Demon from the Dark (Immortals After Dark #10)(60)

He blinked at the landscape, seeing a blurring explosion of green all around them, like a wall. Green? Scents bombarded him—

The smell of aggression, enemies. He jerked his head around, shoving Carrow behind his back. Can’t see . . .

“Welcome to hell, Slaine,” some strange man intoned.

Movement all around them. With his eyes burning, Malkom struggled to analyze the scene. A large, pale-faced man stood at the back. In front of him was a short club-carrying mortal.

More than a dozen mortal soldiers besieged them, weapons at the ready. They were dressed like the ones he’d killed for trespassing on his mountain.

Now they must be bent on revenge.

I’ve endangered Carrow. Get her away. His gaze darting, he turned back to the portal. Beside the doorway stood a wide-eyed sorceress, but she’d already closed that escape.

The short male calmly ordered, “Seize him.”

Malkom drew Carrow closer. “Stay behind me.”

But she edged past him to stand next to the sorceress.

“What are you doing, Carrow?”

Her voice a whisper, she said, “Malkom, I’m so sorry.” Her eyes brimmed with tears that spilled down her heartbreaking face. Her expression seemed agonized.

No. His mind couldn’t grasp this, couldn’t comprehend . . .

“P-please, just go with them—”

“No, Carrow,” he insisted, even as realization took hold, that knot tightening in his gut. She’d lured him into a trap. “Channa?”

“I-I didn’t have a choice,” she said, but he was no longer listening.

“Not you, not you.” He gnashed his teeth. “Not you!” he roared with fury.

As he lunged for her, he was blasted with some kind of power. Muscles spasming, his legs buckled. And then the pain began.



When the guards surrounded them, Malkom’s eyes had been questioning, disbelieving, then anguished. Now they’d shot to black, flashing with an unholy rage.

Carrow screamed as the men opened fire on him with sedation darts, rifles popping. “No, stop this!”

Lanthe held her back. “You can’t do anything for him.”

But the darts could barely puncture his taut muscles, and he quickly knocked them away. So they opened up with those charge throwers, like flamethrowers with electricity.

He bellowed as they electrocuted him, but he wouldn’t surrender. When two soldiers got too close, he leapt forward, claws bared, slashing them nearly in half, slicing through their weapons and their bodies.

Now the riflemen switched to bullets, firing a barrage that nearly put him to his knees.

Tears poured from Carrow’s eyes. “No! Please, stop.” She wanted to defend him, to war against these men who dared hurt Malkom. Yet she could do nothing. “Chase, call them off, please!”

The mortal merely gazed on, his wan face impassive.

Lanthe murmured to her, “It’s only a matter of time now.”

There were too many of them, and Malkom was still weakened from his imprisonment in Ash, from his journey across the desert.

To save me. When she gave a sob, he turned his attention to her. “I will . . . make you pay—”

Another volley of bullets. He convulsed in agony, blood pouring from his wounds and arcing over the ground. Still he fought, futilely striking out until he was so injured he could no longer stand.

They swiftly closed in, securing his wrists in those unbreakable manacles.

With a torque in hand, Fegley sauntered over, placing his boot on Malkom’s face, shoving it into the ground. After he’d threaded the collar around the demon’s neck, he pressed his thumbprint onto the screen to lock it. “Good job, boys,” he said to the guards. “Take him away.”

With a smirk, Fegley turned to Chase. “Not as stylish as, say, your black bag over the head, but we do what we can.”

The soldiers strapped Malkom to a board, like a gurney with restraints, loading him into one of the trucks. Just before the doors closed, the demon gazed at her with pure hatred, his bloody lips moving as he rasped in Demonish.

“Malkom, I never wanted this. I didn’t have a choice!”

The doors slammed. And then he was gone.

Fegley turned to Carrow. “You want your torque off?” He held up his hand, wiggling his right thumb. “Then come to Daddy.”

Lanthe nudged her forward. Numb, Carrow crossed to the man who continued to make her life hell.

“Turn around, witch.”

After what they’d done to Malkom, she burned to kill Fegley the moment her power returned, but she couldn’t until she had Ruby somewhere safe.

When she turned, he snatched her wrists behind her, manacling her. She thrashed from his grip, too late. “What the hell is this, Fegley?” She twisted around to stare down Chase. “Is this just until I get off the island? Or did you never intend to let us go?”

From behind her, Fegley said at her ear, “Bingo.”

Lanthe hissed, “You filthy pig,” while Carrow rocked on her feet, dazed. All this hurt, and for nothing.

“Chase, don’t do this! You gave your word.”

Sweat beaded on Chase’s upper lip. He sidestepped when a soldier brushed past him, but he said nothing.

Fegley yanked Carrow toward one of the two remaining Humvees, with a bristling Lanthe following. “Maybe it’s out of his hands. Maybe perfect Chase got caught with his hand in the cookie jar.”