They closed in on her, and when she tried to push through them, they laughed and dragged her back.
Her blue eyes flared, sparking with terror. “Nyte!”
Fuck this.
For the first time in four hundred years, Nyte altered his form. His horns and wings vanished, the stars on his skin twinkled out, and his flesh lightened to a pale shade much closer to that of Ember’s. It was a shape in which he’d often walked long, long ago. A human shape.
Shadows enwrapped him briefly, forming clothing over his body.
These men deserved more than simply being run off. They deserved to know fear. Tenfold the fear they’d elicited in Ember.
Magic flowed from Nyte. Gloom gathered along the walls, floor, and ceiling, and the overhead lights flickered and buzzed.
The mortals glanced up, a couple with concerned expressions.
Shadows erupted from the floor, engulfing Nyte and dragging him down. They swept him to Ember, and he emerged from their embrace beside his witch. She gasped when he curled his arm around her waist and tugged her snuggly against him, her body tense until he rasped, “I have you.”
She looked at him, relief apparent in her eyes. “Nyte…”
He twisted, guiding her aside so he stood between Ember and her assailants.
The other human’s heads swiveled toward him. They all jerked back, shocked by his sudden presence. The first hints of doubt wafted off them. That was always how it began; a tiny taste of what was to come.
“What the fuck?” one of them demanded.
“Where’d this asshole come from?” asked the man with curly hair.
The man in the vest snickered. “Bulk deal at Goths-R-Us”
“You should’ve listened to her,” Nyte growled. “And you should not have touched her.”
“Fuck off, cocksucker!” Curly Hair lunged at Nyte, thrusting his arms as though to shove him.
A pulse of raw power burst from Nyte, knocking back all five of the men before any hands could make contact with him. The nearest male stumbled and fell on his ass, and three of his companions staggered into clothing racks and display tables, knocking things askew.
The gathering shadows surged inward, swallowing the shop in utter darkness.
The blond man fumbled in the dark for a handhold by which to regain his balance, eyes wide and unseeing. But there was nothing for him to touch. “The fuck is this?”
“It’s the same kind of gimmicky bullshit half the places in this town have,” the dark-haired man said.
But belying his words, the uncertainty he emitted crept toward panic. His arms were out, swinging through empty air as though seeking out the clothing rack he’d struck only a moment before.
Ember wrapped her arms around Nyte, clutching him, and he tightened his hold on her. He willed himself to be seen—inthe perception of these humans, he was a figure of even deeper darkness than that which surrounded them, with a pair of cold, distant stars burning in place of his eyes.
“Real funny,” said the man with curly hair as he pushed himself up on fainty trembling arms. “Now turn the fucking lights back on.”
“There is no light here.” Nyte’s voice swirled through the dark like an angry wind, striking at the men from all angles. “Only nothingness. Only the void.”
The men jumped as they bumped into one another, grasping each other by arms and shirts.
“When we find you, asshole, we’re going to beat the shi?—”
Screams cut off the blond man’s words as all five of them plummeted into the void, falling through that endless emptiness. Shadowy forms of inhuman, incomprehensible beasts rushed through the darkness, clawing at the men and snapping their gaping maws.
The men recoiled, contorting themselves and crashing into each other in their efforts to evade the creatures. They tumbled and spun, their cries rising and falling wildly, their panic only worsening their chaotic fall.
The terror radiating from the mortals was delirious, delicious, a feast like Nyte hadn’t had in more than four hundred years. And it wasn’t enough. After what they’d done to his Ember, it wasn’t nearly enough.
