by Bella Jacobs
I have to get to Wren.
Now.
Before Atlas’s goons get their hands on me.
Hands curled into fists, I launch myself across this third-rate ghetto department store, weaving through the crowded racks of disposable clothing as I sprint for the dressing room door. The dark gray carpet inside still looks spongy at the center. The portal hasn’t closed yet. Wherever Atlas is taking Wren, I can follow, as long as I take the leap in the next minute or two.
But of course Atlas hasn’t left his wormhole undefended.
The sweet older woman who just moments ago was fetching Wren dresses to try on and complimenting her figure, pulls a gun from a thigh holster hidden beneath her sensible tweed skirt. Meanwhile, the muscle from the front of the store closes in on me from behind. I can feel the threat rising like a two-story wave about to bitch-slap me into the rocky shore, but I don’t turn to see how close the meatheads are getting.
I run faster, rolling onto the carpet as Granny Tweed fires. I skid under a rack of petroleum-scented pink jeggings before leaping back to my feet and crouch-dashing around her to the right, where a display of discount tennis shoes offers cover.
And a weapon…
Gripping the metal tower by the base, I hurl it at the woman guarding the portal. A soft cry and a shot that shatters one of the lights overhead give me hope the coast is clear, and I bolt.
I’m almost to the dressing room, seconds from diving for the rapidly narrowing puddle of softness on the floor, when my shoulder catches fire.
My hip is next, then my shoulder again, the bullets jerking me back and forth as they burrow into my flesh. Pain fireworks beneath my skin and sharp cries burst from my lips, but I keep moving, stubbornly believing that if I can just get to Wren, it will all be okay.
But it’s not going to be okay.
And I’m not going to make it.
The next shot hits me in my neck, ripping through so close to my jaw that it knocks my chin up on its way out. I fall, sagging to the floor, fingers clawing into the carpet as blood gushes from my throat. The hot rush is strangely soothing, taking the edge off the burning sting around the edges of the exit wound.
It will kill me, of course—this amount of blood loss, this fast—but it will gentle the pain on the way out.
Out, out, damned spot…who would have thought the old man to have so much blood in him. Lady Macbeth’s words echo through my head, seeming fitting somehow, that Shakespearean lady destroyed by her own ruthless ambition.
Our ambition wasn’t ruthless—our band of brothers and the brave woman who held this quest together—but we were reaching so high. Too high.
It seems laughable now that we ever thought we had a chance. Maybe if we could have trained for a dozen years, if Wren had taken more mates to amp up her fighting power, if she’d had another millennium to come into her own godlike mojo, at least it would have been a fair fight.
But it’s over. We’ve lost the game before we had a chance to take the field.
Heavy boots clomp into view, and a deep male voice shouts, “Fuck, you were supposed to use the darts, asshole. Fuck!”
Another voice snaps, “Relax. He’s a fucking shifter. Takes more than a few bullets to take them out. It’ll be fine.”
“If it’s not,” a female voice grumbles from my other side, “I’m not going to be shy about saying who used bullets and who used darts.”
“Shut up, Deborah.” The man sniffs, sucking in what sounds like a boatload of snot. “Lock up and roll the gate down in front. We don’t want anyone else coming in before we’ve cleaned up.”
Good luck with that, buddy. I’ve made one hell of a mess. You’ll be sopping me up for days. I’d like to go out with a smart-ass crack and middle fingers blazing, but I can’t speak.
Can’t move. Can’t pull in a breath bigger than a wheeze.
But still…
I’m not a quitter.
As the owner of the boots crouches beside me, his dark eyes scanning my face with grim satisfaction, I will the last of my strength to curl all my fingers except one.
My middle digit rises—fierce and defiant—and the guard nods. “Yeah, man.” He smiles. “Fuck you, too. See, you’re going to be fine.”
For some reason that makes me feel better, though I’m pretty sure I’m not going to be fine. But his words are a sign of respect, a scrap of dignity handed over as I lie dying.
I’m dying…
This isn’t what I thought death would be like, but I suppose it never is.
Death doesn’t follow rules or abide by a script. Death is the ultimate badass motherfucker, swooping in when he’s damn well ready and doing his worst, whether you like it or not.
See you soon, Slim, I think, wishing I was beside her, there to hold her hand after Atlas delivers her deathblow.
He’s going to kill her, my girl, my mate, the only person who ever saw all the way down to the bottom of my jaded, cynical, secretly-hopeful heart. She’s so much stronger than she used to be, but she won’t be strong enough. She can’t be, not without her mates to watch her back.
I hope she’ll forgive me for letting her down.
I hope the others will, too.
I hope…
There’s more, another wish or two, but I lose my thread and they blow away, scattered by the wind. I follow, eyes sliding closed and her name the only thing left on my lips as I spin away.
Chapter 3
Dust
The connection stutters, catches, and stutters again, sending my heart lurching up and down in my throat as I cling to the phone receiver like a lifeline.
Meadwood has been home to my griffin kin for the better part of seven centuries, but it wasn’t always a place for shifters. It was originally built by the Fey, a warren of underground passages beneath an ancient druid temple that leads out of the human world and into another realm, one richer and wilder than our own.
And hard as hell to access using modern technology…
I curse, slamming the pay phone back into its cradle for the sixth time as the connection drops before I’m patched through to the throne room. At this rate, Kite and I will be old and gray before I reach someone who can send word to Wren’s sister, warning Scarlett to run before it’s too late.
Or more likely, we’ll all five of us be dead. We’re running low on all resources, but time is the most precious of all.
“Should we try a different pay phone? Somewhere else?” Kite paces back and forth in front of privacy carols on the east side of the bus station. It’s big but outdated, making me think Alberta’s second largest city might be planning to leave bus travel behind in the not-too-distant future. “Maybe it’s the connection on this end that’s bad?”
“Doubtful. Besides, there are no others to try. These are the last pay phones left in the area.” I glance down at my cell, scrolling through the antique-tech-locator app I helped build when I was still working for the interests of the griffin royals. But there isn’t another pay phone or an office supply store with a functioning fax machine for a hundred kilometers.
Connection to the fairy realm runs as much on magic as technology, and the supernatural energy created by thousands of people all reaching out to touch someone from the same spot, using the same tool, for decades or more is the most reliable way to pierce the veil between this realm and the griffin court. I could reach the fairy castle where Scarlett is hiding the same way if I knew the proper runes.
But I don’t. My mother is the only person who might have a shot at reaching the fairy queen—a stone-cold taskmaster named Lenore, who suffers no fools and allegedly had her husband’s bastard daughter murdered and fed to Unseelie monsters as a warning to anyone stupid enough to make eyes at her throne.
But my mother spends her days deep in the heart of Meadwood—either in the throne room receiving petitions and complaints, or in her vast garden cultivating a mix of earthly and unearthly flowers prized for their medicinal power.
And their toxicity.
For a gentle woman who prides herself on fair play, my mother is handy with poison. I can’t help but wish I’d absorbed some of her knowledge, or at least stashed a few of her more toxic plants in my pocket for a rainy day.
Atlas might not expect poison…
“Then we should get going, yeah?” Kite asks. “Head back to the hotel and make plans to get to another pay phone ASAP?” He nods toward the bustling waiting room, crammed with large families, elderly women in jackets too heavy for the pleasant summer day, and other people too poor to travel by train or car.
Bus stations tend to be depressing places, and this one is no different. Still, a spark of hope burns bright inside of me. We’re not out of the woods yet, but we’re closer than we’ve been before. The way forward to Atlas is clear, one of our enemies is dead, and Wren grows more powerful every day.
“Let me try one more time.” I cross my fingers, praying that Fortune will shine a little more luck our way. I want to save Wren’s sister as much as anyone—she was my childhood friend, too—but we can’t afford to spend too much time or energy on anything but our mission.
We have to find and destroy Atlas. If we don’t, neither Scarlett nor anyone else on this planet is going to have much to live for.
“What about that one?” Kite motions toward the antique, turn-of-the-nineteenth-century phone hanging on the wall near the sign pointing to the restrooms.
“It’s decorative, not functional.” As soon as I say it, I realize the error in my thinking. “But you’re right. It’s the time logged on the device that matters most, not the electricity.”
I cross to the phone, plucking the horn-shaped receiver from the cradle on the side, bringing it to my ear as I lean close to chant into the mouthpiece. The ancient Celtic spell will reach out to the realm my people have called home for millennia, the place where I passed the bliss-filled days of my early childhood and the crushing years after my return from the human world, an outcast even though I was in line to inherit the throne.
I haven’t truly belonged to Meadwood since the day the Church of Humanity missionaries stole me away from the forest as a child, shipping me off to a new family that did it’s best to steal my birthright away.
Even after my rescue, struggle was the name of the game. For years, shifting into my griffin form was painful or flat-out impossible, depending on the day and the fucked-up state of my head. I’d spent too much time lost in a fog of shifter-suppression meds and lies to make being a griffin prince easy. There were times when I wasn’t sure I’d ever fit in or find a place that felt like home again.
But now Wren is back in my life, in my bed, and anywhere she lays her sweet head is home. I have to get through to my family for her. For Wren, and for the sister I know she’d do anything to protect.
“Dust? Is that you again? Can you hear me this time, dear?” My mother’s voice is fuzzy and thin, like a song played on a phonograph, but clear.
“Yes, I can hear you. So glad I finally made it through, Mother.” A smile stretches wide across my lips, my joy mirrored on Kite’s face as he lets out a relieved breath.
“Me, too, darling, but you’d best tell me what I can do for you quickly, in case we’re disconnected again. The lines have been malfunctioning all afternoon. Your father thinks it’s the storm up above. Apparently, it’s the worst the isles have seen since the flood that took out that village in Wales a few years ago.” She tsks softly. “Do you remember that? Those poor people and all the lovely old buildings just slid right into the sea. Such a sad, needless loss.”
“I do remember. And I’m hoping to prevent another needless loss today,” I say, quickly shifting the subject before my mother starts in on one of her lectures on how humanity needs to abandon its coastal cities before the oceans grow any more dangerous.
“We’ve located Wren’s sister.” I fill her in on Scarlett’s location in the Fey realm beneath Neuschwanstein castle. “She’s in danger. Atlas knows she’s not the Fata Morgana, that she’s been deceiving him all these years. And we’re pretty sure he knows where she’s hiding. It’s time for her to get out.”
“But she’s surely safer staying put,” my mother says. “Neuschwanstein has the most brilliant cloaking system in the world. I couldn’t find it again without a guided invitation, and I’ve been attending parties there since I was a child.”
“Wren had a spirit visit from both of her parents, warning that Scarlett was in danger.” My gaze skims past Kite as something flashes outside. But it’s just the sun reflecting off the windshield of a bus pulling out into the street, nothing dangerous.
So why do I suddenly feel like a sitting duck?
The hair at the back of my neck lifts, and a warning sizzles up and down my spine, too urgent to ignore. “Get a message to Scarlett, Mother,” I say quickly. “Tell her to run, and to keep running until we send word that Atlas is defeated.” I hesitate only a fraction of a second before adding, “I love you and miss you. And I don’t blame you for any of it. I never have.”
“Oh, Dust…” Her voice catches, rising sharply as she adds, “Someone’s there. On your end. Coming your way, I can—”
The line goes dead, sending a shiver across my skin.
“Something’s wrong,” Kite says, brow furrowing as he glances toward the glass windows facing the street. “Wren… She’s in trouble. I feel…” He claps a hand on my shoulder, his Kin Gift for empathy kicking my vibe-reading power up a notch.
“Creedence, too. Bad.” My heart clutches tightly as pain wraps a clawed hand around my throat.
Kite groans softly. “Fuck, Dust. We have to find them. They’re in trouble, they—”
He’s cut off by a burst of gunfire, and the waiting room explodes with screams and pounding footsteps as people flee the station. Kite and I both dive to the floor, rolling behind the bench by the phone bank, seeking cover as Kite draws his gun.
“Stay down,” he shouts, coming to his knees, aiming over the seat of the bench.
But before he can fire as much as a single shot, we’re overrun.
They come from everywhere, all at once, spilling over the balcony behind us, flowing down the stairs, surging into the station from the street with guns blazing, shattering the glass skylights overhead, raining shards onto the last of the humans in the waiting room. The tattoos on the attackers’ necks mark them as Kin Born, but I don’t need the inked teeth and barbed wire ink to know what they are. I recognize the fire burning in their eyes, equal parts self-righteousness and insanity, traits they share with their fellow zealots.
The Church of Humanity tries to “rehabilitate” the people they despise, not slaughter them, but the sick blaze inside of them is the same, spewing poisonous smoke so thick there’s no getting through it. You can’t reason with an extremist—Kite and I both know better.
So when the leader—a man whose leather jacket has claw-shredded arms—orders, “Drop the gun. Down on your stomachs, arms behind your backs,” Kite and I don’t argue. We’re outnumbered and outgunned. If we fight back, we’ll die, and there will be no one left to save Wren and Creedence.
Luke, being vision-blind, won’t even know they’re in danger.
He won’t know we’re in danger, either.
Kite and I lock eyes as four Kin Born thugs tie our hands behind us. We both know that we’re the only hope for our circle of five. That understanding passes between us before our captors drag us to our feet and shove us across the room, through an obstacle course of abandoned luggage to an armored van waiting at the curb.
Chapter 4
Luke
I can’t remember the last time I was this bone tired.
I don’t know if it’s a hangover from the psychic probe into my memories this morning, or the result of staying up all night making love to Wren—or both—but I can barely keep my eyes open long enough to kick off my shoes and shuffle across the room to the closest mattress. Placing my gun on the bedside table, I fall face-down into the cool sheets, eyes closin
g with a sigh, lacking the energy to feel guilty that I’m not helping prepare for our mission launch with the others.
I’d be useless to them, anyway. Until I’ve recharged, I won’t be worth shooting in the head, let alone guarding anyone else’s life. And my presence on a shopping mission as anything but a bodyguard would be a waste of time.
I know about as much about what rich people wear to a fancy mountain resort as I know about skiing—exactly jack shit. I was born and bred in the desert heat of southern California. The kids in my family were lucky to get a trip to the arcade by the Laundromat on our birthdays. Not much opportunity to learn to shred it on the slopes as a gangbanger, or in prison, either.
But thankfully, seeing as it’s summer, the mission won’t require any actual skiing, just ass-kicking.
Ass-kicking, I can do. Also name-taking.
Atlas…
The monster’s name drifts through my weary head, and a wave of determination rises inside of me. I’m going to kill the bastard. I don’t care how many different things he can turn into at once, I’ll take them all out. There are weapons out there specifically designed for slaughter on a grander scale, and I’ve got an idea where I can appropriate a few.
While the rest of the team spends the next few days brushing up on their magic and shapeshifting, I’m going to find myself some Canadian bad guys. I’ll follow the street drugs to the money laundering operations to the people running the show. Likely, they’ll be peddling weapons, too. There’s solid crossover between the drug and arms trades, and I’ve got the street smarts and experience to convince dangerous new friends to sell me the good stuff.
And if not, I’ll go wolf on them, rip their throats out, and take what I need. I haven’t shifted in seven years, doing my best to contain the bloodthirsty, merciless animal prowling beneath my human skin, but for Wren I’ll free the beast.
I will do anything to protect her and the future I see glittering on the horizon every time I look into her eyes.