Shifters - The Jade Forest Chronicles 1

by Vivienne Neas

  I didn’t know where we were going. We were following Balfour’s nose – feelings that I couldn’t feel at all. Everything was different now. He’d gone into the cells as one person, and when he’d come out of there to rescue me, it was like he was someone else entirely.

  The attraction was still there. If anything, it was much worse now. It was like he was vibrating with bloodlust and energy, and the combination made him hot as hell. I couldn’t keep my eyes off him. Every now and then I glanced over at him before I turned my eyes back to the road.

  We crossed the south bridge. The river was fuller than usual, as if it had rained, even though the seasons hadn’t changed yet. The chatter was more urgent, even though I didn’t know what it was saying.

  “Something’s wrong.” I clutched the steering wheel so hard my knuckles turned white.

  “I know. I feel it too. I don’t know what it is.”

  I believed him. Whatever he was feeling, he hadn’t been specific about it, and that scared me. With his senses twice as sharp now as they had been before, the fact that he didn’t know what was happening worried me.

  “Do we have backup?” I asked.

  I knew that we were going in blind, and if we went in there at all we were going to face something we’d need to fight. I knew full well that we weren’t just there to be spectators. We were going there with a purpose, and purpose usually developed into bloodshed.

  “No.”

  The answer made me shiver.

  “My pack is still up north. I sent the young ones home – the former alpha was wrong to bring them down here, and I can’t call on them now. They would get the message loud and clear, but it’s a three-day journey to get here.”

  I nodded. I’d heard that werewolves could call on each other, like they had homing beacons installed in their genetic makeup. It had something to do with Balfour being the alpha now. I didn’t know more than that. I didn’t feel like I had to.

  “What do we do if we get stuck?”

  Balfour looked at me like he’d hoped I wouldn’t ask. “We don’t.”

  Right. But that wasn’t enough of an answer for me. I needed backup. I was fae, which meant going into a fight was already against my nature. Going in solo seemed like a death wish.

  The turnoff that led to the keep came up, and I took a left onto a road that looked like it belonged in a different time. Whenever I drove there, it felt like being transported to a different reality. I’d thought it was because of the humans being there, but I hadn’t felt the same in Milford at all.

  All the time I’d thought that all humans were the same. I was starting to realize that that wasn’t the case. Humans didn’t have magic, but they had influence, and they had a feeling to them that wasn’t always the same.

  The road was narrow, winding through a bunch of trees that might have been there first or might have been put in for some sort of privacy. The trees were tall, the trunks clean and straight all the way up to where the branches finally spread out.

  Among the trees, the magic was thick. It curled around the roots like a fog and hung in between the trunks like a bad attitude. Whatever was wrong was here among these trees, not at Forechester Keep itself.

  I leaned forward. Shadows were moving around between the trees like ghosts. I knew that those shadows were solid, though. Balfour was searching the trees too, and he had a look of concentration on his face that made me think he was focusing on other senses than his eyes or ears.

  “Something’s here,” he said. “I can’t tell what it is. It’s not a witch.”

  I frowned. I’d thought that was what we’d come after. “Vampire?”

  He shook his head. “I know what those feel like. Vampires are strong, but they feel dead, in here.” He patted his stomach just below his rib cage. “This… this is different.”

  It wasn’t fae; I knew that much. I didn’t know what else could be out there unless it was another shifter.

  “Bear? Leopard?” “Maybe. But this feels… familiar.”

  I parked the car. Driving farther wouldn’t help us; it would just take us past the danger to the keep, where everything was still alright. I didn’t know how long that would be the case, but hopefully, we could do something.

  I swallowed. I was being very jovial about the thought of fighting, but the truth was that I was terrified. I had never fought before. We fae developed our talents in case we needed to defend ourselves, but other than that it was just something we did – like breathing. What would I do if I found myself in the middle of a fight? How was I going to handle myself if fear overpowered me and tripped me up?

  “We’re going to be alright,” Balfour said, like he knew what I was thinking. Then he opened the door and got out.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’m going to see what’s out there.”

  “Alone?” I was suddenly scared that he wouldn’t come back. All of this would be for nothing – and I didn’t want something to happen to him. I really liked him – I’d started falling for him – and the idea that he was in danger made me feel sick to my stomach.

  “I’ll be back.”

  Those were famous last words in a lot of cases. I didn’t want it to be in this case, too.

  “Be careful.” He slammed the door, and I was sure he hadn’t heard me. I took a deep breath and pulled out my phone, then quickly dialed a number. “Hocus?”

  “Wait.”

  I heard something rustle for a moment or two, and then he put the phone against his ear. “What?”

  I wasn’t sure if he was upset that I was phoning him, or if he was somewhere he couldn’t talk.

  “If you say no, I’ll understand. I’ve made enough trouble for you already. But I need your help.”

  I explained what this was all about. I didn’t want to be here in the woods alone with Balfour and not know what was coming at us. I felt underprepared. I felt like I was being stupid going out after something that could potentially kill me.

  I wasn’t ready to die.

  “I can’t do this, Amber. Muriel isn’t happy with me because she knows I was trying to help you. I could lose my job as the gatekeeper, especially with the werewolves coming through. That’s on me.”

  My heart sank. I’d really hoped just for… something. I’d been running around feeling like a big-deal witch hunter when it was about breaking out of the hall and coming here, but now I felt small and stupid, like I’d made a serious mistake.

  I wasn’t going to ditch Balfour, though. I’d said I would go with him, and I was going to stay put. I had my fire if it really came down to it, and I was sure I could do something with that.

  I ended the conversation and tucked the phone back into my pocket.

  A shadow appeared between the trees, and for a moment terror grabbed at me and threatened to choke me. I couldn’t do this alone. Then the shadow took shape and Balfour was running toward me. For a moment I was relieved, and then I saw his face. Something was wrong. He didn’t look scared, but he didn’t look happy, either.

  “What’s going on?” I asked as he whipped open the car door.

  “It’s Raphael.”

  My mind took a moment to catch up. “I thought…” But I didn’t know what I’d thought. I’d thought we were after the witches. I’d thought Balfour was the alpha now. “How does that work?”

  “I thought he was dead. That’s usually how it works – if the alpha dies, the mantle passes on. He’s just not dead, and I don’t know how that works.”

  I squinted and tried to figure out what was going on. None of it made sense.

  “Is it just Raphael?” There had to be witches involved.

  “As far as I can tell. I can’t feel anyone else out there. Just this magic that felt so familiar. I understand why now. I just don’t know how it happened. He’s a lone wolf. He’s volatile, but he’s strong. It’s almost like he’s been given a boost.”

  I got out of the car.

  “What are y
ou doing?” he asked.

  “Aren’t we going to do something about it? It’s just one wolf.”

  He shook his head. “You don’t understand. He’s a lone wolf. Lone wolves are unstable. Their power is unpredictable, and they lose much of their humanity without an alpha to guide them. And Raphael was an alpha, which means that he has that power. And something else – he’s getting this power from somewhere else. Like he stole it from the witches.”

  It didn’t make sense. How could that be? “You can’t just steal power,” I said.

  “I thought so too, but last night I saw it. That’s what they did to me. The high priestess took my power and pulled it into herself so she had more.”

  “And there’s no way she could have done that for Raphael, so that he has this extra power?”

  Balfour started shaking his head, but stopped himself. “I wanted to say no, but now that you mention it, I can’t be sure that it’s impossible. If that happened, though, it had to be a deal that he struck with them. He sacrificed something in return for that power.”

  “Is that something he would do?”

  Balfour nodded. “Raphael is greedy for power. He’ll give up almost everything to get more of it.”

  I walked around the car so that I was face-to-face with him. He looked down at me, and I was overwhelmed with how manly and raw and powerful he was. The feeling was definitely a lot more intense than it had been before, but it was definitely that same attraction that had overcome me completely, and the only way to deal with it was to give in to it.

  I wanted to give in to it.

  “I don’t know what’s going to happen there if we go after him,” Balfour said, his mind still on the fight and not moving in the direction mine was going. “But we have to stop him. He’s moving in on the keep, and I have the feeling he’s going to try and take out the humans.”

  “To do what? He won’t rule it himself.”

  Balfour shook his head. “But he might get someone else up there.”

  “Like Chandre Crowe?”

  Balfour froze. “Where did you hear that name?”

  “It’s the witch who made the offer on the cemetery.”

  “It’s the witch who sucked me dry.”

  The thought struck us both at the same time. The witches weren’t going to use the power in the ground to wipe out the werewolves. They were going to give Raphael the power and let him obliterate the humans so that they could take over. Raphael could have all the power he wanted if he did what they said.

  What better way was there to give werewolf power to a wolf who was already powerful? And if that wolf was their puppet? Easy pickings.

  A roar burst through the trees, and I was sure a werewolf would come running out at us. A shadow appeared between the trees and grew bigger quickly. I understood now that Raphael was something very different than he would have been before. I could feel how unstable he was, too.

  A moment later he appeared – and it wasn’t a wolf running at us, but a man. He ran with a speed and a lethal attitude that I’d never seen any creature use before, and his eyes were an ugly red. I gasped for breath when he came close enough that his magic washed over me. It was so strong I couldn’t breathe.

  Balfour stepped away from the car and met Raphael head-on.

  Was he scared too? That was the difference between being used to fighting and always being kept far away from it. The fae were raised far away from any fighting and danger. This was what fighting did to people, I realized. This was why the fae wanted to stay away.

  Chapter 10 -Balfour