Page 79 of Cold Sacrifice

She lifted her hand, and blue flames began to dance around her fingers. When she drew her arm back, I knew she was about to fling that blue fire at me, or worse, that she’d turn and see Zach and Remy and throw it at them.

I ran toward her, determined to somehow dig out her magic with my blade and end the fight once and for all. I just had to get close to her, because I wasn’t about to throw my blade and risk losing it to her.

Then Remy hurled a stake at her, and his aim was true. The stake flew through the air and pierced her back, plunging right into her heart. She screamed, her back arching, her blue-flamed fingers pushing desperately at the stake end protruding from her chest.

Remy staked and killed the horrifying vampire.

She melted to the ground, her face a grimace of agony, and I raced forward to take her head. “Is it really going to be that easy?” I whispered.

And then I found out, two seconds later, that no—it was certainly not going to be that easy. Remy had killed the vampire part of Jolene, but the necromancer rose from that pile of dead, dark husk and shot into the air, her scream of pain changing into a scream of joy.

Remy hadn’t killed her.

He’d simply freed the necromancer.

And she was more powerful than ever without the constraints of the bloodsucking bastard that Axton had warped into being.

We were in trouble.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

She didn’t stay to fight, though. She turned, almost playfully, and hit Remy with a ball of magic that dropped him immediately. And then, her laughter ringing through the night, she ran.

Zach and I fell to the ground beside Remy. Afraid she might come at us before we could get him to safety, I crouched over him as I stared after her.

She stopped at the edge of the clearing and looked back at me, luminous and smiling, and beckoned me. She wanted me to follow her.

“Cell phone, Zach,” I snapped, and he slapped it into my palm instantly.

Remy lay still and cold, but he was breathing. He was alive.

I called Jared, and that time, he answered. I told him where we were and what had happened in clipped, short sentences, and then I handed the phone back to Zach.

“Stay with him,” I said. “Help is coming. I’m going to kill a necromancer.”

He reached out to grab my arm and I flinched as he took away a handful of melted flesh with his touch. He yanked his fingers away, staring at them, and then my arm, in horror. “God, Kait. Shift. Heal. But don’t go after her alone. Wait for backup.”

“I can’t,” I whispered. “She’s fully the necromancer now, Zach. She won’t have to sleep. Her ability to compel won’t be diluted, and the vampires will die. All of them.” I pressed my fist against my chest. “I feel it.” I jumped to my feet, just a little feral, and undressed. And then, because it was something I simply had to do to survive the night, I shifted.

I lifted my nose to the night sky and howled, then pawed the ground and roared, embracing my rage as my wolf healed my arm. I couldn’t stay shifted for long, though. Not nearly as long as I wanted to. Because the longer I waited, the more damage Jolene would cause before I got to her. I shifted back and dressed as quickly as I could, yanking on the clothes and boots before giving Remy one last look.

“It was his favorite stake,” Zach murmured.

“What?” I asked, poised to run.

“He used Dolly to stake her.”

The stake hadn’t fallen to the ground when the vampire had “died.” Jolene had taken it with her. Maybe it was still embedded in her chest.

“I’ll get it back,” I promised. “Tell him that, Zach. I’ll bring it back to him.”

And then I ran, following the necromancer who Remy had not killed, but freed. The necromancer who was likely even now halfway to Alexandria, where she’d gleefully get her revenge on the vampires who’d hurt her so very badly.

I ran as fast as I could run without shifting into my wolf, and I was nearly certain I could run faster than the necromancer. I was in a hurry to reach Alexandria, but I dreaded it, as well. I didn’t want to fight alone. I couldn’t protect an entire coven of vampires without help. And with Jolene’s recent…transformation, it was likely that she’d be better able to capture the vampires and hold them for longer.

It was unsettling, to put it mildly.

But then I felt my alpha, and I turned to see him just as his wolf burst out of the tree line and sprinted right for me, dozens of other wolves spread out behind him.