Chapter 45
I shift my weight, putting Emma behind me as the wolves fill the hallway like a tide of dead flesh and matted fur.
My father's body takes another step forward. His neck is bent at an angle that should make movement impossible, but he moves anyway, joints popping with each jerky motion.
"Not another step."
The thing wearing my father's face smiles. His lips pull back too far, showing too many teeth.
"Or what, Sloane? You will kill me again?" The voice layering over his is wrong—multiple tones speaking in unison, like a choir of the damned. "That worked so well the first time."
Emma's fingers dig into my shoulder. "What the fuck is that?"
"Not my circus," I mutter, but my feet stay planted. Because it is my circus. Has been since the moment I pulled that trigger.
The possessed corpse tilts its head, studying me with eyes that have filmed over white. "You have your mother's stubbornness. She fought too, at the end."
My nails bite crescents into my palms. "Do not talk about her."
"Why not? She screamed your name when they tore her apart." Another step. The wolves behind him move in perfect synchronization, a choreographed nightmare. "Did you know that? Your father did. He heard every second of it."
Yeah, no. I am not doing this.
I grab Emma's wrist and bolt for the window.
"Sloane, we're on the third floor—"
I am already throwing it open, already calculating the drop to the fire escape below. Two stories. Maybe three. The math does not matter because staying means dying.
"Jump or die. Pick one."
Emma jumps.
I follow, hitting the metal grating hard enough to feel my teeth rattle. Emma is already scrambling down the ladder, her duffel bag bouncing against her hip.
Above us, my father's corpse appears in the window. It does not climb out. It just steps into empty air and falls, landing on the fire escape with a wet crunch that should have shattered every bone in its body.
It stands up anyway.
"Fuck." I shove Emma toward the ladder. "Move, move, move!"
We hit the alley at a dead run. My car is parked two blocks away, might as well be two miles with the sound of claws on metal behind us.
Emma gasps for air beside me, her human lungs struggling. "What—is—that—thing?"
"Something that should be dead."
"Helpful, Sloane. Really fucking helpful."
We round the corner onto Seventh Street. My Civic is right there, parked under a broken streetlight because of course it is.
I fumble for my keys. Drop them. Swear.
Emma snatches them off the ground and unlocks the door herself. "Get in!"
I dive into the driver's seat as the first wolf rounds the corner. Then another. Then six more, their movements synchronized like a school of fish, all dead eyes and bared teeth.
The engine turns over on the second try. I throw it into reverse and floor it, clipping a mailbox as I swing around.
"Seatbelt," I say, because my brain has apparently decided now is the time for safety protocols.
Emma laughs, high and brittle. "Sure. Seatbelt. That's what's going to save us from the zombie wolves."
I do not correct her about the zombie part. Close enough.
The wolves give chase for three blocks before falling back, their puppet-master apparently deciding we are not worth the effort. Or maybe just letting us run so we lead them somewhere more interesting.
That thought sits in my stomach like a stone.
"Where are we going?" Emma's voice shakes.
"Hospital. Declan needs—"
"No." She grabs my arm, hard enough to make me swerve. "Those things are following us. You said so yourself. We lead them to a hospital full of people and what happens?"
My hands tighten on the wheel. She is right. She is absolutely right and I hate it.
"Then where?"
Emma is quiet for a long moment, staring out the window at the city sliding past. "Somewhere public. Somewhere with witnesses. Whatever that thing is, it has not attacked in front of humans yet."
Smart. When did Emma get smart about supernatural horror logistics?
"The Waterfront," I say. "Festival is tonight. Thousand people, all packed together."
"That is your plan? Hide in a crowd?"
"You have a better one?"
She does not.
The Waterfront Festival is exactly as packed as I hoped—food trucks lined up along the pier, string lights turning everything golden, families and couples and groups of drunk twenty-somethings all pressed together in a mass of humanity that smells like fried dough and beer.
We park three blocks away and walk in, Emma clutching her duffel bag like a lifeline.
"Now what?" she asks.
Good question. My phone buzzes before I can answer.
Declan.
I step away from the crowd, pressing the phone to my ear. "Hey."
"Where are you?" His voice is tight with pain and something else. Fear, maybe. Declan does not do fear often. "The hospital called. You never arrived."
"Yeah, about that—"
"Sloane." He cuts me off, which he never does. "What happened?"
I watch a kid drop his ice cream cone and start crying. His mother scoops him up, promises to get another one, and the world keeps spinning like it is not ending.
"My father came back."
Silence on the other end. Long enough that I check to make sure the call did not drop.
"Declan?"
"That is not possible."
"I watched him fall off a roof. I watched him die." My voice cracks. "And then he knocked on my door and walked through it with an army of wolves that move like puppets."
More silence. Then: "Where are you now?"
"Waterfront Festival. Emma thought—"
"Emma is with you?"
"Where else would she be?"
"Safe." The word comes out sharp. "She should be somewhere safe, Sloane. Not with you. Not when—" He stops himself.
My spine goes rigid. "Not when what?"
"Nothing. That is not—I did not mean it that way."
"Then what way did you mean it?"
A long exhale. When he speaks again, his voice is careful, measured, every word chosen with precision. "You are in danger. Anyone near you is in danger. That is simply the reality of the situation."
"So I should what, abandon her? Leave her alone when something is hunting me?"
"I am saying you should bring her to me. I can protect her while you—"
"While I what? Handle this alone?" I laugh, and it tastes like broken glass. "That is your solution? Send everyone away so I can face the monster by myself?"
"That is not what I said."
"That's not the whole truth either."
The silence that follows is heavy enough to crush bones.
"You are right," Declan says finally. "That is not the whole truth."
My heart does a complicated thing in my chest. "Then what is?"
"I am terrified." The words come out quiet, almost too quiet to hear over the festival noise. "I am terrified that I will lose you. That whatever came back wearing your father's face will take you from me before I can—" He stops. Starts again. "I cannot lose you, Sloane. I will not survive it."
Something hot and sharp lodges in my throat. "You are not going to lose me."
"You cannot promise that."
"Watch me."
A pause. Then: "Where is Emma now?"
I scan the crowd until I spot her near a funnel cake stand, trying to look casual and failing. "Twenty feet away. Eating fried dough and pretending she is not watching me."
"Good. Keep her close. Keep yourself in public. I am leaving the hospital now."
"You were shot—"
"And I am leaving anyway." His voice brooks no argument. "Text me your exact location. I will be there in fifteen minutes."
"Declan—"
"Fifteen minutes, Sloane. Do not move."
He hangs up.
I stand there for a moment, phone pressed to my ear, listening to dead air and trying to remember how to breathe.
Emma appears at my elbow. "Was that Declan?"
"Yeah."
"Is he okay?"
"He is coming here."
"Good." She takes a bite of funnel cake, powdered sugar dusting her lips. "Because I have been thinking."
"Dangerous."
She ignores that. "Whatever that thing is, it wants you specifically. It could have killed me in your apartment but it did not even look at me. Just you."
I have been trying not to think about that. "Your point?"
"My point is that it is not random. It is not just some monster. It is personal." She licks sugar off her thumb. "So what did your dad know that got him killed? Or what did he do?"
The question sits between us like a live grenade.
"I do not know."
"Bullshit." Emma's eyes are sharp despite the fear still swimming in them. "You know something. You have been different since you came back from wherever you went. Harder. Scared in a way you were not before."
"I am not—"
"You killed him." She says it flat, matter-of-fact. "Your dad. You killed him."
My lungs forget how to work.
"Emma—"
"I am not stupid, Sloane. The way you talk about him. The way you will not talk about him. The way you looked when that thing showed up wearing his face." She crumples the funnel cake wrapper. "You killed him and now something brought him back. So I am asking again: what did he know?"
I should lie. Should deflect. Should do literally anything except tell her the truth.
"He knew a war was coming," I hear myself say. "Between packs. Between alphas. He knew and he was trying to stop it and someone killed him for it."
"And you killed him back?"
"It is more complicated than that."
"It always is." Emma tosses the wrapper in a nearby trash can. "So what now? We hide in a crowd forever? Wait for zombie dad to get bored and leave?"
"I do not—"
The lights go out.
All of them. Every string light, every food truck, every phone screen in the crowd. Just gone, like someone flipped a switch on the entire festival.
The crowd goes quiet for exactly three seconds. Then the screaming starts.
"Sloane." Emma's hand finds mine in the dark. "Tell me that is just a power outage."
I do not answer. Cannot answer. Because I can smell it now, that wrong smell of death and rot and something else, something that makes my wolf want to crawl out of my skin and run.
"Get behind me."
"Again with the behind you thing—"
"Emma. Now."
She moves.
The crowd is panicking, people shoving and stumbling in the dark, parents calling for children, someone sobbing nearby. And through it all, I hear them.
Footsteps. Dozens of them. All moving in perfect synchronization.
My phone buzzes. I fumble it out, the screen providing the only light in the immediate area.
Declan: Five minutes away. What happened to the lights?
Me: Not a power outage.
Declan: Get out of there. Now.
Me: Working on it.
I grab Emma's wrist and start pushing through the crowd, using my phone light to navigate. People are everywhere, a mass of bodies all trying to move in different directions, and we are stuck in the middle of it.
"Excuse me, sorry, coming through—"
Someone slams into me from the side. I go down hard, phone skittering across the pavement. Emma shouts my name but the crowd swallows the sound.
I scramble for my phone, fingers closing around it just as the lights come back on.
The crowd freezes.
Because standing in a perfect circle around the festival, spaced exactly ten feet apart, are the wolves. Dozens of them. All with dead eyes. All perfectly still.
And in the center of the circle, standing on top of a food truck like he is giving a sermon, is my father's corpse.
"Good evening," it says, and the voice carries across the entire festival, amplified by something that is not technology. "I apologize for the interruption. This will only take a moment."
The crowd stares. Someone whispers "What the fuck" but no one moves.
"I am looking for someone." The corpse's head swivels, scanning the crowd with those filmed-over eyes. "My daughter. Sloane Carrigan. If she would be so kind as to identify herself, the rest of you may leave unharmed."
Silence. Heavy and suffocating.
"No?" The thing wearing my father's face smiles. "Then I suppose we do this the hard way."
It raises one hand.
The wolves move as one, stepping into the crowd.
People scream. Run. Scatter in every direction.
Emma yanks me to my feet. "We have to—"
"Sloane!"
Declan's voice cuts through the chaos. I spin and there he is, pushing through the panicking crowd, one hand pressed to his side where the bullet wound is, his face pale but determined.
He reaches me in three strides, grabs my face with both hands. "Are you hurt?"
"I am fine, but—"
"We are leaving. Now." He looks at Emma. "Both of you."
"It wants me," I say. "If I leave, it will follow. All these people—"
"Are not your responsibility." His eyes are fierce. "You are not sacrificing yourself for strangers, Sloane. I will not allow it."
"You will not allow it?"
"No." He does not flinch. "I will not."
The wolves are getting closer, herding the crowd like sheep, and any second now someone is going to get hurt, someone is going to die, and it will be my fault for being here, for existing, for—
"Sloane Carrigan." My father's voice booms across the festival. "I can smell you. I can taste your fear. Stop hiding and face me."
Declan's grip on my face tightens. "Do not."
"I have to."
"You do not."
"Yes, I do." I pull his hands away, gently, and step back. "Because that is what he wants. For me to run. To hide. To let other people die in my place." I look at Emma, then back at Declan. "I am done running."
"Sloane—"
I am already moving, pushing through the crowd toward the food truck where my father's corpse stands waiting.
People part around me like I am radioactive. Maybe I am.
I stop ten feet from the truck, tilt my head back to meet those dead eyes.
"Here I am."
The corpse smiles wider. "There you are."
It jumps down, landing with that same wet crunch, bones breaking and reforming. Up close, I can see the bullet hole in its chest, the one I put there. The edges are black and rotting.
"You have caused me considerable inconvenience, daughter."
"Good."
It laughs, and the sound is wrong, layered with too many voices. "You are so much like her. Your mother. She had that same fire. That same defiance." It reaches out one hand, fingers bent at unnatural angles. "Right up until the end."
I do not move. Do not flinch.
"What are you?"
"I am what comes after." The hand drops. "I am what waits in the spaces between. I am the price of power, the cost of ambition." Its head tilts. "I am what your father summoned when he tried to stop the war."
My blood goes cold. "He summoned you?"
"Not intentionally. But when you reach into the dark, sometimes the dark reaches back." It takes a step closer. "He wanted power to protect his pack. To save his family. To prevent the bloodshed he saw coming." Another step. "And I gave it to him. For a price."
"What price?"
The corpse's smile is terrible. "You."
The word hangs in the air like a guillotine blade.
"He refused, of course. Tried to break our bargain. Tried to hide you, protect you, keep you safe." It spreads its arms wide. "So I took everything else instead. His pack. His mate. His life." The arms drop. "But the debt remains. You are mine, Sloane Carrigan. You have always been mine."
Behind me, I hear Declan moving through the crowd. Hear Emma's sharp intake of breath.
"I am not anyone's."
"No?" The thing wearing my father's face leans in close, close enough that I can smell the rot. "Then why can I feel your wolf? Why does she recognize me? Why does she want to submit?"
And it is right. My wolf is there, just under my skin, and she is not fighting. She is not snarling or clawing to get out.
She is afraid.
"Because you are mine," it whispers. "Body and soul and blood. Your father promised you to me before you were born, and a promise made in blood cannot be broken."
"Watch me break it."
I shift.
Not fully. Just enough. Just claws and teeth and fury.
I lunge.
The corpse catches my wrist mid-strike, its grip like iron, and suddenly I am not in the festival anymore, I am somewhere else, somewhere dark and cold and endless, and there are things moving in the shadows, things with too many eyes and not enough faces, and they are all looking at me, all reaching for me, all—
I am back. On my knees. Gasping.
The corpse releases my wrist. "You cannot fight what you are, Sloane. You cannot run from a debt written in your bones."
Declan is there suddenly, putting himself between me and the thing, and his eyes are not human anymore, they are wolf-gold and furious.
"That is not the whole truth," he says, and his voice is steady despite the fear I can smell on him. "You are not telling her everything."
The corpse regards him with something like amusement. "And what would you know about it, Thorne?"
"I know that blood debts require consent. I know that promises made for unborn children are not binding unless the child accepts them." He does not look away from those dead eyes. "I know that you are lying."
The thing's smile falters. Just for a second. Just enough.
"Clever," it says. "Your father was clever too. Look where it got him."
Declan goes very still. "What did you say?"
"Oh, did she not tell you?" The corpse looks at me, then back at Declan. "Your father and hers were friends once. Partners. They made their bargains together, tried to break them together." It spreads its hands. "They died together too. Eventually."
Declan's face drains of color. "You are lying."
"Am I?" The thing tilts its head. "Ask her. Ask Sloane what her father told her before she killed him. Ask her about the names in his journal. Ask her—"
"Enough." Garrett Voss's voice cuts through the festival like a knife.
He steps out of the crowd, flanked by six wolves that are very much alive, very much not possessed. His suit is immaculate despite the chaos, his smile sharp and dangerous.
"I believe that is quite enough theatrics for one evening," he says, and he is looking at the corpse like it is a misbehaving employee. "You were not authorized to make a public appearance."
The thing wearing my father's face turns to face him. "You do not command me, Voss."
"No. But I command the territory you are standing in." Garrett's smile widens. "And you are in violation of our agreement."
"What agreement?" I am still on my knees, Declan's hand on my shoulder the only thing keeping me upright.
Garrett looks at me, and his eyes are almost sympathetic. Almost.
"The agreement that keeps things like this contained, Sloane Carrigan. The agreement your father broke when he tried to save you." He turns back to the corpse. "Return to the dark. Now. Or I will make you."
The corpse laughs. "You cannot make me do anything, alpha. I am beyond your laws. Beyond your power."
"Perhaps." Garrett touches his left wrist, a gesture so casual I almost miss it. "But she is not."
He steps aside.
And standing behind him, dressed in black and silver, her eyes glowing with power that makes my wolf whimper, is a woman I have never seen before.
She raises one hand.
The corpse screams.
It is not my father's voice. It is something else, something ancient and furious and in pain.
The woman speaks, and her voice is layered with power. "By the old laws and the blood compact, I bind you. By the names you have taken and the debts you have claimed, I bind you. By the—"
The corpse lunges at her.
She does not move.
It stops mid-air, suspended like a puppet with cut strings, and then it is falling apart, my father's body dissolving into ash and shadow and something that smells like sulfur.
The wolves collapse. All of them. Just drop where they stand, their eyes clearing, their bodies going still.
The woman lowers her hand.
The festival is silent.
Then someone screams, and the crowd breaks, people running in every direction, and within seconds it is chaos again, but a different kind, the kind where people are fleeing from what they saw, not from immediate danger.
Garrett walks over to me, offers his hand. "Sloane Carrigan. We need to talk."
I do not take his hand. "Who is she?"
"Someone who can help you." He glances at Declan, then Emma, then back to me. "Someone who can break the debt your father made. If you are willing to pay the price."
"What price?"
His smile is terrible. "The same price everyone pays eventually. The truth."
The woman in black and silver approaches, and up close I can see she is young, maybe thirty, with scars on her hands that look like ritual marks.
She looks at me, and her eyes are sad.
"Hello, Sloane," she says. "My name is Morrigan. And I am your—"
The ground beneath us explodes.