Page 89 of Cold Sacrifice

Then Joe’s phone began to ring.

He yanked it from his pocket. “Yeah?” Then, “Jared. She’s dying. That’s what you’re feeling. You need to—” He frowned as Jared interrupted him, then looked down at me. “Jared says something is happening with Remy’s stake. It’s covered in ice and moving. He said it rolled off the bed and is banging itself against the wall. Trying to get out, he thinks.”

I closed my eyes. “Fuck me,” I whispered. “Joe, ask the alpha if he can bring the stake to me. It’s part of this mess. It was inside Jolene, as her whip is inside me.”

“Oh,” Trinity murmured, her eyes wide. “It’s the second part of the tether. Both those things must be combined to be ended.” For a second, her stare went blank. Then she came back abruptly and when she did, her eyes were a different shade of green. “The embedded magic in your arm must be bled into the stake, and then the stake must be burned. There’s your answer. There’s your way to destroy the ghost.”

I could only give a hoarse yell as the pain amped up another notch.

Joe dropped his phone and gathered me to him. “Hold on, boss. He’s on his way.”

“He’d better hurry,” Richard said, his voice strained. “I’ve never met a spirit as strong as I am, but this abomination is close.”

Richard didn’t look much better than I felt, and I wasn’t sure either one of us could hold on until Jared arrived.

“In the meantime,” Trinity said, a little relieved because the ghosts were quiet, “I need to begin the process of pulling the tether out of your arm. It won’t be a fast process, and it won’t be painless.”

“It can’t possibly hurt any worse than it’s hurting right now,” I said, my teeth clenched. It didn’t just hurt my arm. It hurt my entire body. It hurt my brain. My chest. Every part of me. But mostly, it hurt my arm.

“Kait,” Richard called. “I’m losing control of her. She’s struggling like a desperate cat. If she gets free…” Then he turned his head toward Jolene, who was shuddering with the effort of ripping herself free of Richard’s clutches. It was as though he held her in an invisible net, and she was close to tearing a hole in it and escaping to take her rage out on every one of us. “Be still,” he yelled. “Sleep! I command you to sleep.”

And she did. For about fifteen seconds. But maybe that was all Richard needed to renew his strength and his energy, because when she roused herself and began once again to struggle, Richard seemed a little stronger and a lot calmer.

Because it was a faster way to get to me, Jared shifted and carried the stake in his mouth all the way from Shadowfield to Silverwood.

I felt him as he burst from the woods and began to cross the yard, and Joe ran to the front door to let the wolf in. Jared lost his shift as he came through the living room, and if I hadn’t been in so much pain—honestly, I believed I was near death—I might have laughed at the look on Trinity’s face when a huge, muscular, incredibly beautiful and completely naked man strode into the kitchen. He dropped the stake onto the floor and then sat down beside me and gathered me into his arms.

He looked at Trinity. “Do what you need to do. Do it now.” His voice was quiet but his stare was blazing.

Trinity flinched, then took a deep breath and picked up the stake in one hand and her blade in the other. “I’ve teased the anchor a little closer to the surface,” she said, “but I’m going to have to use the knife, as well. Hold her still.”

“Don’t worry about her,” Joe said. “Kait will do what she has to do. She’s not going to pull away because of a little pain.”

“It’s not a ‘little’ pain,” Trinity said. “It’s the kind of pain that would have already driven most people mad. If she was anyone else, she’d already have taken her blade and plunged it into her heart just to get away from the agony of what she’s feeling.”

Joe stepped back, his hand to his stomach. “Then stop talking and fix her, damn you.”

“Kait,” Jared said, as Trinity took my arm. “Look at me.”

I did. I felt myself fading. Not just from the unimaginable pain, but from the magic that was causing the pain. Evil magic. Magic that had been created by Frederick Axton and his seer Kaloni. Magic that took enormous pleasure in making someone hurt, and bleed, and die an agonizing death.

“I’m sorry, Kait,” Trinity murmured, and she slid the point of her blade into my flesh, into the wound, and I couldn’t help it.

I screamed.

But I did not pull away.

At that moment, Jolene broke free of Richard’s hold. She was still held in the kitchen, though, thanks to the salt and Trinity reinforcing it with magic. Honestly, I didn’t care and barely noticed. I’d forgotten what I was fighting for.

I’d forgotten why I cared that Jolene was a ghost or why I needed to force her crossing. There was only that enormous, burning, bleeding, torturous pain.

Joe would have rather faced the sun than see me so agonized, but he dropped to his knees beside Jared and me and held my free hand. “Kaity,” he said. “Kaity.”

“You’re crying blood,” I whispered.

Richard and Jolene were once again fighting, and I believed that even more than her need to escape him was her need to hurt him. To destroy him. She just had all that madness inside her. All that rage.

Reminded me a little of myself.