Living Nightmare (47 page)

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Authors: Shannon K. Butcher

BOOK: Living Nightmare
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Hope didn’t know how he knew that, but she doubted he’d waste his breath lying.
Her gaze slid across the room to the fight. The man battling that beast must be Logan. She had to help him. She had no idea how to defeat the monster, but she’d seen a length of metal pipe back near the door, and she wasn’t afraid to use it.
 
Logan looked up from the floor where he landed. The spots cleared just in time for him to see the demon’s giant, slimy foot hurling toward his head.
Logan rolled aside, dodging at the last instant. Chips of concrete flew into his face, stinging as they hit. He smelled his blood a moment before he felt the hot trickle of it sliding down his cheek.
The creature’s foot was raised, poised for another attack. Logan’s body shook with weakness, so cold he could barely feel his limbs. Only the dull throb of pain managed to get through the growing numbness of his body.
He was running out of time. Soon, the poison would incapacitate him, making him an easy meal.
There was no way Logan was walking away from this alive. The child had to be his first priority. He just needed to buy Pam enough time to escape. If her child survived, he could one day save others of Logan’s race.
The thought brought him a sliver of solace.
It was time to pull out all the stops. He gathered up a bit of power and burst from the ground, shoving his dagger deep into the demon’s groin. The beast howled. Black blood spurted from the wound.
Logan shoved the blade sideways to slice open a large wound before jerking it out. He stumbled backward as the demon clutched at its wound, trying to stop the flow of blood. Not that it would do any good. That blow was fatal. It was just a question of how long it would take the demon to bleed out and whether Logan would survive until it did.
It thrashed around, spraying blood across the floor in a black arc. One giant fist lashed out at Logan, knocking him back into a wall. Pain radiated out from his spine, but at least now he was out of the way of more blows.
The demon’s eyes flared bright green as they fixed on him. He saw a streak of movement, heard a battle cry. A woman ran across the floor, wielding a pipe like a sword.
Logan screamed for her to stop, but he was weak and out of breath. All he managed to get out was a growl of warning too low to reach her.
She slammed the pipe into the demon’s leg. It roared in anger and turned around to face the new threat.
She hit it again and jumped back out of its reach. It took an awkward step toward her and slipped on its own blood. It toppled to the ground, nearly crushing the woman beneath it. She got out of the way just in time, backing up until she hit a large wooden crate.
Black blood pooled under the demon. Its tongue swept out to lap up its own blood in a vain attempt to heal itself. But it was too late for that. It was bleeding too fast.
Finally, with a last shuddering breath, the demon died.
There wasn’t time to revel in the kill or celebrate their victory. Logan staggered away to where Steve had landed, so he could rid the man of poison. He’d just made it to Steve’s side when his legs simply gave out.
The longer he waited to finish this, the more likely it was that the scent of his blood would draw other Synestryn to him.
Steve, his family, and the mystery woman needed to be long gone before that happened.
Logan closed his eyes and concentrated on manufacturing an antidote to the poison within his veins. It was slow, and every bit of energy he used had to be dragged out of the deepest recesses of his body. Each spark of power slowed his heart. His breathing became shallow, and he was so cold that his breath no longer misted in the frigid air.
By the time he was finished, he was blind, shivering uncontrollably, and could barely move. Even his own head was too heavy to support.
He couldn’t draw the antidote from his veins as he normally would have done. There was no syringe and no time. Instead, he closed his mouth over Steve’s and forced the antidote through his saliva glands and into the human’s mouth.
Moments later, Steve moved. The movement was weak at first, then grew as the man’s strength returned.
“You need blood,” said Steve.
“Not yours. Poison.”
“I’ll find help.” Like a rag doll, he moved where Steve pushed him, too weary to even speak and tell him not to bother. There wasn’t time.
Cold sank into his body—a bone-deep cold he knew would never leave him. His breathing began to falter and his heart’s rhythm stuttered as it slowed.
Pain and cold surrounded him as death came for him. And as Sibyl had said, it was not going to be gentle with Logan. It was going to scrape every last breath from his lungs and wring every last beat from his heart, forcing him to endure every second of pain and cold and hunger. He would find no peace in oblivion.
There was still so much work to do and now he was leaving his brothers to do it all alone. But selfishly, that was not his last thought. His last thought was how much he wished for one single moment of warmth before he died.

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