Chapter 7
He still couldn’t believe she had stood up to him like that.
Kaster rubbed the rough stubble on his jaw as he stared unseeingly out the front window of the car, with Marclan sitting quietly next to him in the passenger seat and Finley chuckling in the back.
He could shut up any time now. Any time.
“She fucking told you off, bro. That was awesome.”
“Shut up, Finley.” His growled retort was far less intimidating than he’d intended based on Finley’s continued giggling.
There was never a single person he’d expected to stand up to him, but if someone had told him it would be a 5-foot-nothin’ little waif of a thing, he would have laughed in their face.
Or punched them. Yeah, he probably would have punched them.
Her fiery amber eyes were emblazoned in his mind as he waited, silently fuming over the audacity of that woman. She got under his skin like no one else, and even though he knew there was so much that she wasn’t telling them (or, at least, that she wasn’t telling him—he wasn’t so sure about Finley at this point, the bastard), he found himself less than thrilled about potentially getting rid of her. It wasn’t that he really liked her all that much—aside from her tenacity, her strength of will, and her sheer determination to overcome every single thing she faced, including the death of her father—but rather, it was as if he…as if he…
Fuck, he had no idea. The woman was damn infuriating, that’s all there was to it. He didn’t have the time nor the desire to deal with her any longer than necessary.
“Hey…how many minutes has it been since she went back in there?” Marclan’s quiet, calm voice broke through his internal tirade against the flame-haired woman, and he glanced down at his watch, his eyes narrowing as he read the time.
“8 minutes.”
Finley’s head popped up in between the passenger and driver seats as he stared at the small pub in front of them. “That seems like a lot longer than it should have taken her.”
Marclan nodded warily. “I agree. I don’t like this.”
Kaster didn’t like it either. In fact, he was beginning to have the same feeling in his gut that he had the day his mother died. That sinking, terrifying feeling of impending doom.
Without another word, Kaster threw open the door of the car and stepped out, slamming it shut behind him with enough force to make the car rock back and forth. Finley and Marclan were quick to follow, and within seconds, they were standing at the entrance of the pub, staring into its dim midst.
The place was empty. Even the bartender had disappeared.
“Well. That’s not at all unsettling.” Finley commented wryly, looking around the interior as if everyone would suddenly pop up from hiding and yell “just kidding”. But no one was there. Not a single one of the five people who had just been in there not even ten minutes before still remained.
Kaster felt that unsettling was not a strong enough to describe this situation.
“Do you…you don’t think Detrick set this up, do you?” The soft inquiry came from Marclan as he slowly walked into the pub, heading towards the booth where they had sat together.
It seemed unlikely to Kaster, but still possible.
“I don’t see how he could have. We only sent him the barest amount of information. There’s no way he could have known about Katra.” Finley’s voice was beginning to carry a note of worry as the heaviness of the situation settled on his shoulders. “How could he possibly know anything about her?”
“He didn’t.” Marclan’s somber response came from the booth in the corner, where he held two objects in his hands—an empty syringe, and a golden cuff.
The same cuff they were given by Alekter.
“The fucking bastard. He was working for Alekter the whole time! That’s how he knew everything.” Kaster was seething. He would gut that fucking coward.
“He probably knew even more than he was telling.” This response came from Marclan as he stared at the offending objects in his hands like they were poison.
“But why use a drug? Why not the paralyzing spell? I can guarantee Alekter gave him the paralyzing spells too.” Finley stared at the syringe Marclan held with equally mixed horror.
“Because he can’t get close enough. He’s not strong enough to fight a powerful shifter or witch, so he plays the part of the weakling—which he would know, since he is one—until he gets close enough to drug the target.”
“Try the tracking cuff. Maybe it’ll tell us where she is.”
Shoving the cuff onto his wrist, he watched as it expanded to cover the full length of his forearm. He waited a few moments as the swirls on the cuff moved around each other, until finally, it stopped. There was no following buzz indicating it found its intended target.
It just sat there, looking like a very pretty and very useless arm guard.
“Why the fuck isn’t this thing working?” Kaster was quickly reaching the point of total loss of control. If he didn’t find an outlet for his rage sooner rather than later (and preferred the outlet to be a certain wolf shifter’s face), he would soon lose control of his dragon magic.
That was the curse of the dark dragons. They could blend in with the shadows, even control the shadows, but it was a perpetual tug-o-war. Darkness was its own living entity, a tireless, indestructible entity, and it craved control like an addict craved heroine, always attempting to push outwards until it encompassed everything. It was like a demon was living inside him that he was constantly at war with, and while he had won the battle so far, he often felt as though it was only a matter of time before he lost, and the darkness took complete control.
Kaster’s phone buzzed. With shaking hands, he pulled the phone from his pocket and checked the text message that had just come in. It was an unknown number, and all it said was:
I have information you need. Meet me at the cottage.
Twenty minutes later and Kaster was nearly ripping off the driver’s side door of the silver Corolla belonging to Daromir, striding up to the cottage with massive steps, determined to find out who the hell was on the other end of that unknown number and exactly how they were involved in this whole, gods-damned situation.
Throwing the door of the cottage open so hard it fell off its hinges, Kaster paused at the entrance and peered into the softly glowing interior, with Marclan and Finley right on his heels.
Sitting cross-legged on the couch like he owned the damn place was a lean, casually dressed man with smiling green eyes. His arms were stretched across the back of the sofa as if he were an invited guest and not an unknown stranger barging in on someone else’s property—and not just any someone, but a powerful sorcerer at that.
Wait. That wasn’t right.
“How the hell did you get in here? This place is warded.”
The green-eyed man fucking smiled as if Kaster had just told some hilarious joke. “Of course it is. Against anyone who would wish the inhabitants harm. And I promise you—that isn’t me.”
Marclan stepped forward a pace. “How did you know that?”
“Because I know the man—excuse me—sorcerer who put them there. Daromir is crafty and clever, I’ll give him that.” The man shifted his legs, uncrossing them and then re-crossing them in the other direction, glancing about him with less-than-enthusiastic curiosity. “I’ve gotta say—I’m not used to seeing this level of…minimalism…from that sorcerer. Usually he’s all crazy antiques and dangerous amulets and odd do-dad’s from times gone by. The man is older than dirt, you know.”
Kaster was in an awkward spot. On the one hand, he had no reason to trust anything this annoyingly comfortable stranger said, but on the other hand, he already seemed to have more information about the one man still alive who was willing to risk everything to keep Katra safe.
Well…hopefully the one man still alive.
“You’re the one who texted me, correct?”
Green-eyes nodded at him and smiled again, like they were old chums, rankling Kaster’s ire even further.
“And what’s this information you think we need?”
“Well,” The man cleared his throat before standing. He held a hand out and stepped forward, as if to shake their hands, forcing the dragon shifters to pull their hands into fists as they stared at him coldly. “Not a very trusting lot, are you? That’s good. She needs people on her side who won’t let just anyone near. I’m Terrin, by the way.”
His hand was still hanging out in the air, waiting for a handshake that most likely would never come.
Except from fucking Finley, of course, useless bastard. The blue-eyed dragon shifter stepped right on up and shook the stranger’s hand firmly, even smiled at him almost warmly, but still with that edge of caution that was the only thing saving him from a serious reaming on Kaster’s part. “I’m Finley. What’s this information you have?”
Terrin shook it in return, nodding his head once before dropping his hand. “It’s about the man who hired you—Alekter. Have you heard anything of his plans, or why he wants exceptionally powerful shifters so badly?”
“No.” Kaster was not in the mood for politeness and pleasantries, and stepped forward to stand directly in front of Terrin, hoping to take control of the conversation and get any necessary information from this infernal man.
“Not surprising. He’s a very old sorcerer—nearly as old as Daromir, but not quite—and he has some very specific and very dangerous plans for people like Katra.”
Beside him, Kaster just managed to catch the slight stiffening of Finley’s spine. Clearly, his brother knew more about Katra than he was letting on.
“People like Katra? What do you mean?” Marclan’s calm, quiet voice spoke up from behind them, and Kaster was momentarily thankful that his younger brother was always the voice of reason and logic.
“Katra didn’t tell you?” The man seemed truly surprised by this news. “Interesting. I’m almost inclined to respect her wishes and keep her secret as just that—a secret.”
He was going to kill this man. He was going to rip his spine out through his chest and feed his intestines to the fishes. There was just no way around it.
Before Kaster could act on his violent thoughts, Terrin continued speaking. “But, unfortunately, we don’t have the luxury of respecting wishes right now. The fact of the matter is, Katra is a very powerful and, in the hands of someone like Alekter, very dangerous shifter. Most of the supernatural community believe her shifter type to be extinct for nearly 2000 years. She’s a phoenix shifter.”
This was not at all what Kaster had expected, or hoped for, because although his knowledge of extinct shifters was limited, especially in comparison to Finley, he knew enough to be aware of the fact that a phoenix shifter’s fire magic could destroy just about any magic it came in contact with. She could make someone, especially a crazy sorcerer like Alekter, unstoppable.
Marclan’s calm voice pulled him back into the moment. “That’s…is that even possible?”
Terrin laughed—outright laughed—at Marclan’s entirely legitimate question. “Of course it is.”
There was imminent violence on Kaster’s mind again.
“Actually, I think that’s a pretty good question. Her mother and father were lion and wolf shifters. It is pretty impossible for her to be a phoenix shifter.”
Terrin cocked his head to the side in contemplation. “Not if they weren’t her real parents.”
His response made Kaster snort. “Even if they weren’t her real parents, she had to get her phoenix shifter DNA from somewhere. It doesn’t just pop up out of nowhere. There has to be some kind of lineage. That’s how rare shifters work.” He could thank Finley for that bit of knowledge later.
“And it didn’t. It came undoubtedly came from one of the people back at my community. Though how they managed to smuggle her out and into the hands of another shifter family is beyond me.”
Kaster and his brothers stared at Terrin in confused silence.
“Oh. Yeah. I’m from Tala, home of extinct shifters, such as myself.”
Extinct shifters. As in, multiple types of extinct shifters. As in…what?
Shaking his head roughly to clear away the lingering shock that had taken root there, Kaster gruffly stepped forward, preparing to shake a better explanation from the man. “What exactly are you saying? That there is an entire community of different types of extinct shifters living together somewhere in the world, and no one even knew about it?”
“Yes, actually, that’s exactly what I’m saying. And it’s more like a very small town, hidden in a valley in the most remote region of Tibet. There’re roughly 200, maybe 250 of us, from hellhound shifters to unicorn shifters to hippogriff shifters to pegasus shifters to—”
“I’m sorry.” Finley interrupted. “Did you just say pegasus shifters? As in, horses with wings? That fly?”
Terrin responded with a chuckle. “Well, I’d hope they’d be able to fly, otherwise those massive wings would be really clunky and annoying as nothing more than mere decoration.”
“Question.” Marclan spoke up, and there was a curiosity in his voice that Kaster had never really heard before. While Marclan had never been meek, peacekeeper though he was, he’d never really shown much in the way of…personality. He was always calm and logical, the one to bring reason into any argument. He would have been a great politician in that sense, but this quietness always made him come across as closed off and reserved, almost to the point of being politely indifferent. Never before had he expressed much interest in…well, anything. “What’s a hippogriff?”
This time, Terrin’s smile was almost blindly, and actually bowed low, and as he straightened, he spoke with a strong note of pride in his voice. “I’d be more than happy to show you. We’ll have to go outside though.” With that, he spun on his heel and headed to the back of the cottage, obviously expecting Kaster and his brother’s to just follow them.
Which they did, dammit.
Once outside, Terrin turned around that same, shit-eating grin plastered on his face, and began to remove his clothing.
Finley jumped forward, hand held out before him as if to stop the man. “Whoa, whoa! Why are you taking your clothes off?”
Terrin paused in the middle of removing his shirt. “Um…because I don’t want it to rip?”
“Don’t you have enchanted rings in your little community?”
Finley, Marclan, and Kaster all held up their right hands simultaneously, where three matching black bands rested on their thumbs.
“Oh! The ones that allow you to shift with your clothes? The ones that make your clothes magically reappear as soon as you shift back? Yeah, I don’t need one.” With that half-assed explanation, he continued removing the rest of his clothes until he stood before them stark-naked in the evening moonlight.
“Great. He’s a nudist. We’ve got a freaking nudist here.” Kaster muttered under his breath as he waited.
It took only a few seconds, just as it did with him and his brothers when they shifted, before a massive creature that looked like a horse-falcon hybrid stood before them. It was the same golden-brown shade that Terrin’s hair was in human form, but now, the front half his body was composed entirely of golden-brown feathers, whereas the back half was a golden-brown horse’s rump, complete with golden-brown hooves. The hippogriff—Terrin—opened his beak and squawked at them, but it wasn’t the high-pitched squawk one usually hears from a bird of prey. No, this was a deep squawk, almost on the verge of being a roar, but still with the slight bird-like sound. He stomped is back hoof and swished his tail, fluttering his wings a bit, and if Kaster didn’t know any better, he’d say that damn hippogriff was showing off.
Fuck. He was showing off. Cocky son of a bitch.
“Okay. We get it. You’re a super-rare shifter that I didn’t even existed before tonight. Change back. We’ve got more to talk about.”
Moments later, a naked Terrin stood before them, stooping to grab his jeans and his grey Harry Potter t-shirt.
“Is that a Harry Potter shirt?” Finley gaped at the shifter as he pulled it over his head.
“Sure is. I love those books. Movies too.”
“You live in the, and I quote, most remote region of Tibet…but you still get books and movies?”
Terrin gave him an incredulous, almost insulted look as he responded. “Of course, we do. I said we’re remote, not uncivilized.”
This guy was two cards short of a full deck.
“Anyway, about Alekter. See, he’s been digging up some of the most powerful supernaturals around for a reason, a project of his, I guess you could say. The only reason we even know about it is because of a very powerful seer we have in our group. She saw a glimpse of what he’s planning, and let me tell you—it’s not good.”
Kaster waited for a moment before losing his patience. “Well? What is this evil, master plan of his?”
“What is the evil, master plan of any supervillain?”
Silence.
“The answer is total, world domination. He wants to control the entire planet. And to do it, he’s using the most powerful supernaturals around to power a machine. You know those tracking cuffs he gives out?”
Three heads nodded simultaneously.
“Well, that’s not even the half of it. See, his thing is combining sorcery with machinery to form never-before-seen devices. This machine he’s made that uses the magic of powerful supernaturals?” Terrin took a deep breath, and for the first time since meeting him, his expression was not only serious, but almost fearful.
“It turns people into shifters. Regular, everyday humans. And in the process, it sucks out every piece of their mind that makes them…them. Until all that’s left is an obedient, compliant super soldier.”