Page 94 of Reaper's Pack

A cage.

Of light.

Of magic.

My first instinct was to teleport out—but that got me nowhere, my efforts wasted. Nor could I cross out of the celestial plane. The shimmering bars seemed to mute my abilities, and a tentative touch had me hissing and shoving my fingertip into my mouth as the flesh sizzled and blistered.

“What do I want?” The creature’s voice echoed around the confines of my cage, like a dozen different voices of varying pitches were shrieking at me. I winced, then flinched back when I found him right up against the bars of my makeshift prison. He wrapped his hand around a staticky beam of orange light, staring at me, totally emotionless. “I want you, Hazel.”

Without the drama of all the different voices, he sounded strained. Hoarse. Like he had been screaming all night for many nights in the recent past.

My heart sank.

He knew my name.

“Stop. You don’t have to do this,” I insisted firmly.

“Yes,” he muttered, his back to me, dragging my cage with one hand. “Yes, I do.”

The creature hauled the cage up the street—headed straight for a portal painted across the pavement, one that bloomed red out of nowhere, the color sharpening with his approach. It hadn’t been there when we’d arrived; I was sure of it.

Nothing had been out of place.

It had just been a quiet street…

I gave it one last go—tried to summon my scythe, to teleport out of here. My scythe had made it to the street level; it lay on its side in front of a garage door, useless, unable to hear my call anymore. While I felt the familiar pull of teleportation, I stayed put, a tension headache splitting my skull in two, streaking from the base of my spine right up and over, settling between my eyes.

The cage didn’t extend underfoot, the road exposed beneath me, but a frantic pulse of my own magic only cracked the pavement—barely. And if I didn’t keep moving, the bars would smack into me from behind, burning me down to, what, the bone?

Yes, I’d heal—but how quickly and to what extent was the question. Magic of this kind was so far out of my repertoire; souls had been my life for the last ten years. I knew the magic of the celestial plane inside and out, but not this. Not something capable of searing my flesh.

Damn it. The bloodred portal in the ground loomed closer and closer with each of the creature’s shuffling steps, and my options were running painfully thin.

“Look, you don’t have to—” A savage baritone reverberated off every building around us; I whirled around to find Knox charging down the street, teeth bared, that huge hellhound body racing like a furious storm. Unable to stay still, I backpedaled, eyes wide and heart leaping into my throat. “Knox!”

The creature picked up his pace, and I stumbled again to avoid the magic’s bite, only to lose my footing and slam into the bars on the other side of the cage with a cry. Knox barreled toward me at full speed, and behind him two other enormous shadows ripped around the corner. My boys were here. They wouldn’t let him—

The ground disappeared from under me the second I crossed onto the portal. The cage plummeted. The pack disappeared, their snarls distant, so very far beyond my reach…

And I fell screaming into the black.

27

Knox

I knew this was a bad idea.

Knew it in my gut from the moment Hazel had proposed it yesterday. She shouldn’t have been left alone. Of course no one had dealt with this bastard yet. Shouldn’t have come. Shouldn’t trust anyone else to protect our mate—

Paws pounding the pavement, I skidded to a halt over the bloody portal, an intricate series of runes that had not been here when we’d first arrived. I had made sure of that, but I should have given the area a proper patrol. Should have done more. Should have been better…

Nothing happened when I stomped over the marks. Not when I dug at the bright red inscriptions, the scent of fresh human blood so briny I tasted it with every heaving breath. Raking my claws over the ground, I snapped and bit at the spot where she had last stood, her final fleeting moments before the portal opened and the ground swallowed her whole. Hazel’s scent lingered, but even on the celestial plane, the morning breeze threatened to sweep it away.

Howls erupted from the rest of the pack, despondent and furious in equal measures. Rage and confusion and fear tore through our bond, and I shifted back to the sound of Gunnar and Declan’s claws scratching over the pavement.

Gone.

She was gone.

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