“No lock. No door.” Jason tipped his head back. “We can try to climb, but the bars above us don’t look any weaker.”
“Dig?” Silas jammed a hand into the dirt. The ground was rock hard under the moss, and his attempts resulted in nothing more than a scraped hand. He kicked the dirt with the heel of his boot, but the packed earth might as well have been concrete. Jason wasn’t faring any better. “Without a tool to power through this stuff, it might take us two days.”
“We don’t have two days.”
“We shift tonight. Our wolves will be able to dig out in no time.”
“At the same time as Alex is here performing his ritual? That seems convenient,” Jason said.
“What are the chances he didn’t think of the burrowing?”
“Zero. He’s a wolf like us. He knows we can dig.
“There must be something about the dirt, an enchantment to keep us from going under,” Silas said. “If there isn’t, then he’s counting on us getting out for some reason.”
“Another trap,” Jason said with a groan. He paced the length of the cage, looking more and more like an animal. “We need a plan. Think, Silas.”
Silas searched the surrounding area, focusing on a clearing of trees behind the cage. “There’s something here.” Jason crossed the cage to get a better look. In the center of the clearing were three intertwining circles of irregularly sized rocks. At the front of the rock formation, stood a stone altar, overgrown with moss and vines. The entire scene looked like a horror movie set.
“Three beings to sacrifice, three circles,” Jason said.
“Nickelova, a demon, and a vampire.” Silas leaned his forehead against the bars, willing his brain to come up with a solution.
“Where’s he getting the demon?” Jason asked.
“The bones he stole from our crime scene. Plus, Julius said he was missing a vampire from his coven.”
“Fuck. What do you think the altar is for?”
“No idea. But the spells in The Book of Flesh and Bone always require a blood sacrifice. Maybe he intends to kill them one by one.”
“On the upside, Laina isn’t here. Maybe he let her go.”
Silas gripped the bars until his knuckles turned white. He hoped what Jason said was possible, but nothing about his experience with Alex suggested he’d have any compassion for Laina.
“Do you think Meredith is helping her mother?” Jason asked.
Only his brother would know how to poke the sore spot in his soul with such precision. Silas shrugged his shoulders and let out a deep breath.
“What do you think her motivation is, I mean, if it’s true?”
Silas tipped his head slightly. “Maybe they felt abandoned by the pack after what happened with Alex. Or it’s metaphysical. When Alex killed their alpha, it’s possible they bonded to him in an irrevocable way.”
“Possible, but unlikely since Olivia isn’t a werewolf. Olivia looked like she was drugged. Probably sulfralite. Maybe Meredith was too.”
“Could be. Hurts, though. She was guilty of something, or she wouldn’t have run.”
“I’m sorry, brother.”
“Yeah. I loved her, and if she helped her mom, she used me. No wonder she wanted to be involved in every step of this case. She could have been hiding evidence.”
Jason frowned. “Or she loved you too, and there’s been a horrible misunderstanding brought on by the orchestrations of a madman.”
Silas gave Jason a condescending look. “Back to reality. How do we get out of here?”
“Help me try to bend the bars. Maybe we can do it if we work together.” Jason used both hands to pull one bar while Silas pulled the other. Even with all of their weight and strength behind the effort, the bars wouldn’t budge. “What now?”
“I’m thinking.” Silas sat down in the middle of the cage and rubbed his aching head.
“I can’t believe this is happening. I finally get my life together, finally find true love with Selene, and what happens? Alex. It’s always fucking Alex.” Jason rested his head on his fists.
Silas could relate. He’d thought for sure Meredith was the one. He also thought he’d easily be able to apprehend Alex in the rogue wolf’s weakened state. But neither of those things panned out. Life was strange. There were things he could count on: himself, his family, the pack, and the phases of the moon. Everything else was merely a shot in the dark. No matter how sure he was that he was aiming in the right direction, there was always the chance his shot would hit nothing at all.
He inspected the bars above their heads again. He’d climb up and test every one for weakness. He wasn’t hopeful he’d find a way out, but it would give him something to do.
“I want you to promise me something,” Jason said.
“What?”
“If you get a chance to kill Alex, promise me you will. No hesitation. No bringing him in for questioning or sending him to prison. Dead. He has to die.”
“The ethical thing to do would be to have a trial. A lot of folks who lost family members to Alex want to feel the closure that would come with participating in the justice process.”
“I know what people want. I am asking you, as family, as your brother. Promise me, Silas. You know as well as I do that we can’t risk it. He’s got to die.”
Silas stood and started climbing the bars. “I promise. I promise as your brother. From here on out, I’m not a detective. I’m a prisoner of war. And POWs can’t be blamed for killing their captors.”
Jason closed his eyes. “Thank you.”
“Now, you have to promise me something.”
“Anything.”
“When it comes time to kill Alex, you need to let me do it.”
A warm breeze blew through the cage, smelling of composting leaves and humid forest. Jason’s face was at war with itself, his jaw twitching, his eyes narrowing. His lips twisted before seeming to come to some resolve. “Deal.”
The cool morning gave way quickly to a sweltering humidity, and then to hours of overhead sun that baked them within the cage. Silas and Jason removed their jackets to use for shade and rolled up their sleeves and pant legs. Still, the heat made Silas feel ill. His head swam, and his tongue felt thick and dry as a stone.
His brain was so fried that he didn’t trust his own ears when a rumble came from a distance. “Do you hear that?” Silas rose, his throat too dry to speak louder than a whisper. The sun had begun to set, and long shadows stretched across his brother’s face, distorting his features. But there was no hiding his sunken cheekbones and cracked lips. A werewolf’s metabolism before the full moon required seven times the calories and hydration of a human. They may have only been in there for a day, but both of them were starving to death.
“Sounds like an engine,” Jason rasped. He stood, pulling the suit jacket he’d been using for shade off his head.
A black Suburban rumbled up a two-rut lane through the jungle, Alex behind the wheel and a Latino man Silas didn’t recognize in the passenger’s seat. Alex parked, climbed out, and stared down his nose at Silas.
“This is what you’ve come to, Alex?” Silas said. “Too cowardly to fight us one-on-one, so you lock us in here to die of thirst?”
Alex reached into the Suburban and pulled out a bottle of water, handing it to Silas between the bars. “Drink up. I wouldn’t want you to die before you had a chance to serve my purpose.”
Silas only hesitated for a moment. He offed the cap and gulping down a third of the bottle, then handed the remainder to Jason. “What exactly do you need us for?” he asked.
“To witness the dawn of a new age. Every revolution needs witnesses. You’ll be the ones to tell the others what happens here. You’ll tell them what’s coming, what the future holds for your pack. And you’ll know exactly what’s in store for them if they don’t comply.”
The other man exited the vehicle and came to stand at Alex’s side. His eyes were dull, lifeless. “Olivia, change back into yourself. Your appearance is d
isconcerting.”
The man contorted, folding at the waist. He expelled the same slimy excrement Silas had seen before as he shifted back into Meredith’s mother. “Would you like me to bring the book?” she asked, once her transformation was complete.
“No. No one touches the book but me,” Alex said. “Bring the fae.”
Olivia opened the backdoor of the Suburban and pulled Nickelova from her seat. The dragon fae looked like death warmed over. Her hands were bound, her hair was matted, and her complexion was blotchy as if she’d spent hours crying. “Alex, please. You loved me once,” she whined. Her mascara ran in long black trails from under her eyes to the delicate bones of her jaw. “I can help you. We could rule together, just as we always planned.”
Alex retrieved Silas’s bag from the vehicle, the one he’d carried Nickelova’s heart in, and hooked it on his shoulder. Then he reached behind the seat and hoisted The Book of Flesh and Bone into his arms.
Silas’s stomach turned at the atrocity in Alex’s hands. It appeared to be made of human skin, the spine a series of bones as if a human backbone had been cracked and flattened to adorn the thick, leathery binding. As Alex passed, a cold breeze came off the thing, sending goose bumps up Silas’s arms and across his chest. But the worst part was the smell. The Book of Flesh and Bone smelled like fetid death bound in misery.
Olivia thrust Nickelova into one of the three stone circles as Alex crossed to the altar and opened the book.
“Alex, please! Have mercy,” she begged.
“Mercy?” Alex laughed. “Like you had mercy on me when you planned to replace me with Jason? You bet on the wrong pony, and now it’s time to settle up.” He pulled the heart from the bag. Olivia released Nickelova and backed from the circle.
“Ukta rho morbidae titan,” Alex read from the book.
The stones around Nickelova glowed purple. She rushed toward the periphery, her body slapping the invisible force that had walled her in. “No. No. Alex, please! Let me out.”
Alex approached her with the heart. “I think I’ve had this long enough. Goddess knows when you give a man your heart, it’s never for keeps.” His hand cut through the purple magic containing Nickelova and violently shoved the heart against her chest. Silas grimaced as her flesh parted to accommodate the organ, her body writhing with the obvious pain of the procedure. When it was done, Nickelova gasped like a baby taking her first breath and clutched at her chest.
Taking pleasure in her pain, Alex paced around the stones, a wicked grin on his face. Once she’d recovered, she raged against the walls of her cage, pounding and clawing at the boundary.
“I’ll warn you, shifting into your dragon form in that circle won’t help you escape, but it will be extremely painful,” Alex said. He turned toward Olivia. “One down, two to go. Let’s call our demon.”
Chapter 25
Silas paced in the cage, an almost comical opposite to Jason who had become unnaturally still in Alex’s presence. As much as he hated Nickelova, if there was a way to free her, he would. She was far less dangerous than Alex.
“Do you remember these?” Alex asked, pulling a bag of bones from the Suburban. Silas’s forehead tightened to the point of pain, a muscle in his jaw tensing and releasing in time with his heart.
“The girl’s bones from the human crime scene,” Silas said.
“You wondered why I’d taken them, why I’d stripped the girl’s flesh from them.” Alex gave him a smug look, and the presumptuousness of the statement wasn’t lost on Silas. “While there is no shortage of human-on-human crime, it seems the perpetrator of this particular murder had a secret. She was possessed by a demon. A new demon, birthed into this world by a young girl who played with the wrong Ouija board.”
“A demon’s human bones,” Silas said, remembering Julius’s theory.
“You’re familiar? I’d not heard of it as a werewolf, but one learns things in one’s travels. Shall we call this one? An interesting fact about demons is they can fold space and travel from one place to another in practically no time. This shouldn’t take long.” Alex dumped the bones into the second circle, eyeing the darkening sky. “Come out, come out, wherever you are.” He pulled a lighter from the pocket of his cargo shorts and squatted down to run the flickering heat beneath the end of the femur.
A cold wind manifested in the trees, darkness gathering between the branches in the woods across from the cage. Shadows danced and expanded, stretching and poking toward the ritual site. Silas could swear he heard whispers in the rustling leaves. And then a woman was there, a dark woman with upturned eyes and tattoos that glowed beneath the long sleeves of her shirt.
“Why have you summoned me, wolf,” she hissed.
“Step into the circle.”
“No.”
Alex thrust the lighter under the bones, and the demon twisted in discomfort, a high-pitched keening escaping her throat. With jerky, tortured movements, she stepped into the circle despite herself.
“Ukta rho morbidae titan.” Alex retracted the flame.
The demon turned into a dark mist, flying left then right, but the ring was sealed. She bounced off the walls of the cell, shrieking in a way that forced Silas to cover his ears.
Alex seemed unruffled by the sound. He turned his face toward the darkening sky and the full moon whose face was already visible in it. “We’re running out of time. Bring the vampire.”
A familiar tug rolled under Silas’s skin, and he understood the urgency in Alex’s voice. The shift was almost upon them. He winced as his spine elongated, pitching him forward, then eased off slightly. He’d be a wolf soon. So would Alex. But the coming lunar eclipse meant they wouldn’t stay that way. He’d shift back at some point, and so would Alex. The perfect conditions for him to complete his ritual.
“Silas,” Jason whispered. “We’re both starving. What if our wolves—”
“Try to eat each other? They won’t. We’re pack. Just try to remember to dig.” In fact, Silas wasn’t sure how their intense hunger and thirst would manifest itself after the shift, but it was his job to remain positive for his brother. A leader never admitted defeat.
Alex groaned, fighting the shift, his hands pawing at the ends of his shirt. He pulled it over his head. Meanwhile, Olivia dragged the vampire from the truck, the ankh tattoo Julius had mentioned clearly visible beneath her ear. Normally a vampire could easily outmuscle and outmaneuver a shifter, but this female vamp looked like she hadn’t fed in weeks. Her cheeks were sunken in, and her eyes were dull. Drugged, Silas guessed. She’d been fed sulfralite like her partner, who had staked himself in the chest.
Beside him, Jason began madly stripping out of his suit, a red flush coloring his cheeks above his thickening beard. Silas’s pulse pounded in his ears, his breath coming in huffs. He unbuttoned his jeans and lifted his T-shirt over his head.
Alex sealed the vampire within the third circle, then stumbled to the place where the circles of the triquetra overlapped. Directly outside their purple boundary, he started a bonfire, igniting the kindling beneath a teepee of firewood.
Silas groaned in chorus with Alex and Jason as the moon tugged at the wolf within. This was the ultimate betrayal. Despite hating Alex with every molecule of his being, this shift, this reaction to the moon, was a reminder that they were made from the same stuff, cut from the same primordial cloth. How he would have loved to think he was fundamentally different from Alex, that the man was a monster the likes of which had never been seen before, nor would be seen again. But that wasn’t the case. Alex was a werewolf, same as him. A werewolf who had turned himself into a monster by choice. Which meant, there was a potential monster in everyone. The thought made Silas want to come out of his skin.
The wave of pain ebbed. As the teepee of branches blazed to life, Alex backed to the altar at the front of the formation and braced himself on the stone table. “Almost time.” He madly flipped pages in the grotesque book.
Olivia strode machinelike to his side, the fine wrin
kles around her mouth and eyes deepening in the light of the fire. Alex wrapped a length of chain around his torso and padlocked it to the base of the table. “Keep me in this spot,” he said to Olivia.” Do you understand?” Olivia nodded robotically.
Alex pitched forward in time with the same wave of pain that sliced through Silas. Older wolves shifted faster. Because Alex and Silas were the same age, the shift was upon him. Jason, on the other hand, might have a few minutes more.
There was a soft rustle in the bushes behind Silas.
“What is that?” Jason asked, squinting into the dark foliage.
Silas couldn’t answer. He finished removing his clothes as his stomach hollowed out and his jaw jutted forward.
Two reflective amber eyes blinked at him from the darkness, low to the ground.
“A raccoon?” Jason whispered, creeping toward the back of the cage.
Silas didn’t care what it was. His hands hit the dirt, his fingers bending under as claws sprouted from his first knuckle. Jet black hair budded from his forearms and climbed toward his shoulders, bubbling under and bursting through his skin. He squatted on his haunches, his throat elongating with his ears.
In his altered state, he could hear the small animal breathing in the bushes outside the cage, smell the wild, musky scent of its coat. With sharp eyes, he blinked up at the full moon above and howled. Jason joined in, his throaty human moan morphing into a proper wolf call. Alex picked up on the song, instinct overriding animosity as he raised his nose to the moon.
The last thing Silas registered before the wolf completely took over was the steady sound of digging near the back of the cage. Whatever was in that bush was scratching at the dirt as if its life depended on it.
The alpha’s paws were in the dirt. No, it was his hands, and they weren’t working as they had a minute ago. The wolf beside him was faring better, throwing dirt with fully functional front claws. Silas came into his head in a rush, his human body bent over a hole. His wolf had been digging, trying to get at something on the other side of the bars.
Vengeance: A Knight World Novel (Fireborn Wolves Book 3) Page 17
