Malkom had had a long life. Such as it was, her mind whispered. She trudged forward and crossed into the brink. Once there, she faced him, meeting his gaze.
I will return for you, Malkom, she inwardly vowed as she beckoned him near....
When Malkom followed the witch, taking her small hand in his, he again thought, I will win. This would be a new life for him.
Shuck off the past, the memories, the nightmares.
The portal was churning and black, steeped in power. His heart raced. He'd never crossed one before, but he'd follow his female - his wife - wherever she led him.
As he stepped across the threshold, the sun shone brightly, even more strongly than in Ash. Though the light blinded his sensitive eyes and burned his skin, he'd take the pain to be with her.
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 "uestioning, 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 "uickly 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 tor"ue 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 tor"ue 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."
Carrow gasped as the full realization of what she'd done sank in. I betrayed Malkom for nothing. She couldn't return for him and save him from these lunatics. "What are you going to do to him?" She hadn't allowed herself even to speculate about it before.
Fegley was all too happy to tell her, "Cut him wide open, see how he ticks."
Bile rose in her throat, her tears welling again. She was as enraged at them as she was at herself.
Yet then she recognized in an instant of clarity that Fegley wasn't long for this world. A calm washed over her. In a monotone voice, she said to him, "Then I'm going to do the same to you. Cut you open. Slowly."