The question sent a chill down the back of my neck, like a spider crawling down my spine. The chunk this thing had already taken out of my shoulder had numbed me, before it had hurt. This wasn’t a normal Were we were dealing with. If Wilson brought me to the brink of death and Changed me—the way Callum hadn’t, not yet—what manner of beast would I be?
No. I wouldn’t think about that. I wouldn’t think about anything, except the smell of death and clammy palms and the claustrophobic room in my head, where my nightmares lived.
Fear.
The Shadow stepped forward and then blurred. One second, he was ten feet away from me, the next, he was rubbing his cheek over mine. In a flash of black fur, Chase leapt for me, leapt for him, but Wilson disappeared.
“Nuh-uh-uh,” the monster said, his voice coming from all around us. “Can’t run, can’t hide.”
I felt him, felt his breath on my skin, felt him closing in.
“I should thank you,” he whispered, in stereo. “For killing me.”
I flew backward and hit a tree trunk. I absorbed the blow and rolled to my feet. I heard the sound of paws on the ground. I felt him leaping—
Thud.
A large wolf—tan fur, white markings, lethal—collided with the invisible predator midair. A high-pitched yelp turned into a growl as the two of them hit the ground, each grappling for control.
Sora was brutal, efficient. Fighting an invisible opponent, she was nothing but fangs and claws, beautiful, deadly grace. Blood, so dark it was nearly black, marked the white fur around her muzzle. Phantom teeth sunk into her flank, but she shook her assailant off violently and whirled around, jaws snapping, fur on end.
The air quivered, like the surface of a pond under an onslaught of skipping stones, and then Wilson appeared again.
This time, I doubted it was on purpose.
In wolf form, he was the creature I remembered from my nightmares. There was a white star on his forehead. His eyes were intelligent, his fur matted with blood. Suddenly, I didn’t have to work to hold on to the red haze.
It threatened to overwhelm me.
Escape. Have to—run—have to—
I reined it in, pulling the power inward, feeling it as a ball of fire in my chest. I wasn’t four years old anymore.
I wasn’t running.
Sora flew through the air again, mouth full of blood-marked teeth, death in her eyes. She grabbed him by the throat.
She pinned him.
His legs scrambled for purchase, but she slammed her body sideways, crushing his limbs under her weight. She met his eyes, his blood filling her mouth.
And then he Shifted—silently, effortlessly, as only a dead werewolf could. She let go of his neck, just for a second. Blood dripped off his body, disappearing the moment it hit the ground.
He gargled.
For a second, they stared at each other—wolf and human, twins. I knew, beyond all rationale or reason, that she’d held him at this point before.
That she’d let him go.
I stopped breathing. She nudged his face with her nose. Licked his chin. And then, without warning, she lunged. Her teeth closed around his human neck. She bit down, until she hit bone, and then she jerked her head sideways.
His spine snapped.
His eyes lolled backward.
His head hung on by a thread.
I felt Sora begin to Shift before I heard it. In human form—naked, her body smeared with blood—she knelt next to him.
“Give me a knife.” Her voice was rough, her words short and sharp. I walked to her, knelt next to her, placed my knife in her hands.
She leaned forward, whispered something in his ear. Then, dark hair running free down her back, her lips ruby red with her brother’s blood, she drove the knife into his chest and cut out his heart.
His legs turned gray, then his torso, his arms, his face, until we were looking at a corpse. His eyes sank back in his skull; his body decomposed. The earth rumbled under our feet, and in an explosion of light—fireworks at midnight, the sun just after an eclipse—he was gone.
Sora collapsed backward on her knees, her body folding in on itself. The curve of her spine caught the last bit of twilight, and I could see heavy breaths wracking her body.
Fifteen, twenty seconds later, she rose. She walked calmly to her discarded clothes. She got dressed, and then she turned back to me.
“The message I gave you?” she said. “For Devon?”
I nodded.
She closed her eyes. “I’ll tell him myself.”
Belatedly, I remembered to let go of the little room, the panic, the fear—and the fight drained out of my body with it. I was so tired, exhausted—and I hadn’t even done anything.
“That’s the danger,” Jed said gruffly. “You stay there too long, you hold on too tight—it can kill you.”