I fought my way through the swirling storm, made wild by the wendigo’s hunger. There was snow in my mouth. I shot the fire toward the wendigo. The smell of burning hair and pine resin was acrid. Blisters broke bloody on my palms, but I didn’t feel them. I had to get Ethan free. His blond hair looked paler, his cheekbones sharper.
If I didn’t get to him soon, Summer would turn him, just as she had been turned. I didn’t know how it was done, I only knew she would do it. There was no question anymore.
That was why she’d been whispering his name, driving him into the forest. And why she was trying to stop me from reaching him now. His eyes drifted shut.
Icicles broke off from the frozen canopy, slicing down at me like daggers. I dodged them as best I could, but they still bit into me, bruising my arm, cutting my cheek. Huge icicles started to come up from the ground, closing me inside their wintry jaws. A pointed tip tore through the hem of my pants, scraping along my shin. Hot blood trickled down my leg. The clash of fire and ice was so intense, I could barely see through the fog and steam and hail.
An arrow pierced through the haze, slicing through the wendigo’s arm as it reached for me. It howled, jerking back. Justine was perched up a tree, another arrow already nocked. Our eyes met. She nodded once.
I leaped for Ethan, blindly trusting that Justine would protect me. I pressed my palms over the ice encasing Ethan, one over his heart, the other cradling his cheek. My skin stuck, the blisters searing. “Wake up!” I yelled. “Ethan, wake up!”
Arrows whistled behind me, so close I felt the fletchings tug on my hair. I forced fire through my body, through my arms and my hands into Ethan. I ignored the pain of the hair on my arms being burned off and my scorched eyelids. I closed off the rest of the world until I was only seeing fire.
Candles, bonfires, forest fires. Inferno. Red everywhere.
Drops of water ran down Ethan’s clear coffin, but it wasn’t enough. His lips were blue. The ice was too thick to shatter, even with the spear. I peeled my hands away and rubbed them together until they chafed and heated up. Blood smeared. The fire made my fingers glow until I could see the veins and the bones beneath. Heat wavered until I was sweating. Snow turned to steam before it touched me. I was broiling inside my own skin. My bones were melting, my flesh was sizzling. I was a beeswax candle, consuming itself. I was soot and ashes and smoke.
By the time the ice cracked, I was panting and seeing spots. Ethan fell forward onto his knees, gasping. I crumpled, fighting to stay conscious.
The wendigo slammed into the ground between us, one of Justine’s arrows through its heart. Blood congealed and gleamed, freezing almost instantly. Justine dropped down from the tree. Ethan looked like he was trying not to be sick.
“That wasn’t her,” he said, mostly to himself. “Not anymore. Not really.”
Holden, Justine’s dad, and Abby crashed through the trees. Abby held a rifle.
“Ethan,” Holden said through a sigh, as if he was deeply disappointed, as if his son wasn’t lying battered at his feet. “I knew you’d interfere.”
“Good work, honey.” Justine’s father beamed at her. She stared at him, seething.
When they approached Sloane’s body, I shot a ring of fire out of the snow around her, scalding them. “Stay away from her,” I snapped. Ethan and I helped each other up. Justine flanked me.
“She can’t stay here,” Holden said gently. Fire snapped toward him, like a whip. He stumbled.
Ethan smiled grimly. “No one touches Sloane except for Justine’s mom.”
“What about that thing?” Justine’s dad said, trying to defuse the tension. He pointed to the wendigo. “My little girl’s first real trophy.”
“That thing,” I said, “was Summer Kirihara.”
Ethan’s fists clenched. “The three of us will bury her while we wait for Justine’s mom. She can take Sloane’s body and deal with the official doctor paperwork stuff. The rest of you can go to hell.”
“You have to see the big picture here,” Holden said soothingly, as if we were being irrational. “We should be celebrating. We have two new champions. Three, after Justin has his Trials.”
Holden beamed at me. “Welcome to the Cabal, Kia.”
Abby’s rifle swung to him. “Like hell.” She looked fierce. “It’s bad enough she had to come to this damned place. You’re not taking her into your cult, too. Clean up your own mess and leave my family out of it.”
“You came to me, remember?” he asked smoothly. “For help.”
“That was a long time ago.” The safety clicked off the gun. “I only stayed for the children and the animals. Not for your Cabal.”
“I protected you,” he said, suddenly sounding sinister. “Kept your secrets.”
“I won’t trade my granddaughter for my safety,” Abby spat. Her eyes flashed silver, and canine teeth dimpled her lower lip.
“Um, Abby?” I croaked.
Ethan let out a wavering breath. “She’s a werewolf.”
I stared at him, then at her. “Shut up.”
She didn’t take her eyes off Holden or lower her gun. “Being a vet was easier,” she said. “I was bitten by dozens of dogs and never turned into one of them. It’s different with werewolves.”
“Sloane,” I said, stunned. “You were the werewolf she couldn’t kill.”
Abby nodded once, her hair looking more like gray fur. “Yes. And I couldn’t very well leave her after that, could I?”
“Sloane?” Holden asked. He paused, frowned. “Never mind. You’ve protected them, Abby, and now they can protect you.” Holden smiled at me. I wanted to kick him right in the teeth. “You want to protect your grandmother, don’t you, Kia? You can do that. Be one of our champions, and she’s safe. No one will ever hunt her.”
I hadn’t thought I had the energy left for the kind of hot fury that boiled inside my body.
Ethan rose to his feet like smoke. Abby closed one eye, taking proper aim with her gun.
She never got a chance to shoot.
Chapter Thirty-One
Ethan
I punched my father right in the face.
He stumbled back as Nix shot out of the lake, her silvery fishtail flashing in the moonlight. She yanked him into the water before anyone could stop her, before I even had time to wonder if I would have bothered to try. He went under almost instantly. Abby’s tranquilizer dart skimmed the water but missed its mark.
Bubbles broke the surface. In the darkness, they were tiny silver pinpricks like shooting stars, leaving traces of my father’s movements but no clues to where he went. The lake was black and unforgiving. Kia tried to send fire to help crack the ice left from the wendigo, but she was exhausted. I couldn’t think about the wendigo being Summer. Not now. I had to get everyone home safe first. I had to get my dad out of the lake. Abby’s flashlight beam swung over the lake, slowly, methodically. “There. By the rocks.”
I ran across the slippery boulders, not waiting for the others to catch up. I stretched out on my stomach, trying to see through the gloom.
There was a splash and Dad surfaced, gasping at the cold.
I stretched as far as I could but I couldn’t reach him. I slipped under the water, hard with ice. It closed around me, merciless and pitiless. “Ethan,” Abby yelled above me. “You’ll freeze!”
I went under, ignoring her. I might hate him most of the time, and God knew I had no respect for the man, but he was still my father. I couldn’t just let him drown.
I searched for the pale flicker of his body as sparks danced over the lake. When I finally resurfaced, I dragged him behind me. He was limp and unresponsive. I swam hard though my legs were numb and heavy. I was shivering violently by the time we reached the beach. Justine’s father shouldered me aside to help my dad. Kia rushed toward me, trying to emit as much heat as possible. She sat between us, trying to warm us both. My shivers died down to thin trembling, but I could barely feel my own body. I felt a numbness that had nothing to do with the sno
w.
Justine’s father pounded on Dad’s chest and gave him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. It was slow, painful work. I held onto Kia’s hand so tightly our finger bones were grinding together. She didn’t let go. The cold water between our fingers turned to steam.
Finally, after what felt like hours, Dad coughed weakly, bringing up water. His lips were blue, his eyes unfocused. He coughed again, a hoarse, rough sound that hurt to hear. He went red, then pale. The cough went silent. He grabbed his throat.
Nix floated nearby, watching us with grim satisfaction. She didn’t say a word, just flicked her hand in a “come here” motion.
“Why won’t she talk?” Kia whispered.
“Dad had her tongue cut out, remember?” I answered. She was still holding my hand, so she stood up, too. “So she wouldn’t lure people into drowning.”
Dad was on his knees, gagging on air that wouldn’t fill his lungs. Nix lifted her chin, waiting. Dad’s pants were stiff with ice. Under the cuffs, his feet were bare and silvery.
“Are those…scales?” Kia murmured.
Nix laughed, though there was no sound.
“It’s very rare,” Justine’s dad said, stunned. “Usually merfolk drown their victims, they don’t change them. And they certainly don’t keep them.”
“Keep them?” Abby asked. Her rifle lowered to the ground.
I crouched next to Dad. “You’ll have to join her.”
Dad shook his head. “Give me a hunter’s burial,” he said, still gagging on air.
“For Christ’s sake.” I grabbed the back of his shirt, shoving him toward the lake. He dug in his heels, still choking on air he couldn’t breathe. I didn’t want my father to die, despite everything. “I’m not going to watch you die, choking on your own pride.”
He sprawled into the lake. Water closed over his face, and he bobbed like a pale, strange fish. When he turned over, spluttering, he was able to talk. “Don’t leave me here,” he begged. “She’ll kill me.”
“I doubt it,” Abby said, glancing at the mermaid. “She wants you to know how it feels. How all of us feel.”
“That’s worse! I won’t be one of them!” I’d never heard actual fear in his voice before.
“I’ll look after Ethan,” she promised. “I always have.”
“Wait!” he shouted. “Wait! The Cabal is here. I sent for them.”
I thought I was already frozen inside, but I was wrong. “Here? Tonight?”
“For Justine and Kia. It’s been too long since we had a new champion. Now they’ll see.”
“You’re not even human anymore,” I said, disgust and relief that he wasn’t dead mingling in equal parts.
“Because of the mermaid. It’s not my fault—”
“It’s entirely your fault,” I spat. “And Nix is not the reason you’re a monster. You became one long before tonight.”
Abby touched my shoulder. “Come on. There’s nothing else we can do for him right now. We have bigger problems.”
I turned away from my father because there was nothing else to do, because I was Cabal.
And he’d taught me to take down the monsters.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Kia
“What do we do now, Ethan?” Justine said. “What do we do?”
Even her dad was looking to him as if he had the answers.
“Get your trophy off the ogre,” he told Justine, turning away from the lake. When she scurried into the shadows with her knife, he added to her dad, “You get back to the bestiary and hold off the Cabal as long as you can.”
“Now see here—”
“Now, Dad,” Justine snapped over her shoulder. A large ogre tooth with a chunk of bleeding gum still attached to it hung from her belt. He frowned but hurried after her. “I’ll call my mom as well,” she added before vanishing into the forest.
Ethan looked at me. “You need a trophy, too.”
“I’m not cutting body parts off an ogre.”
He didn’t smile, which was good, because I wasn’t joking. “One trophy per creature,” he said. “So it wouldn’t work anyway. But the Cabal are here, Kia. If you don’t present them with a trophy, they’ll wipe your memory.”
I thought of his aunt staring blankly at nothing and shivered.
“We don’t have much time,” he said wildly.
“Firebird feather?” I suggested, just as panicked.
“Not fatal.”
“Then I run,” I said. “Because I’m not letting them touch my brain.”
“They’ll catch up eventually. We need a better plan.” A green flare shot into the sky. “They’re already here.”
“The wendigo,” Abby suggested.
“That’s Summer,” I interrupted before Ethan could say anything. He looked ill. “Not an option.”
“It’s not Summer anymore,” she said gently. “She doesn’t need protecting. You do.” She’d have suggested Sloane, if Sloane hadn’t shifted back to human as she died. Nausea churned in my belly.
Ethan was trembling, but he nodded. “She’s right,” he said hoarsely. “It’s not Summer.”
“I don’t care. No,” I insisted. I wasn’t going to hack up some girl, even if she had tried to kill me. “Absolutely not.”
“I’ll do it,” Abby said, stalking past us. Ethan took my hand, squeezing so tightly my knucklebones rubbed together.
When we caught up to Abby she was just standing there, stark and sharp as the icicles had been. They’d melted away. The fire had burned them to nothing, had kept burning while Holden fought Nix, burning through the unnatural storm, through Summer. Charred bones remained. They looked almost human.
I snuck a glance at Ethan. He looked relieved, somewhere under the chaos of all the other emotions he was trying to stifle. I knew how he felt.
“I won’t feed my granddaughter to the hunters,” Abby said with the kind of calm that prickled uncomfortably. Especially when she pulled a large, sharp knife out of the scabbard tucked in the back of her belt.
“What are you going to do with that?” I asked.
Her hand curled into claws, fur bristling halfway up her arm. “I’m getting you a trophy.”
I grabbed her arm. “Are you—” I couldn’t even finish the question. “No. Hell, no.”
“There’s no time.” She looked at Ethan instead of me. “You know it’s the only way.”
“We could get to the bestiary.”
She shook her head. “They already cataloged it. It won’t count if it comes from something ill or caged. You know that.” She exhaled sharply. “Enough talking.”
I thought I’d already seen the worst tonight: Sloane, Summer’s wendigo, the sound of Justine sawing through the ogre. I was wrong.
Abby widened her paw against the trunk of a tree and then pressed down with the blade, cutting off the smallest claw on her left hand. She screamed, slumping to her knees. Sweat immediately froze to her forehead. She was shaking as she applied some kind of tourniquet bandage to stem the bleeding of the amputation. A werewolf claw lay in the snow, fur matted with blood. Ethan and I fell on our knees beside her.
“Abby!” I didn’t know what to do. “We need a hospital.”
“First you need to bring that to those Cabal bastards,” she said, nodding to the claw. Her hand was human again, twisted and faintly blue with cold. Her lips were the same color. She was going into shock. I was going into shock. “Fire,” she ground out. “You can cauterize the wound.”
“Or I could set you on fire!” Hadn’t she seen Summer’s bones? And I hadn’t even realized the fire was still burning.
“It’s not all you can do, Kia. You’ve been practicing.”
Fire was unpredictable. She’d already sacrificed so much for me. What if I hurt her more? What if it was like Riley all over again? I could smell roses and matchsticks.
“Kia.” She propped herself up on the tree. “Now. Before they find us. If they know the claw is mine, everything will be so much worse.”
I wa
sn’t sure that was physically possible. I wasn’t even sure I had any fire left inside me.
Abby unwrapped her hand. The flesh was swollen and ragged, and I could barely look at it. I closed my eyes for a moment. I wouldn’t make living coals out of myself this time. Instead, I would channel the fire, not just feed it. Abby wouldn’t feed me to the hunters, and I wouldn’t feed her to the fire. I would use it to help her.
I chafed my palms together to warm them up, to call the fire. Ethan had once said that like calls to like, magic calls to magic. Heat would draw heat. I felt it tingling and sparking, leaving tiny burns on my already inflamed skin. I wilted, forcing the last of the energy I had through my hands. I visualized candles burning, fire crackling, coals smoldering. I thought of my mother, still being ruled by fear of the fire.
I felt the warmth of the flames when it flared in the living room, felt the press of Ethan’s mouth on mine, the taste of his kiss. I opened my eyes, and in my palms, fire burned. It was small but searing, wavering the air around it. Abby tried to smile right before she shoved what was left of her finger in the flames. The smell of smoke and scorched flesh distracted me enough that the flames flickered weakly. I forced it to keep burning, fed it anger and pain and love and friends lying in the snow.
Abby finally drew back, and Ethan wrapped her hand up. I tucked the severed werewolf claw into my pocket even though touching it made me gag.
Ethan and I helped Abby to the ATV she’d used to find us in the first place. We took her back to the house, and even though I hated to leave her there, we kept going.
At the edge of the bestiary, Ethan took my hand, and we walked out of the woods together, a monster and a monster hunter.
Epilogue
Kia
We buried the wendigo bones by Summer’s standing stone. After tending to Abby, Justine’s mom came on the ATV and left with Sloane’s body. Not long after that, she kicked her husband out of the house and sent Ariel to a boarding school in Switzerland with a personal bodyguard.