“With this army, I can get the money I need and the power will follow. The wolves that hunted us will be under control and our ancestors will be happy,” Leo said. “And then, once we have Manhattan under our thumb, we issue an ultimatum—bow to us or we’ll do the same things to you. For years, we’ve been working to have this all come into play. Now we have all the pieces, except the female witch.”
“She’s too green. She can’t stop an army by herself,” Seb assured him. “I’m stronger—and totally under control, as you well know. The full moon will be here before we know it and I’ll be able to rein in its power to assist the ghost army. The Dires are simply grasping at straws.”
“They’ve brought in backup,” Leo muttered.
“I’m aware of Killian.” Seb moved to confront Leo now, some newfound sense of power coursing through him. “Now get the fuck out and let me do my job. You might think I’m your trained monkey, but you’d be sadly mistaken.”
At first he thought Leo would hit him and then, just as suddenly as the cop’s temper flared, his smile broke through. “You’ve got balls, witch. Maybe you’re finally realizing my team’s the one to beat after all.”
Seb had played with fire and he’d gotten third-degree burns.
It was nothing compared to what would happen to the rest of the world. And he could never atone enough.
*
Kate looked tense, lost and tired. Her eating had finally slowed and Stray told her, “You probably need some rest. I’ll show you where you can lie down for a while.”
She nodded and got up from the table slowly. Her shoulders were in a tense square and she moved a little stiffly.
“Are you hurt?”
“I fell when I was running. My knee’s a little stiff from sitting,” she admitted.
He grabbed an ice pack from the fridge and then helped her into the first floor’s extra bedroom.
“Get comfortable,” he told her. He helped her up onto the bed and she moved back against the pillows and the headboard as she looked around.
“You’ve got a really, um, nice place here. Big, too.”
“It works for us,” he said as he pulled up the leg of her sweats. Her knee was bruised but not too badly swollen. He placed the ice bag on it, wrapped in a towel. “I’ll have Gwen look at it in the morning. She’s a doctor—she’s married to one of my brothers.”
The fact that another woman lived in the house seemed to ease her worries a little.
“So it’s just you and Gwen and one of your brothers?” she asked.
“More than one brother. You’ll meet them soon enough.”
“Do they know about what happened tonight? About me?”
He nodded. “One of them was with me when we got to your apartment. You were right to take off when you did. You should always trust your gut.”
“I’m beginning to understand that.” She gave him a wan smile.
She looked better in his clothes than she should have and not all that vulnerable, despite the situation. Her hair was drying in loose waves that tumbled over her shoulders and her eyes looked a little more copper than brown.
Brother Wolf gave a soft growl in his ear, didn’t want to leave the witch either. He’d have to remind his wolf that they didn’t like witch, but at the moment, he was having trouble remembering why.
*
Kate shifted on the mattress. She should’ve been exhausted, but she was wired on adrenaline and sugar. Stray loomed over her. She had an unnatural urge to touch his hand, stroke his jaw, run a finger along his lips.
She did none of those things, told him instead, “Look, I really didn’t call you for help tonight.” But … she had flashed to him in her mind, gave a brief thought to how protected he’d made her feel.
And then, in the woods, had he seen what she’d done?
“I did see you throw men with your mind,” he said.
“What? How did you—”
Same as you.
His voice, in her head. The trembling was back. Her legs shook so badly, she couldn’t think about moving.
Calm down.
“I couldn’t … before …”
“You can’t read my mind unless I let you,” Stray confirmed. And maybe it was because of everything that happened that night or because she was tired of hiding what she could do, but she was actually excited at the thought of finding a kindred spirit.
“Why are you letting me in now?”
“It’s time to explain a few things to you. But first, tell me how long you’ve been able to read minds and influence your environment with telekinesis.”
She hadn’t been thinking about that last part at all, and somehow Stray knew. “Since my accident ten years ago, I’ve been able to read minds. The telekinesis started before that. I can move things—especially when I’m angry or scared—but not people.”
“Not until tonight,” he reminded her.
“Since you know so much about me, tell me, what kind of freak am I?”
“You really don’t know,” he murmured, less a question and seeming like more of an affirmation to himself.
“If you do, please share.”
“You’re a witch, Kate.”
“A … what?”
“Witch.”
Witch.
The brand on her back flared, but it wasn’t unpleasant this time. It was like a recognition. Everything swirled in her thoughts—the accident, the chant, and she couldn’t deny what she was any longer.
Still, she denied it to him. “You’re wrong. I’m psychic, but I don’t practice witchcraft.”
“You suspected what you might be.” He opened the drawer and brought out the books she’d purchased two months ago. “My brother found them in your apartment—they’ve been well-read. Over and over, but up to a certain point. You knew, and it scared you.”
“No.” She backed up fast but he was on her. There was no real place for her to go anyway. “Please stop. I think you might be crazy.”
“I’m not. Neither are you.” He studied her for a long moment.
“How can you know this? Did you come to my apartment tonight because of what you think I am?”
“What I know you are,” he corrected. “I came because I knew you were in danger. When I touched your back this afternoon, something happened between us. You felt it too.”
Yes, she had. She squeezed her hands into fists as the anger rose inside of her, and she wasn’t sure who it was directed toward more—herself, Leo Shimmin or Stray for what he was telling her.
“You suspected you were a witch,” he repeated. “Who told you what you might be? Shimmin?”
She shook her head as memories flooded her. The psychic had told her she wasn’t crazy, that she was powerful. If Shimmin knew that …
What if everything he’d done for her had been a ploy to gain her trust, to use her? But for what?
“Mind reading’s a powerful ability in and of itself,” Stray told her. “The telekinesis adds to it.”
And to top it off, he claimed she was a witch.
You are, the voice inside of her said, and she’d heard it before, once, a long time ago.
She shut her eyes tight as the anger and frustration flashed through her. She was losing control. Or perhaps she’d never had any. She sank to the ground and Stray caught her. Lights flashed and she lost her sight of the present as she sank deep into the past.
She put her hands over her ears, knowing it wouldn’t stop the screech of tires or the sound of metal crunching metal—and bone.
By this time, Stray’s arms were around her and she was aware of being on the floor—but it was the floor of the car, where she’d gotten wedged, one arm almost pinned, useless. She’d managed to extricate it and the sight of the blood made her gag.
Her adrenaline was so high, the pain hadn’t set in yet, wouldn’t really until she woke again in the hospital, hooked to machines and pumped full of narcotics that made her drowsy. But now she was trapped, and the claustrophobia and comple
te panic had her flailing.
“We’re burning,” she told Stray. She opened her eyes but couldn’t see him, could only feel the reassuring forearm muscles she gripped tightly as if he could save her from everything. She tried to stand, but the smell of gasoline overpowered her. The smoke was thick, cloaked her in a choking cloud when she opened her mouth to scream again for Mom or Dad …
Her hands went to her throat as she gagged. She screwed her eyes shut tight and the world swirled around her like the Tilt-A-Whirl she’d ridden at the county fair. She’d never get her footing again.
She was only thirteen and was sure she was going to die.
Chapter 8
Jinx drove for the better part of an hour after hanging up with Vice, bypassing the closest cemetery in town to one on the outskirts of another and finally, at a third, the intense feeling of being crushed made him slam the truck into park and step out to skid on the ice.
Brother Wolf let out a howl to wake his other half up, but Jinx was too dazed. He never lost his footing, but it was as if he’d had too much to drink. Although the night around him was calm, he smelled the scent of blood carried in the cold air. He shuffled onto the grassy area, which was soaked and a little icy from the recent rains, bypassed the locked wrought-iron gate with the flick of his hand on the old chain and lock.
His hand bled from breaking the metal, but he ignored it and moved forward.
“Father, you need to help me help you,” he called out, and then said a prayer in the old language that his mother made him and Rogue say every night before bed. He’d said it every time he entered a cemetery for as long as he could remember. It was his touchstone.
Deadly silence from the dead was never good, but the buzz got so bad he stumbled and fell to his knees at some point, came up like he was praying. That’s when he saw the first wave of ghosts about twenty-five feet from him.
He got up quickly, still off balance. Tensed as the random ghosts that normally circulated inside the iron gates greeted him. Well, to be accurate, they rushed toward him—and then past him. He felt their fury and their fear as cold air raced through his body, leaving him breathing ice and exhaling steam in their wake.
The ghosts were fleeing and there wasn’t a Dire among them. And as much as he wanted to follow them, he pressed forward alone. Like he was never supposed to do.
Brother Wolf attempted to shift, to save his nonfunctioning half, but Jinx growled and resisted and the wolf gave in to Jinx’s wants for the moment. But the wolf howled his displeasure when Jinx began to run and then stopped short when he came upon the reason for the mass ghost exodus.
He blinked through the scene in front of him, bile rising in his throat as the smell of blood became overpowering.
There were ghost corpses littering the ground next to real ones, newly buried humans unearthed and desecrated. All done on what was supposed to be the most sacred kind of hallowed ground.
They were old and young and everything in between, dressed in torn gowns and suits, battered and bloodied and terrified. Seeing the children was the worst.
He stood among the ruins of bodies ripped apart and scattered as if by an animal.
As if by wolves.
He moved forward to see if he could view the marks on the ghosts’ nearly corporeal bodies, his legs like lead and Brother Wolf’s growls in his ears.
He couldn’t have missed the deep, massive wounds. He stretched a hand out and pictured Brother Wolf’s paw.
These marks were made by a Dire. The Dire ghost army was back with a vengeance. This army could slaughter supernatural beings of its own kind—ghosts—as well as humans, and Jinx knew that what he was seeing was simply a practice round.
This was some kind of training ground exercise. How many cemeteries had the ghost army marched through tonight? How many more would they conquer?
There was nothing he could do to stop them, but he knew he’d have to follow the ghost army, track their destruction. The ghost corpses left out in their wake would have to be sent into the light and Jinx would need more help to get them there. For now, they would remain in the world, lost, confused and wreaking havoc on the living, although not nearly as much as the Dire army promised to do.
“Father … why?” he started, although there was no sign of any other Dire. “You needed to fight this. Why are you letting Seb use you this way?”
His father had been a great warrior, albeit a beta, not an alpha like his twin sons. Whether that was the reason behind his rough treatment of his boys was something Jinx often thought about.
The tingle started—there was someone left behind.
“Show yourself,” he commanded, began the familiar chant he’d worked up to pull his father’s ghost to him. It had taken four days to create the spell and, thus far, it hadn’t worked for shit.
This time, it did.
He turned to see his father’s form. Last time it had barely held it shape, but this time the lines were crisper. The apparition had gained strength. “Why did you stay behind?”
“I knew you were coming,” his father said.
“You were a part of this?” Jinx asked, sweeping his arm over the destruction. His father nodded. God, he was going to be sick. His body trembled at the overpowering urge to get the fuck out of the cemetery and town and hide in the mountains, let the world go fuck itself.
Because suddenly everything crystallized for him, and he understood what had happened in a way he didn’t want to believe.
“It was wonderful to use the warrior ways again,” his father intoned.
“You said you needed my help.” Jinx couldn’t keep the emotion from his voice, but screw calm, cool and collected. He was back on the edge of the field where the Extinction occurred, he and Rogue searching for and ultimately finding their parents buried among mangled bodies of their kind.
“You were punished for those ways. Taken from me and Rogue. Why do it again?”
“We had no choice.”
“There’s always a choice. You didn’t have to follow him then and you’re repeating your mistake.”
“Jameson was always too strong to resist.” Jameson was the Dire king who’d refused to give up his throne.
“He couldn’t bend your will. He had no ability beyond brute force. Violence never used to scare the man I knew as Father.”
“You were naive, Jinx. You didn’t realize Jameson had poisoned everyone’s mind, then … and now.”
“Are you here to kill me, Father?” Jinx spread his arms wide. “Take your best shot.”
“Rifter and Harmony have far more to worry about than you now,” his father warned. “Jameson wants them dead. He placed the orders for that long before the Extinction. Had you all come back hours earlier, you all would’ve been killed.”
“And now?”
“Nothing has changed.”
“You’ll lead Jameson to me, to kill me?”
His father inhaled a harsh breath. “He’ll find you with or without me. But first you had a special job, one you completed days ago when you summoned me with your prayer.”
The prayer. Seb had turned Jinx’s prayer into a spell.
It hadn’t been the chant at all that had drawn Jinx’s father and the rest of the ghost army but rather the last comfort of childhood Jinx had. Now that was destroyed as well, and he couldn’t tell if his father was saddened or satisfied by the development.
One you completed days ago …
“Do you want to see the result of your work?” his father inquired and Jinx’s heart sank. He’d thought he’d already seen it all, but apparently, there was more.
The rest happened so fast there wasn’t time for any more talking. Instead, he sank to his knees, his mind swimming as he tried to disbelieve what was happening in front of him.
As he watched in abject horror, his father moved aside to reveal the yowling cavern. Jinx prayed this was all a dream, that Vice had slipped him some peyote without his knowledge. That had happened before when the wolf thought he nee
ded to relax, and Jinx had made him promise never to do it again.
One you completed days ago …
He’d rubbed his eyes as he watched souls dance around, not seeing him at first. They were different. They hadn’t crossed over. He’d never been able to see spirits, and there was no reason for him to start now.
When they spotted him, they swarmed. He’d been able only to drop to his knees and bury his head in his hands as they hammered at him with their questions and their thoughts.
They were evil beings. Not demons, but they were spawns of Satan, nonetheless. And they’d been free for days.
He’d opened the door to purgatory, freeing the Dire ghost army from where they’d been in some kind of holding pattern. But he’d released other things from purgatory as well.
He staggered backward, away from his father’s ghost and away from the desecration.
Make them go, make them go, he prayed. Then Brother Wolf took over, and they dispersed at the wolf’s growl. Brother ran deep into the woods, far from the cemetery, and still, Jinx heard the ghost’s laughter echoing in his ears.
Chapter 9
The force of Kate’s telekinetic overload was tremendous.
It was like a mini-tornado, part wind, part tsunami as the pipes in the bathroom burst and flooded the room. Stray couldn’t move either of them out of the way because he was mesmerized by what he saw.
He was experiencing everything along with Kate, as though it were happening in real time. It was fucking horrifying, more so because it was as if his body were encased in cement, unmovable, even as Brother Wolf tried to force a shift.
No, Brother, he managed as his mind cleared for a second before being bombarded again with Kate’s thoughts.
He wanted to pull her out of the dream—the nightmare—but he couldn’t. Instead, he held her tight as he watched the woman reach in to grab Kate from the burning wreckage of the car when it should’ve taken the jaws of life to do so.
And then … she was dying. He was dying—something he’d never do otherwise. He couldn’t bring himself to look away, to tear his hands from her body, because he needed to see what happened, to experience this.
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