Chapter Fourteen
Joe and I were wrapping up things in the city—five men we sent to jail, two supernaturals we put down for attacking humans, and more than two dozen assholes we scared the shit out of and sent home when we happened upon them doing things they shouldn’t have been doing.
We could have left the humans for the human cops, but they were overwhelmed with troublesome individuals, and I was more than happy to help them police the city.
And that night, the humans causing trouble way outpaced the supes causing trouble.
Dawn wasn’t far away when Voss showed himself—but not in the city.
Shadowfield.
My mother called me, panic in her voice. “Kaity, we need you here.”
I did a fast turn that nearly sent Joe into the dashboard. “Voss?” I asked.
Voss didn’t care about rules.
“Yes,” she told me. “He has at least two dozen warriors with him. He said he’s just playing with what’s his, as though what he’s doing isn’t against every pack law there is.”
My rage was already swirling. “Where’s Jared?”
“He had to know Jared was gone,” she said. “Or he wouldn’t have attacked us. The beta is here, but he’s not Jared, is he?”
Jared’s new beta was a tall, imposing wolf named Leonard Bosch whose ferocity rivaled Joe’s—as did his heart.
I hoped we could trust this one.
“Mom,” I said, calmly, despite my racing heart, “what is this man doing?”
“He’s his wolf, Kaity,” she murmured, tears in her voice. “And he’s killing us.”
I’d found him.
Now I just had to kill him.
I had to kill him, because dawn was coming and the vampires couldn’t help. Joe and Bastien would be forced into sleep. Jared was gone.
I was the alpha in charge, and I would lead Jared’s beta and his people into a battle that would end with the Iron Fang alpha and his men bleeding out on the ground.
And I had a bad feeling that was going to be easier said than done.
“Mother,” I said, my fear taking over my common sense, “I want you to find a safe place to hide, and—”
Abruptly, before I could say another word, her voice changed into something stone cold and raging, and I knew she was about to shift. “His wolves are attacking ours. I’m not hiding anywhere.”
And then she was gone.
I hit the steering wheel, tears of frustration and terror in my eyes.
Nothing was making sense. I sped down the highway, too fast, but not fast enough.
I called Jared’s phone, and when he didn’t answer, I opened myself up and sent my panic straight to his heart.
Not just alpha to alpha, but bond to bond.
He would feel it, and he would come.
“I’ve called our pack,” Joe said, his voice tight. “We’ll kill them all. They broke the rules first.”
He wasn’t wrong. Voss had broken the rules, and we were going to stomp on those broken pieces and grind them into dust.
Right then, I couldn’t have cared less what the council might say about it. Or what they might do.
But I cared a lot about the fact that I could no longer go in and obliterate a pack of hostile wolves. I would have to fight, but on their level. And that worried me.
“Joe,” I said, hating what I had to tell him. “The safe place Jared built for you at Shadowfield. Take it as soon as we get there. You have to sleep and I don’t want some asshole delaying you.”
Dawn hadn’t yet arrived, but it was looming. And already, I could see the strain of it on his face. He wasn’t old enough yet to fight a coming dawn. Bastien could stay awake until just before it hit, but Joe could not.
“There’s time for me to kill Voss before I have to hide,” he said.
“There’s not,” I told him. And before he could argue further, I glanced at him. “I can’t lose you, Joe. I can’t.”
“Dammit, Kaity,” he muttered, and I knew he’d do as I asked.
He didn’t really have a choice.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ve got this.”
And I even sounded like I meant it.
When we arrived at Shadowfield, I didn’t bother waiting for the arm to lift so I could drive into the village. I slammed the car to a halt at the side of the road and was out and running without another word to Joe or even a hint of hesitation.
And as though he’d been watching for me, one of Voss’s wolves leapt in front of me, not ten feet away.
Joe had veered off at the entrance, and he was already gone.
I thanked God for that. If he’d seen even a hint of a fight or someone coming at me, he wouldn’t have gone.
Not right away. And if someone thought to stake him or incapacitate him somehow, the sun might have come.
The sun would have burned him. It would have killed him.
I shoved Joe from my mind and went at Voss’s wolf with every intention of killing him and doing it as quickly as possible. My demon blade was hot and familiar in my grip, the magic of it sliding up my arm and into my heart, and it felt like heaven. I missed magic.
Even demon magic.
Because now, demon magic was all I had. Anika hadn’t taken the spark that happened when I held my blade, or when its power slid into my flesh and bones and soul. She hadn’t wanted to touch a demon’s magic.
I embraced that demon magic with all my heart and soul, and I realized then that I’d always wielded the blade with caution. With my walls up. I hadn’t wanted to absorb the terrible power from it, as though that might somehow twist me up into a demon and pull me into hell.
Apparently, I was already twisted up into a demon. But no way was I going to hell.
I opened myself up to whatever the blade wanted to do to me. I eagerly pulled that power into myself, and yes, I felt the blackness of it in my heart.
I didn’t care.
My psycho loved it.
The wolf was shocked that I fought him as a woman, holding only a blade. He probably wondered why I would. He was dead before he could wonder too much.
Then there was another wolf, and then two of them at once, and then it was like half a dozen of them came at me. Voss had taken over every pack in Colorado. He had warriors to spare.
And that was a good thing for him, because I killed every single one that took me on. I didn’t stop to question how.
When I had a second to let my surroundings sink into my consciousness, I felt the battle Voss’s wolves had brought to Shadowfield. The viciousness and the savagery beat at my heart and my mind, because wolves learned early not to make a lot of noise when they fought.
Noise brought humans.
But the air was red with blood, and the ground was littered with dead.
And then, I saw Voss.
Or…something.
He was physically changed in a way that should have been impossible. He was his wolf, yet he was his man, as well. Standing on two legs with a man’s body, but larger and covered in fur. And his head was that of his wolf.
He was hideous, and he was wrong.
It was as though a demon had jumped inside him and was pulling and twisting him like a bone-and-blood-filled lump of clay.
He saw me coming and if a wolf could grin, that one did. He casually shot a stream of storm-colored power at a nearby wolf, one of Jared’s scouts. His power blasted a hole through her chest and she fell almost gracefully, immediately dead.
I groaned beneath the weight of that responsibility and the sorrow for not only the scout, or the other wolves who’d died there that night, but for the living who would grieve them.
I raced toward him without a thought for my safety. I had one goal.
Killing Gavin Voss.
When he sent a halfhearted stream of magic at me, I instinctively lifted my demon blade. And when the power hit the blade, it reflected it back at him harder and faster than I could even comprehend.
One second the power was coming at me, and the next, it was hitting him like lightning striking a tree. The flash nearly blinded me, and the crack should have split him right down the middle.
But his head was thrown back, his arms wide, his body seemingly held in place by electricity that refused to release him.
He jerked like a rag doll, and for a few seconds, he was helpless.
It was all I needed.
Ignoring the strange buzzing of my body and the near numbness of my hand, I clutched the demon blade and raced toward the seizing wolf.
My focus was intense, and though I was somewhat aware of the fighting going on around me and the realization that somewhere in the mass of colliding bodies was my mother, I understood that the most important thing at that moment was killing the biggest danger.
Before I could reach him, Gavin shifted into his actual wolf, losing the atrocity of the wolfman…werewolf thing. That shift seemed to clear him of the damage caused by being hit by his own magic.
I believed that he could only use his magic while in that awful wolfman form. As his wolf, he was only that.
A wolf. An alpha wolf.
I was going to fight him one on one, and the only decision I needed to make was whether to fight him as my wolf with her claws and teeth, or as my woman with her deadly demon blade.