Life After Humanity

by Gillian St. Kevern

  Nate sighed. “Do you have the feeling that something—no. Someone—is missing?”

  Ben stumbled to a halt, clutching the rail to keep his balance. He looked back at Nate, standing in the window, looking over his shoulder at his friends.

  “Someone?” Aki sounded skeptical.

  “I’m thinking back over everything that’s happened. It’s like putting together a jigsaw puzzle with a missing piece.”

  Aki laughed. “Since when do we do jigsaw puzzles?”

  “No.” Grant’s voice was quiet, but commanding. Everyone stilled to listen. “I think Nate’s right. There’s something— I keep getting this feeling like there’s someone else here, just out of reach, but when I turn to look, there’s nothing there.”

  “A ghost? You know, our apartment is supposed to be haunted—”

  “This isn’t a ghost,” Grant said with certainty.

  Nate turned his back to the window. “It’s not a ghost,” he agreed. “I don’t know what’s going on… But I know I have to find out. I know it’s important.”

  Ben caught his breath. Nate held the acorn in his hand. The Register was written for people. I can’t make them see me—but the wolves could sense me. They’re not people. Plants aren’t people—is that why I could move the acorn? And why Nate—remembers something?

  For the first time since the mayor had entered his name into the Final Register, Ben felt a spike of warmth. “I said I trusted you, Nate—and you can trust me too. I’m not giving up. We’re not giving up.”

  About the Author

  Gillian St. Kevern is the author of the Deep Magic series, the Thorns and Fangs series, the For the Love of Christmas series, and standalone novels, The Biggest Scoop and The Wing Commander’s Curse. Gillian currently lives in her native New Zealand, but spent eleven years in Japan and has visited over twenty different countries. Her writing is a celebration of the weird and wonderful people she encounters on her travels.

  As a chronic traveller, Gillian is more interested in journeys than endings, with characters that grow and change, becoming empowered to achieve their happy ending. She’s not afraid to let her characters make mistakes or take the story in an unexpected direction. Her stories cross genres, time-periods and continents, taking readers along for an unforgettable ride.

  Email: gillian.stkevern@gmail.com

  Website: www.gillianstkevern.com

  Mailing list: www.gillianstkevern.com/newsletter-sign-up.html

  Facebook: www.facebook.com/gillian.stkevern

  Twitter: @GillianStKevern

  Pinterest: www.pinterest.com/gillianstkevern

  Other books by this author

  For the Love of Christmas!

  The Ugliest Sweater

  Ibiza on Ice

  The Charity Shop Rejects—Live in Concert

  Thorns and Fangs

  Thorns and Fangs

  Uprooted

  Dead Wrong (coming February 2018)

  Coming soon from Gillian St. Kevern

  Dead Wrong

  Thorns and Fangs, Book Four

  Chapter One

  THE AFTERNOON HAD all the gloom of a funeral. The concrete pavement and the drab external walls of the surrounding buildings extended to the gray sky above. Nate and Aki stood in silence in the alley beside their apartment building and contemplated the dead.

  Nate, six feet tall, had to bow his head to look down at them. “You’re sure it’s not, I don’t know, some kind of vampire cat?” He winced. The question sounded even worse out in the open.

  Aki looked up at Nate, his hazel eyes flat. “You’re kidding me. Have you ever heard of a vampire cat?”

  Nate made a helpless gesture toward the bodies. “Look at them.” There were two desiccated rats and, nearby, a shriveled up bird. “Animals don’t eat like this.” He turned the nearest rat over, noticing what looked like a puncture wound. He crouched to get a closer look.

  “Maybe they were sick. Rats are riddled with disease, and pigeons are not any better—don’t touch them!” Aki made a disgusted noise. “Ugh. Keep your gross, infected hands away from me.”

  Nate set the rat down and turned his head, giving Aki a speculative look.

  Aki stepped backward. “Touch me and I promise I will dump you.”

  Nate snorted, turning his attention back to the dead animals. “You can’t dump me. We’re not dating.”

  “I can friend dump you—and I will.”

  “I co-signed the lease. You’re stuck with me.”

  “I’m pretty sure Grant can find me a legal loophole involving pestilence.” Aki stuck his hands in the pockets of his plaid trousers. He drummed one foot against the pavement, the movement making his keychain rattle. “Come on. Let’s go.”

  Nate stood slowly, still looking down at the animals. “There’s got to be some kind of explanation for this. Maybe we should call Department Seven?”

  “They’d laugh in your face. This isn’t even a case for animal control.” Aki heaved a theatrically loud sigh. “If you’re that desperate for excitement, ask George to take you hunting. She’d jump at the chance.”

  Nate frowned at Aki. “I’m not desperate for excitement.”

  Aki raised an eyebrow. “Aren’t you? This is the longest we’ve gone without any supernatural mishaps since you got mixed up with the necromancer, and for the last month, you’ve been glancing over your shoulder, listening to sounds that aren’t there, and watching the news for anything paranormal. If that’s not desperation, I don’t know what is.”

  Nate shivered. How to explain to Aki that for the last month, he’d had the constant suspicion that there was something there, just on the edge of his awareness? “I’m not desperate.”

  “Then why are we hanging out in a shadowy alley, acting like revenant bait?”

  Nate blanched. Revenants were the most basic form of the undead, recently deceased with a taste for blood and no thought beyond acquiring it. Nate had been closer than he wanted to hungry revenants. “Bait implies I want to find one. I don’t.”

  “Then can we please leave before one finds us—”

  Something crunched in the shadows beyond the dumpster.

  Nate’s breath froze in his throat. He didn’t dare turn his head to see what Aki was doing, concentrating all his attention on the shadows.

  He heard a second crunch, as if something shifted on the stones beyond the dumpster. Nate stepped toward it.

  “Don’t.” Aki grabbed his arm. “Please, Nate. This is a seriously bad idea.”

  “Stay here.” Nate disentangled himself. “Get ready to call Department Seven.”

  “And after that, I’ll call the funeral home.” Aki had his phone in hand. “I’m having them put ‘I told him not to do it’ on your gravestone.”

  “Quiet.” Nate knew a revenant couldn’t kill him. At least he was pretty sure he was safe. His experience with the necromancer had woken Nate’s own supernatural side. Being part plant could be inconvenient at times, but it did mean that he was impervious to things that were fatal to ordinary humans. But being a card-carrying psychic wouldn’t protect Aki from becoming monster chow. Nate edged his way around the dumpster carefully. If it was a revenant, he’d have to act fast to stop it preying on Aki.

  Nate rounded the corner.

  Nothing there? The newspaper was spread out as if someone had been sleeping rough—never a good idea in New Camden, the city with the largest monster population in the world—and it crackled under foot. Was the sound just the wind rustling through its pages? Nate turned to leave and caught a dull glow out of the corner of his eyes. He grinned. “Aki, come and look at this.”

  “Is it more dead animals? Because I can pass.”

  Nate crouched down. “Here, kitty. I’m not going to hurt you.”

  “A cat?” Aki snorted, and Nate heard his footsteps on the stone behind him. “All that over nothing.”

  Nate clicked his fingers. “Come on.”

  The cat watched him balefully. She stretched
, displaying her claws, before taking a step into the light. She flicked her tail, watching Nate out of her one good eye. Her left eye was milky white, with the lines of an old scar above and below. She was skinny, her fur bare in patches, and her tail was crooked. Part of one ear was missing, looking like a tattered flag on a pirate ship, with her prominent ribs the hull.

  “Whoa. That’s the ugliest cat I’ve ever seen.”

  “She can’t help that. Poor thing. Who knows how long she’s been living out here?”

  Aki smacked Nate’s hand away from the cat. “Stop risking animal diseases! Look at it. Probably crawling with fleas!”

  “It’s just an old stray cat.”

  Aki scoffed. “I was wrong. That’s definitely some variety of hell beast.”

  Nate clicked his fingers, succeeding in drawing the cat closer to him. “You’re so mean. Just because she’s been on the losing end of a few fights…”

  “More than a few. It’s probably got every disease in the book.”

  Nate extended his hand, and the cat cautiously sniffed it. “I think she likes me.”

  Aki leaned against the dumpster to watch. “Haven’t you learned anything from the disaster that was you adopting the last stray?”

  Nate looked up. “The last stray turned out to be Grant, who we saved from his evil stepdad, getting you a boyfriend in the process.”

  “We’re not dating,” Aki said immediately. “If you’re so stuck on Grant, ask him out yourself. I don’t want him.”

  Nate smiled to himself, stretching out his hand to the cat’s tattered ears. She hissed, and before Nate could react, sunk her teeth into his hand. He jerked his hand back. “Ow!”

  “Ha! Told you!”

  Nate sat back on his heels, nursing his hand. “Are you grinning?”

  “It’s called schadenfreude.” Aki nudged Nate with the toe of his sneaker. “And you deserved it.”

  Nate looked back down, but at his exclamation, the cat had darted back into the shadows. She squeezed into the narrow gap between the dumpsters. All he could see of her was the gleam of her dead eye. “You’re a bad best friend.”

  Aki just shrugged. “You should have checked the fine print. It’s too late now. You’re stuck with me.”

  Nate stood, dusting off his hands on his jeans. “Maybe Grant will find me a legal loophole.”

  Aki elbowed him. “Not allowed. It’s ‘best friends forever.’ Not best friends until Aki hurts my feelings.”

  Nate draped his arm over Aki’s shoulders. “Since when is BFF legally binding?”

  “Well it is. So it’s a good thing I plan on keeping you around.” He leaned comfortably against Nate’s side. “That’s your cue to say there’s no one you would rather be stuck with.”

  Nate paused, guiltily conscious something wasn’t right. There was something—someone—missing.

  “Nate?”

  Nate realized he’d stopped walking.

  Aki was watching him with an expression of concern on his face. “I was only joking.”

  Nate grinned. He leaned over, tapping Aki on his shoulder. “Got you.”

  “You!” Aki demonstrated his feelings of friendship by trying to kick him.

  THEY WERE STILL bickering when they arrived at the apartment.

  Nate paused to fish in his pocket for the key.” Grant’s nice and obviously into you.”

  Aki jiggled impatiently. “I liked him better as a dog.”

  Nate paused, key in hand, to stare at him. “You didn’t like him as a dog. In fact, you complained constantly.”

  “Just open the damn door.”

  “I’m just saying”—Nate unlocked the door and pushed it open—“that there are a lot of inconsistencies in your story—”

  “Surprise!”

  Nate’s mouth dropped open. Grant stood in the center of their apartment, a smug grin on his face. The werewolf looked relaxed and happy, a big change from their first meeting. While he still looked like a shave wouldn’t go amiss, his gaunt face no longer looked starved and his eyes sparkled.

  He wasn’t alone. Charlotte and Vazul, Nate’s friends from supernatural counseling, held up a sign. The difference between angular Charlotte’s height and stocky Vazul’s lack made it lopsided. Despite the angle, the message was clear: Thirty-one days since Nate started a supernatural event.

  Nate looked from the banner to his friends, taking in the decorations strung across the apartment walls. “What’s all this?”

  George grinned at him from the kitchen doorway. The supernatural hunter was dressed for fun, with dangly earrings and a bright-orange shade of lipstick. She’d ditched her usual headscarf, her curls trimmed to uniform length. If Nate hadn’t known where to look, he wouldn’t have noticed the damage done by the demonic attack George had only narrowly survived. “You’ve gone an entire month without a near-death experience. I say you’re slacking, but I was outvoted. These wimps consider that an accomplishment.”

  “Wow. I don’t know what to say.” Now that the surprise had worn off, Nate saw a lot of effort had gone into the party. Food was laid out on the coffee table—three pizza boxes, a selection of what looked like cakes, a salad, and cupcakes with delicate icing that looked suspiciously like Mandy’s handiwork. Nate jerked his head up and saw her standing behind Charlotte and Vazul, nervously picking at her sleeve. “Mandy—Bea?”

  Mandy smiled tentatively, but Beatrice just raised her glass in an ironic toast. “Aki told us about it. We agreed it was an occasion worth celebrating.”

  “I hope that’s okay.” Mandy bit her lip. “I mean, it’s been a while.”

  “Of course it’s okay.” Nate closed the distance between them to give her a hug. He breathed in the familiar scent of her jasmine perfume. “It’s great to see you.” How long had it been? Not since… Not since he’d come out as supernatural. Nate paused. Mandy had made her views on the supernatural clear.

  But Mandy squeezed him tightly with obvious relief. “I’m glad.”

  Nate grinned as he released her. “Wait. If Aki invited you—” He turned his head to stare at his friend.

  Aki smirked at him. “Like taking candy from a baby. You’ve got no idea how many times this week you walked in on us planning this and had no idea.”

  “Given that we’re talking about Nate, I am not surprised.” Vazul always sounded superior, but now he was infuriatingly pleased with himself. “Going thirty-one days without incident is more of an accomplishment than I thought.”

  “Was that what you were doing?” Aki had seemed unusually keen on his coursework, but Nate had put that down to the fact that Grant was brushing up on his study.

  Grant cleared his throat. Immediately the group felt silent, all faces turning toward him. “I think it’s time to come clean. Aki?”

  Aki slouched on the arm of one of the apartment’s two armchairs. “As fun as teasing Nate is, his ability to keep himself out of trouble for an unprecedented thirty-one days—”

  “Hey!” Nate protested.

  “Was only a front.” Aki stuck out his tongue. “The real reason you’re all here is because Grant’s got some news.”

  Every head turned back to Grant. He grinned. “My application to live independently of my pack has been approved. I’m a free wolf.”

  Charlotte squealed, dropping the sign as she clapped. “Grant, I’m so happy!”

  “Took their time,” Vazul grumbled leaning the sign against the wall. “I suppose your old pack contested it?”

  Grant nodded grimly. “Naturally. They argued that if anything, the extreme circumstances around my first Full Moon proved I was a hazard. The judge wasn’t having any of it. He pointed out the extreme events were the result of my stepfather’s machinations, and I had shown considerable self-restraint in the face of overwhelming opposition.” His grin displayed very sharp teeth. “They slunk out of the courtroom with their tails between their legs.”

  “You didn’t tell us you had your hearing!” Charlotte stared at him with astonishm
ent. “We would have come to support you.”

  “And risk your final exams?” Grant shook his head. “No. You’d already done so much for me. I couldn’t ask any more.”

  “Congratulations, Grant.” Nate held out his hand. “No one deserves this more than you do.”

  Grant looked at him, light flashing in his tawny eyes. Then it was gone, and he squeezed Nate’s hand. “Thank you. This wouldn’t have been possible without you.”

  Nate ducked his head. “At least my tendency for starting supernatural events is good for something.”

  “Oh god.” Aki groaned. “Don’t encourage him!”

  “We need a toast.” George cracked open the wine bottle and Charlotte hastily grabbed glasses. “Gather round.”

  Grant was perfectly at home as the center of attention. He thanked everyone, even Mandy and Bea who gave their congratulations awkwardly, before planting himself in Aki’s chair.

  Charlotte immediately sat opposite. “Now that you’ve got your independence, what are you going to do?”

  “He’s going to legalize chasing cars.” Aki, still perched on the chair’s arm, looked sleek and satisfied, like a well-fed cat.

  Grant shot him a look, before turning back to Charlotte. “I’m going back to law school. Now, more than ever, it’s important for the supernatural community to have a voice in the legal system.” His arm settled around Aki’s waist, and Aki gravitated slightly toward him. “My experiences of the last month have shown me just how open to exploitation the current laws surrounding werewolves are. I’m sure there are more cases like mine right here in New Camden.”

  “One step at a time.” Aki nudged him with his elbow. “Before you change the world, you have to pass your bar exam. And while you may be able to take on werewolves, you’ve yet to prove yourself against lawyers.”

  And he expects anyone to believe he’s not interested in Grant. Nate shook his head and sipped his drink. From the wine’s quality, it was clearly Beatrice’s contribution to the party. He made his way to where she leaned against the wall. “Thanks for coming,” he said quietly. “How did Aki manage to drag you into this?”

  Beatrice cast him an amused sideways glance. “We invited ourselves. We’ve been listening to Aki complain about the freeloading werewolf in the flat above for the last month, and well, it’s a rare man, werewolf or otherwise, who can hold his attention an entire month.”