Ascendant (The Shift Chronicles Book 4)

by Eva Truesdale

  Where he was still staring at me.

  He hadn’t taken his eyes off me yet, even to spare Kael or Will or the bartender so much as a glance.

  “What the heck are you looking at, anyway?” I hissed.

  He placed the now empty glass on the bar, still not looking away from me. “Your scars,” he said simply.

  I was speechless.

  Normally people were a little subtler about it, at least.

  “If you like scars so much,” Kael growled, taking a step closer to the man, “I’d be happy to give you some of your own to admire in the mirror.”

  The man finally let his eyes drift away from me, just long enough to give Kael a once-over. Sizing him up, I think, in case this came down to a fight. Which I really hoped it wouldn’t. We were already drawing an uncomfortable amount of attention as it was.

  I was busy trying to think of a way to diffuse the situation when the man stepped blatantly around Kael and reached for my face.

  Kael caught him by the wrist when the man’s fingers were just inches from my scarred eye, his grip so tight that I was surprised I didn’t hear the sound of the man’s bones snapping into pieces. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Kael demanded.

  The bar tender dropped the glass she’d been religiously cleaning and went and stuck her head into the back kitchen, shouting for someone to get out here!

  The man’s fingers still hovered close to my scars, stretching and reaching as if trying to grab something from the empty space in front of them. There was a strange, thoughtful look in his eyes, and after a moment he said, “Silver’s doing, wasn’t it?”

  Kael’s grip slackened a bit, likely from the same surprise I felt.

  “Who are you?” I asked. And then, a more appropriate question came to mind: “What are you, exactly?” Normal humans generally didn’t recognize silver scars. But he looked— and smelled— like a normal human, and I didn’t get it.

  He still wasn’t acting like the divulging type, though.

  “You better start talking,” Will said, impatiently edging closer and glancing toward the kitchen, where a man dressed in cook’s attire—but built very much like a bouncer—was listening to the bar tender’s anxious words with his eyes fixed in our direction.

  Burgundy Coat Man followed Will’s glance, and then he looked quickly back at the three of us in turn. But instead of answering my questions, he said, “Joseph Valkos. I saw you with him earlier.”

  “What of it?”

  “Where is he now?”

  “Answer our questions first.”

  “I’ve got no business with you. Only with him.”

  “His business is our business.”

  He shook his head. “If you aren’t going to tell me where he is, then we’re done here—”

  “I don’t think so,” Will said, reaching for the arm Kael wasn’t already holding.

  The man twisted out of reach, and in the next, inhumanly quick motion, he swung his fist upward and caught Kael underneath the jaw. Then he jerked his wrist from Kael’s grasp and shoved him back into me, turned, and darted toward the door.

  Will dove after him, and the two slammed into a table still waiting to be bussed, sending dishes and silverware crashing to the floor. They slipped and scrambled for balance among shattered glasses and spilled food and drink. I tried, halfheartedly, to hold Kael back—like there was still a chance of us not making a scene here—but he ripped free. He hit the man hard enough in the side of the head to send him stumbling and then tripping forward into the broken glass.

  It was the only blow he managed to land, though, before the bouncer reached us. He grabbed Burgundy Coat Man by the collar and jerked him up and away from Will and Kael. And, with the help of a few backups who filed out from the kitchen, he shoved us all toward the nearest exit, into an alleyway that was drowning in the rain that had started to fall again.

  Three

  dormant

  The man bolted for the street, into the crowd of people rushing through the rain, and he was nearly swallowed up in the rising fog.

  There was no time to think anything except: I’m not losing this guy.

  I shot off after him, ignoring the people shouting and cursing as I shoved my way through them, knocking several shopping bags and umbrellas from hands in the process. “Sorry, sorry,” I mumbled under my breath as they shook their fists and flashed me other not-so-friendly gestures.

  You’d understand if you knew what was at stake, I thought.

  Two blocks later, I lost sight of him—but only for a moment. Then I heard the screech of brakes and angry shouting, and I glanced toward the road to see him shielding his eyes from the glare of a tour bus’s headlights. He hesitated for a fraction of a second—we both did—and then he took off again. It was long enough for Will and Kael to catch up with me. We raced across the road together, earning a few angry horn blasts and squealing brakes ourselves, and we reached the other side just as the man hopped an iron fence and disappeared into what looked like a park.

  “St. Stephen’s Green,” Will panted as we kept running. “It’s huge. There are a lot of entrances—maybe we can split up and get ahead of him, cut him off somehow?”

  Kael and I both nodded. I raced for the main entrance, hopping the fence in the same spot the man had, while Kael and Will went to the left and right.

  Inside the park, it was eerily quiet and not especially well lit through many of the parts I raced through; I guess to deter people from hanging around after hours. Which it seemed to be doing—because it was completely empty. No sign of our target, either. And as I ran on, I started to worry that I wasn’t going to be able to catch this guy after all.

  At least, not in the form I was in.

  So with no one here to see me—except for this man who, at this point I was more or less sure wasn’t human anyway—I shifted. I had to slow for a few steps to keep my balance as I did, but I made up for it in the next instant as fresh power surged through my canine legs and rocketed me forward. My mind released my worries; it focused only on interpreting my senses, and it thought only one thing: He’s close.

  Still close enough to catch.

  I crashed through a thicket of trees. Came out the other side, and there he was. Hesitating on the edge of a pond like he wasn’t sure whether to go around it or through it.

  I was kind enough to decide his next move for him.

  I hit him squarely in the chest. He didn’t crumple immediately, the way a weak human would, but my weight was still too much for him; we landed in the waist deep water with a splash, slinging up the bank’s mud as we went. A family of sleeping ducks nearby squalled and rushed up in a flurry of wings and water.

  The man managed to get himself turned around, to press his back against the bank and keep his head above the water enough to sputter, “Okay. Okay. I—”

  A gasp swallowed up his words as I brought my muddy, dripping snout to within a centimeter of his face and bared my teeth. He was still trying to get his breathing under control when Kael and Will caught up with us. They grabbed both of his arms and heaved him out of the mud. I stepped out after them, gave my fur a shake, and stalked closer to him again, showing him another flash of my teeth—just in case he was having any more thoughts about running.

  “You don’t seem especially surprised by this,” Kael said to the man, nodding at my lycan form. “You recognized silver scars, but you aren’t a lycan, and you aren’t a werewolf, or human, so...?” His voice was razor-sharp.

  And the man must have realized he’d used up all of our patience, because he finally sighed, and, wiping a bit of mud from his cheek, he looked at Kael and said, “I’m not a werewolf like you. And my name is Eamon.”

  We all stared at him for a moment, before a thought occurred to me. (Is he one of them?)

  I didn’t have to explain who I meant.

  “What do you know about the feral?” Will asked. “The names Carrick…Cerin…those ring any bells for you?”

&nb
sp; “Ones I’d rather not have heard,” Eamon said grimly.

  “So you are one of them.”

  An involuntary growl started building in my throat, but Eamon shook his head at me. “No. I don’t think Carrick would claim me now, even if I begged him to.”

  Will raised an eyebrow. “Why?”

  “Because I am one of The Lost, to use his term.” He snorted. “As though I am really the lost and confused one, between the two of us.”

  “And why would he think that?” Kael asked, releasing Eamon and folding his arms across his chest as he gave him an expectant glare.

  “Because I have no interest in becoming anything like that,” he said, nodding at me with a look of obvious disgust.

  (Rude,) I thought with a snort.

  “I never have,” Eamon continued. “Not from the moment I was able to take this human form—I’ve worked hard to keep my beast side dormant, thank you very much, and I have been so much more successful at that these past decades, while Carrick and his kind were gone, off terrorizing whoever and wherever else besides here. But now he’s back. They’re all back.”

  My fur bristled.

  “And now the wolf side is getting harder to suppress; I’m surprised you didn’t recognize me for what I was immediately.” There was a hint of arrogance in the frown he gave me, and I found myself liking him less and less with every second that passed.

  “The feral are back here?” Will asked. “You can say that for sure? Have you seen them?”

  “I don’t need to see them. Whether or not I want anything to do with them, I am connected to them. I can feel it in my blood. My soul. My mind.” He got shakily to his feet and started wringing the water from his coat. “And it is torture, just so you know.”

  I could tell Will and Kael still weren’t convinced—but I was intrigued, at least. (Guys, I think he might be telling the truth. At least about part of it.) They both gave me a sidelong glance, still keeping one eye on our captive. (Joseph mentioned something about this when he was explaining the feral to me a couple weeks ago. His goal had been to make them human, to give them a conscious. And some of them actually took the opportunity and ran with it— disappeared into the human world and hid there, I mean.)

  Eamon nodded, the superior, disgusted look he’d been giving me becoming a little more civil now that I was sort of coming to his defense.

  “So there are more like you?” Will asked.

  “We’re not like…a secret club or something, if that is what you mean. We don’t have regular meetings.”

  “You can spare us the smart-ass comments,” Kael said, “and just answer his question.”

  “Fine. The simple answer is yes. I don’t know how many. We stay away from each other as a general rule; it’s easier to keep that beast side dormant when you don’t have a pack to urge it on, even if that entire pack is intent on staying human. I’ve been the cliché lone wolf for a happy century, but now….”

  (Now things are changing,) I finished for him. (You can’t hide anymore. And so you’re going to help us, right? That’s why you were stalking me?)

  “That wasn’t exactly what I had in mind—”

  “Well I suppose we’ll see if we can persuade you otherwise.” Will’s words carried a strong hint of menace that I wasn’t used to hearing in his voice. And he looked ready to make another threat to drive his point home, but before he could, we all heard the sound of chatter and laughter. It was coming from the sidewalk that ran parallel to the park’s fence. There were thick hedges blocking the view of us from that sidewalk, but the laughing group was still dangerously close—and they seemed to be slowing down, as if they might have sensed our presence.

  (This probably isn’t the best place for an interrogation,) I thought.

  Will grabbed Eamon’s arm again, and Kael pressed in closer, too, so there was no chance of him escaping.

  “You wanted to know where Joseph Valkos was, didn’t you?” Kael asked him.

  Eamon didn’t reply. His face had gone very pale, his eyes wide, unblinking. He looked like he was having second thoughts about what he wanted to know. And probably about this entire night, really.

  “Well you’re in luck,” Kael continued anyway, “because you’re coming with us, and you’re going to get to talk to him face to face.”

  Four

  help

  The hotel lobby was, mercifully, mostly empty. There was just an unloading bus of Spanish-speaking tourists who looked too tired from their day of sightseeing to care much about the four of us, even though Eamon was basically covered in mud from head to toe, and even though there was still obviously tension weaving all between the four of us. I wasn’t really afraid of that tension snapping and Eamon running anymore, though; he seemed to have accepted his fate.

  He marched up the stairs to our second floor rooms with a calm determination and stepped inside room 34— where Joseph and Vanessa were waiting— with that same resolve.

  Joseph stood as Eamon approached him. For a minute the two of them just kind of stared at each other. I couldn’t even begin to guess what they might have been thinking. How weird it must have been to be face-to-face after all this time: the creator and the creation, both caught in the middle of things neither of them could have ever predicted. They were both silent for a long while, lips parting a few times but always closing before they managed to form words.

  Then Eamon drew his fist back and punched Joseph in the face.

  Joseph stumbled back, blood rushing from his nose. The rest of us just stared at first, stunned. Then Eamon started toward Joseph, fists still clenched. But Kael moved faster. He grabbed Eamon and slammed him against the wall.

  And I didn’t particularly like this guy, but there was murder in Kael’s eyes, and we couldn’t afford to kill the most promising link we had to the feral so far. So I shook myself from my stupor and rushed over and grabbed Kael’s arm. Joseph was only a few steps behind. He held one hand over his bleeding nose, but the other grabbed Kael’s shoulder and squeezed.

  “I probably deserved this,” he told Kael.

  “You deserve far worse,” Eamon snapped.

  Joseph ignored him. “Let him go,” he said to Kael.

  And Kael did. Reluctantly.

  I hastily positioned myself between him and Eamon, shaking my head at the latter. “Okay, you have got to stop punching people,” I said. “Seriously. Learn to channel your anger—you’re worse than me. And that’s saying something.”

  “It really is,” Kael said under his breath. He closed his eyes in concentration for a moment before stepping away, clearly trying to force himself to be calm. I didn’t say anything. But I watched him, distracted for a moment by the realization of how quickly he’d jumped to his father’s defense.

  There would be no warm and fuzzy heart-to-heart’s, maybe, but this was something, at least.

  Because it was one thing to want to punch your own family in the face, I guessed, but when someone else started taking swings? Well, you jumped to their defense. Even if they deserved to be hit.

  I was still holding Kael’s arm, I noticed. He looked down at my hand, and then up to my face, and his expression turned curious. Suspicious. I could tell he wanted to know what was going through my head just then, but I only cleared my throat and nodded back to the more important conversation.

  “I wish I’d hit you harder,” Eamon was saying. “You deserve no less, after what you did.”

  “He gave you a life.” I shook my head, still not really understanding his anger. “You were a monster before he gave you a soul.”

  He turned the full intensity of his glare on me so quickly that I almost took a step back. “Yes. But I didn’t know it,” he said. “I just was. A blissful ignorance that was its own kind of Eden… until he came along and gave me a conscious that I didn’t want. An awareness that, like I told you, is torture. Because, thanks to my human intelligence and my connection to the other feral, I know the things they’re doing, the things they’ve done—s
ome things that I did too, once upon a time—and I know it’s all wrong. But what do I do about it, exactly?”

  “You help us,” Valkos said quietly, simply.

  “There is no help for this.” He glanced around at each of us in turn, a cynical little laugh following his words. “I don’t know what you all think you’re going to do, but if you are planning to try to destroy them, you’re wasting your time. Every day I feel their presence grow stronger. Every day, more like me are giving in and going back to them. Not to mention the others, the common werewolves and lycans who will also be signing up for their ranks—whether because of fear or the desire for power or whatever else. Altogether, the feral’s numbers are already becoming too great, too powerful to stop, now.”

  “We’re going to find the source of their power and destroy it, we don’t need—”

  “You realize they will have an army protecting that power, yes?”

  “I’ve faced armies before.”

  “You’ve never faced anything like this.”

  “You don’t know that,” I argued. “You don’t even know who I am.”

  “You are Cyrus Aurick’s granddaughter,” he shot back. “You have his eyes and his arrogance, and I sense maybe a fraction of his power.”

  “I’m arrogant? You’re the one acting like—” I cut myself off abruptly. This wasn’t where the conversation needed to go. Kael laid a hand on my arm, helping to hold me back the same as I had him, and I managed a deep breath and a calmer voice. “I also have an army of my own gathering,” I said. “And that fraction of power I personally have is more than enough for me, anyway, because unlike you, I’m not a gigantic coward and I’m not afraid to use it.”