***
The laptop’s screen flickered with the strange white static that had woken Cilla Gilbourne out of a sound sleep a month before. She snatched her hands from the keyboard, her fingers hot.
“What?” she asked desperately. “What do you want?”
She’d thought she could hide out from him in this trailer in an obscure area of the city, but she’d been wrong. Cilla could hide her physical body, but she couldn’t hide from the man in the code.
Her fear grew as the screen cleared the slightest bit to show the figure who’d been contacting her. She couldn’t make out his face, but she knew it was a man from the way he was shaped and moved.
He was an apparition, a shadow, a flicker of pixels. And he terrified her.
Did you get him? The words hidden in code scrolled down the screen.
I tried. Cilla keyed back. The stupid thugs I hired grabbed the wrong Shifter.
A long pause. Cilla held her breath. Whoever was on the other side of this communication knew everything about her. He’d threatened, not only her life but that of anyone she’d ever loved. Cilla was a loner, but even loners had their connections to the past.
When Cilla had called him on it, insisting he couldn’t hurt her, a young man she’d known—all right, had been in love with—had fallen sick of a mysterious illness. His doctors, Cilla learned, suspected poison but weren’t certain.
Cilla had lost the privilege of rushing to his side, but she’d promised the ghostly hacker anything—had hastened to obey him. Her ex had recovered—very suddenly—but Cilla couldn’t be sure that the man wouldn’t have him poisoned again.
Why can’t you use the sword yourself? he asked.
Cilla’s fingers were already moving. I tried. I don’t think the sword likes me. It wants a Guardian.
Another hesitation, then words in code blazed across the screen. Of course it doesn’t like you! You KILLED A GUARDIAN!
I didn’t …
Cilla couldn’t finish. The men she’d hired had shot the Guardian dead, slaughtering a man and triumphantly presenting Cilla with the sword. She’d thrown up for a day.
I still have the sword, she typed. I just need a Guardian to use it.
You’ll never make one help you. Forget it.
I will, I will! Cilla typed frantically. Give me a chance.
Another pause, and the static solidified, deleting the outline. The screen remained solid white for a long time, then black letters and numbers streamed across it.
I need the sword or I need access to the Guardian Network. That is what I want. Nothing else will do.
I know. I know. I’m working on it.
Finish SOON.
A few more characters flitted across the monitor, then the solid white static faded, leaving an empty black screen. The monitor blinked, waiting for Cilla’s next command.
She stared at the computer, her chest tight, uncertain she’d truly seen the very last characters that had crossed the screen. They’d been different, a code she was sure only the military used. Cilla ran the code through her computer-like memory until she decrypted it.
The final message had read—Help me.
Chapter Seven
Seamus, Spike, and Broderick packed up every scrap of computer equipment in the house, loading it under Joanne’s direction into the back of the truck. They covered the pile with a tarp—no use someone reporting Shifters carrying around a stack of CPUs and monitors. Joanne was mostly interested in the router box she carried, a tiny thing only a few inches square, but she said it was important.
Broderick hung on to the disc—holding it in his hand, rather than shoving it into his pocket. He wanted physical contact with it for some reason, the same way he wanted to stay next to Joanne.
Maybe living with a feral Shifter was rubbing off on him, he thought as they drove away, his fingers caressing the silver pattern. Next thing he knew, he’d be batshit crazy and have to be strapped to a bed right next to Aleck’s.
Tiger was still hunting for a scent by the time they were finished filling the truck. Bleach and some other stinking chemical Broderick couldn’t identify had been used to wipe the house clean, but Tiger found traces of human males in the driveway. They’d piled into a vehicle and gone away without the woman.
She had covered her tracks better, probably knowing Shifters would be after her, but it was clear she’d driven off in a car or truck that was fairly generic, he said—thousands of them out there, and likely stolen. Tiger thought he might be able to trace the men, but she would be more difficult. Of course, once they caught the thugs, they could be made to tell the Shifters where the hacker-woman might go to ground.
Tiger didn’t like being stymied, Broderick could see. Tiger climbed silently into the back of the truck and hunkered down under the tarp.
They were all subdued as they rode back to Shiftertown. Joanne’s pronouncement that hacker woman was trying to access the Guardian Network was bad enough, but it was the problem of the sword that caused the four Shifters disquiet.
A Sword of the Guardian never left the Guardian’s side. He might ditch it a few hours if he wanted to play with his cubs or hang out with his family or hole up with his mate, but Sean kept it strapped to his back at all other times—at the fight club, traveling between Shiftertowns, checking out a problem for Liam, even going for take-out. The Guardian had to be prepared in case the sword was needed, and besides, it was a valuable Shifter artifact, which the Guardian was charged to protect.
The one concession the humans made to Shifters when they were rounded up was that every Shiftertown could have a Guardian, and that the Guardian was allowed to carry his sword around wherever he went. That had been a deal-breaker. The humans had filed the sword and Guardian under “religious practices” which was the one thing the Shifter Bureau had been anxious not to stifle.
A sword without a Guardian attached to it was wrong. What Guardian did the sword that had lost its medallion belong to? And where was the Guardian now?
None of the Shifters liked what that answer might be.
Once they reached Shiftertown, Spike drove to the house where Sean Morrissey lived with his mate, his father, his father’s mate Glory, and Sean’s baby son, Kenny. Spike pulled the black pickup to a halt, killing the engine and sliding out of it in one movement. Tiger got out of the back and walked without stopping to the house next door, where he would fill in Liam, the Shiftertown leader, and start tracking the thugs if Liam ordered him to. Had nothing to do about his mate waiting for him there—oh, no.
Joanne, typically, refused to stay in the truck, or go to Broderick’s and check on her sister, or to visit Kim next door or Ellison and family across the street …
“I’m not a wilting flower,” she said to Broderick as she climbed out, looking straight into his eyes as she liked to do. “Not waiting for the menfolk to come explain everything to little ole me, if they even remember to.” She walked right past him and up to the porch.
Broderick growled. “Goddess save me from pushy females.”
He liked that Joanne didn’t take shit from anyone, but on the other hand, it was hard to protect a woman who went charging ahead before Broderick could check that the way was safe. They needed to have a talk about that.
Sean himself opened the door as Joanne reached the porch, Broderick directly behind her. Sean’s black hair was damp and his T-shirt clung to wet shoulders as though he’d just pried himself from the shower. He let them in at once, his face grim.
His mate, Andrea, sat in their large, airy kitchen with baby Kenny in a highchair, having their morning meal. It was late for breakfast for Broderick’s taste, but this was a Feline family—never mind that Andrea and Glory were wolves. Felines went stealthily about all night and dropped off to sleep in the wee hours of the morning. Cats were weird.
Spike, on the other hand, was Feline, and he stayed up all night as well, but he managed to look alert and rested any time of day or night. Broderick always felt like death warmed ov
er if he didn’t go to sleep for at least some of the dark hours.
Kenny, one-and-a-half years old, watched with intelligent gray eyes as the Shifters entered his kitchen. The kid was going to be alpha all right, Broderick decided, looking at him. Also wolf.
When a Feline and Lupine mated—any Shifter crossing species—the cub was born in human form and stayed that way for a couple years, until the Shifter inside him decided it was ready to show the world his true form. Then the cub turned into either a full Feline or full Lupine. But no one knew which way the DNA had gone until then.
Kenny’s gaze fixed on Broderick with a steely gray stare. No doubt. This cub would be Lupine.
Kenny’s dark hair was tousled, a smear of egg around his mouth, but his eyes were unafraid, meeting Broderick’s without any submission. Kenny growled low in his throat.
Broderick returned the growl. He brought his hands up and mimicked claws, letting his rumbles deepen.
Kenny’s fine brows went up, and the growl stopped. The cub stared at Broderick in shock for a few seconds, then he burst out laughing. Kenny banged his spoon onto the tray of his highchair and whooped with laughter.
Yeah, this kid was going to be a force when he grew up. Poor Sean.
His mother, Andrea, who always looked sleek and well groomed no matter what the circumstance, her gray eyes a match of her son’s, pointed to Broderick’s raised hand. “What’s that?”
Broderick, even while he was making claw fingers at Kenny, had managed to keep hold of the disc, securing it in place with his thumb. Now he lowered his hand and looked at it, but he wouldn’t put the disc on the table.
“We found it at the hacker’s lair,” Joanne said. She sat down in the chair Andrea slid out for her. Lair, she’d said. Not house or home. Because she knew the hacker had stolen the house as well.
Andrea peered curiously at the medallion, then her breath caught. “Is that…?”
Sean had pushed forward. He reached for the medallion, but Broderick closed his fingers around it, loathe to give it up.
Sean shot him a glance but lifted his hand away, not taking it. “It’s from a Sword of the Guardian. The hilt piece.”
Sean brought up his sheathed sword, which he’d fetched while they’d paid their courtesies to Andrea, turned the sword around and showed them the tip of the hilt.
Sean’s sword was the oldest Guardian sword of all. It was the original, forged in Ireland in what was now County Kerry. The Morrisseys’ ancestor was Niall O’Connor, the sword master who’d forged this one in his smithy on the wild coast of Ireland. Broderick vividly pictured the scene—the Shifter man with bare arms, banging away in the heat of his forge, the Fae woman holding her hands over the hot blade and chanting spells.
A touch jerked him to the present. Joanne looked up at him, her brows drawn together in worry, her hand resting lightly on his arm. For a moment, the two of them were transposed on the Shifter sword smith and the Fae, the brutish man and the delicate woman. Broderick smelled the hot ash and burning wood, the tang of silver, heard the whisper of spells.
The moment passed. Broderick found himself in Sean’s kitchen again, Joanne watching him, Kenny studying him, his laughter gone.
Broderick shook himself. There was something unsettling about the medallion. Guardian swords had too much strange magic in them, and this piece of one likely had plenty of residual spells in it too. Broderick should give the damned thing to Sean and be done.
But he couldn’t open his fingers and give it away. Something in the medallion was calling to him, as though the silver knew his name. Protect me…
The hilt of Sean’s sword, on its end, was capped with a medallion identical to the one Broderick held. The medallion on Sean’s sword was more worn, the silver polished with time. It was also definitely part of the sword—it flowed into the bronze hilt rather than being a separate piece on the end.
Seamus asked the question. “So why has it come off? Spike had a good point—they didn’t have superglue in the thirteen hundreds.”
Sean laid the sword across the counter, well out of reach of his son’s tiny hands. There was no guarantee that Kenny would be the next Guardian—the Goddess chose the successor in a ceremony, and she might pick a Shifter not even related to the current Guardian, who would be busy dying at this point. It was true that most of the time the chosen was in the Guardian’s family or clan, but it didn’t always happen. The Goddess did as she pleased.
When Sean turned back, his eyes held deep anger, and he looked more troubled than Broderick had ever seen him. “You all need to promise me to keep this quiet. Dad will probably have my balls on a plate for telling you, but since you found the piece—I’m thinking you need to know.” He let out a breath. “A Guardian was killed. The one from the Western Montana Shiftertown. His sword has disappeared.”
Shit. “Killed?” Broderick demanded at the same time Seamus and Spike were saying son of a bitch and holy fuck. “By who?’
Andrea’s eyes were quiet. “Tell them the rest,” she said to Sean.
“The rest?” Broderick demanded. “You mean it’s not already bad enough?”
Sean gave him a thin smile, but it was gesture of sorrow, a man trying to understand a grave situation. “No Guardian has been chosen to replace him. The sword is gone, and the Guardian’s body lies in state. They brought in the Guardian from the next Shiftertown over to send him to dust—and it didn’t work. The body remained intact. So they had a Choosing, figuring it has to be the next Guardian who releases the previous Guardian’s soul. But nothing happened. The Goddess didn’t choose. So for now, the Wyoming Shiftertown is Guardian-less.”
***
A dead silence filled the room.
Joanne didn’t know enough about Guardians to understand why a Shiftertown not having one was bad, but from the looks on the Shifters’ faces, it was dire. Even Kenny put his spoon in his mouth and held it there, watching them worriedly.
Joanne felt sorrow and anger at the Guardian’s plight, but she realized this was, to the Shifters, something more than the death of a colleague.
They were shocked, stunned, horrified, even afraid. Broderick stared at Sean, his smoke gray eyes full of fury, which is how Broderick dealt with badness—he raged at it.
“How the hell did all this happen?” Broderick asked. “And why are we just hearing about it?”
“The Guardian was captured by humans and killed about a week ago,” Sean said grimly. “Dad didn’t want anyone to know until he investigated more. And now you’ve found a part of his sword.”
“But why wasn’t another chosen?” Broderick demanded. “The Goddess always chooses—I’ve seen it happen.”
“So have I,” Sean said, words dry. “No one knows why. Everyone involved is keeping it on the down-low—Dad asked them to. No use in anyone panicking or speculating that the Goddess has abandoned us.”
Andrea put in, “Or that there is no Goddess at all, and everything about the Guardian and swords is superstition. There are Shifters out there who want to overthrow the order of things.”
Broderick had told Joanne that, a couple years ago, when Andrea had first come to this Shiftertown, there had been a Shifters for Shifters movement—more specifically, Felines for Felines—which had only led to the radical Shifters being duped and nearly getting all Shifters in Austin killed or enslaved. That had been a nasty fight, Broderick had said, and he’d showed her the scars.
“Some asshole always wants to overthrow the order of things,” Broderick growled. “But yeah, a Guardian-free Shiftertown and a Choosing that doesn’t work … I can see shit hitting fans everywhere.”
“So keep it quiet,” Sean said, stern.
“Like I’m going to blab Shifter tracker business all over the country.” Broderick scowled at him. “Where is your dad, anyway?”
Dylan wasn’t in the house—even Joanne had known that when she’d walked in. The man had presence, and the house was empty without him.
“He and Glory
are out doing …” Sean shrugged. “Whatever the overseer of South Texas Shifters and a Lupine pack leader do. He didn’t give me his itinerary.” Sean’s tone was sharp, unusual for him.
“Well, we can guess who has the sword from Montana,” Broderick said. “The little bitch with the hacking fingers. I’m still not sure how this fell off the sword she stole.” He held up the medallion. “Any chance it’s a fake?” Broderick’s question lacked conviction. He knew it wasn’t.
Sean shook his head. “It’s real all right. I’m thinking the Goddess didn’t complete the Choosing because the sword was missing. Maybe she has to wait for its return.”
“Like King Arthur,” Joanne said.
Sean looked thoughtful, but Broderick stared at her. “King Who?”
“King Arthur of Britain,” Joanne said. “There was a sword, Excalibur. Whoever pulled it from the stone was king, and only Arthur could do it. When he died, the sword was taken by the Lady of the Lake, hidden away. The legend is that she still has it, waiting for the true king to return. Presumably, she’ll give Excalibur to him again.”
Broderick listened, mystified. “What has that got to do with Shifters?”
“It’s just a story,” Joanne said. “But maybe it’s the same kind of thing. You can’t choose a Guardian if there’s no sword for him to pick up and wield.”
Sean had his arms folded, listening. “You know, Shifter historians say that the legend of Excalibur was actually about a Guardian and his sword—it got mixed into Arthur’s stories in the late middle ages. The Lady of the Lake—the Goddess—decides who’s the one to wield the sword. The Fae have their hand in Arthur’s tales too. I’ve always wondered how many magic sword stories humans tell each other actually came from Shifter history…”
Broderick cleared his throat loudly, more of a snarl. “Can we get back to today? Leave this Arthur guy and his bloody sword in the middle ages. We have a problem now. How are we going to find this hacker woman so we can take back the sword?”
Andrea’s clear voice cutting through his was like soothing rain on a hot day. “From what I know about Fae magic, I’m willing to bet that without the medallion, the sword won’t do what this woman wants.”
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