Chapter 156

Zane POV

So it was that despite my earlier relief, drugged tea was in my future. At least they didn’t make me bathe again.

I had never been on a spirit walk, though Bertrand had and told me all about it in somewhat horrified detail. The walk had helped him, he swore, but he said he never wanted to do one again.

The size of the temple, particularly as it looked from the outside, was deceptive. I do not believe we went below ground, but I was led to a room I had never seen before. Two slabs of white marble were raised up on pillars, and the flute player was revealed to be behind a white curtain of fine gauze.

That was all I noticed before the incense started to get to me. It was sweet, warm, and woody and unquestionably frankincense. I felt my eyes burn slightly with it, and the odor seemed to fill up the space between my cranium and my brain, as though my mind were floating in a sea of it.

I was allowed to stand there for a few minutes, and soon enough my senses adjusted. The room was warm and pleasant, even if the white-on-white did make me feel like I was standing in an ice cube.

The head Oracle nodded, and six more Oracles walked into the room, forming a circle around the raised marble slabs that were obviously about to be used as beds. The six Oracles produced white ribbons from their robes and held them out to each other. Extending their circumference as they joined together with the ribbons.

The head Oracle beckoned, and I joined her inside the circle. I didn’t know if the incense grew more intense or if I could feel the energy of the Oracle’s circle, but I felt a pressure in my mind, something urgent, and I realized they were all waiting on me.

I nodded, and the Oracle’s hooded figure nodded back.

“Zane,” she said. “You come here to find your enemies. Are they demons that you seek?”

Bertrand hadn’t told me about that question.

“Not demons,” I said, trying to sound confident. “You know that I work for the good of the pack, so I believe those moving against me do not have the pack’s best interests as their goals. I seek to stop these people and protect the pack.”

“You seek also to protect your family.”

“I do. My daughters have destinies as alphas they should be allowed to fulfill, and my children’s goddess-mother is essential to their well-being.”

“And if you find that your enemies have reason to hate you? To wish to seek your destruction and that of your family?”

I opened my mouth to answer, but she raised a hand.

“You must be honest here, Pack Alpha Zane Cavendish. You must seek the truth today, not what will serve you best.”

“I understand. If they have cause against me, if I have acted against them, then I want to know what it is.”

She nodded again as her hand came down and a new odor entered the room, bitter and musky. I turned to see a Temple Priest bringing in a wooden goblet that, going by smell, was filled with something repugnant. I swear the Oracle was smirking at me through that hood.

“We call on the goddess to guide this alpha to his truth,” she said as the priest passed the goblet to me.

Oh, it was even worse in my hands. With a nod, I tried not to breathe in through my nose and managed a single swallow. I kept it down, barely.

No wonder Bertrand had been so negative about his spirit walk. I felt about four years old taking medicine and wanting to spit it out.

The priest reached over the ribbons again and took the goblet back. My relief that I did not have to drink the entire contents of the cup almost made me sway on my feet.

The priest passed the goblet to the head Oracle, who brought it up under her hood, swallowed without difficulty, and returned the now empty vessel to the priest, who walked out. The Oracle motioned to the marble slab near me, and I got on and laid down as she did the same.

The Oracle took one of those ribbons from her robe and held out an end toward me. I grasped it and wrapped it around my hand, as I saw her do, and then I closed my eyes.

The flute continued to play, the incense wafted through the air, and the marble was cooling against my back, but I felt myself get impatient again. Nothing was really happening, and I had a very great urge to get up and walk out of there.

And then I was doing just that. I could see the room around me, and it had nothing for me, so I left, perhaps through a door, perhaps through the wall. I saw a forest ahead and walked into it.

Sarah was standing there, wearing black, as I watched she turned to me, then shouted in pain and fell to the ground. I could smell her bright blood and hear as her heart stopped beating.

“Sarah!” I shouted, running toward her with feet that wouldn’t leave the ground properly. I tried to transform into my wolf, but nothing happened. It was dark, and when I finally reached where Sarah had been standing, there was nothing there but leaves and roots and grass.

I called for her again. The canopy above me had grown thick, and all I could see were shafts of light that caught on the grit in the air and dappled the ground

I saw her again, not far, wearing white this time and wrapped up in ropes that bound her to a tree. White liquid like milk poured from her mouth, and her eyes stared at me as blank orbs. But then I could see she was a statue, not Sarah herself at all.

At a tap on my shoulder had me spinning around, almost falling, and now Sarah was standing there in her brown suit with Grace and Chloe at her sides.

“Why do I keep seeing you?” I asked her. “Are you my enemy?”

“Never, but I am what your enemies fear.”

“And what’s that?”

“What you all fear.”

“Which is?” I asked, not feeling much hope she would answer me.

She moved aside, and I realized my daughters had disappeared. We were in a graveyard now, the tombstones carved with moons and stars. I saw a human family weeping over a gravesite as an alpha carried a tiny coffin as she walked beside a Temple Priest.

Then I saw Grace and Chloe again, but they were wearing jeans and bright t-shirts, laughing as they ran between the graves.

I looked at Sarah. “We all fear death.”

“Not death,” she said. Then she looked up, and I followed her gaze to a break in the canopy through which the marble-white moon shone. I heard her tell me, “It’s not death we really fear.”

I looked down, and now she was wearing a mating gown of silver, and the moonlight made her glow. I felt indescribably happy as she smiled at me. Our hands found the other’s, and we held on tightly as the world spun around on its axis.

“If you seek the truth,” she said, though her voice sounded like the head Oracle’s, “stop seeking enemies and find the moon.”

I looked up, my eyes dazzled by the moon’s light. “It’s right there.”

“But you are not,” she whispered.

When I woke up in the temple, the incense was so strong I wanted to vomit, and I had a horrible headache.