Page 119 of Demon and the Raven

Lorne was gasping, shivering, sobbing, but whole. I called through the wards and felt them lock into place, a vault once more, allowing nothing that was not for its highest and best. Nothing tainted, the demon purified to feed the land.

“Blessed be,” I whispered, my breathing rough as I crawled over to Lorne.

He recoiled, scrambling back.

“Love,” I soothed him, my voice soft, cajoling. “Honey, come here.”

Brushing away dirt and tears, snot and spit, he came toward me, only to have a claw, a hand—my brain couldn’t put together what I was seeing as it was pitch-black smoke—tear out of the earth and reach for him.

“No!” he yelled, moving fast, struggling to stand, failing, falling in front of me, arm shielding me as the demon, all shadow now, came from the ground, no longer scrabbling for purchase, but looming strong as it came toward us.

Lorne tried valiantly to move, flailing to stand between me and the demon, but it grasped his neck and flung him away.

Shoving my hands in the earth, I felt the land shift around us, under us, and I knew it would envelop the demon and drag it to its core before it let him near us. The unclean thing was poison, and the wards needed to be strengthened, but it would swallow the filth a second time to save me and Lorne.

But the land was weakened from tearing Lorne from the demon, and even now, as it reached for that which was made of shadow, it couldn’t hold it, which was how Kamosh had been able to crawl out of the earth to begin with.

“You shall watch your love die,” Kamosh roared at me.

“No!” I yelled.

But the demon clenched its shadowy fist, and I heard Lorne scream.

And scream.

When he stopped suddenly, I knew he was dead.

Instantly, my chest hurt, my vision blurred with tears, my skin washed cold. I let my head drop to my chest as a sob tore out of me. But then Lorne wailed, and I looked up, over to where he was, flat on his back in the grass where the demon had flung him.

The demon clenched both fists, and Lorne choked out a yelp of pain, his voice going, more a rasping cry, the pain, I was certain, utterly searing. But he endured it, I knew he did, because in moments he went quiet, panting heavily, trying to catch his breath.

I wasn’t stupid. I knew it was Corvus suppressing whatever it was the demon had put inside Lorne, keeping him safe, not allowing him to be taken from me.

With a roar of frustration, the demon rounded on me, and my hands were ripped from the earth as it took hold, hand around my throat, tightening fast, flooding my body with cold.

A thought flashed through my brain, my lord’s words to me from the last time I saw him. If I was in danger, to call for his dogs, the ones that roamed Corvus in the fall.

“Dar!” I barely got out.

It was hard to breathe, and it was smart of Kamosh not to let me touch the ground.

“Dar!” Lorne’s cry was ragged. “Osko! Gwyn!”

Kamosh flung me down hard. I was winded, and it felt like my back was broken. I put both hands in the dirt.

Heal, the land said.

You heal, I answered as the demon closed in on Lorne.

“Osko, Dar, Gwyn,” I yelled, and the demon stopped and turned back to me.

I had a moment to think as it came toward me again, and Lorne rasped my name, that the land could not keep us both alive for long, and given a choice, it would save me and allow Lorne to be killed. The land couldn’t understand that his death would leave me broken and unable to be the guardian I was.

Rolling to my stomach, I pushed up, and with the strength and adrenaline I had left, I rose, got my legs under me, and bolted over to Lorne, passing the demon, and fell down on top of the man I loved.

“Xan,” he murmured, and there were tears in his eyes before he clutched me to him as he looked up.

Turning, I saw the demon lunge for me, but was instead caught in the jaws of Gwyn, the largest of the Cŵn Annwn, the three dogs that belonged to my lord Arawn.