“Ew! Ew! Ew! It’s still moving!”
I was surprised by the young and very much human voice that jerked my attention in its direction, and I saw the smallest wolf that had been fighting had shifted back into her human form, revealing a petite young woman.
“That’s fuckinggross!”
I followed her finger to see a glint of metal. The assassin’s beat-up metal arm. Like something out of a mecha version of theAddams Family, it was slowly crawling across the floor by its fingers, occasionally patting here and there as if it were looking for something.
Creepy.
“We… we should probably grab that,” I rasped out. “Put it in a bag or something.” That last part was hardly intelligible, because as I sat up, pain jolted through my ribs. Either I’d really hurt myself with my dive to the side, or all the adrenaline ofbattle had stopped me from noticing I was injured. Adrenaline could do some funny things to the human body.
“I’ve got it,” Jackson said. Although I hadn’t seen him fighting, his expression was grim, his face white, and his eyes were red as if he had been crying. Maybe that transferred between forms. “I... That couldn’t have been him, could it? Like, that’s not even possible, right? I thought all necromancy magic was lost in the great transition to the new world.”
“Who ishim?” I asked. My entire body was aching, and I felt like someone had a crowbar between a couple of my ribs and was trying to separate them. “He looked familiar...” I was almost certain it was Luther, as impossible as that was, but I wanted someone else to confirm that I wasn’t fucking insane.
Chris spoke next, and he looked even worse than Jackson. He was shaking, and although it didn’t seem like he had any injuries, his eyes were also red, and all the color had drained from his face. There was a storm of emotions behind him, which was as intimidating as it was impressive and very, very sad.
“That couldn’t have been Luther! There’s no way our brother would have betrayed us! There’s just... It’s not him! It can’t be!”
“As horrific as this is,” another man said. I recognized him as one of the children of the three big shifter families on the East Coast. I remember glancing at his picture while researching the VanMarches. His wolf had been all black, and quite impressive, which didn’t fit his rather milquetoast appearance. Shifters were funny like that. “I don’t think you can deny that this was your brother. He used his alpha voice on all of you. He shifted. He was as strong as an alpha, and you have no open casket.”
Chris whirled on the man, and I saw the murky, turbulent storm of emotions behind him all transition to an angry, violent red that loomed all the way up to the ceiling.
“Are you accusing us of something?”
“Perhaps I am. I don’t want to, but it seems particularly strange that you would arrange a meeting to get all our families here in a vulnerable position and have your supposedly dead brother show up and start swinging a weapon no shifter should even be able to touch!”
Well, that explains the need for the metal arm.
The limb that was left behind was to throw us off the trail.
Along with whatever flesh the forensic team had been able to pick out.
And with a metal limb, he could use a silver weapon.
But does that mean that he cut off his armbeforehe killed his father with that silver blade?
“Tadgh.” The petite woman who’d been screaming about the arm gently laid a hand on the much taller shifter’s shoulder. “If this was a setup for all of us, I don’t think the assassin’s first act would have been to try to kill Penelope. And you notice he never attacked us unless we directly went for him. His target was his own siblings.” She looked at Chris, who was still radiating a nuclear level of scarlet hatred and anger.
“You had a changeling pretending to be your sister, so you knew, or you hoped, something was going to happen here, right?”
“You’re perceptive,” Penelope said, limping forward. I got to see in real time as her shoulder rearranged itself in its socket and her arm snapped into the proper place. “Any chance you’re studying law?”
If it was him, that explains how he was able to get so close.
There was never a breach in the mansion because he was already in the mansion!
But why would a man cut off his own arm?
He’d have to be insanely unhappy.Or angry!
And why doesn’t he have any emotions?
Also, what’s with the magic?
I’m pretty sure those spells weren’t inherentlyfromhim.
Which meant someone enchanted that blade and made the supplies.