I unwrapped the girdle from around my waist—and it was once again warmer than it should have been. I coiled it up so I could hold it in one hand, but when I got to the end, I wrapped it around my wrist. I didn’t want to lose it too easily.
“What do you have?” Bonarata asked.
I looked up, almost caught his gaze, and managed to focus on his mouth instead.
“Bait,” I told him. “And anchor.” Then I let out a single yip and bolted for the fight.
Adam hit Wulfe hard in the chest, making the vampire take a step back and a little to the side. Then Adam took two quick steps out of the pattern of the fight—away from Wulfe. Leaving Wulfe facing me while focused on Adam.
I stopped about ten feet from him, and using the power that flowed from Adam, I said, “Wulfe.” It was more than his name, it was a reminder of who he was. I held up the girdle stretched between my two arms as I caught his gaze.
I heard the crack of a gunshot, but it didn’t hit me or Wulfe, so I ignored it. I was aware, peripherally, that another fight had broken out between Adam and Bonarata, but I could not afford to look. Adam had told me that he’d keep Bonarata from interfering with what I was going to try to do.
Using the knowledge the Soul Taker had given me, I found the soul bond it had initiated between me and it and hit that with a blaze of the pack’s cleansing power—just as I’d watched Adam do to keep Warren from being enthralled by Wulfe’s bite. I didn’t try to break the bond between the Soul Taker and me. Instead, I sent the spiritual fire through the artifact and into the slave bond between the Soul Taker and Wulfe. Then I twisted the cleansing power and let it burn.
I couldn’t quite burn through the bond, no matter how much power I threw at it. Wulfe wasn’t ours in the same way that Warren was, so the pack magic couldn’t completely destroy the Soul Taker’s hold.
Wulfe’s eyes, one clear and one cloudy, met mine as he walked up to me and held out his hand. Despite the war I knew was raging inside him, there was no tension on his face. I gave him the girdle and he closed his fingers upon it. The serene expression on his face reminded me forcibly of the memory Stefan had shared with me of his first meeting with Wulfe.
As soon as he touched it, the Latin words and the phoenixes embroidered along the belt began to glow. It wasn’t flamboyant, more like the embers of a fire. He closed his eyes, brought the fabric to his face—and dropped the sickle.
I quit pouring power into him and collapsed on the ground in the same instant. I don’t think I could have managed even a second longer—but it had been enough to give Wulfe a chance, and he’d taken it.
I had called him to himself, then given him the belt—a reminder of a time before Bonarata had broken him, something for him to cling to. And with that anchor, he’d been able to destroy the hold the Soul Taker had on him all by himself.
“Because a kite needs to be tethered in order to fly,” Wulfe said, as if pulling the thoughts from my head, which he very well could have been. He opened his eyes and met mine. “And Marsilia”—his hand tightened on the old silk—“is my anchor.”
They had been lovers once. More than that. Marsilia, Stefan, Andre, and Bonarata had been his family. The reason for his existence. But when Bonarata had broken him, Marsilia had given him a touchstone of safety. I didn’t have to close my eyes to remember the skeletal creature that had clung to Marsilia’s skirts in that long-ago dungeon.
I could see that Wulfe was thinking the same thing. And I knew why he’d never killed Bonarata. The simplest reason of all. Wulfe loved him.
Wulfe looked away, breaking that intense communication—and I realized for the first time that the reason I hadn’t looked away first was because I couldn’t have. He leaned down and kissed the top of my head, and then vanished.
A wailing roar reminded me that there was still a fight going on—and I knew that sound. I knew what I was going to face before I turned to look.
Adam . . . the beast that fought Bonarata wasn’t anything like a werewolf. Though his hind legs were articulated like a wolf’s, he stood mostly upright by choice—aided by overly long arms that could balance him when necessary. Adam’s face was a monstrous distortion of a wolf’s head, with an undershot jaw and teeth that would have done credit to a predator twice his size—and he was huge.
Bonarata must have gotten closer to me than we’d planned for Adam to have given himself up to the cursed monster. Then I noticed there were pieces of a gun scattered about. Somehow, though we went armed with guns ourselves, neither of us had considered what might happen if Bonarata had a gun.
I thought of the shot I’d heard. Unlike his change to the wolf, Adam’s change to this beast could be instantaneous, quick enough for him to stop Bonarata from shooting me. To save me, Adam had given himself over to the beast.
Adam’s monster was built for fighting. It was faster than his wolf form and armed with outsized claws and fangs. Even though Adam wasn’t in charge of this form, his instincts were still honed by half a century of fighting and training.
Bonarata looked fragile next to Adam. He’d armed himself with Adam’s bō but he still should have been outmatched.
I had never seen anything like the beauty of that fight.
I’d known Bonarata had been a fighter. But I’d just watched Wulfe fight—no-holds-barred—and if he had not lost to Adam, he had not won, either.
Maybe if Adam had been fully in control of that beast, he might have stood a chance, but it was obvious to me after watching for a few seconds that Bonarata was going to kill Adam.
I drew my own gun—but the speed at which they were moving meant that I’d have a better chance of hitting Adam than Bonarata because Adam was bigger. My hand was shaking so badly—from the after-effects of the magic I’d poured into Wulfe—that I didn’t dare try.
My foot touched the sickle and I felt it tug at me.
I could help you kill the vampire, the Soul Taker whispered. The sound of its truth wound around my heart.
I jerked my foot away . . . and hesitated.
The fight between Adam and Wulfe had been almost musical, the percussive sounds of weapon on weapon and light feet on the ground. The fight between Bonarata and Adam was not. I had the feeling that if I understood Italian, Bonarata’s vocabulary would have rivaled Ben at his best as he screamed insults in a stream of rage. Adam’s monster’s inchoate howls and roars made Bonarata’s battle cries insignificant.
I saw Bonarata swing, and this time Adam didn’t move away in time. There was a crack that sounded like a baseball bat hitting a home run, and Adam reeled back, one arm at a funny angle. He grabbed that wrist with the opposite hand, overlarge even on such a huge body, and jerked it. The arm snapped again, though not as loudly. It was hard to tell, because none of his limbs looked as though they were natural, but I thought he must have either reset a joint—or pulled a broken bone straight so it could heal.
The whole thing took only a second. Adam reengaged with Bonarata, though he visibly favored the arm that had been injured. While Adam was dealing with his arm, Bonarata had glanced at me and seen the Soul Taker.
I didn’t see him do it. I felt the Soul Taker take notice.
Take me up, it told me. Take me up or face me in the hands of the Lord of Night.
Bonarata caught Adam in the ribs and broke the bō on him. The monster fell but rolled back to his feet immediately. Now Adam’s breath was harsh and labored, and he whined with each intake. The arm Bonarata had hit seemed to be okay now, but there was a dent in Adam’s rib cage.