Bodyguards of Samhain Shifter Box Set

by Lisa Daniels

  “The fight doesn’t happen if the clients don’t have any confidence in the odds,” Regal replied, smiling wolfishly. “If we see the bookies have you in favor of victory, then we are more inclined to motion it forward. Since you have already proven your worth in a one-versus-two, the crowd are thirsty to see you participate. Millions are riding on your match today.”

  “That was what happened to the last person who had a spirit like mine, wasn’t it? They did the one-versus-three and lost. They surrendered their spirit.”

  Regal merely raised his eyebrows in response. He walked away, motioning Eleganza to follow him. The woman gave Morgana and Theon a shrug, mouthed a good luck, and trotted after her father, who probably planned to have some serious words with her.

  Morgana clung to Theon’s hand, clearly rattled by the news. “Bastard’s going to fight me. He’s got a powerful spirit by itself, never mind whatever these Disillusion people have. I don’t usually like to swear, but right now, I think I’m well and truly fucked.”

  “Listen to me,” Theon said urgently, gripping her by both shoulders, wanting somehow to pour out all his emotions at once, but knowing she needed reassurance. “You can do this. But if you lose, it’s not the end of the world, either.”

  “I’ll lose her,” Morgana said. “Lose her to an utter bastard.”

  “You’ll be fine,” Theon said. He didn’t dare show any more affection in public. But he helped Morgana quietly gather herself together, and gain new, steely resolve for her situation.

  When her turn came at last, she strode with pride and dignity to her side of the ring, and Theon zipped open the bag and placed Beverly Heath’s bones on display. Regal stood on the opposite side, his golden eyes hungry, dense human bones revealed. Disillusion were two men dressed in identical clothes with an oriental style, silvers, blues, and greens patterned onto their kimonos. They also had two piles of bones.

  Four spirits were conjured into being. Beverly Heath, shining gold and blue, snapping out two ghostly swords from her arms upon spotting the opponents. She was tall, proud, elegant, like Morgana, and eyes were drawn to her careful poise, her positive energy.

  The rest of the eyes were upon three monstrous spirits. One growled and slavered in ursine form, one red, glowing eye shining from his transparent head, and he towered above all the competition. He pulsed an ugly red-black color, and seemed barely under control by Regal. The two that Disillusion controlled were shimmering a red-black as well, though smaller in size. Multiple ghostly tails protruded from their forms. Kitsunes? Japanese fox demons.

  Beverly Heath looked tiny and diminutive, like a pretty sparkling fairy, in comparison to the noxious auras emitted by the three she opposed: Iretha One-Eye, and Taika and Deiken, Disillusion’s spirits.

  Morgana closed her eyes, slipping into focus. The moment the bell rang, Beverly hurtled toward the opponents before they had even a moment to react, instantly sliding through them in a storm of attacks.

  Attempting to win fast, Theon realized. Morgana knows she won’t have the energy to outlast. She’s hoping to get the jump and maybe cripple them before they can get into their rhythm. This method was risky, however: if the opponents avoided or resisted the fury, it meant the attacker would wear out much, much faster.

  Beverly was a fox in a chicken coop, carving and slicing at an alarming rate, causing her opponents to knit up their injuries. Her storm seemed relentless and showed no signs of tiredness, but Theon saw the tight set of Morgana’s jaw, and knew that she’d probably maintain this furious pace until she fell unconscious. The crowd roared, some booing, some screaming in delight, living for the spectacle, drowning in their own lust for violence. Theon tried not to get swept up in the currents, though the frenzied, baying crowd stirred up his own instincts, making him prone to the call. He half wanted to morph into his own bear form to challenge Iretha One-Eye, who seemed to be the only one weathering Beverly’s storm without compromising his own ability to attack.

  Unlike Beverly, who had a fluid method to her movements, her training clearly showing in her spirit, Iretha was a savage, mindless beast with awesome power, one swipe of his falling short and demolishing one side of the ring. It didn’t look as if Regal had perfect control of the spirit, as several times, it seemed more interested in trying to get at the crowd, before Beverly buzzed in like an annoying fly, arresting the spirit’s attention.

  She should ignore Iretha, Theon thought with a sick realization boiling in his stomach. Maybe the spirit is barely under control.

  Morgana’s jaw seemed tighter than before, and the knucklebones showed visibly as she clenched her hands.

  Should I risk it? He knew Morgana wouldn’t be able to last much longer. There was no way she could win against three times the source pool, unless she got lucky. He bent by her ear, hoping she’d hear.

  “Try and get Beverly to ignore One-Eye. I think his master can’t control him.”

  Morgana twitched when Theon’s breath tickled her ear, but she gave a tiny nod.

  Seconds later, Beverly switched her targets to Disillusion’s spirits. Iretha One-Eye kept lumbering, making bursting charges at Beverly, but she sidestepped them and ignored him. Cautious, Theon positioned himself in front of Morgana, ready to lift her up and run at a moment’s notice, or attempt to maybe block a charging, furious ursine spirit. The red energy seemed brighter and brighter around Iretha, and some of the members of the crowd began to shuffle back, recognizing something, maybe seeing Iretha as an evolving danger.

  Inspecting Regal’s face confirmed as much to Theon of his deduction. Regal’s eyes were wide and distant, clearly struggling with all his might to hold onto the powerful bear spirit. Or pretending to struggle. Maybe he didn’t have any control at all. One vicious swipe from Iretha One-Eye caught Beverly at a bad angle, and she went flying, separated into two. Both pieces formed together and avoided another attack, but the amount of energy it must have taken to reform such a devastating blow…

  Without warning, Beverly stopped her attacks and scrambled backwards to Morgana. She collapsed into a pile of bones at Morgana’s feet. Morgana herself slumped, unconscious. Out of energy.

  Lost.

  “Victory is clear! The winners are…” But the referee didn’t have time to announce the winners, because although Disillusion dismissed their spirits, Iretha One-Eye roared, charged, and burst through the ring as if it were made from kindling, rampaging through the cheering crowd, whose cheers quickly morphed into screams of terror and pain, and the groans of the dying.

  No one was safe. Theon hastily scooped up Beverly’s bones, and Morgana as well, under full view of Regal and Eleganza. They both had to scramble when One-Eye lurched their way, screaming and smashing through people and furniture in reckless abandon, and the bodies began to pile up. Some necromancers in the room summoned up their charges, the ones still with energy, and others raised the dead bodies in the bags, but Iretha was under no one’s control, able to sustain himself. How?

  Morgana’s eyes opened. She saw Iretha and her already pale cheeks paled further. “Revenant,” she said, her voice quiet in the chaos.

  Theon joined the others trying to make a mad scramble for the exit. One-Eye went in their direction, as this was the biggest pile of bodies on offer, and swept through them like a scythe through corn. Theon missed being hit by a cat’s whisker, and found himself bumping into Regal.

  “Those bones are mine,” Regal said, but Theon elbowed him.

  “Seemed clear to me you weren’t in control,” he snapped at Regal, “so you weren’t really fighting.”

  Regal started to say something else, but Iretha One-Eye’s crashing paw almost took off his head, and he backed away with a furious, frightened curse. Theon snarled, feeling his inner bear crawl through his skin, begging to fight, but he knew he couldn’t contend with that monstrosity. With a triumphant roar, the bear continued flaying the necromancers and watchers indiscriminately, before chasing a big pack of them out of the exit.

&n
bsp; “Jesus Christ,” Regal spat. Eleganza, who had managed to avoid most of the commotion by discreetly pretending to be unconscious in the corner, moved toward them.

  “Looks like people may just find out about this operation if there’s a revenant bear spirit running riot. Stoneshire’s already had to shrug one of those off, hasn’t it?”

  Unfortunately, One-Eye didn’t stay out for long. Their brief respite in the deadring lasted moments. He came back for all the others, perhaps having already dealt with the ones who escaped.

  “He wants to kill everyone,” Morgana whispered, trembling as the survivors in the building started up their screams again. Bodies were strewn all over the floor like macabre props.

  The ursine revenant roared, tearing into people, before thundering toward them. Theon sought a moment to escape, to shimmy past, but that lumbering mountain took up his whole vision, and the scrum of freshly panicking people blocked some of his mobility and his capacity to protect. Morgana let out a gasp, Regal cursed, and Eleganza’s own bodyguard scooped her up and fireman-hauled her away.

  Iretha One-Eye blocked Theon’s whole vision. His claws went for them, for Morgana. Theon let out a desperate yell, balling himself over Morgana, starting to transform, his arms bulging into fur, hands into paws—

  Golden light exploded from the bag of bones, and something materialized in front of the blow, shimmering with glorious and bright colors. The light blasted Iretha One-Eye, shredding his aura like skin sloughing off in intense heat, until he was nothing but bones, the spirit erased, the shell of his once living flesh crumbling into a pile.

  “No! No!” Regal screamed. His eyes were manic, wild at the light, at the loss of everything he’d plotted for and attempted to obtain.

  Beverly Heath’s form floated in front of Morgana and Theon, her arms outstretched to either side, as if to embrace the blow. There was a smile upon her face, radiant and content.

  “My oath is fulfilled,” Beverly said, her light fading, the room becoming darker, and her voice dissolving into silence.

  “No!” Regal’s mouth twitched open, incoherent with anger. “You took her from me!”

  The sound of police sirens blared from outside, and the rage in Regal’s expression subsided enough for him to gather himself together and flee with the remaining survivors.

  He didn’t even bother to confiscate Iretha’s remains. There was nothing left in them.

  Theon stood there, among the dead, fresh and old, clutching Morgana close to him. He retracted the fur on his arms, the bear returning once more to that corner of his mind. She was wordless, staring at the bones that once housed Beverly Heath’s spirit. Theon stared too.

  He sent a silent thanks to the guardian angel. Protector to the end.

  Epilogue – Morgana

  Needless to say, Morgana no longer had access to the deadrings. All invitations from Regal vanished. So did they from other vendors, though Morgana still wasn’t completely sure if they knew of her connection with the police.

  She sat with Theon outside, on a park bench, just as dawn sliced the air. They’d spent all night together, and neither could find it in them to sleep, so they ventured outside to drink in the dawn sun together. Birdsong from different species pierced the air, and the nearby fountain next to their bench bubbled and gurgled from the constant motion.

  “I still can’t get over it,” Morgana said softly, feeling light, ethereal—blessed. “She changed her oath for me. She made me the thing to protect.” Beverly Heath’s absence felt as if a light had vanished from the world. That gentle, nurturing aura would no longer be available to contact. She had sacrificed everything twice.

  Theon sighed, one arm draped casually over her shoulder. “At least we know why she died.”

  Morgana nodded. Thanks to Rosen Grieves’ sister working with Amelia Hargraves, they’d managed to nail down a local theory, and an old newspaper clipping from 150 years back, mentioning deaths in the county.

  Though there was speculation about her death, it seemed she’d been killed, and the child she’d been raising also killed. In alignment with Jiwon Sung’s conditions for a guardian angel or Tennyo to form, Beverly must have attempted to save her child, only to have that same child she died for murdered anyway, leaving her wandering without a purpose. It also seemed that other necromancers and mediums had been able to contact Beverly Heath’s soul over the decades, but no one had made the connection, and no one ended up using her for fighting or anything else.

  It made Morgana sad to think of such a great sacrifice gone to waste. Beverly Heath giving up her own life hadn’t been enough to save her child.

  “I just… if that happened to me… if I saved someone and lost them anyway, I’d want to forget, too.”

  “Hopefully you’ll never have to be in that position,” Theon replied gently.

  “Speaking of…” Morgana turned to glare at Theon. “You were going to throw yourself under the bus for me, too, weren’t you? You were shielding me.”

  “Of course,” Theon said. “It’s my job to protect you, or die trying.”

  “Sounds like you’re a living guardian angel to me,” she said, leaning against his shoulder, watching more of the sun bleed through the trees, the pathway, and the bushes. “I wish you didn’t have to go today. That I didn’t have to run back to Ireland.”

  “I’m glad I’m going,” he said, and a painful stab went through Morgana’s chest at the words, along with a bout of uncertainty. Had she interpreted the thing between them wrong?

  “Why?”

  “I’ll no longer have to feel guilty about my actions with you,” he said, his voice rumbling in his chest. “You won’t be a client any longer. You’ll be someone I can be free to pursue.”

  Just like that, the doubts in Morgana’s heart dispelled themselves, as if by magic.

  Lightness flooded inside. Morgana grinned, giving Theon a hug charged with frenzied energy, before calming. “I’d be in Ireland, though.”

  “Does that matter? I’m planning to step down from my job. I think I could find myself living in Ireland for a bit,” Theon said, matching her grin.

  Sounded like a grand old plan to Morgana. “I’d like that.”

  He leaned forward then, for the lightest of chaste kisses, lips parting from hers slowly, turning the atmosphere heavy with want and promise. “Me too,” he whispered.

  With those words, he had woven the promise of a future together. One that didn’t involve them visiting the underworld and dealing with high-risk situations.

  One that meant maybe, just maybe, they could look forward to a normal life together.

  Though a necromancer and a bear shifter weren’t exactly what anyone would call normal.

  Normal enough for me. They went to kiss again, the sunlight bathing them, birdsong rising to a crescendo, not caring who saw.

  Nothing mattered but this moment. And all the moments to come.

  Ellie’s Bodyguard

  Bodyguards of Samhain

  Book 4

  By: Lisa Daniels

  Prologue

  Mason didn’t look forward to his new job. His only job, in truth. With his mother lying in a puddle of her own terrible addictions, with his three younger siblings, two girls, one boy struggling every day to be fed, to have decent clothes to go to school with—he knew if he didn’t plunge himself into work as soon as possible, their family would fall.

  His mother had never coped well with their father’s passing. Coming from a low-caste family such as theirs meant automatic failure if no one picked up the slack. Someone had to. Who better than him?

  Still, Mason wasn’t sure if he’d secure one. People generally didn’t think much of low-caste dragon shifters. His own species of supernatural kept them firmly out of the riches they had accumulated, and it wasn’t exactly uncommon to hear about another one of his caste being beaten to death for insubordination. His parents were thoughtful enough to cover up their heritage altogether, so they could almost function like norm
al people. Almost.

  His first client wanted him to protect a daughter. A child, nine years of age. In other words, instead of a daring bodyguard destined to save people from horrific threats, Mason was more of a glorified babysitter. Still, the pay was nothing for him to sneeze at, and his family needed every cent that they could scrape to pay for the intimidating amount of bills and issues that consumed them.

  Ellie Lockhart. A small bundle of blonde hair and hostile blue eyes. She wasn’t exactly impressed with him, and wailed about not wanting a scary man following her around. She started off as a virtual nightmare. Screaming, temper tantrums, hitting him, trying to run away from him, and all he could do was his job. Endure all of it, and try to remind himself that this was a lonely little girl, since her father barely interacted with her, and her mother was timid at the best of times.

  Hell ended once Ellie realized that Mason didn’t mind doing things with her. He didn’t mind teaching her to play card games, or taking her out to the park because she wanted to visit it.

  She might have been a little necromancer child, but she still wanted to do typical child things. But for her type of magic, she was every bit as lowly as Mason felt.

  This was something they shared. Something they both understood. Something that made him immensely grateful to get paid for looking after this brat.

  Mason hoped, one night, as he snuck Ellie a drink from the kitchen because she wasn’t allowed to leave her bed, that he’d always be able to protect her.

  He would be, quite honestly, satisfied with his life to always have a place at her side. So he tried hard not to think about the future. That one day, this job would end, their contract broken, and never again would he have to look after her.

  Two social outcasts. Lonely together.

  He was just fine with that.

  Chapter One – Ellie

  Ellie watched the scene unfold. She knew it would happen, the moment her father answered the door, and that man was discovered behind it, brimming with so much fury that he poisoned the atmosphere of the entire house.