Last Chance (DarkWorld: SkinWalker Book 3)

A Walker funeral isn’t that different from the funerals of any other species. Flowers, coffins, mourners. Tears, grief. Regret.

The subtle difference lies in the species itself, and maybe in particular religious preferences. Most Walkers regard the goddess Ailuros, cat god of the Greek pantheon, as their deity of choice. Worship isn’t in any way similar to most other Earth world religions.

Ailuros just is.

She is a constant, like the air in your lungs or the rain falling from a moody sky. The goddess is nature personified. She gives no gifts, answers no bargains. She is merely the god of all things.

Ailuros has no temples, not in the modern world. Not after the tsunami that was the annihilation of “witches.” Call a Walker or a Mage a witch and it was a laughably simple feat to eradicate entire clans. Places of worship were and always will be an open invitation to the religious zealots.

Now the temple must exist inside your soul. Or else you were truly lost.

I often wonder how different life would be if humans knew we existed. What would they think if their son or daughter brought home a werewolf or Fae for dinner? Cross-species reproduction? I shook my head, the movement jerky and short, as I swallowed a bitter laugh. I walked past faces, some familiar, many not, to the front row of white aluminum foldout chairs—my father’s lawn. And the weather had cooperated in my sister’s honor. The ground was firm, the grass a bright, cheery green. The sun streamed down, not so warm that we’d have to shed our coats, but with enough head that an afternoon outside was a pleasant experience.

Seemed Mother Nature had remembered to pull out all the stops for Greer’s farewell.

I’d already said my good-bye to my sister. I sighed, my thoughts flashing back to our last, very unexpected, conversation in a way I’d never expected. How many people get to talk to the dead?

I recalled Greer’s last words.

“So many times I pushed you away, yet you still came to help me. I didn’t deserve you. I don’t deserve you… Thank you, Kai.”

Words I never expected to hear, not from a sister who had always remained just that bit out of reach, just that bit colder than necessary.

I recalled the expression on her face, the sincerity in her eyes, and even the love as she spoke. So unexpected, those words. Tears blurred my vision as I sat blindly on the nearest seat. I wished we’d had more time, wished we’d been able to be close. But fate didn’t deem it that way. I sighed and felt the lead weight in my stomach settle deeper into place.

I should be happy Greer and I had made our peace, but the harsher, more awful truth hung over me like a dark, accusing cloud threatening to loose a storm of emotions. I’d failed my mother. I’d failed to save her daughter. What mother could forgive me? I didn’t deserve forgiveness. I’d failed her.

Failed them both.

Murmuring from the back of the seated crowd drew my thoughts away from the cesspit of my self-pity. I shifted in my seat and I glanced behind me. My father Corin, brother Iain, and four other men I didn’t recognize walked steadily along the center aisle, bearing the weight of Greer’s coffin between them.

Made of molded concrete shaped to fit the curves of Greer’s figure, the coffin was finished with exquisitely fine detail. The sculptor had paid close attention to Greer’s aquiline features, replicating them so closely that I would have sworn Greer herself lay there. The rest of her body was sculpted wearing a peplos, an ancient toga-like garment draped elegantly around her body in the style of the Greek goddesses. Within the carved casket, Greer was dressed in a similar fashion.

Her body had been gently bathed, perfumed oils rubbed into her skin. Her long ash-blond hair was washed, brushed, and draped over her shoulders and allowed to fall about her body to the waist. Her hands had been positioned at the center of her chest, her fingers entwined around the feet of a stone statue of Ailuros. The statue stood straight up, its feminine curves enhanced by the fall of the fabric of her simple peplos. With the head of a panther, the statue hearkened back to the days before Ailuros had evolved into the external manifestation of a cat, the days when the goddess bore the head of a lioness. Today, each Walker tribe saw Ailuros with a head that signified their own species.

Only the cats, of course. Wolf Walkers bowed to the feet of Anubis.

With a start, I recognized Byron Teague, the local wolf alpha, and Justin Lake, alpha of the cougars, behind my brother and father. The lynx and jaguar alphas brought up the rear of the pallbearers. Again, I was reminded that attendance at the funeral would be more a show of support of those grieving her death rather than an actual payment of respect to Greer herself. I turned and faced the stone bier at the front, a simple table constructed from white marble and surrounded with vases of white roses.

From somewhere around me, a lone violin sang sweet, sad notes. A song I didn’t recognize, but it brought tears to my eyes anyway. I swallowed the lump in my throat and blinked away the moisture. I’d just regained my composure when a tap on my shoulder pulled my attention from the pallbearers who were setting the casket onto the bier. Behind me sat Lily, Logan, Saleem, and Tara. Logan’s hand felt warm and comforting on my shoulder, and I held tightly on to it. I drew strength just from the touch of the man.

Tara leaned forward, her dark hair glinting in the sun. “Mother couldn’t make it, but she does send her apologies and her condolences,” she whispered in my ear before giving me a small, encouraging smile.

I nodded. “Thanks,” was all I could think to say. I was overwhelmed by their support. Even more so when I caught a glimpse of Storm and Chief Murdoch sitting in the back row. Proof that I managed to gather my own little band of friends over the last few years. The one person I didn’t see was Clancy. Clancy McBride, my best friend, my supervisor at the rehab center, taken from me by the same Walker who, in the end, had killed my sister too.

The chair beside me squawked, and I twisted around as Grams sat down. I took her hands and she squeezed mine back. We were dressed in white, me in a skirt suit and Grams in pants and a matching jacket. Walkers shunned the nothingness of black. We saw death as another step in our journey, not a marking of the end, the beginning of nothing.

Grams and I had long supported each other in our grief, and then guilt clawed at me, ripping open old wounds. When my uncle Niko had died, we’d had no body to bury. They’d had a small memorial service, but with everything that had happened and everything Niko had done, I couldn’t bring myself to attend. Grams and everyone else had understood. I’d been weak from the Wraith-sword poison, grieving for Clancy, terrified for Mom and Anjelo and Greer, all innocents sucked into Niko’s crazy schemes.

I tried to banish those thoughts, bring my attention back to the ceremony. With the casket in place, the pallbearers dispersed and my father and brother came to sit beside us.

The light glinted off the carved face of the coffin as a woman glided slowly toward a lectern. The white podium stood beside the bier, covered in white fabric and decorated with a swag of white roses and baby’s breath. Etina was our equivalent to a pastor or a priest. The priestesses of Ailuros presided over deaths and births and marriages within the Walker communities. Etina, her red hair held away from her face by a band of matching braids, came to a graceful stop behind the flowers and smiled at the gathering.

I listened with half an ear as she spoke a little about Greer, an extolling of virtues that steered clear of her leaving home without so much as a good-bye, from her involvement with Pariah Walkers Niko and Brand, and from any references to how she finally met her end. I swallowed a sob. Everywhere I looked I saw the image of my mother’s face, superimposed on everyone, saw the look of disappointment in her eyes everywhere I turned. A look I would need to face soon. My heart thudded as Etina motioned for my father to come forward to speak.

I didn’t hear his words, my mind still on my mother and the promises I’d broken. Fingers slipped in against mine, and I looked at Iain as he held my hand, squeezing it in silent comfort. I’d refused to speak, not wanting to be a hypocrite. As sisters, we’d never been close. No point in pretending now.

Soon my father returned to his seat, and Etina resumed her duties. Movement around me brought me back to the present as the small gathering began to rise. The service was over and the coffin would be transferred to a special cart, whose dark, gleaming wheels were almost as tall as I was. The cart would draw the coffin and the mourners along the edge of the town and deep into the mountains.