by SM Reine
She had also blamed the werewolf for Seth’s heartbreak.
That…that could be changed by the exorcism.
He squeezed his eyes shut, trying not to contemplate what it could mean. That if Rylie were human, if she didn’t have the Alpha need to mate, they could be together again. It hurt too much to think about it. It would be a victory for him, but a huge loss for the pack—and for Abel.
Dammit, they needed Rylie. They needed her so much more than Seth did.
What the fuck was she thinking?
Another house phone caught his eye. Before Seth even realized what he was doing, he jerked it out of the cradle, hand over the mouthpiece, and listened in on Rylie’s conversation.
“Summer’s pissed,” Abel was saying. “She’s throwing the kind of tantrum that makes me happy we didn’t have to deal with her as a toddler.” His tone was a lot gentler than it ever was when he spoke with Seth. He only talked like that with Rylie.
Her responding laugh was brief and humorless. “She shouldn’t worry. Nash will be back for her.”
“Speaking of coming back…”
For a few seconds, Seth only heard their breathing joined over the phone line.
“Soon,” she said. “I’ll be back soon.”
“Dammit, Rylie. I should be there with you.”
“You’re exactly where you need to be. The pack needs their Alpha. They need you. And I can’t imagine them being in any hands better than yours.” A pause, and then she said, “I have to go. I love you, Abel.”
Seth pulled the receiver from his ear so that he wouldn’t have to hear his brother’s response. He stared at the phone in his hand.
She hadn’t told Abel what she was doing.
The lock on the door rattled. He set down the phone and loomed in front of the door, trying to breathe through the anger and failing. It was like Seth had a werewolf of his own trapped in his chest, stealing all the oxygen from his body.
Rylie opened the door. She didn’t look surprised to see him there. With her hearing, she probably knew that Seth had been on the other side the entire time.
“You can’t do this,” Seth said.
“I’ve made my choice. I could save a lot of people.” The flush rode high on her cheeks, filling her with passionate fire.
“What, so you think this is some kind of redemption? Like you need to martyr yourself?” he demanded. Rylie moved to walk past him, and he grabbed her arm to stop her. “What if it was the exorcism that took away all of Katja’s memories? What if removing your wolf makes you forget the last five years of your life?”
Rylie cupped his cheeks in her hands, gazing up at him with wide gold eyes, like her soul was sunshine pouring from within. “I would never forget my family,” she said. “Not Abel. Not Summer and Abram. And I know that I couldn’t forget you, Seth.” She touched her chest. “None of you are in my mind—you’re in my heart. Nothing can ever take that from me.”
He gaped at her wordlessly as she stepped back, taking the warmth of her gaze away from him. She hugged the blanket tighter as she drifted toward the door.
“I deserve to be cured,” Rylie said. “Everyone might be confused at first, but they’ll understand someday.”
Who was she trying to convince—Seth, or herself?
He pulled his anger together, finding strength within the burn. “No,” he said, striding after her when she moved to the door. “Rylie, you can’t do this!”
She dropped the blanket to the top step and glanced at him over her shoulder. She smiled weakly.
The change was almost instantaneous. After five years, she had mastered the shift from human to wolf, and it was almost like watching Summer’s graceful switch between forms. Her sleek golden fur blossomed over her flesh, and the wolf soon stood on the top step where she had been. She was a glorious beast, strong and beautiful.
And Rylie was trying to kill that wolf.
Before Seth could stop her, she loped into the night with long, even strides, quickly dwindling to a dot on the horizon. He knew what she was doing. It was one last run with four paws under the vast night sky—a goodbye to a beast she planned to sacrifice.
Seth had to stop her.
Elise retrieved her sword from the desert then retreated to the McIntyres’ bedroom to prepare. She was going to visit Senator Peterson’s house before exorcising Rylie, and wouldn’t be coming back in between. Swords, charms, gloves—it was almost everything she would need to fight Abraxas and avert apocalypse.
But she hadn’t left yet. She was sitting at Leticia’s vanity, staring at the page of runes she had drawn earlier. Elise could feel a hint of magic in them. It felt like a puzzle with a missing piece. If she could fit it together, maybe she could make the runes glow.
The door slammed open, and Seth stormed into the room.
“You can’t exorcise Rylie,” he said. “Do you have any idea what losing Rylie would do to my brother? To the entire pack?”
“No,” Elise said. And she didn’t particularly care. She stood, folded the paper, and slipped it into her pocket.
“It would be devastating,” Seth said. He drew in a steadying breath. “I saved your life tonight, and now I’m asking you to save Rylie’s pack. Don’t exorcise her.”
Elise touched his bandaged neck with her forefinger. He jerked, but didn’t pull back. She only smoothed the tape over his skin, rubbing out an air bubble. “I didn’t request that you save me, and it wouldn’t change anything if I had. This is Rylie’s choice.” She let her finger fall to the hollow of his throat. The pull of blood was strong enough to make every fiber of her being yearn for him.
She clenched her hand into a fist, forcing herself to stop touching him, and dropped it to her side.
“I don’t have to let you feed off of me again,” Seth said.
“I wouldn’t if you asked me.” Elise stepped back, folding her arms so her hands couldn’t wander. “Feeding off of a human, an ally—drinking your blood—that’s not happening again.”
He actually looked surprised. “You offered me the job with you and McIntyre. I thought—”
“Feeding me is not conditional to your employment.” Even if it was taking all of her strength not to sink her teeth into his throat right at that moment. “The faster we close that door at the Bellagio, the less likely the walls to Hell will tear open. Rylie’s choice could save a lot of lives. I’m not going to stop her because you think I owe you something. If you don’t want me to exorcise her, talk her out of it.”
“I tried. She won’t listen to me.”
“Then you’ve got to deal with it.”
His distress was palpable. Seth paced closer, grabbing Elise by the upper arms. Not hard. She didn’t fight against him. “But my blood,” he said.
Yeah. His blood. It was terribly tempting.
She leaned toward him, inhaling his scents. Seth’s mind was racing with adrenaline. He didn’t want her to feed off of him again because he had liked it. No, it seemed to have scared him—maybe more than anything had ever scared him before. His mind had reached a new threshold of anxiety.
He wanted her to feed as leverage to save Rylie.
Seth and James didn’t look anything like each other. But looking up at him now, when he was trying to talk her out of helping Rylie—when Rylie had already made her feelings unequivocally clear—Elise couldn’t help but think that they were practically fruit from the same tree. James had gone over Elise’s head to make decisions, too. She had been something for him to control. Not his partner.
Elise had seen the despair in Rylie’s eyes when she cried in the shower, regretting the death of a creature she hadn’t wanted to kill. She had felt how much Rylie hated the werewolf in her, hated being helpless to its whims and urges. And she had seen the hope in Rylie’s eyes when she realized that there was a cure, and better yet, that she could use it to save people.
This wasn’t about the pack. This was about Rylie finding a way to live with herself.
Seth wanted to
take it away from her.
The anger surged in Elise, unexpectedly vicious. She grabbed Seth’s wrist so hard that the bones groaned. “I don’t think I want you in Las Vegas anymore.”
Sweat broke out on Seth’s forehead. His knees buckled as her grip tightened. “But Elise—”
It was the plea in his tone that really pissed her off. Elise shoved him into the vanity. Leticia’s makeup scattered everywhere, and the back of his head cracked against the glass.
She fisted his shirt in both hands and shoved her face into his.
“If you fuck this up for Rylie, we’re going to have a problem,” Elise said. Her voice was as cold as her anger was hot.
Seth tried to push her away, but she pushed back, holding him pinned underneath her. “Is that a threat?” he asked through gritted teeth, struggling to pry her grip off of him.
“Yes,” Elise said. “You don’t make this choice for her, and I will kill you if you try to take it away.”
She lifted him an inch and slammed him back again. Her vision swam with fury, and she didn’t see Seth’s face beneath her. It was James. It had always been fucking James.
“Leave,” Elise said.
Seth looked like a cornered beast, desperate and fearful. It bled into his eyes. Turned his skin ashen. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll leave.”
The circle for binding Brianna as aspis was complete, not that it did them a damn bit of good. She had placed every holy item that James had given her around the circle. They had absorbed all the magic and were primed for spellcasting. And in his frustration, James had prepared the altar for opening the door to Eden, too—everything that he could do without blood and a kopis and aspis pair.
But now they were stuck.
James had another plan brewing—there was no doubt of that in Brianna’s mind. Considering the way that he paced the perimeter of the circle, which was centered in front of the statue’s feet, he was probably thinking furiously about alternatives. But the more times he lapped that stupid circle, the more Brianna’s despair grew.
How many of those alternatives was he mulling over that involved giving Brianna all the power he had promised? How many of them involved getting rid of her and trying something else?
It took her a minute to realize that James’s footsteps weren’t the only ones she was hearing.
Someone was climbing into the canyon.
“Do you hear that?” she asked, squinting past the floodlights for a hint of motion beyond.
James froze, head lifted. “Who’s there?” he asked. He had one hand on the opposite wrist, on the verge of pulling his glove off.
“It’s me,” responded a man, stepping into the light.
James shielded Brianna with his body. She tried to elbow him out of her way only to be pushed back without so much as a glance. But she managed to catch a glimpse of who had entered their campground before James blocked her view again.
It was Seth Wilder—kopis protector of the werewolf pack.
“How did you find us?” James asked, facing down the young man. “You didn’t call me.”
Seth shrugged one shoulder. “I’m a hunter. I hunt.” He lifted his hands in a gesture of peace. “I need your help.”
Brianna peered around James’s shoulder. Seth was a lot more attractive than she remembered—all broad shoulders and muscle and glistening dark skin. He had a goatee without the mustache, and black hair that had been chemically straightened to sweep over his eyes. The long hair would have looked juvenile on anyone else, but it made Seth look like a warrior. Or someone off the cover of one of the romance paperbacks stashed under Brianna’s bed back home.
Of course, if Brianna recalled correctly from the last time that their paths had crossed, Seth was also a werewolf baby-daddy. Minor roadblock there.
“What kind of help?” James asked, and Brianna realized that the men were talking about something sane and immediate and not involving bodice-ripping fantasies.
“Elise has learned how to exorcise werewolves,” Seth said. Judging by his glower, this was a bad thing.
“Impossible.”
“You don’t know your kopis very well if you seriously think that.”
The gloved hand hiding runes twitched harder, like it did when James was aggravated. “Did she use the spell I gave her?”
“Oh yeah. She used it.” Seth’s voice was grim.
Brianna had watched James give some of those glowing runes he hid under his gloves to a woman—someone that she had been convinced was a demon. Brianna’s senses were never wrong. It was strange enough to give magic to a demon, but…having that demon as his kopis?
Talk about impossibilities.
If that had been Elise, then the female kopis was absolutely nothing like what Brianna had expected. She was lean, mean, and beautiful, like a samurai sword carved from ivory. And she definitely didn’t have a mustache.
“The problem is that Rylie wants to be cured next, and I can’t make either of them see sense,” Seth growled. “The pack needs an Alpha. It needs Rylie as an Alpha. Abel can’t be what the pack needs—and Abel needs Rylie the way she is even more than the pack does.” He fixed a hard glare on James. “The werewolf Elise exorcised doesn’t even remember anything since she was bitten.”
“Ah,” James said. “And Rylie wants to risk that? I’m surprised.”
“You’re telling me. She’s crazy. This is some kind of—I don’t know, some kind of self-destructive martyr crap. Rylie insists that she deserves this ‘cure.’ Elise wants to kill Rylie’s wolf to shut down the door to Hell at the Bellagio, so she’s not about to talk her out of it.” Desperation bled into Seth’s features. “You have to do something about her. You’re the only one who can.”
“That’s a problem, Seth. I’ve been trying to do my damnedest to keep Elise unaware of my business. Provoking her won’t help.”
“I’ll do anything,” Seth said.
James glanced at Brianna and lifted his eyebrows. Was he thinking what she was thinking? Desperate kopis looking for a favor, a couple of witches looking for a kopis…
“I have only one other question. What happened to you?” James asked, nodding at the bandage on Seth’s neck.
The kopis lifted a hand to touch the tape. His face hardened. “My blood isn’t in someone else’s possession, if that’s what you’re worrying about.”
“Hardly. Your blood won’t open the doors to Eden unless it’s fresh from the heart. I was only making sure that you’re strong enough.”
“Strong enough? For what?”
“This statue is much like the statue of Bain Marshall in Northgate,” James said, sweeping a gesture at the ivory Metaraon. “It stands on the location where a door to Eden may be opened. As you suspect, I require your blood to open it.”
“Fine,” Seth said immediately.
“But I’ll also need something else from you. It takes more than Adam’s blood to open the doors. It takes powerful magic of a very specific kind, which I can’t cast without Elise’s cooperation—but my high priestess can.” James stepped aside. “You remember Brianna.”
Seth gave her an appraising look, as though sizing her up. Brianna plastered her multipurpose shit-eating grin on her face and tried to look as appealing as possible.
“Yeah,” Seth said slowly, “I remember Brianna.”
“I need you to bind Brianna as your aspis immediately,” James said.
Seth’s eyebrows lifted. “My…aspis?”
“Yes. Are you familiar with the lore?”
“Vaguely,” he said, which sounded like his bullshit way of saying not at all.
“A kopis alone is physically strong, but vulnerable to psychic assault from demons and angels. An aspis also cannot unlock her full magical abilities without being able to draw on a kopis’s strength. You are the sword, and Brianna will be your shield.” James extended a hand toward Seth, offering a handshake. “Do this, and I’ll save Rylie from Elise for you.”
“Isn’t that a lifetime commit
ment?”
“Indeed. But Rylie’s decision is equally permanent, isn’t it?”
The kopis didn’t hesitate another moment. He shook James’s hand.
“Tell me what to do,” Seth said.
Eighteen
Elise stood outside what used to be Senator Peterson’s house, watching the people milling on the lawn. His home had been turned into a fucking museum, and there was a cocktail party to launch the Gallery of Preternatural Legislation. The wealthy citizens of Washington DC were celebrating while apocalypse fell on the west coast. There were dozens of people in tuxedos or cocktail dresses drinking wine and laughing in the cool night air, and Elise could see more beyond them, inside the house.
It was strange to see the old manor home filled with light and laughter, as if these people had no idea that Las Vegas had been swallowed by the darkness. Or they just didn’t care.
“Politicians,” Rylie muttered under her breath, like it was a dirty word. Her voice was still raspy from the combination of smoky desert air and having been choked by Elise’s shadow as they fast traveled across the country.
Elise gave the Alpha a quick once-over, assessing her general appearance. She had combed the knots and dirt out of her hair and put on a clean dress, so she looked innocuous—as invisible as a wolf-girl with gold eyes could be. As long as nobody looked too closely, they wouldn’t realize that Rylie had been dressed by Target rather than expensive designers. She might be able to slip through the party unnoticed. Elise wouldn’t. Not with her leather jacket and eyebrow piercing.
“Let’s check for another way in back,” Elise said.
They moved away from the strains of music and walked across the lawn of the house next door, heading around the fence toward the backyard. The party was also occupying the rear patio. They wouldn’t be able to sneak in there, either.
Rylie sniffed the air. “There must be a couple hundred people here,” she said, pulling Elise behind a tree when a waiter on the deck glanced in their direction. Rylie peered around the tree. “Basement?” She pointed at a low window on the side of the building, away from the deck.
