LIAM (The Rylee Adamson Epilogues, Book 2)

by Shannon Mayer

  She was right, and I knew it, but I didn’t want to agree, not out loud. Almost as if by agreeing, I was somehow making it become a reality I did not want to see.

  Hell, I’d been a human a lot longer than I’d been a supernatural. That didn’t mean I wouldn’t help them. I understood what Rylee had meant when she said she knew something bad was coming, but it wasn’t entirely clear, and there wasn’t much we could do about it until that clarity came through. However, between her info and what I’d gotten from my contacts, I could put together a pretty good picture.

  The world was on the brink of another war. And this one would be with weapons that could wipe out the entire planet if it wasn’t stopped. There would be no reason to try to save anyone if we let this happen.

  There was an explosion and two of the jets erupted midair, leaving only a single American jet flying. Shrapnel blasted in every direction, flames shot through the clouds in bright sprays. Ophelia didn’t say a word, just climbed higher.

  Levi shook in front of me. “I’m freezing, and I can barely breathe.”

  “Don’t think about it,” I said. “You aren’t human, this won’t kill you.” I hoped. He was sucking wind hard, but he hadn’t passed out. Something he would have done had he been fully human at this height. We were way above the clouds and the air was thin.

  Ophelia kept her pace up while she spoke.

  They won’t stop until their world is dead and their species extinct.

  “Maybe that would be for the better.” The words slipped out and I shook my head, denying them right away. I knew it was a knee-jerk reaction, but I couldn’t help it. We’d saved the world, only to watch it disintegrate into a human-made war? That wasn’t going to happen. I prayed.

  If we let them fight like that, they could end up taking us with them.

  The truth in her words echoed what I’d already been thinking. So I changed the subject.

  “How long before we get to Seattle?”

  We are almost there, Liam. Where do you want me to take you?

  I checked the positioning of the sun. Two hours was all it had taken, faster even than a commercial flight. In front of me, Levi’s head was ducked and he clung to Ophelia’s spine as though he would be swept off at any moment. Here and there he shivered, but otherwise, he didn’t move. I had to give him credit, he hadn’t completely lost it, despite almost being dumped from the dragon’s back.

  Which was saying a lot considering the situation.

  I checked myself; it was time to focus. Two hours, and the plan I had was still barely sketched out. It looked like I was about to pull a Rylee and leap before I looked.

  From what Rylee said, the majority of the ogres camped out in Kerry Park, but that was a small strip of green according to Levi’s phone. The likelihood of it actually being their real haunt was small. But I wasn’t about to ask to be dropped in the middle of where their last known whereabouts was. Call it a feeling, but I doubted my sudden appearance and request for one of their females was going to go over well. Of course, it’s what Rylee would have done, fully expecting to fight her way out and win. A grin twisted my lips.

  “Let’s do a fly-over, see if we can see any ogres, or a good place to land.” She nodded and banked to the side, heading to the north.

  A few minutes passed and we slid over a small section of green. “Can you drop lower?”

  Of course.

  She spun us downward until we were only about a hundred feet above the treetops. A faint whiff of ogre musk was there and gone in a flash. I might not be able to shift into my wolf form, but my nose worked as well as it ever had, even as a human.

  “Levi, try your phone. See if it can tell us where we are.”

  Shivering, he sat up slowly and fished around in his jacket. “The screen is dark. I don’t understand, I had like eighty percent still.”

  “Supernaturals and technology don’t mix,” I muttered. “It might come on later when you are away from me and Ophelia.”

  He looked over the side of her carefully. “That’s Kerry Park.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yes, see that building there?” He pointed at a large blocky structure across from the green space, and I nodded.

  “Yeah, I see it.”

  “I remember it when I did the search for the area. That sign on top of it is hard to miss.”

  The sign in question said something along the lines of the current president was going to cause the apocalypse. Another day, another life, I would have laughed. Not so much now after all I’d seen.

  “Good job, kid,” I said. I scanned the area, seeing in the distance a glimmer of water. “Head to that lake, Ophelia.”

  You got it. That will be a good place for me to rest before I head back.

  “That little green space back there is hiding ogres?” Levi mumbled, twisting to look behind us. “That’s not possible. I mean, is it?” He looked at me, awkward with the fact that I was holding him in front of me.

  Ophelia snorted and shook her head. The world of the supernatural rarely fits into what is possible. The place may look small to you, but with the right magic, they could bend it in on itself and make it a monstrous forest you would never escape from if they chose.

  I startled, surprised. “Seriously?”

  She nodded. Yes. Be wary; if they have a mage that can do that, you will have to truly watch yourselves. As you’ve seen, ogre mages are even more vicious than the rest of their warriors. Bloodthirsty assholes, the bunch of them, if you ask me. The only good ones are those three you will raise, because I know you will show them a better path.

  There was more than a hint of rage simmering under her words; grief thick and heavy swam over the syllables, making them hard to stomach. Her loss had been as great as any of ours. Blaz had been her mate, the father of her children, and he’d fought her a long time before he let himself realize that truth. And then he’d been killed by a band of ogres.

  I put a hand to her side. “I miss him too. We all do.”

  She bobbed her head. I know. I only wish it had not ended the way it had. All dragons expect to die, but not at the hands of a creature we could snap in half with a single bite.

  I gritted my teeth as she flew lower to the lake, doing my best to fend off the emotions that flowed from Ophelia into me. By the way Levi trembled, he was getting a dose of it too.

  I’d never mentioned it to Rylee, but Ophelia’s way of speaking was very different than Blaz’s. Blaz was your typical male, straightforward and blunt.

  Ophelia’s words held emotion like a cup held water, and if you drank from it, those emotions spilled into your own mind. Maybe Rylee didn’t notice. Or maybe it was just the difference between male and female.

  The emotions eased as she focused on bringing us down. The bobbing turbulence of landing setting my teeth on edge, and my stomach rolled more than once as we bounced along. Levi gasped as we slid through the downward air currents, which shook us sideways hard, before landing on a strip of beach tucked in a tiny cove. Ophelia’s claws dug into the soft dirt, back feet and tail dipping into the water with barely a splash.

  I unwrapped my arms from the kid and jumped from Ophelia’s broad back, sliding down the left side, away from where Levi had emptied his stomach. Levi was right behind me, stumbling on wobbly legs as he hit the ground.

  She turned her head to us, big eyes blinking. She flicked her tongue out once. I will wait as long as I can. I will need an hour at least to rest before I can head home.

  I put a hand on her side. “Thank you. Hopefully we can make this happen fast.” I said the words but I think we both knew there was no way I was going to find a female ogre, convince her to come with me, and do it in an hour. Without causing any other problems along the way, at least.

  Even my luck was not that good.

  She bobbed her head, eyes clouded with concern. Rylee would not be happy if I left her mate, without even trying to wait for him. If nothing else, I will do a sweep of the city for you before I
leave.

  I laughed, then realized she was serious. “You have no faith in me?”

  As we flew I recalled that I have heard of this ogre tribe, but I assumed they would have gone in with the rest who were killed. They are . . . violent is too mild of a word. They are masochistic in the way they treat one another, and they treat outsider supernaturals as chattel and food. They are incredibly dangerous, Liam.

  “Great,” I grumbled. “Anything else?”

  She squinted her eyes in thought. They are stronger and faster than the rest of the ogres out there, which is partly why they cut themselves off from the rest of their species. They are the ultimate killers.

  I’d faced ogres before. Most were over seven feet in height and had a musculature that would rival the biggest body builders. They were fast, and they loved nothing more than a good fight.

  So if this tribe was even more dangerous . . . as Rylee would say . . . fuck me. I drew in a breath. “Numbers?”

  Many, many. I don’t know exactly, I only heard about them from those who’d passed by. But they are a big tribe from all accounts. A big mob. And if they have a mage . . . that will make your task multiply in difficulty like rabbits in the spring.

  I scrubbed a hand over the back of my neck. We were into midnight hours with maybe six more before dawn broke, and every minute that ticked by was against me. This was no time for a long goodbye.

  “Thank you, Ophelia. For everything.”

  She winked one big eye and laid her head on the sand. Be careful.

  “We will.” At least as much as we were able to in the situation.

  I sniffed the air, the smell of a multitude of animals, most not natural to the area, coursing back to me. I frowned as I plucked through the different scents. Too many animals in one place: my first thought was that it could be a holding pen for the ogres’ next meals.

  “Come on, Levi. This way,” I said.

  He shivered beside me in the dark, his eyes downcast.

  Ophelia lifted her head a few feet. One last thing. Don’t die. I don’t want to be the one to take that news to Rylee. She would never forgive me for letting you die.

  I grimaced, wondering for a moment if Ophelia felt like that toward Rylee. Like she would never really forgive her because Rylee had been with Blaz when he died. He’d been protecting her, as was his job, but he’d left behind Ophelia and unborn children. I wisely kept my thoughts to myself, though.

  Levi flinched as if she’d smacked him.

  “She doesn’t mean that, does she?” he asked, his eyes barely lifting to mine.

  I shrugged. “Death is something we deal with all the time.”

  He frowned. “No, I mean would Rylee really not forgive her?”

  I glanced at him as I walked up the beach to the tree line. “Rylee would forgive her. She has a heart that can’t hold a grudge.” But I knew what he was really worried about was if I died while with Levi, would Rylee let him come back. Levi and his sister had only been with us a few days, but I had no doubt it was the first time in their short lives they’d been safe and able to sleep at night without waiting for their door to bust open. His face was an open book: he didn’t want to lose that safe place if I didn’t make it through the ogres we were going to have to face.

  “Don’t worry about Rylee. If anything happens she won’t blame you, kid.”

  Faris was proof enough of Rylee’s ability to see all sides of the story.

  I could almost feel the vampire laughing softly and I frowned. He was gone, his soul having crossed the Veil to the other side when the sunlight burnt him out of his body.

  But . . . now and again, I could still feel Faris, almost like a ghost only I could sense. It was another thing I wasn’t prepared to talk to Rylee about. At least not yet. I wasn’t sure if it was his memories coming through the synapses of a brain we’d shared, or my imagination.

  Not your imagination, you know that, he whispered as if he stood beside me.

  I hurried through the trees, picking my way easily in the dark, ignoring his voice. My eyes adjusted, but of course—behind me Levi crashed to the ground.

  “Sorry. I can’t see,” he mumbled.

  I turned, adjusted the bag on my shoulder, and opened it. At the bottom was a small flashlight. I pulled it out, flicked it on, and pointed it at the ground. “Keep it away from my eyes and yours.”

  He took it with a nod. With him and the light behind me, the way ahead was clearer yet.

  We moved—well, not silently—but quickly through the trees. I had to give Levi credit, he didn’t complain, not even when I heard him stub his toes, or stumble into a hole he didn’t notice. He just got back up and hurried to catch up. We cut across the green space, heading west toward the scent of animals that called to the wolf in me. What the hell were those fucking ogres up to?

  I paused as the trees thinned and drew in a deep breath.

  My wolf stretched forward, identifying everything I picked up on. Every kind of mammal, birds, reptiles, the numbers were staggering. I shook my head. That wasn’t possible. I had to be getting something wrong. I hurried forward, drawn by a curiosity that detoured me from the reason we were there.

  Or perhaps the wolf in me knew something I didn’t. I was betting on my wolf. He was a tough bastard.

  A large fence grew out of the forest, wrought iron, twelve feet high, razor wire at the top. I stared at it, thinking. Was it possible that the ogres had a second compound within this green space and we’d stumbled on it?

  No, even my luck wasn’t that good. Logic kicked in and I knew exactly what we were looking at, and it wasn’t an ogre compound.

  “That looks . . . bad,” Levi said. I reached back, grabbed him around the waist by his jeans and threw him up and over the fence. He screeched in mid-air and an answering screech from a nearby aviary burst through the night like a series of gun shots.

  “Shut up,” I snapped as I climbed up the fence, pausing at the razor wire. I swung my bag first, covering the worst of the wire. Hanging by my hands, I swung my legs up and over, landing on top of my bag. From there, I leapt down on the inside of the fence line and landed inside the enclosure.

  I climbed back up the wrought iron and pulled my bag down. There was no guarantee we were coming out the way we came in.

  “Seriously, a little warning would have been nice, dude,” Levi muttered, brushing himself off.

  I shrugged. “We’re in a hurry, I didn’t need a vote to tell me what I was going to do.”

  The signage as we hurried along the path stopped him in his tracks. “If we’re in a hurry, then why are we going through a zoo?” he asked, not a drop of heat in his voice. Very unlike the other teenagers I knew. Then again, he’d had the shit beaten out of him regularly by his father. That didn’t leave much room for defiance in any soul.

  I didn’t have an answer for him, not really. Why the hell was my wolf taking me through a damn zoo? I didn’t have a clue, but it felt right. Almost as if someone called to me.

  “Turn the flashlight off,” I said.

  He did as I asked, again without question.

  I let the deeply rooted instinct in me take the lead. I followed my nose past enclosures of various kinds, some heavy with bars, others barely chicken wire, depending on the type of animal behind them. I barely saw the animals, though I could have named them by their scents. Zebra, chimpanzee, peacock, bear, and cougar. We passed the giraffes, and they blinked at us from well above our heads, their eyes following us.

  Levi kept close. “What are we doing here?”

  I answered him truthfully. “I don’t know.”

  “Great.”

  I wasn’t bothered that we were in the zoo, other than the time it was taking away from my search. But I’d learned with Rylee that there was a reason things happened, and while we were on a time crunch, something had brought us this way. The why of it was yet to be answered, but whatever it was calling to me hadn’t let up yet. I felt it like a pull through my soul, and my wolf was
n’t about to be denied. The tension grew, like elastic being pulled taut, ready to snap at any second.

  I didn’t have to wait long to see where we were being led.

  We followed the curving paved path around a sloping corner and came face to face with a large cat enclosure. There were wide flat stones in the middle of it, sand, a few scrub bushes, all made up to look like an African savannah. A slow rolling man-made river flowed around the edge of the structure, and I wondered if there was a crocodile or two floating about. For authenticity, of course.

  I drew in a deep breath, tasting for the first time a scent that was all fire, as if the sun suddenly had a scent all its own.

  Lions.

  My wolf all but nodded. I approached the enclosure, taking it in. There was a small fence hip height to keep the public at a reasonable distance. A green space of maybe ten feet, and then there was a second, taller fence easily fifteen feet high of solid steel mesh. Beyond that was the actual enclosure itself with a third fence even higher and the makeshift moat six feet across.

  It seemed overkill to me, and I wondered about the lions, why the enclosure would be set up this way.

  I slipped off my coat and handed it and the bag of weapons to Levi. “Don’t lose this. If someone comes, hide.”

  He raised an eyebrow as he took the bag, a flash of personality finally coming through the abuse. “This seems a bad time to commune with nature, if you ask me.”

  My lips twitched. “Thanks, I’ll take it into consideration.”

  Although, I asked myself the same question. What the hell was I doing? I was here in Seattle and my first task was to find a female ogre, not go to the zoo to check out the lions.

  But that pull was still there, and my wolf all but shoved me forward. Whatever was going on, I needed to get in that lions’ pen.

  Stupid, a part of my head warned me. Very stupid.

  I ignored it, and hopped over the first fence. I strode across the green space, noting there were tiny depressions in the ground. Sensors of some sort? I bent and brushed a finger over one. It was a sensor with a red light that went out when I touched it. So I could short-circuit whatever it was. Was that good or not?