And it’s not just images I see. I feel what she feels. I know all she knows.
I feel her rage at being abandoned by James. I feel her hatred toward me, and all that unguarded jealousy. Her mind is a storming cauldron of emotions.
But she doesn’t know I’m there.
Victoria only gets the briefest chance to react as something heavy and fast slams into her and knocks her to the ground. She cries out as she lands on her back.
And there, through her eyes, I see it. The evil, menacing, raging Narwhark I’d unleashed. It attacks her like a savage dog.
Her hands come up in self-defence and her claws and fangs come out. But the Narwhark is too fast, too hungry, too angry. It rips right through her defenses and sinks its curling pointed teeth into her shoulder, her arms, her abdomen.
Victoria screams. I hear it both in the air and in my mind. The pain she feels is doubled in my body.
I crash to my knees and grab my head, willing the images out, out, out. But as the Narwhark continues to attack, and all I can see is its blurred black form, my connection with Victoria only strengthens, until I’m fully inhabiting her body, until I’m trapped inside like in some sort of horrible dream.
The cell door opens. James is there. He rushes back in.
The Narwhark leaps off. Victoria’s eyes droop shut. Her vital energy is draining out of her. The wounds she sustained are corrupted with the demon’s spit, and her body cannot heal them, cannot close them up in time.
Her head rolls one way. She looks toward the creature.
And I see, for the very first time, just what the Narwhark is.
The little black shadow is but a tiny piece of its horrifying body. I see the demon as a faint outline traced in blue light. Its head is massive, its arms and legs thick as a bear’s. Long, terrible claws extend from paws that are gnarled with finger-like digits. Its skin is cracked and leathery with nauseating splotches of color here and there, like a diseased reptile. Its neck curls right before it protrudes into the head, giving it the look of a spindly thing, almost like the curved ark of a reaper’s deadly blade.
Then the vision fades, and the Narwhark is that little black blur again, streaking toward James.
Victoria’s eyes fully close.
I don’t get to see what happens next. I’m plunged into sudden darkness. I feel a sudden crack at the back of my head.
Pain. Horrible, blistering pain as the connection between Victoria and me severs.
I fall to the floor. The pain continues unabated, lashing through my head in sharp jabs of agony. My jaw clenches as I clutch my head.
Pain, pain, and more pain washes through me, unrelenting, unstopping, and there’s nothing I can do to lesson it. I cannot even cry out. It feels like my mind is breaking,
As the reverberations of the cut connection with Victoria continue to pulse through my body, my last thought is of Raul and how I never told him how I feel.
The world pitches into a thick and inky black.
Chapter Fifty-Five
SMITHSON
I race up the stairs ahead of the Queen, Witchbane unsheathed and at the ready in my hand.
When she alerted me to a potential breakout from the silver cells… I was sure that I’d been compromised. I never thought James would be stupid enough to rescue his woman from the tower.
For a few minutes, I’d dared to hope it had been Raul, gone to save Eleira as I’d none too subtly suggested…
But when I ran into him while racing to the castle, all hope went out. Now, the only thing I can do is pledge ignorance about James. But that’s a horrible demonstration of my worth as Captain Commander.
We run up a flight of stairs. From the top a snarling black blur flies out. “Watch out!” I scream and jump in the way of the Queen.
The Narwhark strikes my blade with a sickening hiss. The force of impact nearly knocks the weapon from my hand. The demonic creature falls back, then picks itself up again.
Black liquid oozes down the blade. I watch, aghast, as the metal starts to warp and droop like a melting icicle.
Such rage takes me then. In all my centuries of life this blade has been my sole companion, the one constant, the only thing in which I could trust. And now, a single parry against the Narwhark, and it’s… ruined.
Before I can do anything the Queen strikes out. Blue light explodes from her staff. A solid beam of it sears the spot where the Narwhark had been.
But the demon is deceptively fast. It leaps out the way so the Queen’s attack hits nothing but stone. The force of impact makes the whole chamber shake.
Morgan swears. Meanwhile, I drop my sword, knowing it will do me little good. I extend my claws and ready myself to attack—
Raul is there before me. He jumps for the demon, trying to get it with his claws. Again the damnable creature darts away, quick as silver.