The anger swiftly grew in Clint, and she stepped back as he threw his head up and arched his back, letting out a monstrous roar.
“NOOOOOOOOO!!!” He shifted instantly and stood before them in his wolf form, panting hard, his lips curled back to reveal sharp, slavering fangs.
“Clint, you must hear me,” Sylvanis called to him. “You can do nothing for her alone. Get a hold of yourself.”
Clint wheeled on her, letting out a low growl and stepped forward.
Hank was between them in a second. Clint turned away, but spun and back handed him, sending him flying.
Simon turned into a Bear and made to intervene as his father did but was brought up short by Sylvanis’ outstretched arm.
“Stop,” she told him, not taking her eyes off Clint.
“Fine, go to her,” she told him. Clint stood before her, chest heaving from full, deep breaths, his golden wolf eyes boring into her. She stood her ground. Spinning around, he ran out of the house.
“Why did you let him go?” Kat demanded of her. “We need him.”
Sylvanis turned to study her.
“I know we do. There was no stopping him. Not without bloodshed, and I will not have that amongst friends.” Turning to the side of the room, Hank was dusting himself off, trying to remove the drywall dust from the wall he partially went through when he hit.
“Are you okay?”
“More or less,” he told her. “More surprised than hurt. The kid packs quite a punch. Though, if he hits me again, I am going to hit back, and he will find I hit a whole lot harder.”
Sylvanis smiled at him. She thought he was jesting. Well, perhaps not. The truth was, she didn’t know these people. She knew their ancestors, but not them. They must be noble people to offer their help, knowing they might not survive. She didn’t know them, but she could get a sense of each of them, and she felt confident they would be enough to stop Kestrel.
“Well, I would suggest we rest for the night. There is plenty of room here for all of you to sleep. Tomorrow, if Clint hasn’t gained control of himself and comes back, we will go to Chicago, and hope to intercept him there.”
She noticed Stephanie and Jason were not paying attention but were arguing about something.
She watched them for a moment. Realizing the room had gone silent and they were now the focus of the attention, they each stood and stepped closer to the rest.
“I don’t think we should go to Chicago,” Stephanie told her.
“Really? Where do you think we should go?” Sylvanis asked.
“Oh, no,” Stephanie laughed, blushing. “I don’t mean you shouldn’t go to Chicago, only Jason and I shouldn’t go.”
Sylvanis raised her eyebrows inquisitively.
“It’s just one of the goals you listed was recruitment. We believe we know a couple of people who we might be able to convince to help us. So, we have to go back to our college.” Sylvanis thought this over. It was likely Kestrel would figure out the same thing about where her last minion would end up. So, it was likely if they ran into each other, it would be her, Kat, Sim, Hank, and hopefully Clint, against Kestrel, Syndor, the Croc and four Boars, assuming Kestrel didn’t get to the Rat first.
She did not like those odds. But, Stephanie did have a point, and one thing she learned from Stephanie’s predecessor, Adonia, was the Fox always planned ahead. Now, whether Stephanie was anything like Adonia, she couldn’t be sure, but it would have been like her to split up and try to accomplish two things desperately needing to be done. Would it be harder without them? Most likely, but it did seem necessary.
“Very well, you and Jason return to your college and see who you can get to help. Try and meet us in Chicago as soon as possible. For we will be sorely pressed without the numbers your presence would bring us.”
“Thanks, Sylvanis.” Jason told her. “We will meet up with you as soon as we can.” He glanced to Stephanie, then back to her. “If it’s all the same to you, we will leave tonight. The sooner we get there; the sooner we can make it back to you.”
Smiling at them both, she considered herself lucky to have these two on her side. They turned and left, leaving Sylvanis there with the others.
“Kat,” Sylvanis turned towards the young woman. “How do you think the Boar found Clint?”
Kat shrugged her shoulders. “Not sure. It is possible he found him the same way as me.” Kat sat down on one of the couches.
“I watched the news, read the papers, trying to find anything which would lead me to someone like me. You see, my parents knew about the lycanthropy. My mom was entrusted with the secret. One day, she knew, we might be called upon to serve again. She knew there would be others as well, most likely. So, when I transformed the first time, we knew it was time. It was before I found Clint when I started to feel your… summons?”
Sylvanis nodded, admitting it was an accurate description of what had happened.
“Well, I decided to leave and come here when I hadn’t yet tracked down any other sign of what I had read in the news, about a large animal, possibly a bear seen in Chicago. It was luck which made me decide to wait one more day. So, I walked the beat, so to speak and sniffed him out.”
“Sniffed him out?” Hank asked.
“Yeah. Can’t you smell it?”
He shook his head.
“Well, possibly because there are too many of us in this room, and there is no way to tell the difference. The point is, if you are in a room full of non-Weres, you can smell the Were in the room. I’m not sure how else to explain it, but the moment I smelled it on him, I knew he was one of us.” She peered off in the distance, as if remembering the moment.
“I lost him the first day. But, I had got a decent view of him. It was plain luck he decided to come out for a walk in the same area again. Though it might have been bad luck, because it might have been how the Boar found him as well.” She turned back to Sylvanis.
“I guess you are right. Seems odd you both could follow a vague lead like a news story and end up finding him.” Sylvanis mused.
“There was one thing about him, the Boar I mean, struck me odd.”
“What was it?”
“He had a British accent. I mean, it was hard to tell, you know, because we all sound a little different when we shift, but I thought I detected it in his voice and the words he used.”
It wasn’t what Sylvanis wished to hear. It confirmed the worst of what she had thought. If the Boar was British, likely he was sent there by Kestrel to try and take out Clint.
This meant Kestrel had located everybody except the Rat. Sylvanis knew it would be harder to defeat her this time. Sure, there were outside forces which would make Kestrel’s attempts harder to accomplish, but Sylvanis watched the news, she saw the people protesting in the streets.
There was a horde of people out there who felt the same way as Kestrel— humans were destroying this world and they must be stopped, at any cost. These people had been dangerous, in their own way, before. Now, with a leader like Kestrel, they could be deadly.
Kestrel wouldn’t make the same mistakes as last time. She would target those who would agree with her cause and would fight harder because of it. Syndor had been around all this time, and she doubted he had been inactive.
They would have the money and the resources to accomplish what they wanted. The Croc and Boar were not Por and Answi this time. She would make sure they would not try anything stupid and get themselves killed. Of course, Clint wasn’t Calin, either. Renwick had been a coward, and there was no telling if the Rat would be so, again.
Sylvanis sighed.
“What’s wrong?” Sim asked her.
Smiling at him, pleased by his concern, it was important they liked her and cared for her, though she would not try and force it.
“Just thinking about how daunting our task is. This is a different time from the last time Kestrel, and I clashed. There are a lot of uncertainties, and I am not the leader of some vast army as I once was. All I have is the six
of you, but I am sure it will be enough. It just won’t be easy.
“Well, I think we should go to sleep. We have a long and difficult day ahead of us tomorrow and we will need our rest. I believe I am going to check on my parents to see what I can do to speed along their recovery. I bid you all goodnight.”
Climbing the stairs, she left the others below to work out sleeping arrangements.
Lying in their bed where Stephanie and Jason had left them, she found her parents. They were still unconscious, and she took a moment to examine them. She had been afraid from the beginning they might have been wounded beyond the superficial and may have gotten lycanthropy from the Croc. But a quick examination showed they only had taken a blow to their heads, and there were places where the fire had burned them enough to cause some blisters.
They would live, and more importantly, they would not become Weres under the control of the Croc. Placing her hands upon each of them in turn, she took some of their pain away, and they went from unconsciousness, to sleep by the rhythm of their breathing. Crawling up in bed between them, she snuggled as she used to when she was a little girl.
She laughed quietly to herself. Yeah, a little girl. Like what, a couple of months ago? She genuinely loved her parents, yet in a way, they were strangers to Sylvanis.
Snuggling closer to them, to feel their warmth, she hoped they could forgive her for taking away her childhood from them. When she left tomorrow, she didn’t believe she would be back, and she hoped they would have another child, and live happily with one they could watch grow at a normal pace. She had not intended her spell to do what it did. Not seen the consequences of her actions. But, what choice had she had? She couldn’t let Kestrel come here, now, and do what she tried to do back then.
It wasn’t fair. She gave up her life then to stop Kestrel and had to do so once again. She was not able to grow up at a regular pace because of Kestrel, and she had been robbed, once again, of a chance to grow up and live out her life in peace.
She cried for the loss of her parent’s daughter, and the loss of herself. She cried till she fell asleep, cradled in the arms of her parents, in the arms of strangers.
Chapter 8
Shae stood on the sidewalk of Chicago’s Magnificent mile and watched as repairs were underway on several buildings around her. There were fewer people on the streets today than yesterday as the novelty began to wear off. Of course, it was still busier than any town she ever been in.
She could sense Daniel back at the hotel. They had fought again about coming here, but in the end, she told him to shut up and he had little choice but to do so. It was a strange relationship they shared. He disgusted her and many times she wished him dead, yet she couldn’t be without him.
Occasionally, she would use him, but it was mainly to humiliate him, for she found little pleasure in their sex. It was a part she believed her past had killed within her- the pleasure of intimacy, and she didn’t think it would ever return.
Brushing her ruddy brown hair out of her eyes, the wind which gave Chicago its nickname blew hard cutting her skin like a knife, leaving no wounds only reddened chapped skin. Pulling her overcoat tighter around her, she checked her Sais, as she learned the knives were called, to see if they were secure at her waist.
She practiced daily handling the twin daggers. Whether she could fight well with them, she couldn’t tell, but she could handle them with familiarity, which would help with any casual encounter where she might need them. If she dealt with someone who knew how to defend against them, or had a similar weapon, she would have to rely on her shifting ability.
Daniel and she had been here for two days.
They had been living off the grid in extended stay hotels for around seven months. Daniel was independently wealthy and took most of his money out of his accounts before they left New York to have cash so they couldn’t be traced using credit cards.
Seven months they had traveled and lived aimlessly. Not sure where to go and what to do. Until they saw the news of what happened in Chicago. There was no mistaking the descriptions of other Weres.
She woke Daniel in the hotel room they were staying at and told him they were leaving. After driving all night, they arrived in Chicago in the afternoon. Shae dragged Daniel downtown that night and they both examined the damage and listened to the talk about what happened there a couple of days ago.
Of course, the stories varied, since most heard it from a friend, who heard it from a friend. The following morning, Shae returned, without Daniel, and questioned more people. In the end, she located a woman from one of the damaged stores who had witnessed almost everything.
She had been reluctant to talk about it at first since many people didn’t believe her or called her nuts, regardless of all the video of it on the internet. Shae assured her she would not think her crazy and would believe her. Something about Shae convinced her to talk.
The woman missed the beginning of the fight, but others had told her a huge man, with a face like a boar with tusks and everything, emerged from somewhere and attacked a man and a woman. That is when she exited her shop to see what was happening.
“It was the most frightening thing I’d ever seen. This boarman lifted this woman into the air, right in front of the man who may have been her boyfriend, or perhaps husband it was believed, because of the way the boarman was taunting him with the woman. Just when it appeared the monster was going to eat this woman, he was attacked, not by the man, but by some tigerwoman.”
Pausing to peer at Shae, she undoubtedly wanted to check to see if she was going to laugh, but Shae was transfixed to the story, and only nodded for the woman to continue, which she did.
“At this point, the woman the boarman had been holding was dropped and the tigerwoman and the boarman fought. The boarman was downright beating the hell out of the tigerwoman, and I was sure this fight was going to end soon with the boarman winning.
“In fact, the boarman had everything going his way. He had beaten the tigerwoman to unconsciousness and was, once again, about to grab the other girl when the man who had been with the woman transformed into a wolfman. I wouldn’t have believed it, if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes,” the woman told Shae. “Anyhow, the man transformed, like a…a…werewolf. He transformed and attacked the boarman. They fought, and the tigerwoman, who I’d thought was a goner, helped, and together they saved the other woman and escaped. The cops arrived and the boarman attacked them. The cops must have shot the thing dozens of times, but it didn’t stop, it tore through them and was gone.
“At any rate, no one knew what happened to the boarman, tigerwoman or wolfman. Rumor had it, the cops knew the identification of the wolfman, but not of the others. The woman was in the hospital, but from what I heard, three boarmen came in and took her. I’m not sure I believe it. It sounds more like others trying to join in on the hubbub around the attack.”
It was all she knew, she assured Shae. Her eyes sparkled with finally being able to tell someone who took her seriously, and didn’t think she was either crazy, or lying.
Thanking her for the information, Shae returned to the hotel to find Daniel and tell him what had happened. He was torn between his desire to help her and to study these others. She reminded him that part of his life was over; he would never experiment on another person ever again. He sulked, but knew she was right.
The next day she spent at the stores, searching for any sign any of those people who might still be around. She knew it was silly, and Daniel told her as much. Why would those responsible for this destruction return to the same spot, but it was all she had. This was her only link to others like her.
She returned the following day as well. Daniel stayed at the hotel; he lived in a perpetual state of self-loathing which didn’t allow him to spend much time out. Or, it might be he was afraid he would change, though they had learned to control the change in the seven months they had been traveling around together, he was still uneasy about it.
The sudden appearance of
others like her got her wondering. It seemed an impossibility. Suddenly, three Weres, like her, appear out of nothing? She wondered if they changed for the first time at the same time she did? It was unlikely, but she couldn’t fathom another reason around the same time she had this thing awaken within her; others would show up as well. She needed to find the others, she needed answers.
Her acute nose picked up a new scent in the air. It was not something she had ever smelled before and couldn’t quite place it. It smelled…bestial, was the only word she could find to describe it. As she was trying to place the smell, a dark shadow stole the sunlight from her.
“Hello, lass, it seems the Lady guessed right when she said you might come here,” a man said from behind her with a rough British accent.
Turning around, she saw a man looming over her. Easily over six feet tall, with black greasy hair, slicked back, which only accentuated his oversized forehead. He was a somewhat fat man, with a portly gut. He smiled down at her with a gapped-tooth smile and beady eyes.
Her hands stole within her overcoat to grab her Sais.
“There is no need for those, lass,” the man told her. “You are among friends and others like you.”
“What do you mean? Like me?” Despite his assurance of friendship; she didn’t like him or trust him in the least.
He smiled wider at her. Yeah, she didn’t like him at all.
“I think you know what I mean, lass, but it’s best to not discuss this here. Come with me and I will answer your questions. And, when the Lady gets here, she will answer the rest of them.”
“Which one were you?” Shae asked, suddenly curious.
“Which one?” He raised an eyebrow.
She nodded in the direction of the damaged buildings.
He smiled at her again. “Which one do you think?”
Shae scrutinized him before answering. “The pig.”
The Awakening Box Set Page 48