by Lisa Daniels
Without knowing if they’d actually made any difference in the war at all.
Chapter Five - Erlandur
He froze as the awful, sonorous noise ripped out of the Black Tower. All around him, his units died, his witches fell, until he had only been reduced to less than three thousand fighting undead, having taken the full brunt of a ravenous horde of Shadows, which seemed incensed to meet the undead, to feel his magic radiating over the battlefield. Holding each of the individual minds was easy. Like an extension of his limbs. He felt every one of their lights gasp out, felt them fall – and he had no idea what was happening to Helena’s army.
He saw them under the Black Tower, fighting desperately against more Shadows, a horrible number of them, including the ones from the tunnels, but there was no sign of the Supreme, icing the battle with her peculiar brand of magic.
Erlandur had held out longer than expected. He found that anyone who fell in battle due to magic, rather than a Shadow’s touch, he could reanimate, and attach them to their army. He’d been doing that with Helena’s army of werewolves, though they’d been confused, and even attacked the blue eyed reanimations, before comprehending the reach of his power.
It still wasn’t enough. And now, something was happening in that Tower.
He floated beside Kell and his undead witch, absently ordering his undead army to ring and try to push through once more to Helena’s army. Echo’s Monster shifted to protect their rear again, lashing out and obliterating dozens of Shadows at a time, but still barely making a dent in the numbers.
He didn’t know what had happened to his sister or Faith and he grimly accepted the possibility they might be dead. If he was animating their bodies now, he had no way of telling if it was them. They were simply empty shells, after all.
Everything they’d done seemed to crumble around them. The numbers of the Shadows proved disheartening, vicious, and prone to fill the human and werewolf members of their armies with despair.
More died. Hundreds of his undead exploded from one devastating attack from a fire caster, before Erlandur made his forces spread out again, and got one of his lightning witches to take out the caster.
It’s over.
The thought weighed on him. It also made him determined to reach Helena’s dying army, to muster up a last form of defense. A last laugh. Some way to spit in their eyes whilst the greatest army the werewolves had ever mustered turned to dust.
Finally, they punched through, making it to the foot of the Black Tower, but not without sustaining dreadful losses.
He couldn’t see his sister. No Faith, either. He spotted with a wave of sadness that he was now animating the werewolf chieftain, Targun, who ripped into the enemy lines with mindless destruction, as if emulating the last emotion the great warrior must have felt before he died.
Kell gasped beside him, her eyes wide and shining. “They did it.” She looked up to the Black Tower, though it was far too high at this range for them to see the top. “I sense it. Whatever was in that tower is gone. They reached the top floor.”
Erlandur closed his eyes. A smile invaded his lips. “Good. I had… I couldn’t reach here for so long. I thought we’d not be able to do it. Helena must have made the choice to go ahead. What a bitch. Stealing all the glory.”
Kell laughed at Erlandur’s stab at humor. “Yes. You could say that.”
“She told me the defenses in that place were likely to kill anyone who were spotted. She wanted me there, to reanimate her if she died without her body being destroyed. She said she absolutely needed to survive – but goes and suicides, anyway.”
He felt more of his fighters die, saw the desperate surge of their combined armies press against the Shadows that outnumbered them at least three to one.
“Maybe they’ll sing songs about us,” Kell whispered. “Maybe…”
Then, Erlandur noticed something peculiar happening. He saw the attacking Shadows just stop and stand listlessly, even as they got mowed down. Others milled about in confusion, as if drunk, and the push of their numbers against the tiny force defending the Black Tower stopped, putting no effort into fighting. Other groups still fought, but a big percentage of them had stopped, before suddenly turning upon the others.
Erlandur stared in astonishment at the fighting, listening to the screams of the Supremes who didn’t understand what was happening.
Their own army had stopped their desperate struggles as well, aside from the few Shadows that made it to the last line of defense.
He then shouted as ice materialized out of the front door of the Black Tower, and Helena came zooming out of the door at a ridiculous speed, her body sliding over the smooth ice.
“Help meeeee!”
The Supreme was arrested mid air by Kell, who was now forced to drop Erlandur and the undead shielder down to handle this.
“There’s more coming!” Helena said. “I hope you have enough energy to grab us all!”
“What?” Kell said, then hastily used her magic on four other people who came whizzing out of the building on the ice slide Helena had created.
Echo had by now reached their group, to greet her mentor. “Are you insane, Helena?”
“It was a good idea at the time!” Helena panted, shoving her way towards them. “But I underestimated just how blasting fast we’d go. Not to mention the stomach churning effect. Awful.” She stood in front of them, hair wild, eyes expanded like stars.
“Hey,” Erlandur said. “I was a little late, sorry.”
“No… no problem.” Helena waved one hand, watching as Kell arrested the reckless descent of several more of the tower expedition.
“Is this your doing?” He pointed at the Shadows who now battled the others, which retreated, along with the baffled Supremes.
“Yes,” Helena replied. “Some of their original controllers died, and I took advantage of that before the others claimed possession. We need to focus on getting out now. Our job’s done. We destroyed the Heart.”
Erlandur sighed. “No more Supremes will be making it to our world?”
“None,” Helena said. “We’ve sealed the way for them for a long time, at least. Creating something like the Heart takes a good few centuries. Their numbers can only dwindle from here.”
“Great!” Kell said, sounding rather irritated, as she seized more high flyers from catapulting themselves into the enemy. “But we still have this massive army to deal with!”
“Yeah… which is why we should back out.”
“You won’t bargain with the remaining Supremes, Helena?” Erlandur asked. He knew this was part of her original plan. To eradicate the caste that hated humans, and try and bend the will of the rest to her cause. She’d end up ruling the Fractured City, seeking an alliance with the humans, rather than subjecting her people to endless war.
A truce.
That was the aim. But only after destroying the way home for them forever, preventing more from invading their planet. Only after she subjected as many mindless under her control, by targeting the Supremes with the largest numbers.
“Retreat!” Helena roared. “We’ve done what we came here for! Let’s get as many survivors to safety as we can!”
The Shadows she controlled now cut a path of retreat for them, pushing back the tide, allowing the weary werewolves to gather together, allow the witches to clamber on them, and go. Kell arrested the last two members of the expedition, the fire witch and the overprotective wolf clinging onto her with his teeth by the scruff of her neck – Erlandur noticed only sixteen of them had made it back.
They should have felt victorious, but the heaviness stamped upon his heart as the knowledge of the sacrifice of everyone who’d chosen to follow him sank in.
He couldn’t tell the numbers from here, but their army, once hovering at around seventy thousand or so troops, now numbered less than six thousand. The Shadows had been at just over double that number, which didn’t include the ones in the tunnels, which almost tripled it.
They
ran for the rest of their lives, and all Erlandur wanted to do was sleep.
Chapter Six – Two Months Later – Geraline
Geraline groaned as she rolled to her side. Back in the Spine encampment, most of their remaining army had taken the time to lick their wounds, mourn their dead, and speculate about the future.
She knew that white haired Supreme, Helena, was in the process of trying to negotiate with the more moderate members of Shadow society, and assassinating extremists.
She also knew that although the war still wasn’t over, they had inflicted tremendous damage upon the Fractured City. They had turned an impossible situation and a pervading threat into something containable. The only way the Shadows could bolster their numbers was through creating inferior mindless, rather than obtaining the intelligent Supremes, who were capable of possessing magical bodies, or making a non-magical body wield power it never formerly held.
The Fractured City lay in chaos, the Shadows assaulted by the humans and werewolves they considered beneath them – but at a cost.
So many died. I just… I wish our victory had been more conclusive. Geraline rolled to her side, coming face to face with the slumbering form of Malek. Her protector. Her saviour. He seemed to be dropping in more and more lately, as they lapped up the aftermath of their campaign in the Fractured City. Rumors persisted of another one perhaps in the works.
Geraline didn’t care. She’d gone face to face with the mouth of evil in that place, and never wanted to see something like that again.
She examined the werewolf, with his delicate curves, those long and slender fingers, the growth of a beard that sprouted over his face, the long, moppish hair that now curled to his neck. Attractive, for sure. Quite heroic, too.
And the whole isolated by his tribe thing held appeal to her. Without any attachments, he was free to roam the world without worrying about family. Instead, he chose to stick around Geraline, citing that she “wasn’t too bad looking.”
Geraline assumed that was a compliment.
Her best friend, Faith, avoided company for the most part, hanging around Erlandur, glum with the discovery and loss of her grandmother. Yarrow stuck with Raine, trying to work on something that inhibited the voice chanting inside her mind.
And Geraline, well. Geraline didn’t feel like doing anything. Twenty something thousand or so werewolves left for the Fractured City. Less than four thousand made it back in the end, as despite Helena’s newly controlled minions, Shadows were still able to nip at their numbers during the mass retreat.
Her heart was in turmoil, unsure what to think or feel. Malek’s company helped dull some of the thoughts and soften the emotions, but it still wasn’t enough to wipe out the fact that they suffered great loss.
“I can feel you staring at me,” Malek said, his yellow eyes fluttering open to fix on her face. “The quality of the air seems to change. Like you’re stabbing needles into my eyes.”
“Oh.” She shrugged, plastering on a smile. “Only because I could happily look at you forever like this. You’re not ‘bad looking,’” she said, imitating his phrasing for her.
“Sure.” Malek stretched, before latching his arms around her and drawing their bodies close. “So, what’s with the worry? Not thinking about what happened in the city again, are you?”
“I am,” Geraline admitted, feeling a strange urge to cry, though she suppressed it as best as able. Though she’d destroyed the Heart with her own magic, though she often envisioned the melting of that artefact in the back of her mind, she still didn’t hail it as the astounding victory Helena claimed. “I just… I don’t understand, I suppose, why some people are treating it as a success when it feels like it cost everything. And the situation in the Fractured City is still there. We’re outnumbered. There’s still thousands of those Supremes. All we did was destroy some stupid artefact. That was the great plan.” Geraline huffed into Malek’s neck, taking comfort in the strong, manly scent of him, and the powerful muscles wrapped around her body.
“You’re just unhappy we weren’t able to wipe them all out in one sitting,” Malek pointed out, making Geraline flush. “So you don’t see what we’ve actually done. Their numbers are no longer infinite. Helena controls a small faction of the City now, with the intent to eventually control the rest of it. We’ve sent word to the Lunar Waste tribes and inns and sentry posts along the northern borders about the tunnel. We have the knowledge to pass along to every single werewolf clan, and every single southern clan on how to beat them. Even if you’re not a werewolf. So, I’d say it’s a victory.”
“Most southern people don’t even know werewolves exist,” Geraline said. “They never leave their comfy and sunny towns. They just run trembling under their beds at the mere mention of a Shadow.”
“We can change all that,” Malek said. “I’ve learned so much since joining this campaign. Before, all I knew about the Shadows was that they were nasty and killed people, and there were rumors that they came from a city in the north over the mountains. Now look at us. Professionals in understanding our foes. When you know where your enemy comes from, you control the situation better. Don’t you see, Geraline? It’s brilliant.”
When he put it like that, Geraline admitted to herself, it did sound pretty convincing. Cheered up slightly, she rewarded Malek with a kiss, soft and pliable on his lips, and it quickly heated up into something else. Emotions sizzled between them, trapped by the excitement they shared together. Malek, buoyed by his sense of triumph, ramped up the kiss, devouring her lips, heart and soul, hands gripping her tight, transmitting his heat onto her skin.
So easy, Geraline thought, to forget everything like this. To feel we succeeded. Also, to feel pleasure by the various sexual urges they felt, to have herself scrutinized by him and appreciated physically. To learn more about him, his family, his home, his hopes and ideals.
To know they survived, and that any children they might have would be brought into a better world.
The scar upon her thigh throbbed slightly as she tensed her legs, allowing him to fall onto her, his hips between them. She didn’t want soft and slow, she wanted hard and fast, and frantically wrestled him out of his pants, to allow his erection space to breathe, before he grabbed at her underwear and yanked it off with a ripping noise.
He bit her neck before pushing his erection inside her, slipping through the growing arousal down there, rough and delicious with her. Geraline moaned her delight, her brownish red hair splayed out on the pillow beneath her, eyes jerking backwards, fingers balling into claws as she clutched at his arms. She left scratch marks there, and he grunted, closing his eyes for a moment, delving into her with passion. Both of them had been lonely, one way or another. Both of them needed something like this.
Two months into a relationship with him, and she still kicked herself every day for feeling like it was still their first week, and they hadn’t been together for that long at all.
Feeling him here with her came as a welcome relief. Instead of death and destruction, she focused on love, lust and the physical effort of their bodies entwining together. Geraline liked being bound to someone, able to drink in every asset of them, from the corded muscles of Malek’s body, to the eyes that hazed in pleasure above her.
When they came together, the bedsheets thoroughly rumpled between them, the sweat pouring off their bodies, and the luscious glow of her orgasm stroking every nerve ending, Geraline sighed, closing her eyes and resting her face on Malek’s arm.
“Don’t know about you,” Malek whispered into her ear, kissing her hairline, “but I’m glad we survived. And I’m glad we both chose to risk our lives to fight the Shadows in the first place. It says a lot about you.”
Geraline frowned. Admittedly, it was Faith’s determination more than anything that spurred her to leave Ghost Lake and potentially sacrifice herself for a greater cause. But she wanted Malek to maintain that heroic image of her, so said nothing.
When they stepped outside about an hour later,
the cold gleam of late night greeted them.
The mountains provided a misted backdrop to the Spine clan’s fort, and sentries paced the walls. They hadn’t experienced Shadow attacks for over a month. Geraline spotted Erlandur, Alyssa and Faith talking together, huddled by one of the Eternal Flames Geraline had created.
Strolling beside Malek, Geraline contemplated what lay next for them. The future was far from defined. They still had a long way to go, and had suffered awful losses.
They’d also potentially saved the world. That meant something, Geraline supposed.
Together, bit by bit, they would rebuild what had been lost. Show the south that the Shadow threat was no longer so threatening. Recruit more to their cause, and help Helena seize control of the entire Fractured City.
And live.
Geraline breathed in deep, taking lungfuls of crisp, chilled air.
Then, with a smile, she held Malek’s hand, determined to do everything they could to make the future they fought for happen – and to have the Lunar Wastes experience peace for the first time in centuries.
Thanks to people like them, it was possible.
The End
Shifters of the Bulgarian Bloodline
Complete Set-Books 1-7
Lubanov. Spirova. Armanev and Gregorovitch. The four noble werewolf families. Names that carry weight. To bear such a name is to be the pinnacle of their hidden world. Their stories interweave with one another. It starts when Tia, a normal human female, is almost chosen as a werewolf’s dinner, but ends up entwining her fate with one of the last survivors of the Lubanov clan. It goes to Arina, a child caught between two worlds, who has seen the savagery of the werewolves first hand, but also longs in her heart for the one who saved her. She’s also a cop, living it up in North Dakota. Others make themselves known, as the small dynamics of the werewolf world unfurl…