Her whole perception of the world shifted in that moment, and it was as if she were suddenly looking back-stage at all the mechanics happening behind the scenes. There was so much more going on than even she knew. She wasn’t sure she really wanted to see any more. Her life was already complicated enough as it was.
“Where do we go now?” Andra asked.
Paul shot her a quick glance, then looked at Nika. Compassion wrinkled his brow, and he shook his head. “If you go home with us, we may be able to help her.”
Nika was still chanting, “No, no, no . . .”
Andra couldn’t stand to see her like this. If there were anything in her power she could do to help, she had to try. It didn’t matter how much she didn’t want to dig deeper into this new world of magic she’d just discovered. She was Nika’s big sister, and she’d do whatever it took to make her well again.
Andra smoothed Nika’s white hair back from her face, hoping to comfort her. “It’s worth a shot.”
Madoc made sure he left a nice, easy-to-follow trail of blood as he walked out of sight of the mental hospital. None of those whack jobs inside needed to see the kind of beating he was about to lay out. Their minds would really be fucked-up then.
The hospital was nice and isolated, which meant there was plenty of farmland out here, all of it framed by thick growths of trees. He found a dark, secluded spot with plenty of room to fight before he stopped.
His body was humming with power. It pounded against his eyes and scratched at his veins trying to get out. Hell, he felt like he was going to be shaken apart by it if he didn’t do something soon, and that little skirmish hadn’t even been a challenge. Thank God the night was young. He had hours of darkness before all the Synestryn would retreat back into the holes where they lived and he wouldn’t be able to find them and kill them any longer.
Madoc ripped off his T-shirt and tied it around the wound in his thigh to slow the bleeding. He didn’t want to pass out from blood loss while there was still fighting to be done. He needed every ounce of exertion he could get to stave off the fucking pain grinding at his bones. Not to mention that if he passed out, it would be the last thing he did. Literally.
Then again, maybe that wouldn’t be so bad. There was no way death could hurt more than living. No fucking way.
A deep, growling rumble shook the ground. Demons were nearby. They’d found his scent and would be here any minute.
Good. He could hardly wait.
Chapter 8
Nika felt the monsters’ hunger. Their excitement.
She didn’t want to go with them, but she had no choice. A sliver of her mind was inside them, dragging her along on their hunt.
She tried to think about something else—to turn the channel in her head so that she was back in the truck with Andra, safe and sound in her sister’s lap. She liked that part of herself. Even though there were strangers in the truck with her, and one of them wanted to drink her blood, it was better than the other places she existed right now.
So many places. So many monsters. She couldn’t keep track. Her mind was torn into too many pieces and she no longer felt there was any of her real self left.
Nika saw through the eyes of a pack of sgath as they hunted. She felt damp grass under her paws and the warm night air ruffle her fur. Her claws dug deep into the earth with every powerful stride of her body. Prey was close. She could smell its blood, rich with power.
Her belly rumbled with hunger and her mouth watered, dripping glowing saliva onto the ground as she passed over it. She was close. She could hear her prey’s slow, steady heartbeat.
Her pack broke through the trees and she saw then what she hunted. He had a sword and wore the luminescent collar that marked him as a Theronai—a warrior who wanted to kill her and rid the earth of all of her kind.
The part of Nika that knew she was human cheered for the man—the same man who had been near her hospital bed earlier. But the part of Nika that was beast hissed at him in hatred. She was going to sink her teeth into his flesh and gulp down his blood before it could soak into the earth and be wasted.
More pieces of her huddled inside three more of the sgath as they charged the man. She saw his attack from all angles at once and her human mind had to struggle to turn the images into something she could translate. It was too much input. Too much hatred and rage coming from all sides of her. She didn’t want to see the man’s death, but if she stayed among the sgath, she feared that was what would happen.
The man looked into one pair of her eyes as she lunged for his throat. He didn’t recognize her. He didn’t know this wasn’t what she wanted. She didn’t want him to die.
He didn’t even appear to move, but she felt the metal of his blade slide through her belly. She landed hard on the ground and her insides were oozing out of a neat opening. Her paws were clumsy and couldn’t push all the organs back in. Her own blood smelled like food and she was so hungry. She knew it was futile and that she was dying, but couldn’t stop herself from lapping it from the ground as she bled out.
Back inside of the real Nika, her stomach rebelled at the acid taste of the blood, the thick, rotting smell of it. She shoved out of the thing’s mind, only to find herself trapped inside another. It was hiding from the man, waiting to strike as soon as he turned his back.
Only years of practice allowed her to pull back into her real body.
God, she was so weak. She could barely lift her head. “He’s in trouble,” she managed to get out.
“Who?” asked Andra.
“The Theronai who was with you tonight.”
“I don’t know any Theronai, baby,” said Andra in that patient, gentle voice she always used with her crazy sister.
Nika wanted to scream at her that she wasn’t crazy—her mind was just shattered into a thousand fragments that lived inside others—but she knew from experience that it never worked. When she shouted, the orderlies came with needles and put her real mind to sleep so that she had no place to retreat to. No place to hide.
Dreaming was a horrible collage of blood and hunger and war, with her mind trapped inside so many monsters. But that wasn’t the worst. She could hardly stand being with Tori anymore. The things they had done to her were hideous. Inhuman. She wasn’t even really Tori anymore—she was something dark and twisted the Synestryn intended to use as a weapon.
But Nika had promised Tori she wouldn’t leave her, so she hadn’t. Not once in all these long, painful years.
“You have to warn him,” said Nika. “There’s a sgath hiding nearby. Behind him.”