Uniquely Unwelcome (The Shadow World, #1)

by Brandy Nacole

  Ethan’s watching Danika, no doubt worried about her and how she’s handling all this. She just seems too committed and emotionally wrapped up. I sometimes wonder if it’s too much for her. I wonder if I should call the Elders and request they bring her home.

  I haven’t done so because in all honesty we need her. Not just for the traveling perks but for her knowledge. She knows so much more about things. If I didn’t have her here, I don’t know that we would have made it this far.

  “Doesn’t seem like a loving queen at all.” Coy places his hand on my back, rubbing circles again. Right now, it doesn’t comfort me as much as it annoys me.

  “She might not be loving but man, was she hot,” Jared says to no one in particular. He’s perched on a log with a smirk across his face. I roll my eyes, as does everyone else. I wonder if this act is his way of disguising the pain.

  Coy and Ethan look ready to kill Jared as he rambles on about the perfect night that could end with death by the lovely Fae Queen’s hand.

  Danika is still staring off into the distance. I grab her by the arm, pulling her toward the tree line. “I need to speak with you.”

  “What is it, Racquel? Obviously we don’t have time for a friendly chit-chat. The world seems to lie upon our shoulders.” Her hands are shaking as she gestures around the clearing.

  “The world is not on our shoulders. The queen might have threatened us but will she go through with it? Seriously?” I still have my doubts about her killing people at random over something that is out of our control.

  “Seriously!” Danika’s voice rings loud as she shouts. “She will bring death upon anyone who stands in her way until what’s hers is returned. That wasn’t a threat, Racquel, it was a promise.”

  Wonderful. With this new development, I need to be sure Danika’s not on the verge of a break down.

  “I know it’s a lot right now but I need to know you can handle this. You keep having outbursts and snapping at everyone. Are you sure you can keep going?” Funny how a few days ago the roles were reversed, Danika was lecturing me on outbursts, trust, and playing it smart, and now I’m having a similar conversation with her.

  Danika bites down on her lip and averts her eyes. Finally after a few seconds of her silent debate, she looks up with tears gleaming in her eyes. I can tell she’s fighting to stay strong.

  “I want to. I’m just so scared, especially after what happened to Ethan. That could happen again to anyone of us. What’s next, Racquel? Our deaths, and those of all we care about?”

  She has a point, one that I have been mulling over the last couple of days. I’m not going to give up, though. I’m going to continue on, even if death is the next step for me.

  “Danika, you can walk away. Walk away from all this right now. I won’t. I can’t. But you can, no one will look down on you with shame if you do. If I didn’t have so much at stake with this and had another purpose in life, I would probably walk.” I shake my head, realizing I’m getting off track. “It doesn’t matter. You have a choice and you can take it. It’s up to you.”

  She nods her head. Like I’m supposed to know what that means. Is she agreeing with me and is going to go? Or is she nodding in understanding?

  “I’ll stay. We all have to die one day, I might as well go down for a reason.” She takes a deep breath and lets out a long sigh that seems to release some small part of her from her burdens.

  As we head back toward the guys, I keep running over everything the queen said. Her threat, the information she shared, and the warning. The warning has the tightest grip on me. Why would the one I seek bring me the most pain? Is he going to kill me in a dreadfully painful way? Do I know him? Have they tortured me before?

  I don’t say anything about the warning to Danika, nor do I plan on sharing it with anyone. This is for me, a warning that I will soon find a response to. Hopefully.

  We’re almost back by the lake with the others when a question pops into my head that has been bouncing around since I first saw Kaya.

  “So, why is Kaya not like the other Fairies?”

  Danika looks at me puzzled. “What do you mean? She’s a Fairy.”

  “No, I know that. I mean why is she in full human form?”

  Danika shakes her head. The corner of her mouth tipped in a small smile. “Are you sure you went to school?”

  I roll my eyes, deciding not to tell her that my lack of education isn’t just my fault. How was I supposed to learn in isolation with a teacher who just threw books at me and sat in the corner afraid?

  “Will you just answer the question?”

  “Kaya is always like that. Fae do eventually die, but not the queen. Her spirit is fed by those of her court, therefore providing her eternal life. The only way a queen can die is if she has a child. Part of her spirit is placed inside her child when it is born, giving the child the power of the court.”

  “Whoa, whoa, wait a second, how can the queen have a Fae child if all the male Fae are…well…little?” Sex is a pretty natural thing to understand but a little Fae reproducing with a human-sized Fae? Not so natural.

  Danika sighs, shaking her head once more. I know she wants to comment on my lack of education again, but thankfully, she just answers the question. “During the first two weeks of Samhain, all Fae become human size. They are able to frolic with whomever they please. If the queen has come to the decision that her time is completed, she will then chose a male to her liking, and conceive a child.”

  Huh. Well it does seem that every life form has its family drama.

  We reach the boys by the lake. Ethan and Coy gladly turn from Jared, who is still chattering away.

  “Okay guys, we need to decide what we’re doing and fast.” Danika is in control again and ready to get us moving. I’m glad to see it. I do need to fill them in on something I forgot to mention before.

  “I almost forgot. The queen did give me some vital information about our mystery man, and those creatures. She said it is a Vampire who’s in charge. And not that this matters, necessarily, but she called the creatures Chimera.”

  “Wait, did you say it’s a Vampire?” My comments bring Jared out of his perverted fantasy world, finally becoming serious for once. “That’s impossible. Any Vampire with that much power and dominance would be a threat to Aldrick. But he doesn’t seem threatened or annoyed. In fact, I overheard him saying he had no clue who was behind all of this.”

  “Well, apparently he’s in the dark on this one,” I say, pleased that another Vampire has slipped under Aldrick’s radar and could possibly bring him down. It’s quite apparent Aldrick has his own head so far up his own butt that many matters involving the vamps seem to pass his attention easily. I can only hope that Lynna is successful with her plans to usurp him.

  It looks like he’s about to argue with me when Danika verifies that it is possible. “If Cerelia can do all the things we’ve experienced, what makes you think she can’t block him from Aldrick?”

  I look at Jared, raising my brows, waiting for him to protest, but it would seem he’s gone again in another world. Hopefully this one is more of the reality-based sort, instead of frolicking with Fairies.

  He shrugs. “Now that we know what type of Shadow we’re after, does that help in any way?”

  “Other than how to kill him, not really.” Ethan is throwing daggers of anger and accusations at Jared. But Jared doesn’t see them. He’s still staring off at the lake, his face grim. Ethan continues mumbling on about how he figured a leech was behind all this. Apparently I am the only one who hears him. That or everyone’s just letting him rant.

  “Yeah, and that’s if we can get past Cerelia and her magic.” Danika’s voice still carries a tone of dread. I know she doesn’t think we are strong enough to take on Cerelia, and to be honest, neither do I. But we have to try.

  Danika shakes her head, bringing herself out of the depression she was headed into. “Should we keep looking for the shifters or call it quits? Maybe we can take everything we ha
ve plus what the Fae Queen told us and finally put an end to this.”

  That’s when Queen Kaya’s words come back to me. ‘You are looking but you are not seeing.’ I play her words over and over in my head. What am I not seeing? We have searched all over the area and I haven’t seen anything. No little huts, fires, glamours, nothing.

  But maybe that’s what she meant. Instead of looking for one location where they all live, why not search them out in their environment.

  I walk to the edge of the lake. Closing my eyes and taking a deep breath, I center myself. I coach myself into seeing what is plain in sight. Not to look so hard but just to see.

  When I open my eyes, the scenery hasn’t changed. Everything still looks the same.

  But what is different are the animals that I now notice. There’s a small group of grizzly bears at the edge of the lake. One of them lifts his head and looks at me, then looks back down at the lake. Birds are soaring high above us in a circle. There are fish jumping and rolling around the tops of the water. I turn behind me and see the squirrels, rabbits, and even the bugs that I did not notice before.

  Danika cautiously walks up beside me. “What is it?” she softly whispers. Her voice sounds like she’s scared that I hear or see something bad, and is fearing the worst.

  “We have been doing this all wrong. Look around us. They’re everywhere.” Now that I have stopped and looked, I can feel them, a part of me now sensing their energies. If everyone else had stopped and done the same, they probably would have felt it too.

  “I can’t believe we were so stupid,” Danika says as she looks around, sensing the shifters too. Not all of them are shifters, of course. There are still a few natural animals around us, mixed in with the shifters of their kind. I wonder if those animals can tell the difference. And if so, why are they not afraid? Have they become so accustomed to the shifters that they trust them? Or do they not realize?

  “We were in a rush,” Ethan says as he looks around the lake. “You know what they say, you can’t rush knowledge. It takes time and patience.”

  Danika shoulder-bumps him, a small smile playing on her lips as she looks at the ground. It’s nice to see how much they help one another. Lending one another a hand, still able to smile even when there doesn’t seem to be much reason to do so.

  Now that we’ve found the shifters, will they shift from their form to help us? Surely they can sense that we are Shadows just like them. I turn to question Danika about this but come up short, surprised. A man, covered in what looks like a black bear’s hide with little underneath, now stands before us.

  For an older man, he isn’t bad on the eyes. He has smooth black hair that’s short and messy. His hazel eyes are rich as honey. Although he’s a little rough around the edges, there is a gentleness about him that lets others know he’s harmless.

  “Hello, little hunter. I believe you have been looking for me.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Sitting here looking across the lake, I feel lost. Where do I go from here? I had let myself build up to this moment. Hoping, I guess, that all the answers would fall into place once we found the shifters. But now I know how stupid that was. We’re not any closer to finding Addie than we were at the start.

  After talking to Casper, the leader of the shifters, I’m dumbfounded. Casper—whose name is fitting considering he appeared out of nowhere like a ghost and then disappeared the same way—told me everything he knew and what he thought about it.

  He knew, unlike the others, not to be deceived into believing someone had a personal vendetta against his people. He told Danika where all the missing shifters were taken, and that he had shifters all around the world watching, trying to find anything that might lead them to their family. They have been unsuccessful so far. That was all the information he had.

  After giving Danika everything and telling us he wished us well on our journey, Casper pulled me aside. He went on to explain how extraordinary I am, not because of the mixture within my blood (like the others had said), but because of my spiritual familiar.

  He explained that the eagle was a rare gift that many desired but were never granted. It takes a special person with the heart of a warrior, the compassion and understanding of a human, and a spirit that can’t be bound, to be given the honor of an eagle-form.

  I barely listened to him as he explained how special I was and what abilities I was capable of. I was too focused on the devastation I felt emotionally—that I still feel. I feel like a failure, not some soaring warrior. How will we ever find the missing? We could ask every creature hiding under every rock what they know and still come up empty-handed.

  When Casper disappeared, I collapsed where I stood. No one came over to me to offer comfort or words of encouragement. We all feel the same. How can we lend each other false hope, when we have none to offer ourselves?

  I look around at the others, wishing I could do something to boost their spirits so we could get on the move again. Coy is sitting on a log looking helplessly at the ground. He’s kicking rocks around, like it’s the earth’s fault this is happening. Jared is standing next to the lake, tossing rocks, although he’s throwing them with so much force they are propelled down into the lake instead of skimming across the smooth surface.

  I glance at Danika, who’s pacing with worry. I know she is probably taking this harder than the others. She feels responsible for all of us as well as those we are looking for. No one had asked her to take that responsibility, but she took it nonetheless, just like I have. Ethan’s trying to console her but having no luck. She shakes his hands away as she continues to pace.

  I return my gaze to the lake, taking in its serenity. Calm. Smooth. Soothing. Taking a deep breath, I calm my racing mind, just like the lake before me, and think everything over. All the traveling, the meetings, the attacks, the revelation of Cerelia, finding out the cloaked man is a Vampire. What does it all mean? There has to be a connection between all of this. We couldn’t have spent all this time finding everything out without some sort of answers being in there to find.

  I review each meeting carefully. The Elders had told me that Cate was killed by injections. Cate said she had seen others in cells, but was unable to hear them. The Vampires had offered us little information. The Lycans had provided us with the same information everyone else had, but had no real leads. Garron had witnessed the creatures and the cloaked Vampire attacking his wife, but that was it.

  And the attacks between all those meetings didn’t really give us much. Just warnings and proclamations of doom. The Vampire in charge had captured me to give me warning, and offered me a place with him, but why? And when I had declined, why didn’t he just kill me right then?

  Once we got back on track, we were attacked once again by the Seelie Court. The queen had informed us that the cloaked man was a Vampire. She had offered us the locations of her missing Fae just like everyone else. Oh, and there is that pesky ‘I will start killing if mine are not returned’ threat.

  The words that kept playing over and over in my head, however, was not her ‘I will kill them all’ speech, but her earnest ‘you’re looking but not seeing’ speech. I had listened to her the first time around and found the shifters. Maybe I was doing the same thing now as I had been doing with the shifters. Looking but not seeing. But what was I not seeing?

  My mind starts spinning and tries racing through it all to find an answer. A panic rises up inside me, needing answers, wanting to see what I’m not seeing. My head starts to spin, throwing off my concentration.

  Come on grandmother, give me something. You told Dagna I was meant to do this, but why? Her encouraging words whisper through my mind. You are a strong girl, Harmony. Always trust your instincts. My grandmother was my stronghold when I was a child. Why should it be any different now? She may not be here with me in person, but she is still here in spirit, never leaving my side.

  I stop and try centering myself again. I quit concentrating on the events of the past few days. Instead I listen
to the quiet. Feel the calm that emanates from the water. I take deep, soothing breaths, telling my mind to concentrate only on that which is important.

  I take my thoughts in one at a time. I picture the map in my mind. Is there a connection? A pattern? I see the dots all over the world, the dots on almost every continent, more on some versus single dots on the others.

  Then I run through everything once more, taking it all in one item at a time. The only similarity is the fact that every group of Shadows has someone missing. That’s it, nothing else. But there has to be something. Something I’m looking at but not truly seeing.

  There’s nothing! I’m not missing anything because none of it makes sense! I scream in frustration.

  Coy and the rest look over at me. I just shake my head, throwing my hands up over my face. A part of me feels like giving up. Then there’s the part that keeps screaming at me to look. Open up your mind and look.

  Look at what? No matter how much I go over it, it all still comes out the same. Useless. The map creeps back into my mind, the dots all over the place. Except—

  I jump up and start running to the SUV. Danika had taken the map back to the SUV earlier, probably expecting the rest of us to follow her. But no one did, so she had come back after some time.

  I keep running, everyone yelling after me as I rush through the woods. This could be it. This could be what I was missing. What we all have been missing.

  I reach the SUV and yank the door open, accidentally breaking it off its hinges. I can care less. I grab the map and spread it out across the hood.

  “What the hell?” Ethan emerges from the trees first. His hands spread out wide in astonishment as he looks at the door on the ground.

  Danika comes up behind him and gawks at the door too. “Was this really necessary, Racquel?” she scolds, hand gesturing to the door.