Page 181 of Jagged Souls

She doesn’t give me the names of those she wants saved, doesn’t trust me enough. Yet. But she will give them to me eventually. I don’t have any need for them. My goal isn’t to hurt her; it’s to hurt Varius through her, but she will tell me who they are simply because I will become her god.

Because she will give me all her hopes and dreams.

She will turn to me with all her prayers.

And I will give them to her.

I will turn her into a dog who crawls at my heel.

The perfect little sleeper agent once I let Varius “save” her and take her home. She’ll lie in wait until I’m ready for the next part of my plan.

Because I know now what they’ve tried to hide from me. What Varius tried hard to portray in our initial video call. And he succeeded too, had me believing he didn’t give a shit about her.

I thought he was callous enough to have given up on her in this life, planning to just collect her in the next. After all, I am not a god. If I kill her, she won’t die permanently. The true death can only come from the gods, a godslayer, or one of the families that stop the dead from escaping the three underworlds. So she will come back to him, her soul pulled to his as soon as she’s reborn.

And I hate them for that. Envy them. Why should they get to have something I cannot?

Only witches can create blood bonds. It defies the wishes of the gods. It isn’t right. It isn’tnatural.

My hands clench as I stare at her, waiting for her answer even though it doesn’t really matter.

Because in the end, I will kill her regardless of what she does for me. It is impossible to bring back her baby anyway, so she will probably thank me for ending her grief.

“I’ll do it,” Micha says, her words so broken and quiet. “Just bring her back.”

“As long as you obey me,” I say. Dismissing her, I turn to Eduardo. Timothy groans against the wall, finally regaining consciousness. The silver knife he tried to stab me with lies close beside him. I don’t bother to kick it away from him. If he tries again, it’s no energy to stop him.

Shifting fully into my wolf, I drop onto all fours and start eating the rest of Digby’s corpse. His bones crunch beneath my teeth. His flesh tears. His blood sprays free. And his power seeps through me, a hot burn that flushes through my skin.

Timothy lifts his head as his eyes open, and I catch his stare as I swallow Digby’s heart. His ugly face pales, and he pushes to his feet. I growl low, a warning, but he doesn’t stop. Howling, he picks up the knife and lunges for me.

“What’d you do to my brother?” he screams.

I lunge forward, jumping over Digby’s corpse, grab hold of his arm with the knife and snap it at the shoulder. He screams, the blade drops. I catch it out of the air and stab it into his chest. Shifting back into human form, I throw his body at Eduardo. “Keep him alive for his sperm. I don’t care what else you do to him.” I glance at Digby’s and Stephen’s bodies. “And put those two on ice. I’ll finish them when I’m back.”

“You’re leaving again?” Eduardo asks, his voice shaky.

I turn to face him fully. He’s already tried to kill me once with his teleportation circles. To send something through them, thousands upon thousands of threads snake out from the destination circle and latch onto the traveler. If any of those threads cross, the person’s body will be reshaped. If any of them break, they’ll lose whatever part of their body that was attached to it.

And if they all are corrupted in order to tear apart in the middle, the person will be killed.

If Eduardo had tried that when I first met him, he would have succeeded in killing me. But by the time he’d grown the balls, I’d grown too strong, and my resistance to magic allowed me to step out between the circles. Oh, I had taken damage – a lot, and I’d ended up in the middle of a random family’s home and had to kill them to leave no witnesses, but I survived.

I killed all of his precious little experiments –he has an unhealthy attachment to them– then nearly killed him. He’s never gone against me since.

Perhaps he needs another reminder of what I can do.

His eyes widen, and he damn well trips over his words. “I’m only asking because I need a bit of time to recuperate.” He’s used a lot of magic recently.

“How long?”

“A week – three or four days,” he hurriedly corrects.

My jaw tightens.

I’m so close to being able to head into the Underworld and bring Siome home. When I sought out a way how to, I was told by ancient scholars it was impossible for a mere wolf to venture into the deep as Hades’ domain will poison all that lives. An Earth human does not have enough magic in their veins to spend more than a minute or so there. A demigod could spend a couple months, and it will take me at least three weeks to travel through all the check points, longer still to get an audience with Hades and Persephone.

Refusing to give up on Siome though, I found a way to increase my magic. My family has always eaten our dead as a way to gain a bit of their power. So I expanded the Death Hunt Family and bred all the women until I found those who could birth hybrids. Then I ate their babies, taking their power as mine. Another two or three fetuses, and I will be able to spend six weeks in the afterlife before it kills me.