The barrier around the island shimmered, reflecting the gray sky above. Errol was right to wonder. How the hell did they manage it, and more importantly, why were we so important?
Salem
I let my shadow linger at the edge of the deck just inside a doorway while Razik and Errol talked. Spying on my future coworkers was probably bad form, but they were strangers to me, and I knew better than to trust strangers without gathering intel first. But they’d piqued my curiosity by sensing my presence, and as much as I despised what linked us, I wasn’t about to renege on my promise to Cassandra out of spite.
A glimmer of purple light flickered in the corner of my eye, and I redirected my attention, remaining silent in the darkened doorway. The gray, foggy light was perfect camouflage for my shadow. On the Shadow plane, the world looked different—starker in contrast, the shadows darker and the light a little brighter, but all in monochrome without an ounce of color. Which was why the flash of purple stood out.
The large, dog-shaped ghost creature I saw was an unexpected passenger aboard this ferry. It didn’t see me, but seemed homed in on Razik and Errol. It trotted up to them, sniffed the air around each of them, then sat back on its haunches and warbled a strange melody.
The atmosphere within my shadow vibrated, pulsing quickly in time with the heart that still beat within my body a floor above inside the ferry’s passenger area. I wasn’t entirely sure what it was, but if I was looking at a fate hound right now, that meant my two future teammates had been targeted. Should I be envious or relieved? It meant either Fate or Deva Rainsong were meddling in their lives. I’d just as soon stay clear of either of their webs.
With one long inhalation, I summoned my shadow back to my body, but in the split second before I opened my eyes, another flash of purple appeared. This time, a different hound was clearly seated on its haunches right in front of me, its nose hovering a few inches away from the center of my sternum.
“Fuck off!”
I yelled the words as my consciousness snapped back into place and my eyes flew open. The hound was gone, but a faint melody still floated through the air around me, the echo of my expletive a dissonant reverberation beneath it.
This could not mean what I thought it meant, could it? Two hounds on the ferry, targeting the three of us. My skin went chilly, a heavy weight sinking into my belly, but at the same time, heat burned in a deeper part of me.
There were enough rumors among the higher races about what fate hounds meant, what they were capable of. They were instruments of Fate itself, targeting the higher races to direct them to the mate or mates whose strings Fate pulled. In more recent years, a handful had come under the control of Fate’s protégé, Deva Rainsong, but I had no way of knowing which of them these two hounds belonged to.
I just hoped to hell it didn’t mean that somehow those two Shadows down on the lower deck and I were meant to be together for more than a business arrangement. Not that I wasn’t keen on having a mate, but two other Shadows? And men at that. I was a dragon, so naturally, the idea wasn’t out of the realm of possibility. But them?
I knew Razik by reputation, of course. There weren’t so many Shadows in the world that I’d have been confused about his identity. He looked more world-weary than the last time I’d seen him years earlier. His hair had grown out to a messy swath of waves that fell down over his forehead and around his shoulders, and he didn’t take care to prevent facial hair from growing. I supposed he was entitled to being an unkempt war hero. During the war, his team had infiltrated an enemy camp and succeeded in bringing crucial intel back to our general. He grew in renown after the war simply by virtue of surviving when the rest of his team had died.
It wasn’t as if they were the only casualties though. Just some of the few who had earned the gratitude of the immortals.
But I had no issue with Razik. I’d fuck him and would enjoy it, no doubt. It was Errol who rubbed me the wrong way with his deference to and adoration of his abusers. He’d clearly never been tortured by the immortals before, or he’d have been far less defensive of them.
But we were meant to be a team, and regardless of what I had seen, I intended to behave as if that were still the case. Which meant I had to find a way to endure living in close quarters with them both, which included being willing to sate each other’s needs. We were moving to an island, and sources of fresh energy wouldn’t exactly be easy to find. I just wasn’t sure how well the pair of them would accept a dragon like me.
Determined to attack the issue head-on and face them sooner rather than later, I stood. I grabbed my duffel and made my way to the steps down to the lower deck, bracing myself for the introduction but having no clue how to behave in the wake of spying a pair of fate hounds lurking around.
Just as I reached the bow where they’d been standing, the gate clanged open, and they disappeared down the gangplank onto the dock, their rucksacks slung over their backs.
“Fuck,” I muttered. I hadn’t realized how close we were, and I had to jog to catch up. I slowed when I spied a woman with close-cropped dark hair, dressed in snug black jeans and a black tank top, comfortable despite the chill. She stood beside a burly man with curly blond hair and beard. The couple greeted Razik and Errol, then the woman shifted her attention to me, her eyes narrowing.
“That must make you Salem. I’m Cassandra St. George. This is my mate, Andrew Vincent.”
I eyed her outstretched hand for a beat before taking it. Her grip was strong, the greeting brief. Then I shook the man’s. His grip was firmer than strictly necessary, and the look in his eyes held a warning as if he sensed my suspicion of his mate. He crossed his arms when he released my hand, giving Cassandra a slight nod without speaking.
Yet another reason to be wary of this job was the woman who had hired me for it. Even though all the former Ultiori Elites I knew had been conscripted and forced to serve under duress when the enemy was active, I still didn’t know her. She was an enigma. Unlike Marcus, Naaz, and Sterlyn, the three Elites who had been prominent figures among the dragon community for four years now, Cassandra had remained in hiding. It stood to reason that the woman whose own mother had been the chosen vessel of the evil enemy might be a little hesitant to appear in public after what went down. That didn’t make it easier to trust her though.
I muttered a greeting, ignoring the pointed stares of both the other men, my neck prickling with a combination of self-consciousness and curiosity. So much for easing my way into things. Now they probably thought I was an obstinate loner who’d be impossible to work with.
I couldn’t exactly destroy that illusion—mostly because it was true, even though I was more curious than anything now. I hadn’t grown up with other dragons, and I was still trying to understand how to behave around my own kind.
“I’m Errol,” Errol said, giving me a bright smile that had no place on the face of a Shadow who’d lived under the boot heel of the Blue Beast. I may not have grown up with other dragons, but my parents had told me enough stories to know who was who. I scowled at his outstretched hand.
“I know. And he’s Razik. I’m not an idiot. I knew who you were before I took the job.”
His smile faded, and he dropped his hand. Razik snorted. “I remember you. You’re one of the Unbound that joined up to fight in the war at the last minute. I was always surprised you joined Nikhil’s army under the circumstances. You didn’t train with the other Shadows.”
“That doesn’t mean I didn’t train at all. I spent ten years in the human military while you lot were hibernating. But human wars are child’s play compared to ours. I wanted a challenge. Besides, I couldn’t let the rest of my race live in fear if there was anything I could do about it. Continuing to hide would have been cowardly.”
With that, I glared at Cassandra, but she didn’t flinch. Her head turned, but her gaze remained on me for a second before sliding back to the others. “Welcome to the St. George School,” she said, stretching her arms and turning to gesture up the
small, wooden dock.
I was a little miffed that she hadn’t taken the bait; getting a rise out of her would have been satisfying. I’d been part of the battle, unlike her. At the time, I’d expected more recognition than I got. In the end, I’d been punished, not rewarded, simply for having parents who broke dragon law by refusing to follow the renunciation. They went underground rather than commit ritual suicide at the appropriate time. They’d remained alive, living among the humans, and were still shunned by their own kind despite serving out their sentences. By contrast, former Ultiori like Cassandra wound up in positions of prominence among the Higher Races government. Many of the former Elites were even mated to the immortals themselves.
I fell into step behind the others, stewing over being ignored as she led us up the dock.
At the end, a stone path curved up a hill into the trees, broken up by several short flights of stone steps. We were surrounded by enormous fir trees with pale moss hanging from their branches. The mist had barely cleared, but through the gray, I caught glimpses of a large house with a wide, screened-in porch wrapping around it. As we drew closer, the sprawling building came fully into view, three stories of pale stone that stretched across the hillside, with windows overlooking the Sound.
“This is the Cedars building,” Andrew said. “Otherwise known as the big house. Your quarters are in here, as are most of the staff and the higher profile students. You can leave your things in the foyer while we take the tour of the grounds.”
He pushed the wide double doors open and gestured to the flagstone floor just inside. I waited for Razik and Errol to deposit their rucksacks before leaning mine against the wall and slipping back out.
“We saw the barrier on the way in,” Razik said. “That’s pretty impressive security for a place like this.”
Cassandra nodded, taking a turn at the bottom of the steps and cutting around the side of the big house, along a path bordered by beds of lush greenery. “It was necessary considering the clientele. We only host about two dozen students per three-week session, but they are almost all Bloodline. You may not be aware of this, but there are certain gods who see the Bloodline either as a commodity or as a potential threat, so we needed to take steps to ensure their protection.”
“A threat?” I asked, incredulous. “They’re still human, right? I mean aside from traces of higher races blood.”
She eyed me over her shoulder. “They’re about as human as I am,” she said, raising a hand. An ultraviolet flame bloomed from her palm, then disappeared.
“But you’re an Elite.”
“I was,” she said. “The Void’s blood is what powers me. There were only two other Elites created with his blood. And while most of the Bloodline don’t have immortal blood, what they do have is divine blood that has awakened the higher races nature within them, so some have the potential to exhibit power like mine. Or more to the point, like the higher races they’re connected to.”
“So why is it so important to protect them here? It’s not like they have any such protection before they arrive,” I asked.
Cassandra led us down another path to the edge of the water, then paused beside Andrew. “Because Deva Rainsong’s fate hounds are the ones who find the students, and they only bring us the ones with enough power to require honing. We aren’t just an art school, but a place to help initiate the Bloodline who have the potential to exhibit power. Channeling their power into creative pursuits, as it turns out, is the perfect—and safest—way to train them. To help them understand who they are.”
Errol crossed his arms. “I thought the fate hounds were meant to match the Bloodline up with mates.”
“They have several uses.” She shot a twinkling gaze back at us, suggesting that he wasn’t too far off the mark.
She swiped her foot across the sand then, revealing a glimmering glyph in a round stone embedded on the shore. “These are placed around the island’s perimeter. There are a dozen of them, and their power signatures are all visible from the air with dragon sight. The three of you will work in shifts, which you will need to arrange among yourselves. As Shadows, you’re uniquely capable of viewing the underlying essence of the magic that powers the barrier and keeping it flowing. Most of the time, all you need to do is monitor things, but the link to the power source needs to be renewed once a week, sometimes more often if we’ve had attempts at breaching it. That’s why we didn’t just need three Shadows, but three Shadows descended from the Void. Your blood itself is required to refresh that link.”
“So that’s the big secret, is it?” Razik asked, shaking his head. “I still don’t get it. Why is it Void blood that powers this thing? Aren’t three of the island’s owners ursa? Why not use Source magic like they do in the Sanctuary? What is the actual source that powers this barrier anyway?”
“Follow me, and I will show you.” Cassandra turned away, walking up the path toward the rear of the house. “The blood link is my doing, indirectly. My daughter, April, is a chimera, like Deva Rainsong. Not as strong as Deva. She’s no goddess, but she’s still quite powerful in her own right. Andrew is Bloodline with concentrated ursa blood. With ursa blood, April is powerful enough to tap into fertility magic. Into the Source itself. But given her link to me, that means her dragon side originated from the Void. Both her essences went into creating the power source for the barrier.”
When we rounded the corner of the house, my breath caught. Beside me, Razik let out a low whistle.
An enormous sculpture of a tree took up much of the clearing just beyond the rear patio of the house. All three of us stopped short and gaped up at it.
It wasn’t real. At least it wasn’t wood and leaves. It was made of polished metal all the way from its roots to the tips of its branches, and the red and golden-hued leaves were all glass. Rather than simply whispering in the breeze, a tinkling melody filled the air whenever the wind blew. And dangling from several of the branches around the tree like strange, magical apples, were dozens of globes filled with miniature autumnal landscapes that all glowed like so many tiny fairy worlds captured within glass.
I’d had little exposure to the magic of the higher races for most of my life. My parents had raised me among humans, after all. Only in the past three years had I seen some of what we were capable of, but this was beyond anything I’d witnessed so far.
As I rounded the tree in amazement, one of the globes stood out starkly from the rest. I stopped and stared. This globe was a pale ashy gray inside, as if a blight had taken hold of one piece of this spectacular, magical thing. Yet it glowed just as brightly, like a large snow-globe hanging from one of the branches. A spark of light flashed in the center, and my breath hitched.
I coughed to cover up the noise, moving a few paces around the tree and redirecting my gaze to Cassandra. “This is the source?” I asked, staring up at the tree, avoiding making eye contact with the strange globe again. Something about it gave me an odd feeling. A humming vibration in my center that I wasn’t sure whether I liked or not.
“Yes. It’s the pure physical manifestation of April and her mates’ power combined. It’s their baby, to put it simply. It’s about three times larger than when it was first crafted and planted here, and three times as powerful. The barrier’s glyphs are linked to the tree, so when you refresh the magic, all you need to do is draw blood, like so.” She took out a blade and swiped it cleanly across the pad of one thumb. “Then press to the trunk of the tree. Then repeat the process with each of the glyphs.” She stepped in close to the trunk and held her thumb up, then nodded at us, waiting for each of us to do the same.
We all took out our blades, repeating the process as she had done, then surrounded the trunk of the tree. As a unit, the four of us pressed our bleeding thumbs to the metal. A shock of awareness flashed through me, jolting my shadow from my body for a second.
In that moment, I saw Razik and Errol’s shadows push free as if shoved backward out of their bodies, and we stared at each other across the Shadow plane
.
And in between the two of them, staring at me from beneath that strange, pale globe was an ethereal image of a beautiful black-haired woman who hadn’t been there before.
“It’s about fucking time,” she said.
Errol
The abrupt yank on my shadow stunned me for a moment. When I got my bearings, the stark, monotone world came into focus. The tree in front of me glowed with pale, pulsing light, threads of magic flowing through it as if it were, in fact, a living thing rooted to the earth. Salem’s shadow form was visible across from me, shaved head gleaming and eyes blazing with shock at a spot between Razik and me.
Then I felt the new presence and turned my head. A ghostly figure of a woman stood between Razik and me, her face flickering between flawless pale skin and stark, shadowed bone. I couldn’t help but grimace reflexively at the macabre sight, but then her face solidified into something more human and ethereally beautiful. She glanced around at each of us.
“It’s about fucking time.” Her ultraviolet eyes flashed with annoyance, and a shock of utter certainty spiked into my gut. She was the reason I was here.
But a split second later, my physical body reclaimed my errant shadow with a snap, and the world came back into focus, the colors returning and the sounds clear and unmuted. I inhaled sharply, the sound echoed by the other two men.
The woman was gone.
“Everything okay?” Cassandra asked, giving us concerned looks. “You all looked like you touched a live wire. That’s never happened before.”
Razik cleared his throat, still staring at the spot between us where the ghost woman had stood just a moment ago. “Um, there’s some serious power in this thing. But I think we’ve got it covered. Is there anything else we need to know?” He gave Cassandra a pointed look.
Wicked Souls: A Limited Edition Reverse Harem Romance Collection Page 21
