LIGHTBRINGER
Light & Shadow: Book 1
JC Andrijeski
Copyright © 2021 by JC Andrijeski
Published by White Sun Press
Cover Art & Design by Claire Holt of Luminescence Covers (2021)
Ebook Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please visit an official vendor for the work and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.
To K.R., I’m sorry the humans did you wrong.
Contents
Free Box Set!
A Quick Reminder Blurb
1. Lightbringer
2. A Bad Feeling
3. An Uninvited Guest
4. Traveler
5. The Outer Realms
6. The Real
7. Staying
8. The Old Zoo
9. Intruders
10. What’s In A Name?
11. Houseguest
12. The Others
13. In The Darkness
14. Alarm
15. Silver And Shadow
16. Not Enough
17. Out Of Juice
18. Back-Up
19. Alone Too Long
20. Penang Hill
21. The Cave
22. The Key To The Door
23. The Army
24. The Bargain
What to Read Next: White Dragon
What to Read Next: Quentin Black
Join the Light Brigade!
Reviews are Author Hugs
Sample Pages
Prologue
List of Books by JC Andrijeski
About the Author
A Quick Reminder Blurb
Brand new series by USA Today & Wall Street Journal Bestselling Author, JC Andrijeski!
“Do you have a name?” she queried politely.
“Caliginous,” he told her. “You may call me Cal. Or Calin.”
Her lips pursed. “Cal. Calin. Caliginous. As in dark, misty,” she mused. “…also opaque. Difficult to understand.”
“Indeed.” The creature smiled.
Alexis is a Lightbringer, one of a race meant to protect the portals linking the worlds, to keep them safe from dark beings. Gods, monsters, demons, vampires, interdimensional bad guys – Alexis deals with them all, protecting humanity, protecting Earth.
But something’s gone horribly wrong.
Someone is murdering Lightbringers.
The portals are all opening.
The Traveler, Cal, was supposed to be there to help her. An odd race, Travelers historically helped and spied for the Lightbringers before, sliding in and out of dimensions, helping to patrol the portals, infiltrating, observing, nudging, influencing, reporting back to their betters.
But the Travelers are tired of watching from the sidelines.
And Cal isn’t an ordinary Traveler.
LIGHTBRINGER is Book #1 in a brand new series, LIGHT & SHADOW, for fans of urban fantasy, paranormal romance, and supernatural suspense. Watch this space for more information and upcoming books for this brand new series!
1
Lightbringer
She spun around, pivoting her hips, letting fly a high, spinning hook kick in less than a second.
She pulled the kick, stopping it from going full-strength.
She already had speed on him.
Speed was a significant advantage on its own––even against a full-grown werewolf.
Even against a full-grown werewolf who happened to be pack alpha.
She got him right in the jaw, snapping his head sideways, bringing a growl and a yelp from his throat that reminded her so much of a wolf-pup she’d played with as a kid, she let out an involuntary laugh.
He stepped back from her, rubbing his jaw, giving her a rueful smile.
“That’s funny to you, Poole?” he said wryly. “My pain is funny to you?”
“When you yip like a pup whose tail I’ve stepped on… yes,” she smirked back.
“You’re awfully cocky for someone who gets off on beating up werewolves,” he observed. “One of these days you’ll hit the wrong wolf. Maybe one from a pack a lot less warm and fuzzy than mine…”
She tilted her head in a sideways shrug, smiling.
“That’s what I pay you for,” she informed him. “You and your pack would kick their asses for me. And I would sit back and watch, and laugh… then buy you all nice, new cars. Or I’d be finding me some new werewolf henchmen, Dev.”
He rolled his eyes, but she saw his mouth quirk in a smile.
“Henchmen,” he snorted. “You are a brat. You’re lucky we grew up together.”
She snorted back at him. “I’m lucky?”
He laughed for real at that.
Holding up her fists in a kind of parody of a fighting stance, she jumped back and forth lightly on her feet, sniffing as she rotated her head and neck.
“Come on, wolf-man. Fight me!” she said mockingly. “Stop being such a baby! You promised me a real workout tonight. Not this candy-ass crap.”
He laughed like he couldn’t help it, even as he made his voice mock-stern.
“I thought this was supposed to be your day off,” he growled. “I thought this was just going to be some ‘light sparring’ before you went home and, you know… actually shut off your brain for a change, Poole. Acted like a normal damned person.”
“Normal?” She gave him a disparaging look. “What dream world are you living in?”
“You could pretend at least. For once.”
She smacked her wrapped hands together. “Come on. One decent round. I promise not to mess up that pretty face of yours before your big date. Then I’ll go home and pretend to be as ‘normal’ as you want.”
At his rolled eyes, she laughed.
“See?” she mocked. “You thought I forgot… but I didn’t.”
“It’s such a mystery why you’re single, ‘Lex,” he muttered, wiping his face with the back of one glove, moving his jaw around where she’d kicked him.
“Ouch,” she said, frowning. “Personal foul.”
He only shrugged, smirking.
Shaking off her last kick, he mirrored her, smacking his more heavily-gloved hands together, getting a satisfying sound out of his black boxing mitts.
Between those gloves, which were decorated with lime-green wolf heads, and the pack and clan tattoos all over his bare upper body, and the black shorts with the image of a howling wolf down his thigh, she couldn’t help sighing a bit, remembering them both in high school, back before they knew either of them were supernaturals at all.
These days, he’d more or less one hundred percent embraced the wolf identity thing.
He’d probably embraced it even more than most wolves, given his pack-alpha status.
It was more or less who he was now.
It hadn’t torn them apart as friends, thank God, but it did put a bit of a barrier there.
She was envious in a way, too.
She’d never managed to embrace her own supernatural identity to the same degree.
Also, she didn’t h
ave a pack of other beings like her, who “got” her on that level. Devin and Jules were both supernatural, but it wasn’t the same.
They were both still half-human.
Alexis wasn’t entirely sure what she was, in terms of the species thing.
Maybe partly because she was the only one––at least in this dimension.
“So who is she?” Alexis teased. “This big date? You seem more eager than usual?”
“Bite me, ‘Lex.”
“No really,” she said, making her voice a touch less mocking. “Is this some alliance thing? Are you dating another ‘daughter from a rival pack for diplomacy’s sake,’ like you told me before, with that psycho chick who just about tore out your throat?”
He grunted another laugh, shaking his head.
“No,” he growled.
“Likely story,” she said, still stalking around him in the ring.
She had zero doubt it was another shifter, at least.
Devin didn’t seem to have time for anyone who wasn’t a shifter these days, apart from her and Jules, another friend of theirs from school who happened to be half-fae, and the manager of her club on Sunset Boulevard.
It was a damned good thing she’d never seen him as anything but a friend.
Dating someone like Devin if you weren’t a shifter would be a friggin’ nightmare.
“What’re you thinking, Poole? You’ve got that look on your face again.” He smirked. “Is this envy I’m seeing? Are you actually thinking about going on a date of your own one of these nights? Or is that just me engaging in magical thinking again? I mean, I know it’s a stretch… imagining you might deign to go on a date with, well… anyone.”
She smiled, sliding sideways on the mat, watching his limbs in her peripheral vision, along with any shifts in his weight.
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” she retorted. “At least I’m not forced to date psychos who want to kill me… all in the name of prehistoric cave-man-wolf politics.”
He snorted another half-laugh, shaking back his long, black hair.
She watched him follow her lead in the ring, falling into a fighting stance of his own. His dark eyes watched hers warily, his irises glowing faintly in the overhead lights of the state-of-the-art boxing and parkour gym.
It had been their main workout spot for the past year or so.
Devin knew the owner.
The guy wasn’t a shifter himself, but he seemed to be aware of them; that, or he was in serious denial about the strangeness of some of his most loyal clientele, and how often that clientele ended up replacing nearly-new equipment they’d ripped apart, either with their wolf teeth and jaws, or simply with their shifter strength.
Devin worked out a deal with the guy to let his pack use the facilities after hours, and with complete privacy, with the understanding that everything would be left pristine and/or replaced if damaged.
After Devin took Alexis here a few times, she adopted the gym as her own, as well.
Some of that was for the use of Devin’s pack as sparring partners in the ring.
Given the kinds of creatures she fought regularly as a function of her job, even shifters didn’t quite cut it, frankly, but they were a hell of a lot better than full-blooded humans… for a lot of reasons.
Most of Devin’s pack were good sports about helping her train.
She also let them use her to test out pack formations on occasion, using military-style strategies to try and take her down––which probably helped her as much as them.
Alexis knew it was kind of an ongoing wager-slash-challenge to see which of them would be the first to best her on their own. So far, they’d managed to bring her down as a pack a fair-few times, but not in any one-on-one matches… or even two-on-one.
Or three-on-one.
Devin and two of his lieutenants had come the closest.
Two of them were vets who’d seen combat, including Dev himself, and all three of them worked as stuntmen for one of the major studios during the day, so they took not being able to easily win against her as a personal challenge––even though they knew what she was.
Well, as much as anyone knew what she was.
She didn’t realize how far she’d let herself get into her own head until Devin spoke, aiming one of his wolf’s-head boxing gloves in her general direction.
“Hey. Lightbringer,” he said. “You still with me?”
He gave her a faint smirk, but the smile didn’t quite reach his eyes.
“Seriously, when are you going on a date? Or are you really committed to this whole supernatural nun thing you’ve got going on?”
She rolled her eyes.
“You can’t possibly be so bored you want to start up with that crap again. I’m beginning to think you and Jules plan these bizarre lectures into my sex life when I’m not around.”
He shrugged his massive shoulders.
“It’s a little weird,” he informed her.
“What is?” she retorted. “That I’m not Tinder-swiping-right on every mouth-breather who likes my profile picture? Or going out with one of the several dozen guys who figures out I’ve got a high net worth, and is hoping to cash in?”
He grunted, aiming the glove at her again.
“You own a sex club,” he reminded her.
“Eleven of them, actually. It’ll be twelve in June.”
“You’re kind of making my point for me, ‘Lex.”
She snorted. “You knew me in high school, Dev. What’s changed?”
“Nada,” he conceded, letting his slight accent color his words. “Absolutely nothing has changed. Again. Not sure how you’re not making my point for me, ‘Lexi.”
Realizing he was in one of his big-brother moods, maybe because he genuinely thought she was somehow “missing out” by not indulging in the insanity that was the L.A. dating scene… or maybe just because he didn’t want to get kicked in the face again… she lowered her arms, sighing.
“We can stop,” she said. “I know you’ve got that date, and you worked all day. If you wanted to cut out early, you could have just––”
“What?” He frowned, his dark eyebrows drawing together. “No. Jesus, Alexis. This wasn’t some passive-aggressive attempt to get out of sparring. If I wanted to stop, I’d stop.”
“Really?” She gave him a flat look. “Then what is this, Dev? What do you want from me?”
“What do I want from you?”
“You and Jules both,” she said, sighing. “It’s like you just refuse to see the reality of my life. You insist on pretending you have no idea how things work for me.”
“Enlighten me, ‘Lex.”
Instead of answering him directly, she leapt up and whipped around again, this time, at full speed, letting her body work the way it wanted to work, without holding back in any way.
Her heel connected firmly with his solar plexus.
That time, since she hadn’t been pulling her kick, she felt herself follow all the way through, the way her body told her a kick was supposed to be.
Every ounce of her momentum, weight, and muscle fell in line behind it.
He flew.
Alexis landed easily on the balls of both feet, her hands still up, balled into fists, instinctively protecting her head. She lowered them as he crashed into the far wall, which was padded, luckily, if far enough away that the impact still had to hurt.
She stood there, frowning, when he didn’t get up right away.
Then he groaned, slowly sitting up, and she exhaled in relief.
“Ow,” he said pointedly, glaring at her from the floor.
“Kinda my point,” she said, relaxing more when she saw him rotate his neck, reaching up to rub his shoulder.
“There was a point to that?” he grumbled.
“You’re a full-grown werewolf,” she said, sighing. “The best fighter in your pack. And damned near indestructible from what you’ve told me.”
“I’d better be, with friends like you,” he muttered, still rubb
ing his neck. “Again, not seeing a point with this little demonstration, Poole––”
“So find me someone who wants to date that,” she said, frowning. “It’s not as if I don’t have enough problems with people trying to get me to finance their indie films… or produce their screenplays… or just live off me while they screw my housekeeper, or the local starlet while I’m off fighting bad guys in Istanbul or whatever…”
He frowned a bit, still sitting on the mat, but now listening to her.
“Point taken,” he admitted.
Staring at him, realizing she’d hurt his pride with that little takedown, she winced.
She walked over to him, holding out an arm and a hand, now feeling guilty.
“Sorry,” she muttered, helping him to his feet.
He shook his head.
“No. I get it.” He gave her a faintly warning look. “But I know you, ‘Lexi. It’s not only the guys. I get that there are a lot of vultures… especially in Hollywood. But I think you’re holding out for someone who can match you in certain ways, and that might not be the best strategy for someone like you.”
Alexis let out a disbelieving laugh.
“You’re saying no one can match me? No one? Ever?” Her voice turned sour, in spite of herself. “Jeez, Devin. That’s a little insane. Even I don’t believe that… and you’re usually the optimist in our little group.”
“I’m not saying that. I’m saying, maybe you’re not looking to be matched in the right areas,” Devin said. “Maybe you’re not looking for the right things. And maybe you don’t need someone who can out-fight you, ‘Lex… or who has more money than you… or who won’t need you in certain ways. Maybe you just need to find someone who’s not an asshole, who has enough self-confidence to deal with you.”
Lightbringer: An Enemies to Lovers Urban Fantasy with Demons, Portals, Witches, Renegade Gods, & Other Assorted Beasties (Light & Shadow Book 1) Page 1