Page 90 of Cold Sacrifice

I heard a car roar up to the house, and a few seconds later, Remy and Zach rushed into the kitchen.

“Watch the salt,” Joe yelled. “Step over it.”

I wondered where Sam was but I didn’t wonder enough to ask. There was barely enough room for Remy and Zach behind the smaller salt line, but they crowded in and watched as Trinity picked up Dolly and began murmuring words that eventually all ran together, becoming one long hum that comforted me, for some reason.

I didn’t look away from my alpha for more than a few seconds at a time. He was my anchor.

I felt the stake soaking up my blood, felt the blood gushing, and I felt it carrying the bad thing with it. The tether. The magic. I’d have to give up a whole fucking lot of my blood to get the magic out, but it wouldn’t kill me.

I wouldn’t let it.

Something drew my attention to the kitchen doorway and I glanced over, sluggish and weak, to see Rick, Sam, my mother, and Lucy. Lucy had probably called Sam to ask him to bring Rick and my mother, maybe because she believed I might die and I would need everyone who loved me to be with me.

I didn’t question how she knew things were so dire. She’d left the kitchen the moment Jolene had arrived to crack the chair. It seemed to me like that had happened months ago. Maybe she’d dreamed that moment.

Rick’s stare was terrible, and I thought that eventually, he might need to get into his car and just…go. Far away, somewhere quiet and calm where he wasn’t immersed in the world of wolves and vampires and ghosts and horror.

Maybe he saw something in my eyes, because he strode toward me. Joe hurried to move so Rick could take his place, and when he sank down beside me and Jared, he took my hand. “I’m not going anywhere, Kait,” he said. “Not ever.”

Then he lifted his stare to Jared’s. “Alpha…”

“I’ve got her,” Jared said fiercely, then added gently, “She will always be okay.”

But then Richard disappeared, likely because he simply couldn’t fight anymore, couldn’t hold on to the warped spirit that was Jolene, and the necromancer ghost burst through a salt line that was no longer more powerful than she was.

And I wasn’t sure any of us would be okay.

Chapter Thirty-Three

The others couldn’t see her, but they could feel her.

The wind from her brutal push through the salt and Trinity’s magic was like being caught out in a storm. All the debris from her fight with Richard began to swirl, and just like with the stake, ice began to form on every surface in the kitchen.

Jared’s warm body went abruptly cold, and even he began to shiver. “Trinity,” he said. “How close?”

“Nearly done,” she said, her voice shaking as the cold hit her. “Nearly done.”

But Jolene wasn’t waiting.

She slammed herself against me, knocking the air out of me, and then she reached out with frigid fingers, in no way resembling the necromancer I’d first seen, fresh from the grave with a certain mad intelligence and a desire to mess with the vampires.

This ghost had none of that. She wouldn’t remember her time in the ground, I didn’t think. She wouldn’t remember who put her there, or her need for revenge. She was running on pure instinct now, and her instinct told her to rip my arm off and take it and the stake with her. She might not even know why, but she knew she had to get to me.

And my people stood in her way.

The kitchen was full of massive power and strong people. There were wolves and vampires and shapeshifters and witches. But no one could do a thing against a force they could neither see nor understand.

While Trinity had punched Richard in the nose with a spell of power wrapped around her fist, such a small thing wouldn’t hurt Jolene, even if the witch could have managed it. Getting that close to the necromancer would likely have been the end of Trinity.

Then everything happened at once.

Trinity, her fingers frozen and clumsy, dropped the stake. My mother yelled when she realized the spirit was free and tried to shove Lucy out of the kitchen, but Lucy wouldn’t go.

Instead, she ran to kneel beside Trinity, where she grabbed her hand, wrapped it around the stake, and helped her bring it back to my arm to suck up the blood and magic of the tether.

Rick tented his body over me, trying to keep the ghost from getting to me, the icy wind slamming him against me so hard he nearly knocked my arm from Trinity’s grip. Sam stayed at Lucy’s back, steadying her, and Joe, Remy, and Zach formed a circle around us, trying to keep their balance when the freezing wind tried to knock them over.

Jolene screamed, and it sounded like the wind from a tornado shrieking through and ripping apart a house. Then she simply began plucking people away from me, one at a time. They could not stand against her.