Iron Master: Shifters Unbound, Book 12

by Ashley Jennifer

  Peigi gave Shane a grateful nod. She walked past Graham, avoiding his stare, grabbed a jacket, and headed out the patio door. It was cold, yes, but not too bad with her sweatpants and coat. They couldn’t talk anywhere in the house, because the cubs would hear, and Peigi didn’t want them afraid while she figured out what was going on.

  Graham understood, but he grumbled as they walked to the middle of the field that backed the houses on this street.

  “Okay, let’s talk. Make it fast. I’m freezing my balls off.”

  “It isn’t that cold.” Peigi faced him but let her eyes rest on his cheekbone. If a Shifter gazed directly at Graham he might take it as a challenge. “Alaska is cold. The Arctic is cold. This is the Mojave desert.”

  “And you’re a bear with a thick hide. I’m a sensitive little wolf.”

  “Sure you are.” Peigi let herself smile. “I bet it was chilly when you lived in Elko.”

  “Damned chilly.” Graham folded his thick arms over his chest. “We’ve established the weather, so what do you want? And where is Reid?”

  The best way to face Graham, Peigi had learned, was to answer back and ignore his abruptness. He was brusque and didn’t soften himself for anyone but his mate and cubs, though Peigi understood that his fierceness had kept an entire Shiftertown of nearly wild Shifters in line in the middle of nowhere Nevada.

  “I have no idea where he is. Let me tell you what happened.”

  Peigi described her midnight meeting with Stuart at the edge of Shiftertown and her suggestion that they ask Graham and Eric about the ley line.

  “We buried it,” Graham said quickly, a flicker of unease in his gray eyes. “Blew the basements and buried the thing so no more Fae could ride in and say howdy, not to mention enslave us.”

  “I know, but Stuart says the ley line is still there. Whoever was trying to talk to him last night must have used it, right? Stuart might be with them, or somewhere along the line, or …”

  “Or on top of Mount Charleston.” Graham scowled. “The man can go anywhere. Maybe he’s in Hawaii. It’s nice there this time of year.”

  Peigi balled her hands. “Please, can you—”

  “Unbury the ley line?” Graham shuddered. “No can do, Pegs.”

  “Well, do something. Stuart might be in trouble. I got a very bad feeling last night, like the air itself was hostile.”

  At least Graham didn’t dismiss her out of hand. Shifters had terrific senses that went beyond the five—they could instinctively tell when something was very wrong, and Peigi, with her traumatic history, had those instincts honed like razors.

  “I get it.” Graham softened his tone. “But I can’t dig up Shiftertown because Reid decided to pop out and grab more bacon from the nearest convenience store. And let’s face it, I can’t disrupt my Lupines at all for him, because …” He coughed, flushing. “He’s not Shifter.”

  “Seriously?” Peigi’s anger flared, bolstered by worry. “After all he’s done for you?”

  “I know he has. But my wolves, Peigi …” Graham shook his head. “They are stubborn, superstitious shitheads. They don’t like Fae, any Fae, even kindhearted dokk alfars who hate the high Fae as much as we do. I can’t do it until I have more evidence he’s in trouble.”

  Peigi didn’t need evidence. She knew.

  Only one thing to do. “All right,” she said.

  Graham blinked at her, surprised she’d given in so fast. “Well, okay, then,” he said uncertainly.

  “I’ll just have to go over your head.”

  His scowl returned. “Don’t think so. I have free rein over my Lupines, and this is a problem for my Shifters. Eric doesn’t have jurisdiction. Even he’ll tell you that.”

  “I wasn’t talking about Eric.” Peigi made herself meet Graham’s eyes, if only briefly. “I mean Misty.”

  Graham stilled, the look on his face priceless. If only Peigi had a camera—she’d be posting that photo on the Shifter network. Hashtag, Graham shits himself.

  His flush deepened. “That’s just playing dirty.”

  Misty was Graham’s mate. She was human, cute, soft, adorable, and had Graham completely wrapped around her fingers. The big man had a warm heart deep, deep down inside him, and Misty knew exactly how to reach it.

  “I’m worried about Stuart,” Peigi said. “He didn’t simply disappear for no reason. What if someone abducted him?”

  “Teleported him, you mean? Does that work?”

  “How should I know?” Peigi asked in exasperation. “But he mentioned the ley line as though it was key. So we need to find it.”

  Graham heaved a long and aggrieved sigh. “All right, all right.” He held up his hands in surrender. “We’ll have to talk to Eric about it, and my Shifters. That’s how it has to be. But don’t, don’t, for the love of the Goddess run to Misty and spill your story. She’ll be all up in my face, and damn, can she yell at me.”

  * * *

  Stuart didn’t like darkness. The Shifters thought he did, since he was a “dark” Fae, but that was just a literal but not quite accurate translation of dokk alfar. He didn’t like this kind of darkness anyway, one that sucked out even the memory of light. A nice cave for a little spelunking was fine, but this place was dank and smelly and held the weight of ages.

  “You couldn’t talk to me at a coffee shop?” he called out. “Las Vegas has some good ones. I could be sucking down a triple espresso instead of standing in the dark.”

  We need you.

  The disembodied voice was creepiest of all. Reid knew it was a struggle to communicate across the worlds, which distorted sound waves or thought waves, or whatever. The ley lines marked where the folds in reality were weakest, but the lines weren’t open gates one could run through any time, thank the Goddess. One needed a talisman, or a spell, or a ritual that often involved blood and violence.

  “What do you need me for?” Reid snapped. “I’m done saving your asses. It got me exiled into the human world and made me into a bad person. Now that I’ve got my head out of my butt and have a chance to be happy, you want me to come back? What the hell?”

  They will destroy us all.

  “The hoch alfar? Of course they will. What do you expect—they’ll give us a party? They’re always trying to kill off dokk alfar. It’s why they get up in the morning.”

  Silence. Reid had no idea which dokk alfar sat on the other end of the ley line, trying to get his attention, and only knew he was dokk alfar because he spoke that language. No hoch alfar would soil his tongue with it.

  Stuart didn’t know where he was. One minute, he’d been cooking eggs for the cubs and Peigi, the next, he’d had the compulsion to teleport. Here.

  He couldn’t teleport into a place he hadn’t checked out himself, so reason dictated he actually had been there before. His brain had to know where to go. Not a vague, Let’s go to Tahiti! He’d have to buy a ticket and fly out to suss the place first—teleporting didn’t necessarily save on airfare. Also, Reid couldn’t go very far in one burst. Tahiti from Las Vegas was out.

  The whisper sang again, the musical language of the dokk alfar. We need the Iron Master. They have stolen the karmsyern.

  Reid stilled. Karmsyern was the dokk alfar word for, roughly translated, iron guard. It was a talisman, made of iron, that hung in a grove at the entrance to dokk alfar lands. The hoch alfar hated iron—it poisoned them—and the talisman kept them from invading.

  Well, that was the theory. The hoch alfar still raided, harassed, and killed whatever dokk alfar they could find, but it was true the talisman prevented them doing anything large scale too far inside the dokk alfar territory. The talisman was also woven with powerful, ancient, and forgotten spells—it wasn’t simply an iron doodad hanging from a tree.

  “How did they steal it when they can’t go near it?” Reid demanded.

  Another silence, this one longer. They have slaves. Perhaps the Battle Beasts they’ve taken back helped them.

  Reid sucked in a breath. In recent
years, some Shifters had been daft enough to return to Faerie and actually work for the Fae. Those Shifters believed the Fae would help them achieve their freedom, even let Shifters overrun the human world and gain control of it.

  Some idiots would believe anything.

  If Shifters had stolen the karmsyern and taken it to the hoch alfar, that was a whole lot of shit getting layered on deeper and deeper.

  “Are you sure?” he demanded.

  The whisper grew annoyed. Certain enough for a couple of us to twist ourselves inside out to contact you. Hope this pain is worth it.

  “I don’t even know who you are.”

  The silence this time lasted so long, Reid thought the voice wouldn’t return. In the end, it said, Talk to the red wolf.

  Then it vanished. Reid waited. Nothing. He called out a few times, but the voice was gone. Either the guy on the other end was done talking or the break in the ley line had closed.

  Reid was left alone in the dark with his troubled thoughts, not someplace he wanted to be. He pictured the sunny kitchen with the cubs good-natured and noisy, and Peigi’s beautiful smile. He willed himself to be there, bracing for the abrupt drag of the teleport.

  He didn’t move.

  Reid tried again, and again. Instead of the rubber-band stretching feeling and the bizarre juxtaposition of being in two places at once, he got a whole lot of nothing.

  He was stuck underground in wherever, in pitch darkness, with no idea where he was or how to get out.

  * * *

  “It’s there,” Eric said, pointing to the ground.

  As Peigi and Graham had moved through Shiftertown, following Eric toward the recently built houses, they’d picked up an entourage.

  Graham had taken Peigi to Eric and told him Peigi’s theories about the ley line, and Eric, interested, was all for digging up Shiftertown until they found it. Graham objected, of course, because it was his part of Shiftertown where the digging would occur. There was more debate—snarled curses on Graham’s part—until Eric overruled Graham, as he could.

  Eric had the appearance of a easygoing, calm guy, happy to sit in the sunshine with his mate and cub, but when he laid down the law, even Graham and his wolves shut up.

  Eric led the search off right away. Eric’s seconds—his sister, Cassidy, and Brody, Shane’s brother—joined them. Shane had stayed behind at Peigi’s to take care of the cubs. Iona, Eric’s mate, came along. Diego Escobar, who was Reid’s boss and Cassidy’s mate, had been at Eric’s eating breakfast, and he followed as well. The cubs in Eric’s house were too little to stay alone without their parents, so Cassidy and Iona brought them along.

  Nell banged out of her house as they passed, asking what was up. She was technically Peigi’s clan leader, so she fell into step with Peigi, daring Graham to tell her to leave. The only people in Shiftertown who could keep Graham in line were Eric and Nell—not to mention Misty—and Graham didn’t say a word.

  Nell’s mate, an easygoing bear called Cormac, walked with her. They picked up more of Graham’s wolves as they went—Dougal, his nephew and his second, and a couple others. The rest of Shiftertown, who couldn’t mind their own business if paid to, wandered out of houses asking each other loudly where Eric and Graham were going as they trailed behind.

  Therefore a group of about thirty halted just shy of the small front yard of a house around the block and down the street from Peigi’s.

  The Lupine who lived there came charging out. “What the hell?”

  The Shifters, and the few humans too, had stopped before setting foot in the Lupine’s yard. This was the Lupine’s territory, and even pack leaders, clan leaders, and Shiftertown leaders had to respect territory. On this patch of land, the half-awake Lupine in a muscle shirt and jeans, who glared at them over his mug of morning coffee, ruled.

  “We need to dig down to the ley line,” Graham announced. “Better if we have your permission, but if we don’t, we’ll start digging in the street and tunnel under. Hope your foundations hold up.”

  The Lupine, with messy brown hair and a dusting of dark beard, stared at Graham in disbelief. “What the fuck for?”

  “To figure out what happened to the dark Fae.”

  More staring. “Hold it. You want to rip up my yard and tunnel under my house to find that creepy Fae shit? … Oh sorry, Peigi. Didn’t see you.”

  He went red and took a quick drink of coffee as though he wanted to swallow his words. Even a belligerent wolf would think twice about going after a female bear’s mate.

  Not that Stuart was Peigi’s mate in truth, but everyone in Shiftertown had paired them up. Everyone, that is, except Peigi and Stuart. There wasn’t a Shifter term for It’s complicated.

  “Okay then,” Graham growled at the Lupine. “Diego, can you get us a backhoe?”

  Diego raised his brows. “Sure, I keep them in my pocket. Where the hell am I going to get a backhoe at seven o’clock on a Wednesday morning?”

  Graham gave him a look of mock surprise. “You come up with all other kinds of equipment at the drop of a hat. I just thought you knew someone.”

  “Yeah, but that takes time. Phone calls …”

  “We’ll wait.”

  “I don’t know.” Brody, who was a slightly smaller version of Shane, rubbed his hands. “There’s enough of us. We all go at it with shovels, we could make a pretty good dent.”

  Cormac stood next to him, studying the ground. “Might need a jackhammer for the street. Think the humans would freak out if we started breaking up the road?”

  “Probably,” Eric said in his quiet way. “Yard would be easier, but we can’t force Kurt to let us tear up his landscaping.”

  As with most houses in Las Vegas, this one had a small patch of grass, kept alive by a watering system, surrounded by bushes like oleander, pyracantha, and lantana. A row of vincas, bright in the wintertime, lined the sidewalk.

  Graham eyed Kurt, who lowered his cup in irritation. “Oh, come on. My mate’s just planted these.” He waved his coffee at the flowers. “Don’t piss her off, Graham.”

  Graham studied him without bluster. Eric could easily override Kurt’s objections, but he stood back and let Graham deal with it. No one was tense or angry, but Peigi had plenty of experience living with a mixed group of Shifters, and knew that this morning outing could become a bloodbath in a heartbeat.

  “Normally, I’d say screw it, and send everyone home,” Graham said. “But Reid is important. He has useful intel about the Fae, and I’ve seen him battle them like they were nothing. Plus he can do that teleportation thing. We need him, so we have to find him. For the good of Shiftertown. Peigi’s worried, so that makes me worry. Eric too.”

  Eric made the shrugging motion that said he agreed but wasn’t going to make a big deal out of it unless necessary.

  Kurt surveyed the group spread out on the street and took another sip of coffee. Peigi saw shadows in the windows behind him—his mate and cubs. They were curious, but they wouldn’t come out until Kurt indicated it was safe.

  Kurt glanced heavenward and heaved a long sigh.

  “You don’t have to dig up the yard,” he said heavily. “Or the street. I’ll let you downstairs. Not all of you.” He added this quickly as the bulk of Shifters surged forward. “Graham and Peigi only. Diego if it’s necessary, but that’s it.”

  Chapter Three

  “You heard him.” Graham called to his Shifters in the street as Kurt banged his way into the house. “Keep off his turf. Come on, Peigi.”

  “If you need digging equipment, call me.” Diego mimed holding a phone to his ear. “I’ll keep out of the way until then.”

  Peigi gave Diego a grateful nod. Diego was human but understood how sacrosanct a Shifter’s territory was, and how hard this would be for Kurt.

  Shifters kept their deepest secrets in their cellars. They lived many more years than humans and so had acquired treasures or other valuables that had let them exist in the human world for centuries. A first edition of an
eighteenth-century novel or a piece of art from Catherine the Great’s collection kept their worth longer than paper currency or stocks, if preserved well. Though Shifters did invest in stocks from time to time, through humans who could keep quiet about it.

  A Shifter’s hoard was passed down through the pride, pack, or clan, and no outsider was allowed to see it or know what that Shifter family possessed. Therefore, Kurt only reluctantly led them to a concealed door in his back hallway and unlocked it for them. His mate hovered nearby, watchfulness in her wolf’s eyes, but she didn’t argue.

  Peigi had no such stash under her house. She’d lost touch with her clan long ago, even before they’d been rounded up and put into Shiftertowns. She’d spent most of the past twenty-five years with a group of feral Shifters led by a bear called Miguel. His name wasn’t really Miguel—he changed it depending on where they lived, trying to blend in with the locals, as though he ever could.

  Peigi’s folly in believing in him had left her clanless and nearly homeless. She had a place to live these days, but she’d had to start from scratch, no treasure stashed in her basement. Stuart insisted on paying rent for staying in her spare bedroom, and used much of the paycheck he earned from DX Security to buy food for the cubs.

  She owed Stuart, big time.

  Kurt led them down a flight of stairs, Graham right behind him, Peigi bringing up the rear. The hall that opened from the foot of the staircase was plain and empty, the doors on either side closed. Kurt’s family’s secrets would be safe from their eyes, but Peigi scented Kurt’s nervousness.

  Kurt halted at the end of the hall in front of a door little different from the others, except this one was held closed by a metal strap with a padlock. Kurt took a key from the ring he carried and unlocked it.

  “Cubs were playing down here a couple months ago and found the pocket in the ley line,” Kurt explained to Peigi. “My mate and I filled it in and built this door in front of it. Haven’t felt anything since, so we figured the line was dormant.”