Chapter 24

24

“Sir.”

“I told you I would be busy this evening, can it wait?”

“Um, sir, I don’t think so.”

The stone eye is inside me, and I see Thorn as though I’m him, staring at a mirror. He/we glanced at Casey while he/we stood at his desk.

“The wolves are causing a disturbance out by Mary of the Sacred Heart Church, sir.”

Thorn paused in packing the satchel on his desk, and I felt him notice me for the first time. He knows I’m with him, and physically, I’m at the ruins.

Inside the church, all around me, the walls shook, and the columns groaned as the wolves got louder and louder, daring me to come out. After I absorbed the heart, I crawled inside the church, hoping Thorn would arrive soon. I attempted to relay it all to him in impressions and maybe words, unsure if I could. Am I just a passive passenger on this ride?

“How are you coming through so clearly?” he asks me silently as he talks to his assistant aloud.

“I took in two more of the stones. I don’t know what else to do. Please, help me. The entire pack is here, and I hear murder in their song.”

The eye doesn’t seem to have done much, but the hand whispered it needed the moonlight to activate. The sun barely reached the horizon as dusk gathered around it.

A wolf stepped through the doorway, scenting the air, his body taut and ready to spring. But it’s not Kye. I’d know that ginger coat anywhere.

Marvin.

A ginger in human and wolf form. He stalked closer, a lust for revenge seeping from every pore and his amber eyes glinting with the desire to murder me. Kye sent him in, I’m sure, because Marvin was impulsive and vengeful—the perfect weapon to pit against a former pack member you wanted to kill.

I scented the other wolves, my former family, my ex-pack, filled with bloodlust, waiting outside for him to drag me out.

The heart stone pulsed against my thigh through my pocket, and I didn’t know what that meant.

The wolf gave me a toothy grin, and his lips pulled back into a chilling snarl.

Fuck.

I gripped my obsidian knife and slid back my right foot for balance. I’ve sparred with the pack in wolf form, but they always held back. Now I’m facing a ginger nightmare on all fours that outweighs me by a hundred pounds, and he’s not inclined to give me a pass.

The heart stone calls to me, while the eye makes the base of my skull ache. Tendrils of warmth encircled my throat and reached down to my shoulders, making me envision ivy taking over my body.

Shit.

I scramble back toward the altar for cover, too confused by what’s happening in my body to defend myself against a full-size werewolf.

Marvin followed, carefully picking his way through the battered and overturned pews as he stalked me. Outside, a wolf wailed a plaintive cry, and Marvin replied with a low, long howl. I’m about to get more company.

He snarled at me and leaped over the altar as I raised my knife to meet him.

Hurry, Thorn.

Marvin clears the altar and pushes me to the floor, my knife sunk to the hilt in his shoulder. We grapple, me using the knife to force him back, his muzzle snapping a whisper away from my face, his claws scrabbling at the floor beside my shoulders.

The stone in my pocket spilled to the ground in the scuffle, and I grabbed it. The scalding heat of the artifact hit my palm, then scorched my whole arm.

The room goes black, and when I open my eyes, I’m surrounded by wary wolves and the stench of burned fur.

“What have you done?” Kye stood over me, his hands raised to ward me off.

I scuttled back on my ass and crouched. “What the hell do you want? I haven’t done anything to you.”

“Haven’t done anything?” said Kye. “You burned him alive, you fucking witch. I’m going to tear out your heart and eat it you while you watch.”

“Jesus Christ, listen to yourself,” I choked. “I was here, alone. I was attacked, and now you’re threatening to eat me, and I’m the villain?” I cast about to find Marvin, but bile rose in my throat at the sight of the charred canine corpse. “Wait. I did that?”

Kye and I stared at each other, realization dawning in his eyes. “You have no idea what those stones do, do you?”

“Moira said they could make me powerful. I just want them far away from me.”

“Stupid girl,” he growled. “You should never have gotten involved in the first place.”

Rage fills my gut, molten hot and bubbling until it feels like I’ll drown them all if I open my mouth.

“I was doing my job, Kye. You were the one stealing from the Syndicate to gain power you have no right to. You were the one who stole from Thorn and dragged me into the middle of everything.”

His eyes go wolf first, as they always have, and I know he’s on the verge of losing control, which is bad for me. His breathing shallows to near-panicked panting, and his fingers crackle and elongate, bones snapping and re-knitting into horrifying claws.

“If you lose control, everyone will,” I reminded him. “You’re only Alpha by lineage, you don’t have the power to control them, and you never did.”

Even as I say it, it’s like the last piece falling into the puzzle, and I can see it for the truth it is.

Kye stood inches away from losing his position to a stronger wolf. For him, this was never about the Syndicate. It was about the strength and power he might gain.

“Oh, Kye.”

Despite everything, I lower my hands, holding my knife away from my side. “This doesn’t have to get worse.”

The final artifact is hidden from me, and the three inside me are quiet, waiting, it seems, for me to make a choice.

“It won’t get worse,” Kye growls, his lips thinning into a grotesque grin as his face elongates painfully into a canine muzzle. “Not for me.”

He bent and snarled, his spine reforming almost faster than I could see. As I staggered back three steps, he transformed into his half-form, a wolfman who easily stands six and a half feet tall. His shredded clothes hung loosely on his body as if he was a ghoul.

Then everything starts to move in slow motion.

Kye lunged at me.

And a conflagration of blue fire engulfed my body like armor.

Demonic voices whisper in my head that I can burn them all. It can’t hurt anything to incinerate them all. Kye backed away, but the marks and stones were in control now, and the flames licked their way down my arms to gather in my hands.

Gods, no.

I can’t kill the entire pack, can I? As if I spoke the thought aloud, some wolves warily backed away toward the door while others slowly circled me, looking for an opening. Either I will die in this unholy ruin of a church, or they will. The volume of the whispers in my head grew, drowning out the snarls of the wolves waiting to attack.

The floor smoldered under my feet, and still, I felt no heat from the flames that crept steadily outward from me in tendrils that mirrored the red veins crawling over my arms.

“I can’t.” I panted, holding up my hands to the wolves. “I can’t stop it. Get out. GET OUT!” I’m screaming, and the flames answer by bursting forth from me in a wall of fire, devouring the rotting church around me.

The wolves disappear behind the fiery wall, but their feral screams of pain drive me to my knees. They’re all burning alive because of me.

“Turn it off, Elena.” The voice is in my head like a cooling rain. “Let me come to you.” But I don’t know how. The more terrified I feel, the bigger the blaze grows. “I’m here. Nothing can hurt you.”

“Thorn?”

Hands gripped my shoulders, cold as ice, and the boiling in my veins cooled. Long, elegant fingers slide down my wrists, pulling me into an icy chest.

“I’ve got you. Let it go,” Thorn soothed.

“If I let it go, I won’t be able to stop the flames.” I strained to control the raucous chorus ringing in my head and listened only to him. “I can’t—”

“If you let it go, it will stop.”

I pressed myself into him and took a deep breath, releasing it in measure, but the heat pushed away all that gentle cooling, and I tore myself away from him, afraid I’d burn him, too.

“Get away from me. It isn’t safe.” I staggered toward the door, stumbling over the body of another dead wolf. “Oh, God, what have I done?” The entry is just ahead of me, with soothing, inky darkness on the other side.

I have to get to the water.

With no thought to the possibility of wolves waiting to ambush me outside, I lurched through the door, aiming for the pond between here and the safe house. The wooden porch goes up in smoke as I run down the stairs, night-blind from the fire.

“Damnit, Elena, stop running. Let me help you.” I paused, but the sight of Thorn, his shirt front burned away from blistering skin, only made the hurricane of voices in my head even louder.

I stepped backward on the gravel drive, and held up a hand.

“Thorn, I hurt you, and I don’t want to hurt you again. Please, stay back.”

“Elena, listen to me, only me.”

I think he’s shouting, but I can barely hear him over the roar between my ears. My arms are covered in thick, ropey red veins that pulse slower than my racing heart, and the night sky turns to day as I throw my head back to find the rising moon.

“Elena, no.” He’s the whisper in my head now, the riotous demonic chanting screaming at me from all sides. “Baby, it’s okay.”

But I can’t fight anymore, and the world is engulfed in my inferno.