Page 70 of Gone Hunting

“Let me at least take part—”

“No,” Dad says, interrupting Mom. “That’s not an option. Your soul is tender, and this requires more steel than you can offer.” He turns to Mimi. “Tell me what needs to be done.”

“I don’t want you to do this,” Mom growls, rising.

Dad’s voice remains gentle. “There’s no choice. We’re obliged to protect the world and if Celia has somehow been chosen to save it, we’re obliged to save her. Not just for our son. But for all who inhabit it.”

“Aidan,” Mom says, crying into her hands.

Dad kisses her forehead. “It must be done, my love.”

A howl erupts in the distant. We whip toward the barricaded door. “It’s Liam,” I say, knowing he’s in trouble.

Mimi gags on her cackles. “They’re coming for you, little tigress.”

Dad drops to her side. “Mimi, tell me what to do.”

“Tell me!” he yells when she falls unconscious.

Something strikes the door and dark red blood spills in from the outside. I charge to the metal door, throwing it open.

Koda’s body falls at my feet, gripping the nape of Gemini’s twin wolf. Neither are breathing. Koda is missing most of his right leg and pink fluid oozes from his mouth. The twin wolf’s spine pokes out from his back and his blank stare faces the ceiling.

“No!”

Celia and I drag them inside. She feels for a pulse at Koda’s neck and then Gemini’s twin. It’s too late. Their souls are already gone.

Liam howls again. “Help me!” he yells. “Help me.”

Momchanges, her clothes tearing from her body as her honey and cinnamon colored wolf emerges. She leaps over the dead bodies of my friends and over the railing, her snarls resonating as she slams into something at the bottom.

Through the howling wind, the stench of decay rises, singeing my nose. Another skinwalker has appeared and Mom is fighting it alone.

“Dad—”

My voice lodges in my throat as my father takes a large knife and stabs it through Mimi’s chest. Mimi arches her back, cackling as Dad steps away. He marches toward us, careful not to spill the blood smearing the blade.

“Take this,” he says to Celia. “Don’t wipe it. Don’t do anything. Step into the circle of ash, cut your palm with the tip, and Mimi’s magic will do the rest.”

With shaking hands, Celia takes the knife.

Dad places his hands on Celia’s shoulders and presses a kiss to her forehead. “You won’t be forgotten, sweet one. I swear it.”

His head snaps up when he hears Mom yelp. In one motion, my fatherchangesinto his dark menacing wolf, leaping from the terrace and joining my mother. I sprint toward the railing, the wind so strong and littered with debris, I can barely see below.

What I do see is more than enough.

Liam’s naked body lies unmoving below, his decapitated head several feet away from him. What remains of my friend is disintegrating from the skinwalker’s poison. Like the other skinwalker, this one is more a decomposing corpse than anything living.

His face is that of a man combined with a horse, long with glowing humanoid eyes and a protruding lower jaw. Snakes replace his limbs and a forked tongue slithers out as he hisses. Mom and Dad circle him, leaping away from the poison on his limbs and desperate for a chance to bring him down.

I swing my foot over the rail, ready to pounce, but then a wave of magic kicks my leg out from under me. I leap into a crouch, recognizing the magic is Mimi’s and that it’s coming from the house.

Dad snaps his jaws, urging me inside. I back away, conflicted, only for another wave of magic to strike.

I bolt back into our large, open family room. Celia stands inside the circle of ash, staring at the gash in her palm. She looks up, dropping the knife Dad gave her when she sees me. It falls withclangagainst the floor.

“I have to go, Aric,” she says, tears soaking her eyes. “You need to live and so do those you cherish.”

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