Sacrificed in Shadow

by SM Reine

  But even though they had pretended to have a platonic relationship, they hadn’t fooled anyone. Stephanie had always loathed Elise. She had thought that Elise was the younger woman, trying to steal James—or maybe that James had some perverse obsession with adolescent women. Elise had dismissed Stephanie. Unfortunately, the witch hadn’t quite been wrong on either count.

  Even so, it had been three years since Elise had seen James. There was no reason to feel guilty about hooking up with Lincoln.

  The computer chimed. McIntyre must have been awake—he had responded to her newest email. No record of Armstrong in public employee records. I’ll keep looking. Anything else to report?

  Elise drummed one fingernail against the desk, pondering her long and useless day.

  All she said in her reply was, No.

  When she hit the “send” button, she paused to look down at her hand. The nail that she had been tapping on Lincoln’s desk was clear, not black. A normal fingernail.

  Elise spread her fingers. All of the nails looked normal.

  It was only then that she realized that the light from the monitor wasn’t making her skin ache, either.

  She turned on the lamp. No pain.

  Standing, she approached the mirror mounted on Lincoln’s wall and tipped back her chin. The imprint of teeth on her neck was gone. So was the damage on her bicep. Her pale skin looked a little less pale than usual, her hair was glossier, and her lips were redder. It was like she had just recovered from the flu.

  She pulled on a tank top and a pair of shorts, then stepped into the kitchen and turned that light on, too. It didn’t burn her skin.

  Elise was back to normal. Whatever had caused her healing to slow, it seemed to have fixed itself between her reappearance in the forest and the email with McIntyre. But nothing remarkable had happened in that time period. She had talked with Seth and Rylie, glimpsed the Bible again, driven the motorcycle for a while.

  And she’d had sex with Lincoln.

  She paced in the kitchen, tapping her very normal fingernail against her chin as she thought. Elise was a demon, but no specific type of demon that she had met before—not a nightmare or megaira or mara, and definitely not a succubus. Sexual energies shouldn’t have healed her. She didn’t seem to feed off of humans at all.

  Yet here she was: werewolf injuries healed, skin flawless, and feeling better than she had in days.

  Lincoln’s house suddenly felt small and uncomfortable. She stepped onto his back porch, letting the moist, rain-scented air embrace her. The forest was whispered as a wind rustled the drying autumn leaves against each other. It was warm and humid, no better than it had been indoors.

  But the wind parted the clouds, letting the moon peek through for an instant. It bathed her skin in pale light. Elise lifted her arms to embrace it.

  The moon beams didn’t hurt at all. She had definitely healed.

  She stared at her hands. “What happened to me?” she whispered.

  “I did,” said a man.

  Elise turned, and she came face-to-face with James Faulkner.

  EIGHTEEN

  JAMES HAD ALWAYS been a disarmingly attractive man. The contrast between his black hair and blue eyes used to always shock women into silence when they first met him, and Elise had thought less of the people that were entranced by James’s good looks. But she wasn’t immune anymore. The sight of him in Lincoln’s back yard stunned her to silence.

  Elise hated herself immediately for the reaction.

  James was as tall and graceful as she remembered him. Some of that was because he had been a professional dancer in his youth. Some of it was because he had angel’s blood somewhere in his lineage, making him one of the few ethereal Gray in existence. There had always been something regal about the way he stood, like he knew he was better than everyone else, and was just waiting for his throne.

  He was conceited and overbearing, but it was for a good reason. James was more powerful than any other witch alive.

  Elise could see the evidence of that power now. The last time that they had been together, his hair had gone completely gray, and he had been showing every day of his forty years in the lines of his face. But his hair was black again. He was ageless.

  It was probably a glamor spell. She wondered if he was using a glamor to hide his emotions, too, because his poker face would have been good enough to fool any high roller playing the tables in Vegas.

  “How did you know to find me here?” she asked, backing up until her heels bumped the first step of the stairs into Lincoln’s duplex. A few extra inches of space didn’t help.

  James’s features were pinched. “I didn’t,” he said, speaking carefully, emotionlessly. “I came to see Deputy Marshall.”

  The silence was thick enough that Elise felt like it could have drowned her.

  If James hadn’t known what she had done before, he certainly did now. But his face still didn’t change.

  “How do you know him?” Elise asked.

  “His family used to be with my coven, and he owes a debt to me,” James said matter-of-factly.

  “Reno coven, or Boulder?”

  A pause. “Boulder.”

  That meant that Lincoln’s family, somewhere along the line, had been with The White Ash Coven—the witches that had been responsible for grooming sacrifices to God.

  Anger knotted inside of Elise. It didn’t burn slowly, like her emotions usually did. It was fast and hard and took her breath away.

  Somehow, she wasn’t surprised. Of course Lincoln was involved with the coven that had destroyed her life. It would have been far too convenient if she could have hooked up with a man that was sane and normal.

  “Why the hell are you telling me this?” Elise asked, keeping her voice down so that she wouldn’t wake up Lincoln. “Do you want me to feel guilty for fucking him?” She practically threw the words at him, looking for a reaction that never came.

  “You asked me what I was doing here. I answered. Your sexual proclivities are none of my business,” James said.

  How could he be so goddamn calm about it?

  She stared hard at him, looking for a glimmer of jealousy, heartbreak, anything that would tell her that he cared she was involved with someone else. But he looked as calm about it as he had when she had dated Anthony, or Malcolm, or anyone other one of her brief flings.

  There was nothing. No emotion at all.

  He had always faked that too goddamn well.

  “I think you dropped this,” Elise said, fishing his warding ring out of her pocket. She tossed it to him. James plucked it out of the air. “Put it on. I don’t want you digging around in my head if I accidentally lose mine again.”

  He clutched it in his fist. She noticed that he was still wearing leather gloves, concealing his palms. “I haven’t worn the ring in months,” he said.

  Elise clenched her fists, digging her nails into her palms. “Why?”

  “I’ve been waiting for you to take yours off. I wanted you to be able to find me,” James said. “Tonight, when I suddenly felt your mind again, I believed…”

  He trailed off. Cleared his throat.

  James had hoped that Elise losing the ring had been a sign that she was ready to take him back. Maybe he had even thought that she was asking him to save her. No wonder he had been so desperate to find her.

  “I’ve been working with McIntyre and Anthony,” Elise said. “We’ve taken down two overlords, another horde of zombies, and more nightmares than I can count. I have not called for you once. Not goddamn once, James. I don’t need you anymore.”

  “But you need Deputy Marshall?”

  “I thought it was none of your business.”

  James rolled the ring between his gloved fingers. The wind blew the clouds over the face of the moon again, shrouding him in the shadows of night. Elise didn’t need light to see the long, straight bridge of his nose, the piercing blue eyes, the hard jaw. His face was permanently imprinted on her soul.

  He was
one fucking spectacular liar. Even now, she couldn’t see a hint of emotion in his eyes, even though she knew that her denial must have stung him.

  “I don’t want to argue with you, Elise,” he said levelly. “But I do need to ask you a favor.”

  Oh, this was going to be good. “What?”

  “Leave Northgate,” James said. “Leave this place and never return.”

  “Wait—you want me to leave? But you said that Lincoln’s…” She waved a hand, searching for a way to term it. “He’s aligned with you. He’s the one that brought me here.”

  “Against my will, I assure you.”

  “And you were trying to send me a message with Lucinde Ramirez.”

  The first hint of surprise flashed over James’s features. “Lucinde? You mean, Augustin and Marisa’s daughter?” He seemed genuinely baffled.

  “One of the people that went missing here in Northgate is a nine year old girl named Lucinde Ramirez,” Elise said. “When Lincoln mentioned her, I assumed that you had falsified records as a way to get me to come here.”

  “Believe me, Elise, there is nothing that I want more than for you to be far, far away from Northgate. I would not use her memory to get to you.” A muscle twitched under his left eye. “I can’t believe you think that little of me.”

  “I don’t know what to think of you anymore,” she said.

  He raked a hand through his hair. “Christ, Elise. I don’t want to hurt you.”

  The cogs in her mind were turning now, spinning too quickly for her to savor the crack in his otherwise emotionless veneer. If the name hadn’t been chosen by James to manipulate Elise, then what else could it be? Who else could have possibly known that name?

  “What’s in Northgate that you want me to avoid?” she asked.

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  Elise narrowed her eyes at James. “You panicked when I saw Seth. Were you worried he could hurt me? Is he part of this cult that’s murdering people?” she pressed.

  “What cult?”

  “The serial killers,” Elise said. “The ones that have killed seven people.”

  “I thought that it was a rogue werewolf,” James said.

  It was like they were speaking two different languages.

  Everything that Elise had believed to be true about the investigation seemed to be wrong. Seth wasn’t related. Neither was James. He hadn’t lured her there—he wanted her to leave. He didn’t even know what was going on.

  “Someone’s killing people,” Elise said. “A girl named Lucinde Ramirez may or may not be missing. Lincoln asked me to come, and I’m not leaving until the case is closed.” James opened his mouth to argue, but she went on before he could. “I’m not debating. I’m just telling you.”

  “And I’m not debating, either,” James said. “You will leave Northgate of your own volition, or I will force you to leave.” There was magic in those words, the promise of violence.

  Elise’s confidence slipped a notch.

  She gazed up at James. Somehow, they had moved closer together, as if gravity had drawn their bodies to the center of the yard. He looked much like he had when he had first saved her, almost fifteen years ago now. There was still a teenage girl inside of Elise that was desperately in love with him.

  It was that girl who asked, “Would you really fight me over this?”

  His brow knitted. He cupped her chin in his hand, and even with her warding ring in place, touching him was enough to create fissures in the walls between them. She tasted a hint of jealousy that he wasn’t showing.

  “Some things are bigger than the both of us,” James said, his voice so soft. “Some things are worth taking a stand over. Northgate is one of them. I will do what I must to do to protect Seth and Abel, and this town, from you.” His thumb traced the line of her bottom lip. “Even if it means fighting you.”

  Elise jerked away from him.

  He hadn’t been panicking because he thought that Seth would hurt Elise. He had been panicking because he thought that she would hurt Seth.

  Some things are worth taking a stand over.

  Elise stepped away from him, stuffing that vulnerable teenage girl deep inside of her, chaining her away where she couldn’t be hurt by James fucking Faulkner again.

  “I’d like to see you try to get rid of me,” she said. “But I don’t think you will. I think you want to know why Lucinde Ramirez was reported as having gone missing as much as I do. And I think you care that all of these people are dying.”

  Sadness turned down the corners of James’s mouth. “Don’t test me, Elise.”

  “And don’t fuck with me,” she said.

  They stood on opposite ends of the yard, sizing one another up in the moonlight as it peeked through the clouds again—the briefest hint of light that traced James’s charcoal-dark hair with a halo of gray.

  “Leave, Elise,” he said softly, pleading.

  Elise folded her arms. “No.”

  Stalemate.

  He inclined his head, acknowledging that they were still not friends, no longer partners, and definitely not on the same side. Unspoken promises passed between them. Not the kind of promises that lovers shared, but enemies.

  Elise mounted the steps to Lincoln’s duplex and went inside. She let the door fall shut.

  When she pulled aside the curtain to look for James outside, he was already gone.

  The rain drizzled a steady beat on the tin roof of the mobile home like a chorus of tiny drummers, slightly quieter than the pounding of rain on the windshield of the pickup. Seth sat back in the front seat of the truck as he cleaned his rifle, using the dome light to see. His feet hung into the rain, and his steel-toed boots were damp.

  Trevin and Abel were securing the perimeter of St. Philomene’s Cathedral as werewolves, leaving Seth with nothing to do but maintain his arsenal. He caught the occasional glimpse of fur out of the corner of his eye, but by the time he lifted his head, the wolves had already moved on again.

  There was no sign that Father Armstrong had been back since Rylie broke into his house, and no way to tell if he ever would return. Seth didn’t know much about magic, but if the guy had a bewitched Bible in his house, then it would be no surprise if he had some kind of magical alarms, too. He probably knew that people were onto him. If Father Armstrong was smart, he would already be halfway across the country.

  Seth thought it was a waste of time to watch the mobile home, but Rylie didn’t. And Rylie’s word was law these days.

  He snorted as he opened the action on his rifle, blowing a wisp of wolf hair out of it. He remembered the days before Rylie had become an Alpha. He had been the one to walk her through her first changes, explain what being a werewolf meant, and help her overcome her basest urges. Now she was the queen of wolves. As reluctant as she had been to enter that role, everyone obeyed her now. She had settled into it well.

  And she had settled into it with Abel at her side. Not Seth.

  Abel trotted out of the crimson-leafed trees, fur glistening with rain like diamond tips. He stopped in front of Seth and shook.

  “Hey!” Seth protested, lifting his gun away from the spray. Abel’s fur stuck out in damp spikes. He looked ridiculous. “What did you find? Anything good?”

  He had to shift back before he could answer. It used to be that Rylie was the only one that could make other werewolves change at will, but Abel had been improving at controlling his transformation. He was still slow and graceless at changing, just like he was at most everything else.

  His fur fell away. His skull reassembled itself, ears sliding into place and muzzle flattening. By the time he stood upright, he was mostly human, and reaching into the truck with clawed fingers.

  Seth kicked Abel’s clothing out from under the seat.

  “Didn’t find nothing,” Abel said, lisping around his retracting fangs as he dressed. “Some weird marks out in the woods, but no people. All the smells are days old. Nobody’s been around.”

  “How do you want to do t
he watch?” Seth asked. “We could rotate every few hours, you and me and Trevin. Bet we could get Nash in on it, too.”

  “I’m not watching this place.”

  “Rylie said Elise is too busy to do it. We have to.”

  “No,” Abel said, more forcefully than before. “I’m not going to stay here.”

  There was something unfamiliar in his eyes—something like fear.

  Seth set the rifle on the rack behind the driver’s seat. “What’s wrong, dude? You’ve been acting weird for days.” And he had all but fled the mobile home when he had gone there with Rylie, which was more than a little unusual. No matter what Seth thought of Abel and Rylie’s relationship, he trusted his brother to take care of Rylie. He would never run when she was in potential danger. Never.

  “Shit, I don’t know.” Abel paced, bare feet slurping in and out of the mud. “This place is sick and wrong. Don’t you feel it?”

  Seth’s mouth tipped into a frown. It felt wrong to be investigating a priest for murder, but that was about it. His kopis senses didn’t feel anything around the church. “Look, you’re dealing with a lot of stress right now, man. Nobody’s going to blame you if you need to bug out for a while.”

  “It’s not stress!” he snapped. But there wasn’t the usual animosity behind his voice. Abel blew out a slow breath, folding his arms, unfolding them, fidgeting uncomfortably. “If something happens to me...”

  “Nothing’s going to happen,” Seth said.

  Abel lowered his voice. “It feels like I’m going crazy, man.”

  It must have taken him a lot to admit to that. Seth set a heavy hand on his brother’s shoulder.

  “I’ll work out shifts with Trevin,” he said.

  Abel nodded. “I’m gonna stick by Rylie. Keep an eye on her.” By which he meant, keep an eye on Elise.

  “All right,” Seth said. “Keep her in the wards as much as you can.”