Pack Violet Shadow

by C. M. Stunich

  And then … a blanket of darkness rushed up and out of my mouth, a heavy weight of black on black speckled with stars. It swept over me like a wave, crashed into my body, and dragged me under, cutting me off mid-scream.

  The sound of Nic shouting my name was the last thing I remembered.

  I woke up panting, surrounded by the scent of citrus and wolf.

  A heavy weight lay sprawled across my chest, and when I reached up, my fingers found the thickness of a white winter pelt.

  Jaxson Kidd, the Alpha Son of Pack Azure Frost, was deadweight across my chest, lying comatose across my ribs. As gently as I could, I pushed him off and he lolled to the side, hitting the rocky ground beneath us like a corpse. His lack of movement scared me so much that I had to put my ear to his chest to make sure his heart was still beating.

  The warmth and movement of his body reassured me enough to sit up and take a quick look around. It was dark enough that for a second, I had to wonder if we were in a cave or tunnel of some kind. But no, after a few quick blinks, my night vision kicked in and I found myself looking up at a pair of moons the color of fresh bruises. One was lavender while the other glowed a sickly periwinkle blue.

  “It's quite picturesque, isn't it?” a voice oozed from in front of me, coming from the same direction as the sound of running water. As soon as I registered the bubbling of water on rocks, I knew I was in trouble. In Faerie, nothing good lives in the river. That much I knew from Majka's random stories.

  “Very,” I said as chills chased across my skin. I scooted closer to Jax, using his warmth and nearness to bolster my spirits. I'd need them, considering I was looking into the face of a grinning white horse. Or should I say, kelpie?

  The fae creature smiled at me with big, blocky white teeth in a ghostly face. Its fur was tinted from the glow of the double moons, turning it a sickly purple-blue color in the darkness that was hard to distinguish against the rolling landscape and the river. It had a mane and tail made of slimy, dark green reeds that curled down its muscular neck and draped in twisted tangles from its rump. As soon as I made eye contact with it, I knew I was in trouble.

  It was lying on its side on the rocky ground at the river's edge, like a horse taking an afternoon nap. Except … horses don't grin. And they don't have eyes so devoid of light that they're black on black, dark even in a night shrouded landscape. They also don't look at you like they're keeping dirty secrets.

  “Flesh is very hard to tear with such dull teeth,” the creature told me without skipping a beat. “I'd much rather have sharp fangs like your friend there. Do you think he'd mind so very much if I added them to my collection?”

  Magic swirled in the air around us, acrid and metallic. The kelpie was trying to glamour us with faerie magic. But like I said before, werewolves are resistant to ambient magic. It would take more than the kelpie's natural powers of persuasion to get me to hand over Jax, let it drag him into the dark, icy depths of the river.

  With a snort and a sneeze, my new mate came to with a sharp jerk of his massive, muscular body. In an instant, he was on his feet, hackles raised and teeth bared. I followed him up—and so did the kelpie, standing there on legs just this side of too long for a horse. If I looked askance, the faerie didn't look any different from the placid, grass eating animals I was used to. But straight on? Not even a human being would mistake the kelpie for an herbivore.

  This … this was clearly a predator.

  'Kelpie?' Jax asked me, and I was surprised that he recognized it, too. Most werewolves were completely ignorant when it came to the various types of fae. But I guess he'd been groomed from birth to be a leader, just as I was. Somebody in his pack must've been to Faerie because kelpie, they definitely did not cross the Veil.

  “What's the matter?” the fae asked innocently, standing there on spindly legs and flicking its slimy green tail. “You don't want to take a swim with your friends? The water's nice and warm, I promise.”

  The pungent scent of rot plumed in the air with each word, tainting a landscape already riddled with unfamiliar smells. It was almost distracting enough to make me miss the hint in its words.

  Friends. Not friend. It wasn't just referring to Jax.

  My heart leapt into my throat as I heard the sound of splashing in the distance.

  “Jaxson,” I said, those two syllables harsh and sudden, exploding from my lips at the same moment I took off running. The sound of paws and hooves scrambling across the rocky shore followed me all the way to the edge of the water, but I had to put some faith into Jax and hope like hell he had my back.

  Mourning the loss of my favorite hoodie (growing up, most werewolves learn the hard way not to devote much love or money to clothing), I shifted mid-leap, diving into the rough waters of the river and hoping I wasn't already too late.

  When it came to the fae, each individual species seemed to be notorious for something. You know how in the feline world, cheetahs are known for their speed, lions for their manes, and tigers for their stripes? Well, faeries are kind of like that only … not. See, instead of being famous for markings or mating habits, how high they can jump or how fast they can run, most fae gain notoriety for how they kill.

  Kelpie, for example, lure their prey into the water with magic, often convincing them to climb on their backs for a little ride. Once they're submerged, they hold their victims under until they breathe their last, watery breaths.

  And then they eat them, wet and raw and still warm.

  'Where are you?' I called out, using wolfspeak to fling my voice far and wide. At this point, I wasn't sure who I was looking for, only that one of the males I'd promised to protect was in this goddamn river, this icy, dark, awful river.

  I fought against the current as best I could. My wolf form was definitely better at navigating the rough waters than my human form, but I was still a creature of the earth and it was slow going. Besides that, I could barely see through the frosty rapids, my body slamming into rocks as I swam in the direction of the frantic splashing.

  'If you can hear me, I need a fucking answer!' I sent out in a frantic wave, my mind conjuring images of Nic or Silas, flailing beneath the sharp hooves of a kelpie, fighting for just one more breath.

  'We're on the opposite shore,' Nic sent back, sounding groggy and disoriented. He'd probably just woken up. 'I can see Jax and I can see you,' he said with a sudden sharp bite to his voice. 'Zara, get out of the water!'

  'I'm going under,' another voice said just a split second later, a flash of fear and pain cutting straight through me. All of a sudden, I could feel the tight hot ache of burning lungs, the rush of cold water over broken skin, the growing intensity of a life and death struggle.

  Che Nocturne was in serious trouble.

  'I'm coming!' I called out, hoping like hell that it wasn't already too late for the Alpha Son of Pack Violet Shadow. I could taste his fear on the back of my tongue, rancid and bitter, tainted with surprise. Che must've either fallen in the river or been dragged into the water while he was still passed out. What a way to wake up.

  “Zara!” Montgomery Graves called out from the shore. He had his iron sword clutched in one hand, the other resting on the curve of his belt, fingers teasing the hilt of a matching knife. His black trench coat billowed around him in the breeze.

  As I continued swimming toward the flickering beacon of Che's fear, Montgomery waded into the river and tried his best to follow along in the waist-deep water along the edge of the shore. The way his green eyes scanned the horizon did not bode well for Che. If Monty couldn't see him from where he was standing, then Che was already underwater.

  'Che, can you hear me?' I asked, trying not to panic, knowing that I was going to anyway.

  'Hear you …' he replied, and even though he was speaking inside my head, the words were hard to hear. Che was fading and fast. If I didn't get to him in the next thirty seconds, I'd have six alpha males to choose from at the end of the Pairing instead of seven.

  I shifted in the water and
used a nearby rock to push myself under.

  It was so goddamn dark down there that had I been human, I'd have been completely blind. Even as a 'were', I was having trouble seeing. The dark current rushed against my face, chilling me to the bone. It'd been so long since I'd actually felt cold that the sensation was a bit of a shock. I guess it was true what I'd said—werewolves are nearly impervious to cold. Nearly. As in, an icy river in Faerie will still freeze our supernatural asses off.

  Che was a blur in the darkness, part of this thrashing tangle of color about ten feet in front of me. The kelpie was wrapped around him like a snake, its spine twisted in a way that was about as far from a horse as one could get. Looking at it down there, wrapped in the arms of its watery domain, I wondered how I'd even made the comparison to begin with. It hardly looked equine like that, its mouth clamped onto my mate's shoulder, red blood blooming in the water around them.

  A macabre dance of life and death waltzed through the swirling currents, just two dancers spinning across a liquid floor, destined for a watery grave.

  I kicked off the submerged corpse of a long dead tree and shifted mid-dash, slamming into the kelpie's side with all the power of a werewolf. Its teeth dislodged from Che's shoulder, leaving him floating on his back in the rapids like a doll. As soon as he was separated from the kelpie's grip, Che went spinning through the blackness and slammed into a partially submerged rock.

  I stopped fighting the current, hoping it would take me with him. Instead, I felt an awful scraping along my spine.

  Despite what the first kelpie had told me, those blunt teeth of theirs really could do some damage. The pain was exquisite, a deep burning sensation that cut through the cold of the water. Before I could even think to react, I was being whipped against the force of the current and thrown to the mucky bottom of the river.

  'Somebody grab Che!' was all I managed to get out before the kelpie was crushing me into the mud with the force of a freight train. It was as strong as any vampire, as any werewolf, and I was in its domain. Down here, this faerie clearly had the advantage.

  I snapped my jaws at its flank and managed to sink my teeth in, tasting the metallic sharpness of blood as the kelpie screamed, its voice echoing strangely underwater, bubbles escaping its too wide mouth. It lunged at me then, grabbed me around the throat and clamped down hard enough to cut off my air supply. Fortunately—or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it—I was already at that point where I was so desperate for air, I'd been about to suck in two huge lungfuls of water. While the kelpie's bite hurt, it also gave me the smallest reprieve against drowning.

  'Zara, where are you?' It was Silas this time, calling my name, a frantic flair in his words ricocheting through his pack connection. He was worried, desperate, pacing the bank just above me. But the kelpie and I, we were so deep now that it was doubtful that Silas could see us—wolf eyes or no.

  Using the same technique I'd tried with Nikolina in Coyote Creek, I shifted into human form.

  The sudden change of shape dislodged the kelpie enough that I was able to slip out from underneath it, letting the current rip me away and toss me in Che's direction.

  But holy shit.

  As I was flung back from the violent force of the water, I could see the kelpie spin, still as graceful as a dancer in the midst of a ball. It turned and came right at me, rocketing through bubbles and the foamy gurgles of white rapids.

  My body slammed into Che's a split second before the kelpie's slammed into mine.

  An explosion rocked the water, throwing the faerie, me, and the Alpha Son up and out of the river. We landed on the bank in a wild tangle of limbs and blood.

  “Heads down!” Montgomery called out, just an instant before I dropped my head and felt the cool brush of air against my wet scalp. Gripping the iron sword in both hands, Monty swung it in a wide arc and severed the kelpie's head right from its body.

  Blood sprayed everywhere, violent crimson bursts spurting over my naked, wet form, drenching me in hot copper liquid. Meanwhile, my body had ideas of its own, my lungs and stomach muscles contracting painfully as I coughed up water and felt around desperately for Che.

  The kelpie's legs continued to kick, nailing me in the arm, the leg, its body jumping with electrical impulses that transcended its mortal death. Jax appeared a few seconds later, white fur bloody, tongue lolling, and grabbed a mouthful of the kelpie's flesh, dragging its corpse down the beach to give Che and me some space.

  “Wake up,” I whispered, red hair plastered against my face. I was shaking, actually shaking from the cold, as I touched a hand to the side of Che's pale cheek. Water bubbled up past my lips as I continued to cough it up, desperately trying to summon some of that skittish wild magic to heal my mate. “Come on, Che,” I breathed as Montgomery and Anubis knelt down on the opposite side of his body.

  “I know CPR,” Monty said, very matter-of-fact, already shrugging himself out of the trench coat.

  “If someone …” Che whispered roughly, rolling onto his side and throwing up a massive amount of water. He shoved his arm against his mouth and took several deep, shaky breaths. “If someone's going to put their mouth against mine, I'd prefer it was Zara's.”

  I smiled tightly, sniffling and pushing heavy strands of dark red hair back from my face. Nic was behind and to the left of me (as usual) while Jax stood guard near the riverbank with Tidus and Silas. In the distance, I heard an echoing scream that was half-human, half-horse. Another kelpie.

  I shivered and then stiffened up as I felt the pain in my back.

  “It's bad, Zara,” Nic whispered from behind me, but I didn't care. We were all alive, and I would heal.

  “Are you alright?” I asked after Che had thrown up a few more times, finally pushing himself into a sitting position and using his wet t-shirt to clean his mouth off.

  “I'm fine,” he said, his voice like liquid smoke. But even with the violet eyes, the dark hair, the rippling muscles underneath the clinging wetness of his shirt, he didn't look imposing. No, he looked scared. “What the hell was that thing?”

  “Kelpie,” I said, pursing my lips and wondering what the fuck the Unseelie Queen was thinking, setting us up to take our first steps in Faerie on the edge of an infested riverbank. “It's a type of fae that drowns its prey before it eats it.”

  “Oh?” Che said, voice still scratchy and weak from his near drowning. He lifted his head and gave me a look dripping with sarcasm. “Is that all? Just another creature that chows down on wolves? Well, shit, and here I was thinking we'd stumbled into something truly grotesque.”

  'Everything has a right to eat,' Jax said, limping over to stand next to Nic. With a lupine groan, he flopped down and put his large head in my lap. 'Please tell me you have a little more of that healing magic up your sleeve?'

  “I guess we'll find out,” I said as I laid my hands on his neck and felt the deep, bloody gouges left by the first kelpie's mouth. My fingers dug into the wet, sticky fur and an instant later, I felt it, that cool energy leaking from my hand into Jax's throat. His skin closed up beneath my fingertips, sealed together and smoothed out until the only evidence left of his wound was the blood clotting his coat.

  I breathed out a deep sigh of relief.

  Without this strange, hidden magic of ours … Che and I, we'd be dead.

  “That explosion,” I started, looking up and meeting Che's purple eyes. “More magic.”

  “More magic,” he agreed, pausing and then shakily getting to his knees.

  Before I could figure out what he was doing, Che was tugging his soggy wet shirt over his head and pulling me into his lap. As soon as the aching mess of my back made contact with his chest, the pain receded like an outgoing tide and my breath caught, not just from the damp smell of decaying leaves and moist earth but from the hot touch of Che's body. Being pressed against him like this, it made me remember that just yesterday, I was lying naked beneath him in the forest.

  “I was wondering what you were doing out her
e,” a voice said from my left, snapping me out of my thoughts. I scrambled to my feet just in time to come face-to-face with the sloe-eyed faerie queen.

  She was standing barefoot on the slippery rocks, looking perplexed at the headless kelpie.

  Today's body of choice was tall and thin with skin like crushed diamonds and long dark hair, as black and limitless as the eerie depths of the kelpies' eyes. It wasn't black the way a raven's feathers are dark, the way a cat's coat ripples like the night. It was just this void, this tumble of lightless strands that coiled on the ground like shadows.

  Since the sidhe are wingless faeries, the queen had dressed herself in a loose white gown with flimsy gray wings made of wire and cloth attached to the back. Torn strands of ashy gray fabric drifted in the breeze like ghosts.

  “What the fuck is your problem?” I snarled, naked and wet and covered in faerie blood. I must've been a sight to see because for a second there, the queen looked a bit taken aback. It didn't last long—within a few seconds, that arrogant mask was fixed firmly back in place. But I'd seen the slip-up and I would not soon forget. “If you wanted to try and kill us, I'm sure there are easier ways.”

  “If I wanted you dead, you would be,” she said, kneeling down and reaching for the severed head. At first, I thought she was going to use her fingers to close the kelpie's eyes. Instead, she plucked them right from its head and tucked them into a pouch hanging off one hip. “This is not where I intended for you to end up.”

  She didn't bother to elaborate or explain what went wrong. Instead, she just stood up, smiled sharply, and wiped smears of blood onto the front of her white dress.

  “If you'll follow me, you can get cleaned up and we can talk business.”

  The Faerie Queen of the Unseelie Court turned on her heel and headed up the gradual slope of the bank. As far as I could tell, we had two choices: follow her … or hang out here and wait for more kelpies to show up.

  “Let's go,” I said, starting up the hill without looking back to see if my mates were following me. I didn't have to see them to know; I could feel it. After the Pairing Ceremony, I could feel each one of them like seven extra heartbeats inside my chest.