Black Queen: Stray
Shifters Among Us Book One
Lidiya Foxglove
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
More Romantic Fantasy from Lidiya!
Prologue
Frankie
For millennia, humans have told the tales of other humans who can turn into animals. In many parts of the world, offerings and blessings were given to appease them. It was said that unhappy shifters would curse crops and put hexes on their enemies, because they knew magic.
But when a shifter was caught, they rarely made it out of human hands alive. So what good was magic then?
In the days of cottages, hearth fires and horses, so much of life remained a mystery to mankind. And then came the age of science and industry, every mystery turning into fact. The shifters tried to hide.
They could not escape the march of progress.
My mother used to tell me that my great-great-grandmother Mary was the first shifter to be caught and forced to transform before a crowd in Edinburgh and then to London, the same year Queen Victoria took the throne. She managed to escape and flee to America, where my mother was born.
Cats always escape, that’s what my mother said. She used to tell me the story of a prophecy written in the stars, of how one day we would all know peace. Three shifter queens would be born, with greater powers than anyone the world had ever known, and their powers would unite the world.
Soon, she would tell me, we would be safe.
But the truth is, none of us have been safe for a long, long time. The humans will never trust us. No matter where we hide, they find us. No matter where we live, they make trouble. They are only content when we are tamed, and so we allow ourselves to be tamed, or we spend our lives running.
My mother was killed by human “hunters” when I was five.
Cats always escape…until one day, they don’t.
Chapter One
Frankie
Brooklyn Heights, New York, Istara, 2008
“I just need a little recon. Get inside the building and tell me what they got.” My boss, Uncle Roy, gave me the golden-eyed glare that was the only feature he’d passed to his son. Roy was not my uncle at all. He had found me on the street crying over my mother’s body and he was the only person who cared to help.
Since then, he’d squeezed out every penny that helping me was worth, and then some. He was a big guy who wore cheap suits, and had a hairstyle that was still flirting with a mullet. You never wanted to get on his bad side. Some bosses never got their hands dirty, but Roy wasn’t squeamish and when he killed someone, it wasn’t pretty.
“It’s easy, Frankie. Don’t look at me like that. Are you scared?”
“No.”
“Everyone has to earn their keep around here. I go easy on you.”
“Mm-hm.” My lips were tight. Roy didn’t like that much.
“All I’m asking for you to do is get inside the building and take a look. I ask the boys to do more dangerous stuff than this.”
“You’ve never asked them to mess with Angus.”
“You’re not messing with him!”
“If anyone there catches me, I’m dead.” I threw out my hands.
“Nah. You’re a thirteen year old girl. You’re the only one he wouldn’t kill.”
“Okay. Maybe he wouldn’t kill me.”
“You’re a kid,” he said. “He isn’t going to do anything except scare you a little bit.”
“He…he’s a hunter.”
“You don’t want a little goddamn revenge, kid? Come on.”
Angus was one of the most notorious hunters who patrolled Manhattan. He was supposed to stay on his side of the river and out of Brooklyn, which was shifter territory, but he considered it his mission to terrorize us and if he caught you, there wasn’t much of anyone to stop him. He would kidnap kids walking down the street and hand them over to the only people who frightened me even more than hunters: the trainers and breeders.
To them, we were far less than human.
Trainers and breeders didn’t usually mess with cats. We were too independent. So Angus would probably just kill me without thinking twice about it, and I didn’t think my age would spare me.
“Well, sweetheart, I have that much confidence in you. You won’t get caught. You never do. You’re getting older, so I’m going to be expecting more of you. And when you come back, guess what?”
“You’ll take me to Au Bon Pain?” I asked, a little sarcastically. I worked for Roy like I was an adult. He taught me to fight and how to survive, and he considered this enough payment for all the dangerous little jobs I did for him. In exchange for risking arrest and injury, he would treat me to coffee and a pastry, or ice cream. He would take me there along with his own son, Ian, if he was home. Ian went to private school and was never subjected to any danger. When I was a little kid I didn’t question it very much, but I was catching on fast these days. He was using my youth and innocence as I was losing my youth and innocence.
“I’ll give you your own studio apartment,” he said.
“Oh?” I had not expected that. Since Roy took me in, I had been sharing a room with his daughter Emma, who was six years younger than me, and it was a nightmare. When I wasn’t a spy, I was an unpaid nanny.
“Yeah,” he said. “Now, that’s worth it, isn’t it?”
“I guess that’s acceptable,” I said.
He laughed. “You’re turning into a cynic, huh? So young. Well, you have street smarts, kid. You might be a kitty cat, but you’re tough.”
When I was just a baby, my mom and I lived in a small town farther north. There, cat shifters were allowed full rights if they were declawed. Declawing is just a nice word for removing a joint of your finger, so I was missing the tips of all my fingers, and at that point my mom thought she was doing what was best for me, but she felt guilty over it for the rest of her life. Besides this disadvantage, my cat form was small, hardly larger than a house cat. Roy always referred to me as a kitty cat, but in his own weird way I think it was a crude method of challenging me to challenge him right back.
I shrugged. “I don’t need claws when I have knives. Tell me where I’m going.”
I played it cool, but I was ecstatic to be offered my own apartment. My own apartment! I was only thirteen; I didn’t think he would give me a place of my own until I was eighteen, if that. Sure, the pack apartment building was dorm-like, so I would be watched by not just Roy but all his buddies, but at least I could shut the door and sleep in peace.
“There’s word that Angus caught Bobby Silver’s boy. You might have heard he didn’t come home last night.”
“Waylon? Isn’t he always not coming home?” Waylon was what you would definitely call a bad boy. I stayed clear of him. He was my own age but he seemed like
he already knew way too much, fourteen going on twenty, and likely to be dead before he made it that far for real.
“All I need you to do is go in there and see if they have him, or if they say anything about selling him off to somebody. I told Bobby I’d find out where he is. Bobby’s busy working on this move to Portland. So you just listen and as soon as you hear anything about him, run back here. If they don’t have him, you should know pretty quickly. Something like that, they’d be talking about it.”
Bobby Silver was a cat shifter and dealer of all things contraband, from drugs to magical ingredients. Roy didn’t like him much, but Bobby was always awash in cash and he preferred to keep his own crew out of Manhattan. They were too well known at this point. He was also going to work with his brother on the west coast, and I’m sure Roy wanted to milk him for a few bucks before he left. Waylon probably isn’t kidnapped, I thought. He probably got drunk at a friend’s house or something stupid.
“Okay. Give me the address.”
I tried not to think too hard about stepping onto the turf of Angus Maclaine. Obviously, I had never met him. But he was vicious. His crew would be armed to the teeth. My blades wouldn’t stand a chance.
Going into Manhattan was easier for me than the others because I was declawed and small. The cops patrolling the bridge let my presence slide. They didn’t see me as a threat.
I dressed in nondescript and nonthreatening street clothes, a long-sleeved shirt with a ruffled collar and bootcut jeans that left space for blades at my calves, and twisted my hair into a high ponytail with a glittery heart on the tie. Time to play up the innocence and pretend I was a normal schoolgirl.
As I threw a bagel in the toaster for some sustenance before I left, I was starting to shake with fear. Unacceptable. I took a moment to shove all my fears deep down inside me and think about the apartment I would soon have. My own bed. My own window. My own closet. My own music. Or even total quiet so I could actually read a book for once. It would be a real treat to go to the library and get a book knowing I wouldn’t have to read it with a seven-year-old running around getting in my business. Roy wouldn’t send me on a truly dangerous mission. He didn’t want to kill me.
I smeared half a pack of cream cheese on my bagel. Aunt Lacey would be pissed that I used it all up, but I needed this. She was out shopping or something. Roy kept his own family in domestic bliss while he put my life on the line, but I didn’t have time to feel bitter over that right now.
Roy wanted me to get this done today, since time was of the essence, and I was glad. I didn’t have any time to worry over it. Just get it done and get home.
My two longer knives were hidden inside my boots with smaller ones in my sleeves.
The door of the apartment opened and Ian walked in, unexpectedly.
My heart stopped. Oh, shit. Why did I have to have such a reaction? I’d known him since I was a little kid but this past summer, when he was home from boarding school, I suddenly sort of…noticed him.
“Hey, Frankie.” He put down a suitcase and a guitar case.
“I didn’t know you were coming home.”
He shrugged off the jacket of his school uniform. “It’s spring break. I was going to go home with Dave to their beach house but then, the more he was talking about his family the more I thought, if I want that sort of drama I might as well stick with the drama I know. I don’t even really like the beach.”
“Oh…well…cool.”
“Hey, I’m glad someone’s happy to see me,” he said wryly. He stopped and looked at me. His dress shirt was a little wrinkled, his tie already loosened, and then he shuffled a hand through his hair, unconsciously making sure he was the same level of disheveled all over. His dressier pants were paired with dirty Converse. He was sixteen, the perfect age to give me this weird sense that he was an actual man whose presence made me feel safer, without being an actual, actual man who might be creepy and threatening to me. I could smell the wolf in him but I hadn’t seen him change in years.
Above all, while Uncle Roy was kind of a jerk, hardened by life and just trying to survive, he had given his kids a much better life than he had. Ian got to sail off to a proper education and leave all this behind, and he was also a genuinely good person. It was a huge breath of fresh air to me just to stand near him. I knew he wouldn’t look twice at me. I’m sure he saw plenty of hotter girls his own age at school.
“Where are you off to?” he said, grabbing the bagels before I could put them away. “You look all dressed up.” Before I could answer, he said more softly, “Is Dad sending you into the danger zone again?”
“I mean, you know. It’s not that dangerous for me. I do it all the time. As often as I can get away with, probably.”
“Hm.” He side-eyed me. Lately, every time I saw him for a different school break, he seemed distinctly older and more aware of what was going on, even though I was sure no one told him. “What is today’s mission?”
“Not—not much. Just…you know…quick trip to Manhattan.” I tried not to get distracted by the tousled brown hair, the gorgeous eyes that were gold around the iris and copper at the edges, the easy grin that made me think it was possible to be happy, because I was happy around Ian. “Just patrol, pretty much. Um, your dad wants to see if there is still a big patrol presence on the Lower East Side.” I was just making stuff up to hide my fear.
“When ya planning on coming back?” He opened the fridge. “Did you eat the last of the cream cheese? You little punk.” But he said it affectionately, or at least I hoped it was affectionate. Maybe it was more accurate to say he wasn’t mad. “I was thinking of going to O’Malley’s tonight, if you want to come. I think you’re old enough to be out until ten on a Friday by now…” He glanced me over again. My boobs had only just started to really become noticeable. I shrunk back a little, my cheeks hot.
“Cool, yeah. That’d be great,” I said. “I just wish I could have a beer.”
“Ha, well, you and me both. This age sucks. Stay safe out there, though.”
“I will.”
“Oh.” He pulled out a wallet and handed me a five dollar bill. “Pick up some damn cream cheese on your way home.”
I set off for the bridge, feeling elation and terror at the same time. Had Ian asked me on a sort of date? Yeah, O’Malley’s was a family place and his friends would be there, so it wasn’t super romantic, but I don’t think he had invited any other girl there. He probably thought of me as a little sister still, but…maybe in a few years…
I hardly cared whether it was a date or not. I woke up not even expecting to see him until summer, and now I got to spend an evening with him.
On the other hand, I could die before I got there. This was the first time Roy sent me to the lair of a hunter.
Well, it’s good to have something to come back for.
Manhattan’s skyline glittered at me and from here it looked like a glamorous place from an old movie. In the early decades, a lot of the people in New York actually joined with the shifters to try and protect them. But the moneyed classes clamped down on them too, and since the 1980s, New York City had been divided. As a diverse city, a lot of shifters had settled here over the years, particularly in Brooklyn, mostly trying to mind their own business but breaking out into increasing scuffles and then outright war. Eventually, the humans gave up on retaining the borough. It was claimed as Independent Shifter Territory, or IST, now known as an semi-independent nation of its own called Istara.
New York had slid a long way since my great-great grandmother came here to escape the freak shows of London for the freedom of the United States, where everyone was once promised liberty. Her days of living in the Lower East Side with fellow immigrant shifters were long gone, but to me, the skyline still promised hope.
Throughout the country, Istara had formed from a line of Independent Shifter Territory. On the west coast, it ran from Portland to Seattle. Another chunk, mostly isolated and left to their own devices, bordered Canada and the Great Lak
es in the midwest and included a chunk of Minnesota and Wisconsin, plus Detroit. Canada was neutral to shifters so could be used for travel. In the east, the entire state of Delaware had been claimed for Istara, but it was cut off until you reached the greatest part of Istara that ran from Brooklyn up through parts of Connecticut, Massachusetts, and all of Vermont and Rhode Island, where humans resided peacefully alongside shifters.
Even in Istara, we were not really free. We were just tolerated by the humans, and Istara had built up enough of its own military to keep a toehold.
Once I crossed the bridge, I was fully on human turf. Right on the border where Manhattan faced Istara, the neighborhoods looked as rough as ours, but I had traveled up the island and seen the wonders of luxury department stores, art museums and subways that actually ran, instead of being abandoned for lack of finances.
I had also seen the humans’ pets. Shifters raised “in captivity”, as they said, like we were zoo animals and not their equals. As soon as I crossed into human territory, I felt like less of a person, like I was snuffing out the candle of my own soul. I had to become dull here. Dull was safe.
The border patrol officers let us come and go until nightfall. Then, the bridge was shut down for curfew and guarded. A line would cluster near the bridge for officers to check IDs. Most of the people who crossed the bridge worked regularly on one side or the other and were known. But anyone who looked like trouble would get questioned, patted down.
Today it was moving fast. The gray-haired older guy was on the job and he went pretty easy on people. He took a glance at me and waved me through.
Black Queen: Stray: Fated Mates Paranormal Shifter Romance (Shifters Among Us Book 1) Page 1
