Howl for Me (21 page)

“Blight,” I projected, willing myself to show no fear. “What is it you want?”

The great eyes turned down on me, cold and dead. When the gaze caught me and held me, paralyzing fear constricted my throat.

“You will submit to me, child,” a disembodied voice, that seemed to be swirling around me – through me – intoned. “You will be my vessel.”

Something wrapped around my wrist and pulled my limp body to my feet. I cried out, thrashed, trying to grab ahold, but Blight refused my consciousness.

My green vision was addled, broken, and I couldn’t focus. It was like my entire being was being shattered from the inside out, as I stared into the horrible face.

“Lily! Come back to me!” Damon was shouting.

I felt him, I could see him, but I couldn’t do anything to tell him of the danger. My soul had been ripped from my body and held halfway between earth and sky, enthralled by Blight’s gaze.

But, there was no pain. Fear subsided, and panic calmed. The face in the sky opened its mouth. Inside was just blackness. Endless, feeling-less, and hopeless, the void inside Blight threatened to swallow me and everything else whole.

The earth below my feet seemed to pull upward, toward him, like a vacuum cleaner was sucking at the brush trees and the desert. But when my soul looked downward, Damon and Hunter were still whacking away at those bizarre, unearthly wraiths. The only sign that I existed, was that Damon had his hand on my wrist.

“You want to return to him, don’t you, child?” Blight’s voice reverberated in my consciousness. “You want to save him, to warn your lover, don’t you? I can feel your heart aching for him. But... You don’t understand that when I return, when the Blight returns, there will be no pain, no agony. There will be no need to be saved. All will be one inside of me.”

His tones were smooth and supple, caressing my being, and lulled me into believing what he said. The infinite dark in the center of him seemed safe and warm and endless.

“No!” I shouted, shaking myself. Damon lunged at a ghost and inadvertently bumped my head with his leg. “Oblivion isn’t peace! Having the souls ripped from our bodies doesn’t make anyone safe or secure or... anything except a slave!”

Underneath me, I saw Hunter step closer to Cat, shielding her from one of the wraiths and taking a hard slash across the chest.

A slow, rumbling, brown-leather chuckle boomed through the walls of the universe, sending vibrations through my green vision, making everything wobble and tremble.

“If you won’t see things my way, then I’ll simply withdraw my offer of allowing you to choose.”

“What
are
you?” I asked. “I saw you in Devin’s mind. I heard you tell him you don’t care about the lives of mortals. What changed? How can things like us be of any interest to you?”

If nothing else, I figured, maybe playing on Blight’s obvious megalomania would work to disarm him. It always seemed to work for comic book characters when they encountered some cosmic force that could eat the world.

“I mean,” I kept going, “why are you wasting your time?”

He hadn’t responded yet, so I just kept rambling.

“Seems like you could do anything you wanted, so why are you so hung up on the petty lives of mortal werewolves and mortal Fae, like me?”

My heart twisted into a knot. That was the first time I’d ever referred to myself like that – as what I really am. For some reason, saying it was a lot weirder, a lot harder, than just hearing it and experiencing it.

Blight’s huge, star-like eyes were surveying the ground below, almost like he was thinking about what I said. So, being me, I just kept on rattling at him.

“Like, if you could do anything you want, why not just make your
own
society however you want it to be? Why waste your time fiddling around with us? Humans are pretty fickle, and we tend to not make very intelligent decisions, a lot of the time, so—”

“Revenge,” he said, turning those horrible eyes to me fully, for the first time.

The word was cold and slick, like ice frozen solid over steel.

My breath froze in my chest. Everything about him was cold, dead and empty. For a moment, I wondered what it was like to be driven only by a single emotion.

Then I realized that I
was
.

And
then,
I realized that I couldn’t sit there and keep talking to the giant face in the sky.

“You’re gonna need another body,” I told him, as I forced myself lower, forced my soul back toward my body. “You don’t get this one.”

“Silly child,” he laughed, again. “To think that Joram Blight needs your body. I’ve already got my own. You’ve seen it. Oh, have I surprised you? The old wolf told you I could sense your meddling. I know that, because I heard him tell you. I heard him,
through
you. Between you and the simple idiot I charmed, finding the Skarachee has been easier than waking up from my eternal dream. Easier than murdering the Carak. And that,” he said, turning his gaze to Damon. “Wasn’t very hard at all.”

Immediately, I watched Damon wrench to the left, and then to the right, and one of the ghostly riders ripped into him with a wild swing of a chain.

“No!” I shouted. “No, you can’t!”

With every ounce of power I had, I pushed against Blight. I forced myself lower and lower, until I felt my body tingle as my soul returned.

“Look to the east, child,” Blight said, as I slipped back inside myself. “The body you think I lack? It rises.”

His voice faded like a dream. It got fuzzy, and then it was gone. I opened my eyes just in time to see Damon take another lash across the back.

“No!” I shouted, driving my fingers into my temples, and forcing the rider away with an invisible wave of force. “Leave him alone!”

Damon looked at me, perplexed for a second, and whipped the creature, snapping it in half.

“What do we do?” he said. “Did you see anything?”

“Blight!” I shouted back. “He’s here!”

I pointed off to the east, where maybe a hundred yards away, something so big, so horrible, and so twisted, that I could hardly believe it was real, shambled forward.

The black blizzard from earlier resumed, but it was following Blight. With every step he took, the winds whipped harder, the sand stung worse. With all that happening, it took a few seconds for us to realize the wraiths were gone.

Blight was walking, one foot in front of the other, and we were the only four things standing between him and the rest of the world.

We just stood there, looking back and forth, as the lumbering giant, well,
lumbered
toward us.

“What the hell do we do now?” Cat asked, in a reasonably terrified voice. “What—”

“Cat!” Hunter shouted, reaching for her, as she floated into the air and started thrashing around. “Cat! No!”

He took three halting steps, stuck out his hand, and immediately got blown right off his feet by a huge, purple bolt, of what looked like static electricity. He lay on the ground, twitching, convulsing, and gasping.

“Can’t... breathe,” Cat sucked in. “Can’t... breathe. I...”

“Leave her alone!” I yelled into the distance, and then looked at Damon, who cocked an eyebrow at me. “Go away!”

“Worth a shot,” I said.

“Lily,” he said, reaching for me. “Whatever happens, you keep yourself alive, okay? If I tell you to run, you run. If I tell you to...”

“To what, Damon?” I asked, looking back and forth between him and Blight, who wasn’t fifty yards away. “Damon?”

His mouth was moving. It was opening and shutting, like a fish gasping for air.

“Damon? What is it?” I shouted, grabbing at his hand.

In the split second before I realized my mistake, a purple crack popped hard against my fingers. I heard Blight laugh in my mind, and then, something blasted me backwards.

My head hit the ground. My vision went brown, then as it went black, and I saw Damon scratching at his throat. Seeing his suffering, his helpless squirming, and knowing that I was the last one of us able to move made my mind race.

My whole body was one giant, aching bruise, but that didn’t matter. I strained to keep my head up, and then clenched my eyes shut, sending my spirit west, toward Poko’s cave. I couldn’t fight this thing on my own, I knew, but maybe, if I could somehow call to him, he’d know what to do.

I felt the desert brush underneath whip past me on every side, and then, just as I reached Poko’s cave and made my way back to his fire, something tore me back, yanked me, violently, back to my body.

“Poko,”
I choked.
“Help.”

I clawed to keep my spirit where it was, but there was no fighting the force. Blight was pulling me back, and I couldn’t resist.

But then, just as I slipped out of the mouth of the cave, I saw Devin lying on the ground, curled in a ball.

Using the very last shred of concentration I had, I sent out a wave that brushed him. All I could manage was a breeze, a gust of wind that woke him up.

“Help,” I whispered, and hoped that he heard me.

Back in my body, Blight was upon us.

Somehow, Hunter got up off the ground and charged him. Hunter got in one swing of his ninja sword before he was thrown backwards fifteen or twenty feet by some unseen shield that surrounded Blight.

Damon dangled there, feet kicking pitifully in the air, silver, fur-covered muscles straining, pointlessly. He twisted, he thrashed, but before long, he didn’t have anything left. Hanging in the middle of the air, he looked so helpless, so completely defeated, that I couldn’t watch.

Suddenly, I was fading too. My head throbbed where it had hit the ground, and when I reached back, then looked at my fingers, they were red.

“No,” I said into the air. “No, no, no. Not like this. Please, someone help us. Poko, Devin, anyone, please... Someone, please hear...”

I blinked twice, trying to clear my head, trying to concentrate, but it was useless. I had nothing left. The world was fading, and fading fast.

Even in the worst of times, even facing death before, I’d never been so completely helpless, so hopeless, as I was right then. I blinked one last time. I had nothing left. Nothing at all.

As I slipped into a waking nightmare, I hoped that maybe, just maybe, the earth had heard my begging.

With my vision fading, two four-legged bullets, blasted across the desert. One of them was huge, black, and wild, snapping at the air, thrashing, as it ran. The other was pale yellow, tipped with white. His fur was like a snow-crusted pile of hay.

“Po... Poko?” I said, as I watched the smaller, golden wolf hobble up beside me. “Is that...?”

“No time,” he snapped, his voice very obviously hurting. “When you can move, you must go quickly. Blight is pure darkness, pure hate and rage. Use whatever you can think of to counteract that. Do it, or we’re all dead, and worse – our souls are forfeit. I’m fading,” he said, a cough shaping his lupine jaws. “I can’t keep this up, but... Now go. You’re the only hope.”

He curled up beside me, and I felt power radiate through my body, two pulses of white heat gave me one last burst of life.

I looked back, but he was already gone. Was it a ghost I’d seen? A spirit? Or...?

No time, he’d said. I couldn’t waste this chance.

When I turned to Blight, the crazed black wolf was latched onto his arm, thrashing violently. It’s jaws were locked, and even Blight’s strength couldn’t detach him.

“What is this?” he said, with a mocking laugh. “What is this pup? Oh... oh.”

His dry, humorless laugh was resonant, and sent a shudder through me.

“Oh,” Blight said. “You’ve come back to me, is that it? Trying now to save your brother, and your pointless packs?”

“Devin?” I gasped. “Is that you?”

When I spoke, Blight turned to me for just long enough, that Devin was able to grab at his throat.

As soon as those dagger-like teeth sunk down into Blight’s neck, I thought for sure that we were safe, that he’d crumple over dead. Instead, the ancient gray half-wolf plucked Devin off his neck, and held him at arms-length.

Blight just watched him kick like he was some kind of oversized, lupine baby.

“Ridiculous child,” Blight said.

The crack was fast, horrible, and brutal. Even though Devin’s head only moved a few inches, it moved in the wrong direction. When Blight threw him to the ground, I knew he wasn’t getting back up.

He turned his eyes to me, and, as the life left his body, and his skin started to harden, Devin whispered, “Don’t let him win, Lily... You know what to do.”

“Devin!” I screamed. “No! No!”

Blight took another step forward, picked Devin up, again, and something long and silver flashed in his hand and disappeared into Devin’s stomach.

I ran forward. I’d just jump on him, it wouldn’t do any good, but I wasn’t going to let him just murder the rest of us.

I screamed again, but it was too late. Devin looked at me, a smile crossed his lips. He nodded, and when I was three steps away, closed his eyes.

With the next step, the fang Damon gave me all those months ago thumped against my chest.

Pure darkness. Pure hate and rage.

Poko’s words ran through me.

You know what to do
, Devin had told me with his dying breath.

I leapt at Blight. He turned and grabbed my throat with his cold, crystalline hands, squeezing my neck. I thought about what he’d done to Devin.

He had a glimmer in his eye.

“Your turn, child,” he said, in that hollow, monstrous voice. “Say goodbye. You’ll make a very useful thrall.”

“No,” I croaked, grabbing the fang and ripping it off my neck. The chain broke with a soft snap. “We are
not
yours.”

The only resistance I felt was when the tip of the tooth went through his leather skin. It broke like cellophane. It stretched, then it popped, and then the entire length of the dagger-like fang sunk deep. I let go of it, and watched as the fang fell into him.

Damon fell to the ground, and I heard Hunter gasp, and Cat cry out, like they’d all been released at once.

Blight’s hand went to the puncture, and he began to shake, to twitch, as his fingers circled the hole.