Page 68 of A Lady’s Guide to Werewolves

Chapter Sixteen

“Sorcha, run.”

She might not be a wolf, but Sorcha knew the command of an Alpha when she heard one. Aidan’s strength all but rippled around them, like moonlight on water. His eyes flashed gold and stayed that way. She could see how he could easily command a pack of wolves. An earldom.

But it was too late.

The lightning bird had been a trap, set just for her.

The Collector would have known she would not be able to abandon him to his fate. And if the Collector was not lurking about waiting to stop her, the bird would do the trick for him. Because the net had tangled him up and pinned him down, but it had also held a spell, waiting.

For her.

The egg was made of glass and wrapped in red string, tucked behind vines of ivy. It sat on an iron horseshoe marked with sigils on a narrow ledge created by a crooked stone in the wall. Something moved inside of it.

A summoning.

And now the glass egg tumbled and fell, cracking into pieces. There was no putting it back together.

Sorcha was already on her feet, glancing around frantically. Shadows, ivy, stone walls, dried blood. Nothing else yet that she could see. Her stomach twisted with dread. There were wings beating inside her chest, Elderberry desperate. Crows gathered on the crenellations and the window ledges and the rotted planks of what was left of the roof and screeched. “What’s coming?”

“Run, damn it,” Aidan ground out. One of his bones cracked, the wolf already overtaking him.

But there was nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide. No time to think of a banishing spell.

They weren’t alone in the tower anymore.

And there was no outrunning a nightmare.

The spectral horse snorted once, a menacing sound that scraped up the spine, prickling like thorns, before it materialized. It was massive, with blood-red fur and blood-red eyes and a jaw that could crack a skull like it was a walnut. There was something skeletal about it, even through the heft of muscles and bones that were not corporeal. That would not stop it from doing considerable damage, as it did not need its heft for that.

Nightmares only need breathe on you to seed dreadful visions until the fear overtook you and it gorged itself. You could survive a visit from a nightmare.

For a little while.

Sorcha did not generally fear monsters. Black Shucks were dangerous, but they could be understood. They needed food and water and air to breathe, like most creatures. As did Shellycoats and goblins and imps. But Nightmares had no needs beyond the fear they drank from their victims. It was the only thing that sustained them. The only thing they craved.

A circle of salt might delay them. A ring of iron and rose thorns. A potion of rowanberries steeped with the ashes from a summer solstice fire. But they were not foolproof.

More to the point, Sorcha had none of those things. She had embroidery scissors and breadcrumbs and comfrey ointment.

She did not, currently, even have a wolf.

Where was Aidan? Why couldn’t she see him? Had he gone? Was he safe? She couldn’t hear his stern, deep voice, nor the soft snarl of his wolf. Only the snorting breaths of the Nightmare circling around her, trapping her in the tower. Only the rapid beat of her heart in her chest and her wrists and her ears. Her mouth went dry.

Aidan was not here.

She was not even here, not really. She was back at Nettlestone Hall, but it was all wrong. The gate was open, her wards smashed. There were no pigeons, no crows, no barn swallows. She raced through the courtyard but the bakehouse was empty, the ashes of the fire long since dead. No Aesop, no Simon, no unicorn.

Fear threatened to swallow her whole.

No kittens, no hounds. No Black Shuck.

Sweat dripped down her back. The shadows reached her across the cracked cobblestones.

“Granny!”

No grandmother, only a house filled with dust and moth-eaten curtains.