Chapter 6

CHAPTER SIX

M y pack instantly fans out around me.

The elves will be able to use their panther senses to detect the oncoming threat, and Lucian and Jonah quickly respond in kind.

Strife was directly in front of me and he steps to my left as the tangle of their arms unfolds.

Riot and Rumble move farther left of Strife while Anarchy and Lucian spread out on my right with Jonah beside Lucian. They all form a protective boundary around me while giving me a full view of our surroundings.

Ahead of me, within the cave, four men prowl toward us.

Well, men might not be an entirely accurate description.

Despite myself, I shrink back a little at the sight of them.

They're all at least seven feet tall, each one naked from the waist up, wearing only black pants. Long claws extend from their fingertips, not smooth like mine, but jagged. Their eyes are fiery red and full of what appears to be literal fire, and their chests are crisscrossed with streams of lava.

They're a little reminiscent of Jonah's full jotunn form, except that these men have the teeth of beasts and the faces of hounds.

I once saw a picture of a statue of an ancient Egyptian god in one of the books my jailor had brought me while I was imprisoned. It had the body of a man and the head of a jackal.

These men look a hell of a lot like that.

Their eyes burn across me, their growls sounding beneath the shrieking wind as they come to a stop twenty paces away, each one with muscles coiled as if they're preparing to strike.

I brace for an attack, taking deep breaths and reminding myself that my pack and I have faced dragon shifters together. I'm certain that we can bring down these hounds if we need to.

Then, another figure rushes toward us from the darkness of the long tunnel.

The central two men step aside to let the newcomer through.

I recognize Hel, the Goddess of Death and the Underworld, hurrying toward us. Or, as she prefers to be called, Halle Vanguard . She is the sister of James Vanguard. Both of them used to be generals in my father's army.

That is, until my father betrayed my mother.

One half of Halle's face and body is blackened and charred, reminiscent of the black bones I exposed when I first fought her. Her eye on that side is gleaming red, a darker crimson than the eyes of the hellhounds.

Her clothing is split right down the middle, black leather on her charred side—or, as I like to think of it, her dead side. On her other side, she wears the overly sweet face of an auburn-haired pixie with bright-green eyes and fairy-like features topped off with freckles across that half of her petite nose.

Like Emil, she can change her appearance at will, and she does so now, shifting out of her half-dead-half-pixie form and becoming a regal sight in a pantsuit of deep red with impossibly high heels.

Flowing, brunette hair appears, piled on top of her head and cascading down her sides. Her skin takes on a light-brown hue while her cheekbones round out softly and her eyes become a deep, dark chocolate.

Trust me , her expression says.

"Veda!" she cries. "You survived!"

She looks almost happy to see me.

Before I went to the church to steal The Book of Dark Magic , I'd had an unpleasant encounter with Halle. She'd claimed to have been my mother's ally, but I'm still not entirely sure how much I believe of her story about the days before my pregnant mother was imprisoned.

She told me that if I survived stealing the book, I should come and find her because there is much we need to talk about.

I'm unsettled that Emil acted on Halle's invitation—especially given that I might not have.

Now, she's racing toward me, her arms outstretched as if I'm her long-lost daughter, an expression of pure joy on her regal face.

I have to remind myself that she isn't my friend.

I can probably trust her as far as I can trust Emil.

Before Halle can make it within ten paces of me, my hands fly up, my claws fully extended. "Stop!"

Halle pulls to an abrupt halt, eyeing my hands warily.

The first time she and I met, I broke her bones and very effectively cut up her face with these claws. Not that she didn't heal almost instantly. But I'm certain she remembers the damage I can do.

"Veda?" she asks. "Do we have a problem?"

"I'm not here by choice," I say.

She arches her eyebrows at me. "Well, of course you're not here by choice. Nobody visits hell because they want to. Most creatures do everything they can to avoid meeting me." She sniffs loudly. "But I did invite you to come find me. So naturally, I assumed you were here on that invitation."

Before I can respond, Emil speaks up from behind me, his voice clear and strong. "I brought her here," he says. "Without her permission."

Halle cranes her neck and narrows her eyes, her forehead creasing in a way that tells me she can't quite see him very well in the distance. Given the color of his silver hair and white clothing and the brightness of the icy storm behind him, I'm sure she's struggling to make him out. She doesn't have a wolf's perception like I do.

" You did, keeper?" she asks, her shoulders tense. "I can't help but wonder why?"

I have the same question. He was present when Halle told me to come and find her—but why he, as my enemy, would choose to bring me here is a concern.

I don't want to take my eyes off the four hellhounds, but I risk a quick glance back at Emil, hoping to discern his intentions from his expression.

He still hasn't raised his head.

"Take a look at her feet, Hel," he says, the baritone of his voice sounding like a warning now.

My feet? What the fuck is wrong with my feet?

I glance down, suddenly focusing a little to my left.

The Book of Dark Magic lies only a few paces behind my left heel.

Halle gives a soft exclamation. "What happened to the book?" she asks, her eyes wide as she appears to fixate on it.

Technically, The Book of Dark Magic belongs to her.

Because of her affinity with the underworld, she has the ability to resist its power. Like me, she is one of the few creatures who can read the book's pages and not lose her mind.

She'd protected it for millennia until her brother stole it from her and gave it to my father.

Now, I've stolen it back.

And for some reason… which I struggle to believe is related to my continued wellbeing… Emil has brought me and the book back to Halle.

Behind her, the hounds appear alarmed, all of them shuffling and glancing at each other.

Halle's question this time seems directed at me.

"What happened to the book?" I ask, opting for the simplest explanation. "I broke it."

"You… broke … it?" Halle asks.

"I clawed it apart."

It occurs to me now that none of my pack members have paid any attention to the book until this point. They all know how dangerous it is and would never willingly touch or read it.

Lucian, more than the others, understands how destructive the magic in the book can be. Our father forced Lucian to read the book to confirm what it showed about me. When I needed Lucian to recount what he saw in its pages, the memories caused him significant pain. He barely got through the retelling of them.

I suppose I expected them to immediately shrink away from it, especially now that it's been drawn to their attention.

Yet Lucian stares at the book as if he's more puzzled than anything else, his forehead puckered and lips pursed. He gives a small shake of his head. "Is that the same book? It doesn't hurt to look at it…"

Anarchy and the others wear similar expressions, even Jonah, all of them muttering quietly about the fact that it looks like an ordinary book.

"Where has its power gone?" Anarchy quietly asks, taking her eyes off Halle for a moment to bend and peer more intently at the book. When she rises, her head is tilted and her forehead is deeply creased.

My pack's reactions unsettle me even more than Halle's incredulous stare.

I'm now wondering why the book has remained in its torn-up condition. If it can alter its own form to create vines and daggers, then surely it could rearrange itself to bind itself back together?—

"No." Halle seems to get a hold of herself before she firmly shakes her head at me. "No, dearest, you can't have broken it."

Again, Emil speaks up. "She did."

Halle shakes her head harder. "Not possible. Not even remotely likely." Her speech is rapid and sharp and far jumpier than I would expect from the Goddess of Death herself. "The four books of magic have an internal power source created from magic that doesn't exist anymore."

She holds up a finger as if she's giving him a talking-to. "They can react to their surroundings, even choose to become volatile and destructive. They can change their own form, but they are inherently untouchable. They cannot be physically altered by any power that exists today?—"

"It was," Emil says. "Altered."

More than anything, I wish he'd look up because my need to understand his intentions has reached desperation levels.

Inwardly, I sigh because the reality is that even if I could see his expression, it could be a fa?ade. A visual lie. I may never be able to correctly interpret his body language ever again.

"No!" Halle snaps at him, seeming to dig in her heels. "The only way Veda could alter that book is if she?—"

Halle suddenly stops speaking and reconsiders me, her focus flashing from my claws, up to my face, and then back to my claws.

My shoulders tense at her increasingly wary expression, and my anxiety only worsens when Emil finally makes a move.

Where before I was hoping to understand his motivations, now I would prefer if he had stayed exactly where he was.

He rises from his kneeling position to his full height, his white clothing settling around his muscular form, making him appear even taller and more broad-shouldered. More imposing.

I'm half-turned toward him while attempting to keep the hounds in my sight. I'm conscious that my pack members are doing the same, each of them tense as they appear to brace for attack from both sides.

Emil lifts his head, his pale green eyes visible through the silvery strands of his hair. His focus strays to me for all of two seconds, and my body reacts in a way that I wasn't expecting.

Heat floods me. As if he reached out and ran his hand up the side of my neck and to my lips. A soft touch that contrasts sharply with the fear I should be feeling.

Emil approaches and stops a disconcertingly short three paces behind me.

Halle takes a quick step back, her face deathly pale, which is saying something for the Goddess of Death.

"That face…" Halle's voice is strained as she continues, "Keeper, why are you wearing that face?"

"Because it's mine," he says.

She swallows visibly. "But if you…" Her focus flashes to me. "And Veda…" Her focus flashes back to him. "And you…"

"Yes," he says.

I have no idea what he's confirming.

Every member of my pack appears even more confused about the conversation between Emil and Halle than they were about the book. Their tense postures tell me they aren't sure which threat to worry most about right now: the keeper, Halle, or the hounds.

I'm not sure I can, either.

The dark elves are thousands of years old. Jonah, too, is ancient. But it seems that Halle and Emil are speaking about matters that even the elves and Jonah aren't familiar with.

Halle's chest is rising and falling rapidly. She presses her hand to her heart. "Dark saints, save us all."

Her focus finally settles on me, and for a moment, her death-goddess appearance reasserts itself, her eyes turning red and her charred bones becoming visible beneath her skin.

Then, her hesitation seems to break.

"Well, then, I have no good choices." She clicks her fingers at the hounds. "Take Veda into custody. Quickly!"

"What?" The shocked exclamation leaves my lips before I chastise myself for it.

Of course, she would turn on me sooner or later, even if I don't understand exactly what has caused her to do so now.

The hounds surge forward, masses of molten muscle that remind me of how badly Jonah's power can burn me.

If these hounds are creatures of old magic—which is very possible—then their fire will hurt me as badly as light magic can.

My pack responds by taking battle stances around me. Lucian keeps his wings tucked tightly to his sides, but I take comfort from the glittering ends of each of his feathers. They're edged with stone and can be used like blades if he sweeps them through the air quickly enough.

Anarchy and her brothers all hiss like the panthers they appear to be on the verge of transforming into.

My hands fly up, claws still extended, preparing to slash at the first opportunity. If it were only me and the hounds, I'd have more room to move, but as it is, I'll need to be careful I don't hurt my allies.

At the same moment, I'm conscious of Emil crowding in behind me, as if he'll press me forward. But of course, he'll help the hounds capture me.

It's clear to me now that he brought me here to be caged.

I snarl back at Halle as her hounds close the gap far faster than I would like. "I won't go easily, Hel."

"Veda, I'm deeply sorry," she replies, the sight of tears in her eyes shocking me. "But your father was right about one thing: you should not exist."