“Why do you hate wolves so much?” I demand, trying to stall her as adrenaline floods me. “What did they ever do to you?”
“Don’t you know wolves can’t be trusted?” Cleo puts a hand on her hip, and her lower lip pouts. “Haven’t you heard the tale of Little Red Riding Hood?”
I roll my eyes, still attempting to distract her from my internal struggle. I try to guess what Gwen would do in this situation, still digging for the tunnel that I once visualized connecting me to Cleo. “I somehow don’t think the shifters I know are interested in eating people.”
“They’re going to betray you,” the dark-haired witch goes on personably, ignoring the fact that I’ve even spoken. “You should prepare yourself for that. Get out while you can. You could join me.”
“Ha, right.” I curl my lips in anger, then smile as I latch on to the familiar connection between us. Not so shabby—I found it in mere seconds. Maybe I really will get better at this. “Fuck you, Cleo.”
With those parting words, I wrench myself away from the connection.
As my soul is sucked back out of the black cave, relief fills me. I did it—I broke the connection and got the hell out of there before she could drain my essence dry of all life. But a small part of me stays tense, expecting Cleo’s sharp, magical grasp to wrap back around me and pull me into her clutches. It doesn’t happen though. Maybe I surprised her. Maybe I really did get the upper hand, God willing.
Wind seems to rush around me as I’m whipped through the ether. But I don’t emerge back in the place I left. I don’t wake up in Archer’s bed with my mates.
Instead, I wake up strapped to the table in my uncle’s basement.
Clint looms over me, haloed by the halogen lamp that floods down from overhead. It casts harsh shadows on his craggy face, and now more than ever before, he looks like a villain. He’s sober—I can tell because the whites of his eyes aren’t spiderwebbed with veins, and his large, protruding nose isn’t bright red.
Which makes it even worse that he’s looming over me with a knife. This cruelty isn’t even fueled by alcohol. It’s all him. What kind of man carves up a teenage girl for fun?
I know this isn’t real because Clint’s stone cold dead. Trystan ripped out his throat, and we buried the sociopath in a shallow grave in the woods.
Looking back now, it’s obvious that this man wasn’t my uncle. We look nothing alike, really. Clint had dark, sun-ripened skin from his work in the Montana sun, and coarse hair a shade short of black. I was so naïve to believe that I had to remain with him since he was my only surviving family.
He was no family to me at all.
I struggle against my bonds as Clint bends over my torso, reaching out with his free hand to redirect the lamp so he has better lighting.
Then he digs his knife into my skin, and I scream.
The pain is intense. It’s so blinding that it’s impossible to think, and I can’t get a grip on what’s happening or how this is possible. Could this be real? Have I somehow traveled back in time? Or is this a nightmare, a memory dredged up by…
/> Cleo.
With horror, I realize we aren’t alone. The dark-haired witch stands in the corner, just out of sight beyond the harsh light. I wouldn’t have noticed her if I wasn’t looking for her, and even now, all I can really see is the glittering of her eyes.
This is a memory, I realize. When I tried to pull myself out of her hold and return to my body, she redirected me here instead.
And she followed me.
This isn’t real. It’s not really happening. But that hardly matters—the pain feels worse than it ever did in my nightmares. Almost worse than it did when it happened in real life. Clint carves deep into my stomach, mumbling to himself while I scream and cry. My throat is hoarse, and hot tears mark paths down my cheeks and into my hair.
All the times I experienced this over and over in my dreams, I never felt this kind of agony. It’s like I’m really here, this time, not just remembering it in my subconscious, but lying on this table, reliving it while Cleo watches.
“How intriguing,” she murmurs, stepping sideways a few inches as Clint readjusts and blocks her view. “This is how we’re connected, then. The sigils.”
Clint shows no indication that he hears the witch, but I shut up immediately, my head whipping sideways to glare daggers at her in the shadows. “You witch,” I seethe. “You did this. You brought us here.”
Clint keeps carving as if I haven’t spoken at all. I feel like I’m in the middle of a horror movie, unable to get away, caught between the two most dangerous people in my life.
“Sigils,” Cleo muses as she comes closer. Her shoes click on the basement floor, and it sounds so fucking real that goosebumps break out over my skin. “But why, hmm?”
Then she lifts a single hand, holding it out toward me, and the pain of Clint’s carving grows exponentially. The pain grows until I’m filled with red-hot agony, and Cleo’s magic is everywhere, all around me, inside me, tearing me apart from the inside.
She’s attacking me, like she did the first time she dragged me into the connection. This is it, this is what I was afraid of.
I scream, harder and longer than when Clint’s knife first dug into my skin. I know nothing but blinding pain, and my vision explodes in white flashes until I can’t see the basement. Not even the harsh halogen lamp can shine through the haze of fear and agony.