by Amelia Jade
Jake opened his mouth to respond, but was distracted by a loud thump at the thick, extra-wide wooden door. He turned to face it as the others in the room got to their feet as well.
“Oh well,” Andria said. “Too late.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Cowl
“Hey, hey are you okay?”
He opened his eyes to see Violet hovering over him. Groaning, he lay back down. He was hallucinating. That wasn’t good. Why would Andria’s roommate be there?
“Cowl. Wake up. Don’t close your eyes.”
Forcing the lids open he checked again, but it was still Violet. “Andria, why do you look like Violet?”
“I am Violet. Andria isn’t here. She sent me a text saying something was wrong, so I came down here, but she’s not here. Do you know where she is?”
“Yes.”
She was with Jake. And Cowl had let him take her.
Well, sort of. He’d put up quite a fight, but the numbers and surprising strength of his enemies had caught him completely by surprise.
“Home,” he muttered, forcing his weak limbs to support him.
Violet got one shoulder under his arm, and together they got him to his feet. He gently probed his skull with one hand.
“Cowl! Cowl wake up!”
He was on his back again.
“What happened?” he moaned, trying to block out the pain.
“You touched your head and then passed out again. Nearly fell on top of me.”
Right. The side of his head where he’d taken the pipe. His injuries were already starting to heal, but he’d need to be careful with his head for the next little while. The skull must be fractured.
“Home. I need to get home.”
Together he and Violet got him to his feet again, and they made their way back to his apartment building. By the time the elevator opened into the apartment he shared with his brothers, Cowl was feeling stronger, able to support himself.
“Cowl?” Ivore was the first to notice, though his eyes darted back and forth between Cowl and Violet.
“Hey brother. How are you today? I’m fine, just a little beat up after a long day.” He chuckled at his own joke.
“Caine, get out here now!” Ivore barked, moving to Cowl’s side. “Can you walk?”
“I can now. But we have a problem.”
Caine came rushing out from his room, took one look at Cowl, and immediately started making food. Cowl seated himself at the island bar, resting his weight on the cool marble while he explained what happened.
“Something’s not right. They took these pills and became super-strong. I should have gone through them like a blade through grass, but they just kept getting up and coming back. Caught me off guard and it was all downhill after that. They had numbers too. Now they have Andria.”
He almost slammed a fist off his head, but remembered just in time not to. Instead he just rested on the counter, waiting for the inevitable condescending remarks about how he should have thought things through first.
That’s what he was doing now though. Cowl knew he would need help to overpower Jake and his gang while they were still high, and he wasn’t willing to wait for them to come down before he went after Andria.
“Eat,” Caine said. “Then we’ll go teach these fuckers a lesson.”
Cowl looked up. Ivore was nodding in agreement.
“What, just like that? No snide comment, no telling me it’s my fault first?”
Caine snarled, slamming his fist down on the countertop, splitting the expensive marble. “You’re our brother, Cowl. Andria is your mate. That basically makes her family.”
He stared directly at Cowl.
“Nobody fucks with my family.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Cowl
He delivered the ceremonial first blow.
A huge booted foot drove the wooden door inward with one strike, ripping it clear from its hinges. It flew across the room and struck someone, moving too swiftly for Cowl to see who it was.
He swept into the room, trying his best to ignore the vision of Andria helplessly bound to the chair surrounded by the pack of thugs that Jake employed.
“Anyone ready for round two?” he snarled.
They weren’t going to catch him off guard this time. Nor was he alone. Behind Cowl came Ivore and Caine, both prepared and ready for a dustup.
Nobody moved for a moment, until the person under the door flung it free, rising to their feet. Cowl wasn’t sure what surprised him more. That he’d managed to take Jake out with the door, or the fact that when Jake had flung the door free, it had embedded itself in the ceiling. All hundred-plus pounds of thick wood.
“What are you waiting for?” Jake howled. “KILL THEM!”
Two things happened. One, the room exploded into motion, and two, Cowl came face to face with the explanation for the supernatural strength of Jake and his gang.
A huge wolf lunged at him from where Danny had been standing, green eyes gleaming as bone-white teeth snapped at his neck. Cowl spun out of the way, hammering a fist into the beast’s side as it flew past, breaking ribs and sending it tumbling into the wall with a yelp.
“SHIFTERS!” he bellowed as wolves came at them in all directions.
Black ones, gray ones, striped and spotted, mottled, and even one bleached white one, a huge beast that could only be Jake.
Cowl called upon his powers as he ducked another attack. In the middle of the room Andria was screaming. Frost formed around his fists, turning them from pale white to icy blue as his armor emerged from under his skin, hardening the surface.
A wolf lunged at him, jaws open wide. Cowl grinned. “Stupid pup.” He stuck his entire arm down its throat. Powerful muscles clamped down on his arm. Teeth shattered against his impenetrable skin, and Cowl turned with grace, slamming the creature into another headed for his back.
He did this twice more before the hapless wolf slid off his icy arm, falling to the ground when its legs wouldn’t support it.
On his left Ivore called up a whirlwind of ice and snow, directing it at the two wolves he was facing off with. One didn’t dodge swiftly enough and was lifted into the air by the mini-tornado and flung completely through the wall.
Caine clapped his hands and shoved them at an approaching wolf. Ice flowed out from his palms, encasing the creature from the back half of its head to its tail, immobilizing it.
A throaty growl caught Cowl’s attention as the oversized white beast stalked toward him. It looked as bad as its human half. The hair was actually tinged yellow, and hair was falling out from it everywhere. Folds of loose skin clung around its flanks and hind legs, giving it a very unhealthy look.
It was still a dangerous creature though.
“Come on, puppy. Sit!” he barked, pointing a finger at Jake.
The sickly beast clacked its jaws at him, crouching low. It was going to charge any moment now.
Cowl lifted his hands, resting the fingertips against the ceiling as he called up more power.
“Let’s go. I’m getting tired of the wet-dog smell in here. Did you piss yourself?”
Jake lunged at him.
Cowl jerked his fingers downward. A wall of ice descended from the ceiling between him and Jake, moving down as fast as his hands. It caught Jake in the snout as he tried to pass under it. The white beast went down, its head bouncing off the floor only to rebound back up and into the descending ice again, like a pinball.
Jake was dazed but not out of it, and he backed away from the wall, extricating himself. He was slow, however, and Cowl simply walked up to the wall and then pushed it over.
Several hundred pounds of ice fell onto Jake, pummeling the beleaguered wolf until it lay still, its flanks rising and falling in ragged motion.
He glanced around, but his brothers had already taken care of the others. All the wolves were down. Only one of them looked to be permanent, an ice spike sticking out from its side.
Caine shrugged, unapologetic. �
��It went for my nuts.”
Cowl smiled in understanding. That was foul play, and had to be treated as such. He took a closer look at the wolf in question, and noticed through the half-drawn eyelid that the eyes appeared to be green. That fit.
“Hey, Cowl?”
Satisfied that it was safe, he turned his attention at last to Andria. It angered him that she wasn’t his first priority. He’d needed to deal with the wolves first, and fast, before they could think to go after her, the sole human in the room.
“Coming.” He hurried over to her side, ripping the rope apart with his bare hands. “Are you okay? Did they hurt you?”
“I’m fine,” she said, looking down at herself. “Got a little sick. I’m really embarrassed. But not hurt.”
Cowl swept her up into a hug. He didn’t care if she’d been sick; all he cared about was that she was okay. “I’m sorry I left you. I’m sorry it took so long.”
“It’s okay. Cowl, it’s okay.” She slipped out from his arms.
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah. That’s fine. But…Cowl?”
“Yes?”
She looked around the room at the unconscious, frozen, or in one case dead, wolves. Then back at him. Her eyes were dark and delicious, green-eyed and beautiful. Her golden hair clung to her face, damp from the snow and ice that had been flung around the room by him and his brothers. Cowl had never seen someone more beautiful.
“Can you tell me what the fuck just happened here?”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Andria
“They’re wolf shifters,” he said, as if it were matter-of-fact.
“Right. Wolf shifters. Um. Just how many different types of shifters are there?”
He looked at his brothers. “Good question. This is news to us as well. To our knowledge, there have only ever been dragon shifters. Perhaps as we dragons left the world, falling into sleep, another species of shifter rose to fill the gap?”
Andria looked around at the other two, noting the similarities between them as they nodded in agreement with Cowl. “These are your brothers, aren’t they?”
“Yeah. That one’s Ivore”—he pronounced it Eye-vor—"he’s the middle. The one with the ponytail is Caine. He’s big bro.”
Caine rolled his eyes.
Andria said hello. “Okay, next question.”
“Sure.”
“Why am I not freaking out? Why does this seem not all that out of the ordinary?”
Cowl chuckled. “You saw me change into a dragon. Wolves at least exist already. It’s not as far-fetched for this to be possible, after already having seen what I can change into.” He turned to look at the room.
For the first time she got a glimpse of his head where he’d been hit with the pipe. “Oh my God, Cowl. Your head.”
He shied away as she tried to look at it closer. “Please don’t touch it. I tried that already, and I blacked out. I don’t think that’ll happen again, but…let’s not take our chances.”
She nodded fearfully. “Are you going to be okay?”
“Yeah, I’ll heal. It’s just going to be a weak spot for a while. They hit me pretty damn hard with the pipe.” He shrugged, looking at the carnage. “But I think I got them back.”
Andria leaned into his chest, happy to be able to hold him. He was a calming point for her, like the eye of a hurricane, keeping her grounded and at ease despite the chaos surrounding them.
“All this time, Jake and his family were shifters. I still can’t believe it.”
“Me neither.” Cowl held her tight, but she could sense he was looking at his brothers. “This changes everything.”
“Does it?”
“Well, it makes a lot of things clearer.” He kissed the top of her head. “You said that the actions lately of Jake and his family were not what you were used to. Well, that would be the shifter in them acting.”
“What do you mean? The shifter in them? Had the wolf part been taking over, is that why he had been looking so terrible lately?”
“Image is everything to a shifter. This trial, that’s a big deal in this time, right?”
Andria nodded. “Yes, everyone knows about it.”
“Right. So this is about reputation. If there are other shifters out there, they’ll know about it. Hear about it. If Jack is expelled from school and sent to prison, well, the Malkin family will have lost face. A lot of it. Their name dragged through the mud. If they’re as powerful as you say they are, it stands to reason that they’re also powerful in the shifter community. If this goes through, they stand to become much weaker afterward. So, in their eyes, anything is worth stopping you, even violence. There was only one thing they didn’t count on.”
“What’s that?”
“Me.”
She shivered. All of that had been going on, and she hadn’t known. “And here I thought he’d just become a drug addict.”
Cowl didn’t say anything in response, but something about the silence was telling on its own.
“What is it, Cowl? What aren’t you telling me?” She looked at him, then at his brothers, all of whom had grim looks on their faces.
“A lot,” he said slowly. “About why we’re really in Barton City. I wasn’t going to, but I’m not sure we have a choice now.”
A chill ran down her spine. Cowl sounded more solemn and worried than at any point since she’d met the big man.
“Cowl, you’re scaring me.”
“Come on, let’s get out of here. There’s a military unit on its way from Fort Banner outside the city. They’ll round them up and take them.”
As if to emphasize his point, another man walked through the doorway. He was tall like the others, with a thick mane of black hair tied back. He wore a form-fitting black outfit that looked almost like a flightsuit.
“Vanek,” Cowl said with a nod of his head.
The newcomer surveyed the scene. “They’re infected, aren’t they?”
“Pretty sure, yes. They were taking a lot of purple pills. That was my first clue. I think we need to take them in, find out just what’s going on.”
Vanek nodded in agreement. “The Steel Scales will handle it from here. Thank you, you’ve done well. Go home.”
Andria let Cowl lead her from the room after they shook hands. She yelped and plastered herself into Cowl’s side as she nearly walked into the side of a massive suit of metal armor. It moved deftly out of her way, a metallic voice coming from a speaker that apologized.
There were three other similar suits spread out around the rest of the warehouse, all of which were facing outward. Guarding it. Two other men with the look of dragons to them walked the perimeter as well.
“Cowl, what’s going on?”
“Those men back there are infected with something not of our world,” he stated. “It makes them do bad things, and it also kills them. We don’t know how it’s spreading, but someone has been in contact with a being from another planet and is spreading it.”
“Should I be worried?”
“No. It only infects shifters, and it’s not airborne. As far as we can tell, it can’t spread from host to host. Each person has to be infected individually.”
Andria got it. “The drugs. That’s how it’s spreading.”
“It seems so. We fought and killed an infected dragon a few weeks back. We knew there was someone else out there, but we didn’t know who. Now we have a lead.”
“Jake isn’t a dealer,” she said immediately. “He’s not that type of guy.”
“No,” Cowl agreed. “But what about his father?”
Andria had no answer for that. They walked a few more paces.
“Wait. Did you just say that aliens exist?”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Andria
After everything Cowl had revealed to her, standing up at the trial suddenly didn’t seem so hard.
Not when she knew there was an alien army of creatures called Outsiders poised to come through a portal just outside the city at
any moment. Not after finding out that the man standing accused in the room was capable of shape-shifting into a wolf. Not after seeing the man who wanted to save her from herself transform into a mighty dragon of brilliant white.
Telling the courtroom how an asshole had exposed her body to the world just wasn’t as embarrassing as it had seemed a week or two before. It still stunned her to realize just how much her world had changed in that time, and also how okay with the changes she was. Finding out that Cowl was a dragon should have left her thinking she deserved to be in a mental institution. Instead, she’d brushed it off as normal, even going so far as to think it cool.
The explanation that Jake and his friends had become infected by these Outsiders, and that’s what had prompted their change in behavior fit. She wondered if Jack had become ill as well.
I guess I’ll see when they bring him in.
The doors at the back of the room opened and a hush fell over the auditorium that was serving as a courtroom. Andria didn’t turn at first, not wanting to give him the pleasure of seeing the pain on her face. But as the hush was replaced by a low muttering of surprise, she craned her neck to find out what the noise was all about.
Her eyes settled on Jack, not recognizing him at first. When she did she gasped audibly. What the hell had happened to him?
A weak, sickly man far too skinny for his own good was being pushed down the aisle between seats, sitting strapped into a wheelchair. His legs were bony and his knees and elbows protruded from the ill-fitting clothing. Weeks’ worth of unshaved hair hung in knots from his face. Worst of all, however, was the vacant look in his eyes.
Jack’s body was still alive, but his mind had fled.
Behind the caretaker came his father, Richard Malkin. The formidable persona was noticeably missing from his face as he stepped up, surrounded by a bevy of lawyers. Despite Jack’s health, it still seemed they were going to try and contest the outcome.