Once upon a time I would have dismissed it as a trick of the light. Once upon a time I didn’t believe in demons either. The shadow halted. Without knowing why, I dropped the knife I hadn’t realised I’d actually picked up and pretended to flounder around searching for it. Out of sheer habit I drew a protective circle around me and reinforced it twice.
Somebody called my name. The shadow began to move once more. I followed it as it slid across the floor and cleared the long banquet table. It was approaching the head table.
“Blue?”
My head lifted. Kai’s frown was understandable. The indisputable feeling of sickness in me was not. I turned my head sideways and closed my eyes. The circle I drew was meant to help me find clarity. Its purpose was so that I could push the distractions away. What it did was brush up against the perimeter of another circle. One whose purpose was to conceal. A phantom foot landed inside my circle. My chest contracted.
“Get down!” I screamed. Except I wasn’t sure who I was addressing. The dark cloud swirled. The demon blade’s hilt was in my palm one second, and the next it was sailing across the room heading straight for Durin’s head.
3
The moment the blade left my hand somebody tackled me. I was lifted up into the air. Bones snapped and clothing tore as the shifters gave way to their animal halves. A flash of green light collided with the black and red of the demon blade. Kai’s sword swatted the blade away just before it embedded into Durin’s skull. For a brief moment it had made contact with the cloud of darkness, but it had pushed clean through.
The shifters in the Zambian pack had told me stories of Durin’s prowess. They’d said he was the strongest and fastest of them. So why was he just sitting there as though he were made of stone? For a second everything stood still. Kai’s eyes met mine. Something dark and urgent danced across his features. The air in the room sucked in around me like a vacuum. Durin rose to his feet in slow motion. Then he gave a roar that almost shattered my eardrums. The corresponding response from the shifters had me trying to cover my ears. Durin leaped over the table and tried to snatch me from the air. His shirt burst into shreds of cotton as thick black hairs and spines grew over his skin.
I floated into the air, Astrid’s supple arms around me. Shifters of all races howled.
“Sophie!”
I struggled to get free as the bodies below swarmed. It was the full moon. For all they knew I just attacked their alpha. The hairs on my body all stood up at once.
An almighty roar broke through the cluster of shifters below us. Max struck out at a wolf who tried to leap onto his back. He held Sophie in his arms.
“Let go of me!” I screamed.
“Please stop squirming,” Astrid said. “If I let you down now, they’ll tear you apart.”
I knew she was right. I couldn’t stop squirming, though. Max grabbed Sophie and ran. They disappeared out of the room with her parents chasing after them.
The next time Durin leaped for me, Kai grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and dragged him back down. Durin took a swing at Kai. The bear shifter was caught in a half shift. His yellow eyes shone like the underside of the moon.
“Don’t drop her!” Kai called out.
“I can help,” Astrid said.
“Do. Not. Let. Her. Go!”
He lashed out with a brutal punch that caught Durin under his jaw. Even through the din below I could hear the crunch of bone. The sound sent a shiver through me. The alpha bellowed in pain. It didn’t stop him from charging ahead. He took a swing of his own, the punch connecting with Kai’s ribs. An aura of green pulsed around the Nephilim.
“He shouldn’t be fighting another Council member,” Astrid said. She might have been distracted but her grip on me was like a manacle. I couldn’t move even if I tried. My blade was somewhere on the floor being trampled on by shifters. Sophie was God knows where. The room became a battlefield. The shifters who changed into birds attempted to get close to us. Astrid swatted them away as easily as you would a fly. Not once did she even bother taking out her angel blade.
I could swear I heard the sound of feminine laughter from the edge of the room. But when I surveyed the site, it was empty.
Some of the shifters who had managed to hold on to their humanity were trying their hardest to get their friends to calm down. The centre door burst open to frame a curvy figure in a rich purple dressing gown.
“For goodness sake,” the woman said. She brushed rich black curls from her face and pressed a button on a remote. The vents surrounding the room hissed with the sound of compressed air. My nose twitched. Bitterness coated the back of my throat. Astrid and I were closest to the vents. I caught a whiff of the concoction right in the face.
Wolfsbane.
If my Herbology lessons were worth anything, I figured it was wolfsbane mixed with vervain, mint, and essence of quicksilver. The potion was meant to both soothe and incapacitate a riled-up shifter. A dense cloud of the mixture floated in the air. Kai pressed his palms on either side of Durin’s head. His hands glowed green. For a second Durin bucked. His chest heaved. Breathing became his undoing as he sucked in a lungful of wolfsbane. Kai jumped clear just in time as Durin slumped over.
One by one, without Durin’s aggression affecting them through the pack link, the other shifters either passed out or calmed
