Ghosts of Winter: A Dark Shapeshifter Urban Fantasy (Echoes of the Past Book 2)

by H B Lyne

  She shoved the pendant into the pocket of her jeans and tried to hold back the dizziness and nausea that was filling her body. What was happening? Rhys was her mundane port in the storm. What was he and did he even know about the demon cloaking him?

  'What's the matter? Talk to me,' he pleaded.

  'I can't,' she whispered. Slowly she walked towards him. He smelled completely human, he didn't exude supernatural power. She looked carefully at his tattoos and as she drew very close to him she saw that the runes were just about visible without Wind Talker's talisman, hidden there in plain sight. Up close, even in very low light, she saw that the runes were inked onto his skin so tightly packed that from a distance they looked like solid lines. She reached out and touched one of them and he suddenly pulled away from her.

  'Ariana,' he said, his voice filled with panic.

  'Why do you have those tattoos?' she tried to sound casual, but wasn't sure she had achieved it.

  'I can explain.'

  'Please do,' she snapped, losing patience.

  'I'm a shifter, like you.'

  Stalker felt like the wind had been knocked out of her. She leaned heavily on the back of the sofa and groaned, fighting for air. Fresh tears stung her eyes.

  'How can you be? Why are you hiding it?'

  'I'm so sorry. At first I couldn't tell you, because you hadn't changed yet, and then I wanted to but didn't know how to even begin. I was terrified of losing you.'

  Stalker's heart raced and her head throbbed. She clutched at her chest, desperate to breathe normally but she was hyperventilating. Rhys tried to touch her but she yanked away from him.

  'Why are you hiding it?' she yelled. 'Most of us don't have houses and bodies graffitied with runes of concealment, or have demons riding on our backs to hide us.'

  He stared at her, his mouth slightly open as if to speak but no words came out. Stalker felt fear building up inside her. She could think of one reason why a shifter would go to such lengths to hide from others. If they were a member of a secret cult, whose sole purpose was to destroy the world; if they were Spiral Hand. She ran past him and flung open the door.

  'Stalker!' he called out, using her shifter name for the first time, a name he shouldn't even know. She stopped in the doorway, clinging onto the frame on both sides, her foot halfway to the step below. She closed her eyes and felt the weight of that name pressing onto her shoulders. 'We all have demons,' Rhys whispered.

  Stalker stepped into the street, shifted into her fox form and sprinted away, feeling his eyes on her as she ran.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Stalker crept silently through the house and into the living room, where the pack lay sleeping. Even Eyes was there, rather than at home with his family. Stalker wondered if he was there for her or because he didn't want to face his wife after what he had done. She was still shaking as she dropped to the floor next to the sofa. Claws stirred and rolled over to face her, though he didn't wake. She wanted him to. She wanted to tell someone what had happened and he was the only one who knew that she had a boyfriend, but she couldn't be sure how he would react to the news that Rhys wasn't what he appeared. How could she tell any of them? They would immediately worry about what he knew, what she had told him, and they would probably want to march straight over to his house to kill him. She burst into silent tears. She had fallen in love with Rhys without realising it, she didn't want him killed, even if he was a member of the Spiral Hand.

  She was going to have to carry the burden of this secret with her. She could never see him again, not now that she knew what he was, but she didn't have to betray his secret to anyone in a position to do anything about it.

  Slowly, her body morphed into that of a fox and she fell asleep on the floor. Her thoughts and dreams were less vivid in this form, and she was able to switch off her neocortex enough to sleep with only mildly disturbing dreams.

  When she awoke, the room was still and dark. She lifted her head and looked around at her sleeping pack mates. She looked up at Claws on the sofa, his eyes were just flickering open and locked with hers. He looked so sad.

  'Morning,' he whispered. She made a quiet snuffling noise in reply.

  One by one, the pack woke and an awkward breakfast followed. Stalker's phone buzzed intermittently with incoming messages, which she resolutely ignored. She fished Wind Talker's talisman out of her pocket and slid it across the table to him.

  'Thank you for lending it to me.'

  'Did you see what you expected to?' he asked gently. Stalker shook her head. There were no words adequate to convey the poignancy of his question, he didn't need to know and she couldn't tell him anyway.

  'We'll head over to Father Ash soon, with the skull,' Eyes said as he ate.

  A knock at the door interrupted them and everyone looked curiously down the hall.

  Wind Talker went to answer it and Stalker heard his surprise when he opened the door.

  'What do you want?' he said, barely restraining the anger from his voice. The others exchanged worried glances and Stalker made her way cautiously down the hall. Over Wind Talker's shoulder she saw a vaguely familiar face, and she clamped a hand to her face against the stench of tar and rot.

  'Please,' Tar Peter said. His hands were raised in surrender and he clutched a white handkerchief in one of them. 'Hear me out, I come to parley.'

  'We don't negotiate with, what was it? “Rubberneckers”?' Wind Talker snapped.

  'I can help you with the Plague Doctor,' the demon said hurriedly. He glanced up and down the street.

  'Let him in,' Stalker insisted and gently tugged Wind Talker away from the door. He glanced at her and then gave way. Tar Peter stepped into the hall and followed Stalker to the kitchen. Eyes and Weaver were on their feet, hackles raised. Claws looked puzzled and rose slowly to greet the strange visitor. 'Sit down,' Stalker ordered and Tar Peter took a seat at the table. The Lightning Lords gathered around him.

  'What can you do to help?' Wind Talker barked from the kitchen doorway, his arms crossed defensively over his chest. 'And why would you?'

  'His activities are interfering with my work,' the demon said, not even trying to contain his scorn. 'It's my job to keep the traffic flowing, but he's digging up roads and filling the sewers with rats, which blocks the under-city networks. It's a mess.'

  'Wait,' Claws said. 'Who is this guy and what's going on?'

  'This scumbag stopped to gloat when the Blue Moon was destroyed,' Wind Talker snarled. 'We caught him at the site of the wreckage right afterwards.'

  'I was not gloating, I had nothing to gloat over,' the demon replied defensively. 'I was merely looking. I'm sure you can understand. It was no different than the hordes of humans that assembled at the police cordon.'

  Stalker had to give him that. They had been shocked and angry at the time, and had reacted strongly to his presence, but he wasn't really doing anything wrong.

  'How can you help?' Stalker pressed, anxious to get back to the matter in hand.

  'I can distract the rats for you when the time comes.'

  'What do you want in return?' Eyes asked shrewdly.

  'I just want the rat population reduced, which will happen with the destruction of the Plague Doctor. You don't need to do anything that you weren't going to do anyway. It's in both of our interests to end him.'

  'So, you'll do something to clear the rats out of the Plague Doctor's lair, leaving the way clear for us to take out the big man?' Eyes asked.

  'That's the idea. They won't all follow me, you'll have to deal with some of them too.'

  'This all sounds rather familiar,' Stalker said, thinking of Raigo. 'How on earth can we trust you?'

  'You don't have to,' Tar Peter replied. 'I will do as I say, you can trust my word or not. Will it make any difference to what you do?'

  Nobody answered. A few glances were exchanged. 'Well, that settles it.' Tar Peter stood up, brushed down his black suit and placed his hat upon his head. He carefully placed a card on the table. 'Ca
ll me when you need the distraction and I will provide it.'

  He walked past Wind Talker and let himself out.

  'He was telling the truth,' Claws said, breaking the silence. 'But after Raigo, I don't know, I guess demons can slip past my ability if they believe enough of what they're saying and steer clear of outright lies.'

  'We'll be cautious,' Eyes said, his face set in a determined expression.

  An hour later, the pack were pulling to a halt outside Father Ash's house. Stalker's phone continued to receive messages, buzzing as they approached the front door. Finally Eyes snapped.

  'Will you reply or turn that thing off, please?' he hissed.

  'Sorry,' she mumbled and turned off her phone.

  The front door opened and Father Ash greeted them, wearing neatly pressed, grey trousers and a white roll neck jumper. Eyes held up the skull and Father Ash raised his eyebrows in surprise.

  'You didn't expect us to be able to find it, did you?' Eyes asked, a smirk playing on his lips.

  'Of course I did. I wouldn't have asked you to do something impossible. What would the point of that be? But I didn't expect you to find it so quickly.' Father Ash took the skull carefully and led the Lightning Lords inside. This time he led them into a room to the left and asked them to wait while he authenticated the skull.

  They stood awkwardly in the dining room. A huge table dominated the room and Stalker wondered what it was like for the man to rattle around in a huge house like this on his own. She drifted over to a long cabinet against the wall and glanced at the photographs standing on top of it in silver frames. A familiar face caught her eye and she stopped dead.

  'Guys,' she whispered. The others moved over and they all looked at the pictures. The same face appeared in several and Stalker let her finger brush one of them, as if that would reassure her it was real. 'Could he be her father?'

  'It certainly looks that way,' Eyes said quietly. 'Is this her as a child?' He held up another picture of a pre-teen girl smiling awkwardly at the camera. There was a definite resemblance to Last-Breath-Echoes. The other, more recent pictures were all taken at a distance, like paparazzi shots.

  'It's a little bit creepy,' Stalker whispered. They quickly dispersed away from the pictures, though Stalker wondered if he had shown them in here on purpose so that they would see them.

  A few minutes later, Father Ash returned looking satisfied.

  'It is indeed the correct skull. Wherever did you find it?'

  'I believe that would be best not shared,' Eyes said. He locked eyes with Father Ash and Stalker watched the pair of them, waiting anxiously for one of them to back down. Finally, Father Ash smiled and turned away, looking around at the rest of them.

  'You've got yourselves a strong Alpha there, folks.' He put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a phone. 'Now, who do I need to call?'

  Eyes gave him Scribe-of-the-Fallen's number and they all waited while it rang. 'Hello? Is this Scribe?' Father Ash strode from the room to have the conversation. He returned a moment later and passed his phone to Eyes.

  'Hello?' Eyes spoke into the phone. There was a reply that Stalker couldn't hear. 'Okay, thanks Scribe. I'll talk to you later.' Eyes passed the phone back to Father Ash. 'Okay, well I think that concludes our business. Thank you so much for your help.'

  Father Ash offered a hand and Eyes shook it. Stalker watched everything carefully, taking in every little nuance of the power play.

  'Any time.' Father Ash glanced at Stalker, who was still lingering near the photos. He gestured to them and looked down, as if he didn't quite want to make eye contact with Stalker. 'You know her?'

  'We do.' Stalker nodded.

  'How is she?'

  'She's okay, as far as I know,' Stalker replied. She didn't like his attention being on her. Father Ash nodded appreciatively. 'Would you like me to mention that you asked after her?'

  'Probably best not,' he said with a sad smile.

  The Lightning Lords left and returned to the city, barely talking to each other on the drive back. Eyes dropped Stalker off at work, but Claws was the only pack mate that she was sorry to be leaving. They exchanged sad smiles as she closed the car door and she didn't wait to watch them go. The afternoon was a living hell. Her young students arrived for their judo class and she greeted them with little enthusiasm, though many of them were in a particularly boisterous mood.

  'Settle down, please,' she called. Some of them took a knee and went quiet, but two young boys continued to laugh and joke between them. 'On the mat, now!' she shouted. She hardly ever raised her voice to her students and they instantly went quiet and knelt down on the mat in front of her. Stalker's hand went to her vial of still waters, but she wasn't feeling its cooling effects today.

  She directed the class through some drills to warm up and tried to focus herself, to call on the discipline that she had prided herself on a few months ago. The boys kept acting up, however, and she struggled to contain her temper. 'If you can't behave in my class you can leave,' she snapped at them, and after that they settled down. She noticed several other students exchanging looks of surprise but chose to ignore it.

  'Have a good Christmas,' one girl said quietly as the class was finishing up and Stalker blanched, suddenly reminded of the date. No wonder the kids had been so disruptive.

  'Thank you,' she muttered meekly. 'You too.'

  She packed away her things once everyone had left, and set off towards the stairs down to the street.

  'Merry Christmas!' Ron called to her from his office as she passed.

  'You too,' she replied with a bright smile, despite having no festive feeling in her at all. She had two weeks off work ahead and given the way she was feeling and the challenges that she knew lay ahead, she was very relieved.

  As she left the building she found the courage to turn her phone back on. There were dozens of text messages from Rhys, she opened one to find him pleading for her to reply, but couldn't bear to read the rest. She deleted them all.

  Stalker felt completely isolated. Her pack was going somewhere she couldn't follow, and now she couldn't trust Rhys. She didn't return to Grove Street, she needed some space and she walked slowly back to her own flat, even though the evening was biting cold. A small smile crept onto her face as she approached her building and saw Claws leaning on the wall.

  'Hi,' he said with the same, small smile that she greeted him with. She unlocked the door and led him up to her flat. He was the first pack mate to visit her home since Shadow's Step had brought her back to collect clean clothes just after she first changed, somehow it felt right that it was him.

  'How did you know where I live?' she asked.

  'I'm a PI,' he said with a completely deadpan expression and she laughed.

  'Of course. I wish I could offer you a drink or something, but there is literally nothing here these days.'

  'That's fine. This is your bolt-hole, then? The place you're always sneaking off to?'

  'Sometimes,' she said with a shrug. Claws raised an eyebrow and waited for her to go on. 'The secret boyfriend you guessed right about, I went to see him last night.' She stopped and glanced at him, he watched her, patiently waiting for her to say what she needed to say. She swallowed the hard lump in her throat and made herself go on. 'I thought he was human and last night I found out that he isn't, and now I don't know what to do about it.'

  'I see,' Claws said. 'Does it matter? Is the lie more important than the man?'

  'Maybe,' she said and collapsed onto the sofa. Claws came to sit by her and waited patiently for her to speak again. 'He's a shifter and I think he's Spiral Hand.'

  'Ah. Wait, you think he is. You don't know?'

  'Well, he was hiding his true nature, not just from me, by the looks of it, but from everyone, everything. Why would he do that if he weren't Spiral Hand?'

  'Did you talk to him about it?' Claws asked, as if it was the easiest and most obvious thing in the world.

  'No,' she admitted. 'I ran away.'

&nbs
p; 'Granted, I don't know much about them, but I got the impression that they had an agenda and were allied with demons. If this guy is hiding his nature from everything, even the demons, how could he be working with them?'

  'He has a secrecy demon cloaking him. He is working with demons.'

  'But a secrecy demon isn't chaos, fear, anger or greed. Isn't it possible that he's hiding from all of them too?'

  Stalker sighed. His words made a lot of sense.

  'Maybe I should hear him out. I just can't trust him anymore. Who's to say that anything he says now won't just be more lies?'

  'Me,' Claws said, raising an eyebrow. 'I can detect lies, remember?'

  'So you can.' Stalker smiled, there was a glimmer of hope. 'But look, I need to sit on this for a bit. We need to get the Plague Doctor dealt with. Everything else needs to wait.'

  'Okay, whatever you think best. Do you want to go back to Grove Street?'

  'Not really,' she said, grimacing.

  'We have to make things right with the others,' Claws said tentatively.

  'Do we? I don't want to be part of a pack that kills old people. Do you?'

  'No, I don't. But I don't think there's an alternative. The Watch was the same. I may not have been one of them, they kept a lot from me, but I could tell they were doing things that my silly, human morality would struggle with.'

  'We could form our own pack!' Stalker said, lighting up with optimism.

  'And last, what? A week?' The light quickly faded. Claws was right, there was safety in numbers. She had seen the things they had to face, and the two of them wouldn't last long on their own. 'We don't have to be okay with what they did, and we don't have to participate in anything like that. But we do have to stick together and try to get along. We might be able to prevent future incidents, now that we know about this side of it all. We might be able to change them if we work together.'