Chapter Two – Jack

“Where exactly are we headed?” Jack asked, strapping himself in, as the Land Rover took off at speed along the narrow lanes, Michael Jackson’s You Are Not Alone, started playing on the radio, about the most appropriate song ever for Jack and his squad.

“North of the forest. I have the coordinates. Doesn’t have a name, other than Deadman’s Gully,” Kurt said.

“Is that an official name? Or one the Council dreamed up to keep people out?” Jack asked, checking his weapons. Guns were rarely used by his squad. First, if they got stopped by the police, they would be arrested, unless they could argue they were out hunting rabbits. Second, the Council was against arming its foot soldiers. Or degetty fodder, as they joking called the shifters whom they called on to clean up their mess.

Oh, and third, most things the squad came up against were immune to twentieth-century firearms. They were thick-skinned, hard as fuck, and died easier when their heads weren’t attached to their bodies, or when they had an incantation thrown at them, to send them back to whichever world they belonged in.

Like the rest of the squad he carried a long knife, imbued with magic, courtesy of Helena, the witch who was assigned to them, and who kept them from getting their asses kicked more often than not. The squad liked to think they were the last line of defense that kept humanity safe, but really, they were glorified bodyguards, sent out to keep Helena from getting killed while she did her stuff.

Yep, degetty fodder.

“And what exactly are we hunting today?” Roman asked, sitting back in his seat as if he were lounging by the pool at some faraway resort. The guy thought he was the coolest thing on the planet. But he was new, he’d learn. And hopefully not die before he did.

“No one is dying today,” Helena said softly, leaning over and whispering in Jack’s ear. The others couldn’t hear her above the sound of the engine, and he nearly chose to ignore her, because he knew she liked freaking him out with her mindreading. Although she swore she read expressions, more than minds. Helena was a strong empath; she picked up on thoughts and feelings more than most witches. It might freak him out, but her gift had saved their asses enough times that he would never go to the Council and complain that she invaded their private thoughts.

“Unknown,” Kurt returned. “A ward has been set off, and we are to go and see if it’s some crazy, or if someone means business.”

“What kind of business?” Helena asked. “It helps to know what I might need.” She opened the satchel she carried; it contained hexes and potions, and Helena liked to have what she needed to hand. There was nothing as nerve-wracking as Helena rummaging through her satchel, or mixing a potion on the fly, while some creature was raining fury down on you.

“They didn’t say.”

He met Kurt’s eyes as he rolled them, and shook his head in agreement. There were few times the squad was sent out with no details. The Council had placed every ward they encountered; if one had been tripped, they knew what it was, and what it was protecting. If this was need to know, then they were in trouble.

“Helena, why don’t you top up everyone’s talisman? We might need all the protection we can get.” Jack wanted to make sure that whatever was thrown at them would slide off, at least for a round or two. If it was a powerful degetty, they would need everything in their meager arsenal, both protective and defensive, while she sent the thing back to the underworld.

Helena closed her eyes, and the talismans each shifter wore glowed as if they were burning hot. The sight gave Jack some comfort as Kurt drove off road, the battered Land Rover bumping across the open ground as they made their way closer to their quarry.

Kurt’s job was to get them as close as possible, in case they had to make a quick exit. Bears could run fast, and would likely outrun most others they came up against, but Helena wasn’t so fast, despite her powers, and would slow them down if they had to run. One day she would come up with a spell to give herself wings, or maybe change into something small they could carry on their backs. Until that happened, they needed the Land Rover close.

Kurt slowed the vehicle, looking for the exact location before stopping. “This is it.”

They exited swiftly, each member of the squad taking up a defensive position beside the Land Rover. Jack pushed his heightened bear senses outwards, searching for anything that might tell them why they were here.

“Nothing,” Kurt said, and walked around the side of the vehicle, pointing down into a wooded gully. “There. Due east. That’s where the coordinates lead to.”

Jack checked the compass he wore strapped to his wrist; not that he needed it, his bear knew north from south, and east from west. How humans coped without these inbuilt reflexes, he had no idea. “OK, I’ll go in first. Wait by the Rover while I scout ahead. If I flush anything out, be ready.”

Jack walked away from his squad, checking right and left, before entering the mouth of the gully. If the squad’s job was to keep Helena safe, it was Jack’s job to keep his squad safe. Always first into any situation, always last out.

The damp grass gave under his weight, his boots sinking into the ground a half inch with every step. Ten feet away from the Land Rover, he stopped, took one last look around, and then released his inner bear. The air shimmered, a frisson of electricity filling the gully, and he slipped out of this world for a moment, to return as a big grizzly bear whose pawprints resembled that of a fox.

Bears had been hunted out of existence centuries ago in England. But not shifters. So to cover their tracks—literally—they relied on the magic of witches, who used a type of glamor spell so they looked like an indigenous animal of the forest. Today he was a fox; he could always tell Helena’s mood by the tracks his bear left.

If she was in a bad mood, he might leave the tracks of a mouse, or a frog, much to the disgust of his bear.

Jack’s bear lifted his short snout and sniffed the air. Brimstone. Sure sign of degetty presence. His hackles rose and he stalked deeper into the gully, fully alert, ready to fight. The smell grew stronger, but it was stale. Unless a trap had been set, the degetty was long gone. But where? Had it gone deeper into the gully, or moved away from it?

One way to find out. He moved faster, the element of surprise gone: if he could smell the degetty, then the degetty would smell bear. Deeper he went, the sides of the gully high all around him. A perfect place for an ambush. Jack slowed, checking the air. The scent of brimstone had changed; it was tainted. The degetty had bled. He stopped at a spot where the ground was a mangled mess of mud and grass and leaf litter. This was where the degetty blood had been spilled, this is where it had fought and been injured. Who else was here? They were in the middle of the forest, and it was late, long past the witching hour. No innocent passerby had stumbled on the demon.

With his nose to the ground, Jack sifted through the scents, distilling them. Degetty, human, most probably dead, and… He stopped, taking a deep draw of breath, letting it wash over his taste buds. This human scent was different, a tangy scent that stirred him, awakening a part of him that had always been dormant. His bear pawed the ground, a low growl filling him as he struggled for control. A primal part of him was scratching at his mind, wanting to be freed, wanting to kill anything that had hurt this human.

Crap, Jack said, in his bear brain. This was not good. But was he sure? He put his snout to the ground and took in another breath, and as he did, the scent of brimstone hit him.

He whirled around, about to roar to the others; he needed to call for help. He could not take down a degetty alone.

“I always thought you bears behaved more like dogs,” said a voice. He could picture the face, lips curled in distaste as he sneered at Jack’s bear. Druids always looked down on shifters; hell, they looked down on everyone, but Gareth was especially superior. Probably because his father, Thaddeus Hollingsworth, was a member of the Council. It was easy to look down when you knew you were near the top of the Other’s hierarchy.

Jack shifted back into his human form. This fight had Gareth written all over it. He probably came here and set the ward off himself. Asshole always poked around in things that had nothing to do with him. Damn, Jack hated druids. They were almost as bad as degetty: slimy, untrustworthy, and with the added ingredient of magic.

“Good to see you, Gareth,” Jack said evenly. Druids were also open to flattery. You buttered them up right, they slipped away. And Jack wanted Gareth out of the way, so he could get on with his job, but first he wanted to know what the druid knew about this ward, and what it guarded.

“Really?” Gareth sneered.

“Yes, we might need your assistance.” Gareth came closer, and Jack continued. “We have no idea what we’re getting into. We have coordinates, but nothing else. We were told a ward had been triggered.”

“It has.” He hesitated and then his big, fat, arrogant mouth ran away with him. “Or at least it had. I’ve reset it.”

“So, false alarm?” Jack kept his expression neutral, hiding his loathing of the man before him dressed in a white druid’s robe. He didn’t know if druids had the gift of night sight; they seemed to think they had the gift of just about everything else.

“No, there was a threat.” Behind Gareth, a shape moved, it was big. Bigger than the largest shifter, who dwarfed all humans.

“Ahh, I see you brought your own muscle with you,” Jack said. Gareth might be a druid, but he was young and weak, his skills with magic not yet powerful enough for him to tackle anything dangerous alone.

What did a druid with little power do? He talked his father into helping him drag a powerful degetty up from the Underworld and bind it. That powerful degetty was what moved to stand just behind Gareth’s shoulder. Jack shuddered. This one must have been dredged up through Stonehenge itself. All standing stones were places where portals to different worlds could be opened, if the right magic was used. But Stonehenge was the daddy of all stone circles; you want one of the big fish, you fish in the big pond.

And Gareth had caught a shark.

“I knew how important this task was, so I brought Zinan with me.” Gareth looked up at his degetty, the same one who had attacked Jack’s mate, a sneer of contempt on his face. “He’s like a lap dog, only more obedient.”

“For now,” Jack said.

Gareth snapped his attention back to Jack. “For now. And for always. If I was going to keep him. But I’ve sold him. I decided I’d rather have a Porsche.”

Jack nearly choked on that. But then Gareth could easily ask his father for another one; the Underworld was full of them. One day Gareth would be expected to conjure one himself, Jack hoped it chewed his head off and spat it out before the idiotic druid had a chance to bind it to him.

Dragging a degetty from the Underworld was part of the ancient rite of passage for a druid acolyte. He was expected to go to a henge and conjure one, and bind it. Even the most powerful of acolytes could only summon a degetty the size of a cat. Jack knew for a fact, Gareth could not have bound this one alone. Jack’s temper flared, because when it inevitably broke free of Gareth, who would have to put their lives on the line to send it back to the Underworld? His squad…

Another day, his bear warned him, and Jack pulled his concentration back to the damp gully.

“A Porsche, that would attract the ladies,” Jack grinned, grinding his teeth to keep his anger at bay. He should really pity the man; goodness knows Gareth would need something going for him if he wanted a woman to bear him children. Unless he was a very slow developer, there wasn’t a lot for him to work with, except maybe casting a hex on a woman. That was about Gareth’s level…

Concentrate, his bear warned him.

Jack tried to; he narrowed his eyes, focusing on Gareth’s face. Damn it, he knew that expression, the punk was having fun with him. Damn, he hated druids.

“I don’t need material things to attract the ladies, as you put it. And anyway, that kind of base relationship might be what you mutts crave, but for me, there is more to life than breeding.”

Said like a true virgin, his bear said. Now, focus, we need to know what happened. We need to know who the scent belonged to.

“So you and your degetty showed up and dealt with the issue?” Jack asked, reverting back to his training, and shaking off Gareth’s grip over him. He drew on the power of the talisman around his neck, and felt the druid’s grip lessen. Not that he let Gareth know it. Let him think he was toying with a pet bear.

“Yes. Of course, we let her get what she came for first.”

“What she came for?” Jack asked.

“Yes, you don’t think the Council set a ward here for nothing.” He shook his head at Jack, his lip curling back further. “There was something here, something the Council has been keeping tabs on for years. Something they want in their possession.”

“And they couldn’t just take it themselves?” Jack asked. The Council were the most powerful people on Earth. If they wanted something, they usually got it.

“No. It was placed here by a Night Hunter, and protected by blood magic. Only a person with the same blood running through their veins could retrieve it. The Council could have torn the place up, rock and root, and they would never have found it.”

“And now the human has it?” Jack asked, deliberately dumb. Gareth would not have been standing here gloating with his big ape of a demon, if what they had come for had slipped through his fingers. A surge of anger hit Jack in the solar plexus: what had Gareth done to this human?

If Gareth, or his degetty, had hurt her, Jack would be compelled to kill them. That last thought came to him, white hot, slashing through his brain like a machete, carving a swathe of revenge in its wake.

Jack dug his nails into his palm, averting his anger, and he breathed it out, letting it dissipate. He had a bad feeling about this, a real bad feeling.

“And now I have it, of course. You think I’d let something as precious as this slip through my fingers?” Gareth reached into his pocket and withdrew what looked like a stone.

“A stone.”

“A Dragon’s Tear,” Gareth said with enough reverence, Jack was left with no doubt; this was powerful magic.

“It looks like a stone.”

“Look closer.” Gareth held the stone up, and Jack tilted his head, his eyes focused on the stone. It was green, but the more he stared at it, the more it seemed to change. The green was at once the color of jade, before it shimmered to reveal emerald-green facets, before changing again to turquoise, the colors moving like waves. Or like dragon hide, the surface made up of shimmering scales. But dragons were dead, a thing of mystery and myth.

“Nice.” Jack straightened up, relieved when he tore his eyes from the stone. “Want an escort back to the Council?”

“I have an escort,” Gareth said. “He’ll protect me much better than your pack.”

Jack let that go. If he corrected every insult that came out of Gareth’s mouth, he’d be here in this damp gully forever, and he wanted to get his squad back home. There was nothing for them here. A quick reconnaissance sweep and they could say job done.

As if on cue, the sound of bears could be heard coming toward them. Gareth heard it too, and said, “Time for me to leave. I like that they have your back.” He leaned forward and spoke in Jack’s ear. “How long did they leave you here alone? I could have killed you and the trail would be cold before they thought to assist.”

“They were following orders. My orders,” Jack said, struggling to hold onto his temper. Gareth could insult Jack all he wanted, but the squad, they were out of bounds.

“Like sit, and stay…” Gareth goaded.

“Something like that.” Jack swung around, ending the conversation. “I’ll log in that I offered assistance, and it was refused, just in case something happens to you on the way back.”

“Nothing can hurt me. I have Zinan,” Gareth called after him.

“Let’s hope he doesn’t turn on you,” Jack said. “Someone cut him up real bad. When he gets free of you, and I know he will, he’s going to come after you and rip you to shreds.”

Before Gareth could answer, Jack shifted into his bear and ran to join the others, not wanting them near the degetty. His thoughts turned to the scent, and why it had affected him so much.

She’s our mate, his bear filled in.

I know, Jack admitted. So now what do we do?

We find her.