Chapter Fourteen
Skylar
Thankfully, I had my clothes back on when Shelly, Madison and two very shaky hellhound shifters stumbled into the living room. Both shifters were swaying and they looked dangerously close to falling on the floor.
Madison’s disguise was gone and she looked like herself again. Though, she was in rough shape. Her lip was bleeding and purple was blooming around her right eye. Her hair was a mess and there was a tear in her shirt and her clothes were filthy. She’d spent some time on the ground and had obviously been in a hell of a brawl.
Shelly looked a little better than Madison, but she wasn’t as put together as usual. Her hot pink hair was half in her bun, the rest of it frizzy and wild around her face. She had dirt streaked on her cheeks and I could feel the residual magic radiating from her. Whatever spells she’d had to use, they were crazy powerful.
“What happened? Are you okay?” I raced forward.
“Take him,” Madison guided Jasper toward me and I ducked under one of his huge arms to try to support him.
David was behind me and he did the same for Hadrian.
“Get them to the couch,” Shelly instructed.
“Shelly had to fuck with their minds,” Madison said. “And I can tell you from experience, they’re going to feel like shit for a while.”
I helped Jasper to the couch. His eyes were glassy and unfocused. He looked up at me. “Sit here?”
“Yes, sit here,” I said. “It’s going to be okay.”
I got him settled while David guided Hadrian to the other side of the couch. He looked just as confused as his brother.
Once they looked like they weren’t going to fall over, I walked over to where Shelly and Madison were standing near the stairway. “What happened to them?” I whispered. “Is it permanent?”
“They should recover,” Shelly said. “I hope.”
“She didn’t have much of a choice,” Madison said. “They tried to kill us. So did the other shifters. The queen’s got a whole defense system set up now. A dozen shifter slaves guarding the palace. No way anyone’s sneaking in or out of that place.”
I took a deep breath. All these setbacks were making it seem less likely that we’d be able to get in easily. “What about you two? Need an ice pack or something?”
“Probably.” Madison gingerly touched her cheek then winced. “I’m going to have a heck of a shiner.”
“You forget, you made friends with a mage,” Shelly said. “Ice now, we’ll fix it up with some magic after I recover a bit.”
“What can I do to help?” I asked.
“Watch them. Make sure they don’t leave or do anything stupid,” Shelly said. “They’re not going to be thinking clearly for a while.”
“It might not be much of a change for them,” David said.
“Nice way to talk about your friends,” I said.
He shrugged. “It’s true. They’re warriors, but they aren’t generals. They follow orders.”
“David?” Hadrian called.
David walked over to his friends. “Hey, buddy.”
“That stone, it’s bad,” he said.
“I know.”
“You have to take it out,” he said. “If it can change demons what else can it do?”
“He’s right,” Shelly said. “I didn’t think it would work on a demon shifter. The history of that stone says it was focused on wolf shifters. If it can control any kind of shifter, where does it stop?”