Chapter 12

Ava

I thought I was done for, but I didn’t know if it felt any better to watch Lucius fight Calder. My heart was in my throat the entire time. Lucius had told me he could die, and I could see that unlike the bear, coyote, and wolves he was battling, he wasn’t healing from the wounds they inflicted on him.

I’d backed up when the fists started flying, but I couldn’t bring myself to run away. I wasn’t leaving Lucius’ side, and I had to figure out how to help him. He fought five opponents, and a sixth guy leaned against my car. What if that one decided to wade into the fray? I didn’t know who he was, but I was sure he’d been part of the kidnapping crew yesterday. The boss with the ball cap that had never left the truck. Who was he?

He’d caught my stare, and his eyes met mine across the raging fire that engulfed much of the battle. They gleamed silver, then glowed red before he turned his gaze back to the combatants, his mouth curling in a derisive smirk. Fear skated up my spine. A fear more powerful than the fear that had filled me when I’d been chased through the creepy woods near Lucius’ home last night. That guy was bad news, and he was Calder’s ally…

“Meow,” Ziv announced his arrival softly, his body curling against my legs. When he pushed, it was with a shocking strength that made me stumble back. Before I could gather my wits, he’d made me back up another half a dozen steps with insistent pushes. He was herding me away from the fight, toward the road.

“No, we’ve got to help him! I won’t leave him!” That was an all-consuming urge, one that had only gotten stronger after I’d gotten into that car this morning. I did not want to leave Lucius, he needed me, and I needed him. But what could I do? One measly human against all these powerful supernatural beings.

Ziv meowed again, more stridently, and another shove came against my legs. The wrong direction. But for a small feline, he was inhumanly strong, too strong for me. I should have known that his cat was as magical as he was. Unfortunately, I was drawing attention to myself by fighting Ziv’s directions. When I gave in and started to walk down the road, the way Ziv wanted me to go, I heard the patter of paws on stone as they chased after me.

The cat spun around just as I did, he hissed, and I raised my fists instinctively. It was the mangy coyote from the woods, I recognized him instantly, even with streaks of blackened, burned fur. Beyond him, I could see the battle still raged, with Lucius at the center of it. Fire rose in a column into the sky, smokeless but bonfire-bright. The shaggy shape of the grizzly bear shifter lay to one side, not moving, but the others kept converging on him, my phoenix.

I should be watching the danger approaching, but I only had eyes for the blood that streamed from Lucius in rivulets. His t-shirt was shredded to pieces, barely clinging to him in strips. His jeans were holding up, but they were definitely not in one piece and stained with blood. My phoenix couldn’t keep up much longer, and from the careful way Calder was edging around him… I had a feeling the sneaky wolf shifter expected him to do that phoenix rebirth thing at any moment. Only Lucius couldn’t.

What had I done? He was right to try to stay out of this. I’d led death right to his door with my stupid troubles. They were scared of his fire, but they kept getting around it to strike him with blows. While they healed, he didn’t. How could he possibly defeat them? Soon they’d figure it out, and then move in for the kill.

A sob welled in my chest at the thought of his light snuffed out. I had no time to process how much I cared for what should have been a stranger. We didn’t even know each other for an entire day, but already, I felt like I’d shared a lifetime with him. The coyote reached me, his howl forcing me to focus on self-preservation, rather than Lucius’ survival.

Ziv was between me and the snarling beast, a tiny cat against a huge hound. He was fearless, as he swiped his front paw across the beast’s nose with a hiss. It sent the coyote a few stumbling steps back, sparks clinging to his nose that he frantically tried to shake off. Then he was back, chasing after the two of us.

Fire erupted beneath Ziv’s paws, creating a barrier between us and the monster. That cat had more tricks up his sleeve, fur, than a seasoned magician. It was protecting us, slowing the coyote down, but it wouldn’t last. I searched around me for a weapon, for something to take him out, once and for all. Where was a silver bullet when you needed one? Or did that only work on werewolves, not a werecoyote? I should have asked Lucius more questions.

I spared him one glance, relief filling me when I realized he was still hanging in there, and it was just Calder and him now. The others all lay in smoldering, smoking piles scattered throughout the parking lot. Were they defeated? Or just healing? I didn’t know anything, and it was starting to piss me off, anger outweighing the mind-numbing fear that filled me. Fear for Lucius, rather than me.

The coyote was getting closer. I was running out of time, and Ziv was running out of tricks. I’d kept on backpedaling, creating distance between myself and the threat, but also between me and Lucius. I stepped onto a crossroads with my back foot and froze. There was a broken traffic sign lying on the side of the road. That jagged metal pole, could I use that?

I definitely could. When my fingers closed around the cool, rust-stained metal, a surge of adrenaline-fueled power washed through me. I’d always considered myself a pacifist, but those kinds of thoughts went out the window when it came down to kill or be killed.

The coyote roared as he leaped over Ziv’s flickering barrier of flames. They winked out beneath the beast’s paws right as I raised the jagged end of my pole toward him. The coyote collided with the broken steel, I stumbled but held strong with an angry scream. Blood splattered across my face, dotting my glasses with a fine mist.

With numb hands, I let go of my weapon and the metal clattered to the ground, heavy with the coyote still pinned on it, growling and snarling. It was growing weaker by the second, blood spreading from the wound in its belly in a rapidly growing pool. It was the most horrible thing I’d ever done, but not the worst thing I’d seen. That was reserved for Lucius as he thudded to the pavement in the distance, Calder triumphantly looming over him.

The werewolf was back in his human shape, blood-coated but dressed in fresh clothes somehow. A gloating expression on his face as he stood over Lucius’s prone form. “I know you!” he crowed. “You’re that cursed bastard. You can’t rebirth, can you? Idiot! Why would you sacrifice it all for her ? She’s nothing.”

I stepped forward, certain I had to save him, and my feet landed in the spreading blood of the dying coyote. “You can save him if you want to.” The voice that drawled those words from my right seemed to appear out of smoke. They curled around my head insidiously, tempting me. “Don’t you want to save your mate? You do know he’s your soulmate, silly human?”

Mate? Soulmate ? I didn’t want to look away from Calder and Lucius, not when Calder was about to raise his hand and slash my phoenix’s throat with his claws. The voice compelled me to look. It was too sinful, too tempting, and it promised me things I could never hope to achieve on my own.

“How?” I asked, my voice hoarse, and my mouth as dry as ash. When I glanced to my right, smoke was curling through the air. No, it wasn’t smoke, it was mist. It clung to the feet of a tall man standing at the side of the road, a ball cap sat backward on his head. His handsome face was set in sardonic lines, and silver and red glinted in his eyes.

It had to be the man who aided in my abduction last night, but why was he offering to help me now? I didn’t trust it, but I couldn’t deny that he seemed powerful, maybe even capable of saving Lucius.

He snapped his fingers; the sound echoed around me and the trees behind him froze in place. Not just the trees. When I glanced from him back to Lucius, certain this distraction had cost him his life, I saw that they too had frozen. My beautiful phoenix was on his knees, supporting himself with a fist on the ground, his wings draped down his back, too heavy to hold them up. Blood coated every inch of his skin, and his head hung low. Calder looked like a conquering warrior as he stood over him, claws raised for that fatal blow.

“This is a crossroads,” the strange man with the scary eyes said with a laugh. “And I’m a crossroads demon. For a price, you can have anything.” His hand swept through my line of sight to point at the blood of the coyote that soaked the road. “Your sacrifice is acceptable.”

Ziv hissed at my side, his small body butting against my leg. Anything? I looked from Lucius back to the man, swathed in mist at the side of the road. He looked as mysterious and demonic as he’d proclaimed he was. I didn’t doubt that he could deliver.

“Can you break his curse?” I asked. That was the only thing I’d want, for Lucius to survive, to be free again. That might be worth whatever prize this demon would demand of me. I wasn’t stupid enough to think that the ‘sacrifice’ was enough of a payment.

He laughed as if I’d said something stupid. “Of course I can. Is that what you want?” He moved his hand and out rolled a parchment covered in fine print. I had this sick sense of doom fill me at the sight of it. Fine print meant tricks. It meant I’d find myself trapped in this deal in ways I couldn’t predict. But Lucius would be alright…

The demon’s footsteps were completely silent as he got closer. Ziv hissed and postured, but the cat didn’t attack, it knew it was outmatched. “I’m feeling generous. You’ve got pluck, human. And your soulmate, he’s suffered enough, don’t you think? I’ll let you have an entire lifetime with him before I come to claim my prize. Sound fair?”

My fingers tingled, and the parchment was right there, hovering in front of me. A dotted line glowing to tell me where to sign. A pale gray feather waved in the corner of my eye, the demon holding out an old-fashioned quill for me that dripped red at the tip. That red color was too much like blood for me, it turned my stomach.

I stepped back, my foot making a nasty squishing noise in the blood, and searched for a different answer. “Ticktock, the clock is ticking.” The demon wagged the feather in my face, and it reminded me of Lucius. I glanced his way again. The agonizing tableaux frozen in time; his imminent death. Calder’s claws were so close to his throat. Wait, were they getting closer? Was time not frozen but slowed?

Ziv meowed loudly, hissing when the demon sidled even closer, heat bathing my side as it wafted from his body like the fires of hell. I needed to run to Lucius, push Calder over. I needed a weapon. Serious firepower. Lucius would heal if Calder didn’t strike him, wouldn’t he?

My hand slipped into my pocket and brushed over the neat little bundle of phoenix feathers, Lucius’s gift. When I pulled them out, the demon hissed with displeasure, and that emboldened me. Instead of stepping back, I stepped forward. My eyes were on the werewolf and the man who was my soulmate, according to that demon. I didn’t doubt that part, it felt right.

A truck was coming up the road. It was moving almost imperceptibly slowly, but I could see it now, even though I hadn’t before. Time was definitely moving, so this was my only chance. Picking the big flight feather from the bunch, I raised it as if I intended to use it to sign the demon’s papers. “A lifetime with him, and his curse broken?” I asked, stalling for time.

“Yes,” the demon hissed, eyes narrowed. I threw myself forward, the phoenix feather burning through the endless windings of paper. Sound rushed in my ears, the roar of a truck, the scream of frustration of the demon, and Ziv’s howl of fear. I had only one goal: to get to Lucius.