by R. A. Boyd
A picnic with Ronin sounded lovely. Willow smiled as he took over her thoughts. He was such a sweet man. He’d been through hell, but now, things were getting better for him. For them. He wasn’t bitter about what happened to him. He was just grateful to be free of Samiyah who’d used him and a beast who had tormented him. And that’s why she loved him.
One day this week, they would go into town and get a few things that he needed. She and Charlie tried to convince him to order what he needed online, but he said there was nothing like going into a store and looking at what you wanted to make sure you really wanted it. He’d learn.
It was hard to fathom that he’d missed most of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first. He didn’t like cell phones, didn’t want to learn to use a computer, and detested when she used the voice-operated television in the house to find what she wanted to watch. He was still learning to navigate his way through today’s world, and she would be there to help.
Even before Willow could see Sari’s car, she heard the blare of a Michael Buble softly crooning a Christmas song in perfect pitch. She could see Sari sitting in her navy blue Volkswagen Beetle, eyes closed with her head leaned back on the seat. The door sat open, and Sari’s leg hung from the vehicle.
Willow waved and yelled for Sari to cut her music down, but her friend sat unmoving in the car. From where she stood, she could see a gash on Sari’s left temple. Dark blood sat drying on the side of her face.
“Sari,” Willow called, slowing down before she got too close to the border of the wards.
Despite the warm weather and the sunny sky, chills blasted up her spine and moved through her limbs. She hesitated and scanned the wooded area. In spite of the music that seemed to overshadow the ominous feel of the familiar woods, everything was quiet and unmoving. Willow’s eyes darted around, but she didn’t anything out of the ordinary.
To see if anyone was hiding in the thicker clusters of trees and bushes, Willow changed her focus to pick up on auras. She closed her eyes for a moment, and when she opened them, she was happy to see that Sari’s aura was bright green and blue, dotted with flecks of gold and bright white lights. She was alive.
Fear slashed through Willow’s chest as she scanned the woods again. She was surrounded. On both sides, auras of red and orange and indigo hid amongst the high foliage and low lined bushes. But that wasn’t even the bad part. She could take them all on if need be. What bothered Willow more were the grey and black splotches that sat around each and every aura out there. The darkness around them pulsed like a beating heart. They were all connected by a powerful spell of deceit and hatred. Every single one of them.
Samiyah and Remus must have crafted a spell that bound the Rogues to them. Being bound by a common hatred was bad enough, but this spell linked their collective shifter essence to one another.
Together, these shifters were powerful. And the weaver of this spell would be damn near unbeatable.
The dread that seeped into her veins went bone-deep. This wasn’t going to be as easy as taking down the Rogue clan by making them understand the Ghost shifters were no threat to anyone. No, not by a long shot.
A clarity that seemed to rock everything Willow had thought about the Rogues came to a violent pause that soured her stomach. Samiyah had the power to awaken and possess Ronin because of the power this spell must have been feeding him. And now, if she were right, Willow knew without a doubt that Remus was now the receiver of this power.
The hatred that united these people beat like a drum. It sucked the light out of the areas around them.
The only way to undo this spell and truly eradicate the Rogue clan was to find what Remus and Samiyah had tethered the spell to and destroy it.
Willow flinched from the high pitched honk of a car horn. Sari was waking up. She rolled her head from side to side as if that would clear away the fog that had taken her under. Sari had been used as bait. Willow knew they would pounce the moment she left that safety of the protection wards. But she couldn’t leave Sari unprotected.
With a wave of her hand, Willow slammed the car door closed. Sari jumped and looked up at Willow.
“What’s happening?” she yelled as she tried to open the car door.
Willow shook her head and opened up a mental pathway to Sariel, and hoped like hell the wards didn’t prevent them from communicating.
We’re surrounded, Willow said. All of the Coven of the Fallen members could communicate this way. I’m going to pull you and the car into the wards. Shift your gear to Neutral.
Fuck that, Sari thought at her. Move. I’m driving in.
Soft clicks echoed from the stalling engine as it refused to turn over. Damn-it.
Willow looked around again at the still figures. What the hell were they waiting for? Their unmoving bodies freaked her out more than their presence.
The car is in Neutral, Sari said, giving Willow a quick nod to let her know she was ready.
Willow set her gaze on the wheels of the car. She rose her hand in the air, palm side up. As she slowly balled her hand into a fist, the compact vehicle began to roll toward her. Willow knew the exact moment Sari past through the wards of the community.
Clutching at her throat, Sari began to cough wretch as if she were going to vomit. She threw her head back, and a thundering scream tore from her mouth.
“It’s not real,” Sari yelled, now beating at her head with closed fists. Fear filled her dark brown eyes as she looked around her. “Fuck, Willow. Fix it. Fix it. It’s not real. It’s not real,” she chanted.
Working as fast as she could, Willow finally pulled the front end of the vehicle through the wards and ran to the car. She snatched open the door and pulled Sari out and on the ground. She pulled out a pocket knife to take a few drops of Sari’s blood but had to fight to get her friend to stop fighting.
“It’s almost over,” Willow said, unable to grab Sari’s hand to prick her finger. Instead, she used the knife to cut Sari’s arm.
She gathered a few drops of blood on the knife and then pulled out a vial that contained the components to seal the spell. Her hands shook as she worked, trying to add Sari’s blood to the container while still keeping her eye on the woods. They had to know she knew they were there watching them.
A blistering heat blasted through Willow’s torso as the force of a bullet pierced her chest. She looked down at her sky blue shirt and balked as crimson and shimmering silver oozed from her chest.
Everything went silent.
Sari still beat at her head and screamed, but Willow couldn’t hear her.
Pain.
Intense, burning, beating pain filled her body.
Someone had shot her in the heart. With a bullet filled with Heaven’s Flame.
This was a kill shot. They didn’t seek to incapacitate her. They wanted to kill her.
Beading and removing the heart was the way to kill an angel, but pumping Heaven’s Flame through their body was probably a close second to giving an angel the final death.
Even though it had been damaged, Willow’s heart still beat in her body and pumped the poisonous liquid through her completely.
Willow collapsed on the ground and coughed. The blood singed her throat, and when she spat the blood out on the ground it was laced with the Flame.
“I’m dying,” she whispered.
Her body fought to heal itself. She could feel skin and muscle knitting together, but it would fall back into disrepair as the toxin took over.
Even if Sari was lucid enough to pull the Flame from her, it had already taken over much of her body.
Willow could feel it. Burning in her arms and legs and fingers. Scorching in the pit of her stomach and her head. Blistering heat filled her lungs as her breath punched through her lips.
“One of us needs to go and pull her body out,” a man’s voice said from far away. “I was here the night those spells went up. I ain’t going in.”
A low, raspy chuckle filled Willow’s ears as she waite
d to die. “Bitches. I’ll go in. In and out. Fast as I can.”
“What about Ronin?” the first guy asked. “Remus needs him now.”
“He’ll come back when he’s ready. He’s gathering intel, right? So we wait. This witch is on the list. It’s a win. And shut that other one up from screaming, but don’t kill her. She smells like a witch. We need more witches.”
Black dots clouded her vision as Willow stared at the sky. She couldn’t move. Couldn’t cast a spell. And Sari was still sobbing.
Even as Willow took her last painful breaths, she hoped they would leave Sari alone. At least she would be safe.
And so would the man she loved and the people she adored. When she died, her people would know just how much danger they were all in.
Retching filled the air as someone moved closer to Willow. The man that looked down at her was short with chestnut hair. His pale skin grew more and more red by the second as his green eyes glowed with his beast. He put his hand up to his mouth and coughed.
She thought he was going to throw up on her, but instead, he grabbed her by the legs and began to drag her farther and farther away from the Ghost community.
The brown dust on the ground kicked up around her head as he moved her, and the sunlight that peaked through the canopy of trees to the right reminded her of flying through the clouds.
It was done.
They would take her now. She wouldn’t get the chance to tell her friends, her family, that they needed to find what the anchor was that bound the Rogues to Remus.
She would never tell Ronin that she wanted to get married and have children with him. And she would never be there to tell Cass how strong she was and that she could make it through whatever was coming.
Her people would mourn her, but she hoped they wouldn’t do that for too long. There was too much they had to be happy for.
The burning sensation that had paralyzed her a few moments ago was now ebbing away. She closed her eyes and waited for the inevitable death that slowly closed in on her.
Chapter 14
Ronin laughed so hard, he rocked back on his heels and grabbed his stomach. Audra and Simon were arguing over which one of them delivered the killing blow to a Tyrannosaurus Rex they’d eaten a few million years ago.
Audra’s finger was about three inches from Simon’s nose as she looked up at him. “It was me, Simon. I was the one that yeeted that bitch into the lake. Those bastards couldn’t swim for shit.”
“First off,” Simon yelled as he glared down at their fireball of a sister. “I ripped out its throat. Yes, you threw it into the lake, but I was the one who dealt the killing bite. And secondly, I do not accept any tense of ‘yeet’ as an actual word. You’re too fucking old to say shit like that. Act your age.”
“Oh,” Audra drawled out, punching her hands to her hips as she reared back. “You want me to act my age? How the fuck do I act dead, Simon? Huh. That is the dumbest shit you’ve said today. You better count your lucky stars I don’t yeet your ass into a lake.”
“I fucking dare you,” Simon said, turning his back on his sister and walking away.
Why the hell would Simon do that? He knew Audra would pounce on him quicker than a cat could lick its butt. Maybe he didn’t want to see the savage attack coming.
Just as Audra crouched to do exactly what Ronin thought she would, a crack rang through the air and quieted the natural sound of bird calls and singing cicadas that had surrounded them. A gunshot.
Ronin narrowed his eyes and looked off in the direction of the sound. “Willow.”
He turned away from his siblings and bolted down the dirt road leading to the front entrance of their property. It may be a false alarm. Someone may be hunting in the nearby woods, but the sound was too close to where they lived.
Ronin pumped his arms and legs, sucking in deep breaths to keep up the pace. He could run for hours without getting tired, but the fear of something happening to Willow brought on a dizzy, nauseous feeling that made him lightheaded.
Footsteps pounded behind him, and when he chanced a glance over his shoulder, he was relieved to see Audra and Simon catching up to him.
Ronin barely kept his balance when he saw a huge saber-tooth launch itself into the air just behind his brother and sister. He hadn’t seen everyone change yet, so he didn’t know which one of his brethren was joining in to help. A brown and orange saber-tooth with black spots galloped behind them. The beast leaped into the air, jumping over the three of them, and broke away to run into the woods.
In the distance, he could hear the roars and growls all around them. More shots blasted off, and the cry of a large animal echoed through the woods.
Fuck.
On the side of the road up ahead, six animals— three boars, two bears, and a wolf— were fighting a losing battle against the saber-tooth that had run past him. The beast used its long, curved, white as snow claws to rip and tear at the shifters. Another wolf leaped into the air, aimed at biting the saber-tooth’s flank, but the ancient beast turned just in time to catch the animal in its massive jaws. The glistening, blood-coated sabers that protruded from its mouth ran clean through the wolf. Every shifter that tested the crazed beast met its death with no hesitation. More shots rang out. Someone was shooting at the saber-tooth, but nothing was slowing it down.
Who the hell was that? Damon? Jax?
Ronin could see Simon and Audra battling men and women along the tree line. They’d kept their human forms and were able to dodge the bullets or use one of the Rogues as a shield.
Shades of hatred darkened Ronin’s vision. A stout, pallid man with brown hair coughed and gagged as he drug Willow, his fucking mate, away from the fight by her legs. Her arms trailed behind them. She was motionless.
He ran toward them but was charged by a wolf whose sharp teeth were aimed at his throat. Crouching to prepare for the assault, Ronin grabbed the massive wolf by the neck and allowed its momentum to roll them both over and into the grass on the side of the road. They tumbled over the gravel and into the grass.
The Rogue bit Ronin’s arm, but he shrugged off the pain and riped his arm from the wolf’s gaping mouth. Holding the animal down by its chest, Ronin slammed his giant fist into him over and over until the wolf stopped moving.
Ronin got up and took off at a run to take down the man pulling Willow like she was a sack of clothes, but the saber-tooth looked up from its current battle and swiped its paw down the man’s chest, instantly making him and Willow crumple to the ground.
“Willow,” he yelled as he slid on the ground next to her.
Gently grabbing under her arms, he pulled her upper body onto his thighs. She was still breathing. Her beautiful caramel skin held a grey, lifeless pallor. Oh, God. A jagged hole the size of an apple sat above her heart, exposing the struggling muscle to him. Silver, shimmering liquid poured from her wound, and when Ronin looked closer at her neck, he could see lines of Heaven’s Flame beneath her skin.
His vision blurred as realization hit him. Someone shot her in the heart on purpose to test some sick theory Samiyah and Remus had come up with: if you injected Heaven’s Flame right into the heart of an angel, would it kill them? Would the Flame be carried through their body until it filled them thoroughly and ended their immortal life?
Willow had been their test subject, and damn-it, it was working.
More saber-tooths appeared and fought as Willow lay there dying. In his arms.
She looked up at him. Sadness pooled in her eyes as she waited. As they waited.
Ronin leaned down and pressed a lingering kiss on her forehead. “I won’t fault you if you have to kill me.”
He would never fault her for anything. He couldn’t let her die. Not like this. But he knew what biting her would do to him. The claiming mark would bring back his beast. Yes, his saber-tooth had been quiet, but that didn’t mean it hadn’t been plotting vengeance.
It was worth it.
He knew his people would take him down if his beast went
on a rampage. At least they’d be prepared this time.
Ronin watched as the saber-tooth who’d battled all those shifters started to shrink down to their human form. Pops and cracks filled the air, and when the transformation was finished, Ronin couldn’t believe what he saw.
Cass, covered in blood and bits of flesh and bone. Her body was riddled with bullet holes that oozed blood and Heaven’s Flame. She was completely unaffected. The gaping wounds slowly sealed closed as he watched her in amazement. Her eyes blazed like the sun as she looked over the damage she’d done. A wicked grin pulled at her lips at all the death she’d wrought, and for just a second, her eyes flashed to a soulless black, making her look like an ancient goddess of some Hell dimension no one had the balls to go against. It lasted for half a heartbeat, and just like that, her eyes were back to burning bright as the stars.
He knew he should care. She didn’t deserve the evil that was slowly taking her over. But right now, that wasn’t his concern.
Ronin looked down at Willow and let out a sob that ripped him open. “Audra,” he called out, not even bothering to look up to see if she’d heard him. He knew she did. His voice shook as he spoke. “If my beast goes off again. Kill me.”
Without waiting to hear his sister promise to keep his wishes, Ronin pulled down the sky blue tee-shirt Willow wore until her shoulder was bared to him. “I hope we have more time together, love.”
He leaned down and clamped his teeth over the slope of her shoulder and bit her.
Chapter 15
“There she is. Wake up, baby.” Ronin’s voice cracked as he spoke. He sounded like he’d been crying. Or screaming. “Back up. Give her a minute.”
Willow’s eyes wouldn’t cooperate. She tried to open them, but all she could manage were a few lazy flutters of her heavy eyelids.
“What the hell happened?” Willow tried to ask, but all that came out was a low groan that vibrated her chest.
Damn-it, why did her throat hurt so badly? It reminded her of the time she and Sariel got caught in a windstorm in the middle of a desert. With no proper shelter, they’d been buried in the grainy powder. It took hours for them to get all of the sand out of their throats, and hair, and ears.