Brenna stopped thrashing. The glow in her eyes dimmed.
Dali whimpered small incoherent noises.
A tortured snarl echoed through the street. I jerked Slayer free and whirled to the building. A clawed arm scratched at the first-floor window next to the door. Thick fingers slid on the glass, leaving bloody streaks.
Bloody hell.
I grabbed Dali and pulled her to her feet. “Dali! Look at me.”
She stared, wild-eyed. “I knew, I knew something was wrong, I drove up, and it didn’t smell right—”
“Get into the car. Drive down two blocks, go into the bakery, and call the Keep. No matter what happens, don’t leave the store. Do you understand?”
“Don’t go in there!”
“I have to go. If they get out, they might kill somebody.”
“Then I’ll come with you.” She wiped at her face with the back of her hand. “I’m a fucking tiger.”
A vegetarian, cross-eyed, half-blind tiger who got sick at the sight of blood. “No. I need you to get into the car and go call Curran. Please.”
She nodded.
I released her. “Go.”
A moment later the Prowler rolled down the street. I stepped over its tracks. The door of the house gaped open, like a black mouth.
I pushed the door open with my fingertips.
A body sprawled across the rug ten feet away. It lay in a tangle of shredded clothes, stained with black pus. A bitter odor filled the hallway, like the scent of chicken meat gone to rot.
I’d seen shapeshifters bleed gray before, when struck with silver. Silver killed Lyc-V, and the dead virus turned gray. To bleed black, Lyc-V had to be present in record numbers in the body. Only loups carried that much virus in them.
I stepped inside. The carpet muffled my footsteps. Above something thudded.
Slow and easy.
I reached the body. He lay on his stomach. Dark lesions striped his back, filled with viscous ichor, so dark it resembled tar. The odor of rot choked the air. I gagged and nudged the body with my foot. The head lolled. Unseeing milky eyes looked up at me from an unfamiliar face. Dead.
I kept moving through the long corridor.
Right room, clear.
Left, clear.
Right, clear.
Kitchen.
A pot boiled over on the stove. Two shapeshifters lay unmoving. One sprawled on top of the table, midway through the change, his body a mess of fur and skin. His deformed limbs clutched at the table, bones exposed, torn muscle oozing pus onto the green tablecloth. A chef’s knife protruded from his neck, pinning him to the table.
The other body lay under the table, on the floor littered with chunks of peeled potatoes. A huge gash split open his chest, long ragged tears—a claw strike. The same black pus spilled from his lips, staining his chin. Nausea squirmed through me.
The scene played in my head: the shapeshifter on the right lunging over the table, striking at the guy chopping potatoes. His target taking a hit to the chest, thrusting the knife into his attacker’s neck and falling . . .
I moved on to the stairwell. Upstairs or downstairs, to the basement?
I leaned to the side. Blood stained the green wallpaper on the landing above. Up.
The old stairs creaked under my feet. I ran up and pressed against the wall. Short hoarse grunts broke the silence in a steady rhythm, each grunt followed by the screeching of nails on glass. I checked the hallway.
Something crouched in the gloom, far to the right, on the clump of mangled bodies, digging in the flesh with bloody claws. The creature struck a corpse and wiped its deformed hand on the window. Claws scratched the glass. Screeech.
I stepped into the hallway.
Screech.
Screech.
The beast looked up at me. A girl. Barely older than Julie. She looked at me with pale dark eyes, the blood and black tarry pus falling from her mouth.
Her face was almost perfectly human. The rest of her was not. Her limbs protruded too far, ending in oversized hands. A hump bent her spine, sheathed in gray wolf fur. Her chest was concave and her ribs were piercing her skin.
“It hurts,” she said.
I kept walking.
“It hurts.” She dipped her hand into the blood pooling in the stomach of a woman next to her and wiped it on the glass. Screech.
“What happened?” I asked.
She leaped at me with a guttural snarl. I dodged left, and sliced across her side. She bounced off the wall, twisting, and lunged at me. I flipped the blade and sliced up through her stomach into the heart. Human teeth snapped an inch from my mouth. Her claws gripped my shoulder and she sagged on my blade, her life bleeding out.
I pushed the child off my saber gently and kept going.
Bodies lay strewn across the hallway, one after another, all facing to the end of the hallway, where the solid door to Jim’s office stood half-ajar. They must’ve run here and didn’t make it. I checked the faces as I walked, afraid I’d see someone I knew.
Whatever it was came through the front door. The first shapeshifter collapsed where he stood. The attacker hit the kitchen and headed upstairs. The shapeshifters on the first floor and in the basement must’ve heard the noise and chased after the intruder. Nine people dead, including Brenna and the child I’d murdered. Jim must’ve reinforced their numbers, expecting trouble. All of them went after the intruder. Nobody tried to get out until it was too late.
A muffled thud came from behind the door.
I pushed it open.
A naked man sat among the shambles of broken furniture and clumps of papers. A metal manacle clamped his ankle, attached to a spike in the floor by a chain as thick as my wrist. The loup chain—every Pack house had one.
A twisted mess of limbs and wounds lay in front of him. To the left a female shapeshifter hung on the wall, nailed by a sword to the boards.
The naked man looked up at me. An oily sheen slicked his skin, stretched tight over the lean body. His eyes were the dim yellow of old urine. The stench of rotting chicken swirled about him.
“My favorite niece,” Erra’s voice said. “Only you could make this better. Welcome to Venom’s party.”
The body in front of Venom moved.
“You again.” The undead stabbed the shapeshifter with a wooden shard and jerked it out for the second blow.
I grabbed the body by the legs and pulled it to me, out of his reach.
“Too late.” Erra snorted.
The shapeshifter’s body shuddered in my hands. Black ichor oozed. I knelt and saw bright red hair. Dingo, one of Jim’s men. Oh no.
A bloody hole gaped where Dingo’s left eye used to be. His right looked at me, stark against the mangled mess of his face. “Got him with the chain,” he whispered.
“You did,” I told him.
His voice was a hoarse, pain-laced groan. “Dying. Kill me.”
I raised my saber, brought it down, and then he hurt no more.
“Disgusting,” Erra said through Venom’s mouth.
Neither of us was laughing anymore. “These people were my friends. You made me kill them. You made me kill a child.” I could still hear Brenna’s voice in my head.
“Quit your sniveling. I have no patience for cowards.”
I got up and slid the cabinet door open. With tech and magic dancing back and forth, most people stuck to things that always worked for backup.
Papers, boxes, nothing of interest. I moved on to the smaller cabinet to the right. “I figured out why you don’t target women.”
“Women are the future. One man can sire a nation, but kill the women and you kill a people.”
“Nope, that’s not it. You were trained to demolish armies. Not many ancient armies were made of women.”
“You’d be surprised,” Erra said.
A glass gallon jug of kerosene, still three quarters full, sat in the corner. I pulled it out and twisted off the cap.
“Why don’t you gnaw off your leg and escape?” I asked.
“And miss out on your misery?”
“Oh, I’m pretty sure you’d be glad to miss it. If you lose your undead toy, you’ll have to look for another body to drain of blood. You didn’t escape, because making him chew off his foot would hurt you. And you don’t like pain.”
I strode to the undead.
Venom lunged at me. I sidestepped, catching his throat in my hand. My fingers touched his skin. I had already touched Erra’s mind once. It took me a fraction of a second to find it again. I grabbed it and dumped the kerosene over Venom’s head. Venom twisted, aiming a kick at my stomach. I let go and backed away, out of his reach, clinging to my aunt’s mind, chaining her to Venom’s body.
“Got a question for you.”
“And?” Erra snorted.
An awful pressure ground on my mind. I unclenched my teeth. “Can you outlast me?”
I pulled a lighter from my pocket, clicked it on, and threw it at Venom. Flames surged, licking his skin.
Erra screamed. Her mind grabbed mine and shook, the way a dog shakes a rat when it wants to kill it. I hung on with everything I had. Every ounce of fury I had to crush to get through this house. Every drop of guilt at watching Brenna’s blood splash the snow. I sank all of it into Erra’s mind, fastening her to Venom.
Burn, bitch. Burn.
The air stank of burning hair and charred fat. Venom flailed on his chain like a rabid dog.
“I’ll tear you limb from limb!”
“Does it hurt? Tell me it hurts.”
Heat and pain wound about my mind in white-hot ribbons, and squeezed. Tears swelled in my eyes. Venom burned like a human candle, and I clung to Erra’s mind.
The ribbons turned into blades and sliced into me, pulling me apart. I felt myself unraveling, as if my mind were disappearing thread by thread. An absurd vision of my veins being pulled from my body thrust itself before me. It hurt. Dear God, it hurt so much.
But the fire hurt her more.
Erra howled like a dog. “I’ll rip you apart and suck the marrow out of your bones. I’ll hunt you to the ends of the earth. You can’t hide your blood, I’ll know it anywhere. I’ll track you down. I’ll murder everyone who knows you and make you watch them die. You’ll pay for this. You’ll pay!”
The pressure ground my mind into nothing. “Quit your sniveling.”
Venom crashed to the floor. A light exploded in my mind, like a razor-sharp star. I tasted my blood—my nose was bleeding.
Pushing the words out of my mouth took a long time and they came out slurred. “Death shock. That’s what happens to a Master of the Dead when a vampire she navigates dies before she can let go of its mind. Since you keep your undead so close to your heart that it hurts you when they’re battered . . .”
“Let me go!” my aunt screamed.
“This is how you die,” I told her. “Chained to this undead piece of meat.”
“You’ll die with me,” she snarled.
Pain crushed my skull. I slumped against the wall. Fragments of my thoughts dashed back and forth like frightened rabbits. “. . . worth it . . .”
A short shape dashed into the room. I focused. Dark clothes. Indigo veil. The old woman I’d saved from some low-lives on the way to the Order. What the hell?
She leapt over the bodies and landed by me.
Erra screamed in agony.
The old woman jerked her hand up. A short spear glinted with the light of the flames. Her black eyes glared at me. “I end this. Let go now.”
I had no strength to fight her. I’d sunk all of myself into keeping Erra put. “Don’t.”
The spear spun in the woman’s hand. She flipped it and rammed the butt into my solar plexus. Pain exploded under my diaphragm, dropping me to my knees. I clawed on to the mind link but it slipped from me. The pressure vanished. My aunt broke free.
Venom jerked one last time and died.
Not again.
I surged to my feet and lunged at her. She made no move to counter. I slammed her into the wall. “Why?”
A red sheen rolled over her eyes. Diamond-shaped pupils stared back me. “I must protect you. It’s my job.”
The wall exploded. A seven-foot monster broke into the room, her fur dark, eyes glowing with green from a nightmarish meld of human face and wolf muzzle. Smaller shapes streamed into the room.
“Protect the mate!” the werewolf snarled in Jennifer’s voice. “Secure the room!”
Claws clamped me and threw me out of the room into the waiting hands of another shapeshifter.