by T. G. Ayer
Fate’s Edge
A SkinWalker Novel #6
T.G. Ayer
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FATE’S EDGE
A SKINWALKER NOVEL BOOK 6
Copyright © 2018 by T.G. Ayer
All rights reserved.
Cover art by Eduardo Priego
Cover art © T.G. Ayer. All rights reserved.
License Notes
This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to the Retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, businesses, characters and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, actual events or locales is purely coincidental.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Epilogue
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Chapter 1
I may as well be permanently blindfolded, for all the good my panther senses did to help me. I lay flat on my back, my hands and feet bound, my lips and forehead throbbing as I felt the flesh swelling.
A narrow strip of fabric dangled from my neck, having been ripped off with one perfectly sharp panther claw. I gave the rope around my wrists the same treatment, all the while seething with fury.
Cold had seeped into my bones from the stone at my back, and my chest tightened, sharp stabs of pain searing through my lungs. Each breath I took depleted the air inside the confined space within which I was imprisoned.
I’d awakened seconds ago, my senses in overdrive, my panther sight slamming to the fore as both my feline side and my human form felt panic surging through the blood. Though no sound met my ears, my eyes adjusted to the almost solid blackness around me.
Cold stone at my back, cold stone hemming me in at the shoulders and hips, more cold stone mere inches from my face. The carvings of the stone above me were easy to identify; I’d seen them plenty in my own lifetime.
How ironic that I was currently sealed within a coffin carved into the elegant form of the Lady Ailuros. Must be a message in there somewhere. The coffin was so very narrow, the sides pushing against my arms, giving me next to no space to move, let alone attempt to find a way to escape. The lid was too low to even allow me to raise my knees high enough to use them to leverage it open.
I sighed, frustrated and angry. How had I allowed myself to end up in such a situation? My panther senses were almost permanently on high alert these days, especially after the recent attack on my life by the strange and mysterious shadowman. I’d managed to end his sorry life—the downside to self-defense being the high chance of killing the only person who could help shed light on his reasons for attacking you.
Even now, nobody had been able to help me identify the attacker who’d come all too close to dispatching me permanently.
And, despite being on edge and on the lookout, I’d allowed myself to be blindsided, bound, blindfolded and beaten bloody and blue.
Way to go, Kailin Odel. Some alpha walker you turned out to be.
The box was silent, and beyond its confines, I could hear only silence. Ailuros only knew where they’d stashed my body, and I’d only find out if I ever managed to escape this damned box.
I slowed my breathing and focused, using my panther sight to study the box, its length, and its construction. The lack of sound beyond the box was disconcerting. The absolute absence of sound made me suspect I’d been buried alive.
Crap. I hoped not.
I wasn’t claustrophobic by any means. It was just that the dense lack of sound made me wonder if getting myself out of here was going to be harder than I’d expected.
I banged on the coffin lid, instinct telling me that I would soon be running out of air. My lungs were already beginning to complain.
I’d taken the case for Horner, and despite my hesitations I’d used a jumper and a small team to bring me to Rome where we’d been on the trail of a suspected supernatural child abduction ring currently on a cross-country spree, snatching high-profile children and holding them hostage in exchange for exorbitant ransoms.
I wasn’t a fan of this type of case, especially since kids were not my specialty, and I’d suggested they get Mel Morgan to handle it. Oddly, Horner had replied she was unavailable. I hadn’t dug further, just made a mental note to check if everything was ok with her.
I ran through what I could remember from before I’d been knocked out, hoping to recall a clue or two.
We’d staked out the two sites where kids had been taken and were watching the location of a school where the local police suspected the next abduction would occur. Cassandra Monteith had joined me on this particular case, and for that I was grateful.
She really was one of the best operatives in any of the agencies and that Sentinel had thrown us an agent was proof of how important the case was. Sentinel was, of course, a subsidiary agency of the Supreme High Council anyway, so I supposed inter-agency cooperation with their Elite Squadron was par for the course.
Cassandra grunted, flicking her long blonde ponytail over her shoulder. “You know that feeling you get when you just know something shitlike is about to hit something fanlike?”
I grinned and nodded, knowing she’d register the movement even though her eyes were focused on the exit to the school across the street.
“Yeah. I’m getting that feeling.”
I shrugged, keeping my eyes on the school’s entrance. “Any clue as to why?” I asked out of the side of my mouth.
“Not a one,” came her clipped Brit response.
Cassie was a ShapeChanger, able to shift her features to match anyone she so chooses. At the moment, we were hoping to cross paths with
one or more of the abduction-ring members. Cassie’s Plan A was to mimic one of the abductors and insert herself into the group. This was all based on the assumption of the local police that the abductors were operating as a group and were coordinating their efforts in some way.
The Elite Agency though, was concerned that either rogue jumpers were involved, or one of the abductors was accessing the Veil without permission and breaking all number of laws, both human and supernatural.
Stakeouts were tedious enough, but add the tension of expecting something supernaturally dangerous to happen at any moment, and it made for two very jumpy operatives. I’d allowed my panther senses to come to the fore so I shouldn’t have reacted so suddenly to a mere voice in our comms, and neither should Cassie have, given how seasoned an agent she was.
Still, when the coordinating agent said, “Comm check Agents One and Two, over,” I about jumped out of my skin.
Cassie flinched too and then shook her head. “Idiot.” Her jaw tightened as she gritted her teeth and steadied herself in her crouch, her fingers tightening around the long-range camera in her hands. “I really need to stop being so damned jumpy.”
“You and me both.”
She grunted, but before I could respond with the suggestion that we call in a relief team so we could get some rest—we had been at it for the last two days non-stop—a sound from behind me caught my enhanced feline hearing.
But it was too late.
Even as I spun around on one knee to check on who had come up on us so silently, my ears began to ring. Every muscle in my body tightened, and it felt all too much like someone had struck me with a taser. Only it wasn’t a taser.
As I tasted ozone and began to sink to the ground, I watched a shadow move in front of me, placing a murky hand on my forearm as calm as you please. Clearly, our attacker—or attackers although there didn’t appear to be more than one—wasn’t in an all-fired rush to get his attack done.
He stood and waited as I slumped to the ground and only then did I notice Cassie’s paralyzed form beside me. He’d gotten her first within that split second when she’d spoken, and I’d prepared to answer. If anything, I had to admit his timing was good.
I tried to swallow and found my tongue seeming to swell in my mouth. Panic sliced through my veins, and I worried about choking to death, but I didn’t have to spend too much time worrying.
I passed out instead.
Chapter 2
Recalling how I’d ended up stuck in this box was doing me no good. I’d thought that perhaps I would remember something about how I’d been transported to this coffin, about who had sealed me up inside it, and perhaps some clues as to what awaited me outside. If I ever managed to get out of the damned thing, that is.
Was I buried underground?
Where were Rome’s cemeteries located anyway?
I lay still and considered my options. The box felt like it was made of concrete—which would make sense since all feline walker funerary sarcophagi were constructed of simple concrete material—but was it too heavy for me to move? And how could I create enough movement within the box to encourage it to shift on the ground, or with some luck topple over?
As narrow as the box was, with its sides brushing against my arms, I had to wonder if such a shape would allow me to tip the box onto its side at all.
What did I have to lose? Desperation leads men—and felines—down paths they’d never tread in times of sanity.
So I began to roll side to side, hitting my arms hard against the walls of the coffin with each turn. Spurred by frustration, fury—and a good dose of feeling like an idiot—I began to roll harder. Though tempted to move fast, I suspected speed wouldn’t help although, so help me, I had no idea why.
I kept up the momentum until—just when I’d about given up—I felt a scrape beneath my back. A tiny shifting, as if stone had rubbed against stone. Hope surged through me, and I rolled again, swallowing against the wave of nausea that threatened to take over me.
Gross. The last thing I needed was to throw up. Or to think about throwing up.
I swallowed hard and rolled, focusing my panther energy on hitting the side walls of the coffin with everything I had.
And then I felt another scrape beneath the coffin.
The sarcophagus was likely lying on a stone floor which made me think basement instead of soil and six feet under. My head was beginning to throb, and my chest felt tight, an invisible band slowly tightening around my ribs.
I built up the energy to begin again and started strong, rolling and slamming, using my knees as well as my elbows to give me whatever momentum I could get in such narrow confines. My arms—though strengthened by my panther—were beginning to throb from the continued impact. I could expect bruises by tomorrow…if I lived to see them.
Another scrape beneath me gave me a boost of adrenaline to keep rocking.
Sweat dripped from my forehead, and I could feel it roll along and sink into the hair around my face and at the nape of my head, but I ignored it and kept rocking. But after some time, my bones began to ache, and my jaw began to send spikes of pain into my skull from how hard I was gritting my teeth.
And soon, even though I’d heard a scrape once or twice I felt no other sign that my rocking was doing any good. Silence still encased me, I was losing air, and I was sweating from all the exertion.
Not to mention the fact that I was cold to the bone, my clothing doing nothing to help keep even a tiny barrier of heat in. From the feel of them, I still wore my leather pants and boots, and my leather jacket over my long-sleeved turtleneck sweater. I’d dressed for a night in the open. Thankfully.
My frustration built, strong and hard and I raised my head and let out a distinctly feline roar. The sound—confined with me within my coffin—echoed in my ears, over and over again, and I fell back, hitting my skull hard on the concrete behind me.
It was hopeless.
I was finally admitting that to myself.
I exhaled slowly, my eyes stinging with tears of frustration. I didn’t want to admit it, but there was a possibility that I would die here, without anyone ever knowing what had happened to me.
I thought about my parents and brother. An Alpha walker family, facing dangerous odds with the Walker High Council applying rules that would cast us out of a centuries-old alphahood. They’d already succeeded in tearing my parents apart, putting a strain on their already pain-filled marriage.
I wanted to believe they’d pull through after my death, but we’d lost my sister Greer so recently that I wasn’t sure my parents would hold up under a repetition of such loss. Especially not when they would never know what had happened to me.
Iain, with his solemnity and silence, was a hard person to understand, and I hoped Darcy—a MindMelder mage who had entered our fold not too long ago—would help him come out of his shell. But with the walker council decreeing that walker-nonwalker relationships being illegal, where did that leave him? To be again ripped from a woman he loves would hurt him deeply and I wondered if he would ever recover. Add to the mix the loss of his remaining sister, and there was no telling what he would do.
After all, it was the quiet ones you had to keep a second set of eyes on.
That made me think of Logan, the man I loved despite the law decreeing our relationship being taboo. He was still unconscious, still lying in my childhood bedroom, mostly unmoving. He’d shifted his hand and fingers a few times, but not enough that Darcy or Dad would consider it significant progress.
Logan’s DragonFyr—because no, he was not the fire mage we’d all thought him to be—was building within him slowly, his mind unable to control it while he remained unconscious. I knew he was aware of what was going on around him, though. Nerina, my DeathTalker friend, helped me to communicate with Logan every few days, just to ensure he was doing fine.
Darcy was working with him slowly, attempting to unravel the wipe she'd done on his mind all those years ago. And Sienna—Logan's twin sister—was at his si
de almost twenty-four-seven, pulling the latent fire out of his body, giving him some form of relief, however little.
So many people who would be affected by one disappearance. I wasn’t thinking in terms of how much I’d be missed, but more in that such a disappearance, seemingly with no answers, could shift their attentions toward finding out my truth, rather than keeping to their own paths.
Paths just as, if not more important, than mine. Darcy was searching for a way to make up for the damage she’d done, not only to Logan but to all the other people she’d erased, people whose memories she’d tampered with while Omega had blackmailed her into their service.
I could have told her that she’d never be able to make it up, that all she had to do was be the amazing person she was, and use her talents for good. Would grief sway her from her path too? Would it damage the foundation of the love she shared with my brother?
And Lily? Her path was so convoluted, now intertwined with Dad’s and mine as if we belonged to the same bloodline. Would she survive a failure in her treatment? Should it fail, could she live her days out unable to shift, and still be happy and whole?