Chapter 1
The monster she hunted was so close that Shadow could hear the thing breathing. She couldn’t pinpoint the sound’s origin, though. Something about the way noises bounced off the tombstones in this old cemetery made the harsh rasping seem to come from every direction at once.
She could hear Erik’s voice in her mind, the old Scyld scolding her in his oddly Scandinavian accent. Then do not use your ears, dottir.
Her sight wasn’t of any use here, either. It was too dark—the grave stones and monuments, with their cracked and crumbling angel statues, were merely dark patches against a barely lighter sky.
Resting one fist lightly on the ground, she remained kneeling behind the medium-sized mausoleum she had ducked behind when she first caught the breathing. She closed her eyes and let her senses fall away, one by one, focusing on each briefly to make sure she didn’t need it.
Sight. Gone. Only the blackness of her inner eyelids.
Touch. She readjusted her grip on her battle axe, felt the grit of the dirt beneath the knuckles of her other hand, the pressure of the ground against one knee. Then she let her awareness of those things drift out of her consciousness.
Hearing. The fiend’s breathing sounded less harsh. It was catching its breath. Shadow had to hurry, or she wouldn’t be able to catch it.
No. This can’t be rushed.
Taking a deep breath of her own, she moved aside any idea of rushing, and simply allowed the creature’s breathing to slip away from her thoughts.
Taste. There was something there, a hint of a wild flavor on the back of her throat.
Almost.
That sense she allowed herself to linger on, even as she moved on to the last one.
Smell. With the shift in her focus to the scents in the air, that suggestion of something wild on her tongue became the full-blown aroma of the feral, the untamed.
The monstrous.
And I know right where you are.
Opening her eyes, she allowed all her senses to flood back in, and this time, they all pointed in the same direction.
In one flowing motion, she stood and swung her battle-axe in a smooth, silent circle, working out any kinks that might have developed during her sensory exercise.
As if she had become her name, Shadow slipped toward the nightmare slinking through the graveyard, coming on it from behind before it realized she was there.
This one was particularly ugly, caught halfway between animal and human form, standing upright on bent hind-legs, its wolf’s muzzle highlighted in the moonlight as it turned its nose up into the air.
It caught her scent at the last instant, spinning around to face her as her axe whistled through the air, its centuries-old blade slicing cleanly through the flesh and crunching into the vertebrae. With a practiced move, Shadow jumped backward and tugged the axe out of the werewolf’s neck to remove herself from the reach of its claws. It wasn’t unusual for the creatures to swipe at her reflexively before their bodies realized they were dead.
Shadow had the scars to prove it.
When it came to claws, though, the cat-shifters were really the worst. As long as she avoided a wolf’s jaws, she was usually okay taking one of them out.
This one’s body seemed to recognize that it was done for, though. Even as its mouth continued to snarl, its legs crumpled beneath it. Shadow watched dispassionately as it fell to the ground, attempting to determine whether or not she should step closer to deliver a final blow, or simply stand back as its last breath bubbled out.
When it dug its front claws into the dirt and attempted to drag its way toward her, she slipped to one side, dancing around behind it long enough to slam her axe down one more time. The head still wasn’t entirely severed—it took much more precision and power to behead a monster in one stroke than most popular fiction suggested—but the creature fell still.
Once it stopped moving, she took the time to finish the decapitation. It never hurt to be certain, after all. Then she pulled a phone out of her back pocket. Nothing fancy—she didn’t want to risk her good electronics on a hunt—but enough to let Erik know where the body was.
He would be glad to hear it was in a cemetery. They were Erik’s favorite places for her to complete a kill, as they made body disposal much easier.
So does the fact that the body changes back to its base form, she reflected as she perched atop a nearby gravestone, staring as the corpse on the ground nearby seemed to melt and slide, slipping from monstrous to mundane, even as she watched.
The first time she had seen this happen, she had been horrified. “But it’s a person,” she had protested to the Scyld. “Human.”
Erik had shaken his head. “You’re still young, dottir. Even when they are in their human forms, their inner beasts rein. That is why we are called Scylds—we shield the true humans from the beasts’ monstrosity. You cannot assume that the creatures of the night are anything like you. They are not.”
This one certainly wasn’t.
As it slid back into its human body—minus one head—the pelt that covered it blackened and withered, blowing away into dust, leaving behind only human hair. With a slight grunt, Shadow heaved herself off the headstone and moved around to look at the face, reaching it as the muzzle melted entirely away, like soft wax being shaped into a new mold.
Planting the head of her axe into the ground and sliding her hand down the haft, she squatted to get a closer look. His mouth still held the sneer the wolf’s face had worn, but that was almost all that would have given away any connection between this man and the werewolf he had been moments ago. The werewolf had been in his late twenties or so, with a scraggly half-beard that would not have suggested his wolfish side. The cloudy, sightless eyes had been blue rather than any more traditionally lupine color. At best, his physique could have been called rangy.
No. He was definitely not the werewolf of popular culture.
Sighing, she pushed herself back up to standing.
Where the hell was Erik?
All Shadow wanted was a drink, then bed.
Maybe someone else’s bed, for a change. She rolled her shoulders. She could definitely do with the tension-relief a night of sheer, uncomplicated physicality could offer her—the kind of release she could get from sex, rather than killing.
Unless her clean-up crew bothered to show up pretty soon, though, the bars would close before she had a chance to find someone to go home with.
There was a college campus not far away, she remembered.
Should be plenty of bars with lots of athletic, eager young men to choose from.
Even if talking to them did make Shadow feel unspeakably old, despite being only twenty-two herself.
At the sight of Erik and his team making their way through the cemetery, Shadow raised a hand in greeting. As soon as she handed off this duty, she could start the real fun.
Time to get my game face on.
* * *
Jeremiah Diphiri leaned his elbows back against the bar and surveyed the crowded room. He hadn’t wanted to come out tonight—college bars weren’t really his scene, after all—but the rest of the clan had insisted, and as the only Shield, the only shifter guard, who had traveled to the Summit with them, he felt it was his job to keep an eye on them.
“It is not your duty, son,” Keeya, the clan matriarch, had told him. “Not tonight. We are here in peace. The other shifters will not attack.” As he had left with the others, she had patted him gently on the arm. “If the summit does not go well tomorrow, we will be spending all our time looking for a new place for the clan to live. That will be enough stress. Please, at least attempt to have a good time tonight.”
So far, so good, really. Although alcohol didn’t do much to burn through a shapeshifter’s metabolism, five stiff drinks in a row had relaxed him enough that he didn’t feel the need to glance over his shoulder every few seconds.
The Council members with whom she had spoken had sworn to Keeya that the wolf pack that had mounted a raid on the clan less than a month before had been acting alone. In any case, the Council was now determined to make amends for the actions of one small group, in part by creating an even stronger shifter coalition between the hyenas and the wolves.
The suspicious part of Jeremiah’s mind wondered if the attack had been designed to provoke just such an alliance.
But Jeremiah was still a young male in a primarily matriarchal group; he knew his ideas wouldn’t carry much weight.
Besides, if I could think of it, I’m certain Keeya has already done more than merely consider it.
The hyena’s leader had discussed it with her own inner cadre, examined it from every angle, and determined its potential clan value.
Or lack thereof.
Relax.
The other clan males were enjoying themselves, along with a couple of clan females. And more than one or two of the humans in the bar had attached themselves to clan members, too. Jeremiah hoped the males had remembered to bring condoms. The chances of interbreeding with humans were lower than they were with other shifters, but a shifter baby born to an unsuspecting human mother was inevitably a problem.
And as a Shield, I would have to take care of that problem.
One way or another.
The matriarch wanted all hyena shifters brought up within in the clan. The Council wanted all shifters to remain hidden from general human knowledge.
Jeremiah never wanted to have to kill a child’s mother, if he could avoid it.
He had been taught to revere motherhood—even to remove the child from its mother was more than he liked to consider.
A reminder to the males about protection won’t go amiss, he decided.
He pushed away from the bar and stood up straight, moving lithely through the crowd toward Kopano. Leaning in toward the other man, he whispered a few words into his ear. Kopano’s grin flashed wide and white, and he patted the pocket of his jeans with a wink. Jeremiah nodded, scanning the room for his next target.
A flare of golden-white hair caught his eye by the door, and he found himself staring at the blond woman taking her ID back from the bouncer on the stool and gliding into the room.
She was far from the only white woman in the place. Unlike other places Jeremiah had been in the Deep South, this bar’s clientele was racially mixed—a side-effect, he assumed, of the nearby college, as well as perhaps a less volatile racial divide than he had been led to expect. But she was certainly the palest person, by far. Hair so light that only its gleaming gold highlights made it clear that she wasn’t albino and milk-white skin both almost glowed, even in the bar’s dim lighting. Dark red lipstick—the color of blood—outlined her mouth, drawing attention to her lush, full lips. A short red dress of the same color showed a sweep of long, pale, muscular leg, down to a pair of boots more suited for military wear than dressing up. She carried a black leather jacket too warm for the weather, and her serious expression seemed to evaluate everyone in the room.
Jeremiah stood frozen to the spot, unable to look away.
Her assessing stare slid past him, paused, then tracked back until her gaze met his. Her eyes matched the rest of her—a blue so pale that they appeared almost colorless, except for a dark ring around the outside of the iris.
Like a wolf’s eyes.
The thought shook him out of his frozen state.
Could she be a wolf?
He needed to get closer, see if he could scent her. At the thought of getting near enough to smell her, his breath caught in his chest, his cock stirring.
Getting next to her had nothing to do with desire, he told himself.
If she was a wolf, he needed to let Keeya know.
And if she isn’t a wolf?
Then he needed to know that for himself.
Surreptitiously, he slipped his hand into his own pants pocket, glad to be able to double-check that he, too, had brought protection. He almost hadn’t, sure as he had been that he would spend the evening watching over his clansmates, rather than participating in the evening’s sexual hunt.
You’re still not certain that won’t be your fate, Diphiri.
He was, nonetheless, glad to be prepared.