by SM Reine
Her knees still weakened, her muscles liquefied, and her skin flushed with heat.
Three years, and she still couldn’t resist him.
The first time that Elise had tried to kiss James—when she was eighteen years old, on a beach in Denmark, shortly after they had bonded as kopis and aspis—he had rejected her. She had wished she could die after that.
The next time that they had kissed, she thought that she might die, but of happiness.
This time, she was just fucking pissed.
Elise bit his tongue. Hard.
He twitched back in shock, but his hands only gripped her harder, holding her against his chest. It was probably as much self-defense as it was from passion. Elise couldn’t get up as much momentum to punch him the way he deserved when she was pinned to his body.
She flashed into darkness, out of the circle of his arms, and reappeared behind him.
James turned too slowly. She rammed her elbow into his kidneys. He stumbled, and she grabbed the back of his head, using his momentum to slam his face into the tree trunk.
Magic flared. He threw a hand behind him, lobbing electricity in her direction. Elise side-stepped it easily, but her heart skipped a beat.
When had James learned to throw magic without a single written symbol?
He spun, tossing another one at her—a blast of air that flung her to the ground in a shower of dry leaves. Elise disappeared, reappearing on her feet, and swung a roundhouse kick at his head.
James ducked, seized her ankle. He jerked her off-balance. Caught her before she fell.
He kissed her again, harder than before, with a hand on her throat and the other clutching her back. She still felt faintly bruised where Rylie had bitten her, and he seemed to know just where to press hardest to make her shiver. God, it was good. She groaned into his mouth despite herself.
If not for her subconscious screaming a reminder that there was danger in the air, Elise might have surrendered. But Lincoln had been seized by a demon, and he had twelve silver bullets. He could commit twelve murders in a pack of innocent werewolves.
And Elise was kissing the man that had damned her to Heaven.
When she jumped away again, it was into the shadow of trees twenty feet away, on top of a pile of rocks—well out of James’s reach.
Elise couldn’t seem to breathe. Luckily, James didn’t chase her.
“Do what you need to satisfy your urges,” he said, wiping the blood off of his lip. It glistened black in the night. His tongue must have been bleeding. Good. “It changes nothing. Lincoln means nothing. When all of this is over, I will find a way to earn your forgiveness.”
Elise rubbed her wrist over her bruised lips, wishing that she could wipe away the evidence of their kiss—and all of the feelings that had come with it. It was so much easier to hate him when she wasn’t yearning for him to touch her again.
“I will never stop hating you,” she said fiercely. And the way his body made her feel only made Elise hate him more.
“Never means nothing in the span of eternity,” he said.
He turned and walked away—damn him, he walked away, like it was so easy for him to leave her behind with no way to enter the sanctuary. The wards yielded to him effortlessly. She felt the sting of magic when he passed.
“James,” she called. He ignored her. “James!”
“I’ll protect the pack. Don’t worry,” he called over his shoulder.
By which he meant, he would protect Seth and Abel, who he cared about more than Elise at the moment. But why? He had jammed his tongue down her throat, but didn’t have the decency to explain his lunacy.
James broke into a jog, ignoring her shouts.
Magic flared in the forest, sucking all of the oxygen out of her lungs and silencing her voice. Elise grasped her throat, stumbling.
That wasn’t James’s magic—his spells had never had that kind of heat behind them. His power was the kiss of rain, an autumn breeze. This was boiling summer heat in the Sahara.
Elise spun to search for the source and saw a beam of light lancing through the sky. It only lasted for a heartbeat before vanishing.
It had been centered over Northgate.
Someone in the cult had survived, and they were casting another spell.
She cast one more furious glare at the wards. She couldn’t save the pack, couldn’t exorcise Lincoln, couldn’t even walk six feet west without falling on her ass. But she could finish the cult.
Elise leaped into the sky.
TWENTY-FOUR
THERE WAS ONLY one place in the world that Seth considered to be home, and it was the Gresham Ranch. The faintest whiff of brewing coffee could bring the memories back to him in a heartbeat: the long hours he spent repairing fences, digging trenches, moving cattle, shoveling the paths in the cold winter sun. It had been his first real job. The place that he had been safe with Rylie, most of the time. Somewhere that everyone loved and respected him.
The Gresham Ranch was gone. The Union had seized it, from the back forty acres to the rickety mailbox that had been kicked over in a fit of werewolf anger at least six times. They had said it was a case of eminent domain. In truth, it was a case of control, and the Union’s frustration that they had continually failed to possess the pack that the ranch sheltered.
The Union had taken the ranch, but they couldn’t take the memories. And those memories couldn’t be replaced, either.
But anywhere Abel and Rylie were, Seth could make into a home, whether it be a strip motel or a sanctuary deep in the mountains. They’d spent weeks constructing cottages to the specifications of their future inhabitants, hammering and painting and furnishing, and Seth had poured enough sweat into the sanctuary that he probably could have filled the lake with it. It wasn’t home—not yet—but he was damn proud of what he had accomplished, not to mention what it represented for the future of the endangered werewolf species.
Which was why his heart shattered when he saw the cottages burning, and Lincoln standing in the center of town with flames rippling off of his skin.
He didn’t look anything like the deputy that Seth had shared a beer with earlier that night. If not for the familiar close-cropped hair and football shoulders, he might have thought that a monster had walked straight into the sanctuary.
Veins bulged from Lincoln’s exposed skin, like he had shot adrenaline straight into his heart, and blood streamed down his cheeks. A black symbol swam in the center of his forehead, just under the surface: a demonic sigil.
There was a gun in his hand and a body crumpled at his feet. One wolf already down.
Crystal’s guess had been right. Lincoln was possessed by a demon.
And now he was aiming a handgun loaded with silver rounds at Trevin.
The werewolf was rushing between cottages, head low, arms pumping. It looked like he had ripped debris away from where it blocked the door to one burning cottage, allowing the inhabitants to escape. He was making himself a diversion. A diversion that Seth fully intended to utilize.
Seth shouldered his rifle, centered the sights on the upper right quadrant of Lincoln’s chest, and squeezed the trigger.
The shot slammed into Lincoln with a spray of blood, pouring from the wound with more force than a garden hose. His blood pressure was high, too high, and it spurted with every pulse of his heart.
Lincoln turned slowly, bloody eyes zeroing in on Seth a hundred feet away.
The blood slowed. The wound closed.
Seth expected—even hoped—that Lincoln would fire the pistol at him, wasting silver rounds on someone that wouldn’t be poisoned by the shot. But he dropped the gun and raised his free hand, fingers spread, palm facing Seth.
“Kopis,” he said. Lincoln’s voice was ragged, like his throat had been chewed by a saw.
Terror gripped Seth. His heart hammered, his head swam, and his vision hazed.
Lincoln’s going to kill me. I’m going to die out here. Everyone’s going to die.
And somewhere
below that, he heard his mother’s voice again.
Failure.
Seth fired another shot, even though he couldn’t see. The slug went wild. Lincoln laughed, low and throaty.
Through the haze, Seth could see the deputy approaching, sauntering toward him with gently-swaying hips, as if he were used to having curves. Lincoln stepped over the body at his feet easily. It wasn’t a wolf—it was Nash, hands clutching his chest, gray-tinged blood pouring over his fingers. He had taken a bullet to protect the pack, and it looked like he was down for the count.
Summer had left Nash behind to protect them. Now Nash was unconscious.
If this thing could take an angel, then what chance did Seth stand?
Failure, his mother whispered again.
The fire on the roof of the cottage behind Lincoln touched an electrical box. An explosion flared behind him, briefly lighting up his silhouette—in the shape of a woman. Seth thought that he glimpsed a bikini of bones, a wide grin with a serpent tongue, but the vision faded immediately.
That’s not Lincoln.
“Come here, kopis,” Lincoln said. He almost sounded sultry.
A second explosion. Seth whirled to see that another cottage had caught fire, even though the other burning buildings weren’t anywhere nearby. Where Lincoln walked, flames followed.
The entire sanctuary was going to burn down.
Seth would burn to death.
He could imagine it now with perfect clarity: gagging on smoke, the moisture evaporating from his eye sockets, skin melting. Seth screamed and tried to leap from the fire. The rifle flew from his hands. His back hit the ground.
Lincoln stood over him laughing. The sound struck fear deep into Seth’s heart.
The deputy stooped, and when he rose again, the rifle was in his hands. He wasn’t going to waste a silver bullet on Seth. He didn’t need to.
Need to stand, need to fight back…
Failure…
But he couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t even move. The terror ripped from him in dry, wracking sobs, the tearless kind that shook his entire body.
“Such a shame,” the demon purred through Lincoln’s mouth. “This is a pretty one.”
I’m going to die.
But a man leaped into Lincoln’s side, knocking him over. The rifle discharged into the air.
“Get it!” Trevin shouted, holding Lincoln down.
The instant that he had struck Lincoln, the fear had lifted from Seth’s mind. It was still lingering, but not debilitating. He could breathe.
His eyes focused on the rifle a few feet away. Seth scrambled for it.
Trevin couldn’t change, not without Rylie or Abel’s help—he wasn’t an Alpha. But his human form was nothing to laugh at, either. He hurled all of his strength into each punch across Lincoln’s face, snapping his head from side to side, sending blood spraying across the road that Seth had paved himself.
With a thunderous growl, Lincoln kicked Trevin off of him. The werewolf went flying. He punched through the wall of the nearest cottage, and half of the burning roof collapsed on him.
Shit.
Seth lunged for his rifle, but another hand landed on it at the same time that his did: a hand corded with veins and stained with blood.
He elbowed Lincoln in the face. The deputy responded by biting his elbow hard, digging his square teeth into the meat of Seth’s forearm. He cried out as he ripped free.
His pounding heart sped to fill his ears.
You will die alone, pretty kopis.
That wasn’t his thought—it belonged to a sensual female voice, like the very best phone sex operator on Earth, and with it came waves of fresh fear.
Seth could imagine Rylie writhing on the ground, wracked with the pain of silver poisoning. Abel was already dead. They were skinned and bleeding and there was nothing he could do to save any of them, because he had failed—
The images vanished.
“Crux sacra sit mihi lux!”
Lincoln screamed with twin voices, one masculine, one feminine. He reared back on his knees, gripping his head in both hands.
Beyond him, James emerged from the smoke of the burning cottages, sword in hand.
Seth had seen Elise’s obsidian falchion. This sword looked to be its twin, though it was from much more ordinary components—steel, he thought, although he had never seen steel glowing with its own internal fire before. Religious symbols blazed over the flat of the blade.
James stood over Lincoln, pressing the flat of the falchion against his face.
“Non draco sit mihi dux—Seth, grab the pistol!”
Seth felt lost and scared and confused. But he was starting to understand that the fear wasn’t his. It belonged to the demon. It was the same thing that had made Abel run from the mobile home, and no matter how real it felt, it wasn’t his emotion.
“The pistol!” James yelled again.
Right. Seth ripped it out of Lincoln’s belt, ejected the magazine, and threw them both in separate directions. He hoped that the magazine would land in one of the fires. Silver was a soft metal; it would melt easily.
James wasn’t trying to cut Lincoln with the sword, but whatever he was doing looked like it hurt as badly. The blazing falchion left a raised welt on Lincoln’s flesh. The deputy’s eyes had rolled into the back of his head as he shuddered.
Seth grabbed his rifle and aimed it down at Lincoln’s skull. He only shook a little bit.
“Shoot him,” James said.
“What?”
“Do it!”
Seth didn’t squeeze the trigger.
Was that the right thing to do to someone possessed—kill them for the crimes of the demon? Lincoln was kind of a prejudiced dick, but he wasn’t evil. He was a deputy. He protected people.
“Can’t you exorcise him?” Seth asked.
They had stalled too long. Lincoln’s hand clamped around James’s wrist, forcing the sword away from his cheek. James’s muscles shook with the strain of trying to hold the falchion in place, but the demon was stronger.
“I don’t think I like you, angel-heart,” Lincoln said with a moue of distaste.
He shoved James and shot to his feet. The instant that they broke contact, fear erupted over Seth again, boiling magma-hot over his flesh.
Lincoln shoved Seth. He fell, unable to fight back.
“No!” James roared, swinging the sword.
But Lincoln didn’t stop to fight them again. He ran with inhuman speed, flying across the sanctuary and into the mountains.
Only when he vanished did the grip of fear release Seth’s lungs. “What the hell just happened?” he gasped, getting to his feet, gripping his chest in both hands.
“Nightmare demon,” James said grimly, reaching back to sheathe the sword. Like Elise, he had a scabbard on his spine, hidden by a loose button-down shirt. “Fuck me, I didn’t think…” He shook his head. “We have to catch him before he reaches Northgate. Are you coming?”
“Wait,” Seth said.
Two of the werewolves, Crystal and Reese, were pulling apart the walls of the cottage that Trevin had fallen into. Seth hurried over to help, but they had already ripped into the building with super-strength, extracting Trevin from its depths. He was ashen, singed—but breathing.
“I’ve got him,” Crystal said, hugging Trevin’s shoulders tight to her chest. Her manicured fingers stroked the sweaty hair off of his forehead. “Get that thing.”
“The fire,” Seth said, staring at the sanctuary. It wasn’t nearly as bad as he had thought at first glimpse—the cottage that Trevin had been in was the worst, but the others were barely smoldering. The fear radiating from the nightmare had made it look worse. Thank God that Rylie had splurged on the best flame-resistant building materials.
“We’ll rally the pack and take care of it,” Reese said. “Go, Seth.”
He turned to see that James was already sprinting after Lincoln. Muttering a curse under his breath, Seth followed.
TWENTY-FIVE
ELISE BRACED HERSELF for what she would find at the center of the magical hurricane in Northgate. She expected to find another arm of the cult evoking another demon, or maybe a portal to Hell with demons and fire raining upon the town. Or both, even—the amount of magic thickening the air suggested that something terrible was going down.
But when she reached the square, she didn’t find demons, portals, or cults.
She found Dr. Stephanie Whyte at the base of the Bain Marshall statue, in all of its three-story marble glory. And she was grappling with… Wait, is that Father Night?
Elise couldn’t remain shrouded in shadow with so many currents of magic twisting over Northgate. So much energy seemed to invert the night, turning the sky pearlescent cerulean, and making the stars black punctuation on a pale sheet.
She coalesced on the edge of the broad lawn surrounding the statue, arms wrapped around her body, struggling to hold onto her skin. It was almost bright enough to make her vanish completely.
With human eyes, she could see that it was definitely Father Night beside Stephanie. He was almost unrecognizable with tousled hair and a t-shirt. There was no priestly raiment now. Only the trappings of an ordinary man.
Stephanie held the cult’s ravaged Book of Shadows under one arm, a page clutched in her fist, hatred in her eyes. Father Night backed away from her.
“Please, Stephanie,” he said. “You don’t want to do this.”
Elise trudged toward them, struggling to get closer to the nexus of magic—the Bain Marshall statue, which had an altar erected between his feet.
“I will kill you,” Stephanie said, voice trembling. “I will.”
What the hell was going on? How was Father Night alive, and why was Stephanie attacking him?
“Hey!” Elise barked, grabbing Stephanie’s arm. The doctor jerked with surprise. She must not have heard Elise’s approach. “Someone tell me what’s going on here, or I’ll eat the both of you and save myself a headache.”
“She’s gone insane,” Father Night said promptly. “She’s trying to kill me.”
A sob ripped out of Stephanie. “He’s the one that captured me. He fooled me into thinking—he made me think—” It seemed too difficult to say. Tears streamed down her cheeks. “He led the cult, Elise, and now he’s going to open a portal to Hell.”
