Chapter 3
Marclan Negrescu found the entire situation unsettling.
His hazel gaze mapped his brothers’ movements as they searched the cabin the girl and her father had abandoned for any clues or information about where they may have gone or who they were, though he continued to feel the weight of discomfort settle in the pit of his stomach throughout their search.
Why couldn’t he tell what kind of shifter she was? Alekter, the strange sorcerer who had hired them, had only said that the thief was a powerful shifter—hence, the only reason why they were able to break into his mansion and steal his artifact—but how could any shifter break through spells woven by a sorcerer? And the fact that he repeatedly refused to clarify just what this priceless artifact was was more than a little odd to him. If this artifact was so important, shouldn’t they know what it looked like, so they could hopefully find it and return it to him? No, Alekter seemed less concerned with this supposed stolen item than he was with the alleged thief herself.
Moreover, the girl herself was tiny, easily the smallest shifter he’d ever seen, standing no taller than 5’, maybe 5’1”, if he was being generous. Granted, she’d handled those .45’s with the kind of confidence that only came from years of experience, but even so, there was something about her demeanor that made him shy away from thinking she could have possibly stolen anything, much less stolen anything from a powerful sorcerer. The kind of supernaturals who stole from sorcerers were wicked, devious, and often times severely insane creatures. They had to be, to place themselves in such a precarious position. Her perfect form in handling the firearms was completely inconsequential; there wasn’t a shifter in existence that didn’t have at least a basic understanding of weapons and fighting techniques. It was in their blood. They were semi-wild creatures, and semi-wild creatures couldn’t make do without at least a little bit of violence in their life.
And why in the hell couldn’t he tell what kind of shifter she was? Of all the causes for concern, this one topped his list. Every shifter in existence had a sort of smell or taste to them. Wolves smelled like the forest and freedom; hawks and falcons smelled like high, atmospheric air; lions tasted like the heat of the savannah. Even each of the dragon shifter types had a smell or taste, depending on their type of magic.
This girl didn’t taste like anything. She didn’t smell like anything. If he didn’t know better, he would have said she was human.
But the device given to them by Alekter to track down the thief had led straight to her.
No, Marclan did not like this situation at all.
“This guy must be some kind of history buff. Do you see all these books? This one must be at least 500 years old! Where did he get these?” Finley murmured as he gently stroked the spine of an admittedly very old looking tome and gazed at it with ocean blue eyes the way most people would gaze at a pirate treasure or an expensive car. Marclan couldn’t help but roll his eyes as he watched his older brother swoon over the piece of history. Considering that the dragon shifter was a notorious player, it often went by unknown that he also happened to have a serious obsession with history, particularly anything supernatural related. Marclan stifled a laugh as his brother continued eye-fucking the old books spread out around the cabin.
A fist slammed into the wall near the front door. “I don’t give a fuck if he’s a damn circus performer, we’re wasting time. There’s nothing here that will help us with catching the thief, so let’s get a move on. Our contract has a time limit and we’re losing daylight. I want to get this shit taken care of.” Kaster’s dark eyes bore into his two younger brothers as he ripped his fist from the hole he’d just created in the cabin wall. Marclan’s instinct to bring his brother’s anger down flared up as he moved towards Kaster.
“We’ve got time. The teleportation rings he gave us will take us straight to her, wherever she is.” Marclan’s stomach flip-flopped as he spoke, and he could feel that nagging sense of not-rightness tying his gut into knots. He didn’t want to be encouraging Kaster to continue on with this contract. Everything about the situation left him feeling queasy with anxiety. But this was what he did—he was the voice of calm sent to settle the raging storm that was his older brother Kaster, even though he knew that Kaster’s rage was caused by something Marclan could never give him relief from.
Kaster reached into his pocket and pull out a thin, golden band. Holding out his left arm, he shoved the band onto his upper forearm, then turned the golden cuff once, twice, three times, and watched as it grew into a golden plate covering his entire forearm, with swirls and loops marking its surface. The swirls on the device began to move around each other for a few moments until they finally stopped, pulsing once with a slight glow and a small vibration.
“It’s got her. Let’s go.”
Katra felt that she and her father had reached somewhat of an understanding as they stood there in each other’s arms, his massive body dwarfing her tiny one with familiarity and the sense of family, of childhood memories and comforting smiles.
The calm feeling was abruptly cut off by the sound of glass shattering, and Katra’s eyes blinked open in surprise as she felt her father’s body be wrenched away from her by a gust of wind. Her startled gaze flew over to the window, where a stranger now stood in front of the window he had clearly just smashed open. The man was tall and lanky, almost to the point of appearing unhealthy, like he didn’t eat enough. His dirty blonde hair was long enough to nearly cover his gaze, but she was still able to peer directly into his emotionless brown eyes.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw her father struggling to stand back up after being knocked into the far wall by the force of the wind. She knew without a doubt that he would be starting to shift, and she could imagine the sight of his claws erupting from his fingers and his fangs growing in his mouth before his wolf took full control.
But the man before her must have seen this coming, because he immediately lifted his arm up towards her father, and a bolt of lightning erupted from his hand, arcing through the room and straight into her father’s chest.
Mage lightening. He was a Mage.
Her heart stopped, dropped into the pit of her stomach, and then leapt back up into a galloping race so fast she thought it would burst right out of her chest, onto the floor, and out of the room.
Rage. This was rage spurring her heart into a dizzying frenzy of adrenaline as she watched her father’s lifeless body lie on the floor, little tendrils of smoke wafting up from the small circle of charred flesh on his chest no bigger than a 50 cent piece, but still lethal enough to rip straight through bone into his heart, stopping it dead. This was rage that caused her to turn back to the mage, who was already beginning to make his way towards her with his hand still outstretched, but this time towards her. It was rage that had her reaching for the guns tucked into the back of her jeans, already knowing that the safety was off, because that was the way her father had trained her, her father who was now lying dead just a few feet away.
She raised the guns, aiming for the mage.
He narrowed his eyes at her as he let loose another bolt of lightning, but as the lightning made its way across the space towards her, his eyes slowly widened at the sight he undoubtedly had never seen before.
Katra’s tiny tongues of flame danced through the air, forming a shield in front of her and eating away the lightning before it was ever able to reach her. The mage gaped at her has his arm slowly fell, clearly uncertain of how to proceed in this new and unsettling situation. His reaction was far from surprising; those who knew of the magic of a phoenix shifter were few and far between, limited only to historians and those obsessed with power.
Brown eyes stared at her in dumbfounded shock, and Katra smirked as she squeezed the trigger on both guns at the same time, reveling in the powerful sensation of the gun’s backfire and the sight of two identical holes appearing in the face of the mage before he fell to the ground.
Dead.
Just like her father.
And her mother.
Dead, just like her entire family.
Was everyone in her life doomed to die?
A small sob escaped her throat as she whirled around and rushed to her father’s body, collapsing on the floor beside him, the .45’s in her hands dropping to the ground with a loud clank moments before she did. His eyes were still open, although they were as empty as the Sahara desert. Katra felt a sharp slice of pain in her chest at the realization that she would never see any emotion in those light brown eyes again, and she found herself wishing her mother were there to comfort her.
But her mother was gone. And now, her father was too.
Katra’s grief was so intense and all-consuming as she gazed down at her father that she didn’t even hear the quiet sound of someone creeping up behind her.
A cold dagger suddenly appeared at her throat, pressing against her jugular hard enough to make her wince, and she automatically attempted to turn her head far enough to see the owner of the dagger but was stopped by a strong hand tangling in her hair, forcing head back. “Stand up, girl. We’re leaving.” A cold, feminine voice growled in her ear, and she was vaguely surprised at her complete inability to care about the threat to her life. Her heart and mind were still too wrapped up in her sudden loss, and she didn’t make a single move to stand, even when the sharp edge of the dagger made a shallow cut in her neck that stung with silver as the hand tangled in her hair tugged harshly.
“I said, get up. Now. Before I kill you.”
“You’re not gonna kill her. If you do, you won’t get your money.” The sudden appearance of a vaguely familiar voice was almost enough to startle Katra out of her state of shock, and she found herself trying to turn her head again to see who this new arrival was as she felt the nagging sensation of familiarity ratchet up a notch. There was a latent piece of her mind trying to rise up to the forefront through the cloud of grief, attempting to alert her as to who this new person was, but the grief was still too thick.
“Who the fuck are you?” The woman responded sharply.
“We’re your boss’s other employees, though not for long.” The dark, rough voice was definitely male, and it sounded particularly irate.
“Yeah, well, you know what they say—finders keepers or whatever the fuck that saying is. Back off. I’m taking her in, not you.” There was another tug on her hair, and Katra finally felt her ire rising up at the irritating man-handling on the strange woman’s part. She became aware of the solid feel of the small knife tucked into the boot of right foot, and half-heartedly began considering ways she could reach for it without the woman noticing.
“No, you’re really not.”
“Heheh. I really am. You think I was the only one to come for her? My partner over there is one of three. There are two more of us, and they’ll be here any second. And with only one of you…? Yeah—we’re definitely taking her.”
There was an odd tug from behind Katra, and a second later the woman’s arms suddenly loosened before releasing her altogether. Startled, Katra turned to look behind her and saw none other than the hazel eyed man from back at the cabin, staring at her with a hesitant expression. Beside him was the slightly taller blue-eyed man, wearing the same over-confident smirk he wore when she first saw him, and she wondered if perhaps his face was simply incapable of expressing any other emotion.
It was after a few seconds of shocked staring that she finally realized she didn’t see the woman who had been attempting to kidnap her. Noticing her confused look, the hazel eyed man made a pained face and glanced down at the ground. Following his gaze, she gasped in shock at the sight of a woman with short, spiked brown hair and surprisingly large, muscular arms, whose head was twisted almost all the way around.
She looked back up at the two men. “Who did that?”
The blue-eyed man glanced over at his partner, who looked almost…apologetic. “Her name was Bentley, and she was ruthless. The men she traveled with are just as bad. We should really leave. Soon.”
Katra blinked. “…Bentley? Her name was seriously Bentley?”
“I know, right? She looks like her name should be Axel or something.” The blue-eyed shifter agreed with a small chuckle.
“Well, I don’t think I’d have gone that far, but I can say with certainty that Bentley would not have been at the top of my list of possible names for a woman like her.” Glancing down again, Katra marveled over the sheer size of the woman’s arms, legs, and…well, just about everything. She was probably about 6’, and had a face that looked like it was carved from stone.
“Speaking of names, mine is Finley. Finley Negrescu. And these are my brother’s, Marclan and Kaster.” The blue-eyed man—Finley—motioned to the hesitant hazel-eyed man, followed by the tall, brooding man, who looked like he was about ready to pop a blood vessel. His angry gaze was focused on the dead woman, though, and Katra wondered what the hell the woman had ever done to warrant such a fierce look. His eyes then lifted to hers, never losing their intensity.
“Marclan’s right. We should get out of here.”
Quickly snatching the .45’s up off the ground, Katra shook her head vehemently. “Wait, wait, wait. Hold up. I’m not just going to run off with you lot. You were the original group to come after me, remember? Who, by the way, also want to take me to some weird person that is falsely accusing me of stealing some mysterious object that…what? What does it even do? What does it even look like? Do you people even know?”
“We’re not paid to ask questions.” Kaster’s dark gaze never wavered, though Marclan and Finley were looking considerably uncomfortable.
“Oh, yes, because that is the most comforting thing you could say right now. No. I’m not going anywhere with you lot. I don’t know who you’re working for—”
“Alekter.”
The interruption threw her off. “Pardon?”
“The man who hired us, who says you stole something important? His name is Alekter. Does that sound familiar?”
Katra stared at him blankly. “Does it look like that sounds familiar?”
“I knew this didn’t feel right…” Marclan’s soft mutter off to Katra’s right momentarily drew her attention, and her gaze shifted to him as her stared at her with that same apprehensive expression he’d had when she first laid eyes on him. She was beginning to think that, of the three, this guy was the one who thought things through the most, who considered all the variables in any situation. Probably the one with the most morals, too.
Although, being a mercenary, his morals were probably still considerably on the low side.
She kept the handguns lowered down at her sides, but clenched them tightly. “Look, I don’t know who this Alekter is, I don’t know what the hell it is he thinks I stole, and I sure as hell am not going anywhere with you. I will fight you, if I have to, and while there may only be one of me and three of you, I am not going to go down easy.”
Finley sighed in exasperation. “Sweetheart, we’re not going to take you anywhere except somewhere safe. As soon as Alekter hired out to other mercenaries, our contract was rendered null and void. We are very expressly clear when we take on any employer—no double dipping. If they hire us, they hire only us. It’s a little skeezy hiring out to multiple groups of people for a job. If we were bounty hunters, that would be one thing, but mercenaries? We have a code.”
Katra snorted in amusement. “A code? Mercenaries have a code? And what, exactly, is this so-called code of yours?”
“Don’t fuck with us.” The dark comment came from Kaster, and she couldn’t resist rolling her eyes as she shifted her amber gaze to meet his black one.
“Not gonna lie, that sounds like a pretty universal code, and not at all convincing enough to make me consider going with you.”
“Is there anything we could say that would convince you?” Finley queried with a raised eyebrow.
She seriously considered his question for a moment. “…nothing’s coming to mind.”
Marclan and Finley exchanged a look that Katra couldn’t read before glancing over at Kaster. They looked wary, as if they were either unsure of what his reaction would be or unsure of if they would like his reaction. Either way, Katra could care less. These shifters were not taking her anywhere, not over her cold, dead body. The .45’s felt fantastically heavy in her hands as she stared down the dark eyed dragon shifter.
“I’m only interested in keeping her away from the sorcerer as a point of pride. Could really care less what happens after that.” Kaster’s response was about as warm and caring as bowl of ice cold water to the face.
“Yeah, okay, we’re done here.” This had gone on long enough, and Katra was well past the end of her not just frayed, but downright shredded rope.
A scratching noise rustled through the room, and Katra’s gaze whipped over to the mirror she and her father had used to contact Daromir, her hands raising slightly to aim the firearms in that direction. As she stared, the reflection in the mirror wavered the same way it had before, until Daromir’s face slowly came into focus. It was an odd image, kind of bouncy and shaky, as if he were recording himself on a video camera while he was running. He even seemed out of breath, and as Katra watched, he glanced behind him before staring back down in her direction, and she only then realized that whatever he was using to communicate with her must have been held down low, well below eye level.
“You need to go with them, Katra.” He huffed shakily.
“Excuse me?” Katra gaped as she tucked the .45’s in the back of her jeans. “What are you talking about? We don’t even know these guys, Daromir. They’re mercenaries! They hire themselves out to the highest bidder and probably—”
“Stop arguing, Katra, and listen!” Daromir shouted at her before glancing behind him again.
His harsh response startled her into silence.
“I heard what you all have been saying. The mirror you’re using”—pant, pant—”I can use it to listen to whatever is going on in that room. Alekter”—pant, pant—“is not someone you want to mess with, Katra. He is more powerful than almost any other sorcerer, and”—pant, pant—“twice as in insane. If he gets his hands on you…people will die. So many people. Thousands.”
“Daromir, what are you—”
“Stop interrupting! Take the stylus you used to contact me, and write these runes on the mirror when I’m done. They will take you to another safe house in Ireland, one that is warded against anyone who would wish you harm.” He seemed to stumble, and the image momentarily blurred into unrecognizable movements, before clearing again to show his harried face.
“Stay safe, Katra, but most of all, stay free.” With that last foreboding statement, his face vanished from the mirror, to be replaced with a smoky impression of three, swirling runes. Katra stared at the runes in shock before they eventually faded.
“Did…did anyone happen to write those runes down?” Finley asked hesitantly after a moment of silence.
Shuffling came from her right as Katra continued to stare at her own shocked expression, and a second later, Marclan’s reflection appeared next to hers. He gently placed a large, heavy hand on her shoulder, motioning for her to move aside, before stepping up to the mirror and writing the three runes that Daromir had somehow magically sent to them. The reflection on the surface rippled again before the entire mirror began to glow. As she watched, the mirror began to grow in length until it was large enough for a person to step through, and the surface shifted until the image of a small, brick cottage on a green countryside appeared. The sky above it was a dark cloudy, grey, and she could even smell the rain that drizzled down.
“Come on, Katra. Let’s go.” She turned to meet Marclan’s kind, hazel eyes.
Why was he so quick to help her? He didn’t even know her.
Turning back to the mirror, she stared at it blankly. “I can’t leave him here.”
Marclan’s gaze swiveled over to Jakob’s body. “Then we’ll take him with us.”
“We do not have time for this.” Kaster’s irritated voice drifted to Katra’s ears, and she resisted the urge to flip him off.
She was surprised when Finley’s voice responded with just as much vehemence as Kaster’s. “We, of all people, know what it’s like to lose a father, Kaster.”
The statement surprised her a little, and she glanced over at the dark eyed dragon shifter, curious to see his response. She was not disappointed. His eyes softened fractionally as he glanced at Jakob, before settling his dark gaze on her. “Very well. We’ll take him, and give him a dragon shifter’s funeral.”
Both Finley and Marclan nodded in affirmation, seeming pleased with this response, although Katra found herself feeling a little wary over what exactly a dragon shifter’s funeral was comprised of.
When Kaster strode solemnly over to Jakob’s body, Katra had to avert her eyes, unable to watch them lift his limp form. Instead, she stepped up to the mirror and reached out her hand to touch the image on its surface. Instead of the hard glass of a mirror, her hand met what felt like cold water, but with a thicker consistency before passing through it. With an abrupt rush of motion, she felt herself thrown wildly off kilter as her body was sucked through the cold, liquidy surface.