Mara slashed at her opponent’s throat, cutting deep, and watched with detachment as the young man’s head fell back. Blood sprayed. The body dropped on the cobbled street with a thud.
The last one.
Oppressive silence hung like a chain of stones around her neck. She bent over, panting, wisps of dark hair tickling her eyes.
Then she straightened, muscles aching. She slung the silver-edged scimitar across her back, and turned toward the gothic tower dominating the city of Siforis.
“Leaving, are we? Entertainment over so soon?”
She spun around, wary. In the flickering light of a lamp post, a red-haired man stood among the dead bodies, smiling broadly. Damn, she’d missed one. Probably a werefox, like the others. The slight distortion of his face, the bones moving under the skin, told her he was about to shift.
“What do you want?”
His black collar glittered with round, golden studs. “What I want? To see you die, shifter-huntress.”
“Do you, now?” She sighed. “Where in the five hells are your keepers tonight? Use the bond, summon him, or her. I promise I’ll let you walk away.” Truth was, she was tired. She hoped he might just leave.
He fingered his collar, long nails scraping on the metal studs, but stayed put. “We need no keepers.” He drew out the last word, made it sound filthy.
Oh great. Another rebellion? “Yes, you do. It’s the law.” The decrees had been for the shifters’ own protection. The human keepers made sure a shifter wouldn’t be mistreated or killed, especially after returning to human form with the temporary exhaustion the transformation brought. Of course, that’s what the ruling class, the undead, claimed. Truth was, the undead had wanted control over the shifters all along, and now they had it. And Mara helped maintain it — a tool wielded in a never-ending conflict.
“The deal your boss is about to sign is important, huntress. Do you even know what it’s about?”
“Sure.” She wasn’t going to admit she hadn’t been told.
“Then you know that tonight every shifter’s coming in alone. It’s war.”
Shit. “Says who? Did the werewolf king decreed war?” He ruled over all shifters, and led the resistance against the reign of the undead, like Riffa and herself. But surely he wasn’t about to plunge the world into more bloodshed. Was he?
She suddenly wasn’t so sure.
“Desperate times, desperate measures, huntress.”
She got no other warning. The man shifted as he jumped at her, claws coming out, muzzle lengthening, teeth glinting — a giant red fox.
Mara rolled, came up with scimitar in hand, and slashed the creature’s chest and belly, pressing the blade deep. A moment of struggle, his claws reaching for her flesh, his teeth for her throat — then she knelt and watched as he morphed back to human, gasping and spitting blood.
“Sorry,” she whispered, “told you to call your keeper.”
“You’ll fall when you least expect it,” wheezed the man, lips drawing back to reveal blood-flecked canines. Death already clouded his gaze. “Others are coming for your lady mistress, and you.”
She caressed the sickle moon tattooed in blue on her belly, the sword tattooed on her arm. “Then they’ll all die before they reach the tower. Ain’t that a bitch?”
Her job was to keep her ghoul Countess Riffa, underworld enforcer, safe, whatever the cost, and whatever Riffa was doing at the moment in the tower. Mara’s contract obliged her to guard Riffa with her life, because Riffa held Mara’s soul.
Mara shivered, and it wasn’t just the cold wind biting into her flesh. Her soul, the one thing that made her who she was, that frail, fine thing that nobody was supposed to be able to steal from her, taken, and used to enslave her.
“Is it true Riffa brought you back from the dead?”
Why was the creature taking so long to die? “None of your business.”
“You were damned, and now you’re a demonic half-shadow. She’s your purgatory.” He coughed blood. His voice dropped to a raucous whisper. “A hundred years in her service and you might go free, and finally die. You’re jealous of me dying, aren’t you? Admit it.”
“Just die already.”
No answer. The werefox’s brown eyes remained open and glazed.
Another one down.
She clenched her jaw, her chest tightening. She thought she had buried every feeling deep inside. Damned for killing her sister’s abusive husband and so triggering the slaughter of her clan; turned into an assassin by Riffa, kept out of the underworld in this twilight existence, torn between sorrow and rage, played like a pawn on a giant chessboard. When would she be free at last?
Mara wiped her scimitar on the creature’s pale chest, and turned her face away from that accusing dead stare.
Stop fretting. Work. She began walking the perimeter again, around the tower’s metal fence. Belonging to the ruler of Siforis, the tower rose like a hand of grey lias stone from the ground, turrets with lancets for the archers, and a palisade. Somehow, Mara didn’t think that would cut it, when all the shifters attacked, as the werefox had implied.
On the way, she crossed paths with Jana, the other huntress, and nodded a greeting. Blood splatters covered the young woman’s silk leggings and tunic, clothes typical of Morker, a city further south. She held her short knives ready.
A busy night.
Mara reached the eastern end of the fence, then started back.
A low growl was all the warning she got when a pack of huge wolves poured over the outer wall and fell on her. She rolled to avoid being crushed, and reached for her daggers. “Jana! Help me!”
Growling in the distance told her that the other huntress was probably in a fight of her own. Mara rolled again, barely avoiding teeth and claws. She had no choice but to let her shadow nature out, if she wanted to survive.
She opened her mind to the other side, and the voice of her dead mother, sweet, rough with love, echoed in her head. Blinking away tears of sadness, Mara absorbed the breeze of the underworld, let it flow in her veins, icy. A grunt of pain escaped her lips as her body shivered and broke into particles, moving like a thick, sticky cloud of dust inside her clothes. She hovered on the paved path, not daring leave her weapons behind.
The wolves snarled and sniffed, pawing and whining, tails between their legs, looking spooked. They fell back.
It worked. Good. But she couldn’t fight that way. She forced the ice out of her mind, shutting the link, and it hurt as if jagged crystals tore her up inside. Gasping, she concentrated on the scent of the wet earth and animal bodies so close. Her body jerked, began to condense.
Normally, shifters would move away by now. Their keepers would call them back to keep them safe from a shadow creature like herself, the invisible bonds between keeper and animal tugging. But these wolves didn’t turn around and leave. Two came at her again, and five others loped toward the tower.
War. That was what they wanted.
Cursing, light-headed with the quick transformation, she turned, struggling to solidify more. But they swiped at her with their paws, grabbed her in their jaws. Every bite and slash, every foreign body inside her, their teeth or claws, prevented her from gathering her essence. Mara had to break free of them.
Using her still half-liquid nature, she jumped and floated over their heads, landed and sprinted toward the grim tower. Finally free of intruders, her body knitted. She slowed, suddenly heavy, filled with bone and flesh.
The tower! Even as she somersaulted over a low fence, she knew she was too late. The five wolves had reached the palisade. Hells!
She pulled out her silver darts, took aim and struck one of the wolves down. “Jana, damn it, where are you?”
But she was alone in this, and she knew it. She had failed Riffa, and she’d probably spend some quality time in the dungeons with the countess’ friends in the next days.
The four remaining wolves turned, snarling, teeth bared. They jumped at her and she ran, throwing darts, sure
she was too late — when a white blur slammed into them in mid-air. The wolves crashed to the ground, yipping.
The waxing moon reflected on snow-white fur. A white wolf?
He crouched low, his pelt short and spiky, his ears stiff.
What the hell was a werewolf doing helping a Shadow like her?
As she stood there, frozen, the gray wolves jumped on the white. They writhed on the ground, silver and snow swirls of fur and claw, eyes flashing yellow and blue. The white wolf bit their flanks, and crimson blood sprayed.
The blood jolted her, and she raised again her darts. Shaking off the stupor, she approached more, but getting in a clear shot through their tangled limbs was hard.
One of the gray wolves broke from the fight and loped toward the tower that soared into the dark sky. She aimed and struck him down as he leaped. He fell with a thud, his collar clanking against the flagstones.
A howl. A wolf leaped at her. Drawing her silver daggers, she stabbed him in the belly and up, aiming for his heart. He fell off her like an old fur coat, and she glanced up to see the white wolf pinned down by the others. She aimed carefully, threw a dagger and took another one out.
The white wolf buried his teeth into the gray one’s throat, blue eyes fixed on her. Her hand trembled on her other dagger. Who was this shifter?
The white wolf shook his head, tearing flesh, making the other wolf jerk. A loud crack marked the breaking of his neck.
Effective, she noted, lowering her hand, her heart thumping. Now she would really like some answers. She wondered what pack this wolf belonged to, and who his keeper was.
“Hey.” She kept her dagger out, tip trailing to the ground. “Good job. Are you okay?” She had no experience with animals, other than killing them. She hesitated, then crouched next to the wolf. His tongue lolled as if he laughed at her. She reached out her hand, and he sniffed it, then gave it a lick. It tickled.
Blood matted his white fur. Running her hand on his strong body, she found a wound on his foreleg.
“You’re hurt. You’ve got to shift back to heal. Call your keeper, he’ll help—” Her hand trailed on the silken fur. No collar. “You’ve got to be kidding me. No keeper?” Her body tensed. “You don’t belong to a pack. An outcast, an outlaw.”
She’d seen them run behind the packs, scraggly and sickly. He was white, an unusual color, which was probably why. Damn pack prejudices. Almost as bad as the humans.
What to do? He had saved her skin. She should stay, help him once he shifted, near blind and half-conscious, like all shifters after a transformation. But she was on duty, and growls sounded already from the west. She had to run. Riffa could never find out about this, about how close Mara had come to failing her.
There was no question about keeping him. She was always on duty. She killed his kind. That was her job.
He whimpered again, tried to lick her hand. She pulled it back. “I need to go.”
Her chest tight, she gave the white wolf one last glance, and left.
As she fought off other wereanimals, her thoughts kept drifting back to the wolf. Would he make it? Should she go back for him? Where could she take him?
She rubbed her face.
Unable to concentrate, she barely avoided getting killed when a werelioness jumped on her. She slashed the lioness’s throat and stepped back to avoid the spray of blood.
She saw in her mind’s eye the white wolf fighting, and her heart leaped.
Disgusted with herself, she ran the perimeter check back, until she reached the spot where she’d left him.
He was gone. A small pool of blood marked the place where he’d lain.
And then she felt it, faint but throbbing in her mind, like a pulse: the stirring of a bond. How the hell had that happened? She’d never lowered her defenses enough for such a seed to be planted.
Had she?
Mara pushed the bond deep down and locked it away.
***