Page 34 of Stolen

Although, I would have preferred a swift horse and an army of mages to aid my way out of Vai Seren. The Middling was a refuge—and I sensed it could be even more—but it wasn’t permanent. Varick and I couldn’t live in an in-between world where my power was limited to creating pretty flowers and changing the color of the sky. But at least we had a safe place to talk—assuming Midian didn’t change his mind about bringing us together again.

And assuming Varick stayed alive.

Worry nagged at me as I shivered before the empty hearth in my bedchamber. It was impossible to keep track of time in this place, but I estimated that about six hours had passed since Midian separated us. Hopefully, Varick was sleeping.

But I knew he wasn’t. My vampire blood had always afforded me more stamina than full-blooded humans. As a child, I’d often risen well before the rest of the castle, and Helen had despaired of my habit of staying up late. Varick was a pureblooded vampire from the warrior class. He could probably go a week without sleep. However, these were highly unusual circumstances. The stress of fighting off Midian’s illusions had to be wearing on him.

It was definitely wearing on me. Exhaustion hung like two weights on my eyelids. My scalp was starting to itch, and my gown looked like a cleaning rag. Varick hadn’t hurt me in the Middling, but I felt sticky and sore between my legs. More than anything, I wanted a bath, but I knew I wasn’t getting one anytime soon.

Tears burned my throat. I braced a hand on the ancient, dusty mantel and bowed my head.

Awareness prickled down my spine. Slowly, I turned my head.

A demon stood against the wall, his body the same pattern as the filthy gray stones behind him. Only his eyes, wide open in an exaggerated expression, were “normal.” The rest of him blended into the wall.

I screamed and stumbled away from the hearth. My control deserted me, and I flung a hand toward the door. “Get the fuck out!”

The demon stepped forward, and his clothes shifted into typical court attire. But then he kept coming, charging toward me like he meant to tackle me. Heart racing, I screamed and careened backward. My foot caught on debris, and I started to go down.

Suddenly, I was across the room.

But my body remained by the hearth. Flailing, it crashed to the floor.

Disorientation swept me as I stood by the door and watched myself sprawl on my back on the ground. My eyes stared vacantly at the ceiling. One arm was flung out, my palm turned up. Panicking, I looked at my chest—or my body’s chest. It rose and fell steadily, and some of my alarm subsided.

But my panic flared back to life as the demon stood over my body. He swung his head toward me before peering back down at my crumpled form. For a moment, he just stood there.

Then he lay on the floor beside me.

I lurched from the corner. “What are you doing?” Abruptly, a strange sensation assailed me. An invisible force pushed me, blocking my path to my body.

On the ground, my arm twitched. The fingers of my upturned palm curled, closing my hand.

No. Gods, no…

He was possessing me. Stealing my body. By farseeing, I’d left my body unattended, and now he’d decided to take it—or at least try it out.

I rushed forward, anticipating more resistance, but the invisible barrier was gone. Its unexpected absence tripped me up, and I almost tripped in truth as I ran to my body’s side. Later, I could lose my mind over how weird it was to see myself from the outside. Right now, I had to figure out how to get back in. My heart lodged in my throat, my pulse fluttering so wildly I felt lightheaded.

Except could I feel lightheaded? I didn’t have a body!

On the floor, my hand curled into a fist. My eyelids fluttered. The demon was almost fully in control.

No. No way was I letting this happen. Anger took the place of panic. I knew how to do this. I’d done it just hours ago when I seized full control of the Middling. The rushing, bubbling spring of power hovered nearby. All I had to do was reach for it. I closed my eyes. Deep within my mind, I stretched out a hand…

I blinked my eyes open and stared at the blackened, cobwebbed ceiling above me. As I sucked air into my lungs, something dark and oily darted from my chest to my stomach—from the inside.

With a cry, I sat up and clawed at my midsection. But it did no good. Not when the demon was inside me—its thick, viscous presence like slime on top of my soul.

On the floor, the elven body jerked, drawing my attention. How was it moving when the demon was clinging to me? But it wasn’t moving, I realized. It was disintegrating. Panic flooded me, but this time, the emotion wasn’t mine. I couldn’t explain how, but I sensed the demon inside me jerk its attention to the elven body. In my mind, the demon darted forward.

And I slammed the brick wall to the front of my head. In the fraction of a second it took me to picture it, I wasn’t sure it would work. But it did. The demon crashed into the wall and howled, furious at being thwarted. Deep within me, it thrashed violently, bashing itself against the bricks repeatedly.

On the floor, the elven body decayed rapidly, its skin graying and then flaking off. The process accelerated, chunks of flesh dropping to the floor, landing, and turning to dust. The nose went. Then the cheeks sunk in and collapsed completely.

I propelled myself backward, scooting on my palms and butt as the elf’s skin sloughed off and its skeleton appeared. Inside me, the demon wailed in despair. Gone! The cry racketed around my brain. The demon knew it had gambled and lost.

I held the wall in place until the elf was nothing more than a pile of dust. With a shiver, I couldn’t help wondering if some of the dust in the castle was exactly what I saw before me now. All this time, Varick and I had been walking over corpses.

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