I didn’t take my head off Jaxson’s chest. “A blast from the past, looking for revenge. He nearly killed us both once, but I killed him.”
Her expression didn’t waver. “Death binds us all together. Those who you’ve killed in life, if they are here, will be drawn to you. And you to them.”
Uh-oh.
A month ago, I’d been a waitress. Now…now there would be many in the Deadlands who would be looking for revenge, and I was certain that would be true for Jaxson as well.
I disentangled myself from Jaxson’s arms. “We’d better get going.”
“Yes,” he said, his voice totally flat, but I detected the hidden concern.
I stopped at the Crusher’s corpse but jumped back with a start.
He’d begun to change—as if he were decaying, but faster. His skin turned to mist and started to blow away like sand from the top of a dune. In a matter of seconds, he’d completely disappeared.
“He’s gone,” Jaxson muttered.
“What happens when you die here?” I asked.
Stephanie gave me a hard look. “The end. There is nowhere else to go.”
I blinked in surprise. “Oh.”
Nowhere else to go. So the Crusher was gone forever? From our world, and now the next? Not only had I killed him with the Soul Knife, but I’d eradicated him from the afterlife as well. A dark sense of satisfaction swelled within me. “Good.”
I began to walk away, but Jaxson grabbed my arm. “We’re being watched.”
I snapped my head up. A gray wolf stood on the crest of a hill, tracking our movements. The moment our eyes met, it bolted.
For a second, the sight of a wolf brought hope welling up in my chest, but it died instantly. It wasn’t her—my wolf—nor any wolf I recognized.
Stephanie frowned, and I asked, “Did you know that wolf?”
“No, but I’m certain it was a sentry. We’re in his domain now,” she whispered.
“Whose?”
She turned and gave me a blank, emotionless look. “The ghost wolf alpha. He rules over all the ghost packs.”
“Ghost wolf alpha? Did he send you to us?”
She shook her head. “No. He doesn’t know about this. I came to you on my own, with the help of the Opener of Ways. There was no time to seek the alpha’s permission.”
That didn’t bode well.
We continued through the rolling hills, moving more cautiously than we had before, but it wasn’t long before Stephanie stopped us. “He’s here. I can feel him.”
Focusing my senses, I strained to catch any scent. The limits of my human perception betrayed me again.
“I have his scent—a powerful alpha,” Jaxson said. “And I can sense his anger. What should we do?”
Stephanie backed up. “I don’t know if he’ll help us, but whatever we do, we mustn’t aggravate him. He’s quick to anger.”
Great.
I waited, listening. For a moment, there was nothing, and then a strong signature washed over me—the scent of falling leaves and the taste of dark molasses, the sound of crackling flames and the feeling of cold stone on my skin.
And the rumbling of anger.
I opened my mouth, but before I could speak, an enormous shadow crested the hill. A white wolf the size of a truck appeared among the trees. His power was overwhelming, like the presence of an alpha, but grounded in a way I’d never felt before. It vibrated all around us in the earth, the trees, and the sky.
For a second, he glared at us with vicious golden-yellow eyes. Then words echoed in my mind like a landslide: Only I may take life and death in my lands. You have violated and profaned my domain. You will leave.
With that, the great beast charged.