Alpha Asher and Lola novel Chapter 206

Chapter 206

It was dark magic, it had to be.

Invisible claws latched onto a part of me that was much deeper than mere flesh and bone, wrapping and coiling like the scaled body of a snake. The pleasure soured, and as spasm after spasm rocked my body, I tasted its foulness on my tongue.

I was entangled in it’s grasp, powerless even though mere seconds ago I k****d an entire group of witches with my mind.

The way it split my thoughts like a deck of cards, shuffling through them before turning each one over to inspect it felt like a violation.

Everything hurt. The pain was so consuming that I couldn’t tell which parts of me were still intact. My skin b****d from the silver tipped arrows, stung from the slices in my flesh, and b****d because every movement I made jostled the quills protruding from my back.

The forest was growing darker, the shadows dancing around the edges of my vision. They thrashed and writhed, their whispers just out of reach. It took me a moment to realize it wasn’t the forest that was growing dim, slowly draining of color.

It was me. My strength was failing, and I didn’t have nearly enough to fight off the dark magic while also keeping myself from bleeding out.

A splash of crimson blossomed in my peripherals like the petals of a wilted rose.

An idea came to mind, one that would’ve made me sick if I weren’t standing on d***h’s precipice.

When I looked back on this moment, I wouldn’t remember digging my fingers into the dirt to propel myself forward. I wouldn’t be able to recall the feeling of dirt and stone getting wedged under my nails, packed into my wounds as I slid along the forest floor.

What I would remember is the moment I reached her, the witch that shot me.

I’d remember sinking my teeth into her neck, tearing into her flesh with human canine teeth. They were so dull compared to Maya’s, so terrible at slashing through flesh that it was almost a chore to get to what little blood remained in her body.

I swallowed and swallowed, drinking the liquid strength that poured from her body in a sea of red.

My skin began to itch horribly as the wound on my side, where I’d been grazed by an arrow, began knitting itself together. The ones on my back were another story all together. I couldn’t reach to pull the arrows out of my flesh, and I didn’t have enough strength for my magic to get the job done.

“Shadows, I need your help.” I croaked, wincing at how sore my throat felt.

Help…help……help… They whispered in dozens of overlapping voices.

I clenched my hands into fists, unable to look at the stain on my skin and those unnerving veins that crawled up my fingers like poisonous spider webs.

“Can you get rid of this—this evil inside of me?” I tried not to beg them, but I was terrified.

I thought I was slowly becoming comfortable with magic, but this was a wake-up call that showed me just how little I actually knew.

Each word ached like I’d swallowed mouthfuls of glass, but I forced them out regardless. The shadows writhed at the sound of my voice beckoning them closer. To anyone else, it would’ve looked ordinary. Similar to how shadows dance along the walls in a dimly lit room. If they looked closer they might see the hundreds of tendrils all curling around one another, all speaking in their high-pitched whispers.

Yesss…we can help you, master. We can take the darknesss.

My sigh of relief sounded more like a sob, melting the tension in my shoulders until they slumped. The shadows weren’t done, though. Their voices shot out from all sides of the forest, all of them saying the same thing.

It will be painful, master. So very painful… They warned.

I closed my eyes and steadied myself. This wasn’t the first time I’d felt pain, and it certainly wouldn’t be the last. Anything—anything was better than this evil magic peeling apart the layers of my brain. No matter how bad it was, I’d endure it.

“Do it. Do it now and you can have the d**d witch’s blood.” I whispered.

As I anticipated, the promise of magical blood sent the shadows into a frenzy of excitement. All at once they shot out from the cover of the forest, slinking from behind trees and untangling themselves from the brush. Like leaches bloated with the anticipation of blood, they flung themselves at me.

It was like every shadow in the forest had come.

They moved so fast that I didn’t even have time to cover my face. Darkness flooded my vision, the impenetrable kind that blocked out every single one of your senses and left you wondering if this was what d***h were like.

The pain wasn’t instant, but it did come without warning.

I’d been encased in the Shadows, hearing only their chatter when every muscle in my body contracted and every bone flexed. My mouth opened but no scream came out, only excruciating silence. Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, it did.

The Shadows continued to writhe all along my body. They had no feel to them other than this icy coldness licking at my skin. When one slithered up my neck and forced its way into my mouth, I let out a choked shriek. Another followed, and another, and another.

Only when I began to thrash did I realize that the Shadows covering my body were there for a reason.

I couldn’t move a muscle.

They had trapped me. Caged me in with their bodies and made me their prisoner.

You mustn’t fight usss…

Yeah, like that was easy when I could feel my throat expanding, forced to take in the frigid cold. Time passed languidly, each second stretching on longer than the next. There was ice seeping into my bones, using the wounds the dark magic gouged in my body and mind as pathways. I could tell when they made contact with it.