by Lisa Daniels
Give in.
She dismissed the voice, got dressed in her warmest clothes, and peeked through the keyhole of her chambers. A guard stood dutifully outside.
Stealthily, she crept to the window and prised it open, wincing when it made a tiny squealing sound. No one reacted. No one saw. She brushed off the snow that had formed upon the sill and clambered onto the ledge outside. Her shoes struggling to keep a good grip on the outside, she slithered onto a roof. Now people noticed her. Hard not to get noticed in a fortress full of sensitive individuals alert for Shadow activity, but she didn’t care.
She sensed the Shadow nearby. Her blood pulled her to it. Hatred pulsed within, and she slid onto the cold, snow packed ground, and through the building where the Shadow presence emitted from.
This hadn’t occurred before. Normally, she just heard the voice whispering, and the darkness clawing.
Now, she felt something different. Power. As if magic lingered in her veins again, though not in a shape she knew.
A couple of witches were in the room, and they gaped at her as she strode towards one of the ten Shadows imprisoned in their circles.
“Leave her. Leave her!” Raine recognized her from one of the workstations. She held up a palm against the three guards who paced into the room.
“Miss, isn’t she –”
“We can take her if it comes to that. But wait, please!” She turned her attention elsewhere. “Yarrow. Can you understand me?”
Give in.
“Yes.” Yarrow forced the word out. She stared at the amorphous Shadow in front of her. Her blood screamed at her to step forward.
For some reason, there was no fear. Just an odd, floating conviction that she needed to do this.
The Shadow pressed against the invisible barrier, keen to reach her. To connect.
Risking everything, obeying the call of her blood, Yarrow reached over the barrier and her palm came into contact with the Shadow’s head.
A dam of thoughts flooded.
Pain kill hatred dead all of us dead not resting not sleeping still moving miserable hateful anger. The Shadow jerked, raising its arms to grasp hers.
Gasps and exclamations sounded from behind, but Yarrow ignored them.
Hatred anger giving in never stops never stops please make it stop please endless agaonizing.
Yarrow closed her eyes. The Shadow’s thoughts overlapped with others, like a cacophony of screams.
What are you, Shadow?
The Shadow quivered at this mental question, its bulbous form fluctuating.
We are no one fragments hungry thirsty moving vengeance dark filled inside. Then, a pause in the flow of chaos. Give us death.
You want to die? Yarrow pulsed the thought. The gibbering madness became contained, now that she understood the source of the voice, the frequency they emitted at.
Yes die kill death.
Then why don’t you?
The Shadow seemed to hesitate at this thought, confused. Then, it retracted from her hand, inflating and expelling like lungs, before it disintegrated into nothing. Brief happiness touched her thoughts from the expiring monster.
“By the moon,” Raine whispered, as Yarrow turned, facing the stunned audience who had now poured into the barn-like expanse.
Give in.
Yarrow walked past the Shadows, pulsing the same thought.
Rest in peace.
Within moments, all ten Shadows had collapsed into nothing.
A hushed, terrified silence filled the enclave. Hragun stood at the back in his hulking human form, his yellow eyes expanding in shock. Erlandur pushed his way through the crowd, along with Targun, Kain and Vrin.
“What happened?” Erlandur said, his voice strong, projecting through the room.
Yarrow sifted through the attraction in her blood. She could sense more Shadows. She could, if she strained her mind, hear their voices. “Turns out I might have an entirely new power,” she said.
A beat.
“That’s nice,” Raine said, though she sounded both awed and alarmed. “But can you not kill all our Shadows here? We need them for the weapons.”
Erlandur chuckled. “Interesting. You were able to touch it and not die. How?”
“I’m partially one now,” Yarrow said without emotion, though her heart danced in sudden delight, sudden inspiration. “I can hear them. I can feel them. I can affect them.”
She wobbled slightly on her feet. “And they listen to me.”
Naturally, she chose that moment to have her legs cave out from under her, and she fell to the cold floor.
Give in.
No.
Hands helped her back up. Belatedly, Yarrow realized she was now suffering the recoil of her magic. Her Shadow magic.
“Told you you’d be useful.” Vrin smirked at her then, and the room erupted into conversation, processing the events of what they had just seen.
What a strange twist of events.
Yarrow, so close to death, now had some form of control over it.
But how?
Later in the night, all the clan leaders and witches gathered, with Yarrow as their subject of talk. They drilled her about the power, tried to fathom what it was, and if they could spread it as a weapon amongst other witches.
Yarrow stood adamant on the fact: no. “Anyone who has this happen to them will have the voice inside. I do not wish this upon you.”
“What changed?” Erlandur asked, his legs spread as he leaned forward on the chair. “What made you go and use this magic?”
Yarrow shrugged. “It changed…” Her face flushed crimson. Certain events clicked into place.
Smokes. It changed after Vrin and I…
Vrin saw her embarrassment, made the connection, and coughed politely to draw everyone’s attention. “I think she’s saying she changed when she got retested for magic.”
Hragun’s face went livid. “You? YOU?” He got up, hands like claws, and he needed to be physically restrained by Erlandur, Priya and Kain. “YOU TOUCHED MY DAUGHTER?”
“Calm down!” Erlandur snapped. “He may have saved your daughter’s life!”
Hragun wouldn’t calm down though, and eventually needed escorting out. His yells and frothing anger were hurled behind him as he vanished.
An awkward silence prevailed. “Sorry about my dad,” Yarrow said, feeling the need to defend him. “He just gets super protective. He got mad enough when I first unlocked my powers.”
“This is so… fascinating,” Raine said, eyes shining like stars. “Unbelievable.”
“I have no idea,” Yarrow said. “We’ve officially gone over the edge of the cliff into unknown magic territory.”
“You know what this means? You realize what this means?” Raine leapt to her feet, excitement in her bounce. “We have a Supreme. On our side.” Gasps punctuated the statement. “She’s a Supreme. She has the powers of control.”
“I don’t think it’s like that,” Yarrow said, extremely embarrassed by the shouts that followed Raine’s words. “I doubt a Supreme would faint after one attempt at magic.”
“A baby Supreme, then,” Raine corrected, still not letting go of her theory. “You said you could hear their thoughts, right? That you told the Shadows to rest, and they did?”
Yarrow nodded.
“Well, from what we’ve seen, Supremes have that same type of control. Except, obviously they’re not using it to put their minions to sleep. So. You got infected. By a Supreme. Then you uh, got tested. And it unlocked this power.” Her face momentarily fell. “If I knew… I could have saved my mother.”
No matter how Yarrow tried to downplay it, everyone looked at her with a mix of reverence and fear. True excitement flicked through Erlandur’s eyes, through the leaders.
They had a new weapon.
One that Yarrow still didn’t understand.
Give in.
Of course, the voice always lingered there, always tapped…
But she could hold it.
&
nbsp; Just.
She asked to have a break from the war council, and they allowed her outside to grab a breath of air. She stared at the sky, thinking of her father, her family, of the strange, tainted magic in her skin.
I never wanted to be this. She examined her hands. I mocked Raine. I hated her method, her use of Shadow blood. Yet I am now no better. I am this thing. And I see into their minds.
Vrin stepped beside her in the cold night, which tickled her cheek with icy fingers. His yellow eyes crinkled at her, and she reached for his hand. He grabbed it and squeezed.
“It’s a lot to take in,” she said.
“I know the feeling.”
Give in.
With a sigh, she leaned her head on his shoulder, closing her eyes for a moment, letting herself forget that the outside world existed. That the curse influenced her blood.
“If these powers work the way Raine thinks,” Yarrow said, her mouth twisting as she considered her words, “then our expedition will need me. And I need you.”
“Of course.”
“I need you to keep me on the straight path. To keep encouraging me if I stumble. The voice isn’t gone. It’s just quieter.”
Vrin kissed her on the forehead. “I will.”
Empowered, Yarrow opened her eyes. A sense of purpose filled her.
Give in.
She wasn’t a Shadow. She might have their taint in her veins, but she knew a little of how to use it against them.
I can rain death upon them. I can creep into their minds and whisper for them to rest. I can sever the bonds between them and the voice that commands them.
Her eyes fixed upon the dark spiral that protruded above the mountains. The Fractured City.
Eight hundred wolves intended to enter the city. Fully decked in armor. The witches protected.
And now her, with this cursed power.
She’d need to talk to her father later. Reassure him, persuade him of Vrin’s good intentions. Tell him she liked Vrin. She needed him.
Maybe later. Yawning, she let go of Vrin’s hand, gave him a quick kiss upon the lips and a hug. “I’m going back in.”
“Good luck surviving in there,” he replied with a grin, walking with her side by side into the council room.
The End
Arina’s Mate
Shifters of the Bulgarian Bloodline
Book 2
Prologue:
Ricten Spirova. Arina remembered the name of the man who’d slaughtered her family. She’d thought the werewolves weren’t so terrible as the locals made out – she even had four friends from some of the surrounding families that used to play with her and the other village children. Luelle, Ordri, Markus and Danny. They were young, curious, and wanted to know what the humans were like, and it was easy for them to be friends, easy to share everything together and live like the children they were supposed to be. Danny and Markus showed off their werewolf forms, though all they could really do was grow claws and sharper teeth, and growl a little bit. They made up games, such as exploring the lakes for rusalkas, or being careful not to talk too loud in the forests, in case the Baba Yaga came, or the vampires tried to suck at their blood.
One day, Ordri stopped coming. She said her family was mad because she wasn’t supposed to play with humans. Then Luelle stopped – she needed to go and marry some Russian werewolf, and burst into tears over it, and made Arina promise to keep writing letters, and Arina did, except the address Luelle was supposed to give never happened, and her poor friend vanished into the bleak wilderness, never to be seen again. Danny and Markus came down to the village one day, wild and frantic, and urged Arina to run away with him. He said the older ones were whipping themselves into a frenzy – they wanted to do bad things to the village, bad things to her father and little brother. They couldn’t do bad things to her mother, who’d been dead for five years.
She wanted to warn her family, saw her father walking her brother along a dirt track – and also saw a huge black werewolf lunge at him, crush him to the ground and rip out his throat. Her brother, Gregor, just stood there in absolute shock as their father bubbled out the last of his breath. The grizzled werewolf then, slowly, deliberately, picked up her six year old brother, laid him onto the ground, and began chewing into his stomach, taking out things that should have been kept inside, with him very much alive, squealing in terror and agony. Other villagers in the small, isolated village ran, screaming down the lanes, chased by blurred, monstrous forms with glowing eyes.
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” Danny had cried, his pale brown eyes aghast in horror, and he and Markus ran with Arina, who barely could move her limbs, or register the sight she had just seen.
They ran to the forests, through the lakes. Danny broke into a small house, stole some money, shoved it in her hands and told her to make it as far away as possible. Maybe go to one of the cities, because didn’t she have an older cousin in Plovdiv, a Godfather in Sofia? She could go to them, just not back to the place where she once lived.
Markus gave her the green, transparent stone that used to be on her bedside, and he, Danny and her hugged, and cried.
She cried, and asked for them to come with her. They said they couldn’t. When the bus came, just before she got on it, she asked for the name of the one who had killed her brother and father. Markus whispered it into her ear: Ricten Spirova.
Arina clambered onto the bus and watched Danny and Markus roll out of sight, her hands pressed against the dirty windows.
She didn’t stop crying for a long time afterwards. Sometimes, she mouthed the black werewolf’s name. When she did, it drowned out her tears in place of hatred.
Chapter One
Arina opened up the newspaper on her work desk, cappuccino already there and steaming from the Dolce Gusto machine, and she scoured through the headlines diligently. She didn’t take long breaks at work, and they preferred her to paper-push, rather than move out onto the field, because she had a high kill statistic rate when shooting with her Sig Sauer P226, even though the rest of the department preferred their Glocks. Arina shot with her left hand, so the ambidextrous catch of the Sig suited her just fine. She ran a thumb over her police badge, proud of feeling the spiked shape of it weighted on her clip, knowing that she had earned it throughout her years in America, in the state of North Dakota.
Around her neck, she wore a green, transparent stone set in silver wire, a memory of one of her childhood friends, who had saved her from the chaos of the wolves. She kept it there as a reminder that good and evil co-existed. That things were not black and white, but rather a constant, murky color that people trampled over, insisting on their ways and morals, their paths and their choices. She kept it as the reminder of the things that lurked in the dark – the werewolves, the vampires, the creatures that killed in secret or hid amongst the humans in plain sight.
Finally, Arina’s eyes rested upon a color picture, which she squinted at as she sipped her coffee.
Wanted. Suspect is believed to be responsible for a string of killings across West Virginia, and has last been spotted at a gas station near the border into North Dakota. Citizens are urged to contact their local police if they spot this individual, who is highly dangerous, and likely armed.
Although the face was twenty or so years older than the last time she had seen him, Arina recognized the distinctive eye color and hair of Danniven Lubanov, shown in the picture to be handing money to a proprietor in a gas station. A knot of exasperation settled in her heart. She’d been tracking the progress of Danniven for some time, wondering if he was no longer the boy who had risked his life and standing with the Lubanovs, when hustling her out the village, onto that dusty bus two decades ago. It made her sad. Of course, people assumed that he was just a run of the mill killer, unaware of his status as a werewolf. No doubt the clipping had been placed in by other werewolves, wishing to hunt this rogue member down. She knew the station wasn’t too far off Fort Tyr, probably about an eight-hour drive by car, and entertained t
he possibility that Danny might be dropping into her neighborhood.
Sighing, she closed up the newspaper, and began flicking through the pile of cases on her desk, dutifully comparing them against the system. That stupid fucking Lubanov, once again sticking his nose into something where he didn’t belong. Maybe he was a killer now. Maybe he always was. But she still remembered him as her friend.
I’d hoped we could all meet again. The five of us. I tried hard to remember that although monsters killed my family, four of them were not monsters. We were just different people. We didn’t choose which family we were born into. We didn’t choose what our parents chose for us.
She absently fiddled with her necklace, remembering Markus. His soft, childish features, his mesmerizing blue eyes, so striking, as if they could see into your soul. Every single one of those four friends had dropped off the face of the earth, and the only one who had emerged after all these years was Danny, who looked as though the whole of America were hunting him.
Imogen walked past Arina’s desk, and dropped a small chocolate bar. “Hey. I’m doing the thing where I bribe all my police officers today with some candy, because I know things have been real slow, lately.” The blonde-haired, brown eyed woman flashed a beatific smile, prompting Arina to pick up the Twix chocolate bar.
“Well, this will work. Are you sure you should be encouraging sugar addiction like this? I thought drugs were bad.”
“Oh, you.” Imogen playfully swatted Arina on the head. “Don’t make my ideas sound bad, Vasilev. Hmm. Vasilev. Did I tell you that sounds like Vaseline? You eastern Europeans and your weird names.”
“Please. Like being called Imogen Annabelle Elizabeth Rutherhood isn’t weird.” Arina grinned at her colleague, opening the chocolate bar and taking a small bite.
Imogen laughed, patted Arina on the shoulder. “I’ve started a new series, FYI. It’s called iZombie. Really good. I recommend it. And you should come over to my house tomorrow so we can watch it, whilst the hubby’s out of town.”
“Sure. If I show you the first ep of what I have. P.S, it’s Vikings.”
“Deal.” They shook hands, and Imogen strode out, her rear swinging slightly from her high heels.