Sacrificed in Shadow

by SM Reine

  “I’m so sorry,” he whispered. “I’m sorry for what I did to you. I’m sorry I obeyed him when every sense told me that I was doing wrong.”

  Elise twisted her wrists. “I forgave you the moment you did it, Nashriel.” It was the truth. Eve had never been angry at him for acting upon God’s word.

  The moment of relief that showed in his eyes passed quickly.

  “You look like a demon,” he said. He sounded like he was on the verge of fainting, like the conflicting sensory information was overloading his fragile ethereal neurons.

  Oh, for fuck’s sake.

  Elise let the hard rim of the shackles dig into her skin. Skin split and blood flowed to the knuckles of her gloves. The scent flooded the room. It was woodsy, musky, laced with copper and spice. Not human blood.

  Nashriel’s pupils narrowed to pinpoints.

  “Open the shackles,” she said. “Now.”

  He reached for her. In moments, she would be free—free, and within the enclave of the werewolves, where she might find the answer to every single one of her questions.

  But a woman stepped through the open door, interrupting them.

  She was a little over five feet tall, with blond hair like a fairy princess from a children’s cartoon. Her features were Germanic; her eyes were gold. She moved with the silken grace of a wolf. And she was hurriedly tugging on a white sundress, arranging the fabric so that it modestly concealed her coltish legs.

  Blond hair, tan skin, slender build? Elise had no doubt that this was the golden wolf that she had glimpsed among the trees, as graceful and swift as the wind. She didn’t look like a human as much as she did a beam of pure moonlight poured into the vessel of human flesh.

  The wolf-girl’s jaw dropped when she saw Nashriel reaching for Elise’s shackles. “Nash, wait—what are you doing?”

  The angel stopped, fingertips on the chains.

  “Free me,” Elise whispered. “Do it quickly, before she stops you.”

  “Hey,” the blond woman said again, striding across the room. She grabbed Nashriel’s arm and jerked him away. “Didn’t you hear me? What do you think you’re doing?”

  “Mother,” he whispered, gaze still fixed upon Elise.

  Elise gave him the full brunt of her stare. “Nashriel,” she said softly, pretending that the blond woman wasn’t in the room, as though they were in the nursery in the garden and he was born into her arms all over again. “Let me out of here. I’m trapped.”

  His fingers stretched toward her bindings.

  But the blond woman hurled Nashriel away with inhuman strength. He flew through the air, striking the wall hard enough that it buckled under the impact. Shelves collapsed.

  When the woman whirled back to Elise, her golden eyes blazed, and her lips were peeled back to bare fangs.

  “Don’t you even think about messing with him,” the werewolf said, lisping around fangs. “He’s mine.”

  Mine. The declaration of ownership rankled. An angel couldn’t belong to some werewolf—all angels belonged to Eve. But that word carried weight when it came from the lips of this blond, gangly girl, and Elise had to acknowledge that she had failed to grab Nashriel.

  She sat back against the wall, hands balled into fists behind her.

  “I had to try,” Elise said. Her gaze was fixed on the pulse at the wolf-girl’s throat. What would her blood taste like? “Who are you?”

  The blond woman straightened. It took visible effort, as though she would have preferred to drop to all fours. “I’m the Alpha of the werewolf pack.”

  “So you’re responsible for the murders,” Elise said.

  The Alpha’s face crumpled, confused. “Aren’t you the murderer?” Such a naive question.

  “I came into the forest tonight looking for the werewolf responsible for the attacks,” Elise said. “I didn’t expect to find a whole pack of you. I didn’t think there were any packs left.”

  “We’re the last one.”

  The Alpha kneeled beside Nashriel, hesitantly touching his arm. It was awfully careful for someone who had no problems declaring him as belonging to her. More like casual acquaintances than close friends. He didn’t respond to her touch.

  The girl bit her bottom lip hard enough to leave the indentation of her teeth on her skin.

  “What did you do to him?” asked the Alpha. “What are you?”

  “My name is Elise. I’m not the beast that’s been killing people. I’m the person that’s come to stop the murders.”

  The light of hope flashed over her face. “We aren’t the killers, either. Someone’s setting us up.”

  Elise was inclined to believe that was true. She couldn’t imagine this blond girl with blood on her hands. But even an Alpha couldn’t speak for an entire pack. The wounds that she had seen on the bodies had definitely belonged to an animal, and Elise was certain that the killer had to be among them.

  “I think we have a lot to talk about,” Elise said.

  “I guess so,” she said. “My name’s Rylie Gresham.”

  Rylie. It was a quirky, Millennial Generation name that Elise would have expected from a teenager, not the leader of a werewolf pack.

  “These shackles are uncomfortable,” Elise said. “Let me go so we can talk.”

  Rylie touched Nashriel’s shoulder. He had the heel of one palm touched to his temple, as if struggling with an overbearing headache, but he wasn’t looking at Rylie or Elise. His attention was thousands of years away, diverted to some dark, internal place where Adam and Eve still walked the garden, and angels were merely children that obeyed them.

  “Are you okay, Nash?” she whispered. He didn’t react to the question.

  Elise hadn’t tried to force her will on an angel since returning from the garden. She wasn’t honestly sure what she could do to them now. It was possible that she had melted Nashriel’s mind and will—though hopefully the damage wouldn’t be permanent.

  “He’s in shock. He’ll be okay in a few hours,” Elise lied. She jangled the shackles. “I can help.”

  Rylie hesitated, glancing at the spotlights. She felt safe with the lights at her back. Someone had told her about Elise’s abilities, told her that Elise would be powerless without darkness—probably the same someone that was struggling to organize his jumbled thoughts on the floor a few feet away.

  And it was mostly true. If Elise was in the light, she wasn’t going anywhere by infernal means. But mundane methods of locomotion didn’t seem to occur to Rylie.

  The werewolves were led by a naive girl. Some kid, barely more than a child.

  Elise plastered an I am so very nice and harmless smile on her face.

  “Please,” Elise said.

  “Okay,” Rylie agreed.

  She kneeled, unlocking Elise’s bindings.

  Elise planted a hand in Rylie’s chest and shoved. The Alpha spilled onto her back. Elise crossed the room in three long strides, arms folded over her head to protect her skin, and entered the darkness.

  Then she was gone.

  Light. Light everywhere. Elise was burning.

  She slammed back into her corporeal form the instant she exited the front door of Rylie’s home. Elise stumbled over her own feet and hit the pavement.

  Pavement. In the middle of the supposedly empty Appalachian mountains.

  Elise flexed her human hands on the black ground, hard enough to make her fingertips turn white. She was as solid as the ground underneath her. Rocks dug into the knees of her jeans. She barely had a shadow—there were too many lights.

  She looked up. She was in the center of what looked like a small town, still under construction. Several cabins—more like cottages, really, with delicate white accents—encircled Elise. Huge spotlights illuminated the road that ran between them. The werewolves were building a village, doing construction at night, and had accidentally contained Elise. That was their good luck, and her misfortune.

  She took her time getting to her feet, spreading her senses in the way that she
couldn’t spread her body.

  Kopis to the north. Angel behind her. Two werewolves to the south. More pack in the forest—a lot more pack.

  Elise turned to see Seth standing at her left. He had lost the ball cap and jacket. He carried a rifle in his hands with the confidence of a man who knew how to use it, a man that had used it, and someone willing to kill.

  Abel, the scar-faced werewolf, was on her opposite side, still in his burly human form, unaffected by the full moon. That level of control meant that he had to be an Alpha, too. Rylie staggered to his side, gripping his arm, leaning against him. She may not have known Nashriel well, but she was obviously very comfortable with Abel. A mated pair.

  It was worse than Elise ever could have expected.

  “Hands in the air,” Seth said, lifting the rifle to his shoulder.

  Elise spread her arms wide, showing that she wasn’t holding weapons. Lincoln’s sweater hung loose around her body, unzipped.

  “I’m harmless,” Elise said.

  “Like hell you are,” Abel said, wrapping a possessive arm around Rylie. His nose twitched. “I smell silver. Whatever you’ve got, throw it in front of you.”

  Elise didn’t hesitate to comply. She extracted the knives one by one—five of them—and tossed them to the ground.

  Seth stepped forward without dropping his rifle. He kicked them into the darkness and stepped back.

  “Anything else?” he asked.

  Abel shook his head. “Nothing silver, but I don’t like the look of those chains. Strip, demon.”

  He meant her chains of charms, and probably the sweater, too. Elise dropped all of them. They were replaceable.

  She stood in front of them, wearing only jeans and boots and a snug black tank top. There was no concealing the spine scabbard that held the falchion at her back.

  Seth sucked in a breath at the sight of the sword.

  “That, too,” Abel said.

  Elise considered her odds. The spotlights were big and nasty, more than enough to hold her in place. She couldn’t swallow these three unless she escaped. She wasn’t sure that they deserved the death anyway.

  But she wasn’t surrendering her falchion.

  “Let me go,” Elise said. “Walk away, and I’ll spare you tonight.”

  Abel snorted. “In case you missed it, we’ve got three bullets aimed at your head right now.”

  He had already shot her once—something that Elise wouldn’t be forgetting any time soon. Three more bullets wouldn’t make a difference.

  Howls drifted over the forest. The pack was looking for their Alphas.

  “Drop the sword,” Abel said again.

  “No,” Elise replied.

  “What did you do to Nash?” Rylie asked. “Can you really fix him?”

  Elise gave her a steady look without responding.

  Abel cocked the guns. It wasn’t necessary to cock a modern pistol, but it produced a distinctive, threatening sound.

  “Do it,” he said.

  Elise remained silent.

  Seth and Abel exchanged glances. She took that instant of opportunity to run.

  She bolted across the clearing, toward the tee of the crossroads. Her fists pumped. Boots pounded on pavement. Just a few steps, and she would be in sweet darkness.

  A roar shattered the night.

  Elise couldn’t resist the urge to look over her shoulder, expecting to see the mighty beast that Abel would have become.

  It wasn’t Abel changing.

  Rylie’s human flesh exploded away from her. Elise understood that changing into a werewolf typically took several minutes. But Rylie was hiding a lot of power behind the mask of an innocent girl, and the change was nearly instantaneous.

  The skin on her face ripped as her muzzle extended. The hair fell from her scalp, scattering on the pavement. Fur exploded over her rippling skin, bones popped, and that cute white sundress fell to scraps at her paws.

  Elise couldn’t run fast enough.

  The golden wolf leaped in front of Elise, barring her path into the safety of night. Rylie might not have been the biggest of the pack, but she bristled with anger, with power, and the unspoken command: You’re not going anywhere until you fix Nash.

  “Out of my way,” Elise said. “Last warning.”

  The wolf darted forward, snapping at Elise’s legs. It was meant to drive her back into the circle of lights. Away from safety.

  Elise clasped her hands into a single fist and swung, like she was going for a volleyball—except that the ball, in this case, was Rylie’s skull.

  Bone cracked against bone. Rylie’s head snapped to the side. She stumbled.

  A gunshot.

  Elise felt the burn of a bullet enter her back. It probably penetrated her right lung. She ignored it.

  Rylie leaped, and Elise jumped out of reach of those snapping jaws. A swipe of a paw sliced through Elise’s boot, from knee to heel, shredding the leather. It barely grazed the skin underneath.

  She whirled, snapping a roundhouse kick across Rylie’s face.

  Another gunshot—this one a total miss.

  Shouts.

  “Stop shooting! You’ll hit her!”

  “They’re not silver!”

  Elise dodged Rylie’s next lunge, and the next, arms raised in front of her face as though boxing. They circled each other. Elise tried to dart toward the darkness again, and Rylie cut into her path.

  “Change, for fuck’s sake!” That was Seth, ordering his brother. Elise distantly registered how interesting it was for a human kopis to order an Alpha werewolf around, but only distantly—Rylie had lunged again, and this time, her claws caught Elise’s shirt.

  Four parallel gashes opened on her belly from ribs to navel, burning like a brand on Elise’s flesh. Blood gushed into the air. The fluids hissed when they splattered to the spotlit ground.

  The wounds didn’t heal.

  Elise stared down at her exposed abs in momentary shock.

  The wounds aren’t healing.

  Rylie bowled into her, sending both of them to the asphalt.

  The scent of Elise’s blood must have brought out the beast in a way that their fight hadn’t. There were no scraps of humanity left in the wolf’s gold eyes. Only hunter. Only Alpha.

  Jaws swung toward Elise’s face. She shoved her hand deep into the wolf’s mouth, jamming her fist in the air passage, seizing the back of her tongue. The slick, muscular organ thrashed in Elise’s grip, struggling to break free. The wolf’s breath smelled of deer blood.

  Elise dug her fingernails in and tried to tear.

  Teeth closed on her upper arm, leaving a circle of tooth marks on her bicep. Amber blood streaked the muscle.

  Elise didn’t realize that Seth and Abel had closed in until a boot struck her in the side of the head.

  Steel toe connected with her temple. The world exploded in light.

  The wolf reared back, pulling her tongue out of Elise’s hand.

  The men were shouting. More howls, closer than ever. Elise was running out of time. Blood flowed freely. Couldn’t heal, not under the spotlights. Needed to escape.

  She wrapped her fingers around the hilt of the falchion and tried to draw it.

  Rylie was faster.

  The werewolf bit.

  Elise felt the needle points of her teeth enter her throat, and the immense, crushing power of the wolf’s jaw muscles. Her ability to breathe was gone instantly. It felt like being smothered in a lake of blood.

  If nothing else, Elise was impressed that the wolf-girl had gone for the kill shot. She hadn’t expected her to have the balls.

  Her blood pumped into Rylie’s mouth. Elise’s vision blurred.

  And then she saw.

  A gray moon hung heavy over the peak of the mountain. Rylie stood at the apex, naked and human, steaming in the coolness of the spring air. Her toes dug into the ice. Her arms were spread wide, welcoming the moon’s radiance.

  There were people behind her—hunters and werewolves, all l
ocked in the heat of battle. Some had already died. Many more would suffer if Rylie couldn’t stop them. If she couldn’t call down the gods of the moon.

  She looked over her shoulder and saw desperation on Seth’s face. He was there. Abel was, too.

  The moon wanted them all.

  Rylie jumped.

  The vision shocked out of Elise as quickly as it had come, and she realized that Rylie’s weight was gone from her chest. The werewolf had thrown herself away. Elise’s blood coated her muzzle. She whined as she pawed at her nose, as if trying to get it off, but there was no wiping away the fluid that ran through Elise’s veins. It was thicker than blood, stickier than molasses, and it was glued to Rylie’s fur.

  Rylie’s flesh rippled. Sheets of golden hair fell away.

  She was changing back into a human.

  Abel was at Rylie’s side. People shouted. Elise was, momentarily, ignored—struggling to breathe through her collapsed throat, air bubbling in her mouth, her bicep and stomach and leg burning as if acid had been dripped on her wounds.

  Elise rolled onto her belly and crawled toward the darkness.

  She glimpsed Rylie out of the corner of her eye, human and whole, curled into the fetal position. She was having a seizure. Blood matted her human face, stuck her beautiful blond hair to her cheeks, and wildness filled her eyes. Seth and Abel were both holding her. Trying to comfort her. Making sure she was okay. She probably wasn’t—Elise’s blood did strange things to people.

  Meanwhile, Elise thought she was dying. Really dying. It shouldn’t have been possible.

  She stretched out a hand. Her fingers brushed the darkness.

  Let me go, she begged the night.

  Her skin unfolded, and Elise flew among the stars.

  TEN

  LINCOLN AWOKE TO the sound of scraping at his front door.

  He sat upright in bed, sheets falling to his waist. His chest was slicked with sweat. His heart beat a panicked tattoo inside his ribcage, as if trying to crawl up his throat and escape through his mouth.

  Lincoln had been dreaming. He’d had visions of gaping pits, like wounds carved into the earth, and they had bled fire as lost souls writhed inside. The Devil had been waiting for him on the brink of the pits. She had beckoned to him with black fingernails and a blood-red smile.