“This body is not your doorway,
This soul not yours to maim.
You use spirits as your weapons,
But I release them from your claim.”
The sigil fights me.
Pain lances through me, cold and sharp. It’s like grabbing a live wire wrapped in ice.
My body shudders. The diner dims. I bare my teeth and push harder.Help me, Goddess Mother. This is a good man who needs your light. Help me help him.
I pour more energy straight into my focus on the sigil and warmth spreads through my body.
The scarlet glow of the mark darkens, but the sigil still resists. I feel it writhing against my intention like a living beast. There’s only so much I can do without touching it and I’m losing ground.
“You look flushed, Mr. Patterson. Do you have a fever?” The moment I press my hand over his forehead, I channel as much power as I can into the mark. My powers burn through the layers of demonic energy.
The sigil flares brilliant white?—
Then pure agony explodes through every nerve in my body. It’s pain like nothing I've ever felt, like being flayed from the inside out, like every cell is screaming.
My magic backlashes, slamming into me with the force of a freight train, and I’m falling.
I hear Wylder shout my name.
Then the world goes black…
CHAPTER FIVE
Darkness swallows me like a living, breathing entity. It isn’t a peaceful sink into unconsciousness. This blackness pulses with malevolent intent, strangling me in tendrils of pure malice. It’s hungry. It’s sinister. It’s alive.
Itclaimsme.
I fall through something that feels like oil and smoke, thick and suffocating. Then suddenly I'm not falling anymore. I'm standing…
Seeing, but not through my eyes.
A stone courtyard spreads out before me in shades of crimson and shadow. At the edge of that shadow, a balcony wall made of bones and skulls separates me from a scene of endless nightmare.
The air tastes of ash and old blood, but I prefer it to the ash and sulfur of my last visit to Hell.
I feel power thrumming through the form I'm inhabiting. Ancient, vast, terrible power that makes my magic feel like a candle flame against a wildfire. Every breath draws in more strength, feeding on an energy I can't quite identify.
Anger. Fear. Chaos.Tharuzel.
I'm inside Tharuzel's consciousness.
The realization slams into me with the force of a physical blow. This is what he sees. What he feels. The hunger for souls aches in my very existence. It’s tempered by the patient calculation of a predator who knows his prey is already trapped and the victory is inevitable.
Wards shimmer at the edges of this space, glowing with Sebastian's magical signature. The power coming off them is offensive. The idea of being trapped within a witch’s boundaries absurd.
And temporary.
I feel how those wards strain, weakening as my power grows. I may not be corporeal yet, not strong enough to manifest fully, but soon will be.
Part of me recoils in horror. Another part—that sliver of darkness that exists inside me—isdrawnto this power.
