by April White
Waging War
Book Four
The Immortal Descendants
April White
Copyright by April White, 2016
Published by Corazon Entertainment at Smashwords
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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War is being waged against the Descendants and Saira Elian is desperate to stop the Mongers’ savage bid for power …
Saira’s search for kidnapped mixed-bloods draws her into the Mongers’ stronghold, revealing the horrible truth behind the irresistible Monger ring and the vile plan to cleanse Family bloodlines … permanently.
Under threat of a brutal massacre, Saira and Ringo travel back to Bletchley Park during World War II where they team up with Archer from the past to crack a Nazi code and expose a Monger intent on changing the course of history. They join forces with a female commando from the French resistance to hunt down an elite unit of Monger soldiers - Hitler’s Werewolves - before the terror squad can strike a fatal blow at the heart of the Allied war effort.
Their manhunt drags Saira, Archer, and Ringo into the London Underground on the eve of a Nazi bombing raid where they come face-to-face with a Monger assassin on a suicide mission. With the lives of all mixed-bloods in peril, Saira must make a sacrifice that even Time may never forgive.
“Have you ever asked yourself, do monsters make war, or does war make monsters?”
– Laini Taylor, Daughter of Smoke and Bone
Shifter Training
A twig snapped behind me, and I caught the faint trace of Connor’s Wolf.
I’d been studying up on Shifters, and animal facts scrolled through my brain. Wolf. Carnivorous predator. Average travel speed – five miles an hour. At full sprint – thirty-eight miles an hour. Average number of teeth – forty-two. Strategic scent-trackers that hunt in packs.
Connor’s Shifter Wolf was alone though, and if I stayed ahead of his forty-two teeth, he and I would have a better chance of remaining on speaking terms.
I was free-running in the forest outside the boundaries of Elian Manor, where there were more hiding places and better escape routes for the keep-away portion of this game. But there was the small matter of forty-two Wolf teeth somewhere in the undergrowth behind me.
Also, the Wolf and I weren’t the only players in this game of get-back-to-Elian-Manor-unscathed, and if I left the woods, I might as well paint a target on my back. My camouflaging abilities would be totally useless in the manicured fields and wide open spaces immediately surrounding Elian Manor.
I caught wind of him again, which was odd, because wolves hunt downwind from their prey. Connor’s Wolf was deliberately revealing himself. He kept pace behind me, but stayed back out of sight. I’d need a better plan when the woods thinned out near the old apple orchard, but for now, keeping myself out of reach of his Wolfy grin was the best one I had.
He howled suddenly, and I felt the Cat rise up inside me as if she’d been woken from hibernation by the sound. I pushed her back down the only way I knew how – by mental chat. No! I decide when to Shift, not you. In England, “mental” was another word for “crazy,” and talking to the feline Shifter part of oneself was pretty mental.
Cat grumbled at me. I can take down the Wolf.
We are not taking down Wolves today. I said, as if taking down wolves was ever on a list of things to do in a day.
She huffed. It’s a dog.
It’s an Alpha, and he’s my friend, so sheathe your claws. I attempted to convince myself it was only a little weird to argue with a Cougar alter-ego.
Go ahead, fight me, she smirked. You’ll be defenseless, and when you need me, you’ll have to beg me to come.
Gah! It was a lot weird.
Another twig snapped, then a deep grunt. And suddenly a massive, dark figure loomed up ahead near the edge of the woods. My courage shredded and I almost stopped in my tracks, but fortunately I had a razor-sharp sense of self-preservation that overrode the pants-wetting instinct a Bear usually inspired.
Bear. A solitary omnivore. Able to scent food up to eighteen miles away, with a sense of smell seven times better than a bloodhound. One swipe of a paw could disembowel or decapitate a man. Top speed – thirty-four miles an hour.
I couldn’t outrun Mr. Shaw’s Bear in human form.
The Shifter bone was around my neck, tucked down in my t-shirt. I was only half-Shifter, so I needed the Family artifact to unleash my Cougar. It was on a long leather thong, and the ancient bone itself felt alive against my skin.
I shuddered. If I decided to do it, the Shift itself would be intense and glorious, like scratching chicken pox with a wire brush. It was the inevitable post-Shift internal battle with my Cat that I dreaded.
So instead of Shifting, I changed direction and headed for the stone wall that separated the apple orchard from the rest of the fields.
The Bear followed at an easy lope, and when I leapt to the top of the wall, he swerved around to the orchard side. It was a bold move designed to trap me between the orchard and the woods, or to put it in real terms, to trap me on top of a six-foot-high stone wall between forty-two teeth and a decapitating paw. So I had that going for me.
The wall was only about fifty feet long, and ended in a laurel hedgerow that stood taller than my head. Shaw’s Bear had outpaced me and was now at full height on the right side of the wall, about ten feet in front of me. A standing bear was a curious bear, and I’d know he was aggressive if he tensed and dropped to all fours. My legs locked up and I practically skidded to a halt.
“Whoa, Bear,” I whispered, frozen in place. From the top of the wall I scanned the woods again, hoping some new escape option would suddenly reach out and embrace me. I almost jumped down to take my chances in the forest, until Connor’s Wolf stepped out from between the trees and howled a bone-chilling call of the wild.
And then Shaw’s Bear dropped down with a deafening roar full of a challenge my Cougar couldn’t ignore. I knew I was screwed even as I tried to rip my t-shirt over my head. There was a Wolf on one side of me and a Bear on the other, and they’d both just called my Cat to defend herself.
And she answered.
I was going to miss that t-shirt.
I hadn’t been fast enough to control the Shift, and now I was mad - at the Wolf and Bear for provoking my Shift, and at my Cat for disintegrating my clothes. The jeans and boots had been old and could be replaced, but I probably wouldn’t be going back to San Pedro Muffler for another shirt any time soon.
The Wolf exploded forward, and my Cat’s first instinct was to leap off the wall and fight. NO! I yelled at her in my mind. I’m still the boss of you. I yanked her around and we took off across the top of the wall at a full sprint.
I was effectively pinned in place on the narrow strip of stone that divided the woods from the orchard. If the Bear stayed low, I might have a chance to get past him. If he stood up again, I was going to have to leap off the wall into the Wolf’s territory. It didn’t matter that this was a training game. In our Shifter Animal forms it was real, and it could be deadly.
It’s only one Wolf. We could hide in the woods. Cat was pushing her will forward. She wanted to leap off and fight, but I wasn’t going to cave on that, so she was trying to appeal to my basic instincts for survival.
I know we could, but that’s not the game.
There was an edge of fear in
her thoughts. Too close to the Bear.
I wrestled control from Cat as she tried to hurl us off the wall. He’ll let us pass.
He could swat us off this wall like rodents.
He won’t. He’s testing my fear. The instant I thought it, I felt my control over my Cat slip into something calm and confident, and Cat’s nervous anxiety seemed to melt away.
The Wolf was closing in from my right side, but the Bear stayed on all fours as I passed above him. The Bear began to run alongside me, easily keeping up as I sprinted across the top of the wall – the wall that was going to end in twenty feet at the hedgerow.
How are our jumping skills? I asked Cat. She huffed again, clearly insulted, and I laughed. Confidence was overriding fear for both of us. There were two big ash trees on the wild side of the wall, within jumping distance of the hedgerow. If I could get to them, I could climb up to clear the hedgerow, and no animal would be able to catch me. But the trees were outside my human leaping range so I couldn’t rely on my own experience; I had to trust my Cat. I was glad to feel her understand what I wanted and add her burst of speed to my own.
The Bear was running full-out, but my Cougar could sustain a sprint longer than he could, and I sensed he was near his limit. The Wolf could still outrun me, but he seemed to hold back just a little to see my plan. Good. I needed any extra seconds I could get.
The Wolf finally figured it out when I didn’t slow at the end of the wall, but even his thirty-eight miles an hour wouldn’t matter now if I caught the biggest branch right. No matter how fast Connor’s Wolf was, he couldn’t climb.
The Bear roared as I bunched my muscles and leapt. I was at full speed, and I would have to dig in when I hit the branch so momentum didn’t carry me right off the tree. I landed perfectly and my claws bit into the bark. It hurt, but not as much as falling would have, and I changed trajectory up toward the higher branches.
The Bear was now trapped on his side of the wall, and the Wolf would have to go around another stone barrier to get me when I made it over the hedgerow. The Bear roared again, on principle maybe, and the Wolf added a short bark to the noise. I reached the height I needed to clear the laurels, and I allowed my Cat a moment to savor the view. I’d be able to make it back to Elian Manor before either of them could catch me now, and if I’d been in my human form, I wouldn’t have been able to resist the “na, na, na-na, na” that sang in my head. Yeah, I was mature like that.
It was a good jump, I told my Cat.
She preened. It was a great one.
They can’t catch us now. We won. I tried to keep the smugness out of my own mental voice, but winning a game of ditch against a Bear and a Wolf was pretty cool.
I coiled my Cat’s muscles to leap over the hedgerow and down to the field. Cat was dominant and bossy, and yet I hadn’t let her take over. I was the one in control, and a surge of strength made the leap from the tree almost as spectacular as the one that got us there.
Right up until the moment a Falcon attached itself to my back on my way down.
My Cat roared and tried to spin in mid-air. The Falcon screeched, dug it’s talons into my fur, and hung on. NO! I yelled at her, as she pulled her legs in to roll and crush the Falcon. Don’t hurt him!
I wrestled with her to keep control, and I stuck my landing.
So did Logan’s Falcon.
Get it off! Cat was shaking with fury and she tried to turn her head to snap at the predatory bird. I clenched every muscle we had and fought her command. The Falcon’s talons were tangled in my fur, and I could feel their pinch, but they hadn’t actually broken the skin, so my own fighting instinct was starting to calm.
And then I began to laugh.
I laughed, and I ran, and the Falcon hunkered down on my back to keep his balance. I could picture him up there, riding my Cat like a windsurfer, and I laughed harder.
It’s not funny. He caught us in mid-air like a flying squirrel. She was still mad, but my laughter was infectious and her tone was starting to lighten.
Let’s make him earn the win, shall we? I could sense her immediate agreement, and our stride lengthened. I’d never run so fast, and the Falcon struggled to hold on. Finally, even my Cat began to have fun as we sped across the field back to Elian Manor.
Conditions
Liz Edwards hadn’t batted an eyelash when her younger son came into their garage flat riding the back of a Cougar like a skateboard. He flew into the rafters, Shifted into a Spider Monkey, and scolded me with chatter before he sped off to throw on a pair of shorts. A phone call to the main house and a cup of tea later, my mom arrived with my clothes to find me sitting with Liz in her kitchen, wrapped in her bathrobe, recounting the day.
When I was back in my uniform of jeans and a stormtrooper sugar skull t-shirt, I joined my mom and Liz in the kitchen. Claire Elian and Liz Edwards had become friends while Connor and I had Clocked around medieval France trying to repair time with Archer and Ringo, and it was always an honor when they included me in their conversations like an equal.
“As far as I know, Jane Simpson is planning to open St. Brigid’s for start of term as usual,” my mom said.
“But so many Families have withdrawn their children. There won’t be anyone left to teach, apart from my mangy lads,” answered Liz with a head-toss toward Logan, who followed me in wearing his human skin and a pair of shorts.
“Connor’s the mangy one,” he said absently as he ducked out of range of his mother’s intended hair-ruffling, and reached for a slice of cake she had just cut. She smacked his hand away without even looking.
He turned to me with a cheeky grin. “Had to try.”
I shrugged. “Naturally.”
Once the cake was plated, Liz slid it across the counter to him and shot him a teasing glare. “You can do better.”
“Thank you, Mum,” Logan said with a formal, mannered voice, then popped a piece of cake in his mouth with his fingers when his mother’s back was turned. He retreated to the table and began flipping through a book of endangered animals while the moms continued their previous conversation.
“The drop in enrollment at St. Brigid’s is due to fear of Monger reprisals against anyone who dares stand up to them in the Council. It scared a lot of people when they took Bob right out of his office,” my mom said.
“What about the mixed-bloods they’ve kidnapped?” I asked. “What’s the Council going to do about finding them?”
My mom shook her head. “Unfortunately, the Council’s problem is that they very likely are mixed-bloods.”
I stared at her, shocked she could even think that. “Mom!”
“Not because of the moratorium, don’t be ridiculous, Saira. You know where I stand on the subject, and obviously the Seers are with us.” The Seer Head was Camille Arman, the formidably stylish and powerful mother of my friends, Adam and Ava.
“What about the Shifters?”
My mom gave a wry smile. “The MacKenzie is a bull-headed stick-in-the-mud who refuses to stand with anyone on any issue brought before the Council. If he can abstain, he does.”
Liz spoke quietly. “I assume it goes without saying that Rothchild and the Mongers are holding firm in their stand for the old laws?”
“What old laws?” Logan asked from the table.
I appreciated that Liz didn’t even hesitate before she gave him an honest answer. It said a lot about how much she trusted her kids. “There are old Descendant laws that don’t allow mixing Family lines. The laws assert that mixed-blooded Descendants are abominations because of the unpredictability of their skills.”
“That is such a weak argument,” I said, annoyed. “We’re all unpredictable in our skills. I mean, look at Millicent – a full-blooded Clocker who can’t Clock.”
Logan rolled his eyes. “And don’t even get me started on that Edwards kid who can Shift into any animal he wants.” He was talking about himself, of course, as if the grin on his face didn’t give it away.
Liz laughed. “Definitely don’t
get me started on that kid.”
My mom redirected us back to the conversation. “The problem the Council has with the missing mixed-bloods is that because of the moratorium, their Families have never officially claimed them as Immortal Descendants. Without that designation, the Council has no jurisdiction or power to force their return.”
Liz added, “We don’t even know why the mixed-bloods were targeted, and we certainly can’t confirm it was Mongers who took them.”
“Of course it was Mongers,” I said in disgust. “It’s always Mongers.”
“Careful, Saira,” my mom cautioned. “No one is all good or all bad.”
I snorted. “Seth Walters is all bad. Bishop Wilder was all bad. Jack the Ripper, definitely all bad. And guess what Family they all came from? Oh, that’s right … Mongers.” I snorted, and Logan giggled at the sound.
My mom sighed in the way moms do when they’re too tired to argue. “My point is that the Council’s hands are tied on the issue of the mixed-blood kidnappings. If families were willing to come forward to us, or if something definitely tied the Mongers to the disappearances, then we could step in. Otherwise, there’s nothing we can officially do.”
“Do any of the Seers have information about the missing people?” Liz asked.
“If there have been any visions about them, I’m not aware of it. The Armans have just returned from France, and in fact they’ve invited us to tea tomorrow, so we can ask them,” said my mom.
Connor loped into the room wearing jeans and a Tardis and Link t-shirt. “The Seers should know something. There’s at least one Seer among the missing people,” he said.
“How do you know that?” I asked.
“You remember the last person we heard had disappeared – a guy called Tam that Olivia knew? Well, I saw your very small Pict friend the other day when she came to visit her aunt Sanda, and we talked about Tam. He’s part Seer, apparently, and he was with some friends of Olivia’s the day he was taken. But these friends, a brother and a sister, lied to the police about being there when it happened, and they won’t tell anyone what they know.”
