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But the fall never comes, and when I crack my eyelids open, I see the ledge a hand’s breadth from my knees.
With a terrified shout, I scramble backward, away from certain death. Maybe I’m not so eager to take that plunge.
The rain pours down harder, blocking out the sun, and lightning crashes so close that it raises my hair before thunder shakes the ledge I sit on.
Energy buzzes around me, as if I can reach out and grasp hold of it.
Bryant steps out of the trees, Rodney a dark shadow behind him.
Bryant shakes water from his hair. “You just keep surprising me, Rowe. But it’s time—”
“Stay back!” I grab a slender branch and point it at him. “Don’t come near me!”
He throws back his head and laughs. “What are you planning to do with that?”
The branch trembles in my hand.
Bryant snaps his fingers at Rodney. “Bring her to me.”
The shadow monster lurches forward as if pulled by a string with no will of his own.
“Please, Rodney,” I beg. “I know you’re in there. Fight his control.”
Rodney stops, his coal-red eyes swing toward Bryant.
The other man snaps his fingers and hisses, “Bring her.”
The shadows roil around Rodney’s body, and he swings back toward me.
A sob lodges in my throat. “Please, stop. You don’t want to do this.”
“He doesn’t have a choice,” Bryant says. “So be a good little girl and don’t fight. I’d hate to have him bite you.”
“Get away from her!” A flash of tangerine-red darts out of the forest, and Zane tackles the werewolf.
Time slows as the mud slips beneath Rodney’s large feet, and the two men sail over the edge of the cliff.
“No!” Bryant shouts, lunging forward.
Around me, the air buzzes with an impending lightning strike, and I raise the branch I hold high over my head.
A brilliant light flashes across the ledge, and a buzz shoots through me so strong that it lifts me from my feet.
My arm swings downward, the branch in my hand now buzzing with magic. A brilliant white light arcs from its tip, slamming into Bryant.
His eyes widen, and his mouth gapes open on a scream as the lightning rips through him, burning away his blood and turning his insides to dust.
For a heartbeat, I take pleasure in knowing that he’s finally dead, that the monster who tormented me and so many others will never do so again.
In the next heartbeat, reality strikes as I realize my feet really did leave the ground, and they’re not coming back down. Wind cups around me, the stormy sky overhead and nothing but ocean below.
And then I fall.
CORD AND KNOT
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Mel’s eyes twinkle with amusement.
Around the room, the guys groan at her delay.
