The wave of pain ebbed.As the pile of branches blazed to life, Alex backed to the altar at the front of the formation and braced himself on the stone table.
“Almost time.”He madly flipped pages in the grotesque book.
Olivia strode, machinelike, to his side, the fine wrinkles around her mouth and eyes deepening in the light of the fire.Alex wrapped a length of chain around his torso and padlocked it to the base of the table.
“Keep me in this spot,” he said to Olivia.“Do you understand?”
Olivia nodded robotically.
Alex pitched forward in time with the same wave of pain that sliced through Silas.Older wolves shifted faster.Because Alex and Silas were the same age, the shift was upon them both.Jason, on the other hand, might have a few minutes more.
There was a soft rustle in the bushes behind Silas.
“What is that?”Jason asked, squinting into the dark foliage.
Silas couldn’t answer.He finished removing his clothes as his stomach hollowed out and his jaw jutted forward.
Two reflective amber eyes blinked at him from the darkness, low to the ground.
“A raccoon?”Jason whispered, creeping toward the back of the cage.
Silas didn’t care what it was.His hands hit the dirt, his fingers bending under as claws sprouted from his first knuckle.Jet-black hair budded from his forearms and climbed toward his shoulders, bubbling under and bursting through his skin.He squatted on his haunches, his throat elongating with his ears.
In his altered state, he could hear the small animal breathing in the bushes outside the cage, smell the wild, musky scent of its coat.With sharp eyes, he blinked up at the full moon above and howled.Jason joined in, his throaty human moan morphing into a proper wolf call.Alex picked up on the song, instinct overriding animosity as he raised his nose to the moon.
The last thing Silas registered before the wolf completely took over was the steady sound of digging near the back of the cage.Whatever was in that bush was scratching at the dirt as if its life depended on it.
The alpha’spaws were in the dirt.No, it was his hands, and they weren’t working as they had a minute ago.The wolf beside him was faring better, throwing dirt with fully functional front claws.Silas came into his head in a rush, his human body bent over a hole.His wolf had been digging, trying to get at something on the other side of the bars.
Jason’s wolf stuck his head into the hole, snapping at the animal in the bushes behind them.He was still too big to fit through, and he retreated to dig again.Silas turned his face toward the full moon, now totally eclipsed, blacked out by the shadow of the earth.He’d shifted back faster.Jason would likely follow in a few minutes.
Jason’s wolf whined as the creature from the bushes emerged, a dainty red fox with upturned ears and a long, bushy tail.
“Meredith?”Silas whispered.
The fox’s eyes blinked knowingly.
A sound behind him made her scamper into the bushes.He looked over his shoulder.The altar.Alex.The rogue wolf was shifting back, almost human again in the light of the fire.Olivia was still there, hovering over him like some kind of prison warden.
Silas looked back down at his hands, at the place where Jason was still digging.The hole was almost big enough.Almost.It would be a tight fit.Silas pushed Jason’s wolf away, thankful when the beast obeyed.He must have still recognized Silas as alpha even in his human form.He grabbed Jason’s suit jacket and tossed it into the hole, lining the jagged earth at the bottom.Silas tried to slide under, but his shoulders wouldn’t fit.Fuck.Jason was slightly smaller; maybe he’d fit when he shifted back.Silas backed out of the hole.
“Alex.Please.There’s still time to stop this,” he heard Nickelova beg.
Quickly, Silas pooled his clothing to conceal the hole and crossed to the bars in time to see Alex stand, fully shifted, behind the stone table.
“Get the sacrifice,” he ordered Olivia, leaning over the book.
Sacrifice.Another sacrifice?Something besides the three?
Olivia strode to the Suburban and opened the hatch.There was the thump of something heavy being repositioned, and then the woman emerged with another woman in her arms, one with mahogany hair and a curvy build.
Silas forced his eyes to focus in the dim light and tried to get a better look.He sucked air through his teeth.Even if he couldn’t see her face, he could smell her.Laina.
“Let her go!I will kill you,” Silas bellowed.“I will rip your heart out with my bare hands!”
Alex grinned over the pages ofThe Book of Flesh and Bone.He moved aside slightly in order to give Olivia room to arrange Laina on the massive stone table behind the book.What was wrong with her?She wasn’t just unconscious.By the way her arm dangled lifelessly over the edge of the stone, Silas might have presumed she was dead.
“I gave you a chance to join me,” Alex said, looking directly at him.“I gave you a chance to die.Now you will live with your sister’s blood on your hands, as your parents’ blood is on your hands.”
