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I swore, twisted around, and lunged at the wolf as he landed several feet away, thrusting the knife deep into his side. The godly light quickly did its work but the sight of Aiden’s face melting away, his mouth open in a silent scream, had sobs rising.
It made me glad he wasn’t anywhere near Canberra, because the sorcerer was showing me exactly what he planned to do if my wolf did appear.
I swiped at the tears staining my cheeks with my left hand, then thrust up and ran on. A dozen steps later, I was out of the fog and sucking in fresh air. Aside from a few picnic tables and rubbish bins, the grassland beyond was flat and empty. There were no trees, no shrubs, and definitely no sign of the sorcerer, his victim, or even a protection circle.
Had Cat been fooled? Or was she indeed nothing more than another lure by the bastard who now knew entirely too much about me, thanks to the goddamn barrier that had surrounded his first victim.
No, she was the real deal. Probably the only thing that was right now.
Besides, his magic was here. Not just in the fog behind me but also in the emptiness ahead. He was obviously using some sort of concealment shield, one that was designed to give no definitive hint of its location.
I ran past the picnic tables and bins so fast they were little more than a blur. But the knowledge it was all too late, that my brother was dying if not already dead, pulsed through me. Despair quickly followed.
No, I thought harshly. No.
That’s exactly what the wraith wanted—my tears, my desperation, and very definitely my despair. I couldn’t afford to fall down that emotional rabbit hole, because it would only make him—and his demons—stronger.
I was maybe a dozen or so steps away from that middle point when a huge whoomph shook the ground and sent me stumbling. A heartbeat later, a blast of air hit hard, knocking me off my feet and tossing me back a good five meters or so. I hit the ground with a bone crunching “oomph,” losing my knife somewhere in the wet grass as I slid backward a few more yards before coming to a halt.
Winded and bruised, I pushed into a sitting position and looked around frantically for my knife. It lay in the grass a few meters away. I scrambled toward it on hands and knees, then pushed upright.
A stone oval now lay ahead. The remains of a fire sat at one end, with the body of a butchered rabbit just in front of it. Entrails and blood lay across the other stones, though from where I stood, I could smell more than see them.
Within the oval lay the bloody, naked body of a man.
My brother.
As dead in this field as he had been in my vision.
Chapter Eleven
I pushed back the thick surge of anger and despair and quickly scanned the area. There was no sign of the sorcerer. No sign of whatever had caused that explosion. No sign even of the torn remnants of magic that should have accompanied it.
Just my brother, bloody and naked within that oval.
I sheathed my knife and then swung around, unable to face the brutal reality of his death just yet.
The fog that had shrouded the island had also disappeared. Saska marched through the last row of trees, her gun held at her side and blood smeared across her left cheek. I didn’t think it was her blood, but I wasn’t close enough to be sure.
She didn’t say anything. She didn’t need to. Not when her aura was a mess of conflicting emotions, and her face was set and hard.
I wasn’t the only one who’d failed here today.
And yet, neither of us really ever had a chance of saving Julius. His fate had been set by his own actions, and nothing we did after his fateful decision to meet his friends in that restaurant could have changed anything.
I fell in step beside her, and we silently strode toward the stone circle, stopping a meter or so away from it.
My vision should have prepared me for what I was seeing.
It didn’t, simply because that vision hadn’t shown the half of it.
“Fucking hell,” Saska said. “The bastard went all out this time, didn’t he?”
He had indeed.
Because the blood and entrails that covered Juli’s naked body didn’t belong to the rabbits who’d been sacrificed here but were instead his. He’d been cut open from neck to navel, and all his innards pulled out. His rib cage had also been cracked open, and there was dark hole in his chest where his heart should have been.
It struck me then that there was a method—a deliberation—in the way the wraith was killing each of his victims.
