Sacrificed in Shadow (36 page)
Read Sacrificed in Shadow Online
Authors: Sm Reine
“I think this is yours, too,” he said, holding up something small and metal.
It was a plain gold ring. Elise spread the fingers of her right hand and found them bare.
She wasn’t wearing her warding ring, but James’s mind was closed off to her. He must have been wearing his. He had finally given her what she had wanted: to be left alone. But she didn’t want him leaving her alone now. She wanted to know where he had gone so that she could kick the teeth out of his handsome face.
“Thanks,” she said. She didn’t put the ring back on her finger. She unclasped the chain of charms and dropped it among the crosses and pentagrams, then affixed the necklace around her throat.
“Have fun in Northgate?” Anthony asked, sauntering away from the mountains toward McIntyre’s trailer. She followed.
“You have no idea,” she said.
“Kill the bad guys?”
“Mostly.”
“Is everyone safe?” he asked.
She opened her mouth to say “yes,” and then shut it. Elise wasn’t sure. “I don’t know,” she said. “You said it’s almost midnight?” He nodded. Plenty of time to skip ahead three time zones and pay a visit to the pack. “I need to go back.”
Anthony hesitated mid-step. “For Lincoln?”
“Is that a problem?”
“Nah,” he said. “Guess not. Call me if you’re going to go mysteriously missing again, though. Dana and Deb were worried about you.”
Elise managed a faint smile. “Only the kids?”
“Leticia, too.” Anthony wasn’t going to admit that he had missed her. It didn’t matter. She could see it in his eyes.
She nodded once, then returned to Northgate one final time.
Elise still couldn’t
enter the werewolf sanctuary, no matter how many times she threw herself at it. James’s wards were as merciless as ever. Maybe it was her imagination, but they seemed to slap her down harder every time she lunged at them, like they were trying to convince her to stop.
They succeeded. She ended up pacing along the place that the border of the wards intersected with the road, glaring at the sparks of magic helplessly.
A significant amount of time seemed to have passed since her last visit to the sanctuary, although she had no sense of how much, exactly. The branches were bare of all their colorful leaves, making the forest look like endless hills of gray skeletons. The wind carried the bite of winter.
How had James drawn those new runes? She used to be able to cast his paper spells if he made them first. Maybe, if she could figure out his newest magics, she could break the wards herself.
But she didn’t need to. A motorcycle buzzed up the road, heading out of the sanctuary.
Elise stepped into its path. It stopped a foot away from her.
The man on the front of the bike flipped up helmet’s visor. “Elise?” It was Seth, wearing a leather jacket and a pair of distressed jeans.
She pressed her lips into a thin line without responding. She searched the sliver of his face for some hint of resemblance to Adam—some small indication that the blood of the first man was somewhere in his lineage. Maybe his eyes had that easy-going kindness that Adam used to have, before he became God. He was as handsome as Adam, though in a completely different way.
No, the blood of God had been changed throughout the millennia. They looked nothing alike.
But he had opened Eden. Appearances aside, the blood ran true.
“Hi,” Elise said curtly.
The woman on the back of the bike—sidesaddle, no less—wasn’t wearing a helmet. It would take a lot more to kill an Alpha werewolf than a crash in traffic. Rylie dropped her grip on Seth’s waist and stood.
“Oh my God,” she said. “I thought that you were dead.”
“Not yet. How long has it been?”
“Three weeks,” Rylie said. She swallowed hard. “Almost four, actually, since the fight in Northgate.”
Dread pooled in Elise’s gut. No wonder they had given her up for dead.
“How many fatalities?” Elise asked.
“If you’re asking about the pack? None,” Rylie said.
Seth pulled his helmet off and held it under one arm. His hair stuck up on the side. “We got lucky. Nash took three of Lincoln’s bullets before James drove him away, and he’s healing. Summer’s babying him. He loves it, of course.”
“Sir Lumpy’s tail got singed in the fires, too,” Rylie added. “He’s extra cranky now. But Trevin bounced back from his wounds pretty much overnight.” She gave a shaky smile. “The cottages took a lot of damage. We’re still rebuilding.”
Elise frowned. “What about outside the pack? Northgate was burning.” Seth just shrugged. Rylie didn’t meet Elise’s eyes. It must have been bad if they didn’t want to tell her. She could always check the news later, if she wanted the bad news. “And Lincoln?”
“No sight of him since,” Seth said.
After a month, Elise didn’t even know where to begin hunting for him.
“I should return to Vegas and figure out how to find Lincoln, but I don’t need to leave right now,” Elise said. “I could help you rebuild the cottages.”
Rylie and Seth exchanged looks.
“I forgot something back home. I’ll be back in a minute,” he said. He jammed the helmet on again, muffling his voice. “Good to see you’re alive, Elise.”
He kicked the motorcycle into gear, turned a one-eighty, and rumbled out of sight. Elise watched his headlights dwindle into the distance.
Rylie smoothed her hair, which was wind-whipped and tangled. “Want to walk for a minute?”
“No,” Elise said.
“Oh. Right. Okay.” Rylie took a deep breath. “I appreciate your offer of help, but the pack’s agreed not to let anyone into the wards again. Nobody but pack can enter. If we hadn’t let Lincoln in, we wouldn’t have taken so much damage. And it could have been worse, you know. So…nothing personal, but…”
But Seth, or Abel, or one of Rylie’s other trusted advisors had decided that Elise wasn’t trustworthy.
“James can still get into the sanctuary,” Elise said.
“Actually, Stephanie fixed the wards to block him out, too. Just pack. I mean it.” Rylie scuffed her shoe against the path. “It’s not like we’re trying to keep you out, specifically.” Except that they were.
“Stephanie’s fine, then.”
“Not really. She’s pretty beat up.” Rylie shrugged. “We’re working on it.”
Elise narrowed her eyes. “Has Seth decided to help James open the doors?”
“No! No, he wants to stay out of it,” Rylie said. “But if he did decide to help James, would you…?”
Would you kill him?
The unfinished question hovered in the cold night air between them.
Elise was very tempted to give Rylie the “no” that she wanted, even though it would be a lie. Elise
would
kill Seth if that was what it took to keep the doors to Eden shut and James out of the Origin. One lie was nothing in comparison to what Elise would do to protect Eden.
But she said, “Seth’s smart enough to stay out of it. I don’t want to hurt you or anyone in your pack.”
Rylie winced. “Oh.”
“You should realize that James will be back. I could do more for your pack than rebuilding a few cottages. I’d be a good ally to have.”
The werewolf focused harder on the toes of her hiking boots. “Yeah. I guess I’ll keep that in mind.”
That was the end of the conversation. They shared some niceties for a few minutes, which Elise found to be terribly mind-numbing—something about ordering new roofs, digging another well, clearing defensible space in case of future fires. Small talk wasn’t her strong suit.
She was spared from having to discuss the benefits of metal roofing versus shingles by the approach of a pickup with a camper shell, which stopped inside the wards.
Seth jumped out of the driver’s seat. Elise was surprised to see him again—she had thought that he had only been making excuses to reenter the safety of the wards.
“Still want the dog?” he asked, jerking his thumb at the camper shell.
Elise lifted an eyebrow. “You kept him?”
“What else would we have done?” Rylie asked as Seth rounded the truck.
“I expected you to have put him down.”
She laughed. “If I put down every dangerous dog that ended up on my doorstep, I wouldn’t have a pack.”
Seth wrestled Ace out of the back of the truck. After a month of the pack’s tender loving care, he was still muzzled, but he wasn’t trying to bite anymore. He was straining at the chain like he was eager to go for a walk.
Rylie brought him through the wards to Elise. The Alpha didn’t have to fight against Ace. One hard stare with golden eyes, and he flattened his belly to the path.
Elise took the chain. It felt satisfyingly solid in her hand. She tried to stroke the top of Ace’s head, but he whipped around and snapped through the muzzle. So much for gratitude.
“We’ve got him eating kibble, finally,” Rylie said. “And we’ve walked him every day, even though he tries to eat anyone who ends up on the wrong end of his leash.” She pulled a face. “Well, except me and Nash, but
nobody
dares to bite Nash.”
“Thanks,” Elise said. “Really.” She didn’t have to fake her gratitude. Ace might not have been happy to see her, but she was weirdly, genuinely happy to see him.
“It’s the least we could do, since you stopped the cult and all. That’s stupid, right? Thanking you for killing something like thirteen people? But it means a lot to the pack. You’ve kept us safe.”
Safe for now, maybe. It was only illusion. James
would
be back for Seth and Abel, most likely sooner rather than later. And when he came back, so would Elise.
She gazed at the young Alpha, frustration growing in her gut. A pack of werewolves could be excellent allies. Despite appearances, Rylie was fierce, and her pack loved her. They could be priceless in the battles to come.
Yet lines had been drawn, and Elise clearly wasn’t on the same side as the pack.
One more thing that James had taken from her. Might as well add it to the list.
“Contact me if you see Lincoln or James,” Elise said, which was somewhat less threatening than saying,
Call me when the crazy witch-angel comes to bleed your boyfriends.
“Okay,” Rylie said. “I will.”
With a wave goodbye, Rylie stepped back into the wards with Seth…and out of Elise’s reach.
DEAR READER,
AS you can probably guess, this isn’t the end of the series! The next book,
Oaths of Blood
, will be available around October 2013. Rylie and Elise will be teaming up again!
If you’d like to know when Oaths of Blood comes out, visit
my website
to sign up for my
new release email alerts
. I hope you’ll also leave a review with your thoughts on the site where you bought the book—this is my favorite novel to date, and I can’t wait to hear what you think of it!
Side note: Ace’s appearance is based on an American Staffordshire Terrier that used to be in my life. Unfortunately, the family that owned her decided to euthanize rather than help her through her anxieties, and I didn’t learn in time to save her. Writing Ace is helping me come to terms with that tragedy. Pit bulls are fantastic dogs, but all too frequently victims of abuse and unprepared owners. If you don’t have room in your life to adopt one like Elise has, please consider donating to a local rescue that rehabilitates the survivors. You don’t need super powers to be a hero!
Thanks so much for your ongoing support. Happy reading!
Sara (SM Reine)