Growling, the mix of animal and demon so familiar to him it could have come from his own chest, woke him up with a start. Believing the sound part of a dream, he lay there a minute, the moonlight flooding onto the bed where they'd slept side by side. Well, she'd slept peacefully, him not so much. He'd spent the night attempting to analyze the new ways his demon acted up within him to no avail.

Adjusting in micro movements, hoping to regain some feeling back in the arm she rested on, the tangle of a sheet around his right leg built his frustration, an emotion he'd been tapped into all night. He knew without even looking that most of the bed sheets, save the one over them, were strewn around the room along with their clothes. Allanah's head rested against his chest, her shoulder wedged in his bicep, hence the blood shortage to his fingers. A smile graced his face, though, as he relished the feeling of her naked body, warm where it touched his.

The sound of her light breathing should have soothed even the savage beast, and he scoffed at the absurd saying. His beast remained far from soothed. He couldn't put his finger on the source of its agitation no matter where he let his mind roam. It had to be a sheer aversion to love. There wasn't another reason on this earth he could fathom as to why this woman, this gentle, beautiful, loving and resilient creature, scared the demon so. To even think of the hellish thing afraid amused him, granting him another few seconds of reprieve from the shenanigans of the thing causing chaos among his organs as well as other vital systems of the body like digestion and blood flow. Nothing quite right, his parasympathetic nervous system all out of whack, he'd been plagued with an upset stomach, heartburn, and a headache since they'd arrived. Not to mention the fatigue from holding himself in his human form causing physical aches and pains.

"This isn't the way a physically fit man in his early thirties should wake up," he thought out loud, half growling and half grumbling to himself, yet quiet enough not to wake the sleeping beauty at his side.

His brothers thought the demon within, as they stupidly called it, made them stronger. He guessed it did when shifted, at least until you got on its bad side, pissed it off. He heard it again, his growl, louder, closer, this time.

He sat up with a start when it registered that the beastly sound moaning through the night air had not come from his mind, nor from him. Looking out to the water, his disbelief at the sight made it take a few seconds to register. His coven, full beast, surrounded them, the energy coming from their fur lighting the moonlit dark further, casting an ominous cloud around them. He moved her aside, as easily as a frantic man could, taking two large and fast steps to the edge of the room before his entire body tensed with fury.

"I promised to kill you if you came here," he said in a quiet hiss through his teeth as he looked around him again, a circle of unnatural, unworldly fur closing in, surrounding them.

He gripped the wooden banister until it splintered in his hands. This small detail infuriated him until he shook, violently, his breath coming out in painful pants as he ground the pieces of wood in his hands into sawdust that littered the water below his feet. Hearing a fast sound behind him, he turned back to see Allanah's wide eyes, not full of fear, but full of fury, matching his own.

He knew she'd woken as he'd moved out from under her, but rather than cower, or scream, he could see her now as she stood in all of her naked glory, unashamed, seemingly unafraid, though, not stupid.

He scrambled, pushed the suitcase sitting neatly on the floor her way. He grabbed his shorts, yanking and shaking them free of the blanket they had been half hidden under. Putting them on with tumultuous tugs, he didn't knowing what would come next. He nodded to the suitcase for her to do the same.

"You said they wouldn't come," she stated, rather matter of fact, her voice icy with her ire, chilling him actually, as she snatched a dress from the case.

"I threatened. They promised. I don't get it. They are dead men," he rambled, each thought abrupt, each word cut off more as he'd continued on.

His chest tight, his fists clenched, his heart hammered in his chest, not from fear but from rage. All the aliments of last night forgotten, he acquired new, let his fury storm into madness until his bloodlust took over. At this point, moments before a shift, the demon and him were one with the only exception being alliance. He wanted to protect her, the demon's only bane, while the demon wanted to protect itself by aligning with the beasts. The indecision, turmoil, the fight between what lived within him and his true soul, kept him barely human.

"Why the fuck are you here?" he screamed into the night, toward the circle of beasts who'd remained frozen in their circle, maybe as confused as he was as to the why.

In his head he heard the cry of the many around him. The demons allowed the men silent communication, which at times could be quite maddening, since they used it more in bad situations when everyone talked at once. Deciphering the tangles of words, he figured out the gist of it. His demon had called them. It had been threatened, its existence vulnerable, so that they couldn't ignore the call. They had assumed some physical danger, that if Ciaran was in danger of dying so would his demon in turn, so they had to come save him.

What else could they do? Only, here now, they couldn't figure out what exactly had threatened it. They questioned if the thing was devious enough to lie, to pull some sort of ruse. Clearly, no physical threat loomed, and the demon secured. Still, it shrieked out the warning Ciaran had been feeling and puzzling over himself. After a short, rushed back and forth ending in a disoriented state of bewilderment, he shook his head, hoping to clear the cotton brain he'd achieved without alcohol. In fact, he'd kill for a shot of whiskey.

"They came," he said to her, trying to keep his voice just a tad calm despite her wild eyes, "because they thought my demon in trouble; as in me and it dying kind of trouble, which makes no sense. I was not in any battle with anything. Still, as I told you last night, the thing is up in arms about something. I thought it through all night, and I can't believe it could be so threatened by love. But, I don't know what else it could be."

"I believe you...or rather it was in danger," she stated with a calm tone, although he'd heard the underlying tremble.

The beasts around him growled again, this time a battle cry, though they seemed to look around them for an unseen enemy. As they did so, they stomped closer to the bedroom, to them, to surround him. Their large feet made unnatural waves in the water. He'd not realized fully until this moment that the anxious way his demon had been fighting was from some fear of another type of magick, one pure and good, until he heard the other men ranting about it in his head, attempting to figure out the source when there stood only one around them.

"What the hell is going on?" he yelled, looking around the circle of beasts to find the threat himself because what they were thinking made no logical sense. Looking back at Allanah, he demanded, "What have I been battling? What are you talking about?"

"I mean this," she said, her hand raising in the air, a ball of light, bright, white, blinding, forming in her hand, growing until it surrounded the room they stood in like a wall of energy, of protection.

The beasts around them seemed to go crazy, then. Mad, really. Their ruby eyes glowed like flames, her energy ball exaggerating the effect. A war cry, he could only describe the hideous animalistic screams coming out of their mouths as, made her energy ball quake, though it held him inside. As irrational and threatened as he suddenly felt, his demon reacted, insisted on a change he'd thought to fight tooth and nail until he got answers.

However, the shift not coming, he knew, as the thing squirmed inside of him, enraged, maybe suffocating, making him experience the same, that he wasn't the one holding it back. She was. Somehow. With her light all around them, that she glided with her hand around so gracefully, so easily, to control. The ball, which glistened like glass, blinded him. The stomping of his coven around it made him shake. The demon inside, possibly dying, made him curl up in a tight ball around the pain. He clutched at his own throat, gasping for breath until he realized it a sensation only. Air, as sure as the day hinting over the horizon, burnt through his lungs.

"You," he accused, hitting the floor. At that moment, he didn't like the weakness which overcame him any more than his monster did.

"Yes. I had a secret that I needed to tell you, too," she said, calmly. "I believe I was the threat. I think that was the problem yesterday. With your defenses down, your demon sensed my magick. I'm a natural born witch. My magick is pure, not gained through sacrifice, not powered by trapped demons. I intended to tell you yesterday, especially when we agreed no secrets, but, right after that, if you remember, you said to give us one night. I swear, I planned to tell you today. I couldn't wait, in a way, since from what you've said, I actually had hoped that maybe in some way my magick could help you, if you know what I mean."

As she spoke, the beasts around them continued on in their crazed state, jumping around as if the water around them were fire. Hell, maybe her ball of energy electrocuted them through it. How could he know? What did he know? Nothing apparently. Their large and powerful bodies he'd seen destroy houses, men, so easily, beat at her circle of light, hissing in pain, growling in frustration, unable to penetrate it no matter what they did. The energy in them, dark lines edged in blue, crackled over their fur, seemed to explode into a dark, hazy rainbow of colors whenever they touched her white light. Smoke came of the union of good and evil, clouding the scene, yet not blocking out the noise of the anarchy which ensued. 

One of his brothers, he thought, given the size of the beast, slightly larger than the others, grabbed what Ciaran assumed to be a boat in the water he hadn't seen initially. When it hit the wall of protective energy, he realized it in fact a coffin. As it split apart, he saw the contents as they blew around them: bones, black dolls, white flowers. He recognized the spell to contact a demon. He could almost smell the whiskey that had to have been poured over it all, enacting the spell which would bring more of them from the pits of hell to add to the coven's power. They hadn't gotten that far. They'd found him, grown confused as to their exact mission, and then this, this magick. Her magick.

He didn't know whether to be pissed about the monumental omission, or be excited by the possibilities it held. Trapped within the evidence of her unbelievable revelation, his demon passing on its suffering to him, pissed, won out. Regardless, excitement brewed, inciting the beast within further, as it didn't seem the beasts around them were going to win him. At least, not anytime soon,  which was fine with him. Still, he wanted—no, needed—answers.

"You are more powerful than they are?" he asked, just one of the million questions zooming through his thoughts, causing an ache in his head to match the one in his stomach which radiated to his limbs as she continued to prevent the shift his demon so wanted to make. His bones literally felt frozen, as if one false move and they would break. Within this chilled mass burned a small fire throwing a hissy fit. The shrill buzzing sound, an eardrum piercing screech at times, made it so that it took everything in him not to cover his ears, though it would have been a futile action since the noise came from within.

"It seems I am. I had suspected yesterday. You thought you were controlling your demon, but I believe I was. You were so caught up in the moment, in the problem, you couldn't see it."

"We agreed no secrets," he accused. "Your mother, she was a witch, too?"

"Yes, she is a very powerful one. Your father used her, and she let him because if sent back to Ireland, she'd have been persecuted for crimes she was or wasn't guilty of. Depended on her mood how she'd explain it."

"How could you have kept this from me. All this time?"

"All this time? Really? I was going to tell you today, I swear it, as I said, but, all this time? Come on! There was no time when we were teens. I was sent away before I got up the courage. Then, later, after I was gone, I learned your secrets, but I couldn't get in contact with you then. When I came back the other night, to your house, was hardly the time. In fact, there wasn't time at all with your beasts threatening, and all we had was travel yesterday, which would have been the time, maybe, only I still wasn't convinced this was a good idea at that point, that I hadn't made a huge mistake in letting my heart tell me to come with you. Then, once we were here and we promised no secrets, you didn't want to talk yet. "We were supposed to have one night, though your demon wouldn't allow it. With you out of control, how could I dare to tell you then? So, I not only held the information back, I also took you, as in screwed you, on terms the demon could live with. So, tell me, Ciaran, when have I had the time? I needed to test my theories, figure out the influence my magic was having on you before I could find a way to tell it all. I didn't want to get your hopes up, but, as we slept, my magick protected me, and that thing inside of you felt threatened, I guess, enough to call for backup. I'd call that a good sign, that I may be able to help you."

"You think you could banish this thing from inside of me?" he asked, the sound of the magical battle raging around them just background noise now, welcome actually, as their lack of progress against her encouraged him.

"I don't know, honestly, but, this, holding them back, controlling the thing in you, it is tiring me. I don't know how much longer I can keep this up. They are so enraged. If I shut it down, what then? They kill us both? Or just me? Without my magick, I'm physically no match for them."

At that moment, things around them went from bad to worse. The beasts, his beasts, he thought as a pain stabbed right through his heart, doubling him over as the demon clawed, literally it felt, inside of him. A swarm of black smoke smothered her light as the beasts, howling now in a horrible chorus of demonic hatred, put their own hands out, gathered together the black magick of their demons to fight back. Rage took them first, as an instinct, then the sanity to fight grew from that.

The water, normally only ankle or knee deep depending, moved up into tremendous waves that beat against this layer of magic, equally powered at the moment, from both sides. Her light buckled in places, and in others it pushed back against the dark energy. Either way, lightning born of the clash shot through the white verses black, the sharp edges and the smoky haze mixed together in places to hiss, to burn.

Allanah fell to her knees, bent over, sweating, her hands still out but trembling. On a destructive, I'll-try-anything-to-protect-her whim, he decided to use the rage of his demon to fight the others. If he had more power to replenish the suffering fiend, power that could only come from demons, then maybe he could silence the beasts around them. He knew himself more powerful than them, only his magick wasn't organic like hers. It took time, supplies, to make happen. The beasts outside had come prepared for a fight. What he needed was the organic magick trapped in the whiskey through the use of black magick, the demons. Then he could combine it with hers and give the beasts a good whack of something powerful to shut them the hell up.

Unprepared, he hadn't dreamed this would happen. Of course, he hadn't imagined she would have magick. He still didn't understand how he hadn't known before, but he had to table that discussion for another time. Right now, he had to save her. No matter what.

He grabbed for a sheet, placing it over the glass tabletop beside him, luckily in the room within her magick bubble. It wasn't exactly the round piece of glass they tied up and covered with a dark material to portal their evil friends, but he had to believe it would work.

Laying down under it, holding it up with one hand, he grabbed her with the other to drag her under with him. While her energetic bubble broke a second, he yelled to her to use what power she had left to combine with his in order to knock the rest of them out. She listened, tried, even though he could see the uncertainty on her face. Their energy clashed together, an out of control spiral of dark and bright light, evil and good, sparking in places, dying away in others, igniting an unknown. Yet, the circle of beasts, who had fallen when her protection broke, got up, approached on them, dazed from fighting her.

At some point, it all exploded around them, the alchemy, the glass, the water. Everything went dark.