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I DREAMED OF SILAS.
I was hovering over his body watching the demon twins chant something into the air while their hands roamed across his chest. Ashby spoke the loudest in a language I didn’t know. She kept yelling at her sister, as though Arabella had been the one that tried to kill Silas.
The wolf and the bears continued to run around the edges of the parking lot. With the air still filled with dust and debris particles, their fur all looked similar in color. A ghostly gray that made me wonder if I was even seeing them at all.
Something pulled me to toward the ground. A sharp pain that ripped from my head to my toes, back and forth in waves of agony. I turned, surprised by the sudden intrusion and afraid to take my focus off Silas. Viktor kneeled on the ground, bending over a body I couldn’t see. He shook it several times, shouting out to others while he worked on it.
I started to drift closer but then I saw Bo. In bear form, he dragged a broken Nadya by the ankle and pulled her to a spot between Viktor and Silas. Running his nose up her leg, he nudged her several times. On the last hit, her body almost rolled onto its side from the force. She looked like a doll—limp limbs and a glazed over stare. Graham ran over to her, pausing only a brief moment when he saw the giant grizzly next to Nadya. He shouted at her, but I couldn’t hear the words. Grabbing her shoulders, Graham shook her several times. Bo watched, eyes glued to Nadya’s and panting with each touch Graham made. But he kept his distance, like he knew there was nothing else he could do right now.
Bo’s head snapped up at the sight of his two brothers in human form running over to Viktor. They both only wore pants, their skin covered in dust just like their fur had been. Brennan detoured to check on his brother and Brandt kept moving until he dropped down next to Viktor. His eyes widened as they moved back and forth between Viktor and the body beneath him.
The body.
That was my body.
Was I dead?
I felt another pull, only this time it didn’t take me to my body, it took me toward Silas. The twins were still trying to save him the only way they knew how. No human medicine here. Ancient magic must have been at work as I watched his body glow underneath the touch of their delicate fingers. But then Silas began to convulse and Ashby screamed up at the skies.
And the moment she did, her eyes locked with mine.
Arabella looked up, meeting my gaze as well. Ashby’s eyes had tears in them but Arabella seemed confused. Her lips moved as she spoke to Ashby, but again I couldn’t hear. Ashby shook her head and gestured toward my body lying on the ground just ten feet away. The two of them argued. Hands flying at each other and mouths screaming words I couldn’t understand.
I began floating away, lifting into the air high enough to see all of the death and destruction that had occurred tonight. So much death. How had Sebastian’s people gotten the better of us? Had this all been a trap? Were the shifters involved?
I glanced over toward Viktor and Brandt. Brandt had his hands over my throat and Viktor was looking at the wound on my back. Neither one spoke. Nadya still lay in on the broken concrete, splayed out like a crime victim. I thought I saw her foot twitch, but then she went still again. I couldn’t tell what injuries she had exactly and I suspected they were mostly internal.
“Ow!” I said to myself. Someone pulled on my leg and yanked me to the ground. A hand wrapped around my throat and I could actually feel the sensation of being dragged. “Ow!” I said again.
When my eyes focused, I was looking directly at Arabella. She’d grabbed onto my floating soul and pulled me from the sky. My body kept drifting out behind me as she marched over to Viktor and Brandt.
“I’ve got her,” she shouted.
I could hear again.
Viktor looked up and studied her outstretched arm. His eyes wrinkled in confusion. “What?”
“Her soul,” she replied. “She was trying to escape but I caught her.”
Brandt kept his hands on my throat but spoke slowly and quietly. “Do you see anything, Viktor?”
“No,” he whispered.
“You idiots can’t see her, but hear me when I tell you that I have her.” Arabella’s frustrated words pierced the night. And my throat felt uncomfortable as she continued to hold on to me. When Viktor and Brandt just sat there, she let out an exasperated sigh. “Move!” With a kick, she knocked Viktor to the side and glared at Brandt when she landed on her knees in Viktor’s place. Brandt sat back and removed his hands from my neck.
Arabella studied my body and then turned to Viktor. “Can you heal her?”
He bit his lip several times before answering. “I don’t...I don’t know.”
She shook her head and watched the blood pump from my neck. Actually, it wasn’t gushing out like it had earlier. It had slowed to a pulsating trickle now. “Well, can you turn her?”
Viktor didn’t answer which, to me, meant that he couldn’t.
Arabella looked directly at me, in my ghostly soul form. “Do you want to live, hunter?”
Did I? The pain was all gone right now. The bite mark wasn’t inhibiting me from anything. And it was kind of nice floating around in the sky. But then I looked over at Silas, and Nadya, and lastly, Viktor. I wasn’t ready to leave them yet. I still had too much life to live.
“Yes,” I whispered.
“Good,” she said with a curt nod. “Because this is going to hurt.”
Without warning, she slammed my soul down into my body. I felt it pushed through the skin and bones, like someone trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. Arabella’s hand slipped inside of my neck like my body was no longer a barrier for her demon power. She chanted, again in a language foreign to most, over and over. The same five words repeating until she finally pulled her hand free from my body.
My soul stayed inside and the minute the two connected, I screamed out in agony. My neck burned. My back throbbed. I wanted to return to the sky where none of this existed. But then Viktor leaned over me and whispered into my ear. “Stay with me, Sophia.”
Arabella disappeared and Brandt pressed something against my neck in an attempt to stop the bleeding. “This isn’t working,” he said.
“I know,” Viktor growled. “But I can’t let her die.”
“Her body is dying.”
“I know!” Viktor screamed at the shifter and Brandt actually flinched. “I fucking know.” He bent forward again, kissing my lips ever so softly. “Sophia, please. I don’t know what to do.”
“Can you turn her?” Brandt asked.
Viktor’s mouth was still next to mine when he finally answered. “I’m not sure.”
“Well, you have to try. This body isn’t working for her right now.”
Viktor looked up at him. “It’s rarely successful this way. I need a necromancer, and a sorcerer, and a—”
“You don’t have any of that.”
Viktor slammed his lips shut and sucked in a deep breath. Brandt’s mater-of-fact take on the situation seemed to spark Viktor into action. “You’re right. And I also have nothing to lose at this point either.”
Brandt let go of my neck and rubbed his hands over his face. “What can I do?”
With a sigh, Viktor whispered, “Just give us some space.”
Brandt left and I found myself drifting into the void again. Viktor rubbed my arms and tried to wipe the blood off my neck. “Sophia, I wish I could do something else. But you’re leaving me no choice.”
I tried to speak. To tell him that I wanted to live and I would be all right with whatever decision he made. Perhaps if I’d been more lucid, I would have asked for a moment to think and understand. But right now, my brain had lost too much oxygen and I couldn’t even wiggle my toes anymore.
“I don’t know if this is going to work,” Viktor said above me.
I couldn’t see his face anymore, just his blue eyes the color of a tranquil sea. Blackness with a little bit of hope hanging on. I focused on those eyes as he kept speaking to me.
“I’m sorry, but I have to kill you first.”
Did he say kill me? Was I already dead and imagining this?
Viktor pressed his lips against the gaping wound in my neck. I barely felt the sensation—like a butterfly tickling my skin. In the night sky above me, a cloud of dust cleared and I spotted the moon. Almost full but still a little flat on one side. A wolf howled in the distance.
Focusing on the moon, I looked at the face within it. I’d always been able to see him unlike others I knew. It was comforting and magical to believe that someone out there was watching over you. A protector. A guardian.
The darkness around the moon began to narrow. Slowly the light faded until it looked like a tiny star billions of miles away. I could no longer feel my body, my fingers, my legs. I could no longer feel Viktor draining what remaining blood I had left.
I felt nothing.
And nothing felt wonderful.
*