Page 62 of Demon Loved
His form flickered, became something monstrous and huge, eight feet tall or more, with heavy black hair hanging down his back and coppery skin. Then he was Bill again, his face tight with strain.
Her mind tried to grasp what it had just seen, but she knew she had bigger problems to worry about right then. The energy that had shot out of the orb had wrapped itself around his wrists and ankles, binding him in place.
“You can explain yourself to my master,” the robed figure said, and the energy chains seemed to tighten and then pull him inexorably forward.
Once again, Bill’s form shifted, becoming that huge demonic creature. Its muscles strained as it tried to free itself from its bonds, but all its struggles didn’t appear to make any difference.
Not “it,” Brianna told herself. Bill. That thing…it’s him.
She didn’t know how or why, but she knew she’d have to worry about that later.
Right now, she had much bigger problems to deal with.
Whatever was going on with Bill, she knew she had to prevent that person in the hooded robe from doing whatever he or she was trying to accomplish. They could sort the rest of this out later.
“Stop it!” she cried out, and rushed toward Bill.
But…she passed right through him — or whoever he was…and realized his attacker had almost succeeded in tearing him from this plane of existence.
Her heartbeat was now a panicky drumbeat, all her nerve endings surging with adrenaline. She still didn’t know what the hell was going on, but she knew one thing.
If she didn’t act fast, Bill would be ripped from this planet and sent the Goddess knew where.
The world felt as if it was collapsing around her. All she could see was the man she loved, his familiar face and form shifting back and forth between the person she knew and that improbably huge figure, all gleaming copper skin and night-black hair and eyes, a being whose head towered above her by at least two feet, maybe more.
Time slowed. There was Bill caught in his attacker’s energy field, but she realized there was so much more to the moment than that — the slow, steady pulse of the earth beneath her feet, the far more delicate energies of the stars wheeling overhead, the ancient wisdom of the night wind that played with the ends of her loose hair.
All these combined were so much more than the unstable, distorted power of the orb whose energy chains were trying their best to drag Bill away from this world.
Well, that wasn’t going to happen.
Her magic, which had always felt scattered and sparse to her, spread out over too many individual talents, surged within her. Somehow knowing without knowing, she understood that her own powers and the energy of the earth beneath her feet — yes, and the energy of those terrible purple-black beams that were trying to pull Bill somewhere else, somewhere other — were all just a group of disparate frequencies.
Not exactly music, not quite, but she still guessed she would be able to control those frequencies, just as her fingers knew which chords to play while she strummed on her guitar or which harmonies to choose when she was working out the notes of a new song.
She lifted her hands, and the energies she’d sensed just a moment before now wrapped around them, making her feel as if she was playing an utterly new instrument, one without a corporeal form but which still could create its own unique harmonies.
Harmonies that would utterly destroy the evil magic pulsing from the oil-slick orb their attacker held.
At the same time, she found herself humming, and the sound that emerged from her throat somehow combined with the notes emanating from her fingertips, creating a song with its own power.
“What are you doing?” their attacker gasped, but she paid him no mind.
No, she needed to keep on with what she was doing…even if her conscious mind couldn’t quite comprehend how she was able to manage such a thing.
Blue-white light now drifted from her fingertips and moved toward Bill. When it touched the dark energy chains that held him in place, those bonds shuddered and then disappeared.
And as each chain was destroyed, he became more and more solid, as though whatever had been trying to drag him away from this dimension was losing more and more power.
The light emanating from her fingers grew even more solid, rippling across the dark little alley like the dancing currents in Oak Creek. One of those waves struck their attacker, who took several steps backward, his breath coming in heaving gasps.
“How are you doing this?” he demanded, voice cracking.
Brianna didn’t know. This was all coming from some subconscious force within her, something she couldn’t have even begun to understand.
The only thing she knew was that it seemed to be working.
With a sharp sound that made her think of ice breaking during a spring thaw, the orb in their assailant’s hand began to crack, dark energy seeping out like purple pus.
