CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

There was only one place in the world that Seth considered to be home, and it was the Gresham Ranch. The faintest whiff of brewing coffee could bring the memories back to him in a heartbeat: the long hours he spent repairing fences, digging trenches, moving cattle, shoveling the paths in the cold winter sun. It had been his first real job. The place that he had been safe with Rylie, most of the time. Somewhere that everyone loved and respected him.

The Gresham Ranch was gone. The Union had seized it, from the back forty acres to the rickety mailbox that had been kicked over in a fit of werewolf anger at least six times. They had said it was a case of eminent domain. In truth, it was a case of control, and the Union’s frustration that they had continually failed to possess the pack that the ranch sheltered.

The Union had taken the ranch, but they couldn’t take the memories. And those memories couldn’t be replaced, either.

But anywhere Abel and Rylie were, Seth could make into a home, whether it be a strip motel or a sanctuary deep in the mountains. They’d spent weeks constructing cottages to the specifications of their future inhabitants, hammering and painting and furnishing, and Seth had poured enough sweat into the sanctuary that he probably could have filled the lake with it. It wasn’t home—not yet—but he was damn proud of what he had accomplished, not to mention what it represented for the future of the endangered werewolf species.

Which was why his heart shattered when he saw the cottages burning, and Lincoln standing in the center of town with flames rippling off of his skin.

He didn’t look anything like the deputy that Seth had shared a beer with earlier that night. If not for the familiar close-cropped hair and football shoulders, he might have thought that a monster had walked straight into the sanctuary.

Veins bulged from Lincoln’s exposed skin, like he had shot adrenaline straight into his heart, and blood streamed down his cheeks. A black symbol swam in the center of his forehead, just under the surface: a demonic sigil.

There was a gun in his hand and a body crumpled at his feet. One wolf already down.

Crystal’s guess had been right. Lincoln was possessed by a demon.

And now he was aiming a handgun loaded with silver rounds at Trevin.

The werewolf was rushing between cottages, head low, arms pumping. It looked like he had ripped debris away from where it blocked the door to one burning cottage, allowing the inhabitants to escape. He was making himself a diversion. A diversion that Seth fully intended to utilize.

Seth shouldered his rifle, centered the sights on the upper right quadrant of Lincoln’s chest, and squeezed the trigger.

The shot slammed into Lincoln with a spray of blood, pouring from the wound with more force than a garden hose. His blood pressure was high, too high, and it spurted with every pulse of his heart.

Lincoln turned slowly, bloody eyes zeroing in on Seth a hundred feet away.

The blood slowed. The wound closed.

Seth expected—even hoped—that Lincoln would fire the pistol at him, wasting silver rounds on someone that wouldn’t be poisoned by the shot. But he dropped the gun and raised his free hand, fingers spread, palm facing Seth.

“Kopis,” he said. Lincoln’s voice was ragged, like his throat had been chewed by a saw.

Terror gripped Seth. His heart hammered, his head swam, and his vision hazed.

Lincoln’s going to kill me. I’m going to die out here. Everyone’s going to die.

And somewhere below that, he heard his mother’s voice again.

Failure .

Seth fired another shot, even though he couldn’t see. The slug went wild. Lincoln laughed, low and throaty.

Through the haze, Seth could see the deputy approaching, sauntering toward him with gently-swaying hips, as if he were used to having curves. Lincoln stepped over the body at his feet easily. It wasn’t a wolf—it was Nash, hands clutching his chest, gray-tinged blood pouring over his fingers. He had taken a bullet to protect the pack, and it looked like he was down for the count.

Summer had left Nash behind to protect them. Now Nash was unconscious.

If this thing could take an angel, then what chance did Seth stand?

Failure , his mother whispered again.

The fire on the roof of the cottage behind Lincoln touched an electrical box. An explosion flared behind him, briefly lighting up his silhouette—in the shape of a woman. Seth thought that he glimpsed a bikini of bones, a wide grin with a serpent tongue, but the vision faded immediately.

That’s not Lincoln .

“Come here, kopis,” Lincoln said. He almost sounded sultry.

A second explosion. Seth whirled to see that another cottage had caught fire, even though the other burning buildings weren’t anywhere nearby. Where Lincoln walked, flames followed.

The entire sanctuary was going to burn down.

Seth would burn to death.

He could imagine it now with perfect clarity: gagging on smoke, the moisture evaporating from his eye sockets, skin melting. Seth screamed and tried to leap from the fire. The rifle flew from his hands. His back hit the ground.

Lincoln stood over him laughing. The sound struck fear deep into Seth’s heart.

The deputy stooped, and when he rose again, the rifle was in his hands. He wasn’t going to waste a silver bullet on Seth. He didn’t need to.

Need to stand, need to fight back…

Failure…

But he couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t even move. The terror ripped from him in dry, wracking sobs, the tearless kind that shook his entire body.

“Such a shame,” the demon purred through Lincoln’s mouth. “This is a pretty one.”

I’m going to die .

But a man slammed into Lincoln’s side, knocking him over. The rifle discharged into the air.

“Get it!” Trevin shouted, holding Lincoln down.

The instant that he had struck Lincoln, the fear had lifted from Seth’s mind. It was still lingering, but not debilitating. He could breathe.

His eyes focused on the rifle a few feet away. Seth scrambled for it.

Trevin couldn’t change, not without Rylie or Abel’s help—he wasn’t an Alpha. But his human form was nothing to laugh at, either. He hurled all of his strength into each punch across Lincoln’s face, snapping his head from side to side, sending blood spraying across the road that Seth had paved himself.

With a thunderous growl, Lincoln kicked Trevin off of him. The werewolf went flying. He punched through the wall of the nearest cottage, and half of the burning roof collapsed on him.

Shit .

Seth lunged for his rifle, but another hand landed on it at the same time that his did: a hand corded with veins and stained with blood.

He elbowed Lincoln in the face. The deputy responded by biting his elbow hard, digging his square teeth into the meat of Seth’s forearm. He cried out as he ripped free.

His pounding heart sped to fill his ears.

You will die alone, pretty kopis .

That wasn’t his thought—it belonged to a sensual female voice, like the very best phone sex operator on Earth, and with it came waves of fresh fear.

Seth could imagine Rylie writhing on the ground, wracked with the pain of silver poisoning. Abel was already dead. They were skinned and bleeding and there was nothing he could do to save any of them, because he had failed—

The images vanished.

“Crux sacra sit mihi lux !”

Lincoln screamed with twin voices, one masculine, one feminine. He reared back on his knees, gripping his head in both hands.

Beyond him, James emerged from the smoke of the burning cottages, sword in hand.

Seth had seen Elise’s obsidian falchion. This sword looked to be its twin, though it was from much more ordinary components—steel, he thought, although he had never seen steel glowing with its own internal fire before. Religious symbols blazed over the flat of the blade.

James stood over Lincoln, pressing the flat of the falchion against his face.

“Non draco sit mihi dux— Seth, grab the pistol!”

Seth felt lost and scared and confused. But he was starting to understand that the fear wasn’t his. It belonged to the demon. It was the same thing that had made Abel run from the mobile home, and no matter how real it felt, it wasn’t his emotion.

“The pistol!” James yelled again.

Right. Seth ripped it out of Lincoln’s belt, ejected the magazine, and threw them both in separate directions. He hoped that the magazine would land in one of the fires. Silver was a soft metal; it would melt easily.

James wasn’t trying to cut Lincoln with the sword, but whatever he was doing looked like it hurt as badly. The blazing falchion left a raised welt on Lincoln’s flesh. The deputy’s eyes had rolled into the back of his head as he shuddered.

Seth grabbed his rifle and aimed it down at Lincoln’s skull. He only shook a little bit.

“Shoot him,” James said.

“What?”

“Do it!”

Seth didn’t squeeze the trigger.

Was that the right thing to do to someone possessed—kill them for the crimes of the demon? Lincoln was kind of a prejudiced dick, but he wasn’t evil. He was a deputy. He protected people.

“Can’t you exorcise him?” Seth asked.

They had stalled too long. Lincoln’s hand clamped around James’s wrist, forcing the sword away from his cheek. James’s muscles shook with the strain of trying to hold the falchion in place, but the demon was stronger.

“I don’t think I like you, angel-heart,” Lincoln said with a moue of distaste.

He shoved James and shot to his feet. The instant that they broke contact, fear erupted over Seth again, boiling magma-hot over his flesh.

Lincoln shoved Seth. He fell, unable to fight back.

“No!” James roared, swinging the sword.

But Lincoln didn’t stop to fight them again. He ran with inhuman speed, flying across the sanctuary and into the mountains.

Only when he vanished did the grip of fear release Seth’s lungs. “What the hell just happened?” he gasped, getting to his feet, gripping his chest in both hands.

“Nightmare demon,” James said grimly, reaching back to sheathe the sword. Like Elise, he had a scabbard on his spine, hidden by a loose button-down shirt. “Fuck me, I didn’t think…” He shook his head. “We have to catch him before he reaches Northgate. Are you coming?”

“Wait,” Seth said.

Two of the werewolves, Crystal and Reese, were pulling apart the walls of the cottage that Trevin had fallen into. Seth hurried over to help, but they had already ripped into the building with super-strength, extracting Trevin from its depths. He was ashen, singed—but breathing.

“I’ve got him,” Crystal said, hugging Trevin’s shoulders tight to her chest. Her manicured fingers stroked the sweaty hair off of his forehead. “Get that thing .”

“The fire,” Seth said, staring at the sanctuary. It wasn’t nearly as bad as he had thought at first glimpse—the cottage that Trevin had been in was the worst, but the others were barely smoldering. The fear radiating from the nightmare had made it look worse. Thank God that Rylie had splurged on the best flame-resistant building materials.

“We’ll rally the pack and take care of it,” Reese said. “Go , Seth.”

He turned to see that James was already sprinting after Lincoln. Muttering a curse under his breath, Seth followed.