by J. C. Diem
The backdrop shimmered and changed before my eyes. Small black circles opened in the ground and imps clawed their way free. Zombies rose and lurched into motion. They pressed up against the canvas until it tore. Squirming through the opening, they spilled onto the stage. Red eyes blazed from the hell spawn and the undead moaned in hunger as they lurched towards me.
I backed away until my heels teetered on the edge of nothingness. Far in the distance, something roared. I caught a glimpse of a monstrous shape rising high above the buildings. Huge wings unfurled then the vision was cut off as I was swarmed by hell spawn and zombies. Teeth bit into my throat and I fell backwards off the stage into nothingness.
Snapping awake, my heart thudded hard and was lodged somewhere near my throat. My hand went to my neck, but it was unmarked. The dream had seemed very real, but it had just been a figment of my imagination. My subconscious was telling me that it was sick of me being used as a plaything. Someone had to take a stand against Kurt Jorgen and I’d been thrust into the job. If I’d been given a choice, I wasn’t sure I would have accepted this burden. Even my own mind was telling me that I would fail.
The bed beside me was empty, but I felt Reece’s concern. He still didn’t know about the puppet show. As far as I knew, I was the only one who had ever read about it. The journal entry had disappeared as soon as I’d finished reading it. I wasn’t even sure if it had even been real, or if the half-faery had created it to mess with me. Real or not, I’d just dreamt that I had been part of the show.
Sensing that Reece was about to head upstairs to check on me, I put him at ease. I’m fine. I just had a bad dream. Picking up that I didn’t want to talk about it, he didn’t press me for the details or try to pry them from my mind. This was something I preferred the others not to find out about. They were already under enough pressure and I didn’t want to add to it.
I have coffee waiting for you, he said.
You’re a god. My gratitude wasn’t at all feigned. He knew me so well that he could anticipate my needs.
He sent me a mental smile. I’m hardly a god, but I’ll take the compliment. You’d better get down here before Kala steals it. She’s eyeing it off right now.
That sent me scrambling for the bathroom. After a lightning quick shower, I hurriedly brushed my hair. My reflection was wan and faded, but I could see myself well enough. I tried to smooth out my frown so the others wouldn’t see the depth of my worry.
Dressing in fresh cargo pants and a white tank top, I left my room. I passed Mark on the way to the stairs. He looked a little weary and I suspected that he hadn’t gone to bed at all. He had taken the time to shower and change into a new suit.
I reached the dining table just as Kala was making a grab for my coffee. “That’s mine,” I said and smacked her hand away.
“Ow!” She yanked her hand away and rubbed it, glaring at me reprovingly. I’d hit her a bit harder than I’d intended, but I hadn’t heard any bones break. “Didn’t your Dad ever teach you to share?” she said grumpily.
Sitting in Mark’s usual seat, my father winked at her. “Not when it comes to coffee. I pity the person who stands in Lexi’s way when caffeine is involved.”
“I’ll try to remember that.” Kala’s smile was nothing short of predatory and she batted her eyelashes at him. I elbowed her in the side. “What?” she said in bewilderment.
“You know what,” I replied in a low voice. “Remember your promise.”
“You mean I can’t even be nice to him?” she asked with heavy sarcasm.
“That wasn’t being nice. That was flirting.”
Scowling, she shoveled food into her mouth. My plate was piled almost as high as hers, courtesy of Reece. He and Flynn were trying hard to keep their expressions neutral, but they were both amused. Sabine knew what was going on, even if my father had no idea. Ava wasn’t paying any attention to us. Her gaze kept straying up to the coms room where she could see Mark through the windows.
My appetite wasn’t as strong now that I was a hybrid, but I still needed fuel. I worked my way through a mound of toast, bacon and eggs. I was drinking my second cup of coffee when Mark knocked on the window to get our attention. He crooked his finger and we scrambled for the stairs.
“Kurt has stepped up his attacks,” he said grimly. “I heard from my contacts a couple of minutes ago and the reports have just been televised.” Three different towns were currently under siege on the monitors. The attacks were being filmed from a distance and the quality was poor. It wasn’t easy to make out what was going on.
Ava leaned in close to Mark to view the screen. “It appears that birds have now been called into battle,” she noted. Even with the grainy footage, we could all see the birds swooping down to attack people.
“So it would seem,” he said. He cut a look at her and his eyes lingered on her face. Kala sent me a knowing look. Mark might be upset with Ava for lying to him, but he couldn’t hide his reaction to her nearness.
“The videos are too grainy to make out much,” my father said. “We need to take a closer look to see exactly what we’re dealing with. Do you know where these towns are?”
Mark brought up a map on screen. A quick search revealed that all of the towns were close to Wardel and the second town that had been decimated by zombies last night. There were no corpses in sight now that it was daylight. The undead had gone underground and would only emerge once night fell again.
“Can we send in a drone to see if Jorgen is nearby, watching the carnage?” Kala asked.
“I have a better idea,” I replied. “What can fly really fast and has the best eyesight of any creature on the planet, except maybe for us?”
Flynn smiled when he realized what I was talking about. “Eagles?”
“Bingo.”
“You want to bring the Oracle and her pet eagle here?” Mark asked. “Are you sure she’ll even agree to help us?”
“I’m not going to give her a choice. Like you said, we need all the help we can get, even if it means I have to force her to help me.” I knew I could control other shifters and I’d do whatever was necessary to find our foe. I’d just have to be careful not to let the eagle be taken over by the newest golem that Kurt had created. The oracle wouldn’t be very cooperative if her pet was subverted to the enemy’s cause.
“Go ahead,” Mark agreed. “There’s no harm in trying.”
“I’ll drop you guys off in Wardel then I’ll head to Texas to have a chat with her.”
We’d all taken the time to cram our backpacks with spare clothing, weapons and ammo. We grabbed our belongings from our rooms then gathered outside. Zeus materialized beside me. He’d kept watch over our compound all night, but didn’t have anything to report.
We moved into a huddle and sank into the ground. We emerged in the park to the east of Wardel. As we’d seen on the monitors, the corpses were gone. The carrion birds had dispersed now that they no longer had anything to eat. They’d probably been called to battle by the newest golem that we hadn’t seen yet. I wracked my brain for the type of mythical creature that might be able to control birds and came up blank.
“Hurry back,” Reece said to me and squeezed my hand.
“The curse of Lexi is bound to strike if you’re alone for more than a couple of minutes,” Flynn warned me with a faint grin.
“What is the curse of Lexi?” my father asked in puzzlement. He wasn’t sure whether to be amused or disturbed.
“We’ll explain as soon as she’s gone,” Kala said then turned to me with a smirk. “Don’t worry, I’ll take good care of your Dad for you.” She said it too quietly for him to be able to hear her.
Narrowing my eyes in warning, I realized that to retaliate would be childish and a waste of time. She loved to tease and she was very good at it. Being the only female on the Track and Kill Squad until I’d arrived, she’d had a lot of practice at annoying the guys.
Stepping away so I didn’t accidentally take anyone with me, I pictured the place in Texas
where the oracle lived and sank into the ground. A moment later, I popped up inside a cave. Nothing had changed since I’d been here last. A cauldron sat above a fire in the center of the cave with some kind of stew simmering inside. Natural rock shelves lined the walls on both sides. Clothing and various kitchen utensils were lined up neatly on the lowest shelf. Several nests had been built on the highest shelves. A pile of animal skins and furs at the back of the cavern acted as the oracle’s bed. Bird droppings were everywhere and the smell was strong enough to clog my sinuses.
Sensing my presence, the werebird whirled around to face me. Her eyes had been destroyed long ago and her long, scraggly gray hair hid her empty eye sockets. She was clad in scraps of animal skins that had been badly stitched together. The frantic flapping of wings came from behind me and her eagle swept into the cave to land on her shoulder.
The oracle had learned to see through birds the same way I could see through dogs. The eagle cocked its head as she used it to view me. “So,” she said craftily. “The doomed werewolf returns. The vampirism in your veins should have killed you by now. How is it that you are still alive?”
“I was able to assimilate the vampirism. I’m now a cross between a werewolf and a vampire.”
My answer stunned her speechless. “That isn’t possible. Shifters can’t become vampires.”
“I’m the first known hybrid,” I said with a shrug. I wasn’t about to explain that I was partially undead, had a faded reflection and could interact with ghosts.
“What do you want?” she asked in a suspicious tone, sensing that I wasn’t here just to be sociable.
“I need to borrow you and your ability to see through the eyes of your eagle.”
Her expression turned sly. “Even if that were possible, why should I help you? What’s in it for me?”
“You might not be aware of it, since you don’t have a TV, but humanity is under attack. A half-faery has a vendetta against mankind. He’s created stone golems that can control animals and arachnids. He’s used them to destroy the populations of several towns so far. He also has a necromancer on his payroll. A bunch of zombies killed everyone in a small town last night.”
She waved my words away as if they were of no consequence. “What do I care if every man, woman and child on this planet are destroyed? They mean nothing to me.”
“He’s created a new type of golem that can control birds. Hundreds of them die each time they’re sent in to attack a town.” We hadn’t gotten a clear enough picture to see if this was true or not, but at least some of the birds would have died during the invasion.
As I’d hoped, that got through to her stony heart and her lips drew back from her teeth in a momentary snarl of anger. “How exactly do you intend to borrow my talent?”
“I’m not just an alpha werewolf, I can control other shifters as well,” I explained.
Her scent grew skeptical. “You expect me to let you control me?”
She didn’t realize that I didn’t need her permission. I was asking her just to be polite. “I won’t need to control your thoughts or actions. I’ll just be taking over the part of your brain that you use to see through your eagle.”
“Fine,” she said with a shrug of her bony shoulders. “Go ahead and try.” Her scent remained skeptical. Clearly, she thought I was nuts.
Normally, I looked into the eyes of my victims to bamboozle them. That wasn’t going to be possible in this instance. Instead, I crossed to the eagle. It watched me warily as I stared into its eyes. After a few moments, I sensed the oracle’s mind through the bird and latched onto it. Finding the part of the oracle’s brain that I needed, I looked through the eagle to see my own face in startling detail. Now that all three of us were linked, I knew that the bird was female.
“Now what?” the oracle asked sourly when she realized that my desperate plan had worked.
“Now we join the rest of my team,” I said. I didn’t explain how I was going to do this because I doubted she’d believe me. “Close your eyes and keep your mouths shut,” I warned them. The bird closed her eyes, but the oracle didn’t have any eyes to close. Her mouth snapped shut and pressed into a grim line. We sank into the ground and they barely had time to become startled before we reappeared in Wardel.
When the eagle opened her eyes, the oracle shuddered. “Ugh, I can feel your death magic crawling all over me!” The bird glared at me and ruffled her feathers indignantly. “Do what you need to do so I can go back to my cave again. The sooner we get this done, the happier I’ll be.”
She was sadly mistaken if she thought I was just going to use her talents once and then let her go. Like it or not, she was now part of our team until I had no further use of her. She had become a soldier in my strange and miniscule army.
Under my direction, the eagle launched herself into the air and I herded her towards the neighboring towns. She soared high overhead, easily making out the figures below. Reece looked through me as the bird watched a town being destroyed. He relayed what we were seeing to the others.
In the first town, the hydra and the Cerberus were working together. They smashed open doors or windows and sent their minions into buildings to drive humans out into the open. Scores of bodies already lay in the streets. They’d either been bitten to death by snakes and other reptiles or they’d been mauled by dogs. The domestic pets had turned against their owners and had gone feral beneath the control of the stone golem.
The eagle moved on to the next town and we saw the same destruction in progress. Beneath the spell of the chimera, every cat in town had turned on their owners. Yowls and screeches sent an instinctive shiver of terror through the eagle. She watched the small, yet vicious animals biting and scratching the humans. I had to take a firm hold on her mind so she didn’t try to flee. A few bigger cats had been called into the battle. Several cougars were hunting alongside their much smaller brethren.
This time, the chimera had teamed up with a new type of golem. It was another creature of myth with the head of a bull and the body of a man. Its muscular legs ended in hooves.
“It’s a minotaur,” Mark said after Reece described what we were seeing to the others.
With the addition of the minotaur, new animals had been called to the fight. A herd of cows and bulls was running rampant through the streets. The damage that just one bovine animal could cause was astounding. A large bull was thundering towards a group of fleeing humans. His horns dripped blood and a scrap of fabric was caught on one tip. He ran them down, goring and trampling them to death before galloping towards another group of desperate people.
Winging away from the scene, the eagle flew to the third and final town that was under attack. We saw the spider golem and a bird-like thing that had the body of a horse and the head and wings of an eagle.
“It sounds like a griffin,” Mark said. The oracle cursed beneath her breath as Reece described the thousands of birds that were pecking people to death. Instead of eating the spiders, they were assisting them to destroy the humans. The oracle saw it all clearly through her eagle and her grief was palpable. She might not care about humans, but she hated to see birds being used to kill them.
A lone figure standing on the highest building in town caught the eagle’s attention. She moved in closer and focused on the short, bald man in a rumpled black suit. “I see Kurt,” I said. “He’s standing on a building, watching the destruction.”
“This is exactly what I was hoping for,” Mark said. “We need to get there asap before he disappears.” Jorgen’s ability to teleport was going to make it difficult for us to catch him.
“If it was the full moon, I could transform into an eagle and carry you there,” the oracle said. “That is if we weren’t compelled to fight to the death the moment we both shifted.” Shifters instinctively battled to the death when they came up against a different species, or even a rival pack. If we’d truly been created by the God of Mischief, then he’d done a very good job of instilling chaos into us.
Flyi
ng would be the quickest way to reach Jorgen, since I couldn’t transport myself there with my death magic this time. “That is an excellent idea,” I said. Finished with her reconnaissance, the eagle flew back towards us.
Reece understood my intention and took me by the shoulders. “We don’t know what the faery is capable of,” he warned me. “It’s too dangerous for you to go there alone.”
“I’m supposed to be the chosen one,” I pointed out. “I’ll have to face Jorgen sooner or later. I’d rather get this confrontation over with now. The longer I leave it, the more humans will end up dying.”
He conceded my point, but he wasn’t happy about being separated from me. “Watch your back,” he said.
“Always.” I pulled him in for a kiss. Kala made quiet gagging sounds until Flynn elbowed her in the side.
My father walked over and put his arms around me. “Be careful, sweetheart. Kala told me all about the curse of Lexi.” I caught a hint of laughter in his tone, but his worry was stronger. “Try to make sure nothing horrible happens to you.” He kissed the top of my head and I shot a glare at Kala. It was embarrassing how many times something weird or awful happened to me when I was alone. I hadn’t planned on telling him about the curse, mainly because I didn’t want him to worry about me.
I received a hug from everyone and Mark pulled me aside last. “You have to be very careful, Lexi. Kurt has apparently been feeding off supernatural creatures for the past four hundred years. There’s no way to know how powerful he has become. If he is willing to relinquish part of his own soul to create golems, there’s no telling what lengths he’ll take to win this war.” He hugged me hard then stepped back.
“Am I the only one who realizes it isn’t the full moon?” the oracle said in a puzzled tone.
“It doesn’t have to be,” I told her. “Being a hybrid means I can change at will now.”
“I’m very happy for you,” she said sarcastically. “Unfortunately, I’m just a normal shifter and I don’t have that ability.”
