Chapter 12

TWELVE

The next morning, Paris stood in the middle of a deserted parking lot, zero gravel left underfoot, just knotty roots and rambling weeds covering the small unmarked area at the edge of the woods. He strolled across the similarly deserted road to the vista overlook on the other side. He glanced right toward where the ocean should be in the distance, then left toward where Portola should be, and saw nothing in either direction but the soupy gray mist that had made their drive up this mountain a terror Paris had no desire to ever relive. "Is it always this foggy up here?" he asked Mac, who was unloading gear from the car. "This is as bad as the Canyon Lands."

"Along the ridge here, yes," Mac said, as he shut the trunk. "Especially this spot. When I was a kid, there were rumors these woods were haunted." He crossed the road to stand beside Paris and pointed down the mountain toward Portola. "There's a lake down there you can't see for the fog, but before it was a lake, it was a bustling village. It flooded in one of the wars long before the Rift, when Chaos sent fire over the mountains and Nature countered it with waves. No one survived."

"Is it actually haunted here?" Before Mac could answer, a Kraa sounded overhead, a raven soaring out of the fog and onto a nearby branch. "Liam?"

Mac nodded as more black-feathered birds filled the trees, their Kraa s and Caw s joining the chorus, until their song was drowned out by the roar of a motorcycle cresting the ridge, dislodging loose pavement from the edge of the road as it swung into the lot beside Mac's car. Paris was so distracted by the stunning vintage bike—gas-powered, a rarity—that he didn't think too hard about the familiar movements of the backseat rider as she dismounted. It wasn't until she pulled off her helmet, dark hair falling around her tan face and delicate features, that Paris recognized her.

"Shit!" He turned to run and cursed again at the cliff blocking his escape. Which one was more likely to kill him—the fall or the mountain lion shifter?

Mac grabbed him by the back of the jacket, yanking him away from the edge. "It's okay, Paris. They're family."

"She worked for my dad." He kept an eye on the woman he knew as Gail and the second woman who dismounted the bike, another shifter, he guessed, given her golden eyes and the way she moved. Some sort of canine, the power in her actions more blunt, more restrained than Gail's feline power and grace.

"No," Mac said. "She works with us and is a big reason you're still alive. She helped find you that night."

Paris didn't have to ask what night he was referring to.

"I was also on that list you gave him," Gail said as she and the other shifter approached. "You must not think I'm all bad."

"You didn't seem to want to kill me on the daily like Roni." The vampire who'd been his other keeper barely tolerated him, regularly threatening to rip his throat out with her fangs.

"She was terrible. She's also dead." Gail held out a hand to him. "Real name's Abigail."

Paris returned the shake. "Thank you for helping me."

"I wish I could have stopped him from turning you over at all."

"He didn't give you much choice, and if you had, your cover would've been blown. I get it."

"What are we doing out here?" the other shifter asked.

Abigail threw an arm over the blond's shoulders. "This is my girlfriend, Jenn. Excuse her crankiness. It runs in her family."

Jenn swatted her stomach, then turned her attention back to Mac, brow raised, expecting an answer to her earlier question. "Well..."

"We're looking for a giant's altar," Mac answered.

Faster than Paris could blink, Jenn spun out from under her girlfriend's arm and hauled ass back across the road toward the bike. "That's a nope."

Abigail flexed all that speed and grace Paris had witnessed on occasion, beating Jenn back to the bike and snatching the helmet out of her hands. "Did you never wonder why I left my pack? Why I came home with you from the bar that night and never left? Why I volunteered for the Cirillo gig?"

The longing in her voice, the sorrow in her dark eyes, made Paris's gut clench. Then his eyes widened and his breath stuttered as he realized what he was sensing, the sadness and loss in her aura—purple and indigo, black around the edges—but a center of pure green that anchored her to this place.

To Nature.

"Babe," Jenn said, likewise sensing her girlfriend's distress. She slid the helmet from her grasp, set it back on the bike, then curled an arm around her.

"One of the giants infiltrated our pack," Abigail told them. "Manipulated them into doing his and Chaos's bidding. Helping him hunt. I couldn't stay."

"And my father," Paris said, "had connections to a giant."

Abigail nodded. "At least one. Maybe the others. Maybe the one who turned my pack against who and what we are. I was determined to find out who he was. This is my fight too."

Paris approached cautiously, sensing Jenn on the protective edge and not fully trusting him yet. Fair. He raised his hands, palms out, then slowly stretched one out toward Abigail. She placed her hand in his, and he gave it a gentle squeeze. "Thank you again."

She squeezed back, the green in her aura pulsing brighter, then, swapping his hand for Jenn's, turned toward the woods. "Let's go. I know where the altar is."

Paris shouldered his backpack, stepped to the edge of the woods, then paused. "Um, as the only human here, I have to ask... Should we be worried about being attacked?"

"We've got sentries," Mac said, pointing at the corvids overhead.

"And I don't feel them here," Abigail said. "They hunt with him. They must be out of range."

Except five minutes into their trek, Paris started to hear voices. In his head. Beside him, Mac's back snapped straight and he tilted his head, an ear to the woods. "You hear that too?" Paris asked him.

He glanced over, eyes violet, and nodded. Above them, Liam croaked a plaintive call; even he sensed something amiss. Mac flashed him a two-fingered gesture, and the raven went scouting ahead. "He'll check it out," Mac said, moving closer as they followed Abigail deeper into the woods.

The voices getting louder with each step.

If he closed his eyes and opened his mind the way he had with Mac in front of the mural that day, the way the witches had been teaching him, Paris was sure he'd land in a world of violet the same color as Mac's eyes.

He reached out and tangled his fingers with Mac's, giving them a squeeze to get his attention. Are you sure she's on our side? he mouthed, asking a question he knew the answer to but hoped he was wrong.

Mac didn't hesitate to nod, and Paris swallowed hard, dreading what the voices meant, what they were going to find at the altar. Even more certain of it when Liam came sailing back through the woods to perch on Mac's shoulder, his glossy black head bowed.

A scout was no longer needed; a reaper was.

"Abigail," Mac called. "Why don't you let us go ahead?"

She spun on her heel, asking "Why?" at the same time Jenn said, "I smell smoke."

Abigail sniffed the air once, and then she was off and running, Jenn on her heels, Liam darting after them.

"Fucking coyotes," Mac said, shoving a hand through his hair. "Zero tact."

"They're dead, aren't they?" Paris said. "Abigail's pack? That's who I'm hearing."

Mac dropped his arm, then his shoulders, and all of him looked tired already. Answer enough. "Let's get you back to the car," he said. "I'll send Liam back to drive you to the cabin. I'm going to be here a while."

Paris lowered his bag and withdrew the canteen of water, taking a slug as he debated how to ask what he wanted and get the answer he wanted too. Because contrary to what he was sure Mac was going to say, he wasn't taking no for an answer. "You can help them? Even if they're not on your list?"

He offered the bottle to Mac who took a longer swallow. "It's harder to make the connection, but it's doable. I have to try. Their souls deserve peace."

"Can I help make that connection?" He took the bottle back from Mac and tucked it in the bag. "Direct the souls your way?"

"Paris, I can't ask?—"

"You're not asking." An even better approach. "I can help you, and I can maybe learn more about what happened to me and the giants' plans. This is my fight too," he said, repeating Abigail's words. He shouldered his bag and started moving again, the way Abigail and Jenn had disappeared. "Let's go."

Mac drew even with him but didn't try to stop his forward momentum. "This isn't going to be pretty."

"I know. I lived through it."

Famous last words.

Smoke was thankfully all that lingered in the air, the magical fire having reduced everything to ash, but the utter devastation had Paris falling to his knees. He hadn't been there to witness the aftermath of his own near death, and destruction was par for the course in the Canyon Lands, but the black hole that dark magic had left here—in a place of otherworldly beauty, the altar in a meadow like the one near the cabin, its view of the sky unobstructed and above the fog line—took his breath away.

And on the heels of that blow came the one in his head, all of the voices crashing into him at once, a cacophony like the one that had assaulted him on the altar in YB.

"Breathe, Paris." Mac's hand on his nape, the tug in his chest, quieted the souls a measure. "Breathe through it, tell them to hold on while I check on Abigail, and then we'll get to work. But wait for me, okay?"

Paris nodded, not about to undertake this without an anchor, not even about to argue when Mac made a flicking motion with his hand, and Liam flitted down onto Paris's shoulder. He needed the backup, but Abigail needed Mac more at the moment. "Go, I'll wait."

As he did, he tried to ignore the horror and survey the scene, like Mac the investigator would, having observed him walk through his murals the same way. The higher mound of ash that was likely where the altar had been, the smaller mounds that dotted the clearing in a semicircle, witnesses to the monster's sacrifice. Questions roiled in Paris's head along with the voices.

What had this giant done to sway these shifters to his side?

Had he died in the blast too, or was he still out there?

Were any of the pack?

Who was the human sacrifice? How many others had been sacrificed on the altar? How much power had Chaos gained as a result? How much trouble were they truly in?