by Callie Rose
Another crash echoes through the house. It shakes the bed, and I jerk upright immediately, grabbing the post near my head. This time, raised voices meet my ears. Not any of my companions.
Unfamiliar voices.
Outside.
I launch off the mattress and race to the window.
Small beams of light bob around the house. At least a dozen of them, spread out as far as I can see. Whatever’s out there has come for us.
And I’m pretty fucking sure it isn’t shadows this time.
Chapter 19
My boots pound down the wooden stairs in time with my heartbeat, laces trailing on the floor from where I didn’t bother to tie them. Kian, Frost, and Malix are already in the foyer when I arrive, circled up in conference next to the broken front door.
A strong breeze and the sound of voices raised in anger and alarm drift through the crevice in the wood left from Kian’s assault last night.
“It’s humans,” I say, my heart leaping into my throat. “Just humans.”
All I can imagine is these men shifting to their shadow wolf forms and destroying every human life out there. Because that’s what I know they’re capable of.
Malix rolls his shoulders and looks over at me, unamused. “‘Just humans with guns. They’re not here to play cops and robbers with us.”
Kian nods his agreement. “Our best guess is they’re the humans who witnessed us battling the shadows in the motel parking lot. Humans aren’t accustomed to seeing the supernatural, and they’re reacting accordingly.”
I gape at him. “By coming to kill us?”
Kian just looks at me like I’m an idiot. “What would you do if you didn’t understand something that looked like it could eat you?”
“Not fucking engage it,” I snap.
“Then you’re smarter than the cattle outside.”
I glare at him. “They aren’t cattle. How’d they know to come here?”
Frost answers me. “Erik was not a subtle witch. They’ve probably suspected him of it for a long time. So when they saw some other shit they couldn’t explain tonight, he was probably the first person they thought of.”
“Not to mention,” Malix adds, “our bikes are just down the road from this place. Where else are shadow-fighting superheroes gonna be except at the local Merlin’s joint?”
I narrow my eyes at him. “You’re not a superhero.”
“Speak for yourself, kitty.”
The walls shudder again, and I jolt, glancing toward the back of the house. “That came from the back door.”
Kian puts a hand against the broken front door. “We secured it. If they want in, they’ll have to bust through.”
Malix gestures at the living room window. “They’re in a pitchfork mob mental space, brother. They’re gonna bust in. The question is only a matter of when.”
“What do we do?” I ask, shaking out the nervous tingles in my hands. “I’m not going to kill humans.”
Kian scoffs. “You will if they try to kill you.”
I snatch at the front of his shirt and clench my fists in the fabric, going up on my tiptoes to stare him in the eye. “They’re scared. We are not going to kill them.”
“You’re a pain in my ass, Amora.” He grabs my wrists, and his fingers dig into my bones painfully, but I don’t release him.
“Likewise,” I snap, even as the sound of my name on his lips sends a flood of warmth through my chest. “Kill a human, and I’ll kill you. Got it?”
Kian tightens his fingers even more, cutting off my circulation. “I dare you.”
Frost takes a single step, sliding his leg between us like a mountaineer trying to get through a too-thin crevice. As his muscular torso passes between us, I let go of Kian’s shirt and step away before he can touch me.
Frost nods, seemingly satisfied that he’s broken up the imminent fight, then glances at Kian over his shoulder. “We’ll shift to shadow form. That alone should scare away some of them. Then we work from there.”
Kian doesn’t reply except to strip off his shirt and reach for his pants, his gaze leveled on me and still full of venom. And a little something else, maybe.
Something like… respect?
Nah. Can’t be.
Frost and Malix follow suit, shucking off their clothes for the shift. Then black smoky magic swirls around them, and they begin to morph. Those long, creepy limbs lengthening, their bulk growing substantially larger until I have to back away to give them more room in the suddenly too-small space. Their snouts elongate and fill with razor-sharp teeth, while their eyes begin to glow like blue flames in their dark visages.
I kick off my boots and start undressing myself as Kian slams through the broken front door, shattering it to pieces. All three shadow wolves race into the yard to the sound of terrifying screams.
Shit.
I swear to fuck, if they kill those people, there will be hell to pay.
Leaving my clothes in a pile on the floor, I shift quickly, then bound out the door, trying to formulate some kind of logical plan in my head. Luckily, half a dozen flashlight carrying humans are fleeing the scene as I exit the house. So at least Frost’s plan has a little merit.
A gunshot cracks nearby, and I fall to the ground in a roll as I sense the bullet on the air. It whizzes past over my head, then hits the dirt a few feet away in a geyser of rocks and sand. My heart leaps into my throat at how close I came to tasting a damn bullet.
The gunman is to my right, and when I leap to my feet and race for him, he stumbles back, frightened of me. He remembers he’s holding a gun too late—I leap for him, my teeth latching onto the sour metal barrel. He pulls the trigger, and the blast makes me feel like I’ve been punched in the teeth. My teeth and brain rattle around in my head. Rattled or not though, I rip the gun from his hands and toss it away, then I leap up and headbutt him.
Hard.
His entire body stiffens, and he keels over backward. Out cold before he hits the ground.
Not dead though, which is my goal. These aren’t trained fighters. They’re men—scared men, and that’s a pretty terrifying creature all on its own. But I don’t want their deaths on my conscience.
Good thing my wolf head is big and thick like a fucking battering ram.
I leap over the unconscious man and run for the next silhouette on the lawn. His flashlight dances across my line of sight, nearly blinding me, but I duck away into the darkness just as his gun cracks. The bullet slams into the ground way wide, and I circle back around, my claws skittering on the dry dirt.
I slam into his side before he realizes I’m coming. This time, I don’t have to take a blow to the head. He lands on his back beneath my bulk, and his skull bounces like a basketball on the hard ground. The poor man goes limp, and I nudge his gun away from him, well out of his reach in case he decides to wake up anytime soon.
I take a minute to check on the feral shifters, since I don’t trust them not to kill. They have a much darker moral compass than me, and I know their inclination is to fight to kill. The little verbal shoot-out Kian and I had isn’t enough to calm my fears.
But nearby, Frost whips his paw across a man’s face, knocking him out cold. Not a kill shot, thank god.
I guess paws can do that when you’re the size of a goddamn Clydesdale, I think to myself.
Am I bitter? Maybe. I never felt like a small wolf until these assholes showed up with their weird-ass shadow forms.
Kian races past me on a trajectory for another gun-toting silhouette in the dark. His voice sounds in my mind over mind-speak. Get the potion. We’re running.
I huff at him for bossing me around, but he’s already well past me and about to take out one of the two remaining humans. I leave the three of them to handle the remaining attackers, feeling at least ninety percent certain they won’t kill them.
Racing back into the house, I shift back to human form and throw my clothes back on. Erik’s potion is in a black metal cauldron on top of his altar. I look down into t
he dark green goo and make a face at the foul odor wafting off the top of it. And we have to drink this shit? Ew.
I can’t imagine trying to carry a cauldron full of liquid in the trunk of my bike, so I whip open the cabinet next to the altar and grab the first mason jar I see. I dump out the contents onto the floor—something seed-like and hopefully not deadly—then carefully tip the cauldron over the jar. The potion globs into the glass like a moss-colored gallon of chunky sour milk. Once it’s secure, I cradle the jar in one hand and grab the guys’ clothes and boots on my way out the door.
They converge on me as I leave the house, already back in their human forms.
“Did you kill anyone?” I ask, dropping their boots on the ground and handing Malix his clothes.
Kian rolls his eyes. “They’re all breathing.”
“Then I can let you breathe,” I snarl, throwing his clothes at his face.
Malix pops his arms and head through his t-shirt. “I appreciate the fact you hate each other, but we gotta go, kids. They ain’t gonna sleep forever. We need to be long gone when they wake up.”
As they make quick work dressing and stepping into their boots, I find a gun nearby in the grass and check the chamber—only two bullets used, plenty left in the cartridge. I make sure the safety is on and shove it in my waistband.
You just never know when you might need one. Especially with me running around with these lunatics.
Potion in hand, we kick off on our bikes at the end of the dirt road, then get the hell out of there.
Chapter 20
By the time we hit the interstate, dawn is rising over the mountains in the distance and casting the desert in shades of amber and purple. I’m not wearing a watch, though it’s not like that’s ever stopped me. I can tell it’s that purple time of day where late night is bleeding into early morning, and the birdsong answering somewhere in the distance only cements my certainty.
Once we reach empty road, we open the throttle and fly. We make it three miles before I start to breathe easier—five miles before I look in my rearview mirror and assure myself no one followed us. Maybe they were all knocked out or they were just too terrified to chase us when they woke up, I don’t know. But they let us go.
Which is what a person should do when they’re facing a threat they don’t understand. Like Kian said, something that could eat them. Historically, humans didn’t make the best decisions.
I cling to the handlebars with adrenaline still pumping through my veins. As far as I know, we don’t have a plan at all beyond the mason jar inside my trunk. I can’t really worry about that right now. The important part is to put as much distance between us and the humans as possible.
It sucks that things went down the way they did. Humans aren’t meant to see supernaturals. I can’t even imagine how terrified they were to see us battling shadows in the motel parking lot. Clearly, it caused a ripple effect of fear that couldn’t be stopped. A ripple effect that led a bunch of big ballsy men to track us down with guns.
Most people just aren’t ready to know the truth. They were so frightened of us that they put their own lives in danger…
Except, they didn’t, did they? As hard as Kian pushed back on my order not to hurt the humans… none of the feral shifters did. I mean, they didn’t exactly take it easy on them, but neither did I. We knocked them out, shook off enough of them to have some breathing room, then fled.
So what does it mean that the feral shifters listened to me? What does it mean that they didn’t hurt the humans?
Could they have goodness in them? Could they have a conscience?
Could they be reasoned with?
My plan since they pulled me from the forest and tied me up in their bed was to team up with them just long enough to get the antidote. Then I was planning to try to take them down again by whatever means necessary. Earn their trust, then annihilate them using the information I gathered in our time together. Anything it takes to stop the apocalypse.
But what if they’re capable of changing?
They aren’t exactly forthcoming with details on their life, but from what I’ve gathered so far from the hints they’ve spilled, they’re under orders from their alpha, who “made” them. Whatever mission they’re operating under, it has to do with that alpha and the fact that they’re filled with shadow magic.
I think of Frost, looking forlorn in Erik’s library as he told me how much the shadows inside him hurt. How the pain that magic causes is enough to make them want to destroy the barrier between the worlds and pull the shadows closer. To ease the agony.
A hawk flies by overhead in the dim light, his wings spread so wide he looks larger than life. I glance up at him and convince myself he’s a good omen.
It’s a rare thing for me these days, but for just a moment, I allow myself to feel a flicker of hope.
What if there’s another way?
Killers don’t just stop killing because someone tells them to. Killers will shed blood for the slightest reason and not give a shit who gets hurt in the process. But all three of these men refrained from killing those humans. Even though the townspeople came to Erik’s house specifically to take us down.
So… maybe I could help the feral shifters see another path. Help them break away from the mission they’ve been sent out on by their alpha.
What if I could convince them not to do it? I could show them how fucked up it would be to destroy the world just because their alpha commanded them to. Just to ease their own pain.
Because that’s the kicker, isn’t it? According to Frost, they want to break down those barriers and bring the shadow realm to earth so they won’t hurt anymore. Except, in doing so, they’ll destroy humanity.
Three lives for seven billion?
That math just doesn’t make sense.
But still… I don’t think they’re pure evil. Not like I did before.
I glance at Kian. He’s leading us, looking like a hulking mass of muscles on his little Honda bike. It reminds me of his Harley that I so carefully cut to pieces, and how sexy he looked on the seat of that old girl.
I want him to be a good man.
I want them all to be.
But wanting something doesn’t make it true.
I lean back, turning my face to the sky. I can imagine the heat of daylight just beyond the horizon. The earth is turning ever so slowly, taking us into a new day, and the warmth is just out of sight, just out of reach.
Maybe I can fix this after all.
Just as the thought begins to solidify in my mind, a wave of stark pain lances through me.
I gasp and tighten my fingers on the handlebars, fighting against the sudden agony. It washes over me all at once, a thousand tiny knives digging into my body. Keeping my focus on the road ahead, I let off the gas, but before I can hit the brakes, everything in me goes tense. I lose my grip on the handlebars and double over, completely losing touch with my body.
My vision flashes in and out. I struggle to get my hands back on the bars, but I can’t even feel my fingers through the white hot pain burning me from the inside out. The world dips and twists around me. Colors blur, wind blows, everything somersaults around me. For a brilliant moment, I’m weightless.
Then I crash into the pavement at fifty miles an hour.
If the poison pain felt horrible, this pain is unbearable. I skid across the warm asphalt, then roll and roll, my arms useless, flailing. Something snaps in my arm, and another something cracks in my torso. Then everything goes perfectly, absolutely still.
I hover on the edge of unconsciousness. There’s nothing but darkness around me, and the distinct feeling that I’ve detached from my body completely. Tires screech nearby, though I think the sound should be louder. It’s like it’s coming from the end of a long tunnel that I can’t access. Then, the muffled sound of pounding footsteps and raised voices.
“She’s got a pulse,” someone says faintly. It almost sounds like Kian, but there’s no way he’d ever have that much concern i
n his voice over me.
“Broken rib,” Frost says. “Her arm’s injured as well. Possibly a concussion.”
Malix snarls. “Yes, thank you, captain obvious. I’m a little more concerned about the total body road rash.”
Now I know I’m not imagining the worry in his tone.
I claw my way back to consciousness, even though doing so tugs away the muted, muffled distortion of my senses. All the agony rolls right back over me, and sound returns much louder than it should be.
I blink up at the circle of three faces hovering above me.
“My bike?” I croak.
Kian sits back on his heels with a snarl. “Oh for fuck’s sake. Seriously?”
“Is she okay?” I rasp, trying to sit up for a look. My possibly broken rib protests with a dagger-like sharpness against my insides, and I squeak in shock, falling back against the pavement.
Frost leans over me, and his cool, steady palm rests over my forehead. “Amora. Can you hear me?”
I nod wearily.
“Shift.”
Maybe it’s the possible concussion, or the lingering, lightheaded effect of the poison attacking my body, but I pout. “This is my last pair of jeans.”
Kian growls something that I can’t hear through my fuzzy-headedness. His fingers go to my waistband, and he undoes the button on my jeans.
I slap his hand away, then roll to my side, clutching my arm to my body and screaming as my wrist protests at the violence. Frost’s cool palm vanishes from my skin.
“Do you want us to salvage your pants or not?” Kian roars.
“Not you,” I hiss back.
Malix waves him away, then rolls me back onto my back. The movement makes my head swim, and I find myself staring up at a sky growing bluer by the minute. Malix unzips my pants and gently works them off my hips, taking my boots with them. Once he’s tossed them aside, Frost’s cool palm rests against my forehead again, and his sexy, remote face comes back into view.
“Shift, Amora,” he says.
Closing my eyes, I reach for my wolf and let her wash over me.
