The Amber Lee Boxed Set

  My invisible senses stretched into the Nether around me again like blood through water. Where there had been nothing a moment ago, there was something now. It was an impression; a warm melody that reminded me of a hug between sisters. If it was her, she was standing only a few feet away from me. Humming. Smiling, I thought. Happy.

  I could feel Aaron’s energy reacting to my sudden alertness, could feel the spiritual vibrations his body made as he crested the hill behind me. But all I could do was reach for Collette, stretch out my hands, and wrap myself in her essence. To ask her how she is. Where she is. Why she is. I had so many questions for her, so many open boxes left to close. Then I heard her voice as if she were speaking from a vaulted, empty room.

  “Memento mori, ma cherie.”

  “Collette!” I said, immediately raising the alarm. “Please, if that’s you, I need you to speak to me.”

  “When ze devil comes you must choose, cherie,” she said, “Choose ze light or ze dark, but choose it in your heart. Not your mind.”

  “I can’t do this without you, Collette. I need you here, with me. I don’t want you to be gone.”

  “What iz already gone can never again be taken from you. Be ready now. It comes.”

  Her voice faded to an echo and continued to diminish until it was as if the voice had never existed in the first place. The Nether was dark and still again, devoid of all figures and voices, of all movement save for the vibrations caused by the living. Aaron was by my side, his hand on my shoulder. Behind him were Frank, Damien, and Jackal, their vibrations matching Aaron’s. They were all worried about me, and curious as to what I had seen. But I had no time to explain.

  It comes.

  From my diaphragm came a movement so powerful it brought me to my knees, gagging and coughing. My ephemeral senses were gone, my lungs weren’t taking in air, and my muscles were starting to twitch beneath my skin. It was happening. I was changing. Any moment now I would take the beast’s form and either run from, or attack, the closest person to me. Aaron. But something about this didn’t feel right.

  “Amber,” Aaron said into my ear, “I need you to listen to the sound of my voice.”

  I groped for his shirt and neck and squeezed it, bringing attention to the fact that I couldn’t breathe. Aaron realized what I was trying to say, and the blood drained from his face. “She’s choking!” he said.

  “Get away from her!” Frank said. He shoved Aaron aside and knelt in front of me. “Amber, listen to me; it’s happening. You need to fight.”

  “Wh—wh—” the words weren’t coming. Air wasn’t coming.

  “Don’t ask questions! Your body’s pushing it out of your throat. I need you to help it. Throw it up all over the ground. Bring the light down and fight it!”

  It was like a flood of hot, painful bile was clawing its way through my throat to get out of my mouth. At least, that’s what it felt like at the beginning. Then it seemed more like the bile wasn’t trying to get out at all, but rather grabbing onto the insides of my throat to stop my body from trying to push it out. Kicking and screaming and scratching, making sure I could feel every last second of its passing. My throat swelled, my vision receded, and I still hadn’t taken a breath. With the last ounce of my strength, I dug deep into myself, into the power of my soul, and pulled at whatever light I could find like they were pieces of sparkling foam bubbles floating in the air. I imagined the foam entering my stomach through my skin and pushing out from inside, pushing up into my throat, to expel the thing that wanted so desperately to stay within me; a thing that wasn’t quite a demon, but was.

  In one heaving move, I choked the ball out of my throat and expelled it from my mouth. Finally I was able to take a breath of crisp, cold air into my lungs, and for a moment I remained where I was, doubled over and struggling to catch my breath. But then I opened my eyes and I saw it; a black shape like the kind I had seen many times before, like a splotch of black ink in midair. The thing was writhing and pulsing, tendrils of blackness spreading and contracting. The others watched; Aaron and Jackal poised to attack it with tooth and nail, and Frank and Damien both stunned and silent.

  Then the splotch of black ink reached for my face and pulled itself toward me.

  I fell to my back, struggling to hold it off, but it had no mass. Frank leapt to my defense and grabbed onto my shoulder. Damien opened his palm and released thousands of silver motes into the air, which descended upon me like glittery snowflakes. Once again, I couldn’t breathe. Again my throat swelled. Only this time it wasn’t something trying to get out of me, but something trying to get back inside; and by the time anyone had attempted to stop it, it was too late.

  Darkness spread across my field of vision. In the back of my mind I heard laughter, then screams, then more laughter. And just like that, it was gone.

  The moment passed and then another one came and went. My lungs were working again, breathing and releasing, but I couldn’t move. Not because I was being held down, but because my brain seemed unable to send the command through my nervous system. Is this what it feels like to be in shock? Maybe. I didn’t really have a frame of reference, which was weird considering all I had been through. But then, I was able to think so maybe it wasn’t shock in the medical sense. Maybe it was a kind of spiritual shock.

  “Amber?” Frank asked.

  I was watching his magick motes blink slowly out of existence, but I nodded when he spoke.

  “Are you going to change?” Aaron asked.

  I shook my head. The thing that had been hiding inside of me ever since the night of Aaron’s transformation had made itself known, had revealed its presence—its existence—and somehow that made it easier for me to deal with. More importantly, it made it easier for the wolf to be able to deal with. I had come close to ridding myself of it, but not close enough. As long as the thing was still in me, I knew it was only a matter of time before the stability I had worked so hard to achieve was destroyed.

  ***

  It was Damien who spotted the lurker. First the sky darkened as clouds passed in front of the sun, and then the man showed up at the edge of his senses. The densely packed trees on that side of the graveyard kept the man well concealed, and no one else had noticed his presence because they were too busy tending to Amber. By the grace of the Goddess, Damien had noticed him; and he noticed the guy was wearing a hood, too.

  His body tensed and he pretended to look the other way, though he kept the hooded man in his peripherals as well as he could. Jackal was the closest person to him, then Frank, then Aaron and Amber. Jackal would react loudly to whatever telepathic message Damien could send her, and Frank was too busy helping Amber deal with what she had just been through—what she had almost succeeded in expelling from her.

  If Damien raised the alarm, more hooded men might show. He had no way of knowing that as a fact, only a hunch, but he didn’t want to risk it. He would need to deal with the hooded man on his own. Quietly. Somehow.

  “That’s probably the smartest play,” said a woman’s voice. “Keeping them in the dark is smart.”

  Damien’s head arched left and there she was, standing next to him, watching the scene unfold before her as Amber recovered from her incident. Acheris. Here. In broad daylight. Acheris was so close her exotic scent seemed to have been able to wrap itself around him and weaken his defenses before she had even fired off a shot. She smelled like Natalie—like honey and cinnamon—but the smell wasn’t perfect. The honey jar was full of dead flies, and all the cinnamon in the world couldn’t make him want a spoonful.

  “Fr—” Damien was about to say, but Acheris cut him off.

  “Don’t bother,” she said, “They can’t hear you. I wanted to make sure we had our privacy.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I didn’t think she had it in her. Almost rid herself of it. Almost.”

  “What do you want!” Damien said. It was clear she was telling the truth. None of his friends flinched. In fact, they were all standing there
, on the hill, looking at each other, but they weren’t… speaking. It was as if they had been stupefied in some way. Or maybe that’s just what Acheris wanted him to see. To believe. Maybe he had seen the hooded man because Acheris had wanted him to. Maybe the man wasn’t even there at all.

  She turned to her side, to face him, and smiled her full, red-lipped smile. He saw her pointed canines, then—sharp and deadly—and her black orbs for eyes. She had a kind of beauty to her monstrosity, Damien decided, but her hair didn’t move with the wind, as if the air itself refused to touch her, and that made his skin crawl.

  “I came here to tell you that your time is up,” she said. “It’s time to decide.”

  “Decide what? I have no business with you.”

  “Damien, sweetheart, while I do enjoy a good game I must stress to you that time is of the essence. You don’t have a lot of it left, and neither do your friends. I made you an offer, you’ve had time to consider it, and now I want to hear your answer.”

  Damien said nothing.

  “Although,” she said, “It seems like you’ve been using your time in other ways, haven’t you?” She looked over at Jackal.

  “That’s none of your business.”

  “Please, Damien, everything you do is my business. You’re the one who let me in, remember? Your anger, your hubris, I’m here because of you. Frank can throw up as many wards as he likes, but so long as you’re around, he and that little pet of his can’t keep me out.”

  She was right. It had been him. Ever since the night Amber attacked him, his feelings, his thoughts, they had all flipped on their heads. Like it or not, he truly had let her in, whether by conscious choice or subconscious. She only needed an inch and she proved it then. The only thing Damien wondered was whether she had heard the contents of his conversation with Frank back at the van.

  “You can’t bring Lily back,” he said, “If you can, prove it.”

  “Such a vulgar display of power is beneath me, Damien. You know that. You’re going to simply have to take me at my word.”

  “Difficult to take the word of a liar.”

  “From one liar to another, you can trust me to do exactly as I mean to.”

  “And what do you mean to do?”

  “Exactly what I say. You come with me now and deliver the demon you’ve been hiding, and I don’t hack your friends to pieces in this very graveyard.”

  “That’s a bullshit threat and you know it. If you had that kind of power you’d have used it by now.”

  She arched her head to the left and nodded into the distance. There, between the trees, Damien spotted movement. Shadows. People, three of them, and they were wearing hoods. To the right another four men waited, lurking not far from his position. Those men, added to the one he had seen a moment ago, who had now been joined by two others, made the odds shift dramatically to her favor.

  How many men could Jackal take out? How many could Aaron? He had seen what these men could do. Some of them had a measure of her mysterious power, abilities far beyond the realm of normal humans. The outcome of a battle breaking out in the graveyard was uncertain, but it would be a bloody one; and Damien was already injured.

  “I’ll be nice,” she said, “I’ll give you another chance to accept my offer. Let me take you, now, and I won’t destroy your friends. I’ll even give you Lily back.”

  Damien looked toward Frank, Jackal, and the others. He saw them standing there, like statues, blinking but doing little of anything else. He didn’t want them to stay like that. He wanted whatever power it was she had over them to stop. Acheris wouldn’t be able to give him Lily, but if he could keep her from hurting his friends…

  “Fine,” he said, “Call off your dogs and I’ll go with you.”

  Acheris smiled again, once more exposing her vampire-like teeth, and approached. She wrapped her arms around his neck, kissed him delicately on the cheek, and said into his ear, “Thank you.”

  “I’m not doing this for you,” he said.

  “I know you aren’t. You’re doing it for her, and that’s noble. But you’re mine, now, sweet prince. And we’re going to have so much fun together.”

  Acheris’s lips searched for his, and Damien was powerless to stop her. She took his lower lip between her teeth and bit down hard enough to pierce the skin. As Damien’s blood trickled out in the space between their mouths, he felt his stomach churn and grow cold. Then they were gone.

  Frank blinked, rubbed his eyes, and yawned. The others did the same, only he was the one to notice Damien had disappeared. A moment ago, he couldn’t remember when, he had sensed a vibration at the edge of his consciousness but had been unable to reach it. Now, with his mind clear of whatever momentary daze it had been in, he grabbed what was left of the vibration with his mind and read into it. It was a telepathic message from Damien.

  He was gone, Acheris had come for him just as he had suspected she would, and the plan had been set in motion.

  The end had begun.

  ***

  When tiredness put all of its weight into my back, I didn’t question it. Today had been a truly long day, and I couldn’t wait for it to be over so that I could get into bed and sleep for the second night as a human being. The wolf within me was quiet; satisfied that it had identified the source of its fear and put a body to it.

  Aaron had explained the reason for my volatility as my wolf’s sensitivity to the demonic presence still hiding in my soul, and that made a lot of sense; especially now that I could almost feel the wolf lurking just beneath my consciousness. It was awake, aware, and ready to strike.

  I wasn’t out of the fire, though. That much was certain.

  We had reached the van by the time I noticed we had fewer sets of footsteps with us than I had remembered. When I turned around and noticed Damien wasn’t among us, that stillness began to slowly filter out of me and dissipate into the air. A cold feeling gripped my throat, my gut, and my heart and refused to let go.

  “Where’s Damien?” I asked.

  Jackal was the first to turn around. She hurried back into the cemetery, checked left and right, sniffed the air, and called out. Damien didn’t reply.

  “I can’t smell him either,” Aaron said. “Jackal, see if you can find him.”

  She nodded, threw herself on all fours, shook her human skin off, and raced back into the cemetery as a slender black wolf.

  “He was with us,” I said, “Wasn’t he?”

  “I don’t know.”

  My memory was fuzzy, probably from the tiredness, but I was sure he was with us. “Maybe he’s gone to the bathroom. Frank? Did he say anything to you?”

  “I’m sure he’s fine,” Frank said, “We can wait in the van.”

  “No,” I said, “I want to find him.”

  “Jackal will get him. I don’t think she’ll have a problem with stepping into the men’s bathroom.”

  “Do cemeteries even have bathrooms?” Aaron asked.

  “We’ll soon find out, won’t we?”

  I didn’t like this. Something in the air didn’t feel right. I knew Jackal would come up empty, only how I knew I couldn’t say. Intuition? Paranoia? It could have been either of those things warning me of what was about to happen, but whatever it was directed my attention toward Frank. He wasn’t his usual calm self. His eyes were elsewhere. And while Frank was a great liar, there was very little that escaped my notice these days—except, of course, for Damien’s sudden disappearance. But that fact didn’t help my already shot-to-shit nerves.

  “Frank,” I said.

  He gave me his eyes, and in them I saw… subterfuge. “Amber,” he said.

  “Where is Damien?”

  Aaron crossed his arms and came up next to me.

  “We need to get into that van,” he said, “You need to trust me.”

  “If you know where Damien is you need to tell me.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Frank!” I said. I was on him, my hands on his shirt.

  He wriggled
out of my hold and patted down his clothes. “Watch it, witch.”

  My heart was starting to race. “Frank, I need you to tell me, right now, where he is.”

  “What you need to do is trust me. Can you do that?”

  “No! I have a right to know where Damien is! He couldn’t have just vanished into thin air!”

  Frank’s silence said enough.

  “What did you do?” I asked, approaching again. This time I wasn’t rushing, though. “Frank… what did you do?”

  “He’s…” Frank started to say, “He’s… with her.”

  “With who?”

  “You know who.”

  I swallowed the anger, the rage, my throat working furiously to push it all down like a piston firing on all cylinders. “What. Did. You. Do!” I asked, putting emphasis into each word.

  “Nothing that I didn’t think we needed to do,” he said. “This wasn’t my idea, it was his.”

  “Whatever it was you both did, you need to undo it.”

  “I can’t. It’s already done.”

  “I’m not stupid, Frank. You don’t do anything without having a backup plan, so what is it?”

  “I could tell you,” he said, “But that tells me you don’t trust me, and you need to trust me. You need to trust us.”

  “Trust you? Damien has gone to her, plucked right out from under us, and you’re telling me to trust you?”

  “Yeah, you know, like you’ve always done.”

  I lunged at him, swinging for his face with my right fist, but Aaron caught it before it could make contact with Frank. He hadn’t flinched, though. Not an ounce of fear showed on his face. “Get him back!” I said, screaming it aloud.

  “You were gonna hit me,” he said.

  “I would have if Aaron hadn’t stopped me.”

  Jackal returned, rushing out of the cemetery in her wolf form. She shook her head, but I already knew she wouldn’t find him.

  “I’m going to let you have that one,” Frank said, “But if you ever hurt me in any way, witch, you’ll regret it.”

  “Watch it,” Aaron said, “There’s no need for that here.”