“Hold him!” Maxime yelled.
She turned back to him, but Lucas was already changing. The snap and crunch of bones filled her ears. His body convulsed, twisting, heaving, as fur burst over his skin.
“Reach for the beast,” Marie said. “Control him.”
Sarah took a breath and tried to find a psychic link with his wolf. Lucas?
Pain hit her, tearing apart her insides, ripping, burning . . .
Sarah fell to the floor.
“Hold him,” Marie murmured. “Hold the spirits close, don’t let them go.”
Spirits. The pain had tears leaking from her eyes. Shifters had two souls, two spirits inside of them. Man and beast. She could feel them both right then. The savage pain of the beast. The fury of the man. Both buffeting her.
Lucas, stay with me.
A small cloud appeared before her mouth, as if she were cold, and suddenly Sarah was shuddering because the temperature in the room seemed to have dropped about fifty degrees.
“Hold him tighter,” Marie’s voice rose. “Don’t let go!”
Did she mean hold him psychically? Hold him physically? Sarah forced herself to move, to crawl back to the table. The psychic link had broken because the wolf was gone and only the man remained. She grabbed his arm. Ice cold.
Sarah tried to find his mind, but with the wolf gone, she couldn’t connect with him.
“Will you bind to him?” Marie’s whisper floated to her.
Sarah glanced up. Maxime was at her side. “What does that mean?”
“If you want him to live, you bind.” Marie grabbed her left hand. Stretched it out and turned her wrist up. “Do you bind?”
If it meant Lucas lived, then . . . “Y-yes.”
Maxime yanked out a knife and slashed her exposed flesh. Sarah didn’t even have enough breath to scream right then.
“He lives . . . that’s what you want?”
Why the hell was Marie asking that? Wasn’t it obvious? “Yes!”
“You live, he lives . . .”
Marie’s fingers smeared the blood over Sarah’s arm. Then the mambo lifted her blood-stained fingers into the air and seemed to paint letters. “He dies . . .”
No!
The bright blue of Marie’s eyes began to fade. “Then you die.”
All of the candles sputtered out. The darkness swept over her, and the last sound Sarah heard was the growl of a wolf.
The figures in white slowly filed out of the dark house. Marie led the line, her hair a veil around her face. Dane tensed when he saw her. He could almost feel the power crackling in the air around her.
“Did he make it?” Piers voiced his obvious fear.
Marie stopped and spared him a glance. “Death wanted him.”
Fuck. Lucas had pulled his ass right out of hell before and he’d let the alpha . . .
“But your wolf fought back.” Her eyes looked right through them. “Had to bind the souls. Life and death will follow, but for now . . . they live.”
They? The wolf and the man?
Marie shook her head. “He has a weakness. One that could destroy him. Sometimes . . .” She waved her hand in the air, and the big Haitian at her back stumbled, then seemed to topple onto the porch. “We just delay Death. We don’t stop him.”
The Haitian was on the ground now. Not moving. Eyes wide open.
“What the hell did you do to him?” Dane asked, voice tight.
The delicate woman that he’d seen before hit the ground next. Her braided hair spread behind her like a halo.
Shit. It looked like the mambo was killing her own people. Dane’s claws burst through his skin.
“Easy, wolf.” Marie’s head lowered as she stared at the man. Then the woman. “They did their service to me, so I was keeping my end of the deal.” Her hand hovered over the Haitian. “I didn’t raise them, but I am setting them free.”
The Haitian’s body stiffened as a fast rigor set in, the way it usually did when a vampire got staked. But wait, this guy wasn’t a vamp. Dane hadn’t caught the vamp scent on him.
But now the scent of death and decay—several days old—hung in the air.
Marie’s head lifted. “You’ll find them inside. Watch over them until dawn. Be ready for the betrayal and the choice, Dane.”
Piers was staring at the woman with the braided hair. Her body had tensed with rigor as well. The woman who’d been walking around seconds ago now looked like a corpse. “Sonofabitch,” Piers whispered. “What was she? A damn zombie?”
Marie didn’t look at Piers. “Remember what I say,” she told Dane. “Screams and pain or sacrifice.”
Hell of a choice.
“And you’re not the only one who’ll make it.” She turned away. Walked slowly down the porch and across the yard. Her attendants—the ones still alive, anyway—followed close behind her.
Dane didn’t speak until the group had cleared the porch.
“What the f**k?” Piers grabbed his arm. “Is Lucas alive or—” His hand jerked toward the dead bodies. “Or is he like these poor bastards?”
Like puppets on a string—with a string that could be cut any moment. Because he’d heard about cases like this, and Piers had been right . . . zombies. Or, as close as reality could come to the zombie nightmare.
Dane sucked in a breath and tasted death. “He’s alive.” Because he had a sick feeling in his gut. One that told him exactly what Marie had done to Lucas.
Weakness.
He crept toward the Haitian’s body. Other than his skin already taking on a chalky appearance, he looked unharmed. How had he died? How had—
Dane’s eye narrowed on the white scarf around his neck. Both the Haitian and the woman had the scarves. Dane’s fingers lifted and latched onto the soft fabric of the scarf. He tugged lightly . . . shit.
The man’s throat had been ripped open. The scarf had hid the wound, but—ripped open.
“One of ours?” Piers asked from behind him.
Dane’s claws hovered over the wounds. “Shifter . . . can’t say for sure if it was wolf.” But his gut told him it was. He glanced up at Piers. “If a wolf killed her man, why would she—”
“You sure she saved him?” Piers charged for the door. Dane expected him to slam into that invisible wall again, but Piers ran right inside. Dane followed him, rushing forward. His shoes brushed against the loose dirt near the door. The line he’d noticed before. But now, a huge chunk of that dirt had been cleared away. Like a path had been opened.