Magic Burn: an Urban Fantasy Novel (Shifting Magic Book 2) Page 5

  “Stop what?”

  “You know what.”

  I stilled when he leaned down, mouth resting next to my ear, and whispered, “Tell me. In detail. I want to hear it.”

  Our lips ended up no more than a breath apart when I turned my face toward him, and I noted the flutter of his eyelashes as those stormy grays wandered from my lips to my eyes and back again. Then, somewhere on the other side of the camp, an explosion of group laughter forced me to look away again, and I went back to eating my herb-infested soup, unable to shake the tension between us.

  “Oh, Kaye.” Another noisy slurp. “So, disappointed in you.”

  He exhaled something crossed between a laugh and a grunt when I slapped his leg – hard. When he stretched it out and gave it a shake, I knew I’d succeeded.

  “I always underestimate your strength.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment,” I told him. We exchanged quick grins before going back to our dinners in a contented silence. When I finished, I set the wooden bowl aside, wondering if I’d ever be able to taste normal food again with all this herbal aftertaste floating around my palate, and then turned my gaze outward. Although the forest appeared nearly black, I found myself noticing the shapes of gnarled and twisted trees, the rise and fall of thorny underbrush. If I blocked out the rest of the camp, I could almost hear the soft screeching of bugs.

  Darius cleared his throat, and out of the corner of my eye, I caught him stacking our bowls and setting them aside. “You okay?”

  “Thinking,” I told him. “I’ve noticed my senses are kind of… sensitive lately. And not the usual heightened, magical kind. I just… I feel things. I see things. I can hear them. Even here, in a forest that is basically a deprivation chamber.”

  He snorted. “Yeah, I see it all too. I think…” Darius paused, threading his hands together with a sigh. “I don’t know how this will make you, you know, feel, but maybe your shifter side is starting to present itself.”

  I appreciated the sensitivity he took with the topic, considering the sometimes-terse relationship supernaturals had with shifters. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to be a shifter; I just wasn’t sure how to handle that I had a whole separate half of my being that I had only just found out about.

  “So, what, now that I know about it, it’ll start showing up in my everyday life?”

  “I just think you’re more open to connecting with your shifter side,” he remarked. “You know it’s there now. Things that you couldn’t explain before about yourself are suddenly starting to make sense.”

  I glanced up at him after he fell quiet for a second time, only to find him studying me again, his expression more unreadable than I would have liked.

  “But it’s nothing to be afraid of,” Darius added softly. “Though, I’d understand if you were. Having a powerful beast living inside of you isn’t exactly easy. Dragons are next level difficult.”

  “I guess it’d be easier if I were a squirrel shifter, or something,” I managed, picking at a hangnail. “I mean, how dramatic can an inner squirrel persona be?”

  Not that I was experiencing some inner beast—not during moments of peace, anyway. That little voice, the one that had always steered me right since childhood, had become louder in times of real danger, however.

  “Come on.” Darius bumped me with his elbow. “Nobody wants to be a squirrel shifter… Not even squirrel shifters. Don’t ever wish you were a squirrel, Kaye.”

  I laughed, and then leaned into him. Without prompting, Darius wrapped an arm around my shoulders, his fingertips lazily caressing my arm.

  “You’re cute,” I told him, snuggling in so that my head settled under his chin, a hand on his chest. The steady thump-thump of his heart, constant and sure, soothed away whatever worries had started to creep in.

  “I am pretty adorable,” Darius said after a few moments passed.

  I managed to slap his other leg this time—charley horse city, population: Darius.

  Now that I had “proven” myself a capable leader—all because I didn’t blast some poor nymph into sweet oblivion back in the woods—apparently, I was supposed to lead the group through the portals. Galen and Quell had wordlessly relegated themselves to the rear of the group during our hike from the overnight camp to the portal on the other side of Hallowed Forest. I wasn’t sure how not using violence had earned me their respect, but Darius told me to just take it—and take it I would.

  “We move quickly,” I instructed the militia. “The skies might be clear now, but that might not be the case in a few minutes.”

  It only took the word of one scout watching this portal, a small hobbit-sized door carved into the trunk of a century-old yew tree, and we would have the full gargoyle-witch armada on us again. After saying farewell to the Hallowed Forest dwellers, a few of whom had joined our cause, I exchanged a quick look with Catriona, whose gaze told me she would be right behind me, and then nodded when Darius gave my hand a squeeze.

  The yew stood well over a hundred feet tall—a beast among trees, as it was. Sunshine bore down on us, hot and unflinching, and the air was just as still out here as it had been in the haunted forest. Apparently today was going to be a merciless summer day; hopefully that wasn’t the case in Wisconsin, where the portal was set to take us. Good ol’ Wisconsin: home of the bear shifter clans and not much else.

  Pushing the prickly, stubby branches of the yew aside, I found myself standing in front of the portal door. I took a deep breath and turned to my comrades, knowing what I had to do. “I need a dagger, something sharp.”

  It took only a second, and I was being offered all sorts of pointy objects, all of which would easily get the job done. I cringed when a dwarf lifted his hand to me in offering and I saw that he was holding an axe.

  Take it easy there, buddy. I need to offer a drop of blood, not my entire hand.

  I accepted a dagger from one of the elves, used the tip to quickly prick my finger and offered a droplet of blood on the portal door. I pushed against the massive trunk when the bark darkened, beckoning me through. Portals that didn’t take you to Alfheim were a little less disorienting; traveling a rainbow pathway over a bottomless pit turned your whole world upside-down. Local portals, ones that radiated a lesser magic than those that took us to an entirely separate world, were a quick in-and-out procedure.

  Sure, there was some rainbow, but I could see the bright light at the end of the way, like rushing through a tunnel that cut through the underbelly of a mountain. Not wanting to occupy the portal for too long, I jogged through, only to catch my foot on something unseen and face-planted through the wall of light.

  “Ooof!” I grunted on impact, hands slamming down onto lush, spongy grass. Grateful I hadn’t totally face-planted, I blinked hard and breathed in the scent of wet grass; it must have just rained. My head spun, though only enough to be an annoyance: a few more blinks and the sensation disappeared.

  Slowly, I lifted my head—and found myself staring directly into the face of a full grown black bear. Large, almost entirely black, eyes stared back at me, then widened into dish saucers when I let out a full-blown, unnecessarily, terrified scream and scrambled away, the heels of my boots kicking up grass as I went. To anyone watching, it would have been quite the scene, because the bear uttered something like a scream too and went bounding away in the opposite direction.

  “Kaye!” Seconds later, my dragon came racing out of the portal, eyes dark and fists up. He practically exploded out of that little space, on the offense and charging forward.

  “Over here,” I said meekly, pleased that Darius and that fucking bear—a shifter, which I could detect now that I’d stopped being a panicky baby—were the only ones to see me act like an idiot. “I’m okay.”

  Halfway across the clearing, the beefy black bear shifted into a full-grown man—a familiar full-grown man at that.

  “Colton!”

  “Darius!”

  “Embarrassing,” I muttered to myself, wiping my grass-staine
d knees off as the two guys headed toward one another for the manliest handshake I’d ever seen. Colton, along with his friend Liam, had been the two bears working security when we visited the mage, Noris, back in Vermont. Apparently, the guys got around.

  As more of our militia trickled out of the portal, one right after the other, all a little turned around on arrival, I made my way over to the two shifters—as usual, trying to be respectful of all the nudity.

  Because… Colton had a physique. Meathead Central, sure, but I could think of many women—and men—in present company who would find him very appealing.

  “Sorry about that. Didn’t mean to scare you,” Colton said, chuckling as I approached. Darius wore an identical smirk, obviously amused with my predicament, and it grew into a teasing grin when I scowled up at him.

  “Yeah, thanks for waiting a foot away from the portal,” I fired back, though I tried to keep my tone light as I shifted my focus to Colton—face area only. “You scared the shit out of me.”

  “Well, that scream could wake the dead, so I think we’re even.”

  Teasing aside, we offered each other the usual polite greetings, his exuberance reserved mostly for Darius. Then he watched as the rest of the militia spilled out into the steadily, filling clearing.

  “You bringing a lot of people with you?” Colton asked. Clearly, he had been alerted to our arrival, but I couldn’t be sure by who. Zayne? One of my rebellious captains?

  “There’s a lot of us, yeah,” Darius replied, and I bit back a smile when he referred to the other supernaturals as us, like we were all on the same team. Because we were, of course, but it would be difficult for steadfast shifters to accept working with supernaturals.

  “Well, good…” Colton squared his shoulders, his expression the most serious I’d seen yet. “Because there are a lot of bears who need convincing that shit is going to hit the fan.”

  Darius and I exchanged looks.

  “That,” I said, “we can definitely do.”

  Okay, so convincing a whole clan of bear shifters to get on board with Zayne’s plans proved to be a little harder than we anticipated. Years of anti-shifter sentiment within the supernatural community had left them wary of us, and Abramelin’s crusade only made things worse. Fortunately for us, Colton and Liam had already briefed the clan on Abramelin’s destruction, which made it easier for Galen, Quell, and myself to explain our plan of attack.

  Having a shifter on our team helped too, though not as much as I’d hoped. The bears were almost as wary of Darius as they were of us. He’d explained that dragons tended to separate themselves, even from other shifter clans. As creatures of ancient lore, dragon shifters considered themselves loftier than the regular old, modern day bear, wolf, eagle—the works—shifters. It was a detail Darius had neglected to tell us, that dragons were the snobs of the shifter community.

  Still, it had been very apparent that the bears were more willing to listen to him, and my dragon’s established friendship with Liam and Colton, betas in the power hierarchy and only one step down from their alpha, went a long way.

  All things considered, our first shifter clan was kind of a soft sell. Colton and Liam had coordinated with their alpha to mobilize the clan. We spent two days helping those who were leaving for a secret colony in Maine, assisting with the packing and planning and wrangling of wild cubs. Those who stayed behind prepared for battle, which, for shifters, consisted mostly of polishing weapons, weightlifting, and strategizing team plays against the enemy.

  Like a giant, bear football team, only the big, playoff game would be a matter of life and death.

  We did what we could to help the bears. Fairies created protection wards around the clan’s forest community. Full of log cabins, parks for the cubs, and even a general store, it was something I could understand that they would want to keep safe. Our witches and mages created strengthening potions, protection charms—which Catriona and I planted just about everywhere—and even hex sacs: bags filled with magical ingredients that when they hit the enemy, they would explode and hex them. Boils. Unconsciousness. Blindness. Nasty stuff. Although still iffy with magic, most of the bears had been impressed with those in particular—magical hand grenades, they’d called them.

  On the evening of our second day, Darius, myself, Colton, and Liam left the hubbub of the clan behind. The dynamic duo, who I had come to enjoy, led us out to the river, where the bears fished, almost like actual bears, most days. I’d never eaten so much fish in my life. Beers in hand, the four of us sat on the edge of a sturdy wooden dock, feet in the water, and watched the sun slowly set across the gorgeous blue sky. As we talked about everything, but the impending war with Abramelin, pinks, oranges, and reds colored the sky; our own personal television screen provided by Mother Nature herself.

  With the rush of the river creating a gentle up and down bob of the dock, paired with a warm breeze that made me sleepy, this had been the most relaxed I’d felt in… Well, a long time. The good feelings aside, I couldn’t shake a niggling thought, one that my new, rather loud inner voice refused to ignore.

  “Hey, guys,” I said, twisting around, one leg still hanging over the edge of the dock, toes lazily grazing the water, while the other leg folded up toward my chest. Colton and Liam were in the midst of gathering their empties before they headed back to the bear community, an easy ten-minute walk away.

  “What’s up, hybrid?” Liam grinned down at me when my cheeks flushed. Darius and I had shared my heritage with the pair earlier, while we sat here nursing beers and chatting about life. Colton and Liam had been thrilled at the news, though I wasn’t thrilled with their new nickname.

  “How did you know Abramelin was coming for you?” I asked, ignoring the desire to squash the nickname ASAP.

  “Noris,” Colton replied. “We were helping him clear out the village, and he told us everything. He said we needed to get our people up and moving or we’d lose them for good. Liam and I came straight to the clan and told our alpha everything.”

  Bernard, a black bear shifter who positively radiated the competent and strong leadership necessary of an alpha, already had a few scouts headed for other bear clans in the area to spread the word, which saved us a bit of time.

  “Huh.” Darius took a swig of his beer, the liquid sloshing around in the dark brown bottle. “Crazy ol’ Noris. Glad, he didn’t leave you in the dark.”

  “Us too.” Colton gave a quick wave and a smile before heading back to the woods. Liam, meanwhile, lingered, his gaze wandering the horizon for a contemplative moment before fixing back on us.

  “Even if he hadn’t, we appreciate what you guys did here,” he told us. “All of you. We had a plan to get everyone out, but you really sped things along. Cubs are going to be safe because of you.” He shook his head. “I don’t know how we’ll ever repay you.”

  Darius held up his bottle. “More beer?”

  “You got it, man.”

  I rolled my eyes. Trust a guy to ruin a sweet moment with a joke. After saying goodnight to both of us, Liam jogged after Colton, who stood waiting for him at the tree-line. I watched as they jostled one another around, each swipe of their massive, meaty hands good natured, like brothers. Smiling, I faced the river and dipped my foot back in, wiggling my toes in the crisp, cool water. Darius sat beside me, our thighs touching, and appeared lost in thought, blowing on the mouth of his empty beer bottle every so often. Its soft bleating made me grin.

  “So,” I started, knowing we’d have to have this conversation at some point before we left tomorrow morning, “off to see the dragons next, huh?”

  He offered a noncommittal grunt in response, followed by a curt, “Yeah.”

  “Your dragons, right?” I knew Darius belonged to the Sanctius clan, one of the largest colonies of dragon shifters in the country. A portal some fifty miles from the bear clan would take us into a mountain range, where we would find Darius’s family. It hadn’t been part of the plan that they would be among the first shifter clans we
approached; Zayne made the schedule. With our departure steadily approaching, I’d noticed Darius getting quieter and more distant throughout the day.

  “Yeah, my dragons. My family,” he remarked as he started to pick the beer label off the bottle. “The whole lot of them.”

  I nibbled my lower lip, wanting to pull out more information, but not push him so far that he shut down.

  “When did you last see them?”

  “Before the curse,” he said without missing a beat, like he had finally come to accept his past. “I haven’t seen them since. I couldn’t… You know why.”

  I nodded. We’d discussed the situation in some detail, though not as much as I would have liked. Darius’s ex-girlfriend had cursed him when they broke up, taking his wings and his dignity. Unable to fly, Darius had left his family and struck out on his own, working as a bodyguard in New York. Him sacrificing himself for me the first time Abramelin’s men had attacked the hive broke the curse, but we had been so busy with, the impending destruction of an entire group of peoples that he hadn’t been able to go home.

  Not until tomorrow.

  “Do you want to tell me about them?” I asked. The psychologist in me wanted to poke and pry and wheedle out information until I had as accurate a picture as possible. After all, Darius and I were…involved. Tomorrow, I’d be meeting his family, his blood. Psychological interests aside, I felt I had a right to know at least something about his people.

  Darius glanced at me, but continued to face the river. “Do I have to?”

  “No. Not if you don’t want to.” Galen and Quell had briefed me on what the militia knew in general terms about the Sanctius clan: a large cluster of dragon shifters, an ancient line that went back to pre-America, and known for distancing themselves from humans, other shifters, and supernaturals in equal measures.

  I couldn’t fathom the scrutiny Darius may face when they learned he left them to go work for humans.

  “I’ve got two younger brothers,” he said after a few minutes of silence, nothing but the babbling river between us. “Quinn and Hayden. Quinn is the typical middle kid. Feels overlooked. Always looking for Dad’s approval. Good guy, but … I suspect he’ll be standoffish.”