The wolf hit the ground hard. He snarled at me, foam oozing out of his mouth and nostrils. This was no ordinary wolf. The deep scars on its face and hide, its sick lemon eyes and their otherworldly gaze, all told me this was no typical scent beast, it was a demon from the darkest hell.
Behind me, the man chanted a paralyzing spell. The demon wolf found its feet and came for me again with its shining fangs and maddening bloodthirst.
I wanted to avoid using potent magic, but I had no choice.
My legs felt suddenly heavy. The paralyzing spell’s effect. I stomped my feet to get some feel and ran back onto the pier. Blood pounded in my ears. I needed the Moon. I looked up and called for its powers.
Caught between two enemies, I removed my cardigan, letting the moonlight spill into the skin on my arms, loading me with silver energy.
The water rose as man and monster made their way to the pier. Waves crashed against the pier, spraying me with more power.
The wolf raced toward me as the man resumed chanting while opening his arms wide to the sky.
I clenched my teeth, growing more pissed by the second.
The fools, thinking they can take me, a daughter of the Moon, servant of Selene, at the witching hour, with an ocean of water surging at my feet.
I formed a ring of my own, a tight line of swirling magic that scattered into a purple magnetic field that swept the wolf off his feet just as he tried to launch into me. I had to duck as the wolf flew over me and into the sea.
The wailing of the monster echoed off into the night.
The man kept chanting that paralyzing spell, faster, more urgent, but it soon became clear, even to him, that the task was beyond him. Whatever magic he thought he knew had come completely undone under duress.
Moron.
With my eyes closed, I summoned total control of the water, creating an ice spear in my right palm.
The man gasped, losing nerve for the first time. I sliced his energy spell into shreds, barely missing his throat.
Then I leaped over the railing in pursuit of the demon wolf.
The white-hot magic of the saltwater singed my skin as I hit the surface. The wolf turned for me, snarling, his legs churning wildly under the water.
I aimed the tip of the spear at him, feeding it a contained stream of magic, just like Winter had instructed, and then hurled it at the demon, twisting my torso as hard as possible to generate maximum thrust.
The spear pierced the monster’s chest, then shattered into a thousand sharp spikes that lodged themselves inside arteries and veins to reach every organ and… explode!
It was a horrible thing to watch. A shudder ran through me as the demon yelped in agony, his body shrunk down like a deflated balloon until it was swallowed up by the sea.
What had I done? I had killed something that was alive, even if it was evil, even if it was a dark monstrosity—I had killed it. I felt sick. I felt faint. I knew I had to get out of the water before I passed out.
I was the girl who had trouble squashing a mosquito. I certainly never intended to become such a devastating witch, turning water into deadly ice spears. My kind did not use Elemental energy for such purposes.
Maybe Winter had seen my potential for destruction, maybe that was why he showed up in my world. Or, maybe, it was not me at all. I had to, at least, consider the possibility that dark magic had infiltrated my core.
I dragged myself to the shore and fell to my knees, exhausted. Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted the man with the mask running for his life.
I brushed away wet strands of hair from my eyes. I got up and trudged back to the pier, my teeth beginning to chatter.
I found my white cardigan and wrapped it around my shoulders. With my luck, I’d probably catch my death of cold.
A different kind of shiver ran through me. There was a disturbance in the energy fields around me.
It had to be Winter.
“Show your face!” I called out. “Well, here I am, you bastard.”
He had taken everything from me. He had taken my innocence, my life’s plan and now he had turned me into a killer. It was just what he wanted. How he must have loved watching my moral defeat from the shadows. I wonder if he had popcorn as he enjoyed my despair and delighted in my unhinged fury as he pushed me beyond my limits.
I spun around, again and again. “What are you playing at?”
Silence was the only response. Winter was not here.
And it made sense. Who was I kidding? He would never recruit a basic to do his dirty work, for fuck’s sake, not Winter, not a Chief Magistrate for the Seventh Council.
It didn’t make me feel any better. If not Winter, then some other renegade wielder of magic was in town, training basics to channel energy, teaching them rudimentary spells. Not only that, he had them work alongside those lemon-eyed death dogs for which I had no reference at all—and that was far more disturbing than anything else.
It did stand to reason that this new player didn’t want me involved in Winter’s mysterious plans. We had that in common.
Screw Winter. It’s not like he was an innocent bystander. It was like the Frankenstein thing, only I was the monster. I was Winter’s monster. Fuck. He helped to create this new side of me. And this other bastard showed up right after Winter found me. I put this on the Immortal Magistrate.
Why did it have to be my life that got hijacked?
I fell back onto my knees. I heard myself laughing like a madwoman as if I were outside my own body. How did I ever think I could escape to Sweden, or that I would be allowed any free will whatsoever? Winter had connections everywhere. I had nowhere to run. My old life was gone.
And my tears tasted like saltwater.
CHAPTER 15
____________________________________
Winter walked a circle around me. “What the hell happened to you?”
The tiniest quiver of energy leapt forth from his aura and brushed against mine for only a moment before dissolving away into mist. It had a soothing effect, almost nurturing, but I wasn’t so easily fooled. He sensed I was teetering on the edge of something from which there might be no return.
I raised my eyes to him, unblinking. I’d spent the night on my doorstep, unable to sleep, not wanting to go inside and leave the moonlight. The lunar energy replenished me, body and soul. After the fight at the pier, I had begun to lose myself. I had expended so much energy. I did not like who I had started to become or what my destiny might hold.
Winter found me like this, my clothes wrinkled and my hair tangled. A plush Doctor Who blanket hung over my left shoulder.
“I’m fine,” I said. “It’s a lovely morning. Why are you out so early? Is there another torture victim on my block? Is morning abuse like your cup of Joe?”
“Cup of what?”
“It means coffee,” I said, suddenly tired. “It’s a thing people say.”
Winter started to say something but changed his mind. He reached down to take my hand, gently pulling me to my feet.
He put his hand in my hair to remove a twig, or maybe it was seaweed or maybe demon debris.
“You’re always looking for answers,” he said. “Today, I have some.”
“That’s great, can you give me a moment?”
I locked him outside and jumped immediately into the shower, letting the hot water wash the mud and salt out of my hair and off my body.
The hot water poured down my face and I felt nothing. I was in a state of emotional overload. I felt numb. My sense of what Winter truly wanted was all over the place. I avoided telling him what had happened at the pier. I also was in no hurry to hear his so-called answers. He knew way more than he would ever tell me and I would always be at a disadvantage.
I slid into worn jeans and an old sweater and let Winter in. This time, he had no snide comments about the messy state of my life.
“Let’s hear it,” I said. “What do you have to say?”
His face was streaked with hard lines, more so th
an usual. He was obviously fatigued. It seemed I wasn’t the only one who hadn’t slept.
“You will be meeting with the Seventh Council soon.”
Well, roast me over hot coals and slice me sideways.
“That’s the big reveal?” I asked.
Seemingly, this man would never stop testing my patience.
He grinned. “Disappointed?” And there he was, sarcasm and lack of empathy oozing out of him like bad breath. Vintage Winter.
All that smugness vanished from his face as fast as it came, replaced by stone cold gravity. “You can’t face them unprepared. There are things we need to discuss.”
I drew in a slow breath.
There is nowhere to go, I might as well listen.
“Chaos and his legion grow stronger,” he continued, “but he needs more manpower. He doesn’t have time to convert more Immortals, so he has turned to shapeshifters. Sources tell us he has gathered an army of shifters numbered in the thousands.”
“Shapeshifters? They can’t possibly be a match for Immortals.”
I didn’t know much about shifters except that they were loners and rarely formed connections outside of their factions. They were not allowed in the Deep Down because they were violent, volatile and completely clan driven.
The most powerful among the shifters could transform into ten or more different species and a rare few had supposedly mastered human form shifting, or so the legends went. They had beastly strength, they could heal fast from severe injuries and lived long lives, but they were not immortals and they did not channel magic. That’s all I knew.
Winter took a step closer. “It’s true that it’s very hard to kill an Immortal, but there are other things that can be done to us. Vile, horrible things. Things that would make us prefer death. Chaos knows well of these unspeakable offenses and he is out there teaching shifters those dark secrets.”
“Sounds charming,” I said, sinking into my couch.
“No,” Winter said, “they most assuredly are not charming. These are not standard shifters he recruits. They are the most fiendish shifters, rejected even by their own hierarchy. You will never see them shifted into typical pack wolves or honey bears. These killers shift into grotesque monstrosities you would never want to witness with your own eyes.”
I threw my hands up in the air. “Tell me about it.”
He stopped to read my expression. “Have you seen such a creature?”
“I don’t know if the demon animal that followed me around was one, but I can tell you I never want to see that creature again or any other grotesque monstrosities.”
“They don’t wait for invitations,” he said. “No one wants to see one, and few survive the encounter.”
Except maybe a bad bitch like myself.
“I’m going to take a big pass on that,” I said. “If they can fuck with Immortals, can you imagine what they would do to me?”
“Or your grandmother? Or your mortal friends? We must take a stand now. Immortal rule is the only thing keeping them in line.”
My heart quickened. “What do you people expect from me? I hate to be the one to tell you this, buddy, but if you’re counting on a single San Diego coed to win your war, then you’ve already lost.”
His tone softened. “Luna, you’re not expected to fight them, if that’s what you’re asking.”
I’m not going to lie, a huge jolt of relief rushed through me.
“What then?”
“We believe you can prevent them from shifting.”
Their belief made little sense, but I decided to play along. “That’s it?”
“That’s it. If they don’t shift in time for battle, they’ll slink back to their holes and Immortal rule will be restored. Then all returns to normal and you can go back to your trivial existence among the basics.”
“And what about Chaos? Why wouldn’t he come for me?”
“That won’t happen.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Because he doesn’t even know you exist.”
Okay, maybe I should have told him about the fight at the pier.
“You’re not convinced,” he said.
“If it’s too good to be true…” I stopped talking literally a fraction of a second before I called him by his name.
“But it is true. I’m always forthright.”
I shook my head. “There is a big… no, there’s a huge hole in your plan.”
“The plan is perfect.”
“I can’t help you,” I insisted. “Last time I trained was eight years ago. I made the choice to cut off my connection to the Deep Down when I turned fourteen. We’re all given that choice. I took it. I chose a normal life in a world I could understand. That meant no more trips down below, no classes, no substantial use of magic. My knowledge and skills are limited. You’re asking that I control the shifting of thousands of people. I can barely get through a session of spin class. You need a more experienced witch.”
Seriously, the more sincere I got, the more I amused him.
“You don’t need to control the shifting, just the Moon.”
“Oh, because that’s possible,” I deadpanned.
“Isn’t that what the lunar part in your Order’s name is all about?”
“No, oh my god, dude. We absorb power from the Moon, we don’t control celestial bodies. We’re not Greek gods. How do you not know that?”
“I know many things, young witch. For instance, twice a century, we go through a metamorphic Moon, a moon that morphic shifters depend on. When midnight strikes on a metamorphic night, they can shift into anything they wish, be it real or imagined. All they need to do is visualize a form and it comes into life for two moon cycles, forty-eight hours. Only a lunar witch can interfere with the metamorphic phase of the Moon so that it loses most of its magic. I know this, Luna Mae. And, as I can see plainly in your eyes, you are remembering a time when you knew that, too.”
He wasn’t wrong. We were taught that in school, but it went in one ear and out the other. No one had even seen a metamorphic Moon in over a century. Nor had anyone seen a metamorphic shifter.
Winter’s story was like Haley’s Comet meets the bogeyman.
Reasonable minds assumed the phenomenon had run its course. Strange magic usually derived from waves that waned and eventually ceased to exist.
Nothing stayed forever in the preternatural world.
“Morph shifters?” I said. “I thought they were a thing of the past. Where have they been all these years?”
“Waiting.”
“That’s so terrifying. They can really change into anything?”
He nodded. “Chaos has them now. They are deranged, bitter, hungry and, when they shift, they are almost as strong as the most ancient Immortals. They hunger blood and power. They’ve been waiting for the morphic Moon for a long time. As you well know, it’s exactly this moon that makes lunar witches most powerful.”
The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. I didn’t want to imagine what Chaos had promised those bloodthirsty shifters to win their allegiance. Almost certainly, it would begin with a feeding frenzy of human flesh.
“So, let’s hear it. When does this morphic Moon happen?”
Winter stared at me soberly, almost human. “In two weeks, at the midnight hour, the Moon enters the metamorphic phase,” he said. “At peak hour near the 33rd parallel North, the epicenter of the transformation will not be far from where we stand, right here in San Diego.”
Two weeks? In my mind, sands were racing through an hourglass.
Winter reached out and took my hand. My first instinct was to pull it away, but I let it linger in his grasp. “You’re necessary. That’s why I’m here. There are no other lunar witches in the area, and you are fresh magic, your connection will be primal, instinctive. That’s good. Also, older, more steadfast witches would have been harder to bend to my will in a short time frame.”
“I’ll assume there is a compliment in there somewhere,” I said.
<
br /> “I do not waste time on charm,” he said. “If you do not help us stop those beasts, our world will fall.”
I felt like I was shrinking. “And I thought finals was a lot of pressure.”
“There is but one test that matters, Luna Mae,” he said.
“I was attacked,” I said in a burst. “I know I should have told you.”
He let go of my hand. “When?”
“Last night by what I think was a basic trying to cast spells and some kind of scent monster, a wolf, or baby morph, I don’t know.”
He grabbed my shoulders, pulled me to him, then took my head in both his hands. He could have killed me in an instant. “Are you sure about this?”
“Yeah, they weren’t Gaslamp district drunks, that’s for sure.”
“Have you been contacted by any others with power?”
I shook my head. “I’m not sure what you mean.”
“Where did this happen?”
“At the pier down at Ocean Beach.”
“Take me there,” he said. “I need to hear everything that happened.”
He led me to an old red Honda Civic parked across the street. I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen anything more shocking than Winter’s shit Civic. I would have sooner expected him to drive a sky chariot pulled by enslaved phoenixes.
Winter held the passenger door open and I slid in, biting my lip. I somehow resisted complimenting him for his bitchin’ battle tank or his epic cruiser or his badass pussy wagon. Jokes were wasted on him anyway.
It felt like an aberration that he would drive a car at all. Did it mean he had a driver’s license? A social-security number? Did he live in the basic world? Did he have a girlfriend named Candace who worked at the Gap?
Somehow, such thoughts had never crossed my mind. I always imagined he lived in an underground mausoleum or a torture dungeon with the rest of the SoCal Immortal squad, spending every second practicing his scowl.
By the time we stepped onto the pier, the rising sun was working at its morning Monet. The sea was calm, but my heart was not.
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