Shifter (Wicked Woods #6) Read online

  Josh looked at her for several seconds. “Yes, I believe you would.” He sighed. “If I could get my werewolves here, I would, regardless of the marriage thing. I know we need to win here to keep Wicked safe, and my people with it. I want that. All right, so I wanted the power, and I wanted you too. What man wouldn’t? But I want them safe, and I want you safe.”

  Briony didn’t know what to say to that. Particularly to the compliment. She’d assumed that Josh was only interested in her for what she had to offer in terms of power. Josh went on then though.

  “That’s why I’m going to do what we both know you want me to do, Briony.”

  “I don’t want you to do anything, Josh.”

  Josh shook his head. “You do. You just haven’t been able to ask for it, because you keep your word. You want Kevin, and we both need my werewolves to be able to come through. Archer here can find me a gate. I’ll go back through, and Kevin can come here. If you decide to marry him, then he’ll be a worthy enough werewolf for the scepter. It should mean that you’re able to control the gates again and let more of my kind through.”

  “Oh Josh,” Briony said. “I don’t know what to say. I guess I owe you an apology for thinking you were…”

  Josh raised his hand, and Briony was immediately reminded that Josh was a king, the Werewolf King. “Utterly power mad? I can see why you’d think it, but for me, power is always about a purpose, and that purpose is keeping my people safe. And of course, since I know you will never marry me, but you might marry Kevin, this way is our best shot at getting back into Palisor.”

  Briony smiled. “Nice to know that the old you is in there somewhere, working out the angles.”

  “It’s what a ruler has to do, Briony,” Josh said. “Now, I’ll need Archer’s help.”

  Briony nodded to Archer, who went with Josh out the window, transforming and taking the werewolf king with him.

  “We should be going too,” Sophie said.

  Briony nodded. “I’ll be there in a minute.

  Sophie nodded and headed out the door. Fallon came in through it as she left. He crossed the distance to Briony in two quick strides, pulling her into his arms and kissing her deeply.

  “That’s for deciding not to marry Josh,” he said, before kissing her again. “And that’s for all those good vampires who have just narrowly avoided the vampire apocalypse thanks to you.”

  He seemed so happy then, and Briony could guess why. He thought that he still had a chance with her. Who knew, maybe he did, but right then, it didn’t seem very likely. She hadn’t told him yet about the plan as it currently stood, where she would marry Kevin and that would be that. Did he deserve to know? Even though Archer had told her that the marriage was only one of the keys to the vampire apocalypse, did Fallon have a right to know that Briony was thinking of taking one step closer to it to save her kingdom?

  No, not yet. She couldn’t tell Fallon yet, and not just because it would hurt him too much at a time when he seemed so happy for once. The truth was that nothing was settled right then. Josh had gone off to get Kevin, but who was to say whether the werewolf king would be able to get him to come? Maybe they wouldn’t find a gate. Maybe Kevin wouldn’t believe him.

  Or maybe he wouldn’t want to come. Briony had seen him in the reflecting pool with Carol. If she asked him to marry her, and that was still an if, even with her, then would he say yes? It was obvious that he was interested in Carol, and she was a werewolf like him. Maybe Kevin hadn’t wanted to wait around in Wicked for her. Maybe he’d decided that he was tired of waiting for Briony to make up her mind between him and Fallon. Briony knew how jealous she’d felt when she’d seen Carol and him.

  But there was one note of hope even as she thought that. Despite the jealousy and the flash of anger that had run through her seeing Kevin there with Carol, Briony still wanted him. She still loved him. If she felt that way, then couldn’t he? Maybe? She shook her head. This wasn’t the time to think about that. There was a battle that needed fighting. For now though, she knew she had to keep all this from Fallon. She wasn’t going to hurt him over something that might not even happen.

  “Are you going to join in the battle?” Briony asked.

  Fallon nodded. “And it looks like you’re planning to be in the middle of the fighting.”

  “Maybe not the middle,” Briony said, “but the unicorn died for a purpose, and I’m not going to stand around with its horn, not using it for anything when I could be helping.”

  Fallon nodded then, though Briony could see the worry in his expression too. “This is going to be dangerous, Briony. At least as dangerous as anything else we’ve ever faced.”

  “I know,” Briony said, “but this time, we’ll have a whole army to back us up.”

  “It makes a change from trying to do everything with a few werewolves and the members of the Preservation Society,” Fallon said. He turned serious again for a moment. “I’ll be watching out for you in the fight, Briony. Wherever you go, I go. I’m not letting you out of my sight. I couldn’t stand it if…”

  Briony wanted to promise him that nothing bad would happen to her, but she didn’t. She’d learned that much at least over the past few months. Bad things happened to people. All you could do was try to deal with it and make sure that they didn’t happen to anyone else.

  “I’ll be looking out for you too, Fallon,” Briony promised. She hefted the horn. “Come on. Sophie will be waiting for us outside.”

  Chapter 14

  Josh clung to Archer while the dragon searched for a gate, hating being so high off the ground with so little between him and almost certain death if he fell. He felt out of control like this, and he hated being out of control. He hated being someone who had events dictated to him rather than making his own choices. Yet Briony did this all the time.

  Archer was circling now, and Josh guessed that he’d found something. A glance down confirmed that. The pale arch of a gate stood in the middle of a patch of open ground, not glowing with shining mist yet, but Josh knew that it would with a dragon around. And then they’d be able to go through. Hopefully. There was only one real problem.

  The creatures of Xylyx swarmed around the base of the gate, the darkness they carried with them swirling around them like waist high tendrils of mist. As Archer flew lower above them, Josh could make out more and more of them. They were grotesque. There were none of the strangest creatures from the chasm there, but the vampires there were enough. And they were vampires, that much was obvious as they looked up at the two of them circling above, their fangs clear to see.

  Yet they were different from any vampires Josh had seen before, too. They were, hunched and muscular, in clothing of a black material that Josh didn’t know seeming so close to human and yet so far away from it. Pietre’s vampires looked normal to the untrained eye, and even Marcus’ had looked like something out of human history, but these? They looked like something sub-human. Pre-human. Something that had never been human. Their eyes were the red of a vampire in the greatest depths of hunger and their fingernails were claws as long and sharp as those of a big cat. They would never have passed for human. And they were in the way of the gate. Josh shivered involuntarily.

  He shivered more as Archer brought them down at the edge of the horde, transforming into his human form there.

  “What are you doing?” Josh demanded as a few of the creatures on the edges of the mob of vampires started to turn their attention towards them. “Can’t you just fly over them?”

  “I have to bring the gate to power,” Archer said. “Get ready to run.”

  “I thought it was only Briony who could do that? Hugtandalfer royalty at least.”

  “Get ready to run!” Archer repeated.

  Josh swallowed his fear. He wasn’t going to give into this. He was the king of the werewolves. Vampires, even a horde of impossibly primitive ones, were not going to intimidate him. Although it helped that they were still at least a hundred yards away. Far enough that although he
could see the glow of their eyes and the yellow of their curving fangs, they couldn’t hurt him yet.

  “Of all the places to have a gate,” Josh muttered before transforming. If he was going to have to run through this horde, he certainly wasn’t going to do it in human form. He was faster as a wolf. Stronger as a wolf. There wasn’t anyone as fast or strong. Except possibly Kevin, and even that thought didn’t give Josh the surge of anger that it usually did. He’d done what he needed to do. He’d come here and he’d found a way that would let the rest of his people come too. Briony would never accept him, so going home was better. At home, he could take his throne back. At home he could look after his people.

  The world looked so different as a wolf. Color was less important like this. Vision was less important. Instead, sight, smell and more primal senses blended so that the whole world reached him in a rush. How many people were lucky enough to see the world like this? How many had seen it like this almost from birth, the way he had.

  “I’m opening the gate,” Archer said, and spread his hands. Josh looked out over the horde of creatures from Xylyx, and he could see the mist starting to rise in the gateway. He howled.

  “We don’t want them getting through,” Archer said. “We have to hurry.”

  Josh hadn’t thought of that, and he cursed himself for not doing so. Normally, he had things worked out to the last detail, but here, he’d forgotten. When they went through, it would leave a gap. A gap into which vampires could step even if they didn’t possess the scepter the way Marcus had. Which meant that they might be dragging a whole battalion of vampires back with them. Even if that was true though, could they afford not to do it? To look for another chance?

  “Run now!” Archer ordered, and that made up Josh’s mind for him. He sprinted, and Archer sprinted forward in front of him, somehow reaching the vampires first. He didn’t stop to try to fight them, but just kept moving, sliding into gaps between them, moving like smoke as they tried to grab him. In seconds, Archer was at the gate, and then through it.

  Josh sprinted to try to keep up. If the vampires were so crazed that they didn’t care about a dragon running through them, then he ought to find this easy. He ran as fast as he could, keeping his head low and plunging towards the gate ahead of him. Unfortunately, that meant plunging into the darkness that still swirled around the vampires. It only came up to their waists now, but that meant that it was higher than Josh’s head. He ran through it anyway.

  The darkness was absolute. He couldn’t see, and with his other senses overwhelmed by the clamor and the stink of the vampires all around him, Josh was effectively blind in every way. All he could do was plow forward, relying on the fact that the gate was somewhere there ahead of him.

  He thought he could hear whispers in the darkness. Not voices exactly, or at least not voices speaking any language he knew, but something. A strain of hatred and violence; malevolence directed not at him, but at everything. There was something in the darkness that wove between the vampires. Something that wove them together into a kind of bestial tapestry. Something that took these violent, maddened beasts and made something more of them.

  Right then though, Josh didn’t care about any of that. He didn’t care about anything except keeping moving, running with all the power that his werewolf form had at its disposal, heading for the gate before any of the vampires could understand that they had a werewolf in their midst.

  Something grabbed at his hind legs, and he knew that it was too late.

  Josh spun, knowing that it had to be one of the vampires. As he spun, the darkness seemed to clear a little, for no good reason Josh could see, except maybe that it let the vampire attacking him terrify its prey with the sight of it. At close range, that was terrifying. A hairless, powerful, ugly thing with fangs like daggers, its clawed hands fastened on Josh’s legs. But Josh wasn’t anyone’s prey.

  He lashed out, biting the hands that held him, clamping down with his jaws and rending briefly to force the vampire to let go. He was pleased to see the creature bleeding, dark, almost red-black blood dripping from the wounds. Yet the vampire didn’t let go. Didn’t this creature feel pain? Josh knew that vampires could be tough, and certainly, they would know when a werewolf bit them. Josh bit down again, this time feeling the crunch of bone beneath his teeth as his jaws bore down with enough force that they almost tore away one of the hands holding him. Still, somehow, the vampire clung on. It was incredible. Almost like it didn’t have enough of a mind to care about what happened to it. Was there nothing that could stop these ones?

  Almost as if the thought made it happen, the vampire reared back, screaming like a wounded animal. Whatever it was in a werewolf’s saliva that made it deadly to vampires in Palisor obviously still worked on these new ones, because Josh could see the tracery of black lines running up along its veins as the venom did its work. The creature screamed, and then burst into brief, magnesium bright flames.

  A surge of hope flashed through Josh, as fast as the fire before it. He hadn’t had the chance to use this power in Palisor, but feeling it now, he could see all that it could do. He’d spent so long trying to find a way to keep his people safe, and this… this was something that might be able to do it. With this bite, a werewolf didn’t have to succeed in attacking the throat or driving home a stake. With this, they were better than vampires. All it took was a bite, and they would burst into flames.

  The darkness had closed in again by then though, and Josh realized with a start that he didn’t know which way the gate was anymore. Panic threatened to replace the hope, until with a harsh bark that would have been a laugh had he been human, Josh realized there was one easy way to solve that problem. He darted forward, and the moment he made contact with something in the dark, he bit down. A few frantic seconds later, the screaming started, and after that…

  The darkness parted in the bright blue flare of the dying vampire. By that light, Josh saw the way he had to run, and he didn’t hesitate. He had to get there before vampires could get through. Before the gate could close. They were so unpredictable, after all. His muscles bunched, and he ran. He ran as fast as he had ever run, while around him, Josh felt a shift in the Xylyx vampires. They were coming for him. That or they were trying to get through the gate, and Josh didn’t know which thought was more terrifying. He pushed himself harder still.

  He leapt, and he saw an arm reaching out from the gate. Archer’s arm. Josh transformed in midair, flinging out his hand, wrapping his fingers around the dragon’s. Archer dragged him through, pulling him onto soft grass beyond, in a very familiar looking meadow with a stream in it.

  Archer jerked his hand, and the gate disappeared.

  Josh lay there panting, staring up at Archer and trying to think. Had the dragon really just made a gate disappear? He hadn’t thought that was possible. He was sure that, if it were, Archer would have done it before now. Yet he’d just seen him do it. Had he gained something through his connection to Briony? Had he given her something?

  Josh thought he could see the shape of it then. Archer was another piece of the puzzle. A puzzle with who knew how many pieces. He was the key to opening and closing the gates, a dragon bound to the blood heir to Palisor. Archer was special enough without all that; he was a dragon after all, but now it seemed to Josh like he might be the key to more than just the gate. He might be one of the keys to unlocking the whole complicated puzzle around Briony.

  And he was currently in Wicked, on the other side of the gate from her.

  Chapter 15

  Kevin made his way through the forest in wolf form, hunting now. Carol had insisted on it, saying that they needed to prove their strength by taking on Pietre’s vampires where they could find them, and honestly, Kevin didn’t mind that so much. Any new vampires Pietre had made had to be hunted down before they could start killing people. That was simply the way things had to be. What he didn’t like was the way Carol had backed him into a corner. If he wanted to draw Josh back, he had to play the part of th
e werewolves’ king, and that meant doing what she said.

  In this case, it meant stalking a small group of vampires with her. Just her, because Carol had decided that it would look weak for them to take too many other wolves. Or maybe she’d just wanted an excuse to get Kevin alone. Either way, she was stalking along beside him, closing in on a quartet of vampires who were all obviously young and confused about what had happened to them. Kids, transformed by Pietre or his creatures. Not that it changed anything.

  He and Carol rushed forward, splitting as they attacked to make it look like they were going for separate targets, then charging towards a young male vampire in dark clothing. Carol hit him at knee height, while Kevin went higher, attacking his throat. Because the vampire was falling, he didn’t have the chance to block Kevin’s lunge at him, and maybe he hadn’t learned to defend that single vulnerability yet anyway. Kevin’s jaws clamped around his throat and crushed down. The vampire died instantly.

  The two of them split their attack then. Kevin went after the largest of the group, a boy who had clearly been a jock before being transformed. He even wore a letter jacket, and judging by the size of him, he’d probably played plenty of football. Kevin slammed into him anyway, expecting that the young vampire wouldn’t be able to deal with the ferocity of his attack.

  Maybe the kid was quicker than he looked though, because he managed to twist out of the way of that first attack enough to keep Kevin from getting his jaws around his throat. Kevin drove into him, knocking him backwards, and the vampire rolled before trying to take off into the woods. Kevin twisted suddenly, knowing that he should focus on the remaining ones.

  There were two, one male, one female. Carol was attacking the female one, who was hissing in an animal mixture of rage and fear while lashing out with nails that had grown to claw length. Her fangs were out too, and Carol was having to hang back, being careful while she looked for an opening. Unless she could get the throat cleanly, even most new vampires would heal too quickly for wounds elsewhere to stop them.