by J. N. Baker
“Have you seen Annie?”
I shook my head, that unnerving chill returning. “Where did you see her last?”
“She was outside with me a little while ago and then she was gone.”
“What the hell do you mean, gone?” I asked.
He raked a shaky hand through his messy hair. “Like, one minute she was standing right beside me and the next she was just…gone. I don’t know.”
“And you’ve checked with Sloane?” I asked, hopeful that he hadn’t thought of that yet. “Annie helps the nurse a lot.”
“Yes, yes,” he snapped. “I’ve checked all the usual spots. Talked to all the usual people. I can’t find her anywhere.”
“William hasn’t found out, right?” He wouldn’t actually hurt her, would he? No, I couldn’t imagine him lifting a hand to her. It would be James who’d been in danger if William found out.
James shook his head, pacing the small room. “No. We’ve been careful. You’re the only one that knows. Well, you and my brother.”
Godfrey’s head popped into the kitchen and James jumped, cursing under his breath. “There is no sign of Lord Alec anywhere,” Godfrey told me.
Shit. Shit. Shit. “Thanks. Keep looking, will you?”
“Of course,” he said with a deep nod and then was gone again.
“What’s going on?” James asked me. “Alec is missing too? Where are they? Do you think Annie’s in danger? I have to find her. I can’t lose her!”
I grabbed him by the forearm as he tried to bolt from the room. “Stop,” I hissed, yanking him back. “You need to calm down. Think about what you’re doing. If you go out there like this, raving about finding her, William will know something is up. You need to calm down, for both your sakes. We’ll find her, okay?”
James took a deep breath and blew it out. “Okay,” he finally said once he’d regained a bit of composure.
“Follow my lead and let me do the talking.”
With that, I exited the kitchen with James a few paces behind me. Listening to the voices around me, I locked onto the one I needed and followed it until I found the big Viking of a man standing at the castle gate.
“William,” I said, pulling his attention away from Rhett. The shift cocked a brow at his brother and then me. Did he know that I knew? “Have you seen Annie anywhere?”
William’s body stiffened. “I have not. Why do you ask?”
“I can’t find her anywhere,” I explained. “Someone told me she was helping James—”
“Pass out weaponry,” James filled in for me, his voice slightly strained. His older brother narrowed his eyes at him in warning.
“I went to find him, thinking she’d be there. He said she’d disappeared on him. He thought maybe she’d gone to help you or Sloane with something more important, but Sloane hasn’t seen her either. Annie isn’t one to just take off when she’s in the middle of something. I haven’t been able to find Alec either,” I added, my own voice starting to waver.
I tried to tell myself that Alec was okay. After William and Baldric, he was the oldest of the Chosen. He was certainly strong enough to take care of himself. Plus, he was a teleport. He could get out of most situations. But Annie…
“I’m getting worried, William,” I admitted.
A high-pitched whistle from outside the castle had all four of us whipping our heads to the side. I took off as the forest nymph manifested from the darkness, only to slam on the brakes when I saw what was clutched in her tiny hand.
Alec’s sword.
“W-where did you get that?” I breathed, a sharp pain exploding within my chest. The last time I’d seen someone carrying a sword that didn’t belong to them from that same forest…I drew a blank, running straight into a mental wall. I couldn’t recall any of the details. All I knew was it had been bad. Life-altering bad. Why couldn’t I remember?
“Forest,” the nymph hissed.
William took the sword from her, his deep blue eyes finding mine. Was that fear I saw there? “Did you see or hear anything?” he asked.
She shook her head in response.
“Nothing was with it?” I hadn’t realized I’d reached out and grabbed the forest nymph’s slender, vine-covered wrist. “No note?”
Her black eyes seemed to soften. She reached into a pack slung over her shoulder and pulled out a small dagger.
I stumbled back a step, looking up at William. “That’s Annie’s,” I whispered and he nodded, his jaw clenched. “He has them, William. Baldric has them.”
I didn’t wait for him to respond, sprinting to the edge of the tree line. “Alec! Annie!”
The echo of my own panicked voice was the only response I got. I drew my sword. “Come on!” I shouted to the others before starting into the trees. When I looked over my shoulder, I was shocked to find no one was following me. Why weren’t they moving? Didn’t they realize the severity of the situation?
In James’s defense, he looked like he was well and truly trying but his brother had a death grip on his arm. Luckily, William seemed far too preoccupied to notice his over-the-top reaction to Annie’s disappearance.
Backtracking to the tree line, I noticed others had gathered, including Jade, Cody, and Godfrey. They were all deep in discussion. “What the hell are you waiting for?” I shouted at them. “We have to find them!”
I couldn’t let anything happen to Alec or Annie. Oh God, sweet, kind, beautiful Annie with her head on a stake. Her eyes lifeless just as Ryuu’s had been; her blood staining the snow. No. I refused to allow that to happen.
A foot crunched in the snow behind me and I spun around, my blade stopping just short of Brock’s scruffy throat. “Easy, lassie. It’s just me. I caught a whiff of their trail about fifty feet in. I’d need to shift to track them farther.”
“I will send some of my shifts to search for them.”
I turned to find Rhett approaching, his brother in tow. James had a wild look about him, like if his brother released him, he might take off. I didn’t blame him. Hell, I had basically done just that.
“Thank you,” I said when Rhett’s words finally registered.
He looked at his brother and back to me. “I’m not doing it for you. Or at least not only for you,” he amended with a shrug. “I won’t force anyone but I’ll see who else is willing to come along.”
“Aye,” Brock said. “I’ll go as well. I would hate for something to happen to such a bonnie thing.”
“I’m definitely going,” James added and then winced slightly under Rhett’s grip.
“Brock,” I started, seeing the truth about to slip from James’s lips. Not that I really thought the Scot would blab to William. He hadn’t told him about our little training sessions. “Can you go tell William we’re sending out a search party?”
“Aye,” he said, taking off toward the others, kilt swishing around his big legs.
“You’re not fucking going,” Rhett hissed the second Brock was out of earshot.
James managed to yank his arm free, glaring at his brother. “The hell I’m not. I can’t sit here and do nothing while she’s out there. I won’t lose her.”
“I have to agree with Rhett,” I told him, though it pained me to say—almost as much as admitting when William was right. “It’s too risky. You’re not in your right mind. At this point, we just need to keep you as far from William as possible. Besides,” I added, “you should be here when Annie comes back.”
When, because if she and Alec didn’t return in one piece, I didn’t know what I’d do. No, I knew what I’d do. I’d rip Baldric’s head off with my bare hands.
“Will you be staying behind too?” James shocked me by saying, or maybe it was the venom in his normally kind voice that threw me. “Alec is also missing. Are you in your right mind to find him?”
“I doubt William would let me go,” I said before thinking.
Rhett scoffed. “Let.”
I shot the perpetually grumpy alpha asshole a look. We didn’t have time to get
into the long history of William controlling my life right now. “You should worry less about me and more about how to keep your brother’s lovesick heart beating.” With that I spun on my heels and headed back toward William, the crowd around him starting to disperse.
“Zoe,” Cody called out as I got closer. He stepped away from William, Jade, and Brock—the only three still remaining outside the castle—and came over to me. “Brock said we’re forming a shift search party. I want in on it. I want to help.”
“You do?” I didn’t bother to hide my surprise.
His brows drew together. “Of course. I’d hate for anything bad to happen to Red.”
That made more sense.
“Plus,” he continued, albeit begrudgingly, “I don’t want you to lose someone else you care about. Even if that someone is Alec,” he added under his breath. He knew damn well I could hear him.
Jade’s eyes met mine as I stepped beside her. There was pity there, beneath her newfound hatred for me. She’d never wish what happened to her on anyone, including me—regardless of how pissed she was. Not even she was that heartless.
“All right,” William said once Cody, Rhett, and James joined us, “I have instructed our people to arm themselves within the castle walls. Godfrey is getting the archers set on the watchtowers. Rhett, we will require a number of your people in the sky. I want to be informed of anything that moves toward us.”
“James will make sure it’s done,” Rhett replied, his eyes sliding to his brother. There was a challenge there—a dare to defy. Not brother to brother, but alpha to subordinate.
I could see the argument on the tip of James’s tongue but one look at William had him thinking better of it. He gave a stiff nod and stormed away.
“Zoe,” William said, “against my better judgment, I would like you to ask your new…acquaintance to go with the shifts to search for Alec and Annie. To protect them if anything should happen.”
“I thought you didn’t trust them to fight,” I countered. I was pretty sure the only reason William was even allowing us to put a search party together was because Annie was taken. He had a soft spot for her. One could almost say she made him weak—not that I’d ever tell him that.
“I do not. But you claim to. If you trust it so much, then you should be okay with it accompanying your shift,” he said, looking at Cody. “If it comes through again, we shall consider using its people more in the future.”
“That implies we have a future,” Rhett muttered.
Always the pessimist. He really was Jade with a penis. “Fine,” I told William. “But I am going with them.”
“Fido, I don’t know if that’s—”
“Absolutely not,” William interrupted.
“I wasn’t asking,” I said and Rhett smirked.
“No,” William said again. “I forbid it.”
“You forbid it?” I snapped. “No. I’m done with you bossing me around. This is my decision. I’m going and that’s final. I have to find them. I’m not losing any more people I care about.”
William’s hand whipped out, his fingers digging into my forearm to the point of pain. “This is what Baldric wants. I cannot afford to lose you as well.”
Electricity raced through my body, burning through my palm and searing my flesh. The white-hot lightning exploded from my hand, shooting up my arm and onto William’s, wrapping around him like a living creature. William’s eyes widened momentarily before he fell back into the snow, gasping for air around the smoke coming out of his lungs.
I turned my attention to a rather shocked—no pun intended—Jade. “You coming with us or not?”
Her wide eyes narrowed on me but that couldn’t mask what I saw in them. Pure, unadulterated fear. Shit on a stick, Jade was afraid to die. Was that why she’d been hugging the castle walls lately? All her bravado and tough talk—all the times she’d called me a coward and weak—and yet she was the one cowering in fear. Maybe seeing her mate’s head on a stake made her realize just how fragile our lives really were.
“Fine,” I told her, not in the mood to call her on her shit. “Make sure William doesn’t screw anything up with all his worrying. The rest of you, let’s go. We’ve wasted enough time.”
I stood just inside the forest with Brock, Cody, and Rhett beside me. It’d only been minutes since I’d put William flat on his back, making Jade have to drag his ass back to the castle—a glorious sight to see. It felt like hours. Every second spent here was one more second that could determine whether Alec and Annie lived or died.
Three pairs of eyes rested on me expectantly. I knew what the others were waiting for: me to call my new friend. I didn’t want to admit that I wasn’t fully sure how. The creature had said to just say its name. Was it like some sort of Beetlejuice thing? Was I supposed to call its name three times and it would magically appear? Only one way to find out…
“Kaziel,” I called to the darkness.
And like some black magic, out of the shadows it appeared.
“Fucking creepy,” Rhett grumbled.
“Zoe,” the creature said with that hoarse voice that rivaled Rhett’s.
I shook off the chill racing down my spine. “Baldric has taken two of our people,” I told it. “We are going out to search for them. Can you come with us to help protect these guys if something happens?”
The cloaked head tilted to the side and I caught those glowing eyes. “Only them?”
“They are your main priority, yes. Can you do that for me?”
Its yellow eyes studied me for a minute—a minute we didn’t have—and then Kaziel nodded. “I will do what I can.”
“Fantastic,” Rhett growled. “We stay together,” he told the others. “No matter what. We’ll follow the trail Brock found and see if we can’t figure out where it leads. But we stay together at all times. We are stronger as a pack. Got it?”
“Aye, we get it. Shut yer trap already, laddie.”
Rhett shot the Scot a warning look that didn’t seem to faze the big man in the slightest.
“Wait, I’m coming too,” someone shouted, a tall body pushing through the trees until a panting James was standing before us.
“Oh, bloody hell,” Brock said.
I grabbed James’s wrist and pulled him away from the others, his brother following after us.
“What are you doing?” I snapped.
“If you’re going, then so am I.”
“No, you aren’t,” Rhett bit out.
“Look, if she gets to go, then so do I. I’m not going to sit on my ass in that damn castle just waiting around. Besides,” James added, “you guys said you wanted me as far away from William as possible. Well, this looks pretty far to me.”
I groaned. “Fine, you’re right.”
“Excuse me?” I could practically taste Rhett’s anger. “This isn’t your decision.”
“No, it’s his,” I snapped, jabbing a thumb at the young shift. “He’s an adult, let him make his own choice. We’re wasting time.”
“Am I to protect this one as well?” Kaziel asked when the three of us returned.
“Especially this one. Unless he wastes any more of our time. Now, let’s go.”
All of the shifts started stripping and I turned away to give them the privacy they never seemed to care about. And then came the godawful sound of snapping bones and stretching muscles. I cringed. Six-plus years cutting off heads and I couldn’t handle a couple cracking bones.
Cody chuckled, coming up beside me with his shirt off. “Still not used to it?” he asked.
“Music to my ears,” I said sarcastically and his chuckle turned into a full laugh.
When I turned back to the shifts, I spotted Brock’s bear immediately. Beside him were two much smaller bloodhounds. Who was who between the two brothers, I couldn’t tell.
“Not exactly the most fearsome choice,” I mumbled, more to myself than Cody. The dogs’ snouts flattened to the snow-covered forest floor, a comical sight next to the big grizzly.
/> Cody shrugged, tugging at his belt. “We need the strongest noses we can get. If shit hits the fan, we’ve got you, Brock, and your cloaked buddy over there.” With that, Cody dropped his pants without even a hint of hesitation and began to shift. In a matter of seconds, another red hound dog joined the others. With a loud howl from one of the other dogs, the three took off into the forest, Brock quick on their much smaller heels.
Standing there in the darkness with the shadow dweller at my side and a serious feeling of déjà vu in my gut, I followed after the others, hoping this trip didn’t turn out like my last.
Sword drawn, I followed the three bloodhounds and the oversized teddy bear, all of whom had their snouts plastered to the forest floor. I knew when the trail got harder to find, those noses shooting skyward to sniff the air before returning to the ground once more.
As we moved farther into the trees, a bad feeling crept over me like the fog snaking over the blanket of snow beneath my feet. I reached out and put a hand over Kaziel’s cloaked arm, slowing him.
“We’re being followed,” I whispered, listening to the approaching footfalls behind us. “No matter what happens, you stay with the others and help keep them safe. Got it?”
The creature bowed its head. “As you wish.”
I fell into the shadows as the others continued on, pressing my back against the nearest tree trunk, waiting. The footsteps drew closer. Ten feet. Five feet. Two feet.
A vampire, dressed from head to toe in black, slipped right by me. I doubted the others would have been able to hear him even in their shifted forms. Reaching out, I latched onto the bloodsucker’s arm and spun him around until his back slammed into the tree I’d previously occupied. Before he could call out, my hand slammed over his mouth, the sharp edge of my blade kissing his throat, just hard enough to draw a line of blood and make him realize I meant business.
“Where are they,” I hissed.
A twinkle of amusement shone in the vampire’s eyes that only pissed me off more. I added pressure to his neck until my blade was dancing over his jugular. When fear flickered across his face, I released my hold on his mouth.