Death Be Blue (The Terra Vane Series Book 1)

by Katie Epstein

  Hoping Kaleb wasn’t too far behind, I took off running in no particular direction. My plan was to create as much distance between me and the wendigo before he started to come after me.

  The ground was uneven beneath my feet, rocks and debris tripping me up as I raced away, but I pushed everything I had into the run. I was fast, but not as fast as a shifter, and apparently nowhere near as fast as a wendigo as he started his chase. It made no difference though. I had no choice but to try. Weaving left and right in an attempt to distract the hunter in him, I raced away into the night.

  My heart was pumping as I weaved sharply to my left, glancing over my shoulder as I did so. Kaleb was nowhere to be seen. But there was no sign of the wendigo either.

  Wondering where the hell the creature had gone, I turned and ran straight into something hard and unyielding. Shrieking in surprise at the sudden blockade I fell back a little. It took me a moment to realize that I’d crashed into the wendigo’s chest, the drool dripping from the side of his mouth as if I was the finest of delicacies.

  “Run faster,” he panted as if the chase was turning him on. The glint in his eyes had me reaching for my weapon, but he knocked it out of my hand before I could draw it completely. It fell to the floor as I dodged a swipe of his claw. Then he came at me again, frustrated that I had dared to fight back in such a way. I managed to dodge him once more, jumping on the opening he’d given me. I gave him a good kick on his knee joint, but it barely tickled him. He roared with pleasure.

  “Oh, you’re gonna taste good.” He went to take hold of me, but I ducked down and rolled against the ground. Without hesitation, I attempted to again take flight again, but it appeared his playtime was coming to a close. His claws dug down deep into my leg, and I screamed in pain.

  Kicking him hard on the nose, I caught him off guard. As soon as he released me I scrambled up on my feet. It wasn’t the most sophisticated escape as I ran away from him looking as if I was in a three-legged race, but the pain in my leg wouldn’t allow me to put all my weight on it.

  Laughter came from behind me, echoing eerily into the night. The wendigo knew that I was no match for him. I tried to look around for something to use as a weapon, but the trees were too far in the distance for me to reach in time. I had no choice but to try though, so I continued to limp-run in that direction as the wendigo leisurely came trotting up behind me.

  “Time for dinner!” he shouted, and I dared to turn back to see him almost upon my heels. The wendigo’s eyes were rabid as they glinted with a hunger that was eager for my gruesome demise. The tongue lolling out of the side of his mouth mimicked an evil dog chasing its prey. He was so close, I could feel the ground rumble beneath my feet as his heavy paws hit the ground. He was so certain that he was going to eat well tonight, and I called upon every last shred of energy to run as fast as I could out of his reach.

  Nearing the border of the grasslands, I tripped, rolling upon impact. This time, the fear almost ate me whole as I realized I was about to become the meal of a crazed animal and there was nothing I could damn well do about it.

  I had no weapon, no speed or strength that could fight him off, and Kaleb’s prediction of doom echoed in my ears. All I could do was hope and pray it would be a quick death, closing my eyes as the wendigo leaped into his fatal strike.

  A thud, screech, roar … I opened my eyes just in time to see a gigantic, brown wolf flying through the air and crashing into the monster above me. Relief hit me like a wave. Quickly, I regained my feet, not thinking too much to let the panic in. There must be a way I could help Kaleb now he had decided to show his furry face. Pain jolted through my body as my injured leg took some of the weight.

  I turned at a sudden yelping sound to see the wendigo dig its teeth into Kaleb’s shoulder. The fear for my partner was enough to push my pain aside, so I raced toward the scattered trees that no longer bore any leaves on their branches.

  No one knew why foliage ceased to grow in this area of the grasslands. Many claimed it was because death once haunted this place when it was used as a burial ground for the first settlers through the portal. Others said that the Fey merely didn’t see the point of changing the weather system to accommodate an area where no one resided. Either way, it was a section of Portiside that was left for fate to nurture as it provided a natural border between the city and the shifter lands.

  It was a good point of transition for shifters to travel from their natural habitats before hitting the high populace of the big city. It gave their inner animal time to adjust, and a chance for them to transition without an audience. To me, it was just a place where I’d been taken to be someone’s dinner, and it was starving me of a weapon that I could use to help defend Kaleb.

  Glancing around, I saw a large branch that had broken off from its home. It was small enough for me to heft so I grabbed it and limped hurriedly in the direction of the fight. Kaleb was on top of the wendigo—his large paws positioned on the shoulders of the giant ball of fur beneath him. He was gnashing at its neck as he tried to get in a destabilizing bite, and he appeared to have the vantage point. Good. That meant my heart could return to its rightful place.

  I went to drop the branch to head off in the other direction to find my weapon now that Kaleb was in control of the situation, but all of a sudden the tables turned. The wendigo moved with unnatural speed and Kaleb was back beneath him within seconds. The enemy bit once more, and this time Kaleb roared with pain. That meant the wendigo had hit home through muscle and tissue and was starting to do some real damage.

  Here I was, ready to save the day with a rotting branch and a bleeding leg. What the hell had I been thinking when I had talked Kaleb into setting a trap? In my defense, I hadn’t been expecting a serial killing wendigo, but that was no excuse. Now it was up to me to try and get us out of this mess, seeing as how I was the one who had gotten us into it.

  Suddenly, a thought hit me. I always carried with me a lighter out of habit since my Victorian Quarter days. You didn’t go anywhere in the Victorian Quarter without one. Not when half the places there relied on candlelight and fireplaces—including my old apartment.

  Kaleb roared in pain again so I thrust my hand into my jean pocket and yanked out my trusted silver lighter. My hands shook as I tried to strike the thing into flame. And finally, it flared up into a welcoming ball of orange.

  “Yes!” I shouted to myself, and then I got to work until the end of the branch lit up like a torch.

  The wendigo was too busy trying to make a meal out of Kaleb to notice my approach. I moved in as slowly and quickly as I could until I was almost upon them.

  “What goes quack quack, Kaleb?” I shouted, giving him the heads up that something was about to happen. The question was one we often used to tell each other as a warning to duck out of the line of fire. He would know what I meant. And he demonstrated that when he shoved up all four paws to push the wendigo high into my firing line. I threw the fiery branch like a javelin at its back, and Kaleb quickly rolled out of the way of the flame as the branch hit home.

  A scream of pain burst forth from the wendigo as the thirsty blaze fanned out from the branch and spread through its fur. He went up in flames as quickly as if he had been doused in fuel. My mouth dropped open in surprise that my plan had actually worked. Who knew wendigos were so flammable?

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” I said, as Kaleb shifted back into his human form. Thanks to the magic within shifters, their clothes weren’t affected by the change. His general appearance was the same as it had been before the shift. His wolf’s hide would have taken the brunt of the attack, but there was a gash in his neck that was bleeding and his face was smudged with dirt and blood. His pretty hair was now all over the place but I didn’t have the heart to tell him. We both looked a complete state.

  “Is this the right time to tell you I told you so?” he asked as he wiped the sweat from his brow with the sleeve of his jacket. We both looked on with a sick curiosity as the wendigo ran around, screamin
g in pain as it tried to put out the flames.

  “Go on then,” I replied as we both followed the burning ball’s movements. With that, the wendigo slowed down and crashed onto the ground, whimpering and moaning in agony.

  “I told you so.”

  “That’s the only one you’re getting.”

  When I could finally draw my eyes away from the burning creature, I hobbled over to my weapon and picked it up.

  “What are you doing?” Kaleb asked.

  “Putting him out of his misery.”

  “You think he would have been so kind to you?”

  “Guess that makes me the good guy.”

  When I reached the flaming wendigo, I fired a pulse of blue energy directly in between his eyes. It made no more noise as death finally claimed him. I figured his body could burn here to save the Enforcer Bio Team the trouble of hoisting him back to base.

  Kaleb came up beside me as I pressed a button on my wrist comms, waiting patiently while I logged all that had happened. Next I called in the Enforcer Bio Agents considering this was now a crime scene.

  Once I was done, I walked away from Kaleb and started the long trek back to The Rail. My bleeding leg felt like it was about to drop off and the cold was settling into my bones.

  “Want a lift?” Kaleb shouted from behind me and I waved him off. I made it three more steps before the stubbornness left me, and I reluctantly turned around to face him. “I’ll take that as a yes,” he murmured before he shifted back into his wolf form. He was larger than your average wolf, more the size of a small horse. But I was grateful of that right now as he lowered down beside me so I could climb on.

  Hoisting myself up onto his back, I immediately felt the relief of the pressure being taken off my leg. There was a Healer Hub at the agency so I knew I would be fine after visiting one of those. But the adrenaline was starting to wear off and the pain was creeping in.

  If it made me a weak human for accepting a lift from a wolf to the agency in the Indicium Quarter, then call me sweet cheeks and offer me lemonade. Right about now, I was happy to be human.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The healer at the Healer Hub was kind and patient with me, considering I had the attitude of a surly drunk. The meds she gave me doped me up for a short time while she worked on my leg, and the crystals that surrounded the bay made sure no infection seeped through. The meds were all herbal with a boost of magic from the crystals that were managed by the healers.

  Crystal healing went a lot deeper than my mind was able to digest, and it was a profession that was desired by those who had a natural born gift for it. That ruled me out straight away. Healing meant patience, and that was something I tended to struggle with.

  There were some human healers in Portiside, but the majority in the hubs scattered across our world were either of Fey heritage or witch healers. They shared a lot of their recipes and secrets with one another through a weird alliance labeled the HHH (Healers Holding Hands). But if you wanted the top shelf, darker stuff, then that was a different story. The witches and members of the Fey tended to brand the more potent potions and spells as their own to garner up a little healthy competition. Or so my witch friend, Mayra, had told me.

  None of it mattered from my end, as long as they were able to patch me up and send me on my way. It didn’t cost me anything. That was one of the benefits of working for the PCA. Enforcer Field Agents were healed for free and it was a good thing considering we got torn up on almost every job. We needed the incentive. It would have made it an expensive profession if we had to pay every time we needed to be put back together again.

  Once the healer had finished with me, my leg felt like new. It made me feel guilty enough to apologize for my earlier behavior. The healing had also helped with the surliness. Crystal healing was great for eradicating any negative energy hanging around, so now being polite didn’t feel so much of a burden.

  The healer said nothing as she scanned my EFA badge under the Crystal Pulse Ball. The small, white orb, slightly larger than a tennis ball, would deduct the currency owed from the PCA treasury and transfer it to her very own pocket. She gave me a smile and a nod as she handed me back my badge, and I waved goodbye before reluctantly making my way back to the agency.

  Home called to me like a beacon, but I knew I needed to submit my report before clocking out. Even though I had submitted my vocal report into the system, Enforcer Chief Cole Cipher was old school. He demanded written reports he could get his hands on should the systems ever fail.

  We had electricity in the agency and a backup crystal generator, but I could understand his reason for making us write out our reports. Electricity here was intermittent because it relied on the old wind-up methods. The Fey were adamant they weren’t going to allow the digging up of the ground to add cables or raping it for fossil fuels. Their words, not mine.

  Crystal generation was expensive. And even though I was lucky to have a roommate who could afford to run such energy in our home, not many residents outside of the Crystal Quarter were.

  Electricity here wasn’t owned by anyone, but there was a charge for maintenance on the generators. If you wanted to employ an engineer to get it going there was a fee for that too. The electricity was focused into ports that looked like the plasma ball lighting lamps on Earth, and you could tap into it like wi-fi. I had to admit, it was a great convenience not to have an endless number of plugs and chargers everywhere. They looked quite pretty too.

  Enforcer Field Agents, who were called EFAs for short, weren’t assigned a particular desk as a permanent base. But there were a few hot desks around for us to use when needed. When I entered the agency, I found them all to be vacant. Not surprising considering the time of night. The staff who manned the comms did so from another part of the building, so I could bask in the solace while I wrote my report.

  Sitting down at the nearest desk, I reached into the drawers and pulled out a blank report form and pen.

  The paper was recycled. Anything and everything was recycled in Portiside causing the paper to have a creamy tinge. The printed lines asked me to fill out the time and date of the incident. And then a large box at the bottom was ready and waiting for me to provide a detailed account of what had occurred.

  I was tired and grumpy and writing a report was the last thing I wanted to be doing right now. But Kaleb would have been a good boy and filed his report before he left. That meant I had no choice but to submit mine at the same time. He was probably in with the chief now since he’d left the Healer Hub before me and wasn’t anywhere to be seen. His shifter genes would have taken care of his injury, so he’d have only required a once over to ensure his genetics were doing what they were supposed to.

  Checking my watch comms, I saw that time wasn’t on my side in completing the report and submitting it before Cole heard I’d arrived back at the agency. But just in case fate had my back, I was going to try.

  Within twenty minutes I had completed the report, popped it into a brown envelope, and dropped it onto an Enforcer Administrator’s desk. They would be responsible for logging and filing it when they turned up for their shift in the morning.

  I’d almost made it to the exit when a booming voice came from behind me.

  “Agent Vane, I need you in my office. Now.”

  “Damn it,” I whispered, as I turned back around to see Cole staring at me. His face looked strained and it was etched with exhaustion. It made me wonder for the millionth time if he had a home to go to as he always seemed to be around to reprimand me.

  “I mean it, Agent Vane.” He prodded his thumb toward his office then walked away. He really was a sight to be seen if you were into that sort of thing. Which I wasn’t.

  His tall, muscular figure bore his usual uniform of a restricting shirt and tie. He was thicker set than Kaleb and his hair wasn’t long like his brother’s. Different shades of blond had been cut short leaving just a bit of length at the top, perfecting the ideal bedhead look with no trouble at all. It was such a pit
y that he was a bossy, manipulative son of a—

  “You had better get in there, Terra,” Kaleb told me as he walked out of Cole’s office. “I swear there is steam coming out of his ears.”

  “Something you had no problem in stirring, no doubt,” I said grumpily as I very slowly headed in.

  “Hey. I just told the truth.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” I patted his arm as I walked past him—a little bit harder than intended—then went to face the wrath of my boss.

  “Good luck,” Kaleb cheered from behind me. With that, he disappeared off into the night to get the well-earned rest that my body was craving.

  “Sit down,” Cole ordered from the other side of his desk once I had entered his office. He was holding my written report in his hand and skim reading it. How the hell had he gotten hold of that so fast?

  Sitting as he’d demanded, I tried to relax in the most uncomfortable chair in the world.

  “I was just heading home,” I told him, but he put a finger up to shush me while he finished reading. I bit down on my lip to stop the response that had already formed in my mind and waited for him to continue.

  For as long as I could remember, Cole had been the Enforcer Chief over all agency personnel. That included the Enforcer Bio and Enforcer Tech Agents.

  Enforcer Bio Agents looked after the forensic side of things while the Tech Agents looked after the systems—magical or otherwise. Cole had a management team over those two departments who reported into him, giving him some form of a buffer there. But when it came to the field agents, we reported to him directly. No one got in the way of that.

  He should have aged, but he looked the same as the day I’d moved here as a teenager. Shifter genes aged a lot slower than human, but they weren’t immortal like a vampire. Not that I was aware of anyway.

  Cole threw the report down on his desk once he was done and sat down opposite me.