Sacrificed in Shadow (11 page)

But the time for avoidance was over. If Seth and Abel did have an angel with them, Elise wouldn’t need to break herself free. She could walk out of captivity.

She closed her eyes and let her mind drift in the way that her body could not, bound to the earth by spotlights. Even now, as a demon, she retained a kopis’s ability to sense preternatural creatures. She could feel Abel, the werewolf, like a weight in her belly. She could feel Seth, the kopis, on the tip of her tongue, like a forgotten word.

And Elise felt Nashriel, the angel, like the buzz of electricity at her crown.

She reached out to him.

“Nashriel,” she said, and it wasn’t her voice. It wasn’t the voice of a mortal woman, a kopis, or a demon. It was the voice of the mother of angels—the voice of Eve.

Nashriel heard her, and the door opened.

Like all angels, Nashriel was tall—well over six feet. He was handsome. His hair was brown, cut in a modern style, with short bangs that shadowed his eyes. His skin had olive undertones, more Middle Eastern than Mediterranean. And his eyes were blue, pale blue, shockingly so. Only a darker ring of color delineated the irises from the sclera.

He wore a gray suit, the kind that skilled Italian tailors cut with razor precision. He had been doing well for himself. It pleased Eve to see him in such good health, even when she last remembered him with long, unkempt hair, and blood on his hands.

Nashriel dropped to one knee in front of her.

“It
is
you,” he said. His expression was pained. His mind was probably trying to tell him that they were strangers, while his heart said that he loved her more than anyone he had ever known.

Eve would have wanted to soothe him, taking away his hurts.

But Elise just wanted to escape.

“Open the shackles, Nashriel,” she said.

“But you died. You died so very long ago. I was there when the garden burned.”

“The world’s always changing,” Elise said, trying to keep the impatience out of her voice. The love Eve felt for him made Elise’s teeth ache. “Open the shackles.”

Nashriel’s eyes tracked over her face, but he didn’t seem to see her. Not really. He was seeing Eve: a woman with long, auburn curls, olive skin much like his, and a gentle grace that suffused her every motion. Not a black-haired, white-fleshed demon that shattered at the touch of sunlight.

“I’m so sorry,” he whispered. “I’m sorry for what I did to you. I’m sorry I obeyed him when every sense told me that I was doing wrong.”

Elise twisted her wrists. “I forgave you the moment you did it, Nashriel.” It was the truth. Eve had never been angry at him for acting upon God’s word.

The moment of relief that showed in his eyes passed quickly.

“You look like a demon,” he said. He sounded like he was on the verge of fainting, like the conflicting sensory information was overloading his fragile ethereal neurons.

Oh, for fuck’s sake.

Elise let the hard rim of the shackles dig into her skin. Skin split and blood flowed to the knuckles of her gloves. The scent flooded the room. It was woodsy, musky, laced with copper and spice. Not human blood.

Nashriel’s pupils narrowed to pinpoints.

“Open the shackles,” she said. “
Now
.”

He reached for her. In moments, she would be free—free, and within the enclave of the werewolves, where she might find the answer to every single one of her questions.

But a woman stepped through the open door, interrupting them.

She was a little over five feet tall, with blond hair like a fairy princess from a children’s cartoon. Her features were Germanic; her eyes were gold. She moved with the silken grace of a wolf. And she was hurriedly tugging on a white sundress, arranging the fabric so that it modestly concealed her coltish legs.

Blond hair, tan skin, slender build? Elise had no doubt that this was the golden wolf that she had glimpsed among the trees, as graceful and swift as the wind. She didn’t look like a human as much as she did a beam of pure moonlight poured into the vessel of human flesh.

The wolf-girl’s jaw dropped when she saw Nashriel reaching for Elise’s shackles. “Nash, wait—what are you doing?”

The angel stopped, fingertips on the chains.

“Free me,” Elise whispered. “Do it quickly, before she stops you.”

“Hey,” the blond woman said again, striding across the room. She grabbed Nashriel’s arm and jerked him away. “Didn’t you hear me? What do you think you’re doing?”

“Mother,” he whispered, gaze still fixed upon Elise.

Elise gave him the full brunt of her stare. “Nashriel,” she said softly, pretending that the blond woman wasn’t in the room, as though they were in the nursery in the garden and he was born into her arms all over again. “Let me out of here. I’m trapped.”

His fingers stretched toward her bindings.

But the blond woman hurled Nashriel away with inhuman strength. He flew through the air, striking the wall hard enough that it buckled under the impact. Shelves collapsed.

When the woman whirled back to Elise, her golden eyes blazed, and her lips were peeled back to bare fangs.

“Don’t you even think about messing with him,” the werewolf said, lisping around fangs. “He’s
mine
.”

Mine
. The declaration of ownership rankled. An angel couldn’t belong to some werewolf—all angels belonged to Eve. But that word carried weight when it came from the lips of this blond, gangly girl, and Elise had to acknowledge that she had failed to grab Nashriel.

She sat back against the wall, hands balled into fists behind her.

“I had to try,” Elise said. Her gaze was fixed on the pulse at the wolf-girl’s throat. What would
her
blood taste like? “Who are you?”

The blond woman straightened. It took visible effort, as though she would have preferred to drop to all fours. “I’m the Alpha of the werewolf pack.”

“So you’re responsible for the murders,” Elise said.

The Alpha’s face crumpled, confused. “Aren’t you the murderer?” Such a naive question.

“I came into the forest tonight looking for the werewolf responsible for the attacks,” Elise said. “I didn’t expect to find a whole pack of you. I didn’t think there were any packs left.”

“We’re the last one.”

The Alpha kneeled beside Nashriel, hesitantly touching his arm. It was awfully careful for someone who had no problems declaring him as belonging to her. More like casual acquaintances than close friends. He didn’t respond to her touch.

The girl bit her bottom lip hard enough to leave the indentation of her teeth on her skin.

“What did you do to him?” asked the Alpha. “What are you?”

“My name is Elise. I’m not the beast that’s been killing people. I’m the person that’s come to stop the murders.”

The light of hope flashed over her face. “We aren’t the killers, either. Someone’s setting us up.”

Elise was inclined to believe that was true. She couldn’t imagine this blond girl with blood on her hands. But even an Alpha couldn’t speak for an entire pack. The wounds that she had seen on the bodies had definitely belonged to an animal, and Elise was certain that the killer had to be among them.

“I think we have a lot to talk about,” Elise said.

“I guess so,” she said. “My name’s Rylie Gresham.”

Rylie. It was a quirky, Millennial Generation name that Elise would have expected from a teenager, not the leader of a werewolf pack.

“These shackles are uncomfortable,” Elise said. “Let me go so we can talk.”

Rylie touched Nashriel’s shoulder. He had the heel of one palm touched to his temple, as if struggling with an overbearing headache, but he wasn’t looking at Rylie or Elise. His attention was thousands of years away, diverted to some dark, internal place where Adam and Eve still walked the garden, and angels were merely children that obeyed them.

“Are you okay, Nash?” she whispered. He didn’t react to the question.

Elise hadn’t tried to force her will on an angel since returning from the garden. She wasn’t honestly sure what she could do to them now. It was possible that she had melted Nashriel’s mind and will—though hopefully the damage wouldn’t be permanent.

“He’s in shock. He’ll be okay in a few hours,” Elise lied. She jangled the shackles. “I can help.”

Rylie hesitated, glancing at the spotlights. She felt safe with the lights at her back. Someone had told her about Elise’s abilities, told her that Elise would be powerless without darkness—probably the same someone that was struggling to organize his jumbled thoughts on the floor a few feet away.

And it was mostly true. If Elise was in the light, she wasn’t going anywhere by infernal means. But mundane methods of locomotion didn’t seem to occur to Rylie.

The werewolves were led by a naive girl. Some kid, barely more than a child.

Elise plastered an
I am so very nice and harmless
smile on her face.

“Please,” Elise said.

“Okay,” Rylie agreed.

She kneeled, unlocking Elise’s bindings.

Elise planted a hand in Rylie’s chest and shoved. The Alpha spilled onto her back. Elise crossed the room in three long strides, arms folded over her head to protect her skin, and entered the darkness.

Then she was gone.

Light. Light everywhere.
Elise was burning.

She slammed back into her corporeal form the instant she exited the front door of Rylie’s home. Elise stumbled over her own feet and hit the pavement.

Pavement
. In the middle of the supposedly empty Appalachian mountains.

Elise flexed her human hands on the black ground, hard enough to make her fingertips turn white. She was as solid as the ground underneath her. Rocks dug into the knees of her jeans. She barely had a shadow—there were too many lights.

She looked up. She was in the center of what looked like a small town, still under construction. Several cabins—more like cottages, really, with delicate white accents—encircled Elise. Huge spotlights illuminated the road that ran between them. The werewolves were building a village, doing construction at night, and had accidentally contained Elise. That was their good luck, and her misfortune.

She took her time getting to her feet, spreading her senses in the way that she couldn’t spread her body.

Kopis to the north. Angel behind her. Two werewolves to the south. More pack in the forest—a
lot
more pack.

Elise turned to see Seth standing at her left. He had lost the ball cap and jacket. He carried a rifle in his hands with the confidence of a man who knew how to use it, a man that
had
used it, and someone willing to kill.

Abel, the scar-faced werewolf, was on her opposite side, still in his burly human form, unaffected by the full moon. That level of control meant that he had to be an Alpha, too. Rylie staggered to his side, gripping his arm, leaning against him. She may not have known Nashriel well, but she was obviously
very
comfortable with Abel. A mated pair.

It was worse than Elise ever could have expected.

“Hands in the air,” Seth said, lifting the rifle to his shoulder.

Elise spread her arms wide, showing that she wasn’t holding weapons. Lincoln’s sweater hung loose around her body, unzipped.

“I’m harmless,” Elise said.

“Like hell you are,” Abel said, wrapping a possessive arm around Rylie. His nose twitched. “I smell silver. Whatever you’ve got, throw it in front of you.”

Elise didn’t hesitate to comply. She extracted the knives one by one—five of them—and tossed them to the ground.

Seth stepped forward without dropping his rifle. He kicked them into the darkness and stepped back.

“Anything else?” he asked.

Abel shook his head. “Nothing silver, but I don’t like the look of those chains. Strip, demon.”

He meant her chains of charms, and probably the sweater, too. Elise dropped all of them. They were replaceable.

She stood in front of them, wearing only jeans and boots and a snug black tank top. There was no concealing the spine scabbard that held the falchion at her back.

Seth sucked in a breath at the sight of the sword.

“That, too,” Abel said.

Elise considered her odds. The spotlights were big and nasty, more than enough to hold her in place. She couldn’t swallow these three unless she escaped. She wasn’t sure that they deserved the death anyway.

But she wasn’t surrendering her falchion.

“Let me go,” Elise said. “Walk away, and I’ll spare you tonight.”

Abel snorted. “In case you missed it, we’ve got three bullets aimed at your head right now.”

He had already shot her once—something that Elise wouldn’t be forgetting any time soon. Three more bullets wouldn’t make a difference.

Howls drifted over the forest. The pack was looking for their Alphas.

“Drop the sword,” Abel said again.

“No,” Elise replied.

“What did you do to Nash?” Rylie asked. “Can you really fix him?”

Elise gave her a steady look without responding.

Abel cocked the guns. It wasn’t necessary to cock a modern pistol, but it produced a distinctive, threatening sound.

“Do it,” he said.

Elise remained silent.

Seth and Abel exchanged glances. She took that instant of opportunity to run.

She bolted across the clearing, toward the tee of the crossroads. Her fists pumped. Boots pounded on pavement. Just a few steps, and she would be in sweet darkness.

A roar shattered the night.

Elise couldn’t resist the urge to look over her shoulder, expecting to see the mighty beast that Abel would have become.

It wasn’t Abel changing.

Rylie’s human flesh exploded away from her. Elise understood that changing into a werewolf typically took several minutes. But Rylie was hiding a lot of power behind the mask of an innocent girl, and the change was nearly instantaneous.

The skin on her face ripped as her muzzle extended. The hair fell from her scalp, scattering on the pavement. Fur exploded over her rippling skin, bones popped, and that cute white sundress fell to scraps at her paws.