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Fox rushes back to my side with a large knife in his hand.
He passes the knife to me and looks at the crowd.
“Everyone should go home and lock their doors,” Fox tells them, raising his voice. “This was a chimera, and we must ensure it is disposed of properly to avoid it’s return. There is another chimera already in this town that we must destroy. It will leave you alone if you stay indoors. So please do so and we will make sure the town is made safe for you to venture back out in the morning.”
A few people move quickly. A couple stand and clap before they walk away.
One teen stops in front of us. “She was a chimera? Like half-cat, half-snake or something?”
“Something like that,” Fox tells him.
“Don’t they eat people?”
“In a way,” Fox says. “So, you should hurry home.”
He nods. “I’m going. I just … Too many people die here. She saw a lot of them before it happened.”
He walks away, and I realize a lot of the people in this town might have been more aware that something was wrong than perhaps Scar realized when he told us stories of this place.
I move around the dead woman, and I hiss at Fox.
“Okay, okay,” he tells me. “I’m helping.”
Chapter Forty-Eight
Lita
Orionstopsatadoor with a complex looking panel of locks. He brings a set of keys out of his pocket and begins unlocking it. I watch the sequence carefully, afraid that I might need to know it later.
He looks me over when he’s slipping the keys back into his pocket.
A sly smirk appears on his lips before he pulls the door open.
It’s dark inside and there’s a scent I don’t exactly recognize but am somehow able to identify as witch-magic. Strange, until my memory connects the dots.
The ritual, I remind myself. This same fizzy, treacly scent was always there at the forest’s edge when the magic was active and in place to keep Scar and his brothers from entering Nightshade.
“You’re going to like this,” Orion tells me, gesturing to me to enter the room.
“I’m not stepping into a lockable room while you stand at the door with the keys.”
He throws his head back and laughs.
I have a moment where I think I could take a shot at killing him before he can shift into his true form, but I’m not sure it’s long enough, and I don’t know what he’s done with Adam. I need to know where the little boy is before I can be sure I’m not risking his life by killing his captor.
Orion shrugs and steps into the room.
The lights go on inside a second later.
He glances back at me. “Don’t bother trying anything in here, Lita.”
Define anything, I can’t help thinking. I don’t answer him. I just follow him inside.
It goes against all of my self-preservation instincts to follow him down the stairs into his basement, but my wolf knows this is what needs to be done.
He has something to show me.
Some grand plan to explain.
