Page 23 of Paris and the Reaper

“They’re dead, aren’t they?” Paris said. “Abigail’s pack? That’s who I’m hearing.”

Mac dropped his arm, then his shoulders, and all of him looked tired already. Answer enough. “Let’s get you back to the car,” he said. “I’ll send Liam back to drive you to the cabin. I’m going to be here a while.”

Paris lowered his bag and withdrew the canteen of water, taking a slug as he debated how to ask what he wanted and get the answer he wanted too. Because contrary to what he was sure Mac was going to say, he wasn’t taking no for an answer. “You can help them? Even if they’re not on your list?”

He offered the bottle to Mac who took a longer swallow. “It’s harder to make the connection, but it’s doable. I have to try. Their souls deserve peace.”

“Can I help make that connection?” He took the bottle back from Mac and tucked it in the bag. “Direct the souls your way?”

“Paris, I can’t ask?—”

“You’re not asking.” An even better approach. “I can help you, and I can maybe learn more about what happened to me and the giants’ plans. This is my fight too,” he said, repeating Abigail’s words. He shouldered his bag and started moving again, the way Abigail and Jenn had disappeared. “Let’s go.”

Mac drew even with him but didn’t try to stop his forward momentum. “This isn’t going to be pretty.”

“I know. I lived through it.”

Famous last words.

Smoke was thankfully all that lingered in the air, the magical fire having reduced everything to ash, but the utter devastation had Paris falling to his knees. He hadn’t been there to witness the aftermath of his own near death, and destruction was par for the course in the Canyon Lands, but the black hole that dark magic had left here—in a place of otherworldly beauty, the altar in a meadow like the one near the cabin, its view of the sky unobstructed and above the fog line—took his breath away.

And on the heels of that blow came the one in his head, all of the voices crashing into him at once, a cacophony like the one that had assaulted him on the altar in YB.

“Breathe, Paris.” Mac’s hand on his nape, the tug in his chest, quieted the souls a measure. “Breathe through it, tell them to hold on while I check on Abigail, and then we’ll get to work. But wait for me, okay?”

Paris nodded, not about to undertake this without an anchor, not even about to argue when Mac made a flicking motion with his hand, and Liam flitted down onto Paris’s shoulder. He needed the backup, but Abigail needed Mac more at the moment. “Go, I’ll wait.”

As he did, he tried to ignore the horror and survey the scene, like Mac the investigator would, having observed him walk through his murals the same way. The higher mound of ash thatwas likely where the altar had been, the smaller mounds that dotted the clearing in a semicircle, witnesses to the monster’s sacrifice. Questions roiled in Paris’s head along with the voices.

What had this giant done to sway these shifters to his side?

Had he died in the blast too, or was he still out there?

Were any of the pack?

Who was the human sacrifice? How many others had been sacrificed on the altar? How much power had Chaos gained as a result? How much trouble were they truly in?

THIRTEEN

By the timeMac left to ferry the last soul, the sky was full of stars above. Paris wondered again if one of those bright, twinkling lights was his mother, if she’d heard his plea to take good care of the innocents Mac had delivered today.

And there had been innocents, more than a few. Pack children who hadn’t chosen Chaos, other members of the pack who’d been held against their will, the human—Dylan—who had been hunted in these woods for days. He’d been lured here by his best friend, a mountain lion from the pack. Paris had lost his breath when he’d first delved into his memories, nearly drowning from the tidal wave of betrayal Dylan had felt. He couldn’t imagine Kai or Jason ever doing such a thing, but Dylan hadn’t imagined his best friend would either. They’d been closer than blood, but then his friend’s blind allegiance to Chaos, his fear of Nature’s evolving world, had turned him against Dylan. Through Dylan’s unbelieving human eyes, Paris had watched as his friend had stood next to the giant by the altar and, with his own claws, torn Dylan’s heart from his chest. As Dylan’s last breath escaped, as the bond he’d shared with his friend well and truly severed, the giant had lost control of the magic and burnedeverything and everyone to the ground. Paris didn’t think the timing was a coincidence.

Nor did he think it a coincidence that Mac’s violet eyes were dim and his flying off-kilter when he eventually returned. Liam took up position on his wing and guided him to Paris’s shoulder. He landed, and it was like a blast chiller flipping on beside Paris, frigid air blanketing his cheek. The raven was shivering too, cold all the way to his talons. Paris needed to get him back to the cabin, ASAP.

Kneeling, he dug two sets of clothes out of his pack, placing the jeans and sweater on the ground next to Liam and the extra sweats in a pile for Mac. He’d intended them for himself, but Mac needed them more right now. “Shift and change,” he told the giant black bird on his shoulder. “I’ll tell Jenn and Abigail we’re finished.”

It was a testament to Mac’s exhaustion that he didn’t argue, that he simply hopped off Paris’s shoulder and onto the pile of jersey material without protest. Paris crossed the large singed circle to where Jenn stood sentry over Abigail, who was scooping ashes into bowls they’d fashioned from pieces of tree bark outside the burn zone.

“I need to get Mac back to the cabin.”

Abigail twisted to glance up at him. “Are all the souls gone?”

Paris nodded, suddenly feeling the weight of exhaustion in his own bones, in his head that had been a virtual drive-thru the past twelve hours as they’d sorted who and which direction souls would travel, what each soul deserved. “That’s all of them.”

“I couldn’t feel them,” Abigail said as she stood. “But you and Mac and Liam could.” She handed the bowl to Jenn then pulled him into her arms. “Thank you.”

He hugged her back. “Thank you for keeping me alive all those months. And we will catch the giant who did this to your people.” He had a mural to paint, as soon as he got back to thecabin and got Mac buried under a mountain of blankets. “You’re good here?” he asked. “Safe?”

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