Zurlo, Michele - Torment [Daughters of Circe 1] (Siren Publishing Classic) (26 page)

She knew Soren had never seen them, either. He moved as if he had no idea they were actual beings, not simply spirits who whispered in his ear. They were smaller than she expected a demon to be. Each one of them reached no more than four feet in height. They resembled childhood images of fairies.

It was funny how fairies had such a good reputation when they were really just diminutive demons.

Two of Soren’s demons were male. The other two were female. All four of them had cute, pixie faces with overly large eyes, small noses, button mouths, and rosy cheeks. Pointy ears stuck out from beneath long hair. The males kept their hair short. The females let theirs grow to spill nearly to their knees.

To reach Soren’s ears, they stood on one another’s shoulders or climbed on tables, chairs, and counters.

They stared at her, greed glittering in their saucer-like irises. The bloodthirsty savages couldn’t wait to see her cut open, bleeding power for them to grab. She wondered if Hope had seen them as clearly. There was no memory in her head that matched what she saw in front of her at that very moment.

Somehow, she doubted Hope saw anything. She knew the only reason she could see them now was because of the werewolf essence running through her veins, invading every cell of her body.

She wasn’t fighting the transformation. She knew this was what Circe wanted. It was why she created her Daughters in the first place. The power to shape-shift had originally belonged to Circe. Torrey would be the first Daughter to reclaim that ability.

She took in the four interlopers, eyeing them without seeming to see them. Her innocuous appearance and the charm she effortlessly cast fooled the demons. Soren was disposed to let Shade help in any way he could.

With a brief nod, Soren moved out of the way. He let Shade and Torrey pass, but he grabbed Riley’s arm. “Riley.” The single word was filled with regret and pain.

She jerked free. “Don’t touch me.” The malevolence of her stare reverberated with a physical presence. They all felt it. “I hate you, Soren. I hate what you’ve done, and I hate what you’re doing. You don’t have to do this.”

“Yes, I…”

The sharp echo of a slap rang in Torrey’s ears. Riley flounced past Shade, heading up the stairs that would take her to his room.

Shade hesitated. He had neither sorrow nor sympathy for his brother. “You murdered the woman who was my soul. You are going to murder her again tonight. You don’t deserve happiness, and you don’t deserve to have a family.”

The implication of Shade’s words penetrated the layers of protection and charms his demons cast around him. All color drained from Soren’s face. “Shaden…”

Shade shook his head. “We are through, you and I. You are no longer my brother. I renounce any blood, any bond we share.” His gaze flickered down to Torrey and back. “I should have done this long ago. I should never have forgiven you for what you did to Hope.”

Soren said nothing. There were a million things he could have said, but they were all excuses. At the core of it all, there was only Soren. The demons didn’t hurt anyone. They had no real power in this world.

Torrey watched Shade’s face as he carried her to his room. “He is your soul, too, Shade. I don’t expect you to hate him on my behalf.”

“I know,” he said. “I shouldn’t have listened to that letter you wrote. You might be able to forgive him for what he’s done, but I can’t. I’ve tried, Torrey. For years, I’ve tried to do what you asked, all that peace and love nonsense.”

It sounded very sixties to Torrey. She remembered telling Shade to turn the other cheek. It amazed her how different her personality and ethics were in this lifetime. While she did think Shade should eventually reconcile with Soren, she didn’t think he should do it until after Soren was free from his demons.

Riley peeled back the coverlet, and Shade set Torrey down gently. He pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Don’t ask me to try it again. I refuse, even for a deathbed promise.”

Torrey laughed, a short foray because it hurt so much. “I’m not going to die.”

“Torrey.” Riley sobbed her sister’s name. “This is my fault. If I hadn’t been so gullible…”

Guilt and regret flashed over Shade’s features. Torrey knew he never intended to let her get near Lyton, the werewolf village. If it came to it, he would have sacrificed Riley to save Torrey.

“Don’t do that,” Torrey said. “I’m not dying. I’m getting stronger. I’m going to soak up some energy from the sun. Tonight, I’m going to reconnect with earth and water, and I’m going to greet the sun’s long-lost lover with the proper amount of respect and honor.”

Shade stared at Torrey, assessing her with new eyes. He understood her oblique references. “It’s not possible.”

“Sure it is.” Riley’s eyes lit with excitement. “You scratched her. It’s a classical werewolf thing. It has made its way into literature and movies. Now she’ll be like you. Soren won’t be able to sacrifice her because now she’s just like you guys.”

Shade shook his head slowly. “Myth is myth, and reality is reality. Witches cannot become werewolves. Even if they could, it wouldn’t stop Soren. Half-breeds aren’t welcome in Lyton. If they didn’t kill her, she would live the rest of her life as an outcast.”

Torrey laughed. It hurt, but she couldn’t help it. “I wouldn’t stay here. There are lots of other places to live. The world is huge.”

“And witches can obviously become werewolves,” Riley continued, finishing Torrey’s thought as she often did. She smoothed hair away from Torrey’s forehead. “Does it hurt a lot?”

“It burns,” Torrey said. “And it’s going to get worse before it gets better.” She pushed herself to sitting.

“Don’t do that,” Shade warned, reacting to her grimace. He slid in beside her and supported her back with his large, strong hand. “You need to conserve energy.”

“Except for the burning, I feel fine,” she said. “I played it up for Soren. He needs to think I’m on my last legs.”

He stared at her. “You could have told me that.”

“No, I couldn’t.” She grinned. “Remember that tiny apartment we had in Philadelphia? When my parents came to visit, all you had to do was pretend you lived next door, but you blew it with the first thing you said to my dad.”

Shade’s cheeks turned ruddy under his short black beard.

“You’ve never even been to Philadelphia.” Riley’s head tilted to the side. She studied her sister with that look people had when they were trying to figure out whether or not someone was sane.

“I’ve been everywhere.” She answered Riley, but her smile was for Shade alone. “You knew. From the beginning, you knew.”

“You are my soul,” he said as he brushed his lips across hers. “Of course I knew.”

“You tried to get rid of me.” Her voice was soft, but her accusation was not. In that dive of a bar, he had known her immediately, and he still told her to go home.

His arm slid around her waist, holding her good side to pull her closer. “I knew Soren would come after you again. Even if it meant I couldn’t be with you, I couldn’t let him kill you again.”

“He won’t,” she promised. “I need you tonight.” Including Riley in the sweep of her eyes, she added, “I need both of you tonight.”

Riley objected to the plan, but she was overruled.

“How can you expect me to stay locked up in a room far away in the middle of nowhere while you two are out there risking your lives?”

Shade leapt up to clap a hand over her mouth so that the sound didn’t carry too far. The house was large and solidly built, but wolf hearing was exceptional. “You have no powers, Riley. You’re human. To many people out there, you’re nothing more than dinner.”

She turned to him in horror. “You mean werewolves really do eat people?”

“Some,” he said. “The older ones. It’s a practice that fell out of favor more than two centuries ago. Unfortunately, wolves tend to live for three or four centuries, which means there are wolves out there who remember the taste fondly.”

Torrey swung her legs to dangle over the side of the bed. She was stiff from her long illness and the outpouring of power required to cure Shade, and she didn’t want that to impede her later. The wound at her side wept. It would not heal until she shifted her shape, something she wouldn’t attempt until she had the power of the moon in the night sky above her.

“She has power,” she said. “That’s the problem.” Torrey pushed to her feet. Shade rushed to help her, but she waved him away. “That’s why people fall over themselves to do things for you, Riley. You charm them without even realizing what you’re doing. Your power is weak, but Soren recognizes it. If he can’t have me, he will go for you.”

Angry tears glittered in Riley’s eyes. “How am I helping if I’m not even here?”

Limping to an old-fashioned, rolltop desk on the other side of the room, Torrey jotted some words on a scrap of paper. “Find my tree. Sit under it with this blanket draped around your shoulders. When the rain begins, chant the words.”

She folded the paper and shoved it into Riley’s fist, squeezing her sister’s hand meaningfully.

“We will meet again, in this form and in this lifetime.”

Riley threw her arms around Torrey, not checking the force of her hug to save her sister some pain. “Come with us. We can escape. We can be far, far away from here before Soren notices we’ve gone.”

Torrey disengaged herself from Riley’s hug to take her sister’s face between her hands. “I need him to see you leave. I need him to know Shade is keeping his word to me to keep you safe. He won’t trust Shade otherwise. His demons aren’t the smartest, but Soren is. He will figure this out if the two of you linger here all day.”

Turning to Shade, she gave him the same treatment. “Don’t come back until the moon is high in the sky. Soren needs to be occupied with the ritual or he will have his guard do something to keep you away.”

He leaned down and closed his lips over hers. It was a kiss filled with promise and reassurance and love. “I love you, Torrey.”

Torrey smiled. He could have used any of her names. From his lips, the name didn’t matter, only the sentiment. “I love you, too, Shade.”

“I won’t let you die this time,” he said. “I want a life with you. I want a family.”

She reached up to rest a hand on his rough cheek. “We’ll have those things, Shade. I promise. Nothing will keep us apart anymore. Not in this lifetime and not in the next.”

She didn’t need to read his thoughts to know he was remembering the last time, when she’d tricked him into leaving her alone. She had gone to Soren, and she had given herself to him. She knew she hadn’t been strong enough to fight him, not then.

She had been a creature of hope, a creature of light searching for her one true love. She had forgotten the forces that tore them apart in the first place. She had forgotten the power of torment. Though she still didn’t fully remember everything, she knew the demons haunting Soren were the same beings responsible for rending her soul from Shade’s in the first place. He hadn’t been called Shaden then. She couldn’t remember his name, but she knew it wasn’t that.

She had instructed Caiden to name her this way so that she would remember what she needed to do. It hadn’t been a punishment from a father who was nothing to her. It had been a big, fat sticky note.

Shade kissed her again, this time in warning, and then he left with Riley. Torrey watched them leave. Her heart was heavy, and she was afraid. The urge to call out to them, to flee instead of staying to fight, was powerful. She fought it.

If she didn’t stop this now, it might be centuries before she found Shade again. She couldn’t wait that long.

Torrey spent the rest of the afternoon alternating between dozing under the shafts of sunlight playing over the bed and stretching her limbs. Soren knocked on the door as the sun was setting.