Page 104 of Bewitching the Wolf

“SHIFT NOW!” I hear Traggar order, and suddenly there are no men, just monsters, huge and fierce and ready to fight to the death.

Traggar’s intuition was right. They’ve shifted just in time. Because suddenly out of the air-conditioning vents, creatures appear. They are hideous beyond my wildest imaginings.

Vile beings, with claws and scales and curved fangs, land from all angles, clawing and biting and flapping their veined and mottled wings.

One hits me as it passes, sending the cape sideways.

As I lean against the wall, both me and the cape regaining equilibrium, I see Kazmo, in his lion form, bat one of the creatures against the wall with a huge paw. It sinks down, limp and lifeless, its scaly neck broken, its one red eye protruding from the middle of its forehead.

I shudder.

Brody the bear, huge and shaggy, rears up on his massive hind legs and takes on another three of them in one go, with a huge roar, snapping their reptilian legs like twigs.

Silas rises above us on flapping wings, cawing hoarsely, and warding off more of them. It’s the first time I have ever seen him as a raven.

But the creatures keep coming, oozing some noxious substance from their pores, their one huge eye protruding from their wrinkled skulls. All over them are growths, like spiky warts, and they belch out an acrid-smelling smoke that manages to infiltrate the cape with a putrid smell.

Everywhere there is fighting, the sounds and sights of battle. The punch of a fist cracking on a skull. The squelch of a wolf’s dagger or claws taking out the vitals of one of the hideous beasts.

One lands on Otis’s back. He roars and tries to shake it off, but it’s attached, its wings around his shoulders. Silas swoops and drags it off. His beak gouges a huge lump out of its flesh and the creature screams, then fizzles into a puddle of rank acidic black oil.

To say the scene is ugly does not do it justice.

It’s clear though, that the demons are being held at bay, and I have another mission to complete.

I need to move on.

I need to find Marsha.

“Ta de Ka,” I order the cape. “Take me to her.”

CHAPTER 32

JAX

Marsha Winters sits at the desk in the Opal Office, shouting orders into a speakerphone.

As the cape touches down, she pauses, and her nostrils flare. She stares exactly at the spot where I’ve landed, her ugly gaze eating through the folds of the cape.

I drop the cape to my shoulders and order it to stand behind me.

It is decreed that I must meet Marsha face to face, white magic overthrowing the darkness. Mom and I discussed it last night.

Marsha’s eyes bulge, and a vein on her temple starts to throb.

“YOU!” she spits, jumping to her feet. She shakes her head, scowling. “No, no, you can’t be here, you have no free will. I put a fucking chip in your neck…”

“Which is no longer there.” I bare my neck to show the bite marks that turned me.

“This is some trick of Auroras,” she shouts. “You’re not real. The real Jax Summers is doing my bidding at the portals… I saw him on the screen just yesterday.”

“The Jax Summers you have been tracking is a hologram, invented by our orc sheriff to dupe you. This Jax Summers, right here, is the newly appointed High Priest of the Dawnwrought Coven.”

“You lie.” Marsha’s eyes narrow to slits of malevolence. “Where is she? Where is Aurora?” she screams at me. “Where have you taken her?”

“Out of your reach.”

It dawns on her. “It was you who woke her up, you who helped her escape.”