“So what are you?” Caleb said cautiously, his wolf still in that protective stance, its massive gray body shielding its mate and pups. “Ghosts? Demons?”
“Boo!” said one of the bears with a chuckle.
The other bear snorted with laughter, and then it shook its furry head. “We’re soldiers, Caleb. Just like you. But soldiers who fought the wrong enemy. Don’t make the mistake we did. Don’t let our son and daughter make that mistake.”
Caleb frowned, his midnight-blue eyes narrowing as Magda watched. Then the wolf’s mouth dropped open, its eyes widening. “Holy shit,” he said, taking another step towards the bears and sniffing their scent. “I’d recognize that smell anywhere. You’re . . . you’re Bart’s parents! Mama and Papa to ol’ Butterball!”
Magda frowned as her fox sniffed their scent as well, its body tensing up as it recognized them too . . . recognized them not as Bart and Ash’s parents, but as the military scientists who’d tried to kill her animal years ago!
“Murderers,” Magda whispered, feeling the rage flow through her fox. She could sense it trying to open up a pathway to the Darkness, like it wanted that dark magic back, like it wanted to use the anger and hatred to do something horrible to these two bears. For a moment Magda felt it working, like the fox was harnessing the repressed anger of that girl who’d had her animal stolen from her just when she’d discovered it.
But the two bears just narrowed their brown eyes and stared at her, like they knew exactly what her fox was doing. They knew, and they were . . . they were stopping it! She could feel some power in these two bears blocking her fox from reaching to the Darkness, and Magda blinked as she finally felt the little critter in her give up and yield.
“What are you?” she whispered, not sure if she was relieved or terrified.
“We are exactly what you said,” replied one of the bears, its face drooping as it stared mournfully at its mate and then back at Magda.
“Murderers,” whispered the other bear. “We spent our lives trying to cure Shifters of what we thought was a disease. We wasted our intelligence, our gift, our potential. It was only when we ‘cured’ ourselves that we came face to face with the truth.”
“And what’s the truth?” growled Caleb, still wolf, still wary, still protecting his mate and pups even though Magda could tell he was as curious as she was.
“I think he’s interrogating us,” said one bear to the other.
“Benson taught him well,” grunted the other. “Let’s tell him everything before he waterboards us.”
The two bears chuckled again, but Magda could sense a deep melancholy in them, a deep sense of regret, guilt, shame. Those were human emotions, the darker side of human emotions, emotions that flow into a human when they forsake the higher emotions of love, compassion, and duty.
“Showing is better than telling,” said the first bear, turning and then gesturing with its paw. “Come on, kids. Follow us. All will be revealed in the next book.”
“Ohmygod, if this is a cliffhanger, I’m going to—”
“Relax,” said Mama Bear with a toothy grin. “When I was pregnant with my kids, I read romance novels all day and night. I know there’s nothing that a romance reader hates more than a cliffhanger. Not until they get their happy ending first.”
“Are you two married?” said Papa Bear with a raised eyebrow as he glanced at the seven pups crawling around on the grass, tumbling over each other as they giggled and goo-goo’d.
“Just by natural law,” said Caleb with a lopsided grin. He glanced almost apologetically at Magda. “We’ll make it official when we return to the world.”
“About time,” said Magda with an amused smile. In an instant she Changed back to human form, looked down at her naked body, and then stuck out her ring finger. “I’ve been feeling very undressed without a ring.”
Everyone laughed, and then Caleb Changed back to the man, joining with his woman as they gathered their seven pups—five in his arms, two in hers—and followed the darkly comical bears into the depths of the forest.
“This better be good,” he called after the bears. “Because now even I’m curious. I almost understand why romance readers get so pissed off about cliffhangers.”
22
Caleb held his pups tightly in his strong arms as he peered over the cliff. He squinted as he looked down, but all he could see were swirling clouds, dark with rain—or something else.
“What is this place?” he said, frowning as he sniffed the air. But he couldn’t pick up any scent. It was strange. Almost impossible. His wolf could smell anything.
“A doorway to the Darkness,” said Mama Bear. “A gateway to the place where a Shifter’s disembodied animal goes.”
“A gateway,” repeated Papa Bear as he mournfully looked down. “And we are the gatekeepers. We denied our true fate, and our fate changed. This is now our fate. To stand at the doorway to a place that we filled by killing so many Shifters’ animals.”
“I don’t understand,” Caleb said, finally stepping back from the cliff and turning to Bart’s parents. “So you stand here so no one can get in?”
Mama Bear shook her head, smiling sadly as she reached her paw out for her mate’s big paw. “No,” she whispered. “We stand here so no one can get out. A Shifter’s animal without its human is out of balance, lopsided, all Darkness and no Light. We cannot let them out of this place. That is now our responsibility. That is now our forever. This is how we make up for what we’ve done. It is our responsibility now.”
Caleb glanced back at Magda, who was standing a safe distance from the cliff’s edge, her two pups clinging tightly to their mother. He could see the determination in her eyes, sense the feeling of responsibility in the way her jaw was set tight. He looked down at the five babies clinging to his arms and body like little monkeys, and he felt his own deeper purpose bubble upwards like a spring coming through rock. His wolf was inside, but it had backed down as if acknowledging that its time had past, that the human was on the upswing again, that the neverending back-and-forth was something that would always be a part of its destiny, that there would be times when the wolf reigned, other times when the man ruled.
Suddenly he could feel the clarity of the soldier rip through him, and then he was thinking hard, the connections forming so fast it almost took his breath away. He thought back to the snippets of information John Benson had fed to them before sending them here: Why had a beast like Hitler emerged from this part of the world? Why had the military set up a Paranormal Research Lab in this place? Why was—
“My school,” Magda said, her face twisted into a frown as if she was remembering things from her past too. “It wasn’t just a boarding school, was it? It was . . . it was part of that secret research lab that Benson talked about!”
Mama Bear quickly glanced at Papa Bear and then nodded slowly. “Yes,” she said quietly. “We identified children who showed indications of special abilities, and we brought them here.”
“Oh, gimme a break,” said Caleb, snorting as he rolled his eyes. “A school for witches? Really?”
“No,” said Papa Bear. “Maggie was the only witch. And even her we didn’t know about back then. Not until much later.”
Magda frowned as she bit her lip. “Special abilities? You mean like psychic powers? Things like that?” She shook her head. “I don’t remember any of that. There was no mind-reading going on. I didn’t see anyone using telekinetic powers to start a food-fight in the lunchroom.”
Mama Bear nodded and sighed. “You’re right. The school was a failed experiment. We thought by bringing these supposedly gifted kids together we could develop their abilities to the point where we could . . .”
“Could what?” said Magda. “Counteract the Darkness? Close up the gateway? Create a doorway to the Light that neutralizes the Darkness?”
Papa Bear shrugged. “I . . . I don’t
know. Something like that. We weren’t sure, Magda. None of us were sure. All we know is that it was all a failure. Even the abilities we’d witnessed in the children seemed to go away when we brought them to this place. That wasn’t the answer. That wasn’t the way to bring balance back to the world. We were searching outside ourselves for an answer, ignoring the truth that the answer lay within us, in who we were, who we were born to be.”
“Animal and human in one,” said Mama Bear. “We recognized that the Darkness was animal energy, but we mistakenly believed it was evil. We didn’t understand that it was just an opposing force to Light—an opposing force that is a necessary part of the universe. By rejecting our animals and killing so many other Shifters’ animals, we only tilted the balance further to the Darkness.”
“Now you need to tilt it back,” whispered Papa Bear, staring right at Magda. “You’re the only one. Witch and Shifter in one. You and your children will slowly help the world regain its balance.”
“I . . . I don’t know if my natural magic is strong enough,” Magda stammered.
Mama Bear sighed and shook her head. “It isn’t. Your natural magic will have to coexist with the dark magic that your fox got access to when it ventured to this place all those years ago. You’ll have to reclaim that dark magic, control it so it doesn’t take over, balance it with the natural magic that comes from the Light.”
Magda’s face turned ashen as she blinked. “No,” she whispered. “You don’t understand. The dark magic that flowed through me when I stood by Murad’s side was . . . was . . . all-encompassing. Absolute. How can I let that back into me? I have children to think about! I have—”
“You can’t do it alone,” said Papa Bear. “You can’t do it without the support system of the Shifters around you, the bonds of family, the strength of the community. You need your mate, you need his crew, you need the collective.”
“And you need it quick,” said Mama Bear, turning to the dark clouds swirling in the bottomless valley beneath the cliff. She glanced at Papa Bear, and he turned to face the cliff with her. “Because Murad’s Black Dragon is slowly understanding what it needs to do. Slowly understanding why it’s building an army of Shifters.”
Caleb felt a chill go through him as he heard a cacophony of noises coming through the clouds beneath them. He looked down, his eyes going wide when he saw flashes of different animals, beasts of every size and shape, mouths open wide, eyes mournful and dead, claws and teeth bared as they tried to leap through the clouds. Already he’d understood that he needed to go back to the world, that defeating the Darkness meant accepting the human in him again, the man in him again, the soldier in him again. And now that soldier had to turn towards his greater destiny, stand side by side with his mate just like his wolf and his man stood side by side within him. He’d faced his own Darkness during that year in the woods, when he was close to deciding to hide from his human needs. He’d faced it and won. Now he needed to save the other Shifters of the world who had to face their own Darkness, fight their own internal battles.
“Only a Shifter can kill another Shifter,” Caleb muttered as he connected the dots in his head. “And when a Shifter dies, its animal gets sent to this place, to this dark valley. So every time Murad’s Shifter army kills another Shifter, another twisted animal gets sucked into the Darkness. Soon the gates will be broken down, unleashing Shifter-animals without their humans, without balance. Animal energy swarming across the world. Unstoppable Darkness. It’s a timebomb ticking away. A countdown where the number counts down every time the Black Dragon’s army sends another Shifter’s animal here!”
“The Apocalypse,” Magda whispered. “Oh, my God, Caleb! We need to—”
“Go!” rasped Papa Bear, taking his mate’s paw as the two of them stepped to the edge of the cliff and prepared to step off into the clouds, to beat back the animals below. “Join with the others before it’s too late. Before Adam kills his father, and then you are forced to use your magic on Adam as he turns to the Darkness! That will send all of you spiraling towards Darkness! A chain reaction which can’t be stopped. So go. Please. Go now! Now!”
23
ADAM’S LAIR
THE CASPIAN SEA
“Now what?” said Caleb, his face grim as he stared at Benson across Adam’s long dining table.
Magda glanced at the solemn faces gathered around the dark teakwood table. The kids were all occupied in the next room, and through the open door she could see her seven infants, so her fox was calm. But the woman in her was peaked with energy, and she could see that every other person in the room was feeling the same. All their animals were calm, relaxed, happy to be around their crewmates, content that their children were safe. The humans, however, were focused, their sense of meaning and purpose sharpened to a fine point. Their animals had found their fated mates, and that was all they cared about. But a human’s sense of destiny and fate ran deeper, and the separation between the simple needs of the animal and the complex needs of the human was never more clear to Magda.
She smiled at the other women in the room—Bis and Ash. She sighed as she surveyed the serious expressions on Bart and Adam’s faces. Then she took a breath as she listened to Benson speak.
“There’s no sign of the Black Dragon,” he said slowly, his gray eyes steady and unblinking. “He’s gone off the radar. Three months of raiding, rampaging, and burning. Then poof, he was gone. No sign of his Shifter army either. It’s like they’ve been disbanded. Turned into sleeper agents. All gone underground, waiting for the Black Dragon to re-emerge and call them to arms.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Bart the Bear said, rubbing his square jaw and frowning. “A dragon that’s lost to the Darkness doesn’t just stop its rampage out of the blue.”
“Unless it is beginning to understand what it can do with that Darkness,” said Magda. She looked at Bart and then at Ash before scanning the roomful of Shifters and one CIA man. “That’s what your parents told us, Bart. The Black Dragon is starting to understand that no matter how powerful it is, it can’t keep rampaging until it destroys the world. Even it needs reinforcements to do that. So it’s realizing that instead of just running wild and killing everything, it needs to kill only Shifters. After the initial explosion of pent-up energy, it’s calmed down a bit. Become more calculating.”
“And more dangerous,” said Benson softly.
“So you’re saying it’s on the hunt for Shifters to kill now? Just Shifters?” said Bart, now scratching his head. “But there aren’t that many of us, right, John? It took you years just to scrape up the three of us!”
Benson nodded, his face in a deep frown. “It’s not easy to find a Shifter. Most of your kind are living in denial, a state of dormancy. It’s only when they wake up to their true selves that they show up on the map.”
“Wait, you have a map that lights up with a dot every time a Shifter wakes up?” said Bart, his eyes opening wide like a child watching a cartoon.
Benson groaned and rubbed his forehead. “Not now, Bart. Real questions only, please.”
“Shifters can sense when there’s another Shifter in the area,” said Adam quietly, half-smiling at the big Butterball Bart. “That’s why Murad disbanded his army, spread out his troops, sent them back into human society like drones searching for something. They’ll be able to find other Shifters. Kill them. Send their animals to the Darkness, building up its power until Bart and Ash’s parents can’t hold them back anymore.”
“Which takes me back to my original question,” said Caleb impatiently. “Now what? What do we do?”
“We do what my parents said,” Bart snapped, his own impatience seeming to rise. “We find Murad and send in your witch. Poof. Put the genie back in the bottle! End of story.”
“I’m not sending the mother of my children to face a Black Dragon on the warpath!” growled Caleb, his hairs standing on end. He glanced at Adam, his j
aw tight. “We’re soldiers, aren’t we? We’ll find him and we’ll . . .”
He didn’t finish the sentence, and Magda understood that Caleb couldn’t ask Adam to kill his own father even though the thought must certainly have crossed Adam’s mind that he might have to do it. At the same time, Magda wasn’t confident enough that she knew how her dark magic and natural magic would combine to once again control Murad’s dragon now that it had been unleashed. Caleb was right—she was a mother. Yes, the human in her was responding to the call of what she believed was her higher purpose. But she couldn’t ignore the needs of her fox to protect its pups. She needed her fox. She needed all of them.
“We can’t find Murad if he’s all Darkness, if he’s not really a Shifter anymore,” said Magda. “But we can find the others in his Shifter army. Pick them off one by one.”
Caleb frowned as he turned to her. “What? Find the Shifters I trained and then . . . kill them? What are you saying, babe?”
“I didn’t say kill them,” Magda replied with a smile. She looked at Benson. “I meant convert them. Bring them over to our side. Bring their animals and humans in balance.”
“How?” said Caleb. “I know those beasts, Magda. Darius the Lion. Everett the Tiger. Hell, those are wild animals! Close to feral! Who knows what state they’re in by now! You want them to join our crew? How?”
“The same way this crew got back together,” said Magda firmly. “The same way I was brought into this crew. The same way Bis and Ash were brought in. Fate.”
“Fated mates,” said Bis, nodding her head slowly as a smile formed on her dark red lips. “Help them connect with their fated mates, and they’ll find their balance.”
Ash nodded earnestly, leaning forward on the table, her heavy breasts pushing up against the edge. “That’s how we pick them off,” she said, her eyes wide with delight. “As each Shifter finds his mate, it will understand what it means to find balance, how it can be both animal and human at once, darkness and light at once.”
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