Shimmer (Wicked Woods #2)

by Kailin Gow

  Briony spun on instinct, turning so that she wasn’t pinned down in the dirt of the forest floor and driving herself up to her knees. As she did so, Briony shifted her blade held in a reverse grip, ready to pierce the heart as she whirled. Her attacker seemed to have anticipated the move, because a hand clamped down on her forearm, blocking the strike. Briony started to twist free, ready to stab from another angle, when she realized who it was on the forest floor with her.

  “Fallon?”

  “Briony, it’s okay. Please, don’t be afraid.”

  Briony sagged with relief, laughing as she let herself fall into Fallon, holding him tight.

  “You idiot. I could have killed you. I thought you were… well, I’m not sure what I thought you were. What were you doing chasing me?”

  “You’re the one who ran off,” Fallon said. “I was just trying to keep up long enough to get you to stop.”

  “By tackling me.”

  “Yes. Sorry about that.”

  Fallon didn’t sound all that sorry about it. Then again, it did leave them pressed close together on the forest floor, so Briony wasn’t entirely sorry about it either. She put her silver cross away, tucking it carefully out of sight to make things easier for Fallon. Briony kissed him without thinking, relief pouring out of her that Fallon was alright.

  “I’m glad you’re safe,” Briony said. “My brother delivered my jacket to the inn. I thought…”

  Fallon put a finger to her lips. “I know. I heard you talking to him. I’m safe now, Briony.”

  He was, and it lifted a weight from Briony’s heart to know it for certain. When Fallon had not made contact after their escape, she had been so worried that the worst might have happened to him.

  “Why didn’t you get in touch?” Briony demanded. “It has been days.”

  “I didn’t know where you were,” Fallon said. “You weren’t at the inn. You weren’t at your job. I thought about trying to leave a message with that great aunt of yours, but until I knew that you had gotten back safely, it didn’t seem safe. I mean, what if she thought I had done something to you?”

  Briony hadn’t thought of it like that. Her attempts to keep off the radar with Kevin had stopped Pietre from finding her, but they had not exactly made things easy for Fallon either. He was right about Aunt Sophie too. As it was, she had quickly known that Briony was safe, but if she hadn’t, and Fallon had been the last person Briony had been seen with? Aunt Sophie would have staked him.

  There was only one thing Briony did not get. “Why did you spend your time hiding in a tree back there? You could have just shown up openly.”

  Fallon shook his head. “Not with your brother there.”

  There was a strange note in that. A note almost of… fear.

  “Fallon? What is it?”

  Fallon shook his head. “You can’t trust him, Briony.”

  “He’s my brother, Fallon. Of course I trust him.”

  Fallon pulled back from her and stood up. “He’s a lot more than that.”

  Briony stood up too, still puzzled. “A vampire? I know about that.”

  “Oh, he’s more than that.” Briony didn’t know whether to be happy or worried when Fallon started to unbutton his shirt, peeling it back to reveal three clear claw marks across his chest. “Jake might be a vampire, but that isn’t all. He’s a werewolf too.”

  Briony could not help wincing as she saw the wounds. They weren’t bleeding, but they looked angry and scabbed over. “Is that even possible? I mean, can you be both?”

  “Apparently. At least, he was a wolf when he did this.”

  “Oh, Fallon.” Briony hugged him then, and she couldn’t help the moment when it turned into something more, when their lips met again. This kiss was longer, deeper, and Briony did not want it to stop, even though eventually it had to. “I’m glad you got away from Pietre’s vampires. It was brave, leading them off like that.”

  “It was close,” Fallon admitted. “I might not have made it if it wasn’t for… well, a werewolf.”

  “Jake?” Briony asked it automatically, but Fallon shook his head.

  “Someone else. A friend of his. Apparently, being both, he can make friends everywhere. I don’t know how he does it. Something like this, it ought to be an oddity, even a deformity, but your brother uses it to his advantage.”

  Briony nodded. “Jake always was clever.”

  “He must take after his sister.”

  That earned Fallon another, brief, kiss. It wasn’t enough to distract Briony’s attention from the wounds on his chest though. “If even Jake’s werewolf friends are ready to help a vampire, why did he do this to you?”

  Fallon shrugged. “I made a mistake. I thought he could control himself. The werewolf who helped me told me about Jake when I asked why I wasn’t being killed. When I heard about him, I wanted to meet him. I thought he could lead me to your parents.”

  “So what went wrong?” Briony asked. She could hardly imagine her brother turning on someone like this. Even after the way he had reacted around her, she couldn’t imagine this.

  “I forgot about your jacket,” Fallon said. “I was still wearing it when we met, and he obviously recognized the scent.”

  “He thought you’d hurt me,” Briony guessed.

  Fallon nodded. “He leapt at me, and I had to run. He chased me for… it had to be days, just stalking me through the woods. Sometimes, he would be a wolf. Sometimes, he would look like a boy. I knew that the only way I could stop him would be to kill him, and I just couldn’t do that to you.”

  Briony did not know what to say to that. Fallon had been hunted for days, and he had still not wanted to do anything to upset her?

  “He’s just a kid, anyway,” Fallon said. “The trouble is, he’s a kid who’s a vampire. And he has all of a werewolf’s instincts as well. That’s why he’s so dangerous.” He kept going before Briony could disagree. “He didn’t give me a chance to feed, so I got weaker and weaker. Finally, he caught up with me. I only got away because I abandoned your jacket. He changed back, and it was like he couldn’t place it. I think that whatever is happening with him is playing tricks on his mind.”

  Briony shook her head. She couldn’t believe that. She wouldn’t believe that. Even though Jake hadn’t exactly been normal with her, he had still been Jake. Still been her brother. Yet hadn’t he told her that he had just found the jacket? He had not mentioned anything about chasing Fallon. What if he couldn’t remember it?

  “We should get back,” Briony said. “I need to see if Aunt Sophie has shown up. I’m just hoping that it’s something to do with the Preservation Society.”

  “There’s trouble?” Fallon asked. At least he didn’t press her any further about Jake. “Is it Pietre?”

  He held her hand as they walked, and Briony did her best to explain about the things that had happened in the past few days. Though she found herself saying very little about Kevin’s role in them. Briony could guess how Fallon would react to mentions of his brother. Instead, she told him about Pietre using the civilian authorities to strike at the diner, about the Preservation Society’s meeting out on the lake, and about the possible danger to Briony now that she knew the location of the vampires’ home.

  Fallon nodded. “In that case, we should probably get back before anything else happens.”

  Chapter 11

  They hurried back, mindful that the woods were not a safe place to linger. Even Fallon seemed a little afraid out there, and Briony had to keep a firm grip on herself to keep from starting at every sound in the darkness. All the time she had spent in Wicked, and she still had not quite gotten used to the idea that woods were not silent places, but teemed with unexpected noise and movement. Still, they would be safe once they reached the inn.

  At least, that was what Briony thought right up to the point where they emerged from the trees to see the Edge Inn’s door hanging open. Briony was sure that she hadn’t left it like that when she left to chase her brother through the trees,
which meant…

  “Someone has been in there,” she said.

  Fallon nodded. “We should stay clear then. Call for help.”

  “I’m not going to be kept out of my home by this, Fallon. We are safer inside, anyway. And what kind of help could we call? No, I am going in there. Wait here if you want.”

  Of course, Briony knew that he wouldn’t stay there, not when she was about to step into somewhere that was potentially dangerous. Knowing that was part of what made it so easy to step inside to face whatever had been done there.

  They hadn’t been gone long, but it had been more than long enough for someone to wreck the place. Furniture lay broken into jagged fragments. The screen of the TV was smashed, and a shattered picture frame nearby suggested how it had been done. Tables lay upside down by the walls, as though they had been flung aside.

  Her hand on her cross, Briony walked through into the kitchen. If anything, it was in a worse state. Nothing seemed to be where it was supposed to be, and at least one of the kitchen cabinets had been ripped down from the wall and used as a projectile. It looked like some kind of natural disaster had hit the place.

  Except, of course, there was nothing natural about it. It had to be vampires. Was this mess the aftermath of a fight, or simply the kind of systematic destruction Briony could imagine Pietre delighting in.

  Had Jake been a part of it? Briony did not want to believe it. After all, he had said that her family wasn’t on Pietre’s side despite what had happened to them. But he had lured her away… no, she wouldn’t believe it. He was her brother, despite everything that had happened. He wouldn’t do this to her, or to Aunt Sophie.

  At that thought, Briony realized that she hadn’t checked whether her great aunt had come back. She could be in here somewhere, hurt, or bleeding, or worse.

  “Aunt Sophie?” Briony called out. She repeated it again, louder this time. She moved from room to room, calling out for her great aunt, but there was still no sign of her. Fallon followed in Briony’s wake. “You don’t think something has happened to her, do you, Fallon?” Briony demanded.

  Fallon reached out to put a hand on her shoulder. “Was Aunt Sophie home?”

  Briony shook her head. “I couldn’t find her before.”

  “Then there’s no reason to think that she would have come back.”

  Even so, Briony decided to check the rest of the house. She wanted to be sure, not just that Aunt Sophie wasn’t there, but also that the vampires hadn’t left any surprises for them in the house.

  “What I don’t get,” Fallon said, “is how anyone got to do this. A private residence like this should be safe. Vampires would need to be invited in.”

  “Maybe they had help,” Briony replied. She found herself thinking of the human sympathizers vampires were supposed to have. Before, Briony had been able to feel slightly sorry for anyone that stupid. Now though, if Briony ever found any of them…

  She and Fallon started to straighten up what they could as they made their way around the inn, putting things back the right way up, moving furniture back to where it should be. It was not much, but at least it made Briony feel like the place was hers again, and not just somewhere that vampires had destroyed. There was not time to do anything to really tidy the inn, though, because they still had to keep checking for Aunt Sophie.

  They got as far as the hallway, and a bolted door that led down into the Edge Inn’s basement, before Fallon put out a hand to stop Briony.

  “There’s something down there.”

  “Aunt Sophie?” Briony asked.

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so. We could barricade the door,” he suggested. “Trap it there.”

  Briony shook her head. “We need to go down there, Fallon. Even if it’s not her, it’s something. I can’t just walk away knowing that there’s something down there that shouldn’t be. We have to deal with this.”

  Briony tried to make her tone resolute. She wasn’t going to budge on this. This was her home now, and it was bad enough that something had wrecked it. She wasn’t going to let it take up residence in the basement too. Besides, if Fallon couldn’t be one hundred percent certain that it wasn’t Aunt Sophie down there, Briony couldn’t afford to risk it. From the state of this place, she could be in real trouble.

  “All right,” Fallon said after a few seconds, “but at least let me go first. I can survive a lot more than you can, Briony.”

  That made some sense, even if Briony did not like the idea of sending Fallon in to face her danger for her. The young vampire opened the door, trying the light switch that stood at the head of a series of steps downwards. Nothing happened, but instead of waiting until Briony fetched a torch, he just plunged down into the dark.

  Briony hurried after him, hoping that the light spilling down the steps from the hallway would be enough. In the darkness, her steps seemed to echo more than they should have. Fallon was just visible ahead of her, a darker outline against the blackness. Briony hoped that whatever was down here, it wouldn’t be a threat to them, because she wasn’t sure how much use she would be when she couldn’t see what she was fighting.

  A growl came from the side, deep and rumbling. Briony stumbled as Fallon pushed her back, away from something that she could not see. What about Fallon? Vampires could see in the dark, couldn’t they? Did he know what was down there?

  A larger shape smashed into the vampire, carrying him back into the darkness. The sounds of violence came to Briony then in snarls and barely human hisses, grunts of effort and sounds of pain. Briony heard flesh smack into flesh in a blow that made her wince just to hear it, and Fallon cried out.

  “Fallon?” Briony stepped forward into the darkness, trying to help, but she couldn’t even see. Even with her eyes as wide as Briony could get them, she couldn’t make out more than two vague silhouettes struggling with one another, rolling over and over as first one, and then the other, got the upper hand. If Briony tried to intervene with her cross blade, she could end up stabbing Fallon just as easily as his opponent. As for trying to take on whatever it was unarmed, that sounded like a good way to get herself killed.

  Briony knew that she needed light. Without it, she couldn’t help, so she sprinted back up the stairs, heading for the kitchen, where she knew Aunt Sophie kept at least one flashlight in case of emergencies. Briony just hoped that it had batteries in it. She found it in only seconds, but with Fallon fighting below, it felt like far longer. Running back down to the cellar, Briony turned the beam from the torch on the two combatants, recognizing the second of them instantly.

  “Fallon, wait! It’s Kevin!”

  They ignored her. Of course they did. It wasn’t like the two of them could ever put aside their instinctive hatred of what the other had become long enough to actually think. Briony considered throwing herself between them, as she had when they had been preparing to fight before. The trouble was, then, they hadn’t been in the middle of their battle, just at the start. This time, Briony didn’t think her odds of surviving would be as good.

  Kevin rolled above his brother, bringing his fist down once, twice, in meaty blows that looked like they should have driven Fallon into the basement’s concrete floor. Briony grabbed the nearest thing she could find, an aged fire blower that looked as likely to explode as to work, and sent a stream of flame close enough to them to singe eyebrows. The two of them reeled back from each other, turning to face the new threat and only pausing when they realized that it was Briony.

  “Now that I’ve got your attention, do you want to stop tearing pieces off each other long enough to tell me what is going on?”

  The two of them looked exhausted by their battle, which intrigued Briony. Did vampires have any breath to run out of? That thought found itself pushed aside by the state Kevin was in. There were huge tears in his clothes, and in the flesh beneath too, from what Briony could see. There was a wound in his throat that had obviously come from a vampire’s fangs. She rushed over to him.

  “Kevin? What hap
pened? Fallon, you didn’t-”

  “Like he could,” Kevin said. “This was Pietre. I came by to check on you, and he was here. Here, like he owned the place, standing in the middle of the living room. We fought. I almost had him, too, but then he shoved me down into this cellar and bolted the door from the outside.”

  “You look terrible,” Briony said, reaching out to put an arm around him. “Come on, we’ll get you upstairs. Fallon, help me.”

  The vampire gave his brother an angry look, but he did as Briony asked. Soon, Briony had Kevin sitting on the remains of the sofa in the living room, bandaging the wound on his neck as best she could.

  “Made a bit of a mess here,” Kevin said. His voice sounded weak, and he looked very pale. Fallon had retreated to the kitchen, claiming that he was going to keep tidying up, but obviously just wanting to keep out of his brother’s way. Briony went in there to speak with him, leaving Kevin to doze on the sofa. He looked very pale.

  “Fallon, we have to do something. Your brother’s hurt.”

  “I suppose we could always put him out of his misery,” Fallon said.

  “Fallon!”

  “What do you want me to say? What help can we give him?”

  “He needs medical attention.”

  Fallon shook his head. “And let the world know we exist?”

  “The Preservation Society, then,” Briony insisted. “George will help.”

  “This is the same George who hunts werewolves?”

  Briony shook her head. “It’s not like that. He knows Kevin now.”

  Fallon looked somehow affronted by that. “So he’s stepped into the Preservation Society’s trust just like that? What else has he taken over from me, Briony?”

  “I don’t know what you-”

  Fallon’s hands were on her arms then. “Of course you do. Just tell me this, Briony. Did you ever care for me?”

  “If she didn’t,” Kevin said, appearing in the doorway, “do you think I would have spent my time looking for you, this past week? Do you think I wouldn’t kill you?”