No—this was a nightmare. Cold, bony hands around my ankles dragged me towards a hole in the ground. I kicked, but the undead thing’s grip on me was stronger than it should have been. Undead things were fragile. Their rotting forms made them fall apart easily.
Not this one. It tightened its grip on me, bones digging through flesh and into my own bone. I screamed, my throat turning raw in the process.
More hands burst from the earth. They grabbed me and kept pulling me towards the hole. At the edge, I looked down into the black maw of a grave. It had no bottom, only an endless darkness that roiled with the cool smoke of death.
“No, no, no!” I scrabbled at the dirt.
Soil gathered under my nails as they threatened to break. I winced, but I didn’t stop. Adrenaline chilled my blood. My breath came quick, and my head spun. This didn’t feel like a dream anymore. The hands on me were too real. My reactions rocketed through my body.
“Addie! Wake up! Addie!”
The familiar voice made the world stop. Even death stood still for a heartbeat.
I looked up, expecting to find Maddox standing over me. There was nothing more than the gray expanse above. I reached out, hoping to touch something real. I wanted out of this nightmare. If I didn’t escape soon, it would claim me, and I wasn’t ready to go.
“Addie! There’s something in the house. I need you to wake up.”
The cold smoke of death didn’t come from the grave. This time, it burst out of me and flowed in all directions. Somehow, I could feel the walls and halls of my home as the arcana slithered through it. There, in the kitchen, my power touched something undead.
For a heartbeat, I thought about taking hold of it. Then the undead beast gnashed its teeth, and my connection to it snapped.
Gasping, I lurched upright. I came out of the dream like it was water. Air rushed to greet the cold sweat covering my skin. Tendrils of hair were plastered to my forehead. Maddox stood over me with a weapon in one hand. I could have told him that would do nothing against the thing downstairs, but I didn’t dare speak.
He was dead. Ness and Ryder had made sure of that. But someone with my ability had brought him back. My arcana knew him intimately, because I’d gone back to his shallow grave time and time again to make sure he was still there for everyone’s sake. I’d been distracted by everything going on, and in that time, someone brought Alvin Combs back from the dead.
I grabbed Maddox’s sleeve and pulled him close. Though I wanted to chide him for shouting my name, I knew that Alvin would be able to hunt us through smell. Even an undead wolf shifter would be able to smell us.
This bastard had found Alvin Combs of all people. I didn’t understand what kind of game this killer was playing. He wanted me dead, that much I knew. Why, though? Why send all sorts of undead monsters after me in an effort to kill me?
What made me so special?
Maddox helped me out of bed. We quietly padded towards the door. He leaned forward and peered out. What was he doing here? He’d been distant all day, and then suddenly, he was in my bedroom? I became acutely aware of the oversized shirt slipping off my shoulders and the bike shorts riding up my butt-crack. My hair had to be a mess with how much I’d sweated.
This was not a good look, and I shouldn’t have cared in the moment. There was an undead wolf shifter prowling the first floor of my house. We had bigger problems, yet here I was nervously fiddling with my hair.
My arcana would have clucked its tongue at me if it had one. My power cared little for appearances. Once more, it spread out in a net with the intent of finding Alvin. I recognized him so easily, even in death, after coming across him too many times in life. He’d been a vicious monster. Now he was a terrifying weapon.
And my power wanted to steal him. My arcana wanted to pry into the magic binding him to another supernatural. If I pushed hard enough, I could break the control and take him over the same way that I had with the detached hands the first night the killer came after me.
But the price for this power didn’t come out of nowhere. Life had to come from the things around me. I reached out to touch Maddox, then thought twice. I didn’t want my power to draw on him.
Hesitation cost me. While I froze in the face of my own power, the sound of claws clicking along hardwood slowly approached. Alvin had found us.
I clamped my hand over my mouth to muffle my whimper. Inside, my arcana fought me. I kept it close even though it wanted to lash out furiously. I couldn’t…I refused to risk hurting Maddox.
Alvin paused. Maddox shoved me behind him before lifting his weapon. The door burst open and slammed against the wall. Even in the dark, I could see the horrid thing that Alvin had become. His flesh dripped from his body before reforming. Every step had a soft sucking sound. He was slick with a liquid that I didn’t want to identify.
Lowering his rotting head, Alvin growled. The sound wasn’t right. Part of his throat was missing.
Whoever was raising these creatures didn’t have the power to make them whole. Or so I thought. The room dropped several degrees in temperature, and Maddox swayed on his feet. Death sucked life from the room.
The killer only partially raised Alvin so that he could use Maddox’s life force to finish the job. And I had no idea how to stop it. My own power pulled on the life of others. If I tried to stop the killer, I would pull on Maddox, too.
We needed to get out, but the rotting wolf shifter stood between us and the exit. I glanced back at the windows. There was another exit, but I didn’t know how well that would work. Could I make the leap? Probably, but there was a chance that one of us would land wrong and hobble ourselves.
Then we’d be sitting ducks.
I had to use my arcana. If I didn’t, horrible things would happen.