The reality of it hit me so hard, my legs felt unsteady. I sat down on a chair and massaged my chest. “He summoned a demon and let it possess him while he performed the rituals,” I guessed.
“Yep. I blanked out for a bit at the start, but when I came to, he was possessed. He let the demon steer during the sacrifice and the stealing of the essence, but somehow, when it was over, he managed to exorcise the demon and retain himself.”
“Did he make an offering to anyone, to anything before?”
Noah frowned. Without thinking, I reached out and took his hand, knowing that I was asking a lot of him. Asking him to relive a nightmare so that I could learn how to replicate it.
He massaged his brow. “He made the sacrifices to Apollyon.”
Oh, dear Gaia.
Apollyon. The fallen angel of the Abyss. The being who now enslaved the malachim. It couldn’t be a coincidence. Why was I surprised? Lucifer was the heart and soul of the Hell dimension. Why wouldn’t my great-grandfather offer up sacrifices to one of Lucifer’s lieutenants?
And in the back of my mind, that voice chuckled. You can’t escape your destiny, Sophie. We will meet soon enough.
33
Max
The glow of the transportation circle pierced my sight as it flared. How I’d gotten here was beyond me. Beyond anything I could latch on to for purchase right now while this caustic poison was running through my veins.
Gritting my teeth, I shut my eyes as the rippling of the portal sucked me down into the cells. Something in my gut coiled tight as the pack link snapped back into place. My knees gave way on the other side. The link to Durin became a solid thread again. In the far corner, he raised himself from his huddle and stared at me with unseeing eyes. He knew only that I was strong and that my soul was now furnishing him with energy to survive. The longer I stayed down here, the frailer I would become.
That was what I had counted on.
All of my presence of mind was focused on not tearing back out into the Reserve and snatching Sophie regardless of the consequences. This thing, this darkness that had invaded my soul, it didn’t care about right and wrong. Didn’t give a damn about pack or honour. It wanted her with a hunger that was tearing through my resolve inch by inch.
Closer. I had to get closer to Durin before I lost my mind completely.
One of the doors opened as I stalked past. “Max?”
Her voice made me hesitate for a moment. “Mum.”
A tiny part of my mind locked down on the rage as I stared into grey eyes exactly like my own. Despite her ravaged body, her soul still burned bright in those eyes that looked at me with sudden concern.
“What’s the matter, baby?”
She barely had enough strength to raise her hand. I gripped it, holding it to my chest as though my heartbeat might be the thing that breathed life back into her. The lion inside me had gone utterly silent when Sophie had cut me to the quick with those words that Kai had used on me years ago. Never mind what I would be when the demons came for me. The person I was now filled me with shame.
As a kid, I’d never allowed myself to back down from anything. I was Max Thompson. That half-breed shifter with dark magic in his blood. They had taunted me mercilessly. Called Mum all kinds of names knowing that I wouldn’t hesitate to defend her. Every day I’d come home with blood on my hands and a lecture ringing in my head. But she never told me off. Never did anything but look at me like I was the most precious thing in the world. And now here I was, my self-control in tatters. I was supposed to be strong for her. And instead, I was allowing her to slowly die.
I sank down to my knees in front of her. “Max,” her voice was wet. Her arms wrapped around me, so frail I could feel every bone in her body. “Maximus.” She brushed her fingers through my hair and held me there as I tried to get a grip on the thing that was tearing through me. As I raged inside about how unfair things were. How messed up everything had become. “You are the best thing that has ever happened to me,” she said, echoing the words that she used to soothe me all those years go.
“Better than Chuck?”
Her body wracked with laughter. “I love you so much, baby. And I know it hurts, but I also know you’ll do the right thing. You’re too good to let anything break you.”
With all my heart, I wished that was true. As a kid I had believed it wholeheartedly. As a man, with the Hell dimension breathing down our necks, with the Reserve broken, and with the woman I loved rejecting me, it felt like a beautiful lie.
Who knows how long we stayed that way. As I knelt there, Durin sapped my energy until I was too tired to stay awake. When I closed my eyes, it was to the soothing sound of Mum’s voice as she reminded me that I wasn’t alone.
34
Sophie
There was only one person I had known who had been possessed by a demon for an extended period of time and had come out the other side unscathed. Betty Hastings. The problem was getting to her. Having been out of contact for so long, I didn’t know where Basil might have moved them. Even though I had my MirrorNet privileges back, it wasn’t as though I could
