“Ah, but I’ve learned a thing or two while away, my dear, sweet uncle.” She smiled as the first spark of alarm tinged his face. She lifted the bat again and took a step toward him. “Shall I show you?”
He stumbled away, glaring at the wolves, his squeaky voice trembling with rage. “Don’t just stand there. Kill her.”
The wolves leapt forward as one.
At the last second, Kevin twisted, taking down two of them…leaving her with three.
Then Prem dropped down on one of the wolves aiming for her, landing on his head like some demented fur trader hat of old come back to life to seek revenge. The wolf shook his head violently, but Prem hung firm to his hair, his little claws gouging the wolf’s face and sinking them into the gooey whites of the guy’s eyes, and the wolf bellowed in pain, groping for the ferret as he spun in a dizzying circle.
Then she had no more time to watch because the other two wolves were upon her.
She swung the bat, cracking the first wolf across his temple. Wood shattered, sending splinters flying in every direction. Little shards bit into her flesh, peppering her face and arms. Ignoring the pain, she watched the wolf drop like a hunk of meat and skid across the forest floor a few feet before coming to a complete stop.
He remained unmoving.
These wolves didn’t seem to be able to heal as fast as they would normally.
Before she had time to think, claws raked down her spine, ripping into her flesh, and she hissed in pain. She whirled, the claws slicing deeper before they were torn free of her body. She gritted her teeth, feeling rivulets of blood trickling down her spine as she faced the older wolf.
He bared his teeth, fangs gleaming as he leapt to rip out her throat.
Annora lifted her arm, and his teeth clamped down over it, biting with enough force to snap her bones again. Instead of dropping to her knees from the overload of pain, she brought up what remained of the broken bat and rammed the ragged edges straight into his chest.
A garbled howl caught in his throat, his eyes widened in shock, then their light dimmed, and his jaw went slack. As he dropped to the ground, he dragged her with him. She struggled to disengage his fangs from her arm, ripping flesh in her haste, when the last wolf charged her. His face had been peeled away like a medical cadaver, leaving behind strings of mangled tendons and shredded muscles.
She fell backwards and rammed her foot directly into his throat.
Bones crunched under the impact.
Claws dragged down her leg, leaving deep grooves in her flesh before he staggered back, grabbing at his own shattered throat as he struggled to breathe. Annora dragged herself to her feet and saw Kevin barely holding his own against the other two wolves.
Without the drugs or his enhanced shifter strength, they were slowly whittling him down, chunks of flesh and blood flying with each blow. He wasn’t going to make it if she didn’t help.
From the corner of her eyes, she saw her uncle take off into the woods in the opposite direction…and Prem racing after him in his loping gait, his furry little body matted with blood.
She skidded to a halt, the need to go after them like a craving, and she hated herself for hesitating.
Then Kevin shouted. “Go. I got this.”
The sour taste of his lie hung in the air.
She had no choice.
He would die if she left him.
She turned toward Kevin and yelled, “Run!”
He gave her a startled look, taking a fist to the face. Shaking off the effects, he hesitated a moment longer before darting off into the woods like a shot. The wolves started to go after him—until Annora whistled sharply. “You go after him, you lose me.”
The wolves hesitated, instincts demanding they hunt down their wounded prey. They sniffed the air, then turned toward her as if scenting her delicious blood, their eyes gleaming yellow and glittering with hunger. Fangs hung out of their mouths, their jaws misshapen, like they had too many teeth crammed inside.
Razor-sharp claws tipped their fingers, their arms too long and hanging awkwardly from their shoulders. Their hair receded, their foreheads shrinking, the bones of their faces crunching, while their flesh bubbled up from their skulls, like they were shifting in slow motion.
Annora stood her ground while they charged. She lifted her hand, blood dripping down her arm, and gave them a happy wave and smile. When they hesitated, exchanging a confused look, she released her stranglehold over the afterworld, doing her best to keep it from chasing after Kevin.
It burst into life around her, quickly eating up the forest floor and spreading like a dark plague through the trees. The temperature plummeted until the werewolves’ breath fogged the air. Dark particles swirled on an invisible current, tugging playfully at her in welcome.
The sun had vanished, a bluish tinge taking over the world until the woods appeared haunted. The clearing turned gloomy, the trees broken and decayed, the leaves drifting to the ground, only to disintegrate on impact.
Her injuries were slower to heal, like she’d used all her energy to merge the two worlds, and her blood slowly dripped to the forest floor. She ignored the pain, her body numb to it, and she used the adrenaline to keep moving.
The shadows crept ever closer, and the wolves backed away, as if sensing the wrongness to it. Dark strands of fog crept closer, and the wolf she hit with the bat roused slightly, as if detecting danger. The shadows curled around him, and he screamed in terror.
He crawled toward her, claws gouging into the earth, but it was too late.
The shadows grabbed his leg and yanked him into the blackness of the trees beyond. He clawed at the ground, leaving deep ruts in the dirt, and his primal shriek of fear echoed through the trees like a dinner bell as more shadows streaked after him.
Only for his voice to vanish in a gurgle of death.
What the fuck?!?
Something was in the trees with them.
Something from the afterworld.
She edged away, cursing herself for not listening to Edgar when he tried to warn her.
The two remaining wolves scattered, their fight or flight response clearly stuck on the ‘screw this shit’ category. Not wanting to wait around for whatever it was to come back, she grabbed her backpack and hurried after her uncle.
Prem chirped from a tree, then waved a paw in the direction her uncle took. She reached up, scooping him in her arms, a sound of distress catching in her throat when he whimpered and curled around her. She grabbed the darkness and pushed it toward him, only for it to splash uselessly against him and drift to the ground like dust. He grabbed her finger and brushed his tiny hand against it, as if to say it was okay, and her heart shattered.
He was dying.
And she knew this time, there was no coming back.
Not willing to give up on him, she wove together a tiny blanket of darkness until the particles trapped inside began to sparkle with power. Edgar said he ran more on her power than his. If that was true, what healed her should also fix him. She hoped. She wrapped it around him carefully before slipping the now-unconscious critter into the afterworld, praying that he would heal and come back to her.
The need to seek out her uncle and dance on the mangled flesh and bones of his dead body roared through her.
It didn’t take long to catch him. The stupid asshole was still plunging blindly through the forest, making enough noise to attract the dead. She quickly followed his path, hearing him curse even before she saw him trying to untangle himself from a thicket.
“Hello, Uncle dear.”
He startled so badly he nearly fell back into the thicket when he whirled. When he saw it was her, anger darkened his face. “What the fuck did you do?”
“What?” Annora crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow. “You don’t want to see where you’ll end up after you die?”
It was like she’d kicked him in the balls, his eyes practically bulging out of their sockets as he scanned the darkness surrounding them.
�
�Lies!” But he didn’t sound too sure of himself. “If you try to kill me, you’ll only die yourself.”
She couldn’t stop the chuckle that bubbled up. “But Uncle, thanks to your tender care, I welcome death. There is nothing here for me to fear.” She glanced at the fog that swirled around them, then back at him. “Besides, I have no need to kill you. You’ll do that yourself.”
The stench of his terror polluted the air. Shadows began to churn behind him, a form slowly taking shape. Then another. And another. The phantoms here were different—like the life had been drained out of them, leaving behind only their ghostly forms.
Then understanding dawned.
They were the banished.
The weak.
Without anything to tether them to the human world, they became nothing but shadows.
This world was what had terrified Edgar.
She remembered how they dragged off the wolf, and she wasn’t sure if Edgar had been more worried about becoming one of them or being consumed by them.
As if seeing her looking over his shoulder, her uncle spun, then clutched the book closer to his chest, backing away from the new threat.
One of the shadows spilled across the floor like tentacles, the fog seeking out its prey. It slowly grew taller and taller, until the vaporous form of a man appeared, his face whisking in and out of reality like a ghost.
One moment he looked like a normal man, then his face would flicker until she saw what looked like his skeleton beneath, before he ultimately turned transparent once more.
Like his body couldn’t hold its form.
He glanced at the book, then turned toward her, his expression softened. “You are as beautiful as your mother.”
She opened her mouth, then closed it, her throat too tight to speak. She wet her lips and tried again, taking a step toward him. “You knew my mother?”
He gave her a broken smile and shrugged. “She was trying to help my brother. It was how we met.”
Her world tilted on its axis.
This was how her mother met her father. It wasn’t some random accident.
When her uncle turned and scurried into the woods, she narrowed her eyes and moved to go after him.
“Leave him,” the specter said. “You did your job by getting him here. We’ll take care of the rest. He won’t escape, or hurt you, ever again.”
Annora froze at the ominous tone, and she carefully looked at the man who was her uncle, then lifted her chin mutinously. “Are you going to kill me, too?”
She had too much shit to do before she died.
She couldn’t leave the guys to fight alone.
They would never forgive her.
The specter shook his head slowly and turned to glance toward where her uncle had disappeared. As if it was a signal, her uncle’s piercing scream of terror rent the air. A pleased smile twisted his face when he turned back toward her. Then his eyes turned sad. He lifted a chain over his head, the gold coin dangling from the end spinning wildly, the glints of light reflecting off it making it appear to glow.
“This isn’t a safe place for you. You’ve stayed too long already. The phantoms are going to be coming for you soon.” He carefully held out the chain for her. “Take this. It will protect you.”
She held out her hand. When he set the chain in her palm, she half expected it to fall straight through. Instead the metal was bitterly cold, searing into her skin, and she curled her fingers around it. The phantom smiled down at her, like she just passed some sort of test. When he turned to go, she reached toward him. “Wait.”
He hesitated, then glanced back at her over his shoulder, a brow quirked in question.
She chewed on her lip for a moment, eyeing the only relative she had left who didn’t seem to hate her. She had so many questions to ask. “What’s your name?”
“You may call me Valen.” Then he disintegrated before her eyes. The dark particles blasted toward her, and she lifted her arms and staggered backwards as the tiny grains of sand pelted her. A brilliant light blazed behind her closed eyelids, the heat chilling her cold flesh, much like the spell she’d cast back at the house.
When she lowered her arms, the light was gone, taking any hint of the other realm with it, as if it banished the magic used to merge the two worlds.
She blinked at the change, swaying as she struggled to stay upright, blood loss making her dizzy. Though her wounds had sealed shut, they hadn’t healed completely. Inviting the shadows into the human world created more like a dead zone, sucking the energy out of her instead of invigorating her the way they did when she opened a doorway to the afterworld.
She noticed the chain dangling from her fist, and slowly uncurled her fingers to see a gold coin shimmering in the night air. She carefully lifted it over her head, then groaned when her body protested such a simple move.
Like a craving, she wanted to slip into the afterworld and heal, but she was afraid of what she would find.
More specters?
Did they inhabit the afterworld?
Why show themselves now?
Did that mean her camouflage was well and truly gone?
She couldn’t access the afterworld and take the risk that she’d end up trapped or worse, hunted by her father.
A branch snapped behind her, and Annora whirled, bracing herself for an attack.
Only to have Kevin walk out of the woods, his face grim. He glanced around them, but everything appeared normal, the unnatural silence loud in her ears.
“They never had any intention of releasing you or the book.” He hurried toward her side, more of a limping gait than a walk, scanning her for injuries and frowning. “You look like hell.”
She snorted, then waved a hand to indicate his nearly-destroyed body. Without his healing abilities, she wasn’t sure how he was still standing. “You’re one to talk.”
He grimaced, then triumphantly held up his hand, revealing a small stone the size of a quarter resting in the center of his palm. “I have the spell to get us back to the base…only I’m not sure taking you back in your current state would be wise. You would be more of a distraction than a help.”
“I could say the same about you.” Annora narrowed her eyes at Kevin, feeling defensive. “I’m going, with or without you. If we go together at least we can keep an eye on each other.”
The guys needed her. She refused to let them fight without her, and her determination to not be left behind hardened into resolve.
One way or another, she would find her way back to her men.
The darkness inside her was almost depleted, whisking up weakly at her probe. It licked at her wounds, healing her slowly, just enough to stop the internal bleeding, but not enough to knit her fractured bones.
Kevin huffed under his breath, knowing that he was getting played. Neither of them was willing to stay behind, not when the only people who mattered to them were in danger. “Deal—but promise you’ll find me a nice burial site when your guys learn that I allowed you to go into battle injured and kill me for it.”
“I would, but they’ll no doubt bury me next to you after they wring my neck.” Annora grinned at him, bouncing on her feet, ignoring the way her body protested. “Let’s do this. All of this will have been for nothing if something happens to them.”
Kevin nodded, then held the stone aloft. “You better not get yourself killed.”
He twisted his wrist, dropping the stone to the ground. He crushed his boot against it, the fragile material shattering under his heel. Glass cracked, blasting out a weird green powder in a two-foot circle, surrounding them like it had been held under pressure. The smell of black licorice filled her senses as the green substance soaked into the earth. The ground beneath them turned spongy, and the world dropped away as they were sucked down into what felt like a whirlpool of molasses.
Chapter Ninteen
Logan woke to complete darkness, struggling for air, groggy and disoriented. The last thing he remembered was eating some gruel that was more wa
ter than food. It tasted like ass.
Son of a bitch!
They put something in his food.
He should’ve been suspicious, since they only tossed him scraps when they felt like it, but his beast had been so starved, the food was down his throat before he even thought about it.
He tried to twist, only to discover his arms and legs were hog-tied.
His breathing turned ragged at the thought of being trapped, gasping like the air was getting thin.
It didn’t matter that he knew it was all in his head, that there was plenty of oxygen, he just couldn’t seem to suck in any of it.
The past week had fucked him up far beyond what was done to his damaged body. Even now blood leaked from various wounds, leaving him lying in a sticky, crusted pool.
As he fought against the ropes, his broken ribs ground together, and he hissed in pain. He struggled against the urge to remain still, allow the pain to fade, but one thought filled him with determination—they were coming for him.
She was coming for him.
He blinked away tears at the thought of seeing her again.
His Annora.
A twinge of worry niggled at the back of his brain—what would she see when she looked at him?
He wasn’t the same man.
He was broken.
Damaged.
He’d survived hell with his pack, but this was so much worse.
He shuddered when he realized he’d barely lasted a week before going out of his ever-loving mind. He was at the point he’d do anything to make the pain go away.
He couldn’t comprehend how she’d survived years.
Alone.
With no hope of rescue.
His heart broke at what she had endured just to survive.
If only he’d known, he would’ve come for her in a heartbeat.
He trembled, adrenaline shooting through him at the thought of her coming for him, and he was determined she wouldn’t find him trussed up like a damned turkey ready to be served. He had to figure a way out and find her.
His arms actually ached at the thought of holding her close.
He shook his head—first he’d kiss her, then hold her, and never let her go.
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