Wolf's Kin (Monstrous Hearts #3)

Chapter Nineteen

The witch wiped at the blood trailing from her nose, no longer smiling. Her hand shook while she drew sigils on the opened book in her arms. The grimoire had withered into a pitiful thing, its pages crumbling like dead leaves each time her grip tightened. Her appearance hadn't fared any better, hair gone thin and white and spectacles sinking into pallid, wrinkled skin.

More undead bodies pushed their way up from the dirt, oblivious as they crawled over piles of savaged remains. The moon faded against a brightening sky, but the black wolf showed no signs of slowing.

When he cut through two at once with a sword taken from one of the crumpled knights, the witch's composure finally shattered. "This can't be possible. It's been hours. Hours!"

"Think this is my first fucking mob?" The black wolf ripped a skull off its neck and shoved the twitching body aside. Unlike the witch, he had grown faster, angrier, and brutally efficient. "Think there's anything I haven't fought by now?"

The witch dropped the grimoire and grabbed for the dagger. Pages fluttered all around as she said, "This. It's the Mortal Maker of legend. No one believed it could be real, but I found it."

The black wolf just growled, breaking through a new round of rotting skeletons. Blood and grime streaked his face like war paint, but his teeth flashed white as he snarled at the witch.

She flinched back, licking chapped lips. "It ends even immortal lives. I found it in a tomb hidden deep in a cave in—"

"France." He hacked through rib cages, toppling the last of the undead between them. He let the crumpled bodies take the sword with them. "Held in the right hand of a skeleton. Who do you think crushed its skull?"

The witch raised the dagger high. It trembled in her hands. "Everything can die. You just have to find the right method."

Then she ran at him. He let her, dodging her wild strikes. The green of his eyes were still bright with rage, but he moved deliberately, drawing her out to the sluggish moat that still ran along part of the ruins. Just as she realized the danger, he caught her hands and wrenched them, plunging the blade into her stomach. Her scream was cut off when he twisted them further. "I die all the time, you stupid bitch. And then I come back."

Her panting turned shallow as he changed the pressure of his grip, angling the dagger up toward her ribs in a wordless threat. "Where is she?"

"It's too late. Killing me won't stop anything. By now, she's his and—"

The blade went up an inch. "Where?"

The witch's voice grew hoarse. "The Hole. It's a club we own in Amsterdam."

When she tried to say more, he ripped the dagger up and out, slashing all the way to the throat. He threw the twitching body into the water and waited to make sure. His sweat steamed in the cold dawn air. His clothes stuck to his skin, wet with his own blood. Yet all he could think about was Alice and the sound of her screams.

By the time true sunlight rimmed the ruins in gold, the black wolf was already gone.

The city had much changed since he'd last visited it, now a thriving spiderweb of canals and buildings. It was also cleaner, and he quickly found her scent, slender as a thread among the writhing human masses.

He found a door, and then an underground tunnel. Even in the darkness, he sensed the utter stillness that waited beyond. No one was there. Only scent remained, lingering like ghosts. He ignored the hundreds of humans that had come and gone, ignored the dormant electricity of the soundstage and the clean chill of Roman marble.

It was the hallway that held his attention, the hallway and what it revealed before he even stepped into it. The warlock's musk. The frenzy from the witches. And blood, all of it Alice's.

The black wolf had long forgotten how to be frightened, but he still knew pain. He felt like he'd been shot as he found the right room, hearing nothing.

Inside, he circled the rich furniture with his usual hunter's care, memorizing each scent and where he found it. He bared his teeth at the bed soaked with her blood and the warlock's sweat, but his growl ended in a whine when he found hair in the fireplace.

Parts had been crisped by the flames, but the ends had escaped damage, glimmering in the same way as when he couldn't resist tangling fingers in the strands by her face. He slowly reached out until he saw what else was in the hearth.

Impossible to accept. If he did, it would crush him. Instead, he slipped into the shadow world, now in his fur and racing through its utter stillness in search of some hint of her scent, some sign that she hadn't passed through this final, thin barrier between her death and what waited beyond the grave.

His desperation choked him until he began to howl among the lifeless trees and empty clearings. It was a piercing sound, recognizable to any. A wolf calling for another. A wolf that paused for an answer and heard only an echo.

When he came back into himself in that room far underground, he remained crouched there by the hearth, one hand clenched beside the strands of hair. Unmoving even when he sensed someone approach. The man's scent was overwhelmed by that particular sourness that a witch's magical servant always had. He could also smell that fucking dagger, and knew the witch's body must have been found.

"They thought you might find your way here. I'm sure you know what they want." The man paused, as if waiting for a response. When there wasn't any, he shrugged and pulled out the dagger. "Thanks for making it easy on me. Any final words?"

Beasts accept whatever they find. Their hearts beat steady through injury, thirst, and starvation. Their paths remain sure in their will to survive. But what of the heart of a beast that still remembers being a man? What will it turn to when it realizes what it has been damned to survive?

In one movement, the black wolf turned and lunged. The man's eyes bulged as he was grabbed by the throat, and then bulged again when those vicious fingers dug further in. The black wolf's eyes had darkened, pupils expanding until the color of his irises disappeared. Blood sprayed them both as he ripped out the man's throat with one jerk of his hand. He remained expressionless while letting him drop to the floor, gurgling and choking.

The man was beyond hearing, but the black wolf still answered in a language too old to be remembered by anyone else, voice thick as a snarl while he shoved the dagger's blade into a crack in the hearth and snapped it off at the hilt. "No. No more words."