She was there, I could sense her, a curled-up mass of predator, of monster. Usually she was right there. When we were in danger, she came to the surface, breaking free to fight with her stronger teeth and claws. I curled my fingers, willing claws to break through the skin. But nothing happened. She wasn’t waiting to break free. It was as if she slept.
“Oh no,” he said, showing teeth as he grinned. “You don’t get that power. Not while I’m here. You won’t be a wolf for me, you certainly won’t be one against me.”
Being a werewolf was a disease, a curse. I’d spent most of the last ten years working not to shape-shift, to keep it together, to control the urge to turn Wolf and run. But now, now, I needed her, I needed
Wolf, I needed to shift and fight and flee on her long animal legs.
Wolf slept.
I whined, a breath exhaling on the verge of a scream.
“Yeah,” Lucifer murmured. “You’re not so tough.”
He took the hilt in both hands, held the point over my heart, and a look of blazing hatred crossed his face as he prepared to drive down. I kept my eyes open. I could do that. No life flashing before me. Not much of anything. Just glaring at him, with animal focus.
He stabbed down, grunting with effort—and the point of the sword stopped cold an inch above my breastbone. It didn’t move, didn’t waver, no matter how hard he pressed. He tried again, slashing at my neck this time, then my face. Instinctively, I winced away. But he didn’t kill me. He couldn’t even hurt me.
Falling to his knees beside me, he began pawing me. But he couldn’t touch me. His hands skittered an inch away from my skin, my clothes. He threw the sword away; it vanished.
His expression went slack, his eyes focusing on the collar of my shirt.
“What are you wearing around your neck? Show me. Show me now.”
My right hand burst away from the dirt trapping it. I went to punch him with it, but I didn’t get very far with the rest of my body pinned down, and he smoothly leaned away from the hit.
“Show. Me,” he said, teeth bared.
“Ha,” I said, teeth also bared. “Pissed you off.”
“What are you wearing around your neck?”
I pulled at the cord and let the coin hang over my shirt. My wedding ring, which I wore on a chain rather than on my finger most of the time, came with it, but I pushed it aside, hiding it from him. What was left: the marked-up coin of Dux Bellorum, the one worn by Angelo. His betrayal, turned on its head.
He drew back, then laughed. “These were supposed to mark my followers, my acolytes. Identify them to each other, connect them to me. Nothing more. But this? I have no idea what this means.” He tried again to reach for the coin, but once again his touch skittered away from me.
I’d spent enough time with Cormac, Amelia, and Odysseus Grant, I thought I knew what they’d say: destroying, marring the coins didn’t just negate their power. It was a repudiation. A declaration not just of independence, but of opposition. And there was power in that—a deep, protective magic. Maybe entirely unintentional, but I wasn’t going to question it.
“You can’t hurt me,” I said madly.
He leered back. “No, I can’t kill you. I’m pretty sure I can hurt you.”
The ground under me cracked and collapsed. Finally, I screamed.
Chapter 16
A SINKHOLE OPENED under me, dropping me into an underground pool of steaming-hot water, one of the sources that fed the aboveground geyser systems. The water was so hot it didn’t register as heat at first—I splashed in, and felt numb. When the searing came, it was almost from the inside out, muscles flaring then flashing to a burn on my skin.
I was still a werewolf, I was still tough. The burning wouldn’t kill me. Whatever happened, I would heal. I kept telling myself that.
Snarling with the effort, clothes dripping, I splashed to my feet and looked for escape. I was in a crevice, a cleft jagging its way across the pockmarked rock. Exposed to air, my burned skin seared as if every cell were on fire. My feet, still in the pool of water, were boiling. I could smell my own flesh cooking.
I ran, but the ground under me shook and I tripped, falling again into the hot stream.
Lightman stood over me at the edge of the crevice, ready to inflict the next blow. He couldn’t touch me, but he could affect everything around me. The ground rumbled, edges of the crevice crumbling further, stones pattering down. Another earthquake—he could keep opening sinkholes under me until I baked to death in a pool of magma. And he would watch, grinning that smug Hollywood grin.
He expected me to run; he figured all he had to do was keep me from running away. I couldn’t shift, but I still had Wolf’s power. She was still inside me, and unthinking I moved with her drive, her fierceness. Scrambling over debris up the side of the crevice, I went straight toward him. Didn’t stop, didn’t plan. This was a hunt; I only focused on the target.
I could tell by the startled roundness in his eyes he hadn’t expected me to run at him. I discovered, gratefully, that while he couldn’t touch me, I could touch him. But I wasn’t interested in touching so much as grabbing, shoving, and stomping. Wrapping my hand in the first bit of convenient shirt, at the buttons, I yanked, swung him around, and put my shoulder into knocking him over the side, right into the water where I’d been. He made a shout. I didn’t look back. I didn’t have time. I barely paused, kept moving forward.