Page 50 of Cold Sacrifice

I needed to get away from the horror. I shifted to my wolf and ran away from them all.

Mostly, I was running from the butterfly.

Chapter Eighteen

“Totally bogus,” I heard my mother say as I slipped through the house. I’d run for at least two hours, then returned home to shower and change. “A butterfly can’t kill a vampire, Sam.”

“This one can,” he said, and though he’d seemed less than thrilled with my butterfly’s psychotic moment, I thought I detected a hint of pride in his voice. “I saw her do it.”

“She lost control of that shift,” Zach murmured. His chair scraped the floor as he scooted it backward and stood. “I’m going to check on Rick.”

“Should we call Dr. Hayes?” my mother asked.

“No. He didn’t want the doctor.”

“He’s pissed,” Sam said.

“At Kait?” My mother’s voice rose slightly, and I could hear the defensiveness in her voice. “He’d better—”

“Mom,” I said, stepping into the room. “Everything’s okay.”

She jumped from her chair and hurried to me, relieved. “Oh, honey. I was worried.”

“I’m fine,” I told her. And mostly, I was.

Lucy turned from the stove, unusually subdued. “Trinity kept me company,” she told me. “We talked awhile before she was called away. She wants to meet again in a couple of days.”

“You okay, Lucy?” I asked, sitting at the table.

She nodded. “I guess I just…I don’t want to change who I am. I don’t want to find out I’m different than the person I believed I was.”

My short laugh held the tiniest hint of bitterness. “I know what you mean.”

She brought a platter of pork chops to the table. “Yes,” she said. “I’m sure you would.”

“Are you hungry, Kaity?” my mother asked.

Honestly, I wasn’t hungry, but I didn’t want to say those words. I’d drunk vampire blood, and that shit was turning my stomach. There wasn’t a person in the room that didn’t know it. My butterfly was a parasite. “Where’s Jared?” I asked.

“He took some of his wounded back to Shadowfield,” my mother said. “He said he would see you later tonight.”

“We need to talk about what happened,” I said. “We need to talk about the necromancer and how she apparently can’t be killed. How she melts into the ground beneath her feet and sinks into the earth and can’t be fucking killed.”

My mother reached over to caress my arm, trying to soothe me the way she might an overly anxious three-year-old.

“Everything can be killed,” Remy said. “We just have to find out what her weakness is.”

“Do the salt thing,” Sam said. “Catch her in a ring of salt so she can’t disappear and then rip her head off. I guarantee you she will die from that.”

I shook my head. “Salt won’t do it. She’s not a ghost. But I think you’re on the right track. Something can capture her. Something can hold her. I just…” I smiled then, a little. “I need to call Max. And I need to free Richard Slaymaker. We can do this. She’s just another enemy that’s going to cause us a whole lot of grief before we end her.”

Zach nodded. “It’s nothing we haven’t done a hundred times before.”

I grabbed a plate and started filling it, but not for me. I was taking it to Rick and yanking him out of his anger. And then I was going to make some phone calls.

When I walked into the guest room, I found Rick up and staring out the window, shirtless and in his socks. He had a bandage around his upper right arm, bruises decorating his body like paint, and claw marks on his chest, his face, and across his ribs.

But he was alive.