His jaw dropped. He looked like he would fight me, but a sound in the distance caught his attention. His head snapped to the side. Eyes on the distant trees, his gaze focused.
“Wha—”
He clamped his hand over my mouth to silence me. So, instead of using my voice, I reached out with my arcana. I sent it rolling over the large estate like a veil of fog. Surprisingly, there was less death here, on a vampire’s estate, than I assumed there would be.
Then I hit it. A corpse watched us from the woods. Once again, I could feel the familiarity of this particular corpse. Fear hit my veins like a bucket of ice. Beside Alvin were two other shifters. Without question, I knew who they were, too.
In the battle to stop Alvin from binding his pack to himself in a cursed ritual, two of Ness’s packmates had given up their lives. My heart ached for them, now standing alongside the man who’d killed them.
“Connor. Catriona. I’m so sorry.”
Maddox gave me a sharp glare, but I wasn’t the untrained Reaper that I’d been when we met. With my arcana stretched all the way out to the three undead shifters, I wrapped it around them. Closing my fist, the arcana slammed into them and severed any ties that the killer had to them. I could feel the tethers snapping like tendons.
My stomach churned, but I didn’t stop. Taking a deep breath, I steadied myself and asked the shifters now under my command to die all over again. It hurt me to ask that of them. Two breathed a sigh of relief, though.
Connor and Catriona didn’t want to be here. They craved rest, even if there were no souls in their bodies. It was Alvin who put up a fight.
I gasped when I realized that the killer had figured out how to pull a soul from the afterlife—assuming that Alvin had passed on.
Alvin stepped out of the woods and revealed himself, now as complete as the cat back at my house. The sun glinted in his eyes when he fixed his sights upon us. I startled, surprised, but quickly gathered my bearings once more.
Alvin could be controlled. He wasn’t a living creature. He was a dead thing walking in my territory, which meant that he would be subject to my power. At least, that’s what I hoped. This was new to me. My confidence was fragile, and I knew that didn’t help.
“No,” I commanded as I shoved my arcana at Alvin.
I pushed it into him, but I couldn’t take ahold of him. The arcana seemed to go right through him like water through a sieve. I cursed and doubled down. There was more power where that came from. If I couldn’t keep it in Alvin’s undead body, I could drown him in it.
More and more spilled out of me. It filled the area, but before it could spread too far, I gathered it around Alvin until he was surrounded. He tossed his head back and released a hollow howl that shook me. My concentration slipped.
I fumbled back, and Maddox caught me. The connection between us yawned open. Power flowed through him and into me, making me gasp from the sudden wash of cold arcana filling my body. Maddox jerked in surprise, but he didn’t let go of me.
“Alvin Combs, you dirty son of a bitch,” I grumbled under my breath.
I raised my hand and directed it at Alvin. He charged forward. Time was running out. He would hit me before I could take control of him. So much for trusting my power. It’d always betrayed me. I wasn’t sure why I expected anything else. This arcana was good for nothing.
As my confidence waned, so did my arcana. It slid out of me and back into Maddox. Except more poured into him. Through his hands on my shoulders, my endless power acted like a conduit.
Maddox gasped. White light filled his eyes. It was time for him to shift again.
Panic hit me. I didn’t want him fighting Alvin. Ryder and Ness had barely escaped that battle once before. It wasn’t that Alvin was stronger, though he had been an Alpha in life. Alvin had always relied on subterfuge and trickery. Now, with his soul in his undead body, I knew this wouldn’t be a straightforward fight.
Maddox bent, his body changing form. A snarl caught my attention. I turned just in time to see Alvin, airborne above me. Alvin bore down on me, but a white beast leapt past me and slammed into Alvin.
I cried out, afraid for Maddox. “He’s a shady bastard! Don’t let him get the upper hand!”
Alvin closed his jaws around Maddox’s neck. I whimpered as if in pain myself. Then, before Alvin could bite down harder, Maddox blinked out of existence. He fell through the portal to the afterlife and reappeared a few feet away, giving him time to leap on Alvin’s back.
Maddox wasn’t going to play fair, either. With my power flowing through him, Maddox had better control over the portal leaps.
Maddox
The other wolfsmelled of death. His rotten breath made my nose wrinkle. I snarled and snapped at him to back him away from Addie, but this creature cared little for my warning. He was more man than beast, I realized.
Those weren’t wolf eyes staring back at me. They were human. Not only that, but they were the cold eyes of someone who took pleasure in death. He’d been a killer in life. I could already tell he was the kind who hunted for sport.
Did he have anything to do with those girls who’d been discovered last summer? Their killer had never been found, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t be punished. Now, I had a second chance to make him pay for what he’d done.
I understood, now. Life as a supernatural meant making decisions to protect not only those around you, but those who knew nothing about this world, either. Addie’s friends had the eyes of killers because they’d done everything in their power to keep their loved ones safe.