Harvest: Dark Urban Fantasy (Shifter Chronicles Book 3)

by Melle Amade

  I walk in behind Callum and instinctively place my hand on his shoulder.

  “You might want to step away,” he says, and then I realize he’s got a blowtorch in his right hand.

  “You’re not seriously going to light that thing up in here?” I say, my eyes glancing at the books and all the wood trim in the house.

  “I’m not going to burn the house down if that’s what you think is going on. I’m just going to melt a little piece of this metal off for Roman.”

  “We’re trying to figure out exactly what it’s made of and then maybe I can find some chemical that will melt it,” he says.

  “And a way to melt it that doesn’t include burning our necks off,” I murmur.

  “Obviously,” Roman says.

  The blowtorch lights up and Callum aims at the edge of the shard. We watch as the metal first turns gray and then red and then slowly starts to bend and melt until three beads drop off. Roman catches them on a plate of glass as Callum turns the torch off and rests the piece of metal in a clamp so it can cool. Roman dips a small stick into the metal pool and drops an even smaller drop onto a slide, pressing a slide cover against it and then slipping it under a microscope.

  He pulls down his other set of goggles and moves up to the microscope.

  “It’s definitely iron meteorite,” he says.

  “How can you tell?”

  “It’s dominated by iron, nickel, and cobalt. It’s different than iron that you find on earth Here, the cobalt is not so high, if it’s even there at all, and this sample has a nickel composition of almost twenty percent. That’s insanely high.”

  “So, what does that tell us?” I ask.

  “Not sure yet.”

  Callum squeezes my hand. “We’ll figure out a way to get it off,” he says.

  I raise my eyebrows, but then close my eyes and nod. “I know,” I whisper. “I know you guys are going to try everything you can.” But as the days slip by, the collar still seems to be a permanent part of my life.

  Our apps all go off at the same time. “Zan wants us,” I say. Roman, Callum and I head out to the barn.

  “Did you find something?” Roman asks.

  “Well I didn’t find anything on El Oso,” she says. “Nothing. The guy must have people ripping through the Internet, taking anything remotely resembling him off it. But I did find this. It’s kind of weird and kind of out there and probably completely bogus-”

  “Which is what humans would say about a shifter if they didn’t know we really existed.” I shrug.

  “Right. So, it’s this spell,” Zan shrugs. “It’s on the darknet, a site called arcanemagickspot.com.”

  “Original,” Roman mocks. Zan’s gaze is warily on me.

  “What’s the spell, Zan?” I ask.

  “Well, it’s like what we were thinking, a bunch of magical objects put together. This one was interesting. It says the objects are a cage, a crown, a sword, a chain, and…a chalice.”

  “That’s kind of a random collection of objects,” Roman says.

  “They’re really specific objects, actually,” Zan says. “They aren’t just like go to the store and buy these things, or even have them made. They were actual specific ritual objects you had to have.”

  “Like historic pieces?” I ask.

  Zan nods. “They were forged somewhere in northern India, I think, near the Caucus Mountains. And they were used to bring magic to a particular group of people. The article didn’t say who it was that got the magic. But the objects disappeared and then resurfaced about thirty years ago. But nobody knows where they are today.”

  “Did the article have the spell in it?” I ask.

  “A little bit,” Zan shifts uncomfortably. “Okay, sword, chalice, chain, crown, and a cage. So, you have something in the cage chained up and it’s...”

  “Cut with the sword, in the blood runs into the chalice,” Roman says as if it’s obvious.

  My gaze flies to Zan. “It’s a dove, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah,” Zan says, knowing there’s no point in hiding it from me. “It’s a dove needed to make the magic work.”

  I sag. Callum deftly puts his arm around my waist, holding me up.

  “Your father is still alive,” he says. “There is no way your father is dead.”

  “How do you know?” I look up at him blinking, trying to fight the terror rising in my throat.

  “Because,” Callum says. “If El Oso had created more magic, I believe we would’ve heard about it by now. I think he is looking for a way to empower all of the Berzerken. He has the magic, but if he could imbue all of his people with it, they would be indestructible.”

  “I need to go for a walk,” I say turning and getting out of the barn.

  The night is cool and dark but it does nothing to calm my deepest fear. I hear Zan’s foot steps behind me. “I hope you’re not planning on going for a long walk. I’m a bit exhausted from the work today.”

  “I meant need a short walk. A super short walk…” I slip my arm through hers as I pull her away from the barn entrance.

  She chuckles. “Fine. Fifty steps. Go.”

  “One, two, three, four…” I count as we move down a path that runs along the side of the barn. Fifty steps aren’t far at all. We end up at the wrought iron fence that meanders around the square plot marking the family cemetery. About thirty or so headstones covered in lichen, rise stiff and permanent out of the bare earth. Just inside the gate is a small stone bench.

  “I still haven’t decided if the cemetery is creepy or cool,” I mutter, pushing open the gate.

  Things might have been rough recently between Zan and I, but we’ve been best friends for our entire lives. She follows me in and we sit down in sync on the bench.

  “I guess it makes it easier to visit the dead,” Zan tugs at a random tall oat stalk, pulling off its seeds and starting to chuck them one by one onto the nearest grave. They lie their pale and scattered on the burnt sienna earth.

  I look at her curiously. “Where is Aiden’s mom buried?” Strange how I never thought about it before. I know exactly where all of Callum’s family is buried; in the cemetery at the chapel in Topanga. His brother, his mother, all of his ancestors are buried there.

  “Up at the manor,” she says. As if it’s obvious. “It’s actually a little bit creepy. When they took the manor apart in the Netherlands and brought it all the way over, there was a cemetery, so…”

  “They didn’t,” I say.

  “They did,” Zan nods. “They dug up every single Van Arend body.”

  “And they brought them to America? That’s ghastly.”

  Zan shakes her head. “Well, not all of them. Just the ones the Lord Henrike Van Arend cared about, which at eighteen, probably wasn’t that many. I think it was like his brother, his parents, and that. But I guess it was good because it established the cemetery, so when he and his wife finally died, they were buried there together.”

  It suddenly strikes me as my gaze moves over the headstones of Spotswood Ranch. “These are all your relatives,” I say softly.

  “Every last one of them in here shares blood with me. It is a little creepy, but we’re not scattered around the world. It’s easier to visit everybody in one go.”

  “Did you know them?” I ask. The only person I know in a cemetery are Callum’s family. And Naomi, Jon’s girlfriend who died with him this summer. A shiver crawls up my spine.

  Zan points to a short fat headstone on the back row. It’s gray, but not worn or covered in moss like the rest. “That’s Uncle Bert,” she says. “Aunt Emma’s brother who was married to Aunt Natalie. He died about five years ago, I think? Yeah, when I was like eleven. It was in the winter.”

  “How did he die?” I ask. “He couldn’t have been that old. Natalie looks like she’s, what, about fifty?”

  “Well, you can’t tell a shifter’s age by their looks, not in human terms. She’s actually about seventy-five.”

  “Damn. She looks good,” I murmur, su
per impressed. I thought I was hedging it at fifty, trying to make her look older. The truth is she looks about forty.

  “He choked on a chicken bone,” Zan says. “Weird, huh?”

  “A chicken bone?”

  “It happens.”

  “At the dinner table?” I can’t imagine how horrible that would be.

  “Oh… no.” Zan tucks a stray hair behind her ear and looks up at the hills. “You see the ridge up there? He was hunting wild chickens in coyote form. Apparently, some of the chickens had gotten out so he thought he would go up there, and he can smell better as a coyote so he transformed. But he kind of got excited about the hunt, I guess, and ended up killing one of the chickens and eating it.” Her eyes dart to me and I can’t hide the grimace moving across my face. It’s just so hard for me to imagine. I mean, when I’m a dove or a raven, I don’t feel like eating worms or bugs. I don’t say this, though, because I know Zan’s killed and eaten animals when she’s a coyote. Definitely don’t want to make her self-conscious. Everyone’s got to do what feels right for them.

  “Does it happen very much?” I ask curiously. “You know, going beast?”

  “I’ve never heard of it happening ever. Losing control like that,” she says. “It was really strange. Even some of the Pomos from over the hill came to the funeral. Kind of pissed my aunt off, but they couldn’t be moved. They brought the medicine woman with them and everything.”

  I wonder if she means Jacqueline’s mom, but I don’t say anything. Best to wait until I understand more about the relationship between the quail and coyote clans before I start sticking my foot in it. Guinevere’s Uncle Bert’s daughter, a coyote Nuverling, and there’s obviously an issue if he was married to Aunt Natalie.

  “So, none of these graves come from anywhere else?” I ask instead.

  “No, they were all started here. My family comes from around here. Not, you know, originally, but we have Native American blood and can trace our line back to regions of this area. There were coyote shifters and there were quail shifters when the ‘West was won.’ You know, during the forty-niners’ time when everybody was out here. It wasn’t a good time to be an Indian, if you know what I mean. Not much Indian left in my blood, but the shifter gene stayed. There was a settler, a guy who came to the gold rush. He fathered a child, a boy, with one of the Native Americans up in Gold Rush country. The mom died and the boy ended up in an orphanage in San Francisco. When he got older he started having pains and, you know-”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “Anger… needing to shift.”

  “This is, like, when?”

  “A hundred and fifty years ago. There wasn’t a lot going on out here, but he was going crazy in the city. So, the officials shipped him up to work on a farm up here in Potter. It was good fortune. This was one of the only places, I think, where other shifters lived. The Pomo tribe, they lived down here in the valley then. They saw what was happening to him and helped him overcome it. But when they saw he was a coyote and not a quail, they were scared of him. He decided to settle down and hide his shifter nature from everybody. In the meantime, he built a fortune and established Spotswood Ranch. He made sure before he took a wife, that she wouldn’t run, so he shifted in front of her.”

  “And she handled it?”

  Zan shrugged. “I guess so. We are all here, aren’t we? But you never know. Maybe he ate the first few?” She chuckles a bit as she speaks and I smile. I love her laughter; even the slightest giggle brings back so many wonderful memories, so many shared laughs we’ve had over the years. I rest my head on her shoulder and she gives me a hug.

  23

  We all wear our Ravensgaard uniforms when we show up at the Pomo training ground. Well, everybody except Cooper. He’s just wearing his Wranglers and T-shirt that says, “Potter Valley, love it or leave it.” It includes a silhouette of a hand giving the finger.

  When Callum said we were going up for a friendly sparring match at the village, I thought maybe it would be that session Hercules mentioned of me against Evie. Or at least a friendly game, a show of strength to test our skills for ourselves, but as we walk onto the grounds, hooting and hollering comes from the sidelines. And by the look on Jacqueline’s face, there’s not going to be anything friendly about this.

  “The rules are simple. Last person standing wins for their team. And nobody shifts.”

  I knew that was coming, because the whole point of this is to test the training we’ve been doing as humans. But I still cringe a little bit because Roman and I couldn’t shift anyway.

  Callum stands in the center of our group, with Cooper and Zan flanking him. I stand next to Cooper, Roman stands on the other side of Zan. Across from us, Jacqueline stands with Hercules and the hulking twins.

  “It’s uneven.” I point out.

  “Do you want another person?” Jacqueline asks.

  “I mean it’s five of us against four of you, it’s unbalanced.”

  “We’re not worried about it if you’re not,” Jacqueline says with the sly smile.

  She lets out a sonic boom causes the earth to shake and we all lose our footing. Hercules and the twins are back up before I can even breathe. Callum is expecting it and leaps up faster, landing a fist in Jacqueline’s face. He doesn’t seem to care she’s a woman. He can’t at this moment, because she’s not going to cut any corners to spare him. Cooper reaches out and grabs both twins into a huge bear hug and throws his weight on them as he leaps to the air and pushes them down. It’s two against one but I know exactly why he’s doing it. He’ll take a beating for one purpose; because we all know who the primary target is here. It’s Jacqueline. There’s one person here who can possibly beat Jacqueline and that’s me. Cooper takes on the twins so I’m free to go after her. Zan and Roman are doubling up on Hercules. But he’s fast. He so fast it’s amazing. He can move into the trees like nobody’s business. An arrow zings through the air past Zan’s head.

  “That was a real arrow!” I shout.

  My eyes land on Lydia, but she’s smiling. Not maliciously, but challenging.

  Fine.

  If they want to use real weapons, we’ve got real weapons. I’m about to draw my blade out of my boot when I realize I’ve got something better. I can see Callum already has his blades out and he is using them to beat Jacqueline back, to find her weakness. Especially when she can’t use her earthquake power to shatter the earth and knock us over. The only good thing about the earth shake is it’s not possible for her to do it for just one of us. When there are so many of us, it inevitably hits all of us, even Jacqueline’s team. We all tumble to the ground in a brawling heap, trying to land punches and kick our opponents away.

  Roman leaps into a tree, using whatever skills he has as a frog to try to follow Hercules. He’s right on his tail and Zan scrambles in the opposite direction. They’re planning to corner him on the bridge between the two trees. But I can take them down much faster than that. I turn around and ball my hand into a fist, waiting for fire to explode, waiting for the feeling of tingling heat and the sensation of sparks to appear in my hand. I tap my fingernails against the tips of my fingers and click my nails together in the way I’ve always done, but now it creates a spark that lands in the palm of my hand. The flame grows and glows bigger and brighter in my hand until I clasp it in a ball and throw it at Hercules, saving Zan and Roman the effort of capturing him.

  I throw another at Jacqueline and it hits its mark, catching her by surprise. It bursts against her chest and the flames drop onto the bridge. She looks at me in astonishment but I already have three more fireballs in my hands. I launch them at her and they all land. All the evenings of corn hole practice are paying off.

  “Watch out!”

  A rope snaps, cracking through the air and whipping back. The bridge tilts as the rope swings free. Callum lurches to the side, gripping on the remaining strand as Jacqueline grips to the other side.

  “The bridge!” Somebody calls out, and the people nearby scuttle back
. But it’s not the bridge falling that’s their biggest problem.

  “It’s on fire!” Guinevere cries. At this, we all stop and watch as the flames leap up from the bridge and catching to the trees, and all of a sudden, the trees are on fire. The late summer heat has made them all brittle, and it only takes a second for the spark to catch and the trees are burning and sending up billowing smoke above the camp.

  People start to run and scream, moving away from the flames, which are now falling out of the sky above them. Callum swings off of the rope bridge down by my side and wraps his arm around me and starts to pull me away.

  “We can’t just leave the forest! The entire thing will burn.”

  “It’s too late,” Callum says. “It’s going to burn. Look at it.”

  “What have you done?” Jacqueline asks, landing on the ground in front of us staring angrily at me. “I thought you had it under control. You weren’t supposed to use it.”

  “You were using your powers,” I say.

  My powers don’t destroy the trees,” she says

  But she makes earthquakes, the very thing destroys the earth and the trees and everything.

  Suddenly there’s a loud whooshing sound covers through the air and I think it’s the trees catching on fire and spreading. I heard the sound before in Topanga, when the wildfire was whipped by the wind and destroyed everything in sight. But this, this isn’t quite sound. It’s something richer and deeper…

  “The river,” Zan shouts as she runs up, Roman at her heels. “What is happening to the river?”

  The water is rising up out of the river bed. I can’t believe how it flows up and up and up out of the banks. Fish and moss and branches fall from the swell. It swirls in a whirling mass, rising higher and higher until it gets to the same elevation as the fire and the wave comes rushing in, riding along the tops of the trees as if the leaves are a beach. The wave moves through it and spreads the entire distance of the fire and then it pours down. With burning ash and charred wood, the river water falls like heavy rain, dousing us as I stand there watching. It hits the ground and forms tiny rivulets and rivers rolling back to the riverbed. I raise my head up to the sky, Callum holding my hand as we let the water rain down on us.