The cool morninggave way quickly to a sweltering humidity, and then to hours of overhead sun that baked them within the cage. Silas and Jason removed their jackets to use for shade and rolled up their sleeves and pant legs. Still, the heat made Silas feel ill. His head swam, and his tongue felt thick and dry as a stone.
His brain was so fried that he didn’t trust his own ears when a rumble came from a distance. “Do you hear that?” Silas rose, his throat too dry to speak louder than a whisper. The sun had begun to set, and long shadows stretched across his brother’s face, distorting his features. But there was no hiding his sunken cheekbones and cracked lips. A werewolf’s metabolism before the full moon required seven times the calories and hydration of a human. They may have only been in there for a day, but both of them were starving to death.
“Sounds like an engine,” Jason rasped. He stood, pulling the suit jacket he’d been using for shade off his head.
A black Suburban rumbled up a two-rut lane through the jungle, Alex behind the wheel and a Latino man Silas didn’t recognize in the passenger’s seat. Alex parked, climbed out, and stared down his nose at Silas.
“This is what you’ve come to, Alex?” Silas said. “Too cowardly to fight us one-on-one, so you lock us in here to die of thirst?”
Alex reached into the Suburban and pulled out a bottle of water, handing it to Silas between the bars. “Drink up. I wouldn’t want you to die before you had a chance to serve my purpose.”
Silas only hesitated for a moment. He offed the cap and gulping down a third of the bottle, then handed the remainder to Jason. “What exactly do you need us for?” he asked.
“To witness the dawn of a new age. Every revolution needs witnesses. You’ll be the ones to tell the others what happens here. You’ll tell them what’s coming, what the future holds for your pack. And you’ll know exactly what’s in store for them if they don’t comply.”
The other man exited the vehicle and came to stand at Alex’s side. His eyes were dull, lifeless. “Olivia, change back into yourself. Your appearance is disconcerting.”
The man contorted, folding at the waist. He expelled the same slimy excrement Silas had seen before as he shifted back into Meredith’s mother. “Would you like me to bring the book?” she asked, once her transformation was complete.
“No. No one touches the book but me,” Alex said. “Bring the fae.”
Olivia opened the backdoor of the Suburban and pulled Nickelova from her seat. The dragon fae looked like death warmed over. Her hands were bound, her hair was matted, and her complexion was blotchy as if she’d spent hours crying. “Alex, please. You loved me once,” she whined. Her mascara ran in long black trails from under her eyes to the delicate bones of her jaw. “I can help you. We could rule together, just as we always planned.”
Alex retrieved Silas’s bag from the vehicle, the one he’d carried Nickelova’s heart in, and hooked it on his shoulder. Then he reached behind the seat and hoistedThe Book of Flesh and Boneinto his arms.
Silas’s stomach turned at the atrocity in Alex’s hands. It appeared to be made of human skin, the spine a series of bones as if a human backbone had been cracked and flattened to adorn the thick, leathery binding. As Alex passed, a cold breeze came off the thing, sending goose bumps up Silas’s arms and across his chest. But the worst part was the smell.The Book of Flesh and Bonesmelled like fetid death bound in misery.
Olivia thrust Nickelova into one of the three stone circles as Alex crossed to the altar and opened the book.
“Alex, please! Have mercy,” she begged.
“Mercy?” Alex laughed. “Like you had mercy on me when you planned to replace me with Jason? You bet on the wrong pony, and now it’s time to settle up.” He pulled the heart from the bag. Olivia released Nickelova and backed from the circle.
“Ukta rho morbidae titan,” Alex read from the book.
The stones around Nickelova glowed purple. She rushed toward the periphery, her body slapping the invisible force that had walled her in. “No. No. Alex, please! Let me out.”
Alex approached her with the heart. “I think I’ve had this long enough. Goddess knows when you give a man your heart, it’s never for keeps.” His hand cut through the purple magic containing Nickelova and violently shoved the heart against her chest. Silas grimaced as her flesh parted to accommodate the organ, her body writhing with the obvious pain of the procedure. When it was done, Nickelova gasped like a baby taking her first breath and clutched at her chest.
Taking pleasure in her pain, Alex paced around the stones, a wicked grin on his face. Once she’d recovered, she raged against the walls of her cage, pounding and clawing at the boundary.
“I’ll warn you, shifting into your dragon form in that circle won’t help you escape, but it will be extremely painful,” Alex said. He turned toward Olivia. “One down, two to go. Let’s call our demon.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Silas paced in the cage, an almost comical opposite to Jason who had become unnaturally still in Alex’s presence. As much as he hated Nickelova, if there was a way to free her, he would. She was far less dangerous than Alex.
“Do you remember these?” Alex asked, pulling a bag of bones from the Suburban. Silas’s forehead tightened to the point of pain, a muscle in his jaw tensing and releasing in time with his heart.
“The girl’s bones from the human crime scene,” Silas said.
“You wondered why I’d taken them, why I’d stripped the girl’s flesh from them.” Alex gave him a smug look, and the presumptuousness of the statement wasn’t lost on Silas. “While there is no shortage of human-on-human crime, it seems the perpetrator of this particular murder had a secret. She was possessed by a demon. A new demon, birthed into this world by a young girl who played with the wrong Ouija board.”
“A demon’s human bones,” Silas said, remembering Julius’s theory.
“You’re familiar? I’d not heard of it as a werewolf, but one learns things in one’s travels. Shall we call this one? An interesting fact about demons is they can fold space and travel from one place to another in practically no time. This shouldn’t take long.” Alex dumped the bones into the second circle, eyeing the darkening sky. “Come out, come out, wherever you are.” He pulled a lighter from the pocket of his cargo shorts and squatted down to run the flickering heat beneath the end of the femur.
A cold wind manifested in the trees, darkness gathering between the branches in the woods across from the cage. Shadows danced and expanded, stretching and poking toward the ritual site. Silas could swear he heard whispers in the rustling leaves. And then a woman was there, a dark woman with upturned eyes and tattoos that glowed beneath the long sleeves of her shirt.
