Jessica, JESSICA! Listen to me. Don’t go yet, you’re not ready. Please. Throw the magic back out. Tally said you have to eject it. Dammit, listen to me! You have to get rid of it and get the hell out of that circle!
Rourke? How did you get in here? I must’ve been out of it longer than I’d thought. What’s going on?
I felt your power shift so I kicked the door in, but it doesn’t matter! The circle is activating and taking you on its own. Tally thinks your magic, combined with the demon essence she threw at you, has triggered something. You have to rid yourself of the demon magic. Eject it before it’s too late!
I’m trying, believe me. I staggered to my feet, my arms flung wide to the sides for balance. Ray had just been doing this very same thing, and now I knew exactly how he’d felt. This stuff was vicious. I still couldn’t see.
With a start, I realized I was breathing again and the magic wasn’t trying to choke the life out of me anymore. It was there, swirling around inside me, but it had settled like a thick fog around my senses, almost like it was waiting for something. Rourke, I don’t understand what’s happening. Can’t I just walk out of the circle? Once I’m out, Tally can suck this stuff out of me with her staff. I took a few steps forward and abruptly smacked into something solid. It buzzed with the same magic that was now in my head. Rourke, can you hear me? What’s going on?
Jessica, you closed the circle. There was anguish in his voice and he sounded very far away. The magic you’re emitting is mimicking demon magic. You fully absorbed whatever Tally threw at you and the circle now thinks you’re some kind of powerful demon. It’s about to give you a one-way ticket to the Underworld. You have to try to eject it.
I stopped moving.
I had no idea how to get rid of it. We have to harness it like Tally told us before, I said to my wolf. She growled at me, giving me a look.
She was right. There was nothing to harness. The demon essence had begun to sink into me, mingling with my own magic.
Jessica, can you hear me? Rourke’s voice shook as he pounded on the edge of the circle.
I can, but I can’t see anything. The magic has completely settled over me. It feels strange. And there’s a weird buzzing in my head. I can’t find anything to grab on to. It’s not threatening me—just the opposite. It’s beginning to feel like my own.
I could hear him explaining it out loud to others, but his voice was muffled. Then he shouted, “I don’t care! You have to help her. You have the fucking staff. Break the circle open and yank her out of there.”
The Kitty was indeed mad.
Tally’s voice was calm. She was nearer or her voice projected better, either way I could hear her. “I can’t do that. She’s more powerful than this staff right now. She just has no idea how to wield the magic inside her.”
No shit. Okay, we have to figure this out on our own, I told my wolf. We have to dump this magic. I raised my arms and pressed my palms against the inside of the circle, the same circle I had inadvertently activated. It felt hot and sticky, but totally solid. It curved slightly upward. I cleared my voice and yelled, “Can you hear me?”
“Yes!” Marcy answered first. “Jess, you have to get out of there. I don’t care how you do it, but you need to get it done.” Her voice was just short of frantic, which was a lot of emotion for her. “You can’t go to the Underworld without any protection. Come on! There’s no need to show any of us up and be all powerful and scary. Just dump the magic into the ground and the barrier will drop. Easy as pie.”
My body began to shake like a tuning fork in tandem with the ground. The magic inside me grew stronger by the second. There was no pie here. It swirled through me in a massive current, a big haze of golden darkness, leaving nothing for me to hold on to.
I think we’re feeding the circle, I told my wolf. It’s coming up from the ground and through us and back like a transformer. We’re going to have to break the circuit the same way we did with Vlad’s sword.
“Focus on the ground,” Tally ordered. “The earth will take the magic and disperse it for you. That’s why we set the circle here. The reaper ejected it one way, yours will be another. You don’t have to manipulate the magic, or try to change it, just take it as it is and dump it into the ground.”
“Yeah,” I muttered as I dropped to my knees, “because it’s easy like that. There’s no magic to hold on to.” I plunged my hands into the dirt anyway. My claws were sharp and I realized I was in my Lycan form.
“Jessica, please.” Rourke’s voice was low. “I can’t let you go to the Underworld by yourself.” There was enough bitterness in that statement to last a lifetime.
“Harness the mass, Hannon,” Ray yelled. “It was a big cloud of dark shit in my mind. Get your magic around it, and once you have it, squeeze it.”
There was no cloud. Mine was a hazy brackish swirl that was now thoroughly mixed with my own magic. “There’s nothing to grab on to, Ray.” I panicked as the ground beneath me started to feel like a washing machine in its final cycle. “It’s all one big… mass.”
“That’s impossible.” Tally’s voice held a hint of desperation. “The magic is its own being. It can overcome you, smother you, but it can’t become a part of you.”
“Tell that to the damn magic.” I coughed as I plowed my hands deeper in to the ground, hoping it would help me.
“Ma Reine,” Naomi said in a worried tone. “You are starting to glow.”
“Jessica!” Rourke yelled. “Hold on.” His fists continued to pound against the barrier. The reverberations rang through me as I felt his sorrow beat against my chest.
There was more commotion as another voice entered the room. Danny’s worry jumped in my blood. We were bound together. I was still his Alpha and his need to help me was strong. “This is a bloody travesty!” Danny shouted, joining Rourke on the outside of the circle, their combined blows resonating like thunder claps in my eardrums. “You can’t go to the Underworld without anyone to aid you. How are you going to defeat the Prince of Hell, then? With your fists?”
“I’m… doing my best to stay here,” I panted. Did the color of the magic just change again? I asked my wolf. The hazy darkness of the combined magic had turned a shade lighter. The ground below my knees kept up its frantic tremors and I knew instinctively that once the vibrations reached a crescendo it would be too late and I’d be on my way to the Underworld. I flexed outward, trying to send all the magic in my body into the ground.
“That’s it,” Tally urged. “Keep doing that. When you do that I can feel the barrier weaken.”