by Deanna Chase
She lashed out, punching the invisible wall of magic, and the contact shocked through her entire body. She tasted blood, burning leaves, and the familiar electric zing of James’s power. It punched back, harder than she had, and she stumbled. But it didn’t stop her from hitting it again.
Elise was screaming—screaming with pain, with rage—because there were no words to contain her hate. Her roar rattled the sky.
When she pulled back for another strike, James caught her fist.
He stepped easily through the wards and kept walking, using his grip on her hand to shove her back against the tree, safely distant from the unfriendly magic.
“Damn it, Elise, stop hurting yourself!”
She twisted free and swung. Her knuckles connected with his jaw. The crack of bone on bone was more satisfying than any sound she had ever heard, and she was instantly addicted.
Elise struck out again. James ducked, letting it blow over his head without contacting.
She kneed his lowered face. His grunt fed years of revenge fantasies.
But he didn’t let her strike again. His hands closed on her arms, pinning them to her sides. Magic crackled through his gloves. Her ears buzzed, she smelled copper, and her vision blurred. It was as hard as getting struck by the wards—no, even harder.
The back of her head smacked into the tree. James held her against it, chest heaving with exertion. “The pack was fine when I last checked on them,” James said.
“Do you think I’m lying?”
“I think you have an agenda.”
“Let me in, goddammit,” Elise said. “They’re dying!”
“Even if that were the truth, you can’t tell me that you care.”
“You have no clue what I care about, Faulkner!”
A long pause.
Her vision cleared, and she realized his face was inches from hers. His breath smelled of icy-cool breath mints. Hurt touched his eyes, tilting them down at the corners. “‘Faulkner’? Are we on last-name terms now?”
She fisted her hands in his shirt. She would have preferred to grab him by the throat, but his grip on her biceps kept her from being able to reach that high. Elise let her fingernails bite into his waist instead. She hoped it hurt. “There have been serial killings. It is—was—the work of a cult. They summoned a demon to possess Lincoln, and he’s inside the wards. You have to let me in to stop him.”
James’s jaw tensed. “This is about Lincoln?”
Perfect fucking timing to get jealous. “This is about Lincoln being possessed by a demon and killing innocents!”
His gaze roved over Elise’s face. Without his warding ring on his finger—she could see the metal shining in the neck of his shirt, hanging from a chain—the protections between their minds were fragile enough that he might be able to force his way into her head.
They didn’t get time to find out. A body crashed through the trees. Seth appeared, sweaty and breathless, rifle drawn.
He stopped at the sight of Elise backed against a tree by James.
“Did you already stop him?” he asked, brow furrowing, fingers tensing on the trigger.
Elise shoved James away. It was easier to think without his hands on her. “I can’t get through the wards. How did you know what happened to Lincoln? I didn’t tell Rylie.”
“Crystal called me,” Seth said, every muscle in his body taut. His eyes flicked between them. “I don’t know why you’re here, James, or why Elise can’t get in, but they’re under attack. Lincoln was asleep in one of the cottages and came out shooting with silver bullets. Crystal said that Nash had him pinned, but wasn’t sure how long he could hold him.”
It was exactly as Elise had feared. Lincoln was probably a good shot—she had a hard time imagining that he could be bad at anything he set his mind to—but she hoped the demon was clumsy on the trigger. Anything to waste those twelve bullets and prevent them from hurting the pack.
“Go,” Elise said. “Stop him.”
Seth broke through the magical barrier without so much as a misstep. Elise’s frustration only grew as she watched his back retreating into the night, unable to follow.
She faced James. “Let me in,” Elise said, enunciating each syllable carefully.
“I can’t,” he said finally, reluctantly. “I just finished reinforcing the spells protecting the sanctuary. It would take a few hours to disassemble them again.”
They didn’t have hours.
Elise fisted his collar, jerking his face down to her level. “If anyone dies, it’s your fault.”
James didn’t try to argue with her. His heart was pounding, and she could taste it thick on her tongue, like pressing her mouth to the pulse leaping in his throat. His expression said nothing, but his body betrayed him: the flush of heat on his cheeks, the spark of neurons, the thrill of adrenaline burning hot in the air between them.
He wouldn’t be able to see her physical cues as acutely as she did with demon senses, but he didn’t need to. James had known her since she was sixteen. Barely out of childhood. No matter how schooled she kept her features, something would betray her.
His hands wandered from her shoulders to her hips, tracing her body with a familiarity that he didn’t deserve. He had seen every inch of her before, touched her, tasted her, and she instinctively reacted to it. Her nipples hardened, even as she rolled her fingers into a fist. She tensed her hand. Knuckles popped.
“Don’t touch me, Faulkner,” she said.
James cupped her chin. “Don’t call me that. It’s ridiculous.”
“Get unraveling. Open the wards. The sooner, the better.”
He didn’t seem to be interested in having that argument again. He tugged her hips so that she had to step closer to him.
Elise saw the thought budding in his eyes before he said it. He was thinking about that again. The betrayal.
“Don’t start,” she hissed.
It was too late.
“I have no excuses for what I did to you, Elise,” James said softly. “I won’t even attempt to formulate any such thing. I also won’t apologize again—not to spare my nonexistent dignity, but because it’s insulting to presume that words could make up for my actions. All I can say is that you have never strayed from the forefront of my mind. Even for the three years you avoided me. Even now, when we are at odds.”
She captured his head in her hands, fingertips digging into the nape of his neck, thumbs framing his face. For an instant, she entertained the thought of ripping his skull from his neck. “If you love me, then why would you think that I’d hurt Seth and Abel?”
“Because once you know the truth, you will,” James said.
“What truth?” she asked. He tried to look away, but she held his head captive. “What don’t I know, James?”
He dragged her body against his, arm clamped around the small of her back. “No, Elise,” he said. His breath was hot against her cheek.
“No what?” she asked, voice thick with frustration.
James kissed her, plunging his tongue into her mouth, exploring its recesses. His free hand slid up the hem of her shirt, flattened over her ribs.
Her knees still weakened, her muscles liquefied, and her skin flushed with heat.
Three years, and she still couldn’t resist him.
The first time that Elise had tried to kiss James—when she was eighteen years old, on a beach in Denmark, shortly after they had bonded as kopis and aspis—he had rejected her. She had wished she could die after that.
The next time that they had kissed, she thought that she might die, but of happiness.
This time, she was just fucking pissed.
Elise bit his tongue. Hard.
He twitched back in shock, but his hands only gripped her harder, holding her against his chest. It was probably as much self-defense as it was from passion. Elise couldn’t get up as much momentum to punch him the way he deserved when she was pinned to his body.
She flashed into darkness, out of the circle of his arms,
and reappeared behind him.
James turned too slowly. She rammed her elbow into his kidneys. He stumbled, and she grabbed the back of his head, using his momentum to slam his face into the tree trunk.
Magic flared. He threw a hand behind him, lobbing electricity in her direction. Elise side-stepped it easily, but her heart skipped a beat.
When had James learned to throw magic without a single written symbol?
He spun, tossing another one at her—a blast of air that flung her to the ground in a shower of dry leaves. Elise disappeared, reappearing on her feet, and swung a roundhouse kick at his head.
James ducked, seized her ankle. He jerked her off-balance. Caught her before she fell.
He kissed her again, harder than before, with a hand on her throat and the other clutching her back. She still felt faintly bruised where Rylie had bitten her, and he seemed to know just where to press hardest to make her shiver. God, it was good. She groaned into his mouth despite herself.
If not for her subconscious screaming a reminder that there was danger in the air, Elise might have surrendered. But Lincoln had been seized by a demon, and he had twelve silver bullets. He could commit twelve murders in a pack of innocent werewolves.
And Elise was kissing the man that had damned her to Heaven.
When she jumped away again, it was into the shadow of trees twenty feet away, on top of a pile of rocks—well out of James’s reach.
Elise couldn’t seem to breathe. Luckily, James didn’t chase her.
“Do what you need to satisfy your urges,” he said, wiping the blood off of his lip. It glistened black in the night. His tongue must have been bleeding. Good. “It changes nothing. Lincoln means nothing. When all of this is over, I will find a way to earn your forgiveness.”
Elise rubbed her wrist over her bruised lips, wishing that she could wipe away the evidence of their kiss—and all of the feelings that had come with it. It was so much easier to hate him when she wasn’t yearning for him to touch her again.
“I will never stop hating you,” she said fiercely. And the way his body made her feel only made Elise hate him more.
“Never means nothing in the span of eternity,” he said.
He turned and walked away—damn him, he walked away, like it was so easy for him to leave her behind with no way to enter the sanctuary. The wards yielded to him effortlessly. She felt the sting of magic when he passed.
“James,” she called. He ignored her. “James!”
“I’ll protect the pack. Don’t worry,” he called over his shoulder.
By which he meant, he would protect Seth and Abel, who he cared about more than Elise at the moment. But why? He had jammed his tongue down her throat, but didn’t have the decency to explain his lunacy.
James broke into a jog, ignoring her shouts.
Magic flared in the forest, sucking all of the oxygen out of her lungs and silencing her voice. Elise grasped her throat, stumbling.
That wasn’t James’s magic—his spells had never had that kind of heat behind them. His power was the kiss of rain, an autumn breeze. This was boiling summer heat in the Sahara.
Elise spun to search for the source and saw a beam of light lancing through the sky. It only lasted for a heartbeat before vanishing.
It had been centered over Northgate.
Someone in the cult had survived, and they were casting another spell.
She cast one more furious glare at the wards. She couldn’t save the pack, couldn’t exorcise Lincoln, couldn’t even walk six feet west without falling on her ass. But she could finish the cult.
Elise leaped into the sky.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
There was only one place in the world that Seth considered to be home, and it was the Gresham Ranch. The faintest whiff of brewing coffee could bring the memories back to him in a heartbeat: the long hours he spent repairing fences, digging trenches, moving cattle, shoveling the paths in the cold winter sun. It had been his first real job. The place that he had been safe with Rylie, most of the time. Somewhere that everyone loved and respected him.
The Gresham Ranch was gone. The Union had seized it, from the back forty acres to the rickety mailbox that had been kicked over in a fit of werewolf anger at least six times. They had said it was a case of eminent domain. In truth, it was a case of control, and the Union’s frustration that they had continually failed to possess the pack that the ranch sheltered.
The Union had taken the ranch, but they couldn’t take the memories. And those memories couldn’t be replaced, either.
But anywhere Abel and Rylie were, Seth could make into a home, whether it be a strip motel or a sanctuary deep in the mountains. They’d spent weeks constructing cottages to the specifications of their future inhabitants, hammering and painting and furnishing, and Seth had poured enough sweat into the sanctuary that he probably could have filled the lake with it. It wasn’t home—not yet—but he was damn proud of what he had accomplished, not to mention what it represented for the future of the endangered werewolf species.
Which was why his heart shattered when he saw the cottages burning, and Lincoln standing in the center of town with flames rippling off of his skin.
He didn’t look anything like the deputy that Seth had shared a beer with earlier that night. If not for the familiar close-cropped hair and football shoulders, he might have thought that a monster had walked straight into the sanctuary.
Veins bulged from Lincoln’s exposed skin, like he had shot adrenaline straight into his heart, and blood streamed down his cheeks. A black symbol swam in the center of his forehead, just under the surface: a demonic sigil.
There was a gun in his hand and a body crumpled at his feet. One wolf already down.
Crystal’s guess had been right. Lincoln was possessed by a demon.
And now he was aiming a handgun loaded with silver rounds at Trevin.
The werewolf was rushing between cottages, head low, arms pumping. It looked like he had ripped debris away from where it blocked the door to one burning cottage, allowing the inhabitants to escape. He was making himself a diversion. A diversion that Seth fully intended to utilize.
Seth shouldered his rifle, centered the sights on the upper right quadrant of Lincoln’s chest, and squeezed the trigger.
The shot slammed into Lincoln with a spray of blood, pouring from the wound with more force than a garden hose. His blood pressure was high, too high, and it spurted with every pulse of his heart.
Lincoln turned slowly, bloody eyes zeroing in on Seth a hundred feet away.
The blood slowed. The wound closed.
Seth expected—even hoped—that Lincoln would fire the pistol at him, wasting silver rounds on someone that wouldn’t be poisoned by the shot. But he dropped the gun and raised his free hand, fingers spread, palm facing Seth.
“Kopis,” he said. Lincoln’s voice was ragged, like his throat had been chewed by a saw.
Terror gripped Seth. His heart hammered, his head swam, and his vision hazed.
Lincoln’s going to kill me. I’m going to die out here. Everyone’s going to die.
And somewhere below that, he heard his mother’s voice again.
Failure.
Seth fired another shot, even though he couldn’t see. The slug went wild. Lincoln laughed, low and throaty.
Through the haze, Seth could see the deputy approaching, sauntering toward him with gently-swaying hips, as if he were used to having curves. Lincoln stepped over the body at his feet easily. It wasn’t a wolf—it was Nash, hands clutching his chest, gray-tinged blood pouring over his fingers. He had taken a bullet to protect the pack, and it looked like he was down for the count.
Summer had left Nash behind to protect them. Now Nash was unconscious.
If this thing could take an angel, then what chance did Seth stand?
Failure, his mother whispered again.
The fire on the roof of the cottage behind Lincoln touched an electrical box. An explosion flared behind him,
briefly lighting up his silhouette—in the shape of a woman. Seth thought that he glimpsed a bikini of bones, a wide grin with a serpent tongue, but the vision faded immediately.
That’s not Lincoln.
“Come here, kopis,” Lincoln said. He almost sounded sultry.
A second explosion. Seth whirled to see that another cottage had caught fire, even though the other burning buildings weren’t anywhere nearby. Where Lincoln walked, flames followed.
The entire sanctuary was going to burn down.
Seth would burn to death.
He could imagine it now with perfect clarity: gagging on smoke, the moisture evaporating from his eye sockets, skin melting. Seth screamed and tried to leap from the fire. The rifle flew from his hands. His back hit the ground.
Lincoln stood over him laughing. The sound struck fear deep into Seth’s heart.
The deputy stooped, and when he rose again, the rifle was in his hands. He wasn’t going to waste a silver bullet on Seth. He didn’t need to.
Need to stand, need to fight back…
Failure…
But he couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t even move. The terror ripped from him in dry, wracking sobs, the tearless kind that shook his entire body.
“Such a shame,” the demon purred through Lincoln’s mouth. “This is a pretty one.”
I’m going to die.
But a man slammed into Lincoln’s side, knocking him over. The rifle discharged into the air.
“Get it!” Trevin shouted, holding Lincoln down.
The instant that he had struck Lincoln, the fear had lifted from Seth’s mind. It was still lingering, but not debilitating. He could breathe.
His eyes focused on the rifle a few feet away. Seth scrambled for it.
Trevin couldn’t change, not without Rylie or Abel’s help—he wasn’t an Alpha. But his human form was nothing to laugh at, either. He hurled all of his strength into each punch across Lincoln’s face, snapping his head from side to side, sending blood spraying across the road that Seth had paved himself.
With a thunderous growl, Lincoln kicked Trevin off of him. The werewolf went flying. He punched through the wall of the nearest cottage, and half of the burning roof collapsed on him.