Dawning

by Vivi Anna

  The scent of blood was heavy in the air and filled his nose like smoke.

  He found her body, beaten and broken, only ten feet from the pool. She was on her back, staring lifelessly at the rock ceiling, her throat slit from gill to gill. Shaking with anger and grief, Dashrael crouched next to her, pulling her limp body onto his lap.

  His throat constricted with emotion. A dull empty ache gnawed at his body, at his soul. His mate was gone. Taken from him. Murdered by a callous, soulless high fae who had no idea what love and loss truly felt like.

  But Dashrael would teach him the true meaning of loss. A lesson he’d never forget even as Dashrael choked the life from his gaunt body.

  He stroked her face, tucked back a strand of green hair behind her ear. Gently, he set Sunarael’s body back onto the rock floor. Bending over, he pressed his lips to her cold forehead. He would come back to bury her properly, after he had his retribution.

  He stood as a wail of grief tore from his throat. He dug his fingers into the palms of his hands then hurled himself back into the pool.

  Emerging a mile away from the tide pool in the middle of the courtyard of Nightfall castle, Dashrael shook once like a wet dog, then stormed his way into the gilded halls. There were servants bustling about, but they quickly got out of his way, eyes wide, mouths gaping. He imagined they could see the fury in his pale almost opaque eyes.

  There were two guards at the chancellor’s door. They tensed when they saw Dashrael coming. One put his hand up to ward him away. “Do not come any closer, Lord Dashrael. We have orders to detain you.”

  “You could try,” he grunted as he quickly grabbed the guard’s hand, twisted it, and broke his arm in an instant.

  Howling in pain, the guard dropped to the floor as the second guard drew his dagger. Dashrael had the blade buried in the second guard’s throat within moments. Once he dropped to the floor, Dashrael kicked open the heavy doors. He hoped to find the chancellor inside cowering like the weakling Dashrael knew him to be.

  But it wasn’t O’runa standing in the opulent room waiting for him, it was the overseer.

  “Lord Wolfstriker?” Surprised, Dashrael moved cautiously into the room to see the chancellor dead at the overseer’s feet. He blinked in shock unsure of what to do next. “I don’t understand.”

  Lord Wolfstriker nudged the chancellor’s dead body with his foot. “O’runa acted prematurely when he ordered the murder of your mate. I thought I would solve this problem myself.”

  Dashrael inched closer to the overseer, confusion making his head swim. He’d come for revenge, anger and pain still swirling like a typhoon inside him, but now he had no outlet.

  “I couldn’t let you kill him, you see.” The overseer remarked as if privy to Dashrael’s thoughts. He gestured to the sofa for him to sit.

  His knees ineffectual, the merman took the offer and slumped down onto the velvet lined seat, too dubious to do anything else.

  “If you’d murdered poor O’runa I would have to have you jailed or worse executed. Then you couldn’t take his place.”

  Dashrael’s head came up. “Take his place?”

  “Yes, as chancellor.”

  He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “But I didn’t kill your daughter, I failed my mission.”

  Lord Wolfstriker’s eyebrow rose. “Did you now? I think not, Dashrael.”

  His breath caught in his throat. “But my mission, my orders came from you.”

  The overseer smirked. “Do you really think I would order my only daughter’s assassination? I love A’lona. She is a strong, fierce woman, and one day would make a powerful overseer. Sure, I may not agree with some of her choices as of late, but why would I kill her?”

  “But she carries a hybrid child.”

  The overseer nodded, his look one of sadness. “I know this. And one day it will have to be dealt with. But I would never want to harm my daughter.” He pinned Dashrael with his intense gaze. “You believe this, don’t you, Dashrael?”

  Dashrael nodded, although he wasn’t one hundred percent sure of the overseer’s truth. The high fae were notorious liars and manipulators. And he remembered what kind of father Lord Wolfstriker had been to A’lona. A loving attentive father did not come to mind.

  The overseer came behind the sofa and set his hand on top of Dashrael’s head. “I have always liked you, Dashrael, ever since you were a child running around in the courtyard of my castle with my daughter. I watched you grow into a great man, a powerful fae. A strong, respected man with noble aspirations.”

  Despite the frailness of the overseer’s hand, Dashrael could feel the power simmering inside. He’d seen that power in action, countless times. Lord Wolfstriker was not a man to be underestimated. A person didn’t rule for a millennia and not know how to lie and manipulate and charm his way out of situations.

  “Will you be my chancellor, Lord Dashrael? Will you be my strong right hand?”

  Although the pain of losing Sunarael still writhed inside, Dashrael couldn’t deny his desire for power. Hadn’t this been exactly what he’d always wanted? To be close to the overseer? To be honoured and respected by the high fae. To show everyone that just because he was born with gills and not wings, that he was still a power to be reckoned with. He could have that and more if he let go of his need for retribution. O’runa, who’d ordered Sunarael’s death, was dead. Wasn’t that what he wanted, what he’d come here for? So, what if it wasn’t by his hand. The results were still the same.

  Taking in a deep breath, Dashrael bowed his head under the weight of the overseer’s hand. “Yes, I will be your right hand. I accept the position of chancellor.”

  “Excellent.” The overseer dropped his hand and took a distancing step away. He made his way toward the doors. “We will have the proper ceremony this evening. Your people will be very proud of you.”

  Dashrael stood and bowed. “I thank you Lord Wolfstriker for this honour.”

  The overseer waved his hand in the air. “You will have many years to thank me, Lord Dashrael.” He smiled and Dashrael’s gut churned at the cruel twist of his lips. “And when the time comes to do the hard thing, I know I will be able to count on you to see it through.”

  With that parting, the overseer swept out of the room, his robes trailing behind him like a dark storm, leaving Dashrael with a dead body to dispose of and a dead soul to grieve.

  A’lona had been right. A new age had dawned. And Dashrael was leading the charge.

  Please turn the page for the exciting first three chapters of GLIMMER, a Nina Decker Novel

  Chapter One

  The doors from the ambulance bay burst open and two EMTs rolled in a stretcher, a woman badly bleeding lay strapped to the gurney.

  I was there waiting for them, immediately checking vitals. “What have we got?”

  “Werewolf attack,” one of the EMTs announced, “She was found near the water wall in Stanley Park.”

  I gaped at him. “Are you sure it was a werewolf attack”

  We rolled the patient down the corridor toward the trauma rooms. Only one was available as we’d just received two criticals from a motor vehicle accident.

  Other nurses and doctors brushed past us, shouting out orders to each other. Patients in wheelchairs and gurneys lined the walls waiting for their turn at treatment. The night was a busy one. Must’ve been a full moon or something.

  “Gut ripped open. Claw marks on both arms and legs. Don’t know of anything else that could do that.”

  I didn’t either, at least not in the city. But I hated that since the werewolves came out of the closet, so to speak, a couple of years ago, there had been a tendency to point a finger any time someone was apparently attacked by an animal. Working as a RN for the past six years in the downtown Vancouver hospital emergency, I’d seen a lot of awful and strange stuff. This was the first werewolf attack I’d encountered. If it truly was one.

  We wheeled her into the only empty trauma room.

  “On three,�
� I said, as we rolled her up to the bed to transfer her over from their gurney. “One, two, three.” The team picked her up and set her onto the table.

  Once I had control, the two EMTs left, taking their stretcher probably to head off to another call.

  They had already inserted an IV in her arm so I changed the fluid bag and hooked her up to the monitors. Her blood pressure was low, and her heart rate erratic. By the looks of her wounds, and the blood soaking through the gauze holding her stomach together, she was in really bad shape.

  I checked her arms and saw long jagged rivets in her flesh. The marks did indeed look like claw marks. Her legs looked the same. I peeled back the blood-soaked gauze a bit to see how bad the primary wound was. I saw a mass of red and purple and smelled the putrid stench of open bowels, her intestines had been shredded. Oh damn. My gut churned over in response. I slapped two more abdominal gauze pads on her belly, adding more pressure.

  “Hey, can I get a hand in here?” I yelled. The doc was on her way, but she needed to hurry her ass up.

  Another nurse, Heather, burst through the door, rushing to help. She came up to the side of the bed and helped me press on the bleeding wound.

  The doctor rolled in, her face stoic, her manner all business. She snapped on some latex gloves and approached the gurney. The patient was lucky tonight was Dr. Diana Cole’s night on rotation. She was the best trauma specialist on staff.

  “Nina, tell me something,” she said as she prepared to peek under the bloody dressing.

  “BP is dropping. Eighty over fifty. Heart rate is erratic. Blood ox level is ninety and on its way down.”

  Diana peeled back the bandages.

  For the first time in six years of working emergency, I wanted to puke. The woman’s gut had been torn open, not cut like with a knife; I’d seen that plenty, but ripped and torn every which way with something jagged. Looking at the extent of the injury, I knew she didn’t have a chance.

  I looked up into Diana’s face and saw the same grim look in her eyes.

  “We need bags of O neg, stat. Let’s get some blood back into her.”

  Heather and I stuck IVs in her other hand and in her feet to get in the blood, but it was too late. Diana attempted to stitch up her insides, but her blood pressure dropped hard. We were losing her. The machines beeped like crazy, Diana worked on the woman’s heart but her efforts weren’t enough. The woman flatlined with a long drawn out beep which never failed to make my throat tighten with emotion. We got out the paddles and zapped her several times, but she never even regained consciousness, thank goodness.

  Diana looked at her watch. “I’m calling it at eleven twenty p.m.”

  Heather wrote it down on the patient’s chart.

  I turned and pressed the off button on the machine, then looked back to Diana.

  She nodded to me, then peeling off her gloves, she left the trauma room.

  I nodded to the other nurses. “Clean her up.” Then stripping off my own gloves, I followed the doctor.

  I wanted to catch up with her and get her take on the wounds, but before I could, I was ambushed by two police officers. Unfortunately, I knew them both. Officers Coates and Stettler of the Supernatural Event Monitoring Agency—SEMA. Or as I liked to call them Tweedle Dum and Tweedle if-you-grab-my-ass-one-more-time-I’m-going-to-snap-your-wrist.

  The agency had been formed by the Canadian government in response to the werewolves declaring themselves and coming out into the open. But from what I’d seen of them, they were all just a bunch of prejudiced bastards, just waiting to shoot a silver bullet into someone thick and hairy.

  “We heard there’s a werewolf attack vic in there,” Officer Coates said.

  “Can we talk to her?” Stettler asked.

  “She’s dead so, no, I don’t think so.”

  Stettler cursed. “We were hoping for an eye witness. Catch one of these bastards red handed or red clawed.” He made a claw shape with his fingers and swiped them at me.

  If he had come any closer to my face, I would’ve grabbed his hand and twisted it off.

  “What about all those coyote attacks I’ve been hearing about? Maybe it was a coyote.”

  “I knew it was just a matter of time before one of them did something like this. They should all be locked up in a zoo if you ask me,” Coates said.

  He conveniently ignored my comment. “Well, thank the Lord, no one is asking you, asshole.” I brushed past him.

  “What’s up your ass, Decker?” Stettler smirked.

  I didn’t dignify that with an answer and continued to make my way down the corridor away from the trauma room and from ignorant jerks. But I didn’t get far before I heard Coates remark.

  “Maybe she’s got the hots for that head wolf guy, Saint Morgan. Even my sister thinks he’s good looking.”

  “That’s just sick. Like bestiality.”

  I pushed through the door to the nurse’s staff room and blocked out the rest of their conversation. I found my locker and leaned my forehead against the cool metal breathing deep

  I didn’t normally let these things get to me, but I’d been feeling on edge for a while. Ever since werewolves came out, stood up and declared themselves real and here to stay, to be exact. I knew it was just the beginning.

  Most people had no real clue what was out there lurking in the shadows. Lurking inside people. If any of them truly knew what lay in wait inside of me, they’d run the other way. Or turn around and shoot me between the eyes. Except I didn’t think silver would work on me.

  I had a secret. The kind of secret that ruined lives. I would never reveal it because I’d seen how prejudiced people were. How ignorant and cruel they could be. And I valued my job. I liked helping people, and I knew I could lose it all.

  I was, shall we say, a reluctant member of the supernatural community. Half human and half fae, I was just the type of creature that people like Officer Coates and Officer Stettler, and thousands of others in this city, loved to hate, and I wasn’t about to come out of the closet any time soon. I liked my job and my life too much to destroy them with an act of conscience.

  The door to the room opened and I straightened as Diana came in. The heels of her rubber-soled shoes squeaked on the linoleum floor as she approached me.

  “Something you want to talk about?”

  We weren’t friends exactly but we had a sort of symbiotic sympathetic relationship. We were there to lean on, if needed.

  I shook my head and opened my locker, to grab a bottle of Advil as if that had been the reason I came in here in the first place. I opened the top, shook out three and popped them into my mouth dry swallowing them down. The pills weren’t actually Advil but herbs. I didn’t use normal medicines. My metabolism was different and I reacted strangely to human-made medications.

  “You looked like you were about to puke back there. You haven’t been a rookie for years.

  “Caught me by surprise, that’s all.”

  “And the fact that those two imbeciles are imbeciles caught you off guard too?” She lifted one dark bushy eyebrow.

  “No. I just hate hearing all that crap.”

  “We both know if it’s not werewolves they’re hating, it would be Sikhs, or Chinese or whatever race was currently in the news. They are both ignorant rednecks.”

  “I know. I’m just tired and cranky. It’s been a long shift.”

  She glanced at her watch. “Almost over, isn’t it?”

  I nodded.

  “Then go home. You’ve been looking really pale lately.”

  I was surprised she hadn’t realized by now that my skin was always this pale.

  She eyed me carefully. “Are you getting enough iron?”

  I couldn’t tell her that I was allergic to iron in a way, so I just nodded complacently.

  “All right. Good night, then.” She turned to go.

  “Night.”

  She paused with her hand on the door. “Hey, do you know if we have to watch this woman that died?”

>   “Watch her for what?”

  “I don’t know, to see if she turns all hairy.”

  I shook my head. Ignorance abounded. “I don’t think that’s how it works. As far as I’ve heard, werewolves are born not made.”

  “Right.” She nodded then pushed through the door and left me blissfully alone.

  I took off my stethoscope, hung it up in my locker then grabbed my jacket, my bag and my bike helmet. Time to go home. I needed the rest.

  After nodding my goodbyes to some of the staff, I went out the front doors, made my way across the small parking lot to the street where I parked my motorcycle. Fall was fast approaching, making it almost too cool to ride my bike, especially at midnight. The thought of being inside two tons of metal for hours at a time nearly brought tears to my eyes. I hated driving in vehicles and had the worst case of car sickness. Same thing with airplanes. Hated them. Couldn’t go in one.

  Iron had a sickening effect on the fae. Although I wasn’t full blooded, I still felt the ions of the metal seeping into my skin through my pores and destabilizing my immune system. I wasn’t absolutely positive why this happened. Something to do with the Bronze Age and the Iron Age. During the Bronze Age, the fae lived out in the open, free to live their lives as they’d been doing for centuries. But when the Iron Age came, so did prejudice and persecution. Many fae died by tortuous hands. Since then iron had become like a disease and the once mental aversion became a physical one hereditarily passed down through the generations.

  Despite the story being true or not, the effects were the same. Iron didn’t sit well with anyone with fae blood. Although I wasn’t full-blooded, I still belonged to that small group of unfortunates. Lucky me.

  But a girl had to get around, so I rode a motorcycle, a really cool one at that—candy apple red and white painted tank and fenders, the rest in shiny chrome. I wore a matching helmet and with my white leather jacket, I was vain enough to think I looked pretty cool. To me, there was nothing like having the wind in my face and hair. I likened it to flying. Not that I truly knew what that felt like. Enough to know that if I could do it, I knew I’d never want to do anything else.