Just then, the front door banged open, and all thirteen of us jumped.
I turned to find Sköll and Fenrir sauntering into the house, their lazy, satisfied grins mirroring the other.
A very angry Willow was tossed over Sköll’s shoulder in a fireman’s hold, and her legs were kicking furiously in the air as she struggled to get away from him.
“Put her here!” I said, stepping out of the way as they approached and gesturing to the woody circle that would be her temporary prison.
Sköll dropped Willow to her feet and roughly shoved her through the opening I had left in the ring.
“No!” Willow hissed as she fell backward. The second she crossed the threshold, I hurried to lock her in with the final piece, and she launched herself at me.
The oak sealed the ring closed just as she hit the perimeter of the circle, and the magic rippled into place.
She cried out in pain as she hit the invisible wall of magic we had created, and she fell to her knees in agony.
Her hands were bound behind her back with the strange golden noose Gabe had lent us. He’d assured me it would prevent her from using her own magic against us. Another invention the demons had stolen from Yahweh in their fight to free themselves from his reign.
“Goddess…” Luna breathed as we watched our friend hiss and spit in the circle like some sort of deranged gremlin.
She was releasing a strange clicking sound that made my hair stand on end, and her normally warm, brown eyes had bled to black.
Even the whites of her eyes were black, and it was suddenly clear that something wasvery, verywrong with her.
“Willow…” My heart cracked in my chest at the sight of her. “Baby girl… what have they done to you?”
“Shereeks,” Fenrir said gravely. “Like sulfur. I can smell the real her in there, but there’s something else keeping her trapped deep inside.”
My nostrils flared, but I couldn’t smell what Fenrir could. I wasn’t a guardian, so that made sense, but I could see with my own eyes what he meant.
I met Willow’s eyes, and it wasn’t my friend staring back at me, but something else.
“Who are you?” I asked, speaking to whatever it was that was crouching inside my friend’s body.
The creature used Willow’s mouth to hiss, and a black, sticky substance dripped out of her mouth, causing me to clench my fists together in fear.
“I am God’s disciple. Sent to strengthen Raziel’s armies against those that would stain the earth with sin,” it hissed, and I narrowed my eyes.
“I will start withyou,”it snarled. “I will bring your head to my master, and he will absolve me of my failures!”
I crouched down at the edge of the circle, meeting the creature’s eyes dead on to show it that I did not fear it.
Anger swelled in my chest.
How darethis creature violate my friend’s body like this!?
“You dare threaten me? I am Hecate, Mother of Witches. You have desecrated the body of someone who is precious to me, and I will not know rest until you are punished.”
The creature didn’t respond. It simply opened Willow’s mouth impossibly wide, as if it had dislocated her jawbone, and a horrible screechingwailescaped her mouth.
“Argh,fuck!”I barked, leaping back away from it as the sound assaulted my eardrums.
The screech rattled through the house, shaking the bones of my home to its very foundations, and I knew it was calling for its master.
All of us froze, waiting to see what would happen, but when nothing did, I smiled.
“It seems your master has forsaken you,” I whispered, and the creature’s now ink-coated black tongue flicked out of my friend’s mouth as it panted before me. “You’re mine now,” I hissed, and for the first time, the monster seemed afraid.
And it should have been.
