“No, Nico. If it can help my mother, then I want to do it.” I turned back to Sinthy. “Tell me.”
“Okay, hang on. Let me go and get my book. I’ll meet you all in the kitchen.”
She pulled herself from my grasp and went back into the house. With a glance at Nico and Tiago, I headed straight for the kitchen. The other two followed me a moment later. Nico pulled up beside me and put a hand on my lower back. “Are you sure about this? I don’t… I don’t want you to do something that’s dangerous.”
I leaned on the kitchen counter. “I trust Sinthy. She’ll tell me if it’s going to be harmful. Once I know, then I’ll make a decision.”
Nico chewed at the inside of his cheek and gave me a searching look. “Right, but can you make a decision if you’re so worried about Gabriella? You are selfless, and that is a fantastic quality… until it isn’t.’
Before I could retort, Sinthy glided down the stairs. “Okay,” she said. “Ready to hear it?”
She placed the book on the counter and opened to a page toward the back of the tome. Again, I looked at the pages and couldn’t make sense of what was written there in some language I had no experience with. Most of the letters looked like a weird combination of old Norse runes and the chunky sweeping letters of Sanskrit. I pointed at the book. “You can read that?”
Sinthy nodded. “It’s pretty easy for witches. I think it would be very hard for anyone else to figure it out. This” —she pointed at the lines— “is the oldest written language on earth. Several other civilizations stole symbols and pieces, but none conjured the power of these words, no matter how hard they tried.”
As she said that, I glanced at the book again, and to my surprise, the lines had changed and morphed. It was almost like the letters and symbols changed by the minute. She was right. This would be impossible to learn if it kept changing.
“You said you needed something from Maddy,” Nico said. “What did you mean?”
Sinthy tilted her head in agreement. “Ithinkwe can get Gabriella and her wolf back, but it will need to be guided back. The only way to guide it back is for it to follow a road already built. Does that make sense?”
We all stared at her like she was speaking the same language written in the book. I shook my head. “No. Not even a little.”
“Ugh.” Sinthy sighed. “This is harder to explain than I thought. Sorry. Basically, what I’m saying is that you already laid the groundwork when your wolf emerged. You did all the heavy lifting, and that framework, the… map… if you will, is now written in your genes. In your blood.”
Nico’s face went pale. “No. I don’t like the sound of that. We’ve spent months trying to keep the royals from stealing Maddy’s blood, and now that’s exactly what you’re proposing here. Absolutely not.”
I put a hand on his chest to steady him. “Nico, I don’t think Sinthy is going to try and bleed me dry.” I turned to her and raised my eyebrows. “You aren’t, right?”
She shook her head. “No. We need a drop. Nothing more. You are her only blood relative. I think this is the only way it would work. Your DNA will match hers, and once the spell is cast, I think we can use it to create a way to guide her back. A single drop. That’s all I’m asking.”
Nico still looked uncomfortable, but when I looked at him, he gave me a hesitant nod. “Okay. If it’s only a drop, it should be okay.”
“All right,” I said. “I’ll do it. If it’ll help.”
Sinthy’s face brightened. “Okay, great. We can?—”
Before she could finish her thought, the front door burst in, almost coming off its hinges. We all spun, surprised to find Sebastian rushing into the living room. The look of wild fear in his eyes made my blood run cold.
“Nico? It’s happening. Jesus Christ, it’s going down.”
“Sebastian?” Nico stepped toward him. “What the hell is going on?”
Sebastian turned to us, and his eyes were red with panic. “They’ve done it. Martial law. They called for a state of emergency. They’re coming for us, man. It’s finally happening.”
101
NICO
Once the TV was turned on, we all went silent. You could hear a pin drop as the images flashed across the screen. It was beyond horrible. The things they showed shouldn’t have been allowed on screen. I couldn’t even comprehend what new editors had permitted the images to air, but it was on every channel.
The first was shaky cell phone footage of a wolf shifter with a brownish-red coat. The wolf was tearing through a shopping mall, loping down the corridors, and snatching screaming humans up by their throats. An older woman was taken and thrashed around like a ragdoll. The screams of terror were unlike anything I’d ever heard. The woman was tossed to the side with a spray of blood, landing in a shattered lump.
It flashed to body-cam video from a police officer. He must have been responding to a football or soccer game. All I could see was a massive green field, and players in uniforms were sprinting away from the biggest grizzly bear shifter I’d ever seen. It was mauling a man as the officer came upon them. Christ, there was so much blood. Why the fuck were they airing this shit? It was nothing but a goddamned snuff film. The officerscreamed at the shifter to back away from the body since it was obvious the man was already dead.
The officer pulled their pistol and aimed it at the bear. The grizzly turned from its kill and charged the police officer. The officer screamed in fear, and the pistol erupted, firing bullet after bullet into the shifter, but the creature never stopped its charge. The last thing the video showed was the massive bloody maw opening and a guttural roar blasting out of its mouth. The officer screamed as the bear fell upon him. There were more screams, awful blood-curdling screams before the video feed went dark.
The next channel showed a panther shifter sprinting down the hallway of a building. The footage was from a closed-circuit security camera. There was no sound, and the video was in black and white. It only took an instant for me to realize where it was.
