My brother and Danny waited, both of them crouched next to me, concern on their faces.
I battled the insidious spell, pushing more control at my wolf, trying to draw power from my body and direct it at her, pumping her full. She ripped and struck at the red mass in a fervor, too fast for me to follow. I gasped for more air, my lungs barely inflating. We have to do this, I told her. We have to be stronger than her or we lose him forever. It’s giving a little, I can feel it. We’re almost there. I promise you she’s not going to win this. We are stronger. My wolf snarled, gnashing her teeth, forcing the lines back into submission, tearing the spell apart before it could fully metastasize in my body, which was exactly what it was trying to do.
I channeled one last burst of power, using everything I could gather, and aimed it at my wolf. A moment of clarity hit my mind, a bright concentration of power, and the spell snapped once and for all. The lines broke apart, dangling limply in my mind like a tattered spiderweb swaying in the wind.
Then very slowly all the color dissipated, seeping back the way it’d come, like eels sliding back into their holes.
My wolf continued to growl, lashing at the retreating lines until no red remained. But the ugliness hadn’t gone away forever. The spell was still there.
It’d just gone dormant.
When the last remnant of red vanished I fell forward, coughing for air, taking in short deep breaths. After a solid minute of panting, I finally looked up, sweaty and spent. “She’s trying to kill me.”
“Who’s trying to kill you?” Tyler asked. I’d forgotten Tyler had been out cold when Selene had blasted me in the clearing.
“Selene.” I rested my head back against the wall. “It seems she left me a fun parting gift from our party together in the woods.”
But she wasn’t going to win.
“It looked a bit touch-and-go there for a second,” Danny said, his face worried. “You’re not talking about Selene the actual Lunar Goddess, are you?”
“The very one.” The whore was trying to kill me.
“What kind of a spell is it?” Tyler asked. “It looked like it was going to consume your entire body.”
“I think it was a … death spell of some kind,” I said quietly, knowing Tyler wasn’t going to take that news well.
“What the hell does that mean?”
“It means I have to kill the bitch before she kills me.”