Page 54 of Cold Sacrifice

As though Kronor didn’t exist, I began speaking to the other elders before he finished his sentence. I didn’t even glance at him. “What’s there?” I asked them. “And how do you plan to show me?”

“You know what we’re going to say,” Ti murmured.

I did. Of course I did. “You’re going to say what you said before. You’re going to say I have demon inside me. But—”

“Kait,” the vampire elder said, speaking for the first time, “you come in here hoping for power, for magic. You want to shoot magic from your fingers to destroy your enemies.”

Hell yes I did. “But?” I asked.

“But that is not what you will get. There are things that make up what you are. These things are not inside you as though they’re creatures that live in your body. You are a wolf. You are a shapeshifter.” He leaned forward and caught my gaze with his vampire eyes, and I couldn’t look away. “You are a demon.”

It still didn’t feel real, no matter how many times someone said it. Maybe because I didn’t really believe it. Maybe because nothing spectacularly obvious had happened to make me feel like I was one of the awful creatures I hated. I didn’t want to be a demon. Demons didn’t belong in my world. I kept them out of my world.

“It is why you can shapeshift into both animals and people,” Ti told me. “You will discover there are other things you can do, as well.” She glanced at Kronor. “It would be good if you had a powerful demon as an ally, as a mentor. Someone to help you grow your gifts and embrace all sides of yourself. Alas, we know no such demon. Unlike other groups, demons would only envy you. They would hate you, think of ways to destroy you, and they would lead you astray.”

“And,” I said, just a little numb, “they would focus on my blade. My time would be spent trying to guard my blade and my life. And do you know why?” I didn’t wait for any of them to acknowledge my question before I continued. “Because they are selfish, dark, heartless evil. They are evil. I am not. And that’s why I find it hard to believe I am part demon.”

“It is because you are part demon,” Ti said gently. “You are only evil sometimes.”

She might as well have hit me in the face with a ball of magic. I wobbled, lost my breath, and finally, there was the belief.

“My evil is all concentrated in my butterfly,” I whispered. “She’s the demon.”

“You are the butterfly,” she said, but her voice was only in my mind. “You are the protector, Kait, and the good. You are also the darkness. But you can direct that darkness into your shift and confine it there. You won’t become what demons are born to be. The darkness will only smother the light if you allow it.”

“I won’t allow it,” I said fiercely. “I won’t.”

“I know,” she replied.

I’d created the butterfly as a place to confine the demon part of me. I could control it. I would become stronger without allowing the butterfly—the demon—to take over.

“What does this mean,” I asked, “that I suddenly realize there’s a demon side to me? What difference will it make?”

The vampire elder smiled, his eyes disappearing in the deep wrinkles of his ancient face. “As much as you despise it, my child, you must also embrace it. Control it. Use it. Your blade is powerful, very powerful. It has accepted you as its mistress. You have yet to fully accept the blade as yours to wield. You are afraid of it, though you don’t realize that fact.” He peered down at me, so delicate, so old, so powerful. “Stop treating the fire in your veins like a disease, Kait, and let it burn. Let it burn.”

I shivered. “I don’t know how,” I murmured.

“And that,” Ael said, thumping his staff on the floor, “is why you are here tonight. The necromancer must be destroyed. It must. And we will help you do that.”

Now I was just fucking scared.

I imagined this was how it felt to have a baby for the first time. Everything became too real, too final, too fucking scary. I was about to give birth to a monster.

And there was no going back.

“Come here to us, dear,” the vampire said. “Come.”

I missed my people. I missed Joe, and my alpha, and Rick. I wished Remy, Zach, and Sam were at my back. I wished for my mother and Lucy to be with me, their fierce love shielding me from what I was about to become.

I went to the elders, my feet like lead, terror in my heart.

Ael thumped his staff upon the floor and its steady deep beat drew me forward, pulling me to them, and once I began walking, I didn’t know how to stop.

When I was on the dais, I closed my eyes and clutched the hilt of my blade, and when I opened my eyes again, I was surrounded by them all, caught in a circle of ancient power.

Even Kronor was there, with his hatred and his contempt and his desire, and the dais had disappeared. We were outside in the winter, and cold, deep snow was a white carpet beneath my boots. Icy cold crept into my flesh, tangling with the terror. For a moment, I believed I’d lost my mind.

Alpha, I cried, my voice silent, but the cry so deep, so terrorized, so hurt, that I knew he would feel it. I needed him to feel it.