started to run, the shock from the demon knowing my name fading fast. But Bren barreled in front of me. I crashed into his side and bounced back. “Bren!”

He sneezed and motioned behind me. Danny’s and Shayna’s stark white faces kept me from changing and scaling the rock hard walls. They were terrified. I couldn’t justify leaving them, especially with the amount of backup Aric had.

I retreated hesitantly, and knelt beside the injured cougar. He shook his head and shut his lids tight as he willed his beast to heal him. An ounce of his magic reached my flesh and pricked along my burning skin. I managed not to react when his stomach bobbed back into his body and his head crunched on its return home. Danny couldn’t stop his response. He staggered back and tripped over a rock, disturbing a band of scorpions that fortunately chose to scurry in the opposite direction.

The cougar pushed onto his paws. The witch hastened to mount his back. The light from her turquoise amulet turned the cougar’s fur blue as he charged to join the other beasts.

I watched diffidently as they faded into the distance with Aric and the rest of the pack. My tigress paced restlessly. She wanted to join the hunt. She wanted to tear evil in two, and give Aric’s wolf the other half. But neither Aric nor his wolf needed protecting. Nor did they fear. I couldn’t say the same for my little sister and Danny.

“That thing knew your name, Celia.”

Shayna’s voice shook as if the earth continued to tremble. I tried not to think about what she said. Something from hell itself knowing me by name wasn’t just creepy; it numbed and froze my very soul. Bren agreed.

He changed behind me, returning to his human form. “Ceel. I gotta give you props. If that mutant freak had called me by name, I would have pissed out a kidney.”

The thought had crossed my mind. Good thing my bloodcurdling terror had distracted me.

Taran’s swears bellowed near Danny’s foot. He picked up Aric’s iPhone, while Taran continued to curse. “We succeeded in summoning the demon lord. Aric and the others went after him.”

“Where?” Gemini said on the other end.

“East toward Badwater Basin,” Bren said without much thought.

“Is it just you and Bren?”