Page 47 of Cold Sacrifice

Their afterlife.

Trinity murmured as she worked, pulling more items from her bag, spreading what looked like crushed, dried flowers, sparkling black dust, and once, something that looked like smoke. She combined the items in a bowl before slowly pouring the blood and magic into the mixture and stirring it with a small, black knife.

Then into the chalice the entire mixture went.

At last, her voice changing from softly murmured words to a low, continuous hum, she lifted the chalice and began pouring the contents onto the edge of the grave.

Liquid didn’t pour out, though. Fire did. Smoke did.

And when it hit the dirt, the ground began to burn. The bones began to burn. It was a cold fire. I felt it blowing against my skin as it burned away the magic that held the spirits prisoner. It destroyed the shield the vampires had put in place.

“I broke the barrier,” Trinity told me. “They’re all yours.” She knelt on the ground and began gathering her supplies, leaving me to it.

I stood at the edge of the grave and beckoned the spirits to me. “You’re free,” I told them. “I can help you find your path home.”

And one by one, they began to leave the grave that had been their prison for decades. They drifted to me, gathered around me, and milled about, unsure and confused. They didn’t know how to be or where to go or what was real to them.

I didn’t have to sever a tether. Trinity had done that. And their door, their portal, it was waiting. I just had to help them find it. But they were afraid.

The tether the witch had broken wasn’t the only one, I realized. Their fear was a tether, as well. It held them there, adding to their confusion as they truly didn’t know there was something better waiting for them. They didn’t see a way out, and worse, weren’t even aware that one existed. Their time in their dark captivity had warped minds already broken by the vampires.

I believed that the longer they were out, the more aware they’d become. They’d revert to the time before the vampire master had messed with them. They’d become their true selves.

But it was going to take a minute. And maybe it wouldn’t happen here. Maybe they needed to cross over to lose the awful things Axton had created in their brains. Either way, I needed to get them home.

I reached for the ghost nearest me, a young woman that might have been twenty when she’d been killed. As usual when I could actually feel a ghost, I was shocked. I felt the coldness of her slide beneath my skin, and with it came her terror, her rage, her hopelessness. She was quite mad, and that was understandable. Just as it was with the one who’d fed on all of them to survive and escape.

But I had her attention. She focused on me like I was her lifeline, her desperation extreme. I wanted to snatch my hand away from her and run away from the horror of her, but I could not. I would not.

Not until they were all free.

“Don’t look at me,” I told her gently, and they all crowded in on me, crushing me with the weight of their nightmare existence. They were listening with an unnerving intensity, and yes, I was afraid.

I was afraid they’d somehow find a way inside me, or that they’d drag me with them when they went. For a moment, the world went dark, and I couldn’t see anything but the spirits. They began to moan and cry, and every agonized sound they made wrapped around my heart and my brain, making me feel what they felt. I felt their despair, and it was unbearable.

But suddenly, Trinity was there, her arm around my waist, her voice sweet, warm, and confident as she forced me to feel something other than the blackness of those necromancer spirits.

She pulled me out of that cold, dark sea, and abruptly, I was once again in control of myself. I took a deep, shuddery breath and not only showed the spirits how to leave but pushed them out.

I didn’t know if I’d ever again manage something so strange, but it only mattered that I could do it now. I saw them as one, almost, and I wrapped an invisible ring of power around them and urged them to a spirit world that for an instant, I’d actually seen.

It was like a dim, white curtain, constantly moving, lit from behind, and I wondered if I’d seen it because I’d been caught in the death of the necromancers.

When the first one disappeared behind that misty curtain, the others followed suit. They seemed to realize, finally, what they were supposed to do. They realized they were truly free. The magic I’d surrounded them with dispersed with a snap, and just like that, it was over. They were gone.

There was such a buildup of emotion inside me that I feared my heart would explode if I didn’t release it. I would either scream and cry and smash my fists against the hardness of a tree until I got it all out, or I could shift to my wolf and run until I was exhausted.

But it turned out there was a better way to release everything that was beating me to death on the inside. I saw a dark shadow move through the trees as Jared pulled me into his arms and my pack gathered around me, waiting to see what would happen next.

The necromancer came. The living one. The mad, murderous, vengeful necromancer turned vampire. She came for Bastien, and she had a mind-captured Farrow at her side.

Chapter Seventeen

“Bastien,” I screamed. I pulled away from Jared’s comfort and strangely enough, seeing as how a terribly dangerous necromancer vampire with magic was heading my way, the despair of the spirits melted away and savage joy and fierceness took its place.

My demon blade was in my hand and my people were around me, their battle cries as ecstatic as my own. We went to meet the threat.

To demolish it.