If you’re just finding this story, read it in order here on the blog:

Chapter One

Chapter Two (Part 1)

Chapter Two (Part 2)

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

 

Chapter Three

We ran through the dark forest like two shadows, quiet and unseen. The man held tightly to my hand, pulling me along. I could tell he was going slower than he could, just so I could keep up.

What exactly was he?

Even though it was extremely dark out here with no moon to light the way, he seemed to navigate through the dense trees with ease, stepping over fallen branches and avoiding thick patches of brambles. Each step he took was graceful and elegant, and I followed him as carefully as I could.

We’d been running for more than half an hour, and I was exhausted and freezing cold. I wanted to ask him to stop for a while, but I was scared to use my voice.

It would have only taken the witches a few seconds to realize the man was gone. If any of them were capable of casting tracking spells, we were done for unless we could stay a few steps ahead of them.

I pressed on, pushing my body to the limit for another twenty minutes before I finally couldn’t run another step. I pulled my hand from his and leaned over, panting to catch my breath.

He moved on for a few steps, as if he’d barely realized I’d quit. When he walked back, he leaned against a tree and crossed his arms, waiting. He wasn’t the least bit out of breath.

“You could have told me you needed a minute,” he said.

I held my hand up, keeping my head low as I struggled to catch my breath so I could speak.

“I figured you would stop when it was safe,” I said. I straightened and clutched my side, wincing. Damn, I hadn’t run that hard since I was a child. I had no idea I was this out of shape. “How the hell are you not even a little bit out of breath? Do you run marathons or something?”

He laughed softly. “Not exactly,” he said, not bothering to offer more information. He was staring into the darkness behind us.

“Are they following us?” I asked.

“They’re searching the woods, but they’re not terribly close,” he said. “You can rest a minute if you need to, but we will need to keep moving soon.”

I nodded and looked around for a place to sit down. The remains of a fallen pine crossed our path a few steps ahead, so I walked over to it and sat down, testing my weight on it before I relaxed completely. I rubbed my hands together and blew into them, trying to warm them up.

The hand he’d been holding was still slightly warm, but my other hand was like a frozen popsicle. I hadn’t expected it to be so cold up here at night, and I didn’t bring anything with me except my red hoodie for warmth.

“You’re cold.” He moved to sit beside me, and I flinched without thinking. “I’m not going to hurt you. I already promised you that.”

“I know,” I said. “But you’ll have to forgive me if I’m not the most trusting person in the world right now. I’ve basically just found out that members of my own coven have lied to me. Possibly even murdered my family. Besides, I don’t even know who—or what—you are. Or why they were keeping you there. Did you hurt someone in the coven?”

“Come here,” he said, holding his arms open to me.

I stared at him. Was he trying to comfort me?

“You’re cold,” he said. “I can help to warm you up before we get going again.”

He was only wearing a thin t-shirt and a pair of worn jeans. Why wasn’t he freezing cold, too?

“I’m fine,” I said stubbornly, but my bottom lip trembled as a gust of air blew through the trees.

“You’re not fine. You’re freezing,” he said.

He moved toward me and pulled me into his arms. He wrapped them around me, drawing me tight against his chest like a lover.

I started to protest, but the warmth of his body enveloped me. Without thinking, I turned toward him, snuggling into him and pressing my cold hands against his muscular chest.

“How are you so warm?” I asked, the heat of my breath getting trapped between us. “It’s got to be thirty degrees out here.”

“Let’s call it an innate gift,” he said, smiling.

I wanted to ask him more, but something about being this close to him made me feel quiet and at-ease. More than just warm.

Safe.

I’d never felt that way with a man in my entire life.

“Connery,” he said, his lips dangerously close to my forehead as I lay against his shoulder.

“What?” I asked, lifting my head slightly so I could look at him.

“My name,” he said. “It’s Connery. Now you know who I am.”

I smiled and shook my head. “But I still don’t know what you are,” I said. “And something tells me that’s much more important.”

“Perhaps,” he said.

“Can you hear them?” I asked. “Are they coming this way? Do we need to move?”

“We’re safe,” he said. His eyes met mine, and I wondered, for a moment, if he’d been able to read my mind just now.

It didn’t make much sense to feel safe around someone who’d called himself a creature and had been locked up by the Order in a silver cage that looked as though it had been made to contain a monster.

But there were a lot of things in life that didn’t make sense. There were much more important things to rely on than sense. Like passion and love and power. Being able to create light out of nothing or open a padlock with my mind didn’t make much sense, either. I’d learned a long time ago that it was much more important to rely on my feelings than on things that made sense.

I was suddenly highly aware of my hands against his chest. In the darkness of the cabin, I hadn’t been able to tell just how muscular he was, but through the thin fabric of his shirt, I could feel every hard ridge of him. I wanted to move my hands across him and down to his abs, just to know what he felt like.

Which is exactly why I kept my hands as completely still as I possibly could.

“Are you feeling better?” he asked.

“Mmm-hmm,” I managed.

“Because your heartbeat isn’t slowing down,” he said.

I buried my head deeper in the crook of his neck, not wanting him to see my face.

He was right. My heart was pounding just as hard as it had been when I was running full force, but this time it was because of him.

What the hell was wrong with me?

“Red?” he asked.

I shook my head, too embarrassed to even look up. Of course he could hear my heart beating. He could hear witches entering a forest five miles away, and I was practically sitting on his lap.

I forced a deep breath and begged my body to cooperate.

His shoulders shook with a laugh, and I wanted to curl up and disappear.

“I’m sorry,” I said, finally managing to look up and face him. “I can’t seem to control it. I feel…”

He raised an eyebrow, the smirk on his lips returning, as if he knew exactly what I felt.

“You’re a different kind of witch than the ones I usually come across,” he said, the smirk disappearing.

His eyes searched mine, the yellow of them deepening to an almost amber glow.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I can hear your heart beating, but it’s more than that,” he said. “Now that I’m this close to you, I can feel your heart. You’re not at all like the others. You would give anything to help your sister. Even your own life. Wouldn’t you?”

I nodded. I couldn’t look away from him. I could hardly breathe. He was so close to me, our faces nearly touching.

“Why would a woman like you choose to be a part of the Order?” he asked.

His question surprised me, and I pulled away slightly.

“Choose?” I asked, shaking my head. “I never chose this. Is that what you think?”

He frowned. “I can feel the power of the demon inside you,” he said. “How else would that happen, if not by choice? Isn’t that how it works?”

At first, I thought he might be toying with me. Joking about the most horrific night of my life. But I could see the truth in his eyes.

He has no idea.

“My mother was a member of the Order of Shadows long before I was born,” I said. “She raised both me and my sister as a part of the coven. She taught us little things when we were young, like how to light a candle or open a door. Simple spells that were fun. But she never told us the part about the demon.”

I broke the connection with his gaze and looked away, resting my head on his shoulder again.

“The Order likes to keep that dirty little secret until the night of initiation,” I said. “I’m sure if most of us knew what their plan was for us during the initiation, none of us would choose to go through with it. It was the worst night of my life, but once it’s done, there is no way it can ever be undone.”

“That isn’t true,” he said.

I looked up. “Of course it is,” I said. “Do you really think I’d lie to you now, after all this?”

“I don’t mean that your story isn’t true,” he said. “I mean that there is a way to undo what’s been done to you. There is a way to become free of the Order and the ruby coven you belong to.”

I shook my head. “No. If there was a way, I would know about it,” I said, realizing the ridiculousness of my words as I spoke them. There was so much about this world I didn’t know.

“Why do you think the ruby priestess and your prima are so desperate for your sister’s powers to grow stronger?” he asked.

“There’s talk of a war,” I said. “A girl from the east destroying the Order and killing witches.”

He brought his hand to my face, the warmth of it seeping into my skin and bone.

“Not killing them, Red. Liberating them.”

I pulled back, but he held tightly to me, his hand still firmly on my cheek. I felt as if I’d just had the breath knocked out of me.

Liberating witches?

The Prima and the council of our ruby gate had told all of us that all the witches were being slaughtered. They’d said that if the girl and her demon friends brought the war to the ruby gates, we would have to fight for our lives against them.

I wasn’t sure whether I should scream or cry or fall to my knees in gratitude.

A tear slid down my cheek, and Connery ran his thumb across its path, sweeping it away.

“Your heart is too good for this life,” he said softly. “I promise you that if we manage to escape these woods, I will get to Rend and have him create this potion for your sister.”

He spoke the words so sincerely that I felt the truth of them in the deepest part of myself.

As I stared into his strange eyes, I knew with sudden and absolute clarity that my sister had sent me to that cabin to find him. She must have always known there would be no potion or elixir inside that dusty place that could save her. She was sending me to rescue this man.

So that he could rescue us.

When I looked into his eyes, I was looking straight into my destiny.

Connery leaned forward, his hand on my back pulling me toward him. I closed my eyes and trusted my heart. My fate.

Our lips met and a fire somewhere deep inside me ignited. Until this moment, I’d had no idea how much I needed him.

I slid my arms around his body and pulled myself onto his lap, our kiss deepening to something primal, unleashing a passion I’d never realized I was capable of. I had never felt so alive or so real.

I wanted the moment to last forever, but Connery pulled away. When I started to question him, he placed a finger over my lips and turned his head to one side, listening.

“They’re closer than I realized,” he said.

He placed both hands on my face and looked straight into my eyes. “Listen to me, Red. You need to run straight through the woods behind me until you come to the road,” he said, fear flashing in his eyes. “Don’t stop for a second, no matter what you hear or see. Flag down a car or find a place where you can call a friend you trust to come pick you up. Did you leave a car of your own somewhere near the entry to the forest?”

I shook my head. “No, but I don’t understand,” I said, clutching to him. “I thought we were going together.”

“We can’t,” he said. “You can’t run fast enough to get away from them. They’ll find you, and I can’t let that happen. I’ve been searching for you longer than you could possibly imagine. I won’t let anything happen to you now.”

“Searching for me?” I asked. “What do you mean.”

His eyes locked on mine again. “There’s no time to explain that now,” he said. “But someday, I will tell you everything.”

“What will you do?” I asked, tears clouding my vision.

“I’m going to distract them,” he said. “Lead them away from you. Just get home, and if they question you, tell them you were home with your sister all night. Don’t let them know you know about me. Promise me.”

“I promise,” I said. “But I don’t want to let you go. They’ll kill you, Connery.”

He smiled and kissed me one last time.

“They’ve got to catch me first,” he said.

We stood, and he pointed in the direction we’d been traveling.

“It’s a straight path through there,” he said. “You should hit the road in less than an hour if you keep running.”

He grabbed my hand and placed it over his heart.

“I promise, Red, as soon as I can, I’ll find you again,” he said.

“Charlotte,” I said, wiping a tear from my cheek.

His eyes clouded in confusion.

“My name is Charlotte,” I said. I pulled his hand to mine and kissed his warm, rough skin.

He smiled and pulled me close to kiss my forehead. “I’ll find you, Charlotte. I promise.”

With that, he turned and ran into the woods, his body a blur as his form shifted from man to wolf.

I stood in the darkness, watching him as long as I could, unable to believe my eyes.

I’d heard rumors of magical creatures. People who could shift into animals. But I’d never believed it until now.

A howl broke the night’s silence, and I jumped. He was risking his life to save mine, and I wasn’t going to take that for granted. I sent up a silent wish that the witches searching the woods wouldn’t find him.

And then I ran.

 

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I sincerely hope you’ve been enjoying this free Shadow Demons World Short Story! Come back tomorrow for the final chapter!