Of course, she’d never been good at listening to her instincts. It wasn’t mere coincidence that Silver called her Lunatic, after all. She’d always been fearless to the point of stupidity. She should have been a damned cat, not a Wolf. Cats had nine lives. Cats were curious idiots, just like her. Wolves, on the other hand, were cautious. They clung to each other for protection. Wolves didn’t run off on their own into the mouth of danger as she loved to do.
As she was doing right now.
When she’d reached the edge of the clearing, she was confronted by the worst of all possible scenarios. Kirith’s small, pretty home was engulfed in orange flame, barely recognizable as anything other than a wasted skeleton of the house that had stood there only a day earlier.
Littering the grass around the house, a grim reminder of the family that lived there, were children’s toys: dolls, a toy truck, a hobby horse.
Luna’s heart sank as she took it all in.
No, she mumbled. They can’t be dead. My Dragon shifter, my Kirith, he can’t…can he?
Her question was answered when above her, far beyond the tree tops, a great shadow crossed over the moon, drawing her light eyes upwards. Long, black wings beat against the stark white orb as his huge form let out a roar and banked hard to his left, taking aim at the clearing below.
The Dragon, it seemed, was very much alive. As if to prove it, he was hurtling towards her now, shooting downwards like a bullet shot from an invisible gun.
And as much as she wanted to deny it, it looked as if he was aiming for the house. His house.
Why on earth would he attack his own house?
Silver’s warning came to her from the back of her mind as she pulled herself to the ground, flattening herself onto her stomach. Stay away from the Dragon. For a moment she contemplated running into the clearing, trying to signal him somehow, to stop him.
Don’t do it, Lunatic, she told herself. Don’t let him see you. Silver was right—you don’t know what the Dragon’s capable of.
The enormous, powerful form was still shooting down towards the woods, his neck long and tense with a rage that permeated the night air. Luna could see now that his scales were gunmetal blue, reflecting the moonlight so that he looked as though he were made of oil, air, water and stone, all at once.
He was beautiful.
But he was also terrifying.
She watched in horror as he opened his mouth, fangs like longswords gleaming in the moonlight as flame sparked at the back of his throat.
The fire that he unleashed then was so hot that it burned white, engulfing the already burning house in a blinding explosion. A howl rose up in Luna’s Wolf’s throat, but she fought it back. This Dragon can’t be Kirith, she told herself. He wouldn’t do such a thing. He couldn’t. He’s good, I know he is.
As if to answer her unasked question, the monster landed hard behind the house, mere feet from where she lay, and shifted, his back to her. Still in denial, she gasped when he twisted around to stare into the woods for a moment. There was no question anymore. This was her Kirith. Her Dragon had just burned his own home to the ground.
She followed his gaze until off in the distance, on the other side of the clearing, she spotted another Wolf. It was one of the Pack members, a large, young Wolf named Rutger. She had no idea how long he’d been watching the mayhem unfold. No idea if he was thinking the same thing that she was.
“I know you can hear me, Wolf,” Kirith said, his voice a deep, rattling growl that seemed to make the forest vibrate around them. “Go tell your sodding Alpha that I killed them. Tell him that if I ever see him again, I will kill him, too. Tell him no one in these woods tonight is safe from my hellfire. Not now, not ever.”
Luna watched as Rutger turned and fled as fast as his Wolf’s legs would carry him.
She should have done the same, but for some insane reason she stayed there, staring at Kirith, whose back hunched with an unseen, incomprehensible pain. She heard him heave a heavy, heart-wrenching sob, and in spite of everything she’d witnessed, her heart broke for him.
A hard, cruel desire told her to go to him. To shift into her human form, to lay her head on his shoulder and tell him that somehow, everything would be all right.
What the hell was wrong with her? The man had just killed his family; he’d even admitted it. He was a madman, and she somehow thought it would be wise to walk up and try to comfort him?
There was no comforting a man who could do such a thing. Nothing in the world could calm such a beast.
Silver had tried to warn her, of course. He’d tried to protect her from this. Tried to shield her from the truth: that the world was an ugly place. That fantasies were just fabricated, foolish dreams meant to delight, to take one away from reality. Maybe the truth was that Dragons really were nothing more than heartless killing machines.
Maybe Kirith really was a BHD after all.
As the words sank into her mind, Luna finally persuaded her body to take her back to the Wolves’ territory. Rising to her feet, she spun around on all four legs and ran as fast as she could go.
When she came up on the small acreage where the Pack lived in their cabins on the edge of Warkshire Forest, the sound of low voices met her keen ears. She skulked behind a tree, her heart pounding as she listened to the conversation. Poking her head around the trunk, she could see her Alpha, Ripper, listening to the tail end of Rutger’s account. “He’s gone insane,” he was saying. “He said he’ll kill you if he sees you again.”
“Damn it. This isn’t how I wanted things to go,” Ripper said, letting out a frustrated sigh. A strange reaction. What could he mean, how he wanted things to go? But then, the whole night had been strange, and Luna could hardly trust herself to judge anyone’s reaction after her own had been so unnatural.
“Gather the Pack, and we’ll head out,” the Alpha commanded. “We have no time to waste.”
Within the hour, the Warkshire Pack was hiking towards the small village of Bonham, some forty miles to the west. Luna walked next to Silver, who was considerate enough not to ask if she’d seen what had happened. Perhaps he sensed her sadness and confusion.
Whatever the reason, she was grateful.
“Why do you suppose we’re going to Bonham, of all places?” she asked after a time, trying to get her mind off her heartache.
“Ripper knows someone there, apparently. He said there are a few vacant houses about that we can get for cheap rent. I didn’t want to ask too many questions. All I know is he’s trying to get the whole Pack to safety. For once he’s doing the right thing.”
“I suppose,” murmured Luna. She turned to take a final look at their woods. A plume of smoke was rising from between the tall trees at its core, a grim reminder that her beautiful Dragon shifter had turned out to be nothing more than a cold-blooded killer.
One that she would probably never see again.
Chapter 2
London
Present Day
Kirith despised London.
To be fair, he despised pretty well every city in the world, but London had earned its own special kind of hatred over the centuries he’d spent avoiding its borders. The rancid place had never appealed to him, from the time when it had been a filthy mound of codpiece-wearing, unhygienic Elizabethan era bastards to the current, modern pile of shite that smelled of burning engine oil and fried fish. Perhaps there were no more codpieces, but there was certainly too much fucking cod.
As far as the Dragon shifter was concerned, it was and would always remain England’s smelly armpit. A foul stew of humans, shifters, noise, rubbish and filth.
Yet here he was, headed straight for its centre on a bleeding high-speed train. I’m a masochist looking for a fix, he thought as he stared out the window at the tapestry of passing buildings.
His fingers drummed a rapid percussive pattern on his vinyl armrest as the train approached Euston Station, just as they’d been doing off and on for the last hour and a half. If the sound drove the passeng
ers around him mad, they weren’t showing it. Most likely because they weren’t utterly foolish. Messing with a man who stood a little over six-foot-eight, his shoulders as broad as most refrigerators, wasn’t widely considered the brightest idea in the world. Particularly when that man had a look of a Dragon’s searing rage in his green eyes.
“Too many fucking humans,” Kirith said to no one in particular when the station’s platform came into view. The damned place was positively swarming with them. Bloody humans had always been far too impressed with England’s intricate rail system. Trains, they said, were so efficient, so easy to use. One could get around quickly, they insisted. Yeah, well that was because the inferior arseholes didn’t have wings. They had no understanding of how slow and cumbersome trains actually were.
Not to mention that being cooped up inside an aluminum can with a pile of strangers was a bleeding pain in the testicles. The only reason he was riding in one of the sodding things right now was the cover it offered.
His enemies wouldn’t be looking for the likes of him on public transit. So for that, he supposed, British Rail was worthy of a grudging sort of praise.
There was one other thing about the system that impressed him, though he’d never have admitted it out loud. It had been so many years since he’d set foot on a train that he hadn’t realized the individual rail cars had installed Wi-Fi, which meant that all the passengers had their heads tucked into their laptops and mobile phones. There was no dealing with bored, wandering eyes. No inquisitive look thrown his way when this or that person noticed how large he was.
Things had evolved since the old days; days that the Dragon shifter remembered well. He recalled the centuries that had come long before trains were a glint in any inventor’s eye. The days before paved roads, before telephones, even before indoor plumbing. He could still describe, in graphic detail, the way England had looked from the sky when it was known as Britannia, a Roman-occupied wasteland of stone walls, military tents and unsanitary conditions that led to the death of many a man and woman.
Those were the days of his youth, long before he’d ever settled down or had children. The days when the Dragons had flown over the lands and terrified the human population into submission. The days before his kind had learned to hide in the shadows and cower in fear of what their human counterparts might do if they discovered that they still existed.
His son and daughter had listened to him speak about those years on many an occasion while they sat by the fireplace in their small cottage, their small, bright eyes open wide with wonder. Stories of knights and Dragons, of fair maidens and not-so-fair ones. Of trolls, fairies and beastly creatures who killed for sport.
His children should one day have been Dragons themselves. They should have learned to shift, to dart through the sky like birds. They should have experienced so many things, if not for one terrible night when the world had crashed down around them all.
Since that night, Kirith hadn’t had any patience for other living things, human or otherwise. For years he’d hidden himself away from society for its own protection, as well as for his. But now he was coming out of hiding. His life would be focused on one thing only.
A thing, they said, that he could find in London.
When the train had stopped he disembarked, stepping down onto the hard slabs of stone that made up the Euston Station platform. He looked to his right and left, taking in the scents of the city, a disgusted expression scrunching his handsome features. Bah. Humans, coffee, cigarettes, waste. London definitely hadn’t grown any more appealing over the last several decades.
But no matter. Kirith wasn’t in the city to sight-see. He was here on a mission. His goal was simple and straightforward. But before he could achieve it, he’d need to make sure his presence was welcome here.
Which meant seeking out the Kindred of the Dragons’ Guild.
Chapter 3
“Welcome to the Warkshire Pack’s new headquarters.”
Ripper stood at the head of a tall oak table coated in several layers of tough lacquer. His dark hair was slicked back as always, looking like he’d dragged some sort of heavy duty titanium comb through a can of motor oil before saturating his scalp with the vile stuff.
The Alpha always seemed to think it made him look distinguished. But to Luna, it just made him look like the sort of greaseball who runs an under-the-table gambling operation. His name could as easily have been Vinny Two-Shoes or Johnny Small-Dick. Ripper didn’t suit him, really; he’d never torn into anything in his life other than bags of crisps and other shifters’ souls.
Standing in a semi-circle around him were the twelve members of the Warkshire Pack, most of whom stood with their faces pointed at the distant ceiling arching some forty feet above their heads.
Surrounding them were the cold, grey remnants of a subterranean gathering place that shifters had long ago used as a large pub known as the Underground Club. A long system of winding tunnels hidden beneath London’s streets, the strange structure was situated even deeper than London’s famous train system known as the Tube.
“This place was carved under the city before the twentieth century had begun,” said Ripper. “Many of our ancestors hung about between these walls. They drank, fucked, schemed. The club’s been abandoned for decades, but it belongs to us now. I put in a bid before we left Bonham, and signed the lease yesterday. My hope is that it will be the gathering point for all London’s shifter population. We’ll be opening its doors tomorrow night, and you’ll be pleased to know that each of you will have a job between its walls.”
So, thought Luna, this is what you’ve been up to, you bastard. She’d known ever since Ripper had announced their pending move from Bonham to London that he had something up his sleeve, but she hadn’t quite realized how monumental it would be.
She exchanged a quick look with Silver, who seemed preoccupied, just as he always did these days. Her brother had lost the cocky bluster of his youth. No longer did he thrust out his chest or stride around like a man with a purpose. He’d changed, and not for the better.
But perhaps the move to London would be good for him.
Luna was the only one who wasn’t studying the architecture of the space around her. Instead, she watched Ripper intently, her piercing blue eyes focused on his own. For a man who’d just announced what should have been happy news, he didn’t look nearly so excited as the other Pack members seemed. In fact, the expression etched on his features was uneasy, as though he were working rather hard to put on a confident face.
But he was failing. His agitation couldn’t have been any clearer if he’d scrawled Something’s got me shitting my trousers in Sharpie on his forehead. Some scent, some presence in the city had him riled.
Luna hadn’t seen him like this in years. Not since the night so long ago, when the Dragon Kirith had wreaked havoc on the woods so close to the Wolf Pack’s home turf. She’d never forgotten the look on Ripper’s face when he’d escorted the Pack out of their territory. The nervousness as he’d looked over his shoulder, sniffing the air, his body tight with terror, as though he was just waiting for his impending doom.
It had taken him some months to settle down and realize that Kirith wasn’t coming for them after all.
There was no doubt in Luna’s mind that their Alpha was somehow behind her brother’s altered state. The question was how. Ripper had always been cruel and abusive, but Luna couldn’t imagine Silver losing his soul over a bit of nastiness. He’d always been too strong for that.
Well, it didn’t matter now. Fuck Ripper. They’d be rid of him soon, if she could just come up with an escape plan.
In London, she and Silver had a chance to start a new life. A chance to flee from Ripper’s all-too-tight clutches. Now that the city was swarming with Wolf shifters, maybe they could even look for a new Pack to join. Surely one couldn’t swing a dead cat in this town without hitting a better Alpha.
“Many of you have asked me what my plan is for London,” said Ripper, tearing
Luna away from thoughts of escape. “Well, I intend to see to it that we Wolves regain the footing our kind once had in this great city.” The Alpha’s broad jaw set in a grimace that betrayed his lack of fondness for most of his Pack, who simply stared blankly at him.
“How are we going to do that, then?” asked Derek, a large, lumbering dark-haired man, one of the more obtuse of the Pack’s shifters. Luna had always liked him for his sort of general oafishness.
“Simple. As Alpha of the Warkshire Pack, I plan to get hold of strategic territories in London before other Alphas try to lay claim to them. We’ll branch out from here, using the club as a home base. Your job, aside from working for me, will be reconnaissance.”
“Reconnaissance?” asked Luna. “We’re to spy on our customers, then?”
“In a manner of speaking,” said Ripper.
Rutger, who was standing to the Alpha’s right, narrowed his eyes at Luna. Over the years he’d grown to be a large, hulking beast of a man. He’d also evolved into Ripper’s right-hand stooge, serving as a sort of glaring goon who got the others to submit if they were getting out of hand. “You have a problem with spying?” he grunted.
“Well, not exactly,” Luna replied. “I do have a bit of a problem with Ripper talking about claiming territory in this city, though. He said before others take them.” Casually, she twisted her bright red hair into a braid in front of her right shoulder. “You do realize that the Dragons’ Guild pretty well dominates London now, not Wolves. Things have changed here since the glory days of our kind. We can’t just walk around claiming land that’s not ours.”
“Yes, Luna, I’m all too aware,” Ripper snarled, flashing her a narrow-eyed glare that made the fine hairs rise up on her skin. “But the Dragons don’t have the sole claim over this city. They never have, and they never will.”
Dragon's Bane (Dragon Guild Chronicles Book 5) Page 2