Immortals After Dark 10 - Demon From the Dark

seemed agonized .
    No. His mind couldn't grasp this, couldn't comprehend...
    "P-please, just go with them--"
    "No, Carrow," he insisted, even as realization took hold, that knot tightening in his gut. She'd lured him into a trap. "Channa?"
    "I-I didn't have a choice," she said, but he was no longer listening.
    "Not you, not you ." He gnashed his teeth. "Not you!" he roared with fury.
    As he lunged for her, he was blasted with some kind of power. Muscles spasming, his legs buckled. And then the pain began.
    When the guards surrounded them, Malkom's eyes had been questioning, disbelieving, then anguished. Now they'd shot to black, flashing with an unholy rage.
    Carrow screamed as the men opened fire on him with sedation darts, rifles popping. "No, stop this!"
    Lanthe held her back. "You can't do anything for him."
    But the darts could barely puncture his taut muscles, and he quickly knocked them away. So they opened up with those charge throwers, like flamethrowers with electricity.
    He bellowed as they electrocuted him, but he wouldn't surrender. When two soldiers got too close, he leapt forward, claws bared, slashing them nearly in half, slicing through their weapons and their bodies.
    Now the riflemen switched to bullets, firing a barrage that nearly put him to his knees.
    Tears poured from Carrow's eyes. "No! Please, stop." She wanted to defend him, to war against these men who dared hurt Malkom. Yet she could do nothing. "Chase, call them off, please!"
    The mortal merely gazed on, his wan face impassive.
    Lanthe murmured to her, "It's only a matter of time now."
    There were too many of them, and Malkom was still weakened from his imprisonment in Ash, from his journey across the desert.
    To save me. When she gave a sob, he turned his attention to her. "I will ... make you pay--"
    Another volley of bullets. He convulsed in agony, blood pouring from his wounds and arcing over the ground. Still he fought, futilely striking out until he was so injured he could no longer stand.
    They swiftly closed in, securing his wrists in those unbreakable manacles.
    With a torque in hand, Fegley sauntered over, placing his boot on Malkom's face, shoving it into the ground. After he'd threaded the collar around the demon's neck, he pressed his thumbprint onto the screen to lock it. "Good job, boys," he said to the guards. "Take him away."
    With a smirk, Fegley turned to Chase. "Not as stylish as, say, your black bag over the head, but we do what we can."
    The soldiers strapped Malkom to a board, like a gurney with restraints, loading him into one of the trucks. Just before the doors closed, the demon gazed at her with pure hatred, his bloody lips moving as he rasped in Demonish.
    "Malkom, I never wanted this. I didn't have a choice!"
    The doors slammed. And then he was gone.
    Fegley turned to Carrow. "You want your torque off?" He held up his hand, wiggling his right thumb. "Then come to Daddy."
    Lanthe nudged her forward. Numb, Carrow crossed to the man who continued to make her life hell.
    "Turn around, witch."
    After what they'd done to Malkom, she burned to kill Fegley the moment her power returned, but she couldn't until she had Ruby somewhere safe.
    When she turned, he snatched her wrists behind her, manacling her. She thrashed from his grip, too late. "What the hell is this, Fegley?" She twisted around to stare down Chase. "Is this just until I get off the island? Or did you never intend to let us go?"
    From behind her, Fegley said at her ear, "Bingo."
    Lanthe hissed, "You filthy pig," while Carrow rocked on her feet, dazed. All this hurt, and for nothing.
    "Chase, don't do this! You gave your word."
    Sweat beaded on Chase's upper lip. He sidestepped when a soldier brushed past him, but he said nothing.
    Fegley yanked Carrow toward one of the two remaining Humvees, with a bristling Lanthe following. "Maybe it's out of his hands. Maybe perfect Chase got caught with his hand in the cookie jar."
    Carrow gasped as the full realization of what she'd done sank in. I betrayed Malkom for nothing. She couldn't return for him and save him from these lunatics. "What are you going to do to him?" She hadn't allowed herself even to speculate about it before.
    Fegley was all too happy to tell her, "Cut him wide open, see how he ticks."
    Bile rose in her throat, her tears welling again. She was as enraged at them as she was at herself.
    Yet then she recognized in an instant of clarity that Fegley wasn't long for this world. A calm washed over