Emily approached with care. She kept her ears peeled and her Owl form on the tip of her awareness, ready to spring forth in an instant. She was ready to transform and unleash hell at the drop of a hat.
She stopped a few yards in front of the cell. “Hi?”
The form stiffened and cowered as if expecting some form of punishment.
“Michael?”
The form snapped up to look at her.
It was Michael all right.
His eyes were full of a mix of shock and terror. His face was severely scarred with what looked like claw marks. His lips were puffed up as if they’d been bludgeoned, and his body was hidden behind a black overcoat. Who knew what else they’d done to him?
“You shouldn’t have come,” he muttered, and then his eyes glazed over as he slumped to the floor.
She was about to say something when she heard a terrible scream come from above. She heard it because of her heightened shifter-hearing. The scream ended abruptly, but what followed was equally as terrifying. Footsteps. Rapid footsteps.
He’s here. Selena’s voice shook.
Emily panicked. She drew in on her power, creating a short burst of hurricane-like wind in the small corridor. The hurricane threw Michael against the wall, yanked open the iron bars, and Emily came forth as The Owl. The corridor was too small for her to come to her full stature, so she expanded as much as it allowed her.
“It was you!” Michael screeched as he picked himself up from the ground.
Emily, flapping in the air, noticed Michael was missing a few fingers. She swung into the prison, nudged Michael onto her plume, and cut out of the prison like a bat out of hell. She was barely out of the dungeon when she noticed the evil rove walking into the corridor.
It wasn’t Gregory Alfred. It was Marion. And his hands were aflame with an occult-blue fire.
“Be careful of that!” Michael screamed to Emily as he clung to her feathers.
Emily didn’t bother stopping. This was what she’d trained for. It was her moment. She couldn’t stop now. She allowed her anger to come to the fore, feeling the spur of Selena’s support carrying her.
She sliced through the air, commanding the wind to push her faster.
“Stop!” Marion stood in the middle of the corridor. “Stop, now!”
Of course, Emily didn’t listen. As she got closer, Marion raised both hands. As they came together, there was an explosion of brilliant blue flame that roared toward her.
Emily opened her beak to let out her war cry. But what came out—to her surprise and to Marion’s—was a powerful gush of liquid fire.
Her blast of lava quenched the blue flames instantaneously. Marion dived out of her way, yelping something like, ‘Fire demon!?’
Emily didn’t stop to look at her handiwork. She spiraled through the staircase and burst into the bay, whistling and unleashing torrents of liquid fire all about. Michael managed to hold on to her in spite of his new disability.
Joanna and Rina were nowhere in the bay, so Emily ensured she torched the whole place. Even when she broke out of the doorway and into the open air, she torched the sides of the castle, expanding further into her full stature.
She didn’t stop to check for Joanna and Rina. She didn’t see Joanna’s car parked where it should have been, so she assumed they had made it out. After she was satisfied the Alfreds’ castle was going to remain ablaze, Emily set her eyes to the skies and ascended to safety.
39
Emily knew she had screwed up when she sighted the cottage from thousands of feet up in the air. Dad and Aunt Anastacia were standing in the semidarkness. Joanna’s car wasn’t there.
Emily did a single sweep of the cottage in search of enemies or something wrong. Finding nothing, she swooped in first to allow Michael to jump off before she twirled around and into human form again.
Aunt Anastacia immediately grabbed Michael, who had stumbled to the ground.
“Where are they?” Emily asked. “Where are—”
Aunt Anastacia cast furtive glances to the darkness around them. “We can’t stay outside. Get inside, now.”
Dad gripped Emily and pulled her in after Aunt Anastacia, who was helping Michael into the cottage.
Emily was in full-on panic mode. They moved into the library, where Emily paced like a caged tiger, her heart pounding. Dad told her to remain calm and wait for Aunt Anastacia, who had taken Michael upstairs to treat his injuries and put him to sleep.
“I can’t lose them,” Emily muttered. “I can’t! And Marion—he’s a warlock. Who knew? I didn’t know!” She grabbed handfuls of her now-messy hair on either side of her face.
Her father placed a comforting hand on her shoulder.
“What if they were trapped in the house?” Emily thought aloud with horror. “What if they burned to the ground in the fire I caused?”
Dad remained calm, although Emily could tell he was agitated, too. Neither of them had anything else to say.
Anastacia came down after a few minutes. She seemed frazzled, hasty. “He’s in bad shape.” She placed her hand over her mouth and rubbed her jawline. “It will take all my juice to bring him back to full functionality. If I do it, I’ll be out of commission for a few days.”
“Do it!” Emily urged. “I need to go back out for my friends. They might be stuck back in the house.”
Anastacia glared at Dad. “You haven’t told her?”
“Told me what?” Emily turned on Dad, her eyes wide and questioning.
Dad just glared. “Show her.”
Anastacia glanced at Emily. “You friends are gone.” That was all she said before she waved her hands in the air. Smoke coalesced out of nothing, forming a filmy screen in the air.
“The knife I gave you had the special attribute of allowing me to see what you were experiencing,” Aunt Anastacia explained as the screen showed how Emily walked through one of the green doors, leaving her two friends in the bay.
It showed how three people accosted them. They all looked young. They all had the same ebony hair. They were all magicians: a witch and two warlocks. Emily watched with horror as someone cast a spell that immobilized her two friends—or killed, it was hard to tell. Then one (who looked like Marion) entered the door into the dungeon. The screen vanished.
“We need to go after them!” Emily screamed. “Right now!”
“We can’t,” Anastacia cried. “Don’t you understand? You lost. They played you. They’re done for!”
Emily felt so worthless. Rage exploded in her body, causing her to shudder. How had she let this happen? What had become of her friends?
“We played right into his trap,” said Dad sadly.
“There’s only one more play left,” Anastacia said. “Only you can make that decision.”
“What?” Emily asked, although she already knew the answer.
“I have enough magic left to either repair Michael’s damaged body or to perform the Adoption ritual.”
“You saw what we saw,” Dad explained. “There’s not just one of them. There’s three. And none of them were Gregory. This is not just a one-man army. This is a family of evil roves. They all want to kickstart the apocalypse, and they’ve been ahead of us this whole time.”
“We showed our cards tonight,” Anastacia said. “Being an Adopted is not the end; it’s now a beginning. We might still fail, but at least we’ll have a fighting chance.”
“And what if I take Michael and run away from this place?” asked Emily, her hands on her hips.
“Then they’ll come after you,” replied Dad quietly. “Gregory has waited for more than a hundred years to do this. You think he’ll let a silly little teenager stop him?”
“Is that what you think I am, Dad?” That certainly stung. “A silly little teenager?”
“Of course not.” Dad’s eyes softened slightly. “But that’s what he thinks. That’s why he sees your effort as inconsequential. If we have Michael, it’s because he wants us to. If Michael is so battered, it
’s for a purpose.”
“And I think I know what that purpose is,” said Anastacia. “It’s me. To take me out. He knows it will exhaust me to repair Michael’s body. He knows I’ll be out of commission for some time. That’s why I don’t want to be the one to decide. Emily, do you want to become an Adopted now and go after them, or do you want your brother healed?” Anastacia gestured toward the stairs.
“I can still grow his missing digits and heal his scars,” Anastacia went on. “They’re fresh. But if we don’t work on his body now, he’ll remain like that forever.”
Emily fumed. She hated to be backed into a corner. She hated knowing that her friends were in harm’s way, and she was powerless to help them.
She wanted so much to go back out there. But she had to listen to reason. She had to save Michael. If all the Alfreds were magicians, then she needed as many powerful people as she could get. Michael was a warlock. If he joined the team, they could begin to even the playing field.
“Save him.”
Anastacia nodded and, without missing a beat, ran back upstairs.
“You made the right decision,” Dad reassured her. “Now, let’s hope they don’t pick tonight to invade this house.”
“After she saves him, when she recharges, she fixes me, right?” Emily asked. “She makes me an Adopted, and we go after them?”
Dad nodded.
That was all Emily needed to hear. She left the cottage and stood out on the porch, looking out into the all-encompassing darkness.
You finally get your wish, Emily thought to Selena.
This was never my wish, The Owl replied coolly. But if we’re going to make this right, Adoption is the only way to do it.
Emily hated it, but she agreed. She just hoped to live long enough to complete the process. She hoped the Alfreds didn’t pick that night to attack. She hoped a lot of things, but she didn’t trust fate to hand her what she hoped for. So she settled down on the porch steps and continued her sentry duty.
If they came, well, then it felt like a good day to die.
TO BE CONTINUED . . .
Get the Prequel FREE!
Before Emily or Selena even existed. . .
. . .there was an owl shifter named Bernice.
She was expecting the prom night of her dreams.
But instead, it turned into her worst nightmare.
Bernice and her sister Anastacia come from a long line of supernaturals.
Even so, Bernice convinced herself that the curse of supernatural blood had ended with their father’s death.
But now that she is sixteen, her true nature manifests.
And what better occasion than prom night? Especially when her boyfriend happens to be Everet Winter, the son of the top supernatural-killer in town.
Not only does Bernice discover, to her horror, she can now transform into a massive bloodthirsty owl, but also that Anastacia has been hiding her own magical powers the entire time as well.
Now who can she trust?
Will the young man she loves really stand by her when he finds out her secret?
Or will he turn her over to the vigilantes, ensuring her violent death?
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Also by Qatarina Wanders
The Story Continues . . .
Book Two
Her secret is out . . .
. . . and she is in even more danger than she knew.
Now, Emily has to sit and wait.
A whole family of evil roves is after her.
But they don’t just want her dead.
They want to torture and sacrifice her on an altar to induce the apocalypse.
But what they don’t know is that she isn’t just the fated owl shifter they need to perform the sacrifice; she is The Owl. With additional powers no one could have dreamed of. Within her consciousness is not only her owl personality, Selena, but that of a lava-spewing fire demon who likes to be in charge.
Now Emily has to step up to the plate and fight the children of the evil roves, and it doesn’t help that one of them is her classmate and strikingly attractive.
But how can she fight when her powers are scattered between three very different personalities all struggling for control of her own body?
She knows the potentially fatal Adoption ritual is the only way to integrate so she can fully come into her power. . .
. . . But maybe call that Plan B.
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Acknowledgments
Continuing gratitude to everyone who showed support for this project in any way. My daughter and fellow fantasy author Ora Wanders for always reading my rewrites and helping me rework my stories. Ramy Vance for teaching me how to plot. My team at Wandering Words Media for polishing my words: Kachi Ugo for helping me with the outline and continuing ideation; Rachel McCracken and Dee Turner for rocking my editing; and Allison Goddard for being my favorite proofreader and final set of eyes. Everyone on my launch team, all my beta readers, and last—and MOST importantly—everyone who buys and reads my books. I couldn’t do this without you! MWAH!
About the Author
Qatarina Wanders is a full-time writer and editor with a unicorn and pug obsession. When she isn’t writing or editing books about unicorns or pugs (or owl shifters, vampires, werewolves, faeries, witches, angels, or succubi), she is likely eating sushi with her daughter or jumping out of a plane in the Rocky Mountains.
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Adopted by The Owl: The Owl Shifter Chronicles Book One Page 20