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Then the lights flicker. I breathe a sigh of relief as I see the knife stop short of Hex’s chest. Vanessa lets me go, and I turn back to see her looking up in fear. The man doesn’t stop chanting, though, and I’m too weak to move. I lie where I am.
The lights blink off and on in a complicated pattern, dizzying me. There isn’t much time left.
“I can’t hold on, Hex,” I moan weakly. “I’m so sorry.”
“I love you, Juliana,” he cries. “Please, don’t leave me. We’ll fix this. I’ll bring you back!”
Before I close my eyes, the lights in the room explode, and glass shatters around me.
After a surge of light, the room is thrust into darkness. The glass from the lightbulbs shatters everywhere, but it doesn’t fall on me. I would recognize that move anywhere. I’ve seen it a hundred times.
“We’ve come to save you, Hex,” Cassandra’s sweet voice whispers somewhere near my ear.
“You can’t be here,” I tell her urgently. I can’t see anything, but Anderson is still here. He can hurt her. I feel in the dark to undo the strap on my left arm, then quickly undo the bindings on my legs.
“Cassandra, you have to leave. He’ll trap your soul.”
“You silly man.” Cassandra giggles her girly, high-pitched laugh. “Do you really think I came alone? Everything will be okay.”
A powerful, bright light fills the room, and I realize there are hundreds of ghosts in the room. I recognize many frequent visitors of the clubhouse, but there are some I’ve never seen before. They march on Anderson, who releases dark shadows to fight them. They’re too strong for him though. There are so many of them. He can’t possibly take them all out.
“The ghosts are grateful to you,” Cassandra tells me. “You’ve been searching for them for weeks, offering to help them. It’s our turn to help you.”
I lose track of Anderson in the sea of ghosts. His shadows move across the walls and the floors, but the light permeating the room burns them as they try to spread. I hear him crying out in pain, as if the light burns him as well.
I turn toward the light and see Tory running into the room, casting the light all around her. Behind her are Pocus, Seer, Bones, Gator, Snake, Mama, and a dozen or so other men from the MC. They’ve brought the cavalry to save me. I’d be touched if there wasn’t so much chaos happening around me.
Anderson screams, but I can hardly hear him over the mob of ghosts yelling at him. They can’t touch him, but they can overwhelm his senses. They shout curses and threats, angry for how he’s made them cower in fear.
I try to block out the sound so I can focus on getting to Juliana. She’s crumpled on the ground in a heap. The Lazarus stone lies next to her body, growing bright green. The sorcerer stalks slowly, bending down to grab the stone, but Mama knocks him out with a powder she blows in his face. He crumples a few feet away from Juliana.
I sink to the floor and crawl to Juliana, pulling her soulless body into my arms. Her body is alive, her heart beating faintly, but without a soul, it’s just a husk. I grab the stone and slip it into my pocket, not wanting it to get lost in the chaos. Mama and Tory will know how to fix this. They have to.
“You have to wake up, baby,” I whisper repeatedly in her ear, though I know she’s far away from me.
I cling to her and look around the room to get a grasp on what’s happening. I see Vanessa scamper off the ground and scurry to where Anderson dropped the knife he’d tried to stab me with. She holds it up defensively toward my brothers, but Bones and Gator neutralize her, carrying her out of the room. She screams the whole way, down the hall, shouting for them to let her go.
“You okay?” Pocus asks, crouching down in front of me, but I can’t answer him. I can only hold Juliana’s body and rock back and forth.
“We have to go, Hex,” he tells me. “We have to end this.”
I can’t move. I’ve lost all ability to move. Pocus looks behind him and waves someone over. Two of the newer members gently pull Juliana’s body from my grasp and carry her carefully out of the room with them. I scream for her, but Seer and Pocus hold me back, pulling me to my feet so they can haul me out of the room with them.
I turn back to see Anderson struggling against the ghosts. Tory’s there, walking confidently through the hoard to get to him. She can’t see ghosts, but she can detect his aura, like Mama can. The crowd parts for her. Anderson is crouched into a defensive pose, cowering. She throws herbs at him, and he collapses completely.
She reaches down and grabs whatever part of him she can sense. She drags him out of the room carelessly. I take pleasure in seeing his immobile body hit against walls and bump into objects discarded on the ground. I hope it hurts like hell.
We’re going in the same direction, and I realize when we get outside that even more men wait outside on their bikes, ready for whatever fight may come. Pocus tells them to stand down. There’s no army here. Just an unhinged woman and an unconscious warlock.
CHAPTERTWENTY-EIGHT
“Hex,” I yell, dropping Anderson and running to my friend. He looks shell-shocked and panicked, but he holds out his arms and embraces me. “It’s almost over,” I whisper in his ear and squeeze his neck tightly.
He nods, then turns to search for the woman he was clutching. She must be Juliana. She’s absolutely stunning, but she has no aura. The sorcerer has ripped her soul from her body once more and placed it in the Lazarus stone. The poor girl.
He pulls her into his arm and cries silently, stroking her hair and whispering in her ear. I go to him and crouch down. He looks at me desperately. “Fix this,” he begs me. “Please tell me you can fix this!”
Mama approaches us and sinks to the ground behind Juliana’s head. She slips a talisman over her neck, saying a short incantation. Juliana breathes in deeply, as if she’s been given CPR. I look at Mama curiously because we both know this is just a temporary fix. She nods and turns to Hex, who looks at Juliana with all the love he has in his heart.
