Authors: Judy Teel
I swished the thick, spiked tail behind me and snapped my teeth. Damn it. I'd shifted. Once more, I was the scaly, ugly baby of a T-Rex and a pterodactyl with a little stegosaurus thrown in for good measure.
Something crashed through the forest to my right. Something big. I ducked, lowering my body over my muscular legs to get a more balanced position and readied myself to spring on the threat.
The noise grew louder and then a dragon-like creature burst through the underbrush into the clearing that surrounded the ruins. He stopped and raised up on his hind legs to sniff the air, the strange blue aura around him shimmering and dancing with his movements.
He was beautiful.
The late afternoon light caught in the smooth scales covering his body, making deep iridescent turquoise, purple, and royal blue dance along his powerful musculature. His head was shaped almost like a German Shepard's, the forehead high, the snout narrowing into a long muzzle, the pointed ears alert. A mane of what looked like short quills ran down his back, starting between his ears and tapering to the tip of his tail where they sprouted into deadly looking spikes.
Dropping down to all fours, he cocked his head to look at me, his silver eyes bright with human-level intelligence. His gaze traveled over my body and then he shook his head and sat back on his tail, as if shocked by what he saw.
"Ee ant ahl ee 'ovie stahs," I grouched, my words garbled by my lack of human lips and teeth. Yeah, take that, pretty boy.
His eyes widened and he rocked forward onto his toes. He seemed to be considering approaching me when he tensed and his attention focused into the forest. The powerful muscles of his back legs tightened and he swung his head back toward me. Uh, oh.
I jumped over the crumbling wall of the ruins as he sprang at me, snapping open my bat-like wings and flapping them for extra speed and leverage as I scurried to get some distance between us. The sight of them brought the dragon creature to a surprised halt.
Ha!
I thought. Y
ou might be pretty, but you don't have these.
I gave my wings an extra flap for emphasis and braced myself for a fight. Instead, he sprang over the wall, landing lightly inside the perimeter. He gestured toward the woods on the other side with his clawed hands. When I didn't move, he repeated the motion, adding a frantic nudge of his head.
I shrugged. Was he telling me to run away? Why? Whatever he was, I could totally take him. I hunched down again and gestured for him to bring it on. His ears angled back and he repeated his combo motions. I shook my head "no".
That's when the stink of rotten Jasmine swept over me. On the other side of the wall behind Dragon Guy, the air shimmered. A second later,
It
solidified.
To say the thing was some kind of giant bug didn't do the monster justice. True, its tube-like body was plated in flexible sections like a centipede, so it definitely had some kind of exoskeleton. It also boasted six disgusting legs, each with curved spines running down the outside and tipped by a single deadly-looking claw.
But as if stabbing and shredding its victims with its legs wasn't good enough, its face also had a broad forehead with a bulbous multi-faceted eye set in the middle and a snubbed-off reptilian snout that looked powerful enough to crack elephant bones. And when it opened its mouth, I was treated to the horror of double rows of sharp, inwardly curving teeth.
Look, Mom, someone more hideous than me.
There was no question the thing was designed to tear through prey and enemies, leaving nothing but tiny pieces behind. My instincts freaked out, screaming at me to run away fast, but something held me back. Maybe it was the way Dragon Guy stared at me, or how he'd frozen in place. He certainly looked capable of at least giving the twenty- or thirty-foot bug-croc a run for its money, yet he hadn't moved. Why?
I watched the monster's head swivel back and forth, swallowing down a gag when the rotation of it went all the way around as its forked tongue darted in and out of that deadly mouth. After a moment, the air about a foot out from its body rippled like a heat wave and the smell of rotten Jasmine intensified. The vibration compressed inward, distorting the monster as it went, as if encasing it in beveled glass. When the vibration reached the center, the creature vanished.
I stared at the spot where the air still rippled with an unnatural pulse and my peripheral vision caught the almost imperceptible shake of Dragon Guy's head. Even though my mind was screaming at me to run and my guts continued to feel as if they were pretty much liquefying from fear, I didn't move. Finally the heat wave shrank to a small spot and disappeared.
Dragon Guy released a long breath and his shoulders relaxed. Turning, he cocked his head at me and a fierce smile stretched over his scaled doggy face. Sitting back on his tail, he reached into a kangaroo-like pouch on his pearly-scaled belly.
Already shaking from the shock of appearing and disappearing nightmares, if I hadn't been braced up by muscle-bound monster legs, I would've fallen over when he pulled out a pair of soft-looking leather pants with a rawhide cord drawstring and a leather shirt laced at the throat. Who was this guy, Davy Crockett?
He nodded to me as if to say, "you next." I backed up, shaking my head. "Really?" the angle of his head seemed to say.
Yeah, pretty sure I wasn't a kangaroo too.
When I didn't pull anything out of my own freakish stomach tote, Dragon Guy shrugged and started to glow. If the clothing he'd tossed on the ground wasn't clue enough, that sure was. He was some kind of Were and I was about to be treated to the full monty. Yeah. I was done.
Spinning around, I lumbered deeper into the village, and past the fountain to the entrance. Gathering up my stuff, I bounded up the cliff for the forest to get a little privacy.
I didn't linger in 4-D this time, but I didn't rush back down once I was dressed and armed either. I got down on my stomach and commando crawled to the edge of the cliff to determine the position of my mystery protector.
I peered down the ragged drop of rocks and saw the guy from my first shift, the fountain and Jesse's attack sitting on the wall below me. He looked up and directly at me, even though I was well hidden in the laurels that edged this part of the bluff.
"We need to talk," he said, his voice carrying clearly through the unnatural quiet that had engulfed the forest.
*
*
*
"What are you?" I called down, scooting back a little deeper into the laurels while still keeping an eye on him.
He swung his legs to the other side of wall so that he didn't have to twist his head around to look at me. "Demon-Were, like you."
"You're nothing like me."
"You're half practitioner," he said. I was not comforted by how much this guy seemed to know about me.
He bent over and picked a bright yellow flower from where a cluster of them grew near his feet. "I can help you refine your form, if you want." He lifted the flower to his nose and took a deep breath, his eyes half closed as he savored the scent of it.
I studied him, taking full advantage of my current position. He looked like he was in his late twenties or early thirties, which made the "if" part of him being my father even bigger. He had sharp, determined features and his build was lean and muscular, both of which reminded me of myself, though I hated to admit it. His hair was sandy-brown, where mine was dark enough to be almost black, but when he looked up, it was like looking in a mirror as his deep, twilight blue eyes locked with mine.
But even that didn't prove anything. Maybe he wasn't a Were. He might be something else.
"You don't trust me," he stated, looking up at the sky and smiling as if the presence of a few sunset splashed clouds were the height of happiness. "If I wanted to hurt you, would I have saved your life? Three times."
"I know a vamp back home who tends to do that, and I wouldn't trust him as far as I could behead him."
The man laughed, a low, warm sound that seemed familiar. I pushed away the crumb of hope trying to take root in my chest. What better way to gain an orphan's trust than to pretend to be her father?
"Pop on out of here. And take your freakish attack bug with you." Scooting back, I pushed to my feet and turned, planning to make a quick exit.
One blink the woods was empty except for me, the next and the guy stood in front of me with his hands up. I drew my gun in a reflexive Were-fast movement, glad I'd had the foresight to unclip the safety strap after I'd fastened my holster to my thigh.
"There's nothing in that weapon that can hurt me," he said. "But it's not my intention for us to fight."
"I've beaten your kind before."
He raised a brow. "My kind?"
"The name Aedodra sound familiar to you?"
The puzzlement on his face, compressed into a frown. "We were created because of the creature that claims that name."
The chapter I'd read had mentioned something like that, but I'd been too focused on finding a way to stop the pandemic than on thinking about my possible history. "Were-Demons, protectors of the innocent. I've heard," I said, not bothering to hide the sarcasm in my voice.
"Then you know some of your heritage." Seeming pleased, he started to lower his arms.
I waved the gun at him. "Keep 'em up."
His smile deepened as he raised his hands higher. "You're very cautious. Like your mother."
My finger tightened on the trigger. "A guy that I suspect is kin to Aedodra once claimed to know my mother too. You're digging yourself in deeper if you think you can win me over with crap like that."
"Pan is here?" There was no denying the pleasure in his voice this time. "And his sister as well?"
"Maybe."
The man laughed, surprising me. "Even as a baby, your mouth turned down exactly like that when you were disgusted. Your eyes and hair haven't changed either."
"There it is. If you tell me that you're my father, don't be surprised if I shoot you."
He coughed, trying to hold back his laugh, though his eyes still danced with humor. "All right. I'm the man who your mother summoned from a spell that entrapped and protected my people for nearly 10,000 years. We fell in love and after I initiated her in the delights of a man's touch, you were the result."
"Eww! Gross." I scrunched up my face and glared at him.
"Does that answer your question?"
"It makes me feel like I've been smarmed by a greasy teenage boy with BO," I said.
His grin broadened, showing a row of even white teeth. "Only the daughter of Mehkhem and Julia Nebra could say such a thing while pointing a weapon."
"Keep in mind the shooting threat before you open your mouth again. What was that thing that appeared by the ruins?"
Mehk's joviality collapsed like a deflating balloon. "The Tor'nysoos." He spat to the side, his expression dark. "Created by Aedodra to destroy the other races."
I let my surprise roll around inside me and kept my face neutral.
He held my gaze. "It's been dormant for thousands of years. Your first shift awakened it."
"
My
first shift?" I protested, and then something Aedodra's brother had once said echoed through my mind —
Bringing your natural form into this world triggered a vibration that rippled across time and space
.
That signal will awaken something that hasn't walked this dimension of Earth for thousands of years.
A cold slap of guilt and anger hit me in the chest.
"The Tor'nysoos felt the pull of a living Demon-Were and tore through the barrier," Mehk continued. "For now, it can only form in this dimension for brief periods of time. But as it gets stronger, it will be able to hold its solid form longer." His blue eyes watched me intently. "It was designed for slaughter. It doesn't need much time to do that."
"Has it been using the
Suir aosar
to attack the Weres?" I asked, remembering what I'd found when I went into the fourth dimension.
His brows drew down. "Brute strength and instinct is all it knows. It kills in the physical world and will keep killing until every Were and every practitioner is dead."
My blood chilled as I tumbled that around in my mind for a moment, and then remembered the smattering of strange information I'd uncovered during the murder case Cooper and I had worked that past summer. "Those interdimensional bastards," I muttered as pieces I hadn't understood fell into place. "They manipulated me into triggering exactly what's happening now."
Mehk raised a brow.
"Laswell and his sister," I said. He watched me curiously as I thought back to the rich practitioner's weird garden and the statues in it. "Possibly Pan and the goddess Diana?"
He shook his head.
"Goddess of the hunt? Um...god of wine and revelry?"
Mehk's expression cleared. "Maker of Weres. Humanity's champion."
"I thought so." I lowered my gun and Mehk let his hands dropped to his sides.
"Your concern about the
Suir aosar
attacks...are you talking about the half-formed Were?" he asked.
I brought my gun back up. I couldn't believe I'd forgotten about Jesse. "What did you do with him?"
Mehk pulled in a long breath and then released it. "He's been following you since you left
Cha'dana
." He looked out into the forest and his gaze lost focus for a moment.
A soft step to my right and a large black and tan wolf emerged from the shadows. He sat down, his yellow eyes watching me patiently.
My stomach did a flip of alarm and I took a step back, keeping both of them in my sights.
"He doesn't remember the attack," Mehk said. "He only knows that he's drawn to you."
"Why?"
"Partially your Demon-Were scent, but also because you were the last human face that he saw."