Page 76 of Cold Sacrifice

Nothing else mattered to her. She had a goal, and it was a powerful one.

I knew all about goals.

And Jolene was mine.

“Let’s try not to kill the vampires,” I said. “Just disable them if possible.”

I lifted my hand to blast the front door with magic, but of course magic didn’t come. I hit the door hard, then bounced back off it, pain blossoming through my chest and ribs. It was disorienting, and I stumbled as my brain struggled to remember that I had no magic to throw.

I wasn’t sure if I’d ever remember that fact in the heat of the moment.

Remy shoved the door open as I struggled to regroup, but he and Zach both waited for me to take the lead. I rushed through the door, my blade up and smoking, pulling a stake with my free hand as I went.

The house boasted a long, echoing hall, and vampires with blazing, horrified eyes jerked like puppets as they attempted to overcome the necromancer who pulled their strings. The fighting was happening deep inside the house, as well, and on the upper levels. I could hear it above me, and it sounded like at any moment the high ceilings might crack open and dump dozens of bodies and buckets of blood upon us.

Bastien rushed toward me, his stare blazing, so much rage in his eyes that I thought for a minute he was coming for me.

But then I saw the terror there, as well, and I knew before he told me that Jolene was gone, her magic was still alive in his vampires, and worse than all of that…

“She took our Farrow again,” he said. “And this time, she won’t make the mistake of letting her live.”

Chapter Twenty-Eight

I dropped my blade into its sheath, shoved the stake into my belt, and grabbed his face between my palms. Despite his intense emotion, his face was ice. The heat of my hands seemed to shock him, and he recoiled.

I didn’t let him go. “Bastien, we will get Farrow back. But right now, you need to take control of your vampires before they kill each other. Help them, Bastien.”

He shuddered, but the life seeped back into a stare that had been close to feral. He would never forgive himself for letting the council take Farrow, and once I’d given her back to him, he’d vowed never to lose her again.

But now he had.

Twice.

“She was just here,” Remy said. “We can track her.”

Zach turned to stride toward the door. “We need to move now.”

Because if Jolene took Farrow into the ground, we’d never find her.

Bastien realized that, and finally, he straightened his spine, thrust away his fear, and converged upon his vampires. His rage was huge, and the necromancer’s lingering magic could not stand against it. He stood in the middle of the room, threw back his head, and roared a command that made even my heart stutter.

And his vampires, no matter where they were in the house or on the grounds, fell down immediately, some of them groaning, as the rest of the bad magic was pulled from them. Four of his enforcers staggered into the room, bloody and wounded and very nearly as angry as Bastien.

No one liked being controlled and forced to do things they didn’t want to do. The more powerful the vampire, the harder it hurt him.

They were right behind their master as we rushed out of the house. And even before my feet touched the ground, I shifted. My wolf could track better than any of us could.

I tried not to think of Farrow or what she might be going through. Jolene would use her to hurt Bastien, and to her, hurting him would be much more pleasurable than outright killing him. Once he was dead, he would no longer care.

And she wanted him to care. She wanted him to care a lot.

Making Farrow suffer would devastate him. Honestly, it would devastate me, as well. The girl had lived through so much darkness, so much pain. And somehow, she still had the capacity to feel joy. A couple of years ago I would never have admitted it, but vampires, dead humans brought back as monsters, felt everything more than any other being in existence. They loved deeper, hated harder, fought, cared, hurt, needed, pouted, played, starved…just like everyone else. But they did all those things with more passion than the rest of the world. Their emotions were extreme.

And they hid them extremely well.

I caught a scent almost immediately. Not the necromancer’s, though. Farrow’s. Minutes later, I picked up the necromancer’s scent. It smelled like moist earth and sharp magic, and it smelled like Axton and Kaloni.

The trail led from the house, through the woods, up the hills on the other side, and finally, into more woods. And the farther she’d traveled, the more obscure the trail. The weaker the scent.