Page 88 of Cold Sacrifice

It scared the fuck out of me.

“Scootch over, Kait,” Trinity said, and leaned over to grab Joe’s face. She muttered something as she stared into his eyes, then reached into her pocket and pulled out what looked like a small, plastic tube.

She continued murmuring as she squeezed the tube, and with a crack, the tube split open and something I couldn’t see seemed to rush from the tube and into Joe’s face. I couldn’t see it, but I could feel it. She was coating him with something, and the magic that had created it was heavy.

Joe came back to himself. He looked around at the kitchen, but just as he opened his mouth to ask what was going on, the two ghosts renewed their fight. Jolene wanted to get to me, Joe, and Trinity, and Richard wanted to stop her.

“Be still,” he commanded, his voice like thunder.

And for a few seconds, she did exactly as he ordered. She froze, staring at him with consternation.

He was an alpha, after all.

But then she bared her teeth in a grimace and went at him.

They could feel each other. They could touch each other. Could physically fight. And dear lord, did they physically fight.

For a little while, Richard’s will forced Jolene to hesitate. She wanted to obey him, and she knew that she should. She was afraid of him, though I had no idea why. What could a ghost do to another ghost? If he could have forced her crossing, he would have already.

And maybe with a lesser spirit, he could have asserted his will and she would have crumbled. But Jolene was different. She was strong, and she was warped. She was created from darkness and rage, and he couldn’t control her.

Joe did as much as he could to redraw the salt lines. Jolene could not be allowed to escape the kitchen. If she did, we might never get another chance to contain her. The nightmare would continue, and it would get worse.

“I can help,” Trinity said, straightening her shoulders. “I’ll layer a spell over the salt. It will stop it from being displaced so easily. And then, Kait, we will dig that tether out of your arm and destroy it.”

As though she heard Trinity’s words over the clamor she and Richard were making, Jolene pulled on the piece of her she’d left inside my arm. Only maybe push was the better word. She didn’t pull it, the way she had before. She shoved it deeper, pushing it up my arm and toward my shoulder, my heart.

And I wasn’t sure my heart wouldn’t explode. The agony of that thing shoving itself through my arm, through my veins and bones and meat, was indescribable. I’d never felt anything like it. When it was over—if I survived it—I was never going to forget the strange awfulness of that pain.

Trinity couldn’t run around the entire room covering the salt line, but she didn’t need to. She crouched at one section, shutting us all out and focusing on the task. She murmured as she waved her fingers over the salt line, and then, shocking me, she sent a barely visible blue flame from her fingers to light the salt on fire.

The flame rushed over the salt, changing its color and making it look more like a line of metal than a delicate ring of salt. And then she immediately turned to me.

Without having to guard the salt, Joe could help Trinity focus on getting the tether out of me. He knelt beside me, with Trinity on the other side, and we all tried to shut out the battling ghosts. The kitchen was a mess. Furniture was broken, dishes were shattered, and cabinet doors hung askew.

Jolene flung a gust of gold power at Richard, and at first, that blow knocked him back. But just as she lifted her hand to fling another, lighter burst of magic at him, he whirled and the gold power whirled with him, becoming something else. Something he could use. He wrapped that power around his arm as she watched, frozen, and then added something to it that literally caused that gold magic to burst into flames. And then he gave it back to her.

But it wasn’t anything she wanted.

She screamed and turned to run, but there was no place to run to. The salt and Trinity’s magic held fast, and she was forced to stay inside the boxing ring with Richard.

I didn’t see the magic hitting Jolene, but I saw the effects of it when it did. It appeared to hit her in the back, and for an instant, her entire ghostly body lit up as gold fire engulfed her.

And as she burned, Richard turned to look at me. “Sever the tether,” he roared. “I cannot hold her forever.”

I gave Trinity my throbbing, bloody, injured arm. It wasn’t healing. It was rapidly getting worse.

“Can’t you shift?” Joe asked, his voice strained. “Dammit, Kait. Can you shift and heal? Force it out that way?”

I leaned back against him, so weak and sick with pain that I could barely speak. Richard’s hold on Jolene wasn’t making her hold on me any weaker. “If I shift,” I whispered, “the piece will become further embedded.”

Trinity nodded. “The flesh will knit around it.” She lifted her worried gaze to Joe’s. “We would have to cut off her arm.”

“Fuck,” he growled. “Just get it out, witch. Tell me what to do. She’s fucking…fading. She’s dying.”

He wasn’t being melodramatic.

My cell phone rang, and when I ignored it because I couldn’t actually use up the energy to fish it out of my pocket, the call went to voicemail.