Realm Book Two - Shadow Slave

by K. A. M'Lady

  It was a very gallant thing for them to do, even if Kieran ordered them to protect me. I didn’t even mind all the blood that they were covered with once they finally killed the damn thing. What I did mind, however, was the bone crunching, skin-shifting goop that slopped off of them while they went all feral. I think I could live without the slop. But the packages before and even after were lovely creatures to behold.

  “He’s been like that since they brought him in,” Cage was saying, his steps beginning to falter, his spine stiffening as the creature slammed into the door once more.

  Ien stopped beside me, his hand on my forearm as he lifted his head and scented the air. It was such strange behavior to see in a grown man; his lush waist-length white-blond hair flowing behind him. The crest of his lashes closed over the electric blue of his eyes and slowly, meticulously he breathed in the scents of the jail deep into his being.

  Jade, the youngest of the three, cocked his head and watched his older brother as he too began to scent the room. Jade’s ice-blue eyes met mine as the silence of the moment thickened.

  “This is not a new ‘turner, Inspector Cage.” Ien opened his eyes, looking at me rather than the cop in question.

  “What do you mean, not a new ‘turner?” I glanced at Cage.

  The rapid flash of Cage’s eyes told me he knew something, and he was about to try and cover it up. Good thing for me Cage was such a shitty liar, and he seemed to forget how well I knew him. For Prophets’ sake! You would think after all this time the damn guy would just give it to me straight.

  “What the hell is going on, Cage? And don’t feed me your bullshit. You know something. Don’t you?” I asked the coldness of my voice sounding strange to even my ears.

  He looked at me, then at the ground, trying like hell to avoid my question.

  “You know what the fuck is down behind that door. Don’t you?” I asked. “Hell, you probably even know who is behind that door. Your fucking department just doesn’t want to deal with it or the paperwork. But they sure as shit want me to get rid of it. Don’t they?”

  “I don’t know what you’re—”

  I cut him off with a glare. “Don’t fuck with me, Cage. You and I go back a long way. The only person you’re fooling is yourself and your superiors.”

  “I...I swear, Rihker I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  I took a step towards him as anger and adrenaline pulsed beneath my skin. A tic began to twitch in my temple as the irritation of the moment and its enormity sped through my mind. What the fuck did Cage think he was going to gain by lying to me? Didn’t his superiors know that if this shit went south, there was no way in hell that the Court would just voluntarily send another Hunter in to help them, no questions asked? They’d be filling out requisitions until the Second Coming. They’d just better hope that a bloodbath wasn’t on the horizon, because if it came down to it—human or Other—the pathetic humans were going down screaming. That’s just the way the Court rolled.

  The creaking of metal as the ‘turner slammed into the steel door brought my thoughts back to the moment at hand and I took another step towards Cage. First one, then another and another until I had him backed into the closest wall, my hand clutched into his shirt collar as I was growling into his face.

  “Cage, I don’t give an Ogre’s-sized shit on Sunday in Hell what your problem is with me or what your fucking bosses told you to tell me...or not to tell me. But you’ve got about two seconds to come clean, or I’m letting that fucking ‘turner out of that cage myself. Then we’ll see who’s playing all their cards close to their chest.”

  The creature slammed into the door again, the metal creaking with the weight of its blow, causing all of us to glance down the hall towards the door to make sure it was holding.

  “All right…all right.” he screeched. “It’s not a newbie ‘turner.”

  “Really.” The sarcasm was thick enough to walk on.

  “They made me tell you that to get you down here; to get it off our hands without an inquisition from the Courts.”

  “Why would there be an inquisition, Cage? What’s wrong with this ‘turner? What did your people do?”

  “They...they...” he stammered, his eyes darting everywhere, but looking at mine.

  “Yes?” I leaned into him, twisting his shirt a little tighter. This was really getting tiresome. If the dumb ass would have just been straight with me, all of this shit could have been avoided. I mean, what could they have done to this guy? What would make him freak this badly?

  “They killed his pup.” His voice was a soft whisper, and shame laced his words.

  “They what?” The disbelief was thick with scorn as I stared at him in horror.

  Garric whistled. Ien growled. But Jade’s response was the most subtle, the most silent as he took in Cage’s words. It was the overwhelming quiet that worried me most.

  “I swear it was an accident, Rihker. They didn’t mean to do it. It’s the guy, the Werewolf flunky guy that was attacked at Kieran’s club, Spit, they call him. They got a call after he got released from the hospital; complaints of thrashing violence. Howling. Screams in the middle of the night.”

  “When my men got there the house was in shambles, blood on the walls, on the furniture. A baby was crying. Spit was in a rage; half man and half Werewolf. One minute he was clutching the baby, claws exposed, fangs salivating. The next, the baby was covered in slime, then fur, no longer a baby, but a pup. Spit was howling. My men thought it was going to kill the child. Kill it, or eat it.”

  “Jesus, Cage. Are the Police completely inept?” This from Ien, as he looked at Cage with cold fury in his cobalt eyes.

  “They didn’t know,” he said, his voice catching as he shook his head back and forth. “Someone opened fire, but the shot went wide. Their fear made their mark unsteady. The bullet missed. It hit the child instead. They didn’t mean for it to happen. It was an accident, Rihker. They didn’t mean for the child to be hit.”

  “No. Not the child,” I remarked as I looked at Cage in a wholly different light. “But the fucking Werewolf, they definitely wanted to shoot the Were, didn’t they? And I suppose they just happened to have silver bullets?”

  He didn’t answer. His face ashen, his lips trembling.

  “Who fucking told them to load silver, Cage? When did that become a department standard?” I slammed him into the wall, finally letting him go.

  He slid to the ground, his legs no longer able to hold him. “All officers now carry two loads, lead and silver. I…I recommended it after this summer,” he squeaked, a distant horror glimmering in his eyes.

  There was a moment of utter silence as we all looked at him. He stared blankly at the wall across from him. Visions of demons dancing in his head, no doubt.

  It appeared the humans were upping the ante on their own protection. Who could really blame them? They were the weaker link, after all. I guess if most of the bad guys they were rustling up were going to take a bite out of them, they might as well use whatever they needed to protect themselves.

  It was quite possible the pathetic humans were finally wising up. It’s just too bad they had no idea what kind of shit they were opening themselves up for.

  Once again the moment of silence shifted and Ien, Jade, and Garric all turned as one towards me. I caught the same look of warning in their eyes a split second before the door bursting off its hinges ricocheted down the hall like a sonic boom. Jade grabbed my arm and thrust me down the hall behind him as he yelled, “Run!”

  Run? What the fuck was he saying? I glanced at Jade’s pale ice-blue eyes, then back down the hall catching a glimpse of the feral Wolf-like man loping our direction at breakneck speed, my brain freezing on the image before me.

  “By the Prophets!” I swore, awe and horror a mixed sigh escaping my lips.

  Its head was caught in a stasis of mid-change; the top of its skull still human, the ears of a Wolf protruding from the top, each one peaked as though listening to each sla
m of our heartbeats. Its eyes widened on the slope of its brow and as we watched, its muzzle elongated, stretching from skin to tight to hold its jowls. A growl emanated down the hall as it snapped closed its razor sharp teeth—the effect lost on no one.

  In a flash play of fast-forward and rewind, its face fought the change as cheekbones slid and popped between human and Werewolf, a thick, slimy substance slopping off in clumps as human hair fell to the floor, then reemerged on its human skull.

  The Were paused, collapsing to the floor as he clutched its head between two human hands with elongated fingers, the bones popping and cracking. The creature howled, then bellowed in agony as claws forked in and out of their ends, blood running in rivulets down its forearms with every piercing stab.

  His ribs moved and stretched, the bones cracking and spreading as his body shifted and hunched until he fell to the floor writhing, screaming, first in a mans voice, “Oh, God! Help me!” Then growling and howling, his voice completely indiscernible.

  “What the fuck is wrong with him?” I asked, wishing again for the unmistakable feel of cold steel that only my blades could offer me. I had never in my life seen something so horrible or so amazing.

  His body was shifting back and forth over and over between Werewolf and human as we watched in stricken horror. Legs bending in ways I didn’t think it were possible to bend. Skin all but molting a glistening clear substance like slime, and then his flesh would suddenly fill with fur and I’d be amazed all over again.

  “He is stuck in the Change,” Ien said, his eyes wide with shock. “It’s almost like something is making him do it, and he is fighting it.”

  “Can’t you help him?” I asked, turning to look at my three wolves.

  “If we help him take a form and he fights us, he may not be able to turn back. That is the way. To fight your beast is to lose it, or die by its hands. One must accept both to live in peace. But he,” Ien said with a nod towards the shifting Were, “he fights both the man and the beast.”

  I stood there for a second while I let that sink in. There was no way I could just do nothing. Not if I expected to live with myself. “Well, the way I see it, he asked for our help. We can either stand here debating it while he writhes around all afternoon in agony, or we can give it to him.” Didn’t they see the logic of it? The fucking guy was all but begging us to put him out of his misery. For Prophets’ sake! If I had to stand there for a minute more and watch the damn thing molt back and forth between an oozing sack of flesh and a furry, malcontented beast, I was going to kill him myself, just so I didn’t have to watch this shit any longer.

  Besides, the guy had been through enough. How much more could he handle and survive anyway? His girl had been ripped to shreds right before him by a Shadow Land Death Walking Ogre. Now the freaking human cops had killed his pup. What else did he really have to lose?

  My irritation must have shown, because as one my three wolves turned towards each other and started stripping off their clothes.

  “What the hell are they doing?” This finally from Cage who chose now to bring his weak-willed whinny ass back into the situation.

  “I believe they are going to help him ‘Change,” I said. I calmly watched Ien, Garric and Jade strip down to their lovely bronzed skin.

  The Were was still flopping around, growling and heaving, his body shuddering as he screamed and quaked, his bones shifting in quicker increments as my wolves were readying for their own transformations. Cage had finally picked himself up off the floor and had crept towards me, still keeping a small distance between himself, me and all the Werewolves involved. His eyes were wide, his face flushed and his fingers trembled as he gingerly grasped his gun looking on in abject horror at the whole situation.

  “You know, Cage,” I began, wondering if he should be armed. “Maybe you should consider taking some time off.”

  He just looked at me with his hazel eyes empty of emotion, like he was lost and there was little hope of coming back. I was starting to think that the summer had been a lot harder on Cage than I first realized. Maybe I should speak to his Commander about it.

  I wasn’t able to consider any more thoughts on Cage or anything, because the Were was suddenly up off the floor, his face and chest partially shifted; teeth snapping, spittle oozing and claws flashing as it was lunging for my throat.

  It was like a blur of brown fur whipping before me and then I was being slammed backwards onto the hard, tiled floor. I didn’t even have time to brace for the fall and I knew my wolves weren’t going to react in time to save me.

  I thought I heard Ien’s voice say something that turned into a growl, but I had a faceful of Were to fend off, its teeth snapping at my throat as I started yelling, “Blades! Where are my fucking blades?”

  I didn’t have them, and they weren’t going to save me, either. I couldn’t even get my hands open to zap the motherfucker with a ball of Light. It felt like I’d been pummeled by three hundred pounds of linebacker as my back and shoulders rocked off the floor, my head cracking against tiles like a sledgehammer as we slammed full force onto the floor.

  Black dots swam before my eyes as the damn beast dove forward, lunging for my jugular. With my left hand firmly on its throat, pressing to keep his mouth from reaching me, I struck out, landing a good right hook.

  It did absolutely nothing. Why the fuck did I leave my blades at home? I wondered again for the millionth time. I could see them in my mind right where I’d left them; shining in the afternoon sun on my little kitchen dinette. I could almost feel their hilts in my hand like a security blanket, comforting and warm as I continued to pummel the damn Were in the jaw, his teeth snapping, his own fist reaching.

  Where the fuck were my wolves? Goddamn it! Did I have to do everything? I was starting to get pissed as the fucking Werewolf slashed out with his claws, catching me across the top of the chest, raking his way along my collarbone; the blood burning and welling as the razor-sharp nails broke flesh.

  “You furry fuck!” I screamed, socking the damn thing right in the eye. It looked back at me, fury blazing in the cold grey of its eyes. Then it hunched over as spasms began ripping their way up its spine and a voice ripe with agony tore from its throat.

  “Oh, no, you’re not!” I said. “Don’t you dare fucking molt on me.” The thought of this guy changing on top of me was like heaven to a devil. I so did not want that oozy shit running all over me.

  He screamed again and his chest bones popped, hands began reaching for him as I tried to wiggle and shove at the same time. Someone tried to pull him off of me, but he started struggling again. He was fighting all of us and yet at the same time, he kept reaching for me. His claws swinging wildly. Growling and bellowing. Muzzle snapping. Fighting them. Fighting me. He swung out with claws again and I screamed as his arm was in mid-change, blood and ooze pouring from him on to me, the claws raking across my belly.

  I screamed, “Blade!” wanting my blade so badly I could taste it. Suddenly, amazingly, like a gift from the Prophets themselves, it materialized in my hand. Then I was lunging into the Were’s gut, grinding it to his spine as the burn of my own torn flesh ripped through me.

  Chapter Eight

  I may have seen a shadow then, an errant

  Shadow, bearing a bundle on its head

  I saw – and no more saw, in the same instant.

  The footsteps, neither near nor far away.

  From In the Fog by Giovanni Pascoli

  Translated from the Italian by Geoffrey Brock

  Lights, especially fluorescent lights, look so strange when your world is fading to the darkest shades of black. Death is such a subtle taste of sweet oblivion, a quiet, serene unorthodox plane where your limbs feel cold and the numbness begins to spread to your mind as it overshadows your will to breathe. Your very will to exist.

  At least that’s how it felt, as the life and the Light slipped in and faded out of my being as I lay on the floor in a warm pool of blood. The dying Werewolf slumped overtop of me wa
s a solid mass of weight as he rattled his final breath; my arm smashed between us as I clung to my blade.

  I had no idea how the blade had come to be clutched in my hand, but there was no way in hell I was ever letting it go again. I knew as I lay there and considered my breathing that it was the one thing that had saved my life. Not my Tells, certainly not the wolves brought for my protection, but the cold hard steel rammed in the heart of the dead man on top of me.

  Funny how death can give you a new perspective on your own life. What that new perspective might be, I hadn’t a clue. All I knew for certain was that someone would have to pry my blade from my cold dead hand before I let it out of my sight again.

  The flash of inky darkness and the sizzle of sulfur was the first thing that alerted me that something strange was occurring—as if my day needed anything else.

  The weight of the Were being lifted off of me as my eyes locked on to the small dark creature that effortlessly clutched it in its hands was the second thing that told me that my world was jacked six ways to the Second Coming.

  It took everything I had not to say something—or scream to high heaven. For one thing, I had no idea that a Sweeper could be so small.

  “Not what ye were expecting, eh?” The bright pink tips of her short, porcupine spiked-up hair and the Cockney accent was another thing I didn’t expect either. Some say that the Sweepers are third-class Demons from the Underworld come to collect the refuse for the Shadow Lands. Others, that they are assassins for the Silent Court. No one really knows for certain what kind of Others they are. Well, except for the Court, and they’re definitely not sharing their secrets.

  Not when every creature of the Realm has nightmares of the Sweepers coming to collect them in the night. It’s too good of a psychological warfare. Even the Goblins have their fears.

  “No.” I blinked up at her, trying to absorb this latest round of shit on toast. “Definitely not what I expected.”