We kept saying antichrist like it was a horrid word no one should speak. The dramatics made me laugh.
“My friends are interesting to say the least. Ness, you’ve met her, is a Barghest. You know, the Black Hound in old folktales that comes to strike churches with lightning. Her whole thing is justice. Why do I feel like if I left the two of you alone, you’d destroy one another?” I was babbling, but I got the sense that Maddox needed someone to fill the silence.
Was his beast acting up again? I was tempted to ask him when the last time he shifted was, but I’d been there. I’d walked him through the small town until we came across the accursed ghost. If that was all he did when he shifted, though, his beast would be restless. It needed to stretch its legs and really run wild.
The poor beast was cooped up inside Maddox, making his human body a kennel that was two sizes too small. I wanted to ask him to consider shifting and running around while I cooked dinner instead, but I knew Maddox enough to know that he wasn’t going to listen to me.
I prattled on about Hel and what I’d learned about her. Maddox listened, agreeing at some points and asking questions at others. It was all basic responses, which told me that he wasn’t completely present. This wasn’t about me, though. I spoke not to share information, but to help him with whatever was happening on his end.
Finally, I heard the creak of the gate at the front of the estate and the soft approaching rumble of Maddox’s SUV. I hung up the call, put the old tomes away, and stared at them for a long moment.
I hadn’t brought up anything other than Hel, not because I was hiding anything from Maddox. In fact, I wished I had something to tell him. There was nothing in any of the books I’d read that mentioned undead shifters anywhere. It seemed like people had avoided recording any instances of shifters like Maddox.
I looked over my shoulder to where Maddox waited in his SUV. The only other explanation was that he was the only one of his kind to ever exist.
Was that even possible? How could he be the only one? Surely, this had happened before. I’d learned that there were more Reapers in the world than I’d originally thought. Bastien sure had managed to find a lot of us. How was it that no Reaper had ever raised a shifter before?
Perhaps they knew something that I didn’t. This settled on my shoulders like an ill omen, a crow screaming in my ear that death was on the horizon.
I shook myself and headed out to find Vi and Maddox already staring each other down. Wait, no. Maddox’s attention wasn’t on Vi. He stared down at the hellcat at Vi’s feet. The blank expression on his face likely meant that his mind was buffering, trying to process what he was looking at.
Though it was a laughable moment, the weight of the ill omen still held me down.
He’s not right.
The voice didn’t belong to me. I jerked, startled again. My heart raced wildly and looked all over for the source of the voice—even though I knew it’d come from inside my head.
The voice didn’t speak again. I waited and waited. Nothing happened.
Maddox tilted his head in silent question. I tried to give him a reassuring smile. It faltered when I forced myself forward and my feet immediately tangled. The ground rushed up to meet my face, but a pair of hands caught me.
Vi whistled. “He isfast. Bro, I don’t even think the Callahan boys can move that fast.”
I grabbed onto Maddox as he pulled me back upright and set me on my feet. “He can teleport. It’s…complicated.”
“Ah,” Maddox dragged the word out.
For a moment, I worried that I’d betrayed a secret that was meant to stay between us.
“I didn’t teleport.” He leaned back. “Actually, I haven’t done that in a while.”
Taken aback, I blinked at him. He really was fast. I let him pull me up. When he tried to lift me up and carry me, I gently pushed him away. My feet were unsteady but being that close to him would fill my mind with thoughts that I shouldn’t have right about now.
Right now, I should have been more concerned with the voice I’d just heard. Vi was on her way back to her Jeep. The woman had no attention span whatsoever. Before she could leave, I called out to her.
She paused, hand on the open door of her Jeep as Cinder hopped in. Vi looked back at me and lifted both brows to show that she was paying attention.
“The…divine. They speak to you, right?” I wasn’t quite sure how to ask this.
Our pantheons were different. Vi’s lineage came from the Abrahamic divine. There was no evidence that they would work similarly to the Norse divine.
Vi groaned. “All the damn time. Dad would send me the most cryptic messages before I figured out that it was him. The bastard even laughed at me sometimes. They’re all a bunch of assholes that really like to be as mysterious as possible.”
So, there was a chance that what I’d just heard was, in fact, Hel. That made me steal a glance at Maddox. The goddess said that he wasn’t right. I didn’t know what to make of that. Was there something wrong with Maddox? Or was it…the fact that he existed at all? Considering how little I’d gleaned from Luca’s library, I wondered if there’d ever been anyone like Maddox before.
Vi’s lips parted, worry vaulting her brows. “Are you dealing with the divine? Is Grandpa bothering you?”
Maddox paused. He shook himself. “Did…did you just call GodGrandpa?”