Fear spiked through me. The skinwalker was possessing another werewolf.
Everything that monster had done to me flashed through my mind.
The nightmares and fear I’d felt every day, every night since.
How it had felt to have to leave my home because I couldn’t live with what had happened to me.
My cold fear turned to searing rage.
I gripped his arm with both hands, using it to pull my legs up. I wrapped my legs around his neck and used my thighs to squeeze.
Fords eyes went wide as it hit him I was doing exactly the same thing as he was doing to me.
He squeezed harder, but I had more strength and leverage with my thighs wrapped around his throat. Ford’s arms started to shake, and his grip on my throat started to wane.
I gasped for breath but didn’t let up trying to strangle him.
I saw the black wisps of the skinwalker, now flowing out of and away from Ford.
Saving yourself…
I kept up the pressure.
Pain…
I jerked and felt my body spasm.
He’d shocked me, but he must have been draining because it was enough to hurt, but not enough to make me black out.
Squeeze…
Just keep squeezing… just keep squeezing…
Like that cartoon fish, right?
Another shock, this one even weaker.
I cried out in pain, in rage—with the will to kill this son of a bitch.
His legs went out from under him, sending us both crashing to the ground.
He sucked in a ragged breath, but I retightened my grip on his neck.
He thrashed around, trying to knock me off, trying to get away.
His eyes, the glow of his power dimming until there was only the cold blue of his human eyes, and the anger and hatred in their depths.
And then suddenly there was nothing.
A vacant gaze fell over what had been a disbelieving glare. His body sagged as he lost consciousness.
If I let go now, he would probably live. Being a shifter had many great regenerative bonuses.
But I didn’t let go. I thought of the skinwalker, of what he’d done, and what he had tried to do through this monster. I thought of poor Chelsea and Wade.
Wade…
I almost let go, to run to him, but when I looked over I saw he was starting to rouse, coughing and rubbing his chest.
Bastard must have hit him in the chest with his electrical blast.
Tried killing him, did you?
I put even more strength into my thighs. If I could’ve ripped his head off with my bare hands I would have.
A voice slithered into my mind… black as pitch, oily with sickness, harsh with hatred.
The skinwalker.
“Good, good…” he said in my mind. I looked up to find his undulating, smoke and ash form crouched on the ground, what must be his face leering down at me with a disgusting smile. “I thought you were just a plaything, or food.” I trembled as it leaned in even closer. “But you will make a better host.”
Host…
Like Benny had been, and how the wretched monster I’d just squeezed the life out of had nearly been.
“No,” I said, my voice cracking and quivering. I couldn’t hide my fear.
Could he do this? Could he take me over?
Just then, from behind the house came a glow, like the sunrise. But it was instant, and it was moving.
Gram appeared from behind the house, glowing as she walked closer.
The skinwalker jerked forward and his hand sank into my chest, seizing my heart.
Oh, god… the pain… burning agony…
He wasn’t killing me. He was taking me, taking me over.
I reached out and tried to pull his hand out of me, but my hands went right through him.
No, nononono…
Gram was chanting, she was now only feet away, and the wind was picking up, blowing around her like a mini twister.
Glowing specters materialized in the air around her, and I felt almost immediately that they were the spirits of our people.
Gram had always been talking and communing with the spirits… and here they were.
The skinwalker didn’t seem to see them, or Gram. So he was doubly surprised when she reached out and took hold of his wrist, and ripped his hand from my chest.
I called out in scalding hot pain and relief, holding tight to my chest, my heart pounding painfully, feeling as if it wanted to escape my chest.
Gram had hold of the skinwalker’s wrist still and it writhed in seeming agony. Where her hand touched its now quite solid and blackened body, white hot light bled into the night, ten times stronger than the glow coming from Gram.
The skinwalker sprung up from the ground, swinging at Gram with his free hand.
Gram caught it with little trouble, and the same glaring white light started to seep from the new point of contact.
“By the unending spirits of the Cheyenne, of theSioux and Crow, and Arapaho,” Gram said, “of the Assinibione, the Mandan, and Arikara,” The skinwalker jerked against Gram but could not break her iron grip. “I call upon our ancestors to come here, at this time, to take this abomination out of this world and onto the next.”
The glowing shapes that had appeared had grown in number, were converging on Gram and the skinwalker.
The skinwalker screamed, a sound so devoid of humanity it sounded like the dry rasp of a windstorm colliding with the side of a house—powerful, scary, but not really words. It was the cry of a predator that has just become prey.
“Take this poor, miserable creature and make him anew.”
Anew?
Dead would be better.
Some of the glowing figures took the skinwalker by his arms and Gram let go, just long enough to clasp her hands to either side of the skinwalker’s head.
And that’s when shit got scary.
Gram’s eyes went black, and when they landed on me I didn’t recognize who was looking out of her. It felt like looking at the funnel cloud of a tornado.
Her voice came low and booming, shaking the very ground with every word.
“I claim you, unclean thing. I will take you to where you will at long last find peace.”
The skinwalker stared up at Gram, what looked like a look of pleading in its eyes.
Gram looked down at the skinwalker with no emotion at all on her face. “As it should have been long ago, you will rejoin the circle. You will become one with nature once more. Life will spring from you once more. Anew…”
Gram leaned over and kissed the skinwalker’s forehead.
The light was so bright it was blinding. I raised my arm to shield my eyes.
And then it was gone.
When I looked again a fine golden mist hung in the air, sifting in intricate circles, glimmering as they faded from sight.
Wade stood there now, tall and strong and bloodied, his golden eyes locked on mine.
My heart pounded hard again, but this time not in fear or pain, but in utter happiness.
Wade was okay.
I pulled myself to my feet and staggered toward him. So many feelings were stirring up inside me. Need, lust, happiness, gratefulness… and this tingly thing in the pit of my stomach, that, as I took each step toward Wade, started to grow in intensity, and spread through my body, as if it was flowing through my veins with my blood.
I dared not to even think the word.
It was too soon—I’d only just met him less than twenty-four hours ago.
We’d just been through a life or death battle, preceded by a life or death run-for-our-lives.
But…
I stared into his shimmering golden eyes and felt my puma rise up in me, meeting his bear’s gaze.
Maybe this was…
And just then Maddox strode up to us, blood splattered over his bare chest and face and arms. His shirt was torn to ribbons and hanging from his waist.
He slapped his brother on the shoulder hard enough to make him rock forward, causing our eye contact to disconnect.
“That was one hell of a fight, little brother.” Wade winced. “If you bring that kind of violence with you, you’re welcome to come around anytime.”
I had to smile. Only Maddox could find a bright side to all of this.
And just like that Stormy sauntered over, her Ironcloud’s t-shirt plastered to her chest with gore and blood. She had a cut down her cheek, and someone’s handprint bruised on her arm.
From the lack of voices, I was kind of sure that whoever had put that handprint on her arm was now dead.
Then it struck me. Twenty wolves had died here tonight.
Twenty.
Senseless.
I looked over and saw Bull and Bly standing protectively over Benny as he held Chelsea. She was unconscious, which was usual when it came to being bitten by a shifter.
First, there had been pain, and now her body had shut down her mind because all the changes that were taking place.
She could die. One moment, one bite, and all that had been her could be burned away by morning. She would either wake up a werewolf, or she wouldn’t wake up at all.
And all because she’d been unlucky enough to know me.
Stormy pulled me out of my inner turmoil by pulling my chin up and toward her so she could look at my face.
“Nothing too bad,” she said, “Though they could’ve rearranged that thing off your face.”
I shook my head and batted her hand away. “What thing?”
She smiled. “You know, that thing on your face… we all were going to chip in and get a plastic surgeon to remove it for your birthday present.”
Asshole.
“What? Why not for Christmas?” It was closer.
Stormy bumped my shoulder with hers. “We saved up for boob implants for your Christmas present.”
Big asshole.
She looked back at Wade and Maddox surreptitiously, and then back to me.
“You know, having sex while covered in your enemy’s blood is pretty damn hot.”
I closed my eyes.
No, she hadn’t just said that.
Gross.
Yuck.
I tried not to, but I looked over at Wade, blood coating his muscular body, a sexy cut in his forehead with dried blood trailing down the side of his face.
He was… really goddamn sexy… covered in blood.
I shook my head, trying to dislodge the thought.
Stormy laughed as she headed out to the field where everyone, and the corpses of the skinwalker’s pack, were.
“First thing’s first,” she said. “We need to take all these guys to the skinwalker’s land and give them a proper burial.”
There was a collective groan.
“Hey, we kill them, we bury them!” She leaned down and picked someone’s arm off the ground and walked it over to the back of Maddox’s shiny new truck.
“Honey,” he said, exasperation in his voice as she tossed the bloody arm into the truck bed.
“Okay,” she said, walking back to the others. “The faster we do this, the sooner we all get to eat.”
She turned and said to Benny, “You go ahead and take the girl up to mom’s old room. It’s the last one on the right.” She then looked to me and Wade. “You two are on grub duty. Enough for a small army will do.” She looked at us both. “Made sure you wash up first.”
I put my hands on my hips and blew out an irritated breath. “Asshole.”