Sacrificed in Shadow

by SM Reine

Another stiff nod.

  Seth wasn’t much for touchy-feely bullshit, where Abel was concerned. And comforting his brother was one of the last things he ever wanted to do. Abel had made no secret of the fact that he and Seth were adversaries wherever Rylie was concerned, even though Rylie had long since made her choice—and Seth hadn’t been the selection.

  But even with the Alpha between them, they were bros. It hurt Seth to see Abel looking so jacked up. If Abel felt like he was going crazy, Seth couldn’t dismiss that. Abel was an asshole, but not insane.

  “Let me take a look around,” Seth said.

  He grabbed the rifle and hung it over his shoulder as he circled the mobile homes. The priests had netted off part of their gardens, which were long since dead. It looked like there were still herbs growing inside a small plastic greenhouse out back. That was typical for witches, since they used plants as a type of sacrifice to collect energy for spells. The woman that had explained that to him, Stephanie Whyte, had used nicer terms for it—something about the circle of life. But a sacrifice was a sacrifice. Witches dealt in death. All of them.

  Seth didn’t sense anything that made him want to run and hide, so he kept shuffling along the sodden grass, heading toward the back door of the cathedral. The colors of the stained glass windows were washed out in the darkness.

  He tried the handle on the door. It was locked.

  When his hand connected with the metal, he felt a jolt up his shoulder—a shock of energy that said “demon” to his kopis senses. He had only run across demons once before Elise, but it was unforgettably unpleasant.

  Seth withdrew, glancing over his shoulder. He couldn’t see the pickup or Abel.

  Why would a cathedral feel like demons to him?

  Seth pressed a hand to the door of the church and shut his eyes, focusing on the sensations. An unsettling feeling crept over his shoulders, making his skin prickle with gooseflesh. The night suddenly felt darker. Heavier. Even heavier than it did when Elise was ghosting around as a mist, which was, until that moment, the creepiest thing that Seth had ever experienced.

  His heart struggled to beat. His mother’s voice whispered to him from the depths of memory.

  Failure, she hissed.

  Seth had a destiny, and he had failed to meet it. His mother never let him forget that. She was dead now, but her disappointment lived far beyond the grave.

  In a rush, he remembered all of the horrible things she had done to him: locking him in a basement, beating him, letting a demon break his fingers, trying to kill him and Rylie and everyone he loved so many times. The misery of the memories nearly overwhelmed him. His entire body trembled.

  You’ve failed your daddy, boy.

  Light flared. Seth pulled back from the door with a shock, stumbling in the mud.

  “What are you doing?”

  He flinched against the light, lifting a hand to shield his eyes. Someone was aiming a flashlight at him—someone whose outline looked suspiciously like a cop. Seth straightened his back, spread his jacket, pushed his rifle behind him. Hopefully, it was too dark for this woman to realize that he was packing heat.

  “I was trying to get into the church,” Seth said honestly. “It’s raining hard.”

  The flashlight dropped to his feet, and he blinked away his blurry vision. The woman standing in front of him was, judging by her badge and uniform, the sheriff. Her name tag said “Dickerson.”

  “The church is closed for a private event tonight,” Dickerson said. Her tone was flat, but not unfriendly. “You need a ride somewhere?”

  Seth shook his head. “No, sorry. I’ll go.”

  He backed away without letting her see the rifle. He made it all the way back to the truck without looking where he was going. The doors were shut, and the engine was off.

  Seth scrambled into the driver’s seat.

  “Christ,” he muttered.

  Abel was sitting on the opposite end of the bench. “What happened?”

  Seth set the rifle between them, then gripped the steering wheel. Sheriff Dickerson was still walking around the back of the church. Was she looking for something, or waiting for them to leave?

  The shock of being discovered hadn’t made him forget the horrible, miserable feelings he had experienced when touching the door. It had been like stepping into a nightmare.

  “I think you’re right, Abel,” Seth said slowly. “There’s something wrong here.”

  Even in the darkness, the vindication on his brother’s face was obvious. “Trevin’s patrolling and that pig’s watching. Let’s get out of here.”

  For once, Seth agreed with him. He wanted to put as much space between himself and that cathedral as possible.

  He put the pickup into gear and peeled onto the street.

  NINETEEN

  ELISE ARRIVED AT the sanctuary shortly after dawn. Rain was pouring from the sky as though oceans were being dumped over the mountains, which left her soaked, but protected from the sunlight. She stopped the motorcycle on the top of the hill, looking down at the people in the streets of the sanctuary. They were continuing to build the cottages under tarp awnings despite the weather.

  There had to be at least forty werewolves down there. Forty. That was a lot more than Elise had ever expected to find of a supposedly endangered species.

  She kicked off and headed into the valley.

  Seth and Nashriel were working side-by-side, shirts off and muscular backs glistening with rain. It was strange to see an angel getting into physical labor. Angels were intellectual creatures, and much more likely to be found behind the desk at a university than with a hammer in hand. But Nashriel was on top of the bare skeleton of what would become a cottage, hammering with abandon, and he gleamed with sweat and rain like his skin was encrusted with diamonds.

  They looked up at the sound of the motorcycle. Elise approached them on a low gear, and the engine purred underneath her like a wildcat.

  “What are you doing here?” Seth asked, wiping sweat off of his forehead. Elise would have had to be a lesbian or dead not to notice how appealing he looked while shirtless. He carried the muscles of a kopis well on a small-boned frame, and his shaven chest glistened with moisture.

  “I’m looking for Rylie,” Elise said.

  He appraised her with narrowed eyes, scratching the back of his neck. He probably didn’t even realize that he was reacting to Elise’s infernal energy. “Is everything okay?”

  Was everything okay? She studied Seth even as he studied her, wondering what it was about this young man that James thought might attract Elise’s less-than-favorable attentions. “Nothing new is wrong. Where is she?” Elise asked.

  Seth gestured with the hammer. “By the lake. I’ll show you.”

  “Don’t let me interrupt you.” She revved the engine and swung around the cottage. Nashriel’s eyes all but burned a hole in the back of her shirt as she wound down the path to the lake.

  The pack stopped working as Elise cut through them, watching her passage with apprehension clear on their faces. She didn’t give them long to look. She accelerated, leaving the silence behind her.

  Rylie stood on the grassy shore facing the waterfall, relaxing in the mist with her head tipped back and her eyes closed. It was strangely calm in the field between the lake and the back side of the cabins.

  Elise stopped at the bottom of the path and dismounted from the motorcycle.

  “I need a favor, Rylie,” she said. “The deputy—”

  “Can you help me with this?” Rylie interrupted, turning to face Elise.

  She wasn’t just standing around after all. She had been momentarily resting, leaning on the handles of a post hole digger. Once Elise knew to look, she saw the supplies, too. Rylie had a stack of fence posts hidden behind the bushes. There were pegs in the earth with string stretched between them, marking where she planned to build. She had already built half of a split-rail fence around the back side of the sanctuary.

  Elise hadn’t pegged Rylie, with her col
tish legs and delicate bones, as someone that would get her hands dirty. But she had worked up as much of a sweat as Nashriel and Seth. Her shirt stuck to her back, and the knees of her baggy jeans were muddy. Rylie didn’t even have an awning to protect herself from the rain.

  “Sure, I’ll help,” Elise said, shrugging off her jacket and taking the post hole digger.

  “I used to work at my aunt’s ranch, when she still had one,” Rylie explained as she hefted a post over her shoulder, carrying it back to the hole Elise began to dig. “We kept a few hundred heads of cattle. Cows are cleverer than you’d think—they can be real escape artists. There were always fences to fix. You’d think I’d be used to how boring it is by now, but it’s still as miserable as it’s always been.”

  “Why doesn’t your aunt have a ranch now?” Elise asked.

  “We started using it as a werewolf sanctuary, and the Union raided us. She’s living in the city with her girlfriend now.” Rylie jammed the post into the hole and grabbed a shovel. “It’s probably better for a zombie to avoid hard work anyway. She’d break herself.”

  Rylie scooped soil into the hole around the post.

  “Zombie?” Elise asked.

  “Diversity, thy name is my family,” Rylie said.

  “I assume you’re counting Nashriel among your family.”

  “Call him Nash. ‘Nashriel’ is too weird,” she said. “And yeah. He’s my…” She hesitated. “Actually, I don’t know what to call him. But he’s definitely pack.”

  “Family,” Elise said. Rylie gave her a confused look. “You said ‘pack.’ I think you mean family.”

  “Same thing,” Rylie said. “You know what’s nice about pack? We all work together. We’ve got each other’s backs. We pull in the same direction.”

  “Are you trying to tell me something?”

  Rylie shrugged. Laughed. “Nothing, really. Just babbling. I am so stupidly bored of building this fence.”

  Elise placed the next post, and then they set the joining rails together.

  “What were you going to say about the deputy?” Rylie asked as Elise started to dig the next hole.

  “He’s in danger. I need somewhere to hide him. Since you know the area, I thought you might have suggestions.”

  “Bring him here,” she said.

  Elise lifted an eyebrow. “Aren’t you worried about danger following him here?”

  “Not really. You saw the pentacles we have on our cottages, right? We’re warded against unwelcome people sneaking in.”

  “Like I did?” Elise asked.

  “We carried you into the sanctuary, past the barriers, on your first visit,” Rylie said. “Otherwise, you never would have gotten in.”

  “Pretty powerful wards.”

  “We have powerful friends,” Rylie agreed.

  Elise’s eyes narrowed. “The witches that helped you—what coven did they come from?”

  “The Half Moon Coven. They’re based in California.” She waved in a vaguely westerly direction. “Two of my wolves, Bekah and Levi—their dad was with that coven. They hooked us up with some of their friends, and they did all the wards here. Why do you ask?”

  She had been worrying that James had placed the wards, but his coven was from Boulder. If the wards were strong enough to keep someone like Elise out, then maybe it could stand up to James and a murderous cult, too.

  Lincoln wasn’t going to love the idea of staying with a group of werewolves, but it seemed like the safest place in the area.

  “Do you have any spare cabins?” Elise asked.

  Rylie blushed a little when she smiled. “Of course. Like my aunt says, there’s always room for friends.”

  Surprise jolted through Elise. Friends?

  “Hey!”

  Rylie and Elise turned. Abel stood at the top of the path, waving at them to catch their attention.

  “What’s up?” Rylie asked, setting down the shovel.

  “Trevin called,” Abel said. “Father Armstrong is home.”

  The clouds began to thin dangerously, so Elise decided to join Seth in the pickup instead of taking the motorcycle. Being confined to the roads made her feel helplessly slow in comparison to the werewolves sprinting alongside the truck.

  “What are you, anyway?” Seth asked, shooting Elise looks out of the corner of his eye as he steered over the twisting mountain road. “If you don’t mind me asking.”

  Elise massaged her forehead, trying to stave off a developing headache. The clouds were patchy enough that she had to pull a jacket over herself to shield her skin from errant sunlight. “I don’t know. What are you, Seth?”

  He laughed. “I’m just some guy.”

  James wouldn’t have had any interest in “just some guy.” And, for that matter, “just some guy” wouldn’t be the only human in a pack of werewolves. There was something there, something beyond his kopis nature that Elise wasn’t seeing.

  “So you’re an ordinary demon hunter,” Elise said.

  “Werewolf hunter, actually,” he said. She gave him a questioning look. “That’s my specialty. Werewolves. Grew up killing them. Dad was the expert.”

  That was why his name was familiar. “You’re Lucian Wilder’s son? The guy who wrote the manual on werewolf hunting?”

  Seth seemed to be as fond of having his father’s memory invoked as Elise was to talk about her own father. He focused hard on the road. “My dad’s accomplishments don’t define me. Like I said—I’m just some guy.”

  Wolves flashed through the trees ahead of them. He accelerated to keep up.

  “Doesn’t tell me what you are, though,” he added.

  Elise ignored him.

  Rylie and Abel, both in their wolf forms, darted behind Father Armstrong’s mobile home as soon as Seth pulled up in front of it. If Elise hadn’t known they were there, she wouldn’t have been able to see them. Aside from the gentle buzz of werewolf energy tickling at the back of her skull, they were invisible.

  “Where’s this Trevin?” Elise asked.

  Seth jerked his chin toward the forest as he pulled his rifle off of the rack, slipping shells into it. “Gray wolf. That way.” If Trevin really was there, then he was equally as impossible to see as the Alphas.

  “How can you tell?” Elise asked.

  “You learn to see them after a while,” he said.

  She couldn’t see the wolves, but she could see motion inside Father Armstrong’s mobile home. She stretched her senses out and tasted two heartbeats inside, both of them young and hale. They were standing near the place the Bible had been in the living room. Rylie stealing it must have tripped some kind of alarm.

  Seth unlocked his door, but Elise grabbed his arm.

  “Wait,” she said. “Not yet.”

  He gripped the rifle tightly. “But he’s right there. We can get him now.”

  She didn’t want to get Father Armstrong now. She wanted to get every single person responsible for those ruined bodies in the morgue. And, maybe more importantly, she wanted to find the person responsible for Lucinde Ramirez.

  “Pull the truck off that way,” Elise said, indicating a copse of trees. “I want to see where Father Armstrong goes when he leaves.”

  Seth did as she asked. They sat under the shade of the trees for several silent minutes, and Elise never saw a single flick of a werewolf tail, even though she sensed that they were somewhere beyond her line of sight.

  Father Armstrong emerged from the mobile home fifteen minutes later. Elise was disappointed to realize that it was a man at his side. She had been hoping that it would be the coroner, Dr. Stephanie Armstrong.

  “Who is that?” Seth asked. “I think I recognize him.”

  Elise narrowed her eyes, watching the man move through the sunlight. He was brown-haired with tan skin, an average build. She thought that she recognized him, too. Maybe he had a common face—she hadn’t exactly become familiar with many citizens of Northgate in the three days she had spent in town.

  The men walked from
the mobile home to Father Armstrong’s sedan, oblivious to the fact that they were being watched. Father Armstrong looked angry. He kept gesturing, pumping his fists, cheeks flushed with blood. He wasn’t wearing a cassock anymore. He could have been anybody off of the street in his jeans and blue t-shirt. Elise was tempted to roll down the pickup’s window to listen to the conversation, but she didn’t want to lose what little protection the glass provided from the sun.

  They got into the car, started the engine.

  “Follow them,” Elise said.

  They waited a few seconds before following the sedan onto the road. Seth kept a couple of car lengths behind them as Father Armstrong drove through Northgate without stopping, then took a road higher into the mountains.

  Elise craned around to watch the road behind them, searching for any sign of Rylie and Abel on the heavily-forested shoulders. “They’re there,” Seth said.

  “I don’t see them.”

  He gave her a half-smile. “You wouldn’t.”

  Traffic thinned as they took increasingly deserted roads, and Seth had to fall back to keep the priest from realizing that he was being followed. But he let the sedan get too much of a lead. They lost sight of Father Armstrong around a curve, and when they reached a straight part of the road, it was empty.

  Father Armstrong was gone.

  “Shit,” Seth said. “Where did he go?”

  “Turn back,” Elise said. He flipped a u-turn and backtracked slower than before. A turnoff was concealed within the shrubbery on the curve. “That way.”

  Seth decelerated, guiding the truck over the bumpy shoulder and onto a dirt road that cut through the mountain. The trees were thick. Elise dropped the jacket from her legs.

  After a few minutes, the road opened into a small clearing between the trees. A cabin stood snugly against the face of the mountain, with a decorative well out front and a well-tended garden along the side. There was even an above-ground swimming pool surrounded by a deck.

  “Doesn’t exactly scream ‘evil cult,’” Seth said.

  Elise had to agree. If not for the list and the weird Bible, she might have thought that Father Armstrong was just trying to go on a fishing trip.