in his veins dry as dust, muscle and sinew a few steps away from jerky. She imagined the flesh softening, re-hydrating, plumping up as the collapsed veins filled with blood, his heart swelling to its normal size.
Without thinking about it, Ivy's hands flexed, and Reece's heart jumped in answer. She could feel it leap, answering her silent call to wake up. Ilex guided her hands lower, pressing them into Reece's fur-covered belly. He should have been warm, but all she felt was cold stillness and the faintest echo of a heartbeat.
“Breathe, Ivy. Breathe life into him,” Ilex murmured.
Ivy obeyed, drawing breath into her lungs, pushing the energy of her exhale down along her arms and into her hands. In her mind, she saw Reece's lungs expand and felt his ribcage rise up, then down, matching the rhythm of her breaths.
Adrenaline coursed through her, the muscles beneath her hands rippling, thickening. She felt the lion twitch, the surge of life, the power of holding it all in her hands and knowing she could just as easily take it back.
The idea was dark and seductive, terrifying, but Ilex squeezed her hands and pulled her back from that sinister abyss whispering wicked things of ultimate power to her. To take it all and horde it for her own.
“Good, Ivy. Now let go. Let go, little sister.”
She jerked her hands away from his, all but throwing herself back away from the evil temptation. Uriah was there to catch her, pulling her even farther away, cuddling her to him while she gasped and panted like she'd been drowning and finally broke the surface.
Shaken, Ivy opened her eyes and saw a massive golden lion with a thick, tawny mane lying in the tall grass. Breathing, vibrant, and very much alive.
Reece looked like he was sleeping, his huge paws twitching as though chasing a rabbit through a dream. Ilex looked back at her with a proud, satisfied smile, thumping his hand down against the beast's side and looked to Abel, waving at the restored cat with a shaky hand.
“He is alive, but his soul is not here. You need to call to him. Call his spirit back to his body.”
Abel was white as a sheet, his eyes so wide they threatened to fall right out of his skull. “I don't exactly have the gods of the underworld on speed dial, man.”
Ilex snorted a laugh, but it was Kerrigan who pushed herself up to sit on her own, elbowing Abel weakly. “I'm completely out of juice, I can't do a damn thing here, but you're a cat. Cats are naturally attuned to the spirit realm. You're his people, his brother-in-arms. Order him back here.”
Abel shook his head, his wonder replaced with hollowness as he leaned forward and buried his hands deep in Reece's mane. “It's not that simple. Only his alpha could possibly do something like that. I can call Tynan—”
“I don't think we have that kind of time, and from the way she's flagging, Ivy won't be able to bring him back twice,” Kerrigan argued. “You need to try. When I summon a ghost, I call them by name. How would you call out to a lion who's lost in the wilderness?”
Ivy was indeed flagging, she could feel the power the Twin Blade flower had given her draining away like water through a sieve, and in a silent moment of honesty, she was relieved. Ivy never, ever, wanted to hold that much sway over life and death again.
“You can do this, Abel. I believe it,” Ivy told him softly, knowing that's where the real power was. In believing.
Abel looked at her with a wide-eyed shake of his head, and whatever he saw in her expression made him decide not to argue. From one moment to the next, he went to all fours and got furry.
The coven scooted back and made room for the lions to surround their fallen brother, and Abel was the first to throw his head back and roar, loud and furious. When the others joined him, the sound was deafening. It vibrated Ivy's blood inside her veins, and for several straight minutes, all the lions did was let loose their coughing bellows.
Just when she thought nothing was happening, that it wasn't working, Kerrigan reached out and smacked at something. Her hand swooshing through the air like she was smacking a basketball into the net.
Reece jolted like someone had yanked his tail and was on his feet so fast he made his brothers scatter in