Page 30 of Tanglewood Legacy (The Three Sisters 3)
Delphine sneered. “Silence! You don’t deserve to say his name. Yes, I owe what I am to my dark love.”
“Goddess, Delphine. Can’t you see he’s made you a monster? Asmodeus is a prince of hell!”
“You shall not speak his name!” Lucienne hissed.
Delphine tapped on the ward with her nail. “We are all monsters, witch. It’s only a matter of who has the sharpest teeth.” She drew her hand back and scratched at the ward.
Isis yelped with pain as she felt the vampire’s claws rip across her shoulder, although her nails never actually touched her. Three bloody tears appeared in her dress. Cursed, demon magic. Delphine couldn’t pass through her ward, but her magic could.
Eyes widening, Isis called the shadows to her, shuddering as Delphine pulled back her clawed hand again. Gathering Pierre’s considerable weight into her arms, she grunted with the effort, but she had to get Pierre to Rhys. He was her only hope of saving Pierre, whose breath had started to rattle in his lungs.
She howled and strained, folding into shadow and carrying Pierre the considerable distance to Tanglewood Plantation. She made it only as far as the front lawn.
“Rhys! Medea! Someone help me!” she cried.
Rhys appeared in the door to the big house and raced to her side. “Goddess, you’re bleeding!”
“Don’t worry about me! Him! You must save him,” Isis pleaded, rocking Pierre’s body in her arms. Was he still breathing? He felt cold.
Medea appeared in front of her. “Isis, what happened?”
“Help her into my office,” Rhys commanded, prying Pierre from her grip and lifting him into his arms.
Medea looked between Isis and Pierre, and for a moment, Isis feared she’d argue, but then Medea’s gaze focused on her bloody shoulder and her expression softened. “Come, sister. Let’s clean you up and save your human.”
* * *
“Sit down,Isis. Pierre is in good hands, and so are you.” Medea frowned down at her as she dabbed a rag soaked in witch hazel to her open wounds.
“He was so cold. I have to know he’s all right.” Isis tried to get up again, and Medea pushed her back down into the chair.
“These cuts are singed around the edges. They are going to be hell to heal.”
Lifting her eyes to her sister’s, Isis tried to tamp down her panic. “That’s because they were made with demon magic.”
“Demons? I thought we were dealing with a vampire.”
She shook her head, guilt and pain flooding her. When she spoke again, her voice came out thin as a spider’s web. “There’s something I have to tell you, and I think you should sit down.”
“You talk, I’m going to try a healing spell. I don’t like how this looks.”
Isis hesitated but decided her confession couldn’t wait. “When I…resurrected you, a demon helped me do it.”
Medea stopped moving, looked her in the face as if checking that she was serious, and then sat down in the chair across from her. “Go on.”
“Asmodeus, the demon of lust.”
“One of the princes of hell,” Medea clarified.
“Yes. I didn’t specifically call on him to help me, but we both command shadows and I had to pass your soul through his dimension to bring you home. He allowed it.”
Medea’s eyes looked watery as she nodded.
“I’m so sorry, Medea, about what happened to Phineas. Truly, I am.”
Her sister ran her hands over her face. “It wasn’t your fault, and I have already forgiven you. Tell me what this demon has to do with what happened tonight.”
Forgiveness was a balm for a wound that had festered on her soul for a long time, and Isis’s shoulders sank with relief. She’d needed to hear that. Although she thought her sister had forgiven her before, time had passed, and they all had more clarity about things and the events of the past. Knowing she forgave her now, after everything, was paramount.
