Page 53 of Shadow of Death

I was so lost in my thoughts, I barely noticed my wolf had moved until it lunged for Dicon’s throat, clamping down on it and then staying there.

Dicon suddenly jerked, his hands going to this throat as he appeared to stop breathing. He stood, and the wolf got on its hind legs, its muzzle still locked on Dicon’s throat.

People circled around Dicon, trying to slap him on the back, do the Heimlich maneuver. Nothing worked. It couldn’t, because he wasn’t choking. My wolf was killing him.

Dicon dropped to the ground, the wolf following him down and then finally letting go. It walked over, sniffed my hand, and rubbed its head against me, feeling so real that it was hard to distinguish it from reality. I was beginning to wonder what was real.

Dicon was dead, not a single mark upon his throat. Yet it was my wolf that had done it. It had killed him and no one knew. I sat there, my mind reeling as people gathered around Dicon, trying to understand what he’d choked on.

“Let’s head up,” Kicks said.

I shot to my feet, ready to go.

The second Kicks shut the bedroom door, he turned to me. “Was there something odd about Dicon choking that I should know?”

Had my face given me away? I was going to have to watch my expressions, but this was just so… So what? Creepy? Insane? In a sick and twisted way, hopeful? Was I finding a workaround to my powers that wouldn’t leave me so powerless?

“I’m not exactly sure what happened, so it’s hard to answer.” I paced the room.

“Just tell me what you think happened,” he said, tracking me, as I couldn’t stand still.

“Fine. But it’s strange.” I’d killed his father and he was still here. How much worse would an imaginary wolf be? Had to be better than that, right?

“Stranger than everyone dying at the same moment? Death talking to you? The dead river guy?”

“Charon,” I whispered, and shot him a look. “I think he’s sensitive about his name.” The last thing we needed was to piss off another godlike creature. I already had enough disgruntled entities ready to screw me.

“Yeah. Him. Whatever. My point is, I think I’m broken in when it comes to weird. Now what happened?” He walked closer, trying to pin me down to one corner of the room.

“Remember the wolf I saw in my dream?”

“Yes.”

“Well, when Dicon was choking, my wolf had its jaws clamped on his neck.”

Kicks froze. “Did you tell him to do it?”

“No. I did see Didi tripping, and I did think it was Dicon. And that it would maybe be a good thing if he died choking on his greasy rib. But I didn’ttellthe wolf to do anything.”

“This is good. This is very good,” Kicks said, scratching his jaw as if he were working on some nefarious plans.

“I had no conscious control of what the wolf did,” I said before he could start plotting.

“But youdidhave some control. Your powers are trying to work out a way around the stranglehold she put on them,” he said. “Tomorrow, try something else.”

“But I wasn’ttryingto do anything. Yes, I was furious with him, I might’ve fleetingly thought I’d like to see him choke, but that wasn’t what I was trying to accomplish.”

“You might not have wanted to, but you did it anyway.” He grabbed my shoulders, as if trying to infuse his confidence into me. “You can do it again. I’m not saying you have to kill anyone. Just try to get the wolf to materialize and do something.”

Someone would have toreallyget me angry again, but that shouldn’t be a problem in this place. I couldn’t make it a day without getting aggravated.

“I’ll try.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

Dicon was laidupon a bed of logs in the main courtyard as Varic walked forward with a torch, lighting the pyre on fire. There didn’t seem to be an outpouring of mourning. There was a redheaded woman across the way who was said to be his wife, but didn’t shed a single tear. If anything, her eyes looked a bit brighter today than last night, and I didn’t think it was the fire.

Varic tossed his torch on top of the wood pile underneath Dicon’s body, mumbling a curse as he did. He was the only one who seemed to have any strong emotions here, and I wondered if it was for the loss of a friend or because Dicon had been his best yes-man.

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