Sara frowned as she saw Dannie and Balric walk in the infirmary. Dannie wondered if she ever left this room. Sara always seemed to be here. “On the bed. What happened this time?” She asked, gathering instruments and herbs.“I was trying to find answers,”
Nearly an hour had passed, but Dannie couldn’t reach that calm she needed to reach the otherness and find the answers she needed. Dannie got up and took out the pill bottle from under her bed. There was one left. Thank God, for that. She lit up and took a long hit. Calm, Dannie needed to be calm. She also needed a contingency plan. There is only one person she knew that would let her walk into a trap alone, yet she could still count on to have her back — Cass.
Dannie’s screams turned shrill then the pain was suddenly gone. Little aftershocks of pain echoed through her, but it was nothing compared to before.“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” one of the deabru said when Dannie looked up at them. “What the hell, Voss, what the hell?” He clung to the scrag
Dannie looked into the mirror, staring at her reflection. Despite getting her ass kicked, there wasn’t a broken bone, bruise, or cut to show for it. That wasn’t so much a problem as the eye color change was. Her once brown color had turned to a blue-lavender color. “What the hell,” Dannie breathed leaning in closer and wondered what else had changed since last night.She pulled back her lips to look at her teeth, remembering how they felt when she ‘shifted.’ A sigh of relief escaped her when she saw completely normal blunt human teeth. Next Dannie removed her shirt to be a hundred percent sure there was nothing else that had changed besides her eyes. She was about to remove her jeans as well when she saw it. In the center of her stomach was a tattoo - the symbol that was on the cover of the black book.It looked slightly faded as if she had it for years. With a trembling hand, Dannie reached down and touched the dark lines of the tattoo. She traced it with her fingertips, but nothing h
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Sara said, leaning in so close to look at Dannie’s eyes that Sara had not just invaded Dannie’s personal space, but had conquered it for her own. “And you say this happened after you shifted into whatever it was you shifted into?”Da
Balric and Cass walked towards the center of the yard and started warming up. Dannie couldn’t help but watch them for a moment. Balric, despite his size, moved with quick grace. There was something primally attractive about him. She couldn’t put her finger on exactly what it was, but it pushed all her buttons. Cass, Dannie had no doubts, could pull men in just as easily. Beautiful, quick, and strong, Cass was like poetry in motion. The two looked good together.
The rock, about the size of a golf ball, elevated around three inches off Dannie’s hand. Blood trickled from her nose and down her face. The temptation to clean it away made her fingers twitch. The rock wavered and Dannie forced her full focus back onto it. Holding the rock like that took much more effort than throwing it with her magic.
It hurt. It hurt like a son of a bitch, but it didn’t seem to take as long or hurt as much as the first time. Dannie heard Cass swear, fear in her voice and scent as she stood. Dannie opened and closed her clawed hands.“What-what is she?” Cass asked, again the fea
“Apparently to save the demon race,” Dannie told him. “Naberius claims he wants to find a peaceful co-existence in this world as werewolves have. He says what Laina did to me is the key. If I tell him what I know about Laina’s spell, it would allow them to survive.”“I see,&rd
Jarret led Dannie up into one of the buildings, to the top floor. She wasn’t sure what she’d expected from a demon lord’s apartment, but certainly not warm and homey. Decorated in whites and grays with wood and glass furniture, that screamed ‘I’m rich.’ Dannie started to relax until she saw the man in the corner. Tall, athletic, he too had that ‘I’m very wealthy’ look to him only it came along with a sense of arrogance.
Dannie stared up at the red sky, watching the clay-colored clouds float past her. What the hell? She groaned as she sat up. Her body ached, but it was more annoyance than anything else. Dannie looked around her, hugging her knees to her chest. The land around her was all too familiar. Iztal. She was in Iztal. Dannie swallowed at the implications of what being there meant. She was dying. Dannie knew that much. So the fact she went there meant she was more deabru than anything else? Could she go back to earth and if she could, would she have to possess someone to do it?
Sara jumped and cried out as Balric appeared in the middle of the infirmary with Dannie in his arms. “Help her,” he demanded.Sara’s eyes widened. “On the bed. What happened?”
Dannie saw herself, well not herself, but Laina. She paced a sleek, modern-looking living room. Her resolve to go through with the plan was solidified. Laina would save this world from the deabru and Balric perhaps would see her as more than a necessary evil for once.Everything went dark and it cleared Dannie w
The next week, Dannie spent her days developing enough charms for everyone who was going to go to Cody with her, as well as almost thirty magical bombs. During the night, she spent her nights with Balric’s wild side. She wasn’t quite sure what to make of this new side of his or that, after a week, he didn’t seem to tire or be weirded out by her at all. It was something new and kind of scared Dannie a little.
Dannie’s vision went white and her back screamed with pain. She groaned and looked up to see Cass was trying to keep a very angry Balric from a very scared Will. She stood up shakily, her whole body now singing with aches and pains. “Stop, unless you want to go flying too,” she told Balric.
As Dannie kissed Balric, she realized he wasn’t kissing her back. Her stomach sunk and she pulled back from him. “I’m so-” she started when Balric wrapped his hand around her neck and pulled her back to him. His mouth fell on hers, demanding and hungry. Dannie’s heart stuttered as she kissed him back just as passionate. Their kiss deepened, and the taste of him exploded on her tongue. Balric smelled of musky earth, but his taste was robust and fresh.
Dannie spent the rest of the evening and some of the night, thinking about how she’d be able to get an advantage over Voss when he would follow the breadcrumbs of her magic. In the library, the next day, Dannie was researching through the many books there when she smelled Balric, a moment before she saw Balric join her. “What can I do for you, Betrayer?”