Chapter Two
“Before I kill you,” I said, “tell me what you want. Why are you here?”
She sheathed her blade and lowered her hand, looking for all the world like she might light up a smoke as we had a nice little conversation.
“Kait Silver,” she said. “Nice to finally meet you.”
I smiled. “And you are…”
“My name is Anika Draper.” She waited, as though I might recognize the name.
I didn’t. “Why are you here, Anika Draper, interrupting my night and causing me trouble?”
“Because,” she replied, and for a few seconds, she looked incredibly…tired. There and gone, though, so brief I thought I might have imagined it. “Causing trouble is what I do.”
I lifted an eyebrow. “Maybe consider trying something new?”
She grinned, and I had a moment to focus on the wild, striking beauty of her before she lost the grin and continued. “My choices were taken from me when I was born a supernatural.” She shrugged. “I’m here because I have to be.”
I nodded. “You want to fight me, then. You want to die.”
“The first part…not really. The second? Yeah. Some days, Kait Silver, I want to die. But right now, I’m not in a dying kind of mood.”
She took a step toward me, the killer peeking from her eyes. Black, heavy magic seemed to surround her, suffocating, wet, and cold.
I didn’t recognize the feel of her magic, and that wasn’t good. It didn’t feel like magic that came out of her, really. It felt like magic that wanted to pull me in.
“Dammit,” I murmured, thinking of Lennon, the tortured—and now dead—witchwolf, Jared’s former seer. “I’m about sick of fucking magical women.”
She took another step. “How many magical women have you fucked?”
I didn’t find her funny. She was like a demon, cracking jokes while casually twisting her victim’s head off.
I called my magic.
Her dark stare dropped to my hands, one full of swirling power and the other holding a glowing blade, and her smile didn’t falter. If anything, it widened. “That’s right,” she whispered. “Show me what you’ve got, pretty girl.”
“I’ll show you a lot of things before I kill you,” I told her. And finally, my rage woke up and stretched, right along with my interested wolf, and I welcomed them both with open arms.
Because Anika Draper was terrifying.
Despite my outward composure, I was anything but calm. I felt the strangeness of her, the power of her, and it was so awful that it made my entire body hurt. She was a killer, and she was there to kill me.
She confused me, and in a fight, I couldn’t afford to be confused.
And I remembered Lucy’s dream.
I didn’t want to play with her, the way I might have done in a battle that was more familiar to me, like with wolves or vampires or another intriguing but less bizarre supernatural.
I wanted to neutralize her as quickly as possible, throw her—dead or alive—to the council, and wash my hands and my mind of the whole thing.
Because everything about that moment felt wrong.
And then, she came for me.
I did what I always did in a battle. Full of magic and rage and an eager bloodthirstiness that smothered my fear, I flew into the fight.
Death and death’s magic were staring me in the face, and I knew that if I held back, she would win and I would die.
But I couldn’t die, because my mother would be beyond devastated. My pack and my alpha, as well. And my detective.
No, I couldn’t die. I wouldn’t let some random supernat take me out in my own yard, no matter how deadly she was.
No matter that I knew Lucy’s dreams never lied.
I sent a blast of silver power at her head. It exploded from my discolored fingers with an intensity that nearly ripped off my hands. I meant to end her right then and there.
My magic hit her with enough force to send her reeling back.
She staggered as the power sliced through her head, and I watched, restraining my mad need to go to her and see how it felt to shove my demon blade into her heart.
I absolutely expected her to drop to the ground and either pass out or die.
Months ago, one of the daywalkers had managed to bite me on the back of my shoulder. The bite had been slow to heal and in times of stress, it continued to cause me pain. It flared now, deep inside the bone. I wondered, as always, how that bite was affecting me before I let the thought slide away.
I had to focus only on the fight the stranger had brought to my door.
I refused to worry about my pack. They were incredible. They were flawless. I would not worry. Not right then. Later…yeah.
Anika pressed her palms to her temples, the dim lights glinting off of her perfect teeth as she snarled and groaned and attempted to fight her way free of my magic before I took advantage of her vulnerability.
She was trying not to die.
I sent a quick rope of power at her feet and jerked, pulling her off balance. She did fall, then, and I was almost disappointed, but yes, there was relief. She wasn’t a challenge, after all.
I walked toward her, sending magic to bind her as she knelt upon the ground. So much magic.
But she looked up at me, and there was a tiny smile on her lips. My power continued to swirl around her, but then, in an instant, it was like a vacuum lived inside her, and with a sucking sound, the magic I’d used to attack and bind was whisked away.
Just…gone. And the stranger was healed.
“Son of a bitch,” I whispered. “What the hell are you?”
She sprang to her feet and came at me, her stare full of nightmares and fire, and once again, fear—terror, actually—got its sharp, evil claws into my flesh.
I’d underestimated her and overestimated myself.
I was going to pay for that mistake. I didn’t wait to see what she would do but went at her with my demon blade.
Even if my magic couldn’t incapacitate her—at least not for long—no one could withstand a cut from my blade.
Its magnificent power was one reason the big bad angel I’d cut with it had wanted it so badly.
And no matter that my magic was about as effective as a water gun against her, she wouldn’t be safe from the blade. No one was. Ever.
She met me head-on, and we fought with our blades, our fists, our rage.
She was good. Experienced at fighting. She stood toe to toe with me and for the first time in a long time, I honestly wasn’t sure I’d walk away from a battle.
My magic couldn’t damage her, and she seemed to heal from it almost immediately. How the hell could I fight someone who couldn’t be hurt?
Quite unintentionally, I sent another burst of magic at her, which was more of a weak puff of smoke than a force of brutal power. I cursed my lack of control even as she sucked the magic away, dropped the dagger she’d been using, and then brought out a different blade.
It appeared in her hand, long, curved, and shiny black with tiny, glowing green symbols etched in the blade. And yeah, I was in a fight for my life, but my mouth watered for her blade.
Someday I was going to take that weapon.
But I was afraid. Afraid for me, my magic, my blade, and my wolf.
As it always did, my fear made me angry, and the rage came. I needed that rage. My inner psycho wasn’t afraid of anything. She was just mad. She didn’t care if she died.
As though thinking about my death summoned her, I caught a glimpse of my guardian angel, Nicole, blending with the shadows of the night, watching.
Waiting.
I hoped she was there to lend a hand, because I didn’t plan on going to the land of the savage angels just yet.
Anika sliced my chest and then my ribs with the shiny black blade, and as I dwelt for a millisecond on the strangeness of that pain, she punched me in the face. I blinked out like a wind-kissed candle flame, but it was only a stutter.
I didn’t remember hitting the ground, but the bone-rattling fall woke me up in a hurry.
She descended, the tip of her blade dripping red, and I leaped up to meet her.
I let my instincts take over, and despite the weakening of my demon blade, I shoved the eager knife into her chest, viciously, the force of my rage making me—and the blade—stronger, faster, and a whole fucking lot meaner.
She wore some sort of armor beneath her shirt, but that was no barrier to my blade. It had been forged in hell, strengthened by the blood of hundreds of victims, and magicked by the demon lords.
I was gratified by the widening of her eyes as I twisted my blade inside her. I ripped it free as she was still processing the first cut, and I slashed her throat with all the rage I had inside me.
At that moment, I’d never hated anyone as much as I hated that bitch.
And I meant to kill her.
“Not smiling now,” I murmured, and as she staggered, I punched her the way she’d punched me. Bone crunched, and then she was flying backward, blood arcing from her body.
I followed her, my inner psycho fully in control, gleeful and hungry for more. I would chop her into tiny chunks, mop the ground with her blood, scream my rage into her dying eyes.
I pinned her against a tree with the demon blade, and because my brutal, irrational psycho needed something big, something vicious, I screamed into her face. I screamed the killing angel’s scream that I had planned to never use again.
And as she was seizing against the rough bark, lost somewhere in her mind, somehow still alive, I slammed my palm against her open mouth and called my magic. I planned to shove it down her throat and choke her with it. It didn’t matter that she could shrug it off after a minute or two.
Before that happened, she’d be dead from the angel’s scream. Things fell from the dark sky, things I’d killed. No, not things. Birds. Tiny animals in the trees, caught in the crossfire.
But nothing came when I called my magic. It didn’t come.
And finally, even through the thick red haze of rage and madness, I understood something that was nearly incomprehensible.
She hadn’t simply healed from my magic or managed to become immune to it.
She’d killed it.
She’d sucked it out of me when I’d sent it out to destroy her, and she’d killed it. Panicked, I opened my mouth and screamed again.
But it was only a scream.
I had one more thing that was made of magic, and without even thinking about it, I tried to shapeshift into the woman who had annihilated my power.
I’d sworn I would never shift into another person after I’d shifted into Jared’s traitorous beta.
I’d quickly discovered shifting into another person was worse than anything I could have imagined.
I couldn’t shapeshift. My shapeshifter didn’t come.
She must have killed it, as well as my magic. Even seizing and dying and agonized, she’d taken my shapeshifter.
Terrified beyond any terror I’d ever felt because what if she took my wolf? Could she take my wolf?
I had to kill her. Somehow, I had to end her life and take back those parts of me. I had to extinguish the danger of her.
But I staggered a few feet away, taking my blade with me.
Anika Draper had gotten what she came for, and somehow, though she had to be close to death, she stumbled away. I didn’t go after her.
I couldn’t.
I was too hurt, and I was too empty. But before I gave in to my need to lie down and either die or heal, I had to make sure I could shift. I had to make sure my wolf was still with me. I couldn’t survive another hobbling.
Though it was debatable as to whether I’d survive anyway.
I shifted. I shifted. I pointed my nose at the sky and howled, a long, mournful wail that I knew my alpha would feel.
A stranger had extinguished nearly everything inside me. My wolf’s legs crumbled and I hit the ground, spent.
Once again, I was just a woman, and I was just a wolf.