by Holly Evans
We stepped out into a wide hallway with plush sky-blue carpet, which didn’t seem like a very practical colour, but those with money didn’t tend to worry about the practicality of things. I kept waiting for Alasdair to produce a key for my apartment. We reached a black door, and he still hadn’t handed me my own key.
“Is this my flat?”
He opened the door and ran his tongue over his teeth before he stepped inside. I growled.
“Answer my question, Alasdair.”
He dropped my backpack on a large white sofa and spread his arms wide gesturing at the generous living space around us. I noted two doors leading off the space. Unless the bathroom had to be accessed via the bedroom, there was only one bedroom.
“Welcome to your new home. I sleep on the side closest to the window,” he said, his gaze holding mine.
I squared my shoulders and refused to look away.
“Did you just say we’re expected to share a bed?”
“Is that such a problem?” he asked in a sultry tone.
My instinct told me to run, run far away, and never look back.
“I’ll take the couch.”
“Don’t be daft, Niko, we’re both adults and the bed is plenty big enough,” he said with a roll of his eyes.
His soft unidentifiable accent had slipped and taken on a Scottish brogue. Just when I thought he couldn’t get any sexier - the Scottish accent, Edinburgh in particular, was my weakness.
I wasn’t going to be beaten, not with something as stupid as sleeping arrangements. Fixing a polite smile on my face, I picked up my backpack and went to look at the bedroom in question. It was done in whites and silvers with a black feature wall at the back of the room. Alasdair was right, the bed was comfortably big enough for three people. I could survive that.
“Make yourself presentable, then we’ll go and see Saoirse,” Alasdair said from the doorway.
I raised an eyebrow. “I’m perfectly presentable.”
He sighed and strode up to me, where he proceeded to run his fingers through my hair. My wolf preened under his touch, and I found myself leaning into him and breathing in his scent. Growling, I swatted him away and went to find a mirror.
Alasdair had insisted on being tactile even after I growled at him. He had run the back of his fingers over my stubble and made some comment about being presentable. I ignored the desire to run my fingers over his five o’clock shadow, and instead insisted we stop screwing around and get to the priestess.
I’d never stepped foot in a church, moon goddess or otherwise. Some part of me feared that doing so would result in me catching fire or something equally painful. I was an abomination, after all. The church Alasdair took me to was on the outskirts of the city, not too far from the coast. The taste of salt filled the air and made me smile. I could get used to that. The church itself was a classic building made of pale grey stone with arched windows and a single spire. It looked much like the other churches in the area. Slender pale-barked trees grew at the edges of the small gravel car park. The area was well-maintained with small flower beds on either side of the entrance to the car park. Silver-leaved plants grew there with an array of night-blooming plants, each white in colour. I smiled and breathed in deep. This was supposed to be home away from home. Shifters were always told that if they ever got in trouble, they’d find sanctuary in one of the moon goddess’s churches. I really hoped that applied to made shifters, too.
My pace slowed as we got closer to the church, and my throat tightened. What if this was Alasdair’s twisted idea of punishment for being made? What if this was all some sick joke, and there were torture implements in there?
Alasdair wrapped his arm around my waist and pulled me through the dark grey door into the soft silver light of the church’s interior. I didn’t catch fire. My blood didn’t boil. I was ok. I laughed in relief before I pulled away from Alasdair. I was inside, there was no need to maintain that contact. The interior was lit with pale silver lights. The ceiling arched far above and had a stunning mural of the night sky. The pews that I assume used to be present had been removed, leaving the silvery white floor bare and open. My eye was drawn to the simple black altar at the front with a large moon painting hanging over it.
“Alasdair, so good to see you again,” a young priestess said with a broad smile.
Her pale blonde hair was pulled back into a complicated braid, and her silver and white priestess robes hugged her figure in a way that quite eye-catching. Alasdair walked around me as I took everything in. The priestess, Saoirse I assumed, pulled the much larger Guardian into a hug and kissed him on the cheek. Perhaps tactility was normal among Guardians and their crowd. I curled my lip at the thought.
Sixteen
Saoirse smiled brightly at me but remained a few feet away.
“You must be Alasdair’s partner, Niko. Welcome. I’m sorry we don’t have time for introductions, but I have a rather urgent case for you both.”
I dipped my chin in acknowledgement and followed her and Alasdair through to an office in the back of the church. Saoirse handed Alasdair a thin black folder and left again. The familiar click of a kettle soon came from a room just down the hallway. Alasdair took the seat closest to the door and shuffled it closer to my own, both set in front of Saoirse’s simple desk. His mouth tugged down into a deep frown as he looked over the contents of the folder.
After a minute of being polite and waiting for him to share the case with me, I reached over and took the top few sheets out of the folder to inspect them. Ignoring the growl and glare he gave me, I looked over the information we had. The first page was only text on someone called Robert Silver. He was a good wolf, mid-twenties, had no record with either the enforcers or the human police. He kept his head down and worked in construction.
The next page held two photos. Gruesome images full of blood and death. Robert had been cut open from sternum to navel, and intricate sigils had been carved into every inch of skin, including his face. I sat staring at it for what felt like an eternity. The image was going to haunt me, I was sure of it. It wasn’t that I hadn’t seen death before, I’d just never seen something done with such cold intent. The suffering Robert must have endured would have been obscene.
A gentle touch circled behind my right ear, the calming scent of Scottish heather pulling me away from the blood and gore before me.
“Breathe, Niko,” Alasdair said in barely more than a whisper.
I narrowed my eyes as I realised he was circling his thumb behind my ear in the sensitive spot that sent shivers down my spine. His fingers had dug down through my hair to stroke the nape of my neck, rubbing away the tension.
Taking a long deep breath, I calmed myself and tore my eyes away from the photos to find Saoirse sitting behind her desk and a cup of tea before me. Alasdair removed his hand before I snarled at him. Logically, I knew that shifters were very tactile, but I hadn’t experienced it before and I had no idea how to handle it from him.
“There are four others. Three male and one female. All born wolf shifters. All killed as part of the same ritual,” Saoirse said solemnly.
Alasdair placed the folder on the desk before him and picked up his cup of tea in one smooth and somehow elegant gesture.
“Do we have any idea what the ritual is for?” I asked.
“Something tied to shadow, perhaps the shadow god himself,” Alasdair rumbled.
Saoirse sighed softly and pulled the top photo from the folder and frowned at it before she slid it across the desk in front of me. She pointed at a couple of the sigils painted in the poor wolf’s blood near his open ribcage.
“These two are tied to shadow, but the rest around them are too jumbled. We think he’s trying to strike a bargain with the shadow god, but he has gotten the ritual wrong. The shadow god is the opposite of the moon goddess, and as all wolves belong to her, they make a fitting sacrifice to him,” Saoirse said with an unexpected bitterness.
I had thought of priestesses as being gentle, quiet sou
ls. Looking at Saoirse’s face and posture, I saw that she was anything but the fragile flower I’d initially thought. She held herself with a strength that rivalled most of the enforcers I’d met, and there was a cold calculating edge to her pretty brown eyes. I pulled back a little and mentally kicked myself. I knew better than to judge people off expectations rather than reality. There were a lot of dangerous beings in the world who presented themselves as weak, delicate souls, only to tear their prey open when they so chose.
“Do we have any leads?” Alasdair asked as he handed me my tea. “It’s only tea, Niko, it won’t harm you.”
I growled at him. He bared his teeth in return.
“It’s rude to decline a drink someone has kindly made for you,” he said, holding my eye contact.
I dipped my chin to Saoirse and took the cup.
“My apologies, it wasn’t my intent to be rude. I got wrapped up in the case, was all,” I said with a polite smile.
The tea had an oddness to it, a soft lavender taste under the normal black tea taste. It wasn’t bad, but I wasn’t sure I’d want to drink it again.
“No. We’re hoping that you and Niko can dig something up when you look at the most recent scene. I’ve arranged for you to speak to Robert’s pack tomorrow morning, too.”
I didn’t relish visiting that scene. It would be even worse now that it had sat for a while. The idea of those smells filling my nostrils made my stomach turn. I picked up the photo of Robert and took a long drink of my tea. We needed to find the bastard that did that to him and bring them to justice.
Seventeen
A heavy storm had rolled in while we were in Saoirse’s office. The Heavens opened as we stepped out into the dark car park. Rain pelted me with great heavy droplets, and puddles formed on the ground as we ran for the car. Lightning streaked across the sky and thunder crashed as I dove into the car seat and pulled the door shut safely behind me. Despite having been raised in Scotland and living in Ireland for a couple of years, I did not like the rain. I brushed my hair out of my eyes and wiped the water streaming down my face away as I turned the heaters up onto full blast. We hadn’t parked that far away, but I felt like someone had dropped me in a cold pond. Thankfully, my boots were good quality and my feet were dry, but that didn’t remove the horrible sensation of icy water trickling down the back of my neck.
“It’s only rain, you’re not going to melt,” Alasdair said as he passed me a towel.
I rubbed my face and hair as dry as I could manage while ignoring the weight of Alasdair’s gaze on me.
“Perhaps you should have been a feline shifter,” he mused, that infuriating smirk firmly back on his face.
My shadow magic squirmed within me and slipped into my fingertips before I’d even realised what was happening. I focused hard on pushing it deep down inside of me and burying it deep. The last thing I needed was Alasdair or Saoirse feeling I had shadow magic, with the case we were investigating. I tried to relax and look out the window as Alasdair drove us out of the city into the countryside somewhere. I kept my ears pricked, listening for any change in him. Had he felt the magic? Guardians were supposed to be able to feel things like that. It helped them fulfil their role. Was the goddess screwing with me?
The magic reluctantly returned to deep within, where I usually kept it bound tight. It hadn’t pushed forward like that since I had first been made, and the sudden appearance had shaken me. Alasdair’s fingers brushed over mine. The warmth wasn’t unwelcome, but I still bared my teeth at him. I was growing weary of his pushing and testing. I hadn’t spent much time around shifters, but my wolf’s hackles had risen. To keep initiating touch without permission or invitation was a show of dominance, and I wasn’t going to roll over and show him my stomach.
He fiddled with the heat vents to direct them entirely onto me. I was grateful for it.
“Have you done this type of thing before?” I asked.
I rolled my eyes at myself. I sounded like a pathetic cub. The shadow magic had rattled me, and I can’t say I was too happy to see the darkness spreading out over flat scrubby land around us. Something about the area called to the shadow within me and made it more difficult to keep it bound.
“This type of thing?”
I was glad his tone lacked the mocking I’d expected.
“Rituals. Is this a common thing?”
Alasdair exhaled slowly.
“The made rituals are more common than people will let you think, but otherwise no. The witches know better than to draw the attention of the gods most of the time.”
“Made rituals are illegal…”
Alasdair smiled at me, a sharp-edged expression.
“And since when has that stopped people? They have fine-tuned it. The beings that come out of it are fully formed every time, now. The price is high, but some people feel it’s worth it.”
I wrinkled my nose. The price would never be worth it. I had heard about the earlier rituals, where the made that came out of it truly were abominations. The shifters would get stuck mid-shift. There were horror stories of made dying writhing in pain with a wolf trying to break out of their chest. The fae were the worst, insane and vicious. Not that the made fae these days are calm and friendly. Getting into the philosophy of the made rituals wouldn’t do anyone any good.
“I know nothing about rituals. I don’t know how much use I’m going to be to you here. I’m a lowly enforcer, I track and take down rogues.”
He growled. “There is nothing lowly about you. I was given you. You will learn. I’ll walk you through what you need to know. Surely, you know the basics of the ritual and the sigils; you’re witch born.”
I barked out a laugh, more to cover my discomfort at his words over her choosing me as his partner.
“The coven had no use for me until I turned sixteen, when they were supposed to begin training me to be a good husband for a respectable witch from a strong bloodline. Instead, they turned me into this.” I gestured at myself. “They taught me nothing but the barest of basics, such as how to recognise a shifter and the best healing herbs, and even that was only so I could act as an occasional servant.”
He gave a quick graceful shrug and slowed the car to pull onto a narrow dirt track.
“Then you’ll learn.”
A small sliver of pride made me smile. He was an infuriating asshole, but he had faith in me. No one had shown faith in me before.
Eighteen
My shadow magic writhed deep within me as the car slowed further and brought us to a stop outside of a rundown barn with a corrugated steel roof. The darkness flickered and rippled around the edges of the building and set my teeth on edge. The rain had eased somewhat, but there was still a blurriness to our surroundings. My ears pinned back, and I allowed my wolf side forward to better sharpen my senses. Something was very wrong there. Could the ritual have gone better than Saoirse and Alasdair had assumed?
A small man edged out into the rain from the darkness of the barn. He put his hand above his eyes to shield them from the rain before he gestured to us.
"That must be our contact. Should I get you an umbrella, or will you survive the run?" Alasdair said with a grin.
I narrowed my eyes at him before I shot out of the car and ran to the barn. The feeling of the shadow hit me before I got to the doorway. It stole my breath away and almost made me double over with the shock of it. I stood straight and fixed a polite smile on my face to cover the agitation I felt. No one could know.
"Seamus, I assume," Alasdair said to the small man with flame-red hair.
Seamus was looking between us rapidly while his hands did a quick fluttery dance on his thighs.
"Can I go now? You're here, the thing's inside," he asked in a thick accent.
Alasdair nodded, and Seamus ran out into the rain and across the road. He had smelled human and so was likely a friend of the Guardians, or perhaps just a poor man that had gotten caught up in something dark and wicked.
Alasdair pulled a small jar ou
t from his pocket and dipped a finger in a very strong-smelling salve within in. He reached out to me with the stuff on his finger. I curled my lip.
"I'm quite capable of applying it for myself," I growled.
He stepped into my space and smeared it just under my nose.
"And where would the fun be in that?" he growled back.
He applied the paste to himself and opened the crooked barn door to reveal the mess within. A series of soft lights had been hung on the walls. The pale-yellow light slipped over the rough floor and pooled at the edges of the ritual site. It couldn't penetrate the heart of it, leaving the smudges of blood and remains of Robert in semi-shadow. My stomach began doing somersaults. I'd never seen anything like it. I mean, I'd cleaned up rogue lycan kills, and they were bloody, but this was something else. It felt like Robert's final moments, the absolute agony of it, filled the air.
Alasdair stepped into the space with his back straight and his expression neutral. I took his lead and tried to make myself useful. I wanted to be a Guardian, to make a difference. This was the path I wanted to walk.
Alasdair took the right-hand side of the barn, I took the left. The floor was uneven packed earth. Even through the salve, the stench of death was palpable. It coated my tongue and raised my hackles. The sigils meant nothing to me, so I left those for Alasdair and looked in the nooks and crannies for something that could have been missed. The rain dribbled down the wall of the far corner and was beginning to turn the floor there to soft, dark mud. Something about it tugged at the shadow within me, making it very difficult to focus on where I was putting my feet. I drove the magic down deeper inside of me and mentally wrapped it in tight bindings. That was the last place Alasdair could find out about it.
The shadow was tightly bound, but I could still feel the tugging sensation. Walking over to the corner, I peered at the mud trying to see if there was anything there. I was ready to shrug it off when I saw something pitch black. It was pressed up against the wall and almost hid from the light. Crouching down, I leaned over to get a closer look at it without touching it. The goddess knew I didn’t want to risk getting any shadow magic on me. Alasdair came and crouched next to me. He looked at me and followed my line of sight. His shoulder pressed against mine, which brought a feeling of calm and safety that I both resented and appreciated.