Chapter 2
It was truly amazing how unsettling a simple knock on a door could be, but when you’d spent the last 11 and-some-change months without a single visitor—not even the mailman—it was easy to see how unusual and downright unnerving said knock could be.
The unknown caller knocked again.
Katra’s and Jakob’s eyes both swung over to the door for a moment before returning to stare at each other nervously once more. It was as if they were both trying to wait and see if they—whoever they were—would just leave. The old ‘don’t say anything, pretend we aren’t home, maybe they’ll go away’ ploy.
Another knock.
Sighing in frustration, and more than a little discomfiture, Katra finally moved to open the door, realizing at what must have been the same time as her father that this uninvited caller wasn’t leaving as he headed to the door along with her. She stopped and motioned to the door with her hand, raising an eyebrow at her father, attempting to encourage him to be the guinea pig in this bizarre situation.
He rolled his eyes and finally stepped up to the door, reaching for the handle as Katra’s muscles clenched in anticipation, and that strange feeling of dread suddenly intensified. Before she realized what she was doing, she found herself thrusting a hand into the small sack still tied to her belt loop, palming one of the leftover spells Harrietta had sold her. She didn’t know which one it was, but to be frank, at this moment, she really didn’t care.
She just needed to have something—anything—resembling a weapon in her hands.
Twisting the doorknob agonizingly slowly, Jakob hesitantly pulled the old oak door inward, and Katra felt her breath catch as she waited to see who was on the other side.
She wasn’t really sure exactly who she’d been expecting (after all, she wasn’t expecting anyone), but the three figures standing just outside the cabin were certainly not it.
Three disturbingly tall, disturbingly gorgeous men stood on the other side, wearing dark jeans and plain black t-shirts that clung to their sculpted arms like a second skin. The one on the left, with dark hair and hazel eyes, seemed to be the smallest, but only fractionally, and his face seemed guarded, almost hesitant. He had an enticing olive skin tone, and his arms were crossed over his chest, but it didn’t seem to be with the intent of appearing threatening; more like he was uncomfortable with the situation he was in. On the opposite side stood a smirking man with brown hair and deep blue eyes, and of the three, he was the leanest, not boasting quite the level of bulk as the other two, though he was clearly not someone to trifle with. He was casually leaning against the doorjamb as if he were visiting an old friend and not a complete stranger.
And finally, dead center, stood what had to be the most severe, brooding, terrifying man she’d ever laid eyes on. He stood at roughly 6’3”, and his dark hair was easily overpowered by his even darker eyes which looked like the blackest pits of hell, with just as much lethality. His eyes were zeroed in on her, and she had to force herself not to step back from their dark intensity.
That feeling of impending doom was fluttering in her stomach again, but instead of the previous butterflies, it was taking the form of bats flapping around in a primal panic.
“Can we help you?” Katra almost jumped at the sound of her father’s voice as it broke through the awkward silence brought on by her blatant staring, and she shifted her gaze away from the overtly threatening man and his…brothers? They looked like they could be brothers. But why the hell were they there?
“As a matter of fact, we think you might.” The blue-eyed man to the right spoke up, surprising Katra, as she had somehow expected the intense man to take the lead in any and all conversation. “You see, we’ve been sent here by our employer in search of something.”
“I highly doubt that ‘something’ is going to be here. We don’t even know who you—or your employer—are.” Jakob’s firm voice answered without an ounce of trepidation, unlike what Katra was feeling at the moment.
“It’s not a something.” The intense man spoke this time, his voice just as low as Katra would have expected from a man of his demeanor, and it had a slight roughness to it, like someone who smoked for many years. “It’s a someone.”
Katra’s shoulders tensed at the exact same time as her father’s, though he was far more adept at hiding it as, seconds later, he calmly leaned against the door knob he was still holding. “Well, I’m pretty sure we aren’t what you’re looking for either as—like I said before—we don’t even know you. Or this mysterious employer of yours.”
Clearing his throat, the blue-eyed man’s gaze briefly flickered towards the intense man before returning to Katra’s. “Well, the thing is, our boss is under the impression that you are what we’re looking for.”
“Why? We don’t know this boss. I’ve already told you this, several times.”
Tilting his head to the side as he rubbed his jaw roughly, the man with the pitch black eyes zeroed in on Katra with single-minded focus. “Not you. Her.”
This revelation was both surprising and terrifying as Katra’s mouth dropped open in surprise. “Me? Why me? I guarantee you, if my father doesn’t know your employer, I sure as hell don’t. We don’t really go anywhere without each other.” She felt a momentary flutter of embarrassment at the way that sounded—like she was an immature little girl and not an 18-year-old woman.
Not that she even cared what these strange men thought of her.
“Okay, listen up—we have it on very good authority that your daughter here has stolen something important from a very powerful individual, and he has paid us heftily to bring her to him. So, how about you make this easy on everyone involved and just come with us. Calmly, if at all possible.” The dark eyed man stared at her emotionlessly as he crossed his arms over his chest, the action forcing his already sizable muscles to bunch up and strain against his shirt sleeves. He stood there staring at her as if waiting for her to…what, just come with him? Some random stranger—no, three random strangers—like they were old pals or something?
“I’m getting fairly tired of telling you this, but I guess I’ll say it again: we do not know who you or your employer are. My daughter has never stolen anything in her life, and there is no way in hell that she’ll be going with you anywhere. You have the wrong person. I’m going to ask you to leave now.”
None of the men moved, not even an inch, as they continued to stare at her as if they could somehow convince her to come with them through willpower alone.
Jakob moved to close the door, but before he could, a hand shot out and firmly shoved the door open so hard it slammed against the wall. “I’m afraid that’s not the answer we’re looking for.” Dark eyes grinned viciously.
It was at this exact moment that a gust of wind blew in through the doorway, and with it came the scent of…darkness. Like the dead of night. It was intermingled with the smell of wood fire and frozen, wintry air.
Katra’s breath caught in her throat.
These men were shifters.
But not just any shifters—they were dragon shifters.
Jakob undoubtedly caught their sent at the same time, because the two of them suddenly exploded into action simultaneously. Katra threw the spell in her hand as Jakob fell backwards while throwing a blade that had miraculously appeared in his hand, most likely one of the many he kept stashed on his person at all times. The blade flew at them along with the glass orb containing the unknown spell, but the blade reached the man in the center first.
Except it only reached his hand, which he had whipped up with blurring speed, catching the blade before it was able to embed itself in his chest.
Milliseconds later, the spell Katra had thrown at them hit the blue eyed one directly in the center of his chest, and as the glass split apart, tendrils of green smoke began to grow and reach to wrap around him like vines. But it was like watching butter slide off a hot surface as they were completely unable to grasp onto him, sliding around in the air for a few moments in search of purchase before finally sputtering out into nothing.
It didn’t matter what form of magic was used—dragons were utterly impervious.
Time for a change of tactic. Katra dove to her right, tucking and rolling behind the large sofa as she moved towards her father’s desk, faintly aware of the sound of her father throwing more knives at the dragon shifters as he attempted to keep their attention on him long enough for her to make it to her intended target.
Reaching under the desk, Katra felt the cold, hard metal of her father’s two .45’s strapped to the underside. She easily and deftly released the latches holding them in place, then pulled them out and aimed.
The dark eyes of the middle shifter widened fractionally as he focused in on the weapons pointing straight at him.
Katra smirked. He clearly wasn’t expecting her to have a gun, and while he might have been impervious to most weapons in his dragon form, in his human form, he was just as vulnerable as she was. Shifter speed was certainly remarkable, there was no denying that fact, but no shifter in the universe was faster than a barrage of bullets. Sure, there were some shifters who were fast enough to dodge one or two, but as she leveled the two guns at them, it was clear based on the expressions they wore that they would be unable to dodge every bullet. And while a regular bullet would certainly hurt, it wouldn’t kill, but no supernatural worth their salt carried anything other than silver bullets.
The only bullets capable of killing supernaturals.
The hazel-eyed dragon shifter flinched. Or at least, she thought he’d flinched, but a moment later she realized what was a flinch was actually him flicking a shimmering orb at her.
A spell. She couldn’t fucking shoot spells.
In the shock and surprise of the moment, the dragons hadn’t noticed her father moving to the other side of the room, and it wasn’t until he yanked open a drawer in a small, side table that they finally looked over at him. She was more than a little grateful he’d stolen their attention, because she instantly felt her power rising up to consume the shimmering orb that had attempted to latch onto her. It was a paralytic, the kind meant to immobilize a person while leaving them uninjured.
On the other side of the room, her father had grabbed an orb of his own—this one considerably larger than most—about the size of the palm of his hand. He threw it against the floor in front of the dragons, and instead of attacking them like the spell she had thrown, this one exploded into a massive wall of shimmering gold power. It was a shield, a containment spell, and she watched as the dragons began to realize this spell was not something they would be able to overpower. While a dragon’s ability kept them from being harmed, it was completely unable to do anything about a spell that didn’t intend any harm at all. Their ability was passive, whereas hers was active. She could have easily burned away the shield within a matter of minutes, possibly seconds.
Lunging across the room, Jakob grabbed onto Katra’s arm roughly, and she had only enough time to register the chunk of raw-cut smoky quartz in his hand before he threw it against the floor. She watched in awe as it broke, and instead of shattering across the hardwood floor in a million pieces, the crystal exploded into a ball of swirling light that quickly grew until it pulled her and her father into its whirling depths.
The sensation was like being in a tornado, or at least, what Katra assumed being in a tornado felt like, if a tornado were composed of powerful magic that moved over her skin like a living being. It lasted all of 5 seconds, and she was glad for it, because not only was the whirlwind ride giving her motion sickness, but she also felt her magic rising up again, eager to eat away at the spell, and since she suspected this was some kind of transportation spell, she really did not want to find out what would happen if it was destroyed mid-transfer.
When they came out the other side, it was to find themselves in a large, well-furnished but suspiciously dusty room in what, for all intents and purposes, appeared to be a mansion. There was a window on the far side of the room framed in equally dusty but still fancy curtains, and beyond the window was nothing but trees.
“Where are we?”
“A safe house, set up for us by Daromir.”
Katra’s eyebrows raised to the top of her forehead as she shoved the two .45’s still held in her hands into the back of her black jeans. “I’m guessing he doesn’t have much need to come here often. There’s enough dust to—AH-CHOO!” Her words were cut off by a violent sneeze.
Moving across the room, Jakob opened the drawer of a long table covered in random odds and ends—reminding Katra of when she’d first met the sorcerer that had gifted her the runes that saved her life—and, reaching into the drawer, he pulled out a sharp-pointed, silver stylus. He then walked to a large, ornate mirror hanging on the cream-colored wall and, using the point of the stylus like a pen, he began to scratch a series of odd rune-like symbols onto the mirror’s surface. Katra winced at the sight, wondering briefly if Daromir would flip out once he saw the now destroyed mirror, but a moment later, the thought vanished as quickly as ice in the desert as she watched the symbols shift and swirl before finally disappearing. The surface of the mirror began to ripple, and she watched in awe as it darkened until it reflected not the room that she stood in, but an entirely different room altogether. It was very dark, leading her to believe it was night wherever this room was, and she was barely able to make out what appeared to be a bed and possibly a nightstand.
The sound of rustling emanated from the mirror, surprising her with how clearly the noise came through, and moments later, Daromir appeared. He looked exactly the same as he had the day she’d met him 11 years ago, with his black hair, dark brown eyes, and caramel colored skin. She wondered, not for the first time in her life, just how old this man was. While his face and body looked no older than early 30’s, his eyes screamed ancient, and it was well known that sorcerers could live to be thousands of years old.
“I see you’re at the safe house I set up for you.”
She nodding as she gazed around the dusty room. “Yup. Where are we, anyway?”
“The Rocky Mountains. Do you like skiing? It’s not really the right time of year for it, depending on how early the winter snows have begun. Might want to use my computer over there and look it up, if you feel so inclined.”
Her eyes shifted to the darkened corner where a small desk displayed a rather old-looking laptop. “You have internet here?”
“I’m an ancient, all-powerful sorcerer. Of course I have internet. High speed, too.”
“Huh. Well aren’t we all up with the 21st century. Snazzy.” Katra assessed the dusty room with new eyes.
“Well, since you’re calling me in the middle of the night, I’m going to go out on a limb and assume you’ve found trouble. I was really hoping you’d go a little while longer before you completely disregarded everything I advised you to do.”
Katra blinked. “Longer? It’s been 11 years since we talked to you!”
The sorcerer yawned widely. “Exactly.”
Turning to stare at her father in disbelief, she was annoyed to find that he simply shook his head ever so slightly before turning back to the mirror. “Someone came after us, after Katra. Three men—dragon shifters. From the sound of it, and also judging by how they appeared and the way they acted, they were mercenaries. They said someone had hired them to track down Katra, claiming that she had stolen something from someone very powerful.”
Dark eyes shifted to stare at her. “Did you steal something?”
Katra couldn’t help the following eye roll. “Yes, Daromir. I’m the rarest creature on Earth with a power anyone would kill to have, and I decided to throw myself out into the world and steal something. But not just any something, oh no. I decided to steal something from someone who is, and I quote—very powerful. Because I am just that dumb.” She finished off her little rant with an amber eyed glare.
For a second, Daromir said nothing, then his amused laughter filled the air, surprising the hell out of Katra. “Ah, child—I’m glad to see you’ve grown out of your timid demeanor. That attitude would have gotten you nowhere. Now, as far as this accusation goes, I’ll ask around. If the powerful person hired mercenaries to find you, there will undoubtedly be some word about it in the supernatural community. Sit tight and don’t go anywhere. I’ll contact you once I have more information. Oh, and Katra?”
Her head perked up at attention.
“You haven’t been using your powers, correct?”
Later on, Katra would pat herself on the back for how well she maintained her composure, even though her thoughts instantly began spiraling out of control at the question. “Oh, don’t worry, Daromir. The runes you put on me are still in place and functioning at full capacity.” It wasn’t really a lie. The runes were, indeed, still embedded in her back, and she was 99% certain they were still working…as far as she knew, anyway.
There was a moment where Katra was completely sure Daromir didn’t believe her, as he sat there staring at her through the mirror with a look that almost screamed “you’re lying”, and she had to physically hold herself back from shifting uncomfortably under the weight of his stare. But the moment finally passed when he nodded. In the next second, the mirror flickered, and Katra was staring at her reflection standing in a dusty room next to her father, in a mansion nestled in the woods in the middle of godsdamned Rocky Mountains.
“You lied.”
Katra winced at the accusation from Jakob, and avoided his eyes as she turned and began to examine the room, trying to figure out a way out of the dreaded conversation working its way into Jakob’s mind. “I think we should figure out what, exactly, we’re working with in here. This place seems pretty huge, if somewhat unused. We should probably check on the food situation as well, though, knowing Daromir, he’s got some enchanted food storage box that keeps everything perfectly fresh for decades, maybe even centuries. Hell, it may even magically create food on a daily basis.”
“Don’t try to avoid this, Katra. I know you lied to him, just like I know you’ve been using your abilities. I watched you burn away that paralyzing spell the shifter threw at you, and I sincerely hope none of them saw it. Where did you get those spells from? Who have you been in contact with in the supernatural community? And why would you feel it’s okay to put yourself at risk like that?”
Well. Clearly this was happening, whether she wanted it to or not. And she really didn’t want it to.
Heaving a great sigh, she turned and faced her father full on, her amber eyes meeting his brown ones, and once again she was surprised by how little she resembled her parents. They were tall and lean, whereas she was small and curvy. Her mother had been blue eyed with dark, honey blonde hair, and easily stood at 5’8”. Her father, with his light brown hair and equally light brown eyes, stood at 6’. And here was Katra, with amber eyes so light they were almost golden, and hair that naturally began with a vivid red at her roots and shifted lighter and lighter until it became a yellow orange shade at the ends.
Katra straightened her spine as she stared her father firmly in the eyes. “I’m sorry. Really, I am. I wasn’t trying to undermine you or Daromir or disrespect you or whatever, and I certainly didn’t want to bring any trouble down on us. But this is what I am, dad. It’s who I am. I am a phoenix shifter—the only phoenix shifter. I can’t—no, I won’t allow an entire piece of me to go by unrecognized. Would you be willing to hide your wolf, to keep him shoved down into some small space, never able to see the light of day? Jesus Christ, dad, I’ve never even shifted. Do you know how wrong that feels? Could you handle that? Never shifting again?”
“I could if it meant keeping you safe.”
Once again, her dad has mastered the art of turning her guilt trip around on herself. But she wasn’t giving up easily this time. She knew that what she said—what she felt—was right.
“Now who’s lying? The one who goes out every night to shift and run? Every single night, dad. You let your wolf free every single night, and my phoenix hasn’t even seen the sky once. I’m almost convinced that I don’t even have a real phoenix, that I’ve gone so long without ever shifting that I’ve simply…lost her. Or…maybe I never had her to begin with…” Katra’s throat closed up, and she forced the roughness aside with a hard swallow. A shifter’s animal was as much a part of them as their arm or leg, and to deny a part of themselves was as painful as denying their lungs air to breathe.
Jakob sighed heavily, reaching out to cup Katra’s cheek with his hand, and she reveled in the comfort her father created for her, even as she could still feel his anger and frustration at her actions. “I only want to keep you safe, nebol’shoy ogon’. You are all I have left in this world.”
Katra’s heart broke in her chest, and her guilt increased ten-fold. Through all her decisions, she never once considered what her dad would experience if anything were to happen to her. She mentally berated herself for how inconsiderate she was. “I know, dad. I love you.”
Pulling her into a tight hug, Jakob responded with a whisper. “I love you too, nebol’shoy ogon’.”