Waging War

Waging War

Book Four

The Immortal
Descendants

April White

Copyright by April White,
2016

Published by Corazon
Entertainment at Smashwords

Smashwords Edition,
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War is being waged against the
Descendants and Saira Elian is desperate to stop the Mongers’
savage bid for power
…

Saira’s search for kidnapped mixed-bloods
draws her into the Mongers’ stronghold, revealing the horrible
truth behind the irresistible Monger ring and the vile plan to
cleanse Family bloodlines … permanently.

Under threat of a brutal massacre, Saira and
Ringo travel back to Bletchley Park during World War II where they
team up with Archer from the past to crack a Nazi code and expose a
Monger intent on changing the course of history. They join forces
with a female commando from the French resistance to hunt down an
elite unit of Monger soldiers - Hitler’s Werewolves - before the
terror squad can strike a fatal blow at the heart of the Allied war
effort.

Their manhunt drags Saira, Archer, and Ringo
into the London Underground on the eve of a Nazi bombing raid where
they come face-to-face with a Monger assassin on a suicide mission.
With the lives of all mixed-bloods in peril, Saira must make a
sacrifice that even Time may never forgive.

“
Have you ever asked yourself, do
monsters make war, or does war make monsters?”

–
Laini Taylor,
Daughter of Smoke and Bone

Shifter Training

A twig snapped behind me, and I caught the
faint trace of Connor’s Wolf.

I’d been studying up on Shifters, and animal
facts scrolled through my brain.
Wolf. Carnivorous predator.
Average travel speed – five miles an hour. At full sprint –
thirty-eight miles an hour. Average number of teeth – forty-two.
Strategic scent-trackers that hunt in packs.

Connor’s Shifter Wolf was alone though, and
if I stayed ahead of his forty-two teeth, he and I would have a
better chance of remaining on speaking terms.

I was free-running in the forest outside the
boundaries of Elian Manor, where there were more hiding places and
better escape routes for the keep-away portion of this game. But
there was the small matter of
forty-two
Wolf teeth somewhere
in the undergrowth behind me.

Also, the Wolf and I weren’t the only
players in this game of get-back-to-Elian-Manor-unscathed, and if I
left the woods, I might as well paint a target on my back. My
camouflaging abilities would be totally useless in the manicured
fields and wide open spaces immediately surrounding Elian
Manor.

I caught wind of him again, which was odd,
because wolves hunt downwind from their prey. Connor’s Wolf was
deliberately revealing himself. He kept pace behind me, but stayed
back out of sight. I’d need a better plan when the woods thinned
out near the old apple orchard, but for now, keeping myself out of
reach of his Wolfy grin was the best one I had.

He howled suddenly, and I felt the Cat rise
up inside me as if she’d been woken from hibernation by the sound.
I pushed her back down the only way I knew how – by mental chat.
No! I decide when to Shift, not you.
In England, “mental”
was another word for “crazy,” and talking to the feline Shifter
part of oneself was pretty
mental
.

Cat grumbled at me.
I can take down the
Wolf.

We are not taking down Wolves today.
I said, as if taking down wolves was
ever
on a list of
things to do in a day.

She huffed.
It’s a dog.

It’s an Alpha, and he’s my friend, so
sheathe your claws.
I attempted to convince myself it was only
a little weird to argue with a Cougar alter-ego.

Go ahead, fight me
, she smirked.
You’ll be defenseless, and when you need me, you’ll have to beg
me to come.

Gah! It was a lot weird.

Another twig snapped, then a deep grunt. And
suddenly a massive, dark figure loomed up ahead near the edge of
the woods. My courage shredded and I almost stopped in my tracks,
but fortunately I had a razor-sharp sense of self-preservation that
overrode the pants-wetting instinct a Bear usually inspired.

Bear. A solitary omnivore. Able to scent
food up to eighteen miles away, with a sense of smell seven times
better than a bloodhound. One swipe of a paw could disembowel or
decapitate a man. Top speed – thirty-four miles an hour.

I couldn’t outrun Mr. Shaw’s Bear in human
form.

The Shifter bone was around my neck, tucked
down in my t-shirt. I was only half-Shifter, so I needed the Family
artifact to unleash my Cougar. It was on a long leather thong, and
the ancient bone itself felt alive against my skin.

I shuddered. If I decided to do it, the
Shift itself would be intense and glorious, like scratching chicken
pox with a wire brush. It was the inevitable post-Shift internal
battle with my Cat that I dreaded.

So instead of Shifting, I changed direction
and headed for the stone wall that separated the apple orchard from
the rest of the fields.

The Bear followed at an easy lope, and when
I leapt to the top of the wall, he swerved around to the orchard
side. It was a bold move designed to trap me between the orchard
and the woods, or to put it in real terms, to trap me on top of a
six-foot-high stone wall between forty-two teeth and a decapitating
paw. So I had that going for me.

The wall was only about fifty feet long, and
ended in a laurel hedgerow that stood taller than my head. Shaw’s
Bear had outpaced me and was now at full height on the right side
of the wall, about ten feet in front of me. A standing bear was a
curious bear, and I’d know he was aggressive if he tensed and
dropped to all fours. My legs locked up and I practically skidded
to a halt.

“Whoa, Bear,” I whispered, frozen in place.
From the top of the wall I scanned the woods again, hoping some new
escape option would suddenly reach out and embrace me. I almost
jumped down to take my chances in the forest, until Connor’s Wolf
stepped out from between the trees and howled a bone-chilling call
of the wild.

And then Shaw’s Bear dropped down with a
deafening roar full of a challenge my Cougar couldn’t ignore. I
knew I was screwed even as I tried to rip my t-shirt over my head.
There was a Wolf on one side of me and a Bear on the other, and
they’d both just called my Cat to defend herself.

And she answered.

I was going to miss that t-shirt.

I hadn’t been fast enough to control the
Shift, and now I was mad - at the Wolf and Bear for provoking my
Shift, and at my Cat for disintegrating my clothes. The jeans and
boots had been old and could be replaced, but I probably wouldn’t
be going back to San Pedro Muffler for another shirt any time
soon.

The Wolf exploded forward, and my Cat’s
first instinct was to leap off the wall and fight.
NO!
I
yelled at her in my mind.
I’m still the boss of you.
I
yanked her around and we took off across the top of the wall at a
full sprint.

I was effectively pinned in place on the
narrow strip of stone that divided the woods from the orchard. If
the Bear stayed low, I might have a chance to get past him. If he
stood up again, I was going to have to leap off the wall into the
Wolf’s territory. It didn’t matter that this was a training game.
In our Shifter Animal forms it was real, and it could be
deadly.

It’s only one Wolf. We could hide in the
woods
. Cat was pushing her will forward. She wanted to leap off
and fight, but I wasn’t going to cave on that, so she was trying to
appeal to my basic instincts for survival.

I know we could, but that’s not the
game
.

There was an edge of fear in her thoughts.
Too close to the Bear
.

I wrestled control from Cat as she tried to
hurl us off the wall.
He’ll let us pass
.

He could swat us off this wall like
rodents
.

He won’t. He’s testing my fear
. The
instant I thought it, I felt my control over my Cat slip into
something calm and confident, and Cat’s nervous anxiety seemed to
melt away.