As I watched, Valens glanced my way, and with my enhanced vision, I could barely see him do a double-take before Kieran stole his focus again. He’d seen the mark. Thankfully, he couldn’t know what sort of power the mark-holder wielded.

With us on his side, he’ll win.

Daisy had been entirely too confident.

Chad groaned beside me, and I swore I heard stealer.

Soul Stealer.

The magic that inspired fear unlike any other. Stories had been passed down of a single man walking through a raging battle and ripping the life from all he passed. Bodies fell around him and lay in piles in his wake. He was a living plague. No one was immune.

And then the horrifying inevitable happened: the bodies rose again.

The spirits passed through the fires of hell and were summoned back up to do the Soul Stealer’s bidding. He was Satan’s helper. He was a walking terror.

He was a she.

In order to save those I loved, I had to become the thing I most feared.

I pulled power from the Line. More than I ever had. It pulsed to the side, ready to welcome any souls I threw at it.

But I wouldn’t be throwing souls. I would be recycling them. They would do my bidding and protect those who were trying to protect Kieran. He had always been right—I could turn the tide. And I would. I couldn’t bear to lose the family I’d so recently let into my life.

36

Kieran

Kieran dodged a punch faster than any he’d ever seen. He managed to slam a fist into his father’s side and then blasted him with a heavy dose of magic. Water crashed all around them, his father trying to knock him away with the surging surf.

But there was more than one ruler of the ocean in this fight.

Kieran waved away the white foam and shoved the waters, parting them on both sides of their fight. His father kicked his side just as a huge blast of air pushed him off his balance. Kieran tore down the air currents but took the kick. A dull ache spread across his ribs. Had he been a normal man, that kick might have cracked a few bones and maybe punctured a lung.

He blocked another kick and delivered one of his own, nearly reaching for Alexis’s magic to push his father back. Not yet, though. She was coming—he could feel her power burning brightly through their connection, filling him up to bursting. He wanted Valens to see the woman he had chosen. The woman he had marked.

He wanted him to know he’d been wrong.

Zorn’s cloud materialized into his physical form nearby, well within the water’s natural edge. He surprised two of Valens’s men who’d been running out toward the water.

“Need your lackeys to help you with your inferior son?” Kieran taunted, punching his father in the throat, then whirling just in time to miss a kick to his knee.

“Need my men to help fill your miserable excuse for an army?”

“Yes, actually. Thank you for that.”

Magic surged and water rose back up around them. Kieran shoved it away.

“It seems you’ve developed a sense of humor. So have I.” Valens swept his hands from the side and thick spikes of air bore down on Zorn and the guys he was quickly taking down.

Kieran gritted his teeth to tear down the spikes. The distraction gave his father a window. He blasted Kieran with a hot, stinging stream of magic that sent pain pulsing through his body. Black spots danced in his vision and his mind dizzied.

Valens hit him with another, stronger this time, and Kieran staggered back and bit down on his tongue. The rusty taste of blood coated his mouth.

“Weak,” he heard his father say. A fist battered his head, then a kick drove him to the ground. “The Elite are replaceable, Kieran, how many times must I tell you? Accrue many, bind them with their blood, and you need not worry if one or two goes down in battle.”

“Have less, and you will achieve a stronger bond.” He threw up his hand to block a punch but missed the fist. It smashed into his mouth, splitting his lip. Water crashed into his body, washing over him. A swell of magic rose. It would take him under and drag him out to sea, giving his father the upper hand.

He spat out blood and pushed to his hands and knees. He would not quit. He would not die, especially since he hadn’t yet revealed his ace in the hole.

“What…”

His father’s word was lost in the sudden gale force wind that fluttered their souls.

A smile curved Kieran’s swelling lips.

“They will fight for you because they want to, not because they have to,” he said, struggling up to his feet. “They will risk everything for you because you would do the same for them.”

The battle on the beach, so clearly stacked in his father’s favor, slowed. People clutched at their chests and howled in agony. A few broke away, like the shifters had done the other day, trying to escape the onslaught.

She had come.

The sea of black and red dotted with blue and green opened up down the middle. A glowing woman dressed in black battle attire walked down the center, her arms held wide, her hair blowing from a wind every soul on the beach could feel. His mark had perfectly accented her magic’s effects. She was a sight to see, hauntingly beautiful. An angel of death.

Warriors clad in black and red fell without warning, their lifeless bodies collapsing to the ground.

Behind Alexis lurched and jerked her army of dead, fearsome creatures with exposed bones, crooked jaws, and empty eye sockets. Even Kieran’s men reeled back from them, except for four. The members of his Six who fought on land peeled away from the battle and jogged to her side, bloodied and dirty. They filled her flanks and headed up her army, cutting through the enemy like a sword through silk.

His heart ached. Alexis had faced her biggest fear. She’d embraced everything she was out of love for him. He didn’t deserve it, but he was beyond grateful.

“A Spirit Walker,” his father said softly, as though out of breath. He rubbed at his chest, like he was trying to wipe away a piece of dirt. “You’ve found a Spirit Walker.”

“A poor nobody, as you said,” Kieran replied, willing his body to heal faster. He pulled the water around his feet and up to his knees, soaking in its energy while his father was distracted.

His father’s face came around slowly, and pride and envy warred in his expression. “I was wrong. You did well—she is worthy of a mark. A talent like that must be claimed. I hope you took her blood so as to control her.”

“She’s not the kind of lady who can be controlled.” He swept his hand to the beach to prove his point.

The bodies that lay to either side of her began to jerk on the ground. A few started trying to get up. She was bringing them back from the dead in order to direct them. The sight was as gruesome as it was terrifying, and the enemy troops pushed away from her, terror-stricken.

“And if she’ll ever forgive me for what I’ve made her do,” he said, “I’ll make her my wife.”

Kieran blasted his father with his magic and fist both, pushing him back. Using Alexis’s magic, he slashed through his father’s chest.

“How…” His father grunted in surprise and fell back into the rising waters.

“When you show respect to those around you, and put others above yourself, they reward you in ways you could never imagine.”

The waters rose around them before crashing down. His father took off like a shot, heading for the deep. Kieran had no choice but to follow, hoping the people he’d left behind could withstand Valens’s army.

Hoping he could hold his own against his father. This was the part of the battle he’d always dreaded.

The part, he knew, his father would force him to do alone.

37

Alexis

“Where is he going?” I screamed as anxiety and fear dumped into me through the soul connection. I sprinted to the water’s edge, watching Kieran disappear into a crashing wave.

Zorn grabbed me around the waist and ran me up the beach. Another wave came in, and then another, huge and violent. They crashed down not far away, surging up the beach and around our waists. Another one crashed, right on top of the first two. Kieran and his father had kept the waters back, and now the ocean was resuming its normally scheduled program.

“I got her,” Donovan yelled.

Before he could lift me with his magic, a corpse appeared beside me and wrapped its spindly arms around my shoulders. Lights and colors flew around me and my stomach fell through my feet, as though I were falling from a great height. A moment later, my feet hit sand and I stood in a pocket of empty space, looking at the resuming fight.

“Mia, no! I need to get out there to help Kieran!”

Lights and colors filled my vision again, and this time I found myself in an empty space just up from the natural water line. The small collection of souls I’d snatched and shoved back in bodies fought Valens’s horde. The tales of yore had been exaggerating, it turned out. I didn’t have the energy to steal the souls and reanimate the bodies of a large horde unless I did it one by one.

What a crock.

“His father is too powerful,” I yelled at Zorn above the sound of battle and crashing waves. “Kieran has always been worried about facing his father at sea.”

Zorn motioned for Donovan to grab me.

“Men are never worried,” Donovan said in my ear, trying to pull me up the beach. “Though we may be slightly troubled from time to time. Come on. We’ll get a boat.”

“You get a boat. I need to help fight.”

“You also shouldn’t make a man spell out his weaknesses.”

“I don’t know what that means.” I took a few steps forward as three people broke free from the fighting and charged at me.

Before I could react, a rage-filled howl rose up, turning my bones brittle. Thane, the Berserker, crashed through a line of enemy, flinging them to the sides. Topping the crowd by four feet and swinging enormous arms packed with muscle, he was the super-sized version of the Thane who’d terrorized my backyard.

He lurched forward and grabbed one of the men running my way. With a swing of his shoulders, he flung the guy at a woman who was also charging me. They both went down in a tumble. Thane ran forward, so fast despite his size that I couldn’t help taking a few startled steps backward. He smashed his fists into the people on the ground before grabbing up the remaining attacker.