44
Jaxson
The tires of my truck screeched as I pulled onto Razorback Avenue. My skin still crawled from the Dark God’s magic, and a deep dread churned my soul. When he’d forced the shift, I’d heard him loud and clear, as if he’d been standing right beside me. His words repeated on loop in my head: I will take her from you. Tonight, your soul will be ripped in two.
I glanced at Savy. She clutched the door handle, her brows pinched together, looking as beautiful as ever, even as we perched on the edge of a knife. I sensed her fear, and my chest ached. Fury rippled through me. I wasn’t accustomed to feeling helpless. I couldn’t lose her. I wouldn’t.
The further south we drove, the more wolves and half-shifted people appeared from the flickering fog. It was like hell had been ripped open and was spilling into Magic Side.
I caught sight of Eclipse as we roared through Dockside. Smoke billowed into the sky, and I tightened my fists on the steering wheel.
A gray wolf strutted across the road up ahead, and I slowed down as smoke clouded the air. I didn’t need to crash right now. The Dark God’s magic was pressing in around us, and I had a sick feeling that it was only a matter of time before he infiltrated our minds and bodies again.
Savannah pointed out the window. “Holy shit, Jaxson, that woman!”
I followed her gaze to the sidewalk where a young woman, Fae by the look of her tipped ears, was in the early throes of a shift. On her neck was a dripping wound. My blood curdled. She wasn’t a werewolf—what was happening?
“It looks like she was bitten,” Savannah said, then looked at me. “Could it be lycanthropy?”
“Impossible.”
Lycanthropy was a rare disease transmitted from werewolf to non-wolf that brought on wolfish aspects, but it had been nearly wiped out in our world.
I slowed the truck as we rolled by the woman. Claws tore from her fingers, and she screamed as the bones and sinews of her body rearranged themselves.
“Oh, my God,” Savannah gasped. “Can we help her?”
She rose, half woman, half wolf. Just like the other poor bastard we’d seen.
I hit the gas. “Lycanthropy or not, this is the Dark God’s work. There’s nothing we can do for her now.”
I wasn’t certain that was the truth, but we had no time to stop.
Guilt tore at me as I watched the woman in the rearview mirror as we sped away. I was at least partially responsible for this shit, but I wouldn’t risk Savannah’s safety by stopping and helping those poor souls. My mate was everything to me now, and perhaps our only chance at stopping the fucking Dark Wolf God.
“It’s the mist,” Savannah said quietly. “He’s working through it…taking over peoples’ wolves and making them go crazy.”
Godsdamnit. If she was right and the Dark God was using the mist to infect people, how long did we have until he turned the whole island? Before newly transformed and apparently crazed wolves started infiltrating Chicago?
A loud thud hit the back of my truck. I looked in the mirror to find another half-shifted man clawing at the window, scraping up my new paint job. Motherfucker.
“Hold on,” I growled.
I hit the brakes, and the tires skidded and screeched across the asphalt. The man slammed into the window of the bed and flew over the roof, rolling on the sidewalk. I ground my teeth. He’d broken an arm and was pretty busted up, but he’d live.
Savannah turned to me, shocked.
“What?”
She shook her head and looked out the front. “Nothing, just a moment of déjà vu from the night I met you.”
A sick turn of fate.
Dodging cars, debris, and rampant wolves made the rest of our trip to the Indies painfully slow. Up ahead, a piercing wall of light illuminated the sky. The sorcerers must have erected their magical barrier.
We’d better be able to fucking get through.
Savannah had her phone to her ear and was tapping her fingers anxiously on the window.
“Savy?” Her cousin’s voice sounded on the line.