I kept one eye on the shadow that was moving slowly and deliberately in front of me, and the other peeled for a small red fox that was here…somewhere.
The shadow sped up as we neared the base of the mountain, then it stopped and hovered over something. No…someone.
Claire!
She lay in a crumpled heap. Her human body lying still and silent amongst the rocks at the bottom of the ridge.
I sent a warning puff of fire toward the shadow, letting it know in no uncertain terms it was not to harm her in any way.
As if it understood, it moved away, disappearing beneath the canopy of trees. I got my first good look at the brave girl who had kept her promise and came for me.
There were scratches and cuts that had scabbed over, and lots of bruises, but her arms, legs, and head all seemed to be pointing in the correct directions. Whatever had happened had banged her up. Thank goodness she didn’t fall down the steep slope of the mountain. She wouldn’t have fared nearly as well.
I slowly and carefully picked her up, gathering her to me as close as I dared, then went back to the shield.
“Logan…” Claire mumbled as I placed a bloody claw up to split the magic away that was keeping us here. “Logan, I promise I’ll save you.”
So many times, I thought. And in so many ways, you already have.
“I’m so happy you’re okay.” Hadley tackled me in a hug the instant the door opened.
I winced as she came into contact with several bruises.
“I’ve been worried sick about you.” She looked over at Logan and grinned. “You did good.”
“How’s the kid?” he asked. When he saw my confused look, he quickly filled me in on the boy who had come back to tell him about me.
“How did he know I was in the forest?” Only one person had known I’d made it in. Hope welled in my chest. The last time I’d seen my friend, she’d been hurt, lying at the bottom of the lake.
“When he made it to Imperium, he asked for you. As luck would have it, he ran into a girl who had a bandage on her head. She told him to go back and tell Logan where you were,” Hadley explained. “I rode with him to the hospital, and he explained. Rothbert will be fine, by the way. The doctors are extremely optimistic.”
“Rothbert?”
“I believe you know him as Toad. His real name is Rothbert Herman.”
Logan shook his head. “No wonder he goes by ‘Toad.’ Poor kid. I’m going to have to go to the hospital and thank him for what he’s done for us.”
“He’s in surgery now, so I wouldn’t go until tomorrow.” Hadley paused. “I sort of charmed a few people in the hospital, so I’m down as his sister now. I’ll pass along any information they give me.” She scrubbed her face with her palm. “The coven would have a fit if they knew I was using magic this way.”
“I owe you one, Hadley.”
“Bet your ass you do,” she told him, then she looked at me and smiled. “But you got her out of there, so we’re calling it even. Speaking of which, what are you two going to do now? You’re not going to be able to just walk around in the open, Logan. There are too many people who know who you are and where you are supposed to be. Going back to Imperium is clearly out of the question. They’ll just toss you back into the forest, and then call the coven to make more spells to keep you there. And you can’t just walk around the city. The Dark Watch will be looking for you.”
“You’ve got a point. And as if all of those weren’t enough, the witches know about me, too,” Logan admitted.
“I’m not following you,” I said.
“The Watch has witches on their payroll who have come up with a spell that can take the animal part of a soul from a shifter and make them human,” he explained. “Imperium has its witches, and apparently the Watch has theirs.”
“That’s impossible.” Hadley looked shocked, but she still shook her head stubbornly. “There is only one coven in this area, and we wouldn’t do that.”
Logan shrugged. “It’s possible, and it has happened. Either some of your coven has gone rogue and are double agents, or else there’s some new magic out there you don’t know about.”
Hadley frowned, but then grabbed her phone. She pushed a few buttons, and then waited. Her phone buzzed almost immediately, a picture of a middle-aged woman with streaked black and gray hair filling the screen. Even in the scant second I saw it, her eyes were striking. She had one light blue eye, and one that was either a brown or a dark green.
“Bronwyn is going to check it out. Is that all you know?” Hadley asked Logan.
“Their witches can also tell when someone has gone in or out of the forest. From what I can tell, they’re helping with ‘the cure’—the spell that takes your shifter soul—and they’re monitoring the magic in the shields surrounding the Forest of Lost Souls.”
She nodded, pursed her lips, and sent another text to the leader of the coven.
“Hads, what if Bronwyn is the one working for the Watch?” I asked. I could tell from the look on Logan’s face that he was thinking the same thing. It was hard to know who to trust now.
“Out of everyone in the coven, Aunt Sally and Bronwyn are the two I trust. I would have just told Sally, but Bronwyn’s the strongest…and she has a good heart. There’s no way she’d help someone whose main goal is to kill others,” she said firmly.
Neither of us wanted to argue with her, so we stood there and looked at each other.
“I don’t mean to sound like a jerk, but I’m serious. She is, and has always been, one of the good ones,” Hadley insisted. When she saw we weren’t going to fight her, she changed the subject. “So back to our other problem. What are you guys going to do next? Claire, they are bound to have noticed your absence by now, and Logan, you need to stay hidden. I would suggest you, Claire, hightail it back to the university ASAP. Logan is welcome to stay with me.”
“I’m not leaving Claire,” Logan broke in. “The Dark Watch has my medallion. Eventually, they’ll find a way into Imperium. When they do, they’ll have a way straight into Earth House—to Claire. I need to be there to stop them when they come.”
Hadley started chewing on her bottom lip, a habit I’d seen her do several times when working out a problem with a spell.
As I thought about Imperium, a perfect solution formed in my head. “I know what to do!” I took Logan’s hand and started to pull him to the door. “Come on, let’s go. I have an idea. And if I’m right, it’s going to work out great!”
“I don’t need another roommate, thank you,” Quinn said politely. “I have fifty-two of them, which is more than enough.”
“But this one can talk back to you,” I said, gesturing to Logan, who looked even less enthused than the vampire who was watching us as if we’d just announced we were bringing him Lacy to snack on.
“My friends talk well enough. There are plenty of conversations without needing to add more.” Quinn frowned. “Besides, I know that smell. Dragons don’t make the best conversationalists, anyway. They’re stuck up, and they think they know everything.”
This was going to be hard on both fronts. I glanced from Logan back to Quinn. Logan was stubbornly refusing to stay at Hadley’s or to head to his parents’ place south of Roanoke, which were basically his only options at this point. With what he’d discovered at the Watch’s headquarters, he wasn’t letting me out of his sight. Imperium needed protection…and I needed him.
The idea of hiding him in a place where he could move around and not be seen seemed perfect to begin with.
Now I wasn’t so sure.
“Hadley won’t mind at all if you stay with her. I know she won’t,” I tried again. “Besides, Blake is still around. He’ll keep an eye out for me.” At least, I think he will, I added silently. The truth was I hadn’t seen my brother for a few days. The last time I had seen him, he’d acted strange, but I wasn’t going to admit that.
“Blake is working with the Dark Watch.” Logan crossed his arms, muscles working wildly in his jaw
.
“Oh no, he’s changed. Once he figured out I was a shifter, he knew he was on the wrong side,” I said, trying to explain. “He’s been trying to find out what they know about the forest. He’s been helping me by trying to figure out how to rescue you.”
“He’s lying to you.”
“No, he isn’t.”
“Hmm.” I glanced at Quinn, who was watching this exchange with interest, looking from me to Logan and back again as we spoke. “We’ve decided he can stay,” he interjected suddenly. “This is the most entertainment we’ve had down here for years. He can have one of those dark rooms I don’t like.”
Logan ignored him, keeping his attention on me. “I’m telling you, Claire. Blake was there…today. He caught the kid who told me you were in the forest. He held him while they tried to kill him.” He raised one arm to run it through his dark hair, exasperated. “Look, I know he’s your brother, but I’m telling you. I saw him. He’s part of the Watch.”
It didn’t make sense at all, but then pieces began falling into place, like a puzzle that was beginning to take shape. Lacy crying that Blake had been mean, and the looks he’d given us as he’d watched Hadley and me make our way to the dorms. That had all happened after I borrowed the book that held the map to the forest.
“Quinn, do you remember when I was here last?”
“How old do you think I am, Claire?” he asked, rolling his eyes. “I’m not senile. It hasn’t been that long ago.”
I smiled. “Okay, good. The human who had come down before me earlier in the day. You’d said something about ‘only the brave wear pink.’”
“They do. That color has such a bad reputation, you know.”
“Do you remember the name of the one you bit?”
“No. Do you remember the name of the cow who gave you the last hamburger you ate?”
It would have been funny had the situation not been so dire.
Then I remembered the emblem I had spotted on one of Blake’s shirts. “Was there a mark on his shirt pocket?”
“Yes, a delightful little embroidered circle of feathers,” he said with a happy nod of his head.
I knew without a doubt now the reason Blake had gone back to helping the Dark Watch. The venom in Quinn’s bite had erased enough of his memory that he no longer remembered I was a shifter. “You bit my brother,” I accused.
“He wasn’t your brother,” Quinn pointed out in a reasonably calm voice. “A Yokai has a very distinct smell. I’d know if he was something other than human. Besides, I’ve told you before. I don’t bite shifters. Their blood tastes horrible.” He paused, then gave me a small, curt nod. “No offense to present company.”
“You knew what I was all along?” I asked, astonished.
“Naturally. The second you showed up with the mermaid, I knew what you were.”
“Wait a minute,” Logan said, taking a step toward Quinn. “You said Yokai shifters have a specific scent, so you’ve been around them before, which means Claire isn’t the only one left. How many others do you know?”
Some dark memory appeared in the vampire’s eyes, and he said nothing for a long moment. Then his gaze locked onto me. “I know two others…and I believe you’ve met them both.”
House of Secrets Excerpt:
Claire
“Claire…come. Come to me, Claire…”
I knew the voice and the hand that stretched out for mine. But as I reached for her fingers, they moved away and her voice changed, as if she’d moved further into the fog that hid her from view.
“Claire? Claire? Where are you?” Panic replaced the calm, reassuring sensation I’d felt only seconds before and I struggled to reach her, becoming lost in the thick fog as her voice continued to cry out for me, becoming more and more distant until she was gone.
Despair overtook me and my heart hammered faster and faster as I continued to search for her.
“Momma?” My voice sounded tiny. Fragile.
Then someone scooped me up and the panic melted away in an instant. “It’s all right, Claire Bear. I’ve got you. There isn’t anything to be afraid of. Daddy’s got you.”
I snuggled against his chest, feeling safe and secure in his arms.
Then they tightened.
“Too tight,” I whispered in a small voice.
But he only squeezed tighter and I had to fight to take another breath.
“You’re mine now,” he said. “You won’t get away from me again…”
“No!” I sat straight up, kicking the covers off me with enough force that they flipped off the end of the bed. My attention locked on the door just beyond. The shadows there were darker. Was someone there?
I rolled toward the nightstand by the side of the bed and flipped the switch on the lamp. Instantly, the room was bathed in a soft glow.
“It was just a dream…just a dream,” I repeated to myself, attempting to calm my racing heart. It was true that it was a dream—and one I’d had many times before. But not for the last several years and never had it ended this way.
Normally I’d wake up happy that I remembered bits of my parents: the scent of cinnamon that haunted the air when I heard my mother’s voice, or the sense of safety that still lingered when I awoke from being in my father’s arms.
As many times as I’d dreamed of them, never had I seen their faces. But I still knew they were mine and that dream had always come as a reassurance that once I’d been loved.
Once, I’d been someone’s child. Once, I’d belonged.
I got up and picked the covers up to put them back on the bed, sneaking a quick glance at Lacy. She hadn’t moved a muscle during all of this and I was relieved. She’d been the one with nightmares over the space of the last week. Ever since she helped me get into the Forest of Lost Souls, she hadn’t been acting at all like herself.
Each night, she’d awoken me, talking in her sleep. The first few times it had been gibberish, but then a few sentences had struck a chord. “I have his scale. Now he won’t be able to touch me,” had been one of them and I’d found myself wondering if she’d been the one responsible for planting Victor’s scale at the bottom of the shattered crystal in the forest.
If she had, then there was quite a bit more to Lacy Jennings than I knew. Possibly more than she herself even knew.
I crawled back into bed and pulled the covers over me. I knew sleep wasn’t going to be in the cards for me, at least, not for a long while. My gaze landed on the book I’d taken from Flame House when I’d helped Hadley.
Maybe reading a few passages from Mara Shade, one of the school’s founders, would either give me some comfort, or either bore me to death and put me to sleep. Either way, a good idea, I decided, as I pulled it over into bed with me and flipped to the first page.
Today has been a devastating day in the history of our school. Today, tragedy has struck and I am afraid Imperium will never be the same. I fear our dear headmistress will not recover from this blow either. Watching her banish one of her precious ones to the forest has taken its toll. The light of hopefulness in her eyes has dimmed, replaced with a hardness that has never been there before. A new age has come upon us now and I fear there will be no return. The students are now fearful and I cannot find it in my heart to blame them. The most powerful of them all has proven to be the one responsible. They whisper of the place the witches have spelled—the place that will keep them safe from his magic. They are calling it the Forest of Lost Souls, and I must admit with a heavy heart, it does fit. If ever there was a soul that could not be saved, it is that of Asher Preit.
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Other Books By K.R. Thompson
The Keeper Saga:
Hidden Moon
Once Upon a Haunted Moon
The Wolf
Wynter’s War
/> Charmed
Under a Dark Moon
Blood Moon Rising
The Untold Stories of Neverland:
Pan
Hook
Nerida
Jack
Anthologies:
Once Upon a Spell
Tales of Red
www.amazon.com/author/krthompson
About the Author
K.R. Thompson is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author. She lives in the mountains of southwestern Virginia with her husband, son, and a motley crew of pets.
An avid reader and firm believer in the magic of stories, she spends her nights either reading an adventure or writing one.
She still watches for evidence of Bigfoot in the mud of Wolf Creek.
www.krthompson.net
Shifter's University 2: Forest of Lost Souls Page 10
