Twenty feet later, we find another. Then another. And each time we find another ward sigil, Rowan does her thing and cloaks our forward approach.
It’s a slow and arduous task, but Rowan is in her element.
Orion’s tiger appears between the trees, moving with liquid grace, his eyes gleaming silver in the darkness. He crosses the ward with us, followed by two wolf shifters and a black bear.
We’re close enough to see the break in the trees now and the weathered structure of the mill beyond.
Izzy kneels to examine a track in the dirt. Well, it’s less like the track of an animal and more like massive gouges in the earth. The five deep claw marks rake straight through the soil and across the roots.
Her animal magic flares briefly, and then she jerks her hand back like she’s been burned. "There’s nothing natural left in whatever made these. Wylder and I will need to cleanse this whole area once we’re done here.”
“So, let’s get done.” I want this over, and I want my friends to be safely back at Hallowind House.
I press a hand to my sternum, breathing through the spike of dark connection that flares hot beneath my ribs. The closer we get, the worse it burns.
It’s not painful, exactly. Justpresent. Insistent.
It calls to the darkness of Tharuzel’s blood tie within me. If I’m being totally honest, it’s thrilling and I like it.
Except I hate that I like it.
We crouch against the mill's eastern wall, tight to the rotted and gaping boards. Through the cracks, a faint red glow pulses bright enough for us to see inside.
I lean close to look through the gap.
The interior is a cavernous space, with wooden pillars reaching up to a network of support beams crisscrossing high overhead. The old plank floor is empty of debris but looks rotted through in places, the furniture of the restaurant long ago cleared away.
In the center of the space, captive civilians kneel in a sigil circle, their wrists and ankles bound with rope that gleams wetly in the crimson light.
But there are more than the six we saw brought in.
I cast a horrified glance at Asher and enclose our group in a quick and dirty privacy spell. The pressure in my eardrums pops, and the subtle buzz of the spell encompasses us. “What the hell? There are close to thirty people in there.”
Asher looks as anxious about that as I feel. “They must’ve gathered people to fuel him up for the last leg of his coming to life.”
Wylder shrugs. “It doesn’t change the plan, just makes it more complicated. Our numbers and strength were bolstered by the shifters joining us. Let’s hope that’s enough.”
Yeah, let’s hope.
I turn my attention back to the clusterfuck that is our night. The sigil ring that surrounds the captives consists of dozens ofinterconnected demon marks, all feeding into the heart of the containment circle.
At the room's heart, in the center of the circle, an ebony shadow towers over the group like a black hole nightmare threatening to consume everything. The souls of the sacrifices laid out before him, hope, and life as we know it.
And just like the first time I saw him in the Hell Realm, the red script that covers his blackened, leathery skin shifts and writhes.
Tharuzel the Soul Thresher.
I stare at the horror of where his face should be and find only a bone mask. His mouth is two feet north of there, a jagged vertical slit that splits his chest from crown to sternum.
My stomach twists with revulsion, but the darkness inside me hums in joyous recognition, pulling against my control.
I look away from him to the shadows surging and heaving with figures. Stalking around the sigil circle, moving between the pillars, seething in the darkness are Tharuzel’s lesser demon minions. Hunched and misshapen, but still deadly.
Red light flares, and my attention snaps back to Tharuzel. Through the cracks in the wooden wall, we watch as he reaches forward with impossibly long arms and grabs one of the hostages.
The middle-aged woman lets out a whimpered yelp, tears streaming down her face.
Tharuzel lifts her, holds her in the air in front of himself, and the slit running up his sternumopens.
