The entity standing in the middle of the ritual circle wore a twisted version of Dick’s face, but that was where the resemblance ended.
Everything else about it, from the way it stood hunched over menacingly, to the domineering and entitled look on its face, looked so foreign coming from Dick’s mangled body. It had a disorienting effect that sent chills down my spine.
“How foolish of you,” the thing drawled, as if savoring each word in its mouth. It’s voice retained that deep guttural sound that I felt reverberate my very bones. “Throwing away gifts from a god.”
I glanced over at Vomero who was also looking concerned. The research available to us about this curse read more like folklore than factual evidence. So, it wasn’t surprising that we might get something wrong. It’s one of the main reasons we’d picked a ritual more familiar to modern casters instead of trying to patch the original together using guesswork.
While we had anticipated ardent resistance from the Lycan, this level of sentience was wholly unexpected. Now that the uncontrollable rage had subsided, it moved with more intention, slinking slowly toward the edge of the circle closest to the druids like a cunning predator stalking its prey.
“You think to deny me?” the Lycan continued to taunt. “To bind me?!”
The malicious sneer returned briefly to the Lycan’s face as it snapped savagely at the druids, its head temporarily sprouting the long, sharp jaws of the Lycan before popping back into the semblance of a human. The motion was meant to startle the druids, and one of the younger men faltered briefly in his chanting.
The Lycan took the opportunity to swipe a clawed hand at the barrier. It held, but the visible marks left in the barrier lingered ominously before beginning to fade slowly. The creature laughed again.
“Vomero?” I asked. “How long before it starts working?”
“IF it starts working, it’s up to Dick,” Vomero emphasized.
“And if it doesn’t work?” Cash asked.
The look I shared with Cash and Vomero spoke volumes. If Dick didn’t overcome the Lycan before it broke through the barrier, we’d have to hope Light could subdue it, again. Otherwise, I had a feeling Dick and Cash had arranged their own, more lethal contingency plan.
Another spine-chilling laugh reverberated from within the barrier. This time, the Lycan had stalked to the side of the circle near Vomero.
“You don’t have any idea what I am, do you? What your friend is trying so desperately to overcome?” The Lycan closed its eyes for a moment, as if searching for a pleasurable memory. “I can feel him...struggling, so desperate for control! But he can’t stop me.” The creature’s voice lacked even a shred of doubt, so much that I felt my own confidence in this plan slip a little. “I am hunger. I am rage!!” His voice snarled the last word. “And he’s starting to feel how futile it is to fight me. Even a sliver of a god is more than a mortal can overcome. All I need to do is wait. His will weakens. His resolve fades. But I never will.”
I realized we had underestimated the spirit tethered to Dick through the curse. We had thought it was the Lycan’s untamed spirit, it’s primal instinct. How had we failed to question where that instinct came from in the first place?
“Volungus didn’t just curse the Lycans,” I stated.
“He gave them a piece of himself,” Vomero finished.
By now the five of us, including Emery and Ryuuk who had flown back, had gathered at the opposite side of the circle from the druids.
“How does this change things?” Cash asked. “Do we stop the ritual? Try something else?”
Emery shook her head. “If you stop the ritual, the wolf will have the upper hand in Dick’s body. Even Light’s power might not be enough to fully suppress him. It’s hard to tell, but it may not be a chance you want to take.”
The beast’s voice was deliberate and slow behind us, guttural and deep, and tauntingly smug. “Plot all you want. Calculate. None of it will matter. I will feast.”
The barrier between us was visibly weakening, and as it did so, an unwelcome, yet primal urge seemed to seep through the cracks of my soul.
I looked uneasily at the Lycan through the thin barrier of the ritual. It turned toward me, locked eyes and smiled lustfully.
“He wants you, you know,” it was a statement of fact rather than a question. I didn’t respond. “He’s too weak to do it though, but not me. I would give him what he wants...make you a vessel for my...immortal eminence.”
Only one other time had I been subjected to the full onslaught of Dick’s pheromones, or at least I had thought it had been the full deal. It was when we had fought the cage match in Veridi. What hit me next was much more powerful, much more aggressive. If the first time had been a jolt of electricity, this was a lightning strike.
It also felt nothing like the enticing effect of Dick’s biology. His use of the pheromones felt like an aphrodisiac—enticing, amplifying one’s own desires, making them hard to ignore. Volungus proved a master of these baser needs, mutating that ability the same way he mutated Dick’s physical form, and weaponizing it into something exponentially more powerful, something more closely resembling mind control. It was demanding and painfully sensual—assailing my senses like a tsunami washing away my own will beneath a tide of yearning.
Involuntarily, I found myself compelled to take a step toward him, toward the circle.
“What the—oh shit,” Cash spat, reaching out to grab my arm and stop me.
He halted his motion mid-air snatching it back as if burned without ever touching me. His hand, the non-bionic one clenched in front of him as he stared at it.
“What’s wrong?” Emery said, stepping in front of me to block my path. She and I were of similar build and strength, however, and she struggled to keep me away from the circle. She turned to Vomero, who was also backing away from everyone warily.
“I don’t think we should...be this close,” Vomero said shakily. “I feel like I...like I could tear your throat out.”
The spikes in his hands burst through his scaly skin and oozed venom. Vomero’s face looked visibly distressed as he fought to contain the urge.
This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.
“He’s right,” Cash said backing away. “I have the strong desire to chase you down and rip you apart. Luckily, my cybernetic parts are helping me suppress it for now. What the fuck is this thing?”
I watched all this happening as if from a distance. My mind seemed both hyper focused on reaching the being in the circle and yet oddly detached from my body at the same time. The Everwylds, including Emery, and Ryuuk seemed to be the only ones unaffected by whatever the Lycan was doing.
Emery’s wild companion, Kiara, however, was not so disciplined. She swooped in like a winged bird of prey, roaring as she tried to swipe Vomero’s head off his shoulders. He hissed primitively at her, struggling to contain his primal instincts of survival.
“Shit! Kiara!! Stop it!” Emery shouted.
“I can distract her,” Ryuuk said, after narrowly dodging another dive bomb from an enraged Kiara. “Just don’t let them kill each other.”
He took off after Kiara, taunting her into an aerial chase through the cavern.
“Great,” Emery muttered, “But what am I supposed to do about these three?”
Vomero was the next to lose his battle for self-control. He lunged at Emery and met Cash instead, his venomous claws sinking into Cash’s forearm. The bionic man let out his own roar of frustration. Taking action had eroded what willpower his cybernetics were affording him. The two began viciously fighting each other.
During Emery’s slip in concentration, I’d seized the opportunity to push toward the circle. The entity called to me, standing near the barrier like a beacon I could not deny.
“Yes,” his voice beckoned. “Give me everything.”
“Skye, NO!” Emery yelled as I stretched out my hand toward him against my will. The barrier was so thin. I knew I could touch him. I NEEDED to touch him.
The moment my fingers would have breached the barrier and touched his, however, I halted. I’d heard something—a voice echoing in my mind and through the cavern. There were no words, the mysterious voice echoing like a whisper of the wind. It was like a memory my addled mind struggled to catch. What was it saying? I knew it wanted to remind me of something. It was something important. For the briefest of moments, the fog lifted, and my mind cleared just long enough to remember.
Dick wasn’t the only one housing the power of a god.
My eyes glowed green, the tattoo on my hand shimmered with a bright green light. All around me, tiny green orbs of magic rose from the ground like mist. I could feel the rage and killer instinct subside from my companions. It cleansed the pheromonic effects of Dick’s hijacked ability on my body, and, going a step farther, it nullified the ability completely. The pheromones receded, leaving me shaking as I knelt beside the circle.
For the first time since his twisted visage had appeared on Dick’s face, I saw the Lycan’s smug smile falter.
“Ahhh...” he breathed the word out, but this time it lacked the taunting lilt of earlier in lieu of a more speculative tone. “So, the 13th remains after all. I wonder what he’s like these days.”
He spun around and threw his arms out and head back to laugh with abandon before returning to the barrier near me to stare closely in my glowing green eyes.
“Here’s the real wolf in disguise,” he drawled, running his eyes up and down me lasciviously. “At least I would have made it pleasurable.”
“Volungus,” I said, standing to stare him directly in the eyes. “Lycan. Whatever the fuck you are. Get the hell out of my friend.”
I nodded to Light, who had been standing patiently nearby, unconcerned as if waiting for me to remember something important. The little Ancient threw his hands against the barrier, transforming into his customary coalition of warm, glowing light before seeming to dissolve into the barrier, becoming one with it.
As he did so, everything changed. The wind whipping through the cavern outside the circle calmed completely and started anew inside it. The barrier itself shimmered brighter, seeming even more solid that before.
Most importantly, the Lycan began to rage again, going feral and ripping at the barrier. This time it had no effect.
I saw his face, vilely twisted as it was, wince in pain as he stumbled to a knee. Dick was gaining control. The ritual was working.
“I will haunt your nights with the echoes of my hunger,” the beast groaned with great effort. One of Dick’s hands turned into a razor-sharp claw. “You’ll always look at him and wonder if a piece of me lingers in him.”
He continued to thrash against the barrier walls, but some invisible source was dragging him back, toward the center. Once he was there, the barrier dissolved completely and Light reappeared at my side, slipping his hand in mine. Together, we stared at the grotesque version of Dick. His legs were bound to the middle of the ritual circle, now; he would not be able to escape it, yet he continued to claw with the one hand as if trying to rip himself back toward the edge.
“Stoooooooop!” it screamed in agony. “I will feast! Set me free!”
The Lycan drew each word out as if pried from his aching chest, sensing the subversion of his will was inevitable. In his weakened state, the Lycan lost its hold on the host’s consciousness as Dick’s own voice screamed in frustration from the beast’s sinister face.
“You piece of shit!” Dick’s voice yelled as the Lycan snarled in rage at the same time. “Give me back my body! Get the fuck out!”
I could see the mental and spiritual battle happening between Dick and the Lycan playing out in his physical form. Various parts of his body morphed back and forth, like a sloshing bucket, threatening to spill over.
The Lycan seemed to take that command literally, clawing at Dick’s chest and neck. Clearly, it attempted to set itself free by killing the host rather than being subjected to the ritual.
“Please! I can’t take this, anymore. Cash!” Dick yelled looking at the bionic assassin. He and Vomero had stepped closer to my side, having done their best to tend to any damage they’d endured during their fight. “Don’t get soft, now. Kill me!”
His words gurgled as he spit out blood. Cash examined him thoughtfully for a moment then shook his head. His expression was impassable, dead serious as he spoke to Dick.
“He can take it,” Cash said, speaking to Dick. “I know that desperate look. The look of a man who knows his end is inexorable and nigh. You’ll have to do better than that.”
As Cash addressed him, the face twisted and the Lycan emerged once again, laughing hoarsely through its ravaged throat. Clearly it had been hoping to deceive Cash into finishing the job for him.
The struggle playing out through Dick’s physical transformations seemed to subside as the Lycan’s consciousness sank into silent oblivion. With no more resistance, the binding ritual easily completed its work. A dozen small sigils glowed along his skin, the crystal dust of the ritual circle sang like chimes in the wind.
The binding was complete.
Then the second phase of the ritual activated with a loud, metallic clang. The first stage bound Dick’s soul to his own body. This was a necessary step because the second stage of the ritual Vomero, the druids, and I had designed was meant to strip away everything else.
The ritual circle on the ground shot out a bright light so powerful, it was nearly painful to be near it. Cash, Vomero, Emery, and I, as well as Ryuuk who had returned, took a liberal step back from the circle. As we watched, a smoky black and red essence floated from Dick’s body. In its last moment of existence, it continued to struggle until the particles themselves dissolved in the cleansing white light of the ritual circle.
Silence descended and the sunlight returned to the peaceful cavern. All that remained were specks of the crystal dust and Dick’s limp body lying in the center. After a moment, the body stirred, and a bloody, injured Dick pushed groggily to his knees. It took forever, as if every movement required monumental effort. No longer disfigured and grotesque, his body still retained extensive damage.
I stepped forward to help him to his feet. Cash caught the other side of him and we supported him with an arm slung over each of our shoulders. The one on me still felt limp, like dead weight, and I imagined it would be that way all over his body after the beating it had taken.
After helping him lie outside the circle on a soft patch of clover near the water, Light went to work. The little Ancient channeled the ambient magic all around us. So far, Dick remained barely conscious and unresponsive to any of our questions.
Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, Dick threw his head back and looked up at Cash.
“Thanks,” he slurred, groggy and hoarse.
“For what?”
“Not keeping your promise.”
Cash shrugged. “Well...the credits never cleared...you know I don’t work for free.”
With a chuckle, Dick closed his eyes and promptly passed out.