Page 101 of Peacemaker

For a while, they would know only pain, and I could do nothing to ease it.

I would be the cause of it.

Himself kissed my temple. “Find peace, warrior. When you walk it, may your path be kind.”

Then I was falling from the dragon, borne down by a strong, swirling wind. Still, when I hit the ground of Byrd Island, the landing was hard enough to knock the breath from my lungs.

I felt it when Himself lifted the mask from my blood. It was like he ripped a sticky bandage from a large wound. And I was once again vulnerable, naked, raw.

Alone.

High, high above, the dragon circled, his shrieking voice loud and bizarre and spectacular. It did not belong in that world. Not really.

I grieved for Rhys, because he was not the same. Maybe the dragon had devoured him. Maybe Rhys would never return as the man he’d been.

I rejoiced for him, as well, but my joy was tempered by my sorrow.

“Silverlight,” I whispered, and she hummed gently inside me.

So I was not alone. I had my sword. I had my men in my heart.

Good men, all. Heroes, warriors.

I smiled at the thought of them.

I climbed to my feet, slowly, and looked around the ruined place. I remembered the escape. I remembered watching my werebull kill another supernat. I remembered blood.

Seemed like a million years ago.

It also seemed like I’d just been born. I hadn’t done half the things I wanted to do. I hadn’t spent nearly enough time with my loves.

I bent forward and rested my hands on my knees as pain punched me in the gut. “Shane,” I called, as though he’d appear and tell me he hadn’t died.

But he had.

He’d died without me there. He’d died alone.

I straightened, then dug one of my blades from its sheath and without hesitation, sliced open my arm. “Come on, you bastards. Come get me.”

Even when the first rifters began to swarm the island, I lifted my gaze to the slowly circling dragon, clutched my sword, and smiled.

I thought I heard Angus’s agonized roar in the distance. Impossible, really. It’d take him a lot longer than a freaky fast rifter or a mystical flying dragon to get to the cursed Byrd Island.

And then I dropped the knife and called Silverlight to my hand when the rifters, black blurs of terror, raced over the broken ground toward me. “Shane,” I called again.

I wasn’t sure why. Maybe I just needed to say his name.

Death was coming for me.

I’d go. I had no choice.

But I sure as hell wasn’t going to give myself to them. They’d have to work to kill me.

“Shane,” I whispered.

Then I fought.

Silverlight and I, we fought.

We fought hard.

But in the end, it was just me and a sword. The rifters had been created to want my blood. To crave it. My blood was their survival. They were vicious in their need.

So I fought, but in the end, they took me down.

Hundreds of them, but really sort of…structured. The first ones who bit me reeled away, cried out, and passed blood to the second wave. They fed from me, and then they fed each other.

Then Rhys—the dragon—gave a battle scream that made me forget the pain of my dying, and he began to paint the land with fire.

He purged the island of rifters with his cleansing flames, and maybe I felt the heat for one second before I fell into bloodless, gaping darkness, and—