Page 107 of Shifters Unifying
“It’s… killing… you.”
“No, no, it’s not. She’s in my head, trying to take control,” he gasped. “Do what you have to, Emma.”
I repositioned until I could sit on it and gasped at the heated flood. Between the two of us, it was twice as much energy as I’d pulled through the squirrel shifters back in Nuttal. Warmth and light poured through me, nearly obscuring my vision.
Call it instinct. Call it know-how.
But in that instant, I knew what I had to do.
“When I release the shield, don’t move. Stay down,” I barked. “Or you’ll be dead.”
He grunted, still convulsing beside me.
A moment later, I allowed as much power to fill me as I could and abruptly released the shield. It exploded in a fireball of rainbow brilliance. Shards flew outward from the cave and into the forest, landing in a glittering coating on the ground. I dropped down, pressed my palms to the earth beside me, and opened myself to the primal energy of the ancient shifters.
Thunder rolled beneath the topsoil, and I drew the shards of my shield into the earth. The magic seeped in and burst out. The ground lit up as white, blue, red, and green flames danced over it and destroyed nothing. Except…
Twenty more shadow figures rose, moving over the surface, attempting and failing to outrun my fire. They screamed and flailed as the light consumed them. Instead of us being devoured by Acheron’s dark magic, I’d consumed them with mine.
But Marcus’s anguished shriek joined the shadow mages, and he clutched his head, rolling side to side. He tugged at his ears and eyes and nose.
I kneeled beside him, caught his shoulders, and put my full weight on his chest, attempting to hold him in place. “Marcus, can you hear me?” I yelled into his scrunched face. “Tell me what’s happening.”
But his eyes remained tightly closed, and he didn’t respond to anything I tried to ask him. Instead, he wailed and screamed and tried to break free.
I don’t know how long we stayed like that. Seconds, hours, I couldn’t tell. Sweat covered us both. Killing the mages had sent him into some kind of seizure, and I could only guess at what it meant.
Long after the last of our attackers vanished in a puff of black smoke, Marcus took a long, shuddering breath and finally laidstill. Scratches marred his cheeks and his forehead, injuries he’d caused himself. But the gashes in his arms had closed, leaving only a reddish hint of what his sister had done to him.
I couldn’t carry Marcus and the stone back to Six-Mile, so he needed to wake up. Maybe I wasn’t great at delving, but I decided to risk it for the sake of his brain. I dragged the amplification stone close to his side and took a seat on it.
Carefully, I pressed my hands on either side of his head, determined to find out what had happened to him. With the stone touching me, it was easier to sort through the intricate mess in his mind, and I tried to effect healing in the broken places.
Acheron had done this to him, bonded to Marcus somehow, using his sister.
Had that been what Marcus had meant when he saidshewas in his head?
Had that been what had been troubling him on our journey?
Dammit. How awful.His sister had been scrambling his mind.Fuck Acheron.
Suddenly, an image, a spot on a map, flashed through my thoughts…. A location.
But it wasn’t something from Marcus’s mind. It had a different feel than his memories. This one had been placed there, deposited inside him, against his will.
I gasped and dropped my hands. It was the location of Acheron’s hiding place.
So… even as his sister had been obeying Acheron’s commands, she’d been planting her own clues, planning for Acheron’s demise. What a freaking civil war had to have been in the alpha’s head.
Marcus stirred, rapidly blinking. He groped at the air. “Emma? Is that you?”
“I’m here,” I said, catching his hand and giving him an encouraging squeeze. “Wasn’t sure you were going to wake up anytime soon.”
“Me either. I was a little lost in there… at least until you showed up.”
I shrugged. “You weren’t awake to ask permission, but I delved you. Healed what I could. Brain work is a bit more complicated than body work, and I’m nowhere nearly as good as Torbin.”
“I think Acheron tied me to my sister somehow. Or forced my sister to do it. Some kind of link. That’s how they found us. Probably had to be her since our genetics are similar.” He turned his head toward me, but his eyes didn’t quite focus. He stared at the wall behind me. “You know what that probably means for you.”
