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Just one of the many powers he stole. Of course any man who absorbed that many different powers would be powerful, but I’d never seen it firsthand until now.
His shirt is soaked through with blood from where Calla stabbed him, but if he’s feeling any negative effects from the injury, it’s not showing. He whips around as a werewolf lunges for him and grabs the creature by the throat. Then just as quickly, he seizes a hind leg and rips the wolf in half like it’s nothing.
Blood and gore pours onto the ground, and Westcott roars, the moonlight reflecting off his fangs and the crazed look in his eyes.
“Valerie!” someone screams, or maybe it’s the wind.
People stream back and forth, knocking into my shoulders, blurring my vision. My ears ring from the noise, my senses overwhelmed by the number of smells, sounds. I think I see blurs of black Marionettes uniforms. The estate reinforcements?
I’m almost to him now. Dark magic floods up from my feet, and I cut into my palms, letting the blood magic join it.
A flash of black fur catches the corner of my eye, and I’d recognize him anywhere. Cam bounds closer, and my stomach flips at how easily Westcott tore apart the other wolf. He needs the element of surprise.
“Hey!” I shriek, funneling my magic into my voice, and it echoes around the field.
Westcott’s head jerks up from a body he’d been feeding on, his eyes landing on me as blood pours from the corners of his mouth.
I can feel the blood’s magic emanating from here. It must have been a witch. I seize it like a thread in the air, adding it to the growing pool inside of me.
Westcott smiles, nothing about it warm. Nothing about it looking like my father.
Which alleviates whatever guilt I may have felt as I tighten my hand into a fist. Westcott stiffens and jerks like he’s trying to move but can’t. Once I have a solid grasp on his muscles, I move to his organs, his heart, his lungs, the very blood pumping through his veins.
The guards behind him notice a moment later, their mouths moving as they shout to each other and turn toward me, but then one by one, they’re taken out. A wolf tackles the one on the far right. The one beside him is blown back several feet and then encased in thick vines that sprout up from the earth. Anya leaps on the one closest to me, ripping his throat open with her fangs.
“You can’t really think you can beat me, Valerie,” Westcott grits out, and I feel each word pulling and forcing itself through my hold on him.
“You’re killing off your own followers,” I say, taking a step closer. “They don’t trust you anymore. They don’t believe in you. You’ve already lost your family. Without them, you have no one and nothing.Youcan’t really think there’s a way out of this.”
His mouth twists into a smile. He’s stalling me.
I dig my nails harder into my palms, trying to regain my hold on him, but it’s harder to grasp now that he’s made cracks.
An unnatural coldness washes through me. The world turns gray at the edges, fog creeping in along the ground.
I should’ve noticed sooner. How could I not have noticed?
With all the chaos, I’d focused so hard on not losing sight of Westcott. I’d seen the wendigos when I first joined the crowd, but there hasn’t been a glimpse of them since.
An inhuman roar rips through the air, breaking the last of the hold I had on Westcott. The force of it slams into my chest and throws me back into a pair of arms.One of the others?That split second of hope fizzles out just as fast as I feel the claws, the cloak.
Fight back and they’ll die, echoes a voice in my head.
“If you surrender now, you will be shown mercy!” Westcott bellows as the wendigo drags me forward, its hold on me firm, but not painful. Clearly meant to subdue, but not harm. I desperately look for the others and try to take in my surroundings through the fog, but suddenly there are wendigos everywhere when there were none before. Have they been here all this time, waiting on the other side of the veil, perhaps?
They each carry a body forward—Monroe, Kirby, Avery, Anya, Feddei, Daniel, Leif, Wes, Saint, Jones, Cam, Reid, Calla, Mom, and Adrienne. Once the wendigos have convened in a circle, they drop us to our knees and hold us there.
No.No.Not when we were this close. But there’s so many of them, and their claws are poised beside each person’s throat. One wrong move and…
Westcott leisurely paces the inside of the circle, taking in each person one by one. When he reaches Calla, Mom, Adrienne, and me, he looks at us as if we’re strangers. As if we’re nothing to him.
Maybe we always have been.
Despite the smug look on his face, there’s an obvious limp to his walk, an exhausted slump to his shoulders. That display of his powers had been gaudy, frivolous. And it’s taken its toll.
Can you hear me?I ask through the bond, trying to catch Reid’s eyes across the circle.
He lifts his head an inch.Yes.
