Page 5 of Magic & Secrets (Twisted Magic #1)

TEMPE’S BLOODLUST NEARLY sent the entire pack searching for vengeance in the Territories. As I was known to do, I kept my cool and offered to lead a fire team to seek out the attackers.

Tempe agreed with my concern that the Haven Junction massacre might have been meant to lure the rest of us away from the mountain, where magic folk wouldn’t succumb to the toxic land.

“If we don’t return within two weeks or send word in some way,” I told Tempe and my packmates, “you can assume this attack was part of a greater plan.”

Tempe’s guilt over our fallen friends had temporarily blinded him to reason.

His gaze sharpened when I took the lead.

He could think like a leader again. If we were under attack by an alliance from the new epoch, the pack should force a battle at the mountain where our enemies would be at a disadvantage.

“Who should hunt at your side?” Tempe asked me.

Koda quickly stepped forward. The young, golden-haired Bane Shifter was one of the last of our kind designed before the war against the Armgard. I had taken Koda under my wing, keeping him alive against a powerful enemy.

Since arriving at Mt. Elysium, Koda had found his own way. He remained close to Haven Junction and spent more time in human form. While staring at our dead friends, he wore the loss on his face. Unlike Tempe, who clung to rage to push through his pain, Koda wrapped himself in grief.

Despite his brokenhearted expression, Koda refused to be hampered by emotion. His bright blue eyes shone like a Shifter ready to hunt.

Nearby, Delta prowled for clues. His black hair clung to his sweaty, scarred face. Only the most powerful magic could have left such marks on a Bane Shifter.

In the final battles against the Armgard, the female warriors unleashed their most violent magic to stave off an impending loss. The entirety of Delta’s team had been brought down by a dozen Armgard warriors.

I still wasn’t certain how my friend survived the battle. We’d found him wandering the woods, skin blistered, hair burned off, and mumbling about monsters.

A century later, Delta still suffered nightmares from that attack. I occasionally heard my friend’s pained howls echoing in the night.

Despite our bond, the three of us hadn’t spoken to each other in many full moons. Now, we stood together in Haven Junction, surrounded by death.

With no need to strategize or bid farewell to the rest of the pack, we shifted into our wolf forms and chased the enemy’s scent out of the village.

The vibrant green Nexus Valley unfurled ahead of us.

We raced through yellow and blue wildflowers.

After we crossed a stream, I realized the enemies’ scents separated.

I studied the valley, considering how this would be a solid location to stage an ambush.

Yet, the enemy had broken into smaller groups and fled in different directions.

My instinct led me to follow the Necromancer’s trail since his kind tended to travel the slowest and would be the quickest to destroy.

Before chasing the scent, I took a moment to look back at Mt. Elysium. My usual hunting grounds were near the snowy peak. I already missed the crisp, thin air.

My sentimentality didn’t last long. I turned my attention back to the Necromancer’s scent and began running again.

Back when the Bane Shifters roamed the Territories, there was only one species of magic folk with an immediate death decree. Necromancers were treated like the plague. Their magic was viewed as serving no legitimate purpose. That was the official line, anyway.

In the whispers amongst the Murade’s elite was talk of raising their dead by hiring Necromancers. Sometimes, it was done for closure. Other times, the dead were brought back for more nefarious reasons.

As we dashed through woodlands thick with pine trees, across yellow valleys, and over rocky hills, I considered how the world might have changed.

Necromancers could be quite common now. I half-expected to find a world where the shambling dead were as normal a sight as the birds in the sky or the fish in the rivers.

This Necromancer didn’t travel alone. I picked up the rancid scent of his minions. Walking corpses changed over time, turning foul and clawed. Their taste for flesh grew more perverse, craving younger prey. I suspected half a dozen of the creatures ran alongside the Necromancer’s horse.

In hunting mode, my kind felt no fatigue, thirst, or hunger. Koda, Delta, and I were able to run nonstop for hours.

The Necromancer must have sensed us. His tracks changed.

His horse ran faster now. I suspected he hoped to reach the Wicky Bog filled with the dead from a massive battle over a hundred years ago.

The bodies were left behind to rot as a sign of disrespect.

The Necromancer no doubt planned to unleash the corpses on us.

The land changed as we neared Wicky Bog.

The air grew moist. The clouds above were gray and heavy.

Even as my paws struggled against the muddy ground, I refused to slow my pace.

The Necromancer’s putrid scent was likely the last smell my dead friends had experienced. I longed to spill blood in their honor.

The bog was choked with tangled reeds and decaying vegetation. A nauseating fog hovered over the murky waters and clung to rotten tree stumps. Bloated corpses were hidden beneath the surface.

A single narrow bridge guided travelers across the wet graveyard. The Necromancer stood on the other end. His horse neighed and backed away at the sight of us prowling closer.

The Necromancer’s short black hair clung to his head in jagged spikes. He wore human garb: black boots, slacks, and a shirt. He looked utterly normal except for his entirely white, unblinking eyes.

Creeping around near him were six hunched over, humanlike monsters. Their skin was pale and saggy. Their eyes were a milky white except for squirming red veins. Bloody drool leaked from their oversized mouths. They stretched their long, clawed fingers in anticipation of a battle they couldn’t win.

Since the bog water would prove difficult to traverse as a wolf, I shifted back into my human form. I eyed the Necromancer, deeply offended he would think to challenge us. We had left far more powerful creatures in our wake than this mere Necromancer and his rotting minions.

Stepping into the water rather than risking the rickety bridge, I heard the Necromancer whispering his incantation. Koda and Delta shifted into their human forms and spread out before entering the bog. We all knew what was coming next. The Necromancer seemed to think this was our first hunt.

The bodies within Wicky Bog trembled. The water reaching my abdomen began to pop and gurgle. I walked over the dead without looking down. My gaze remained fully focused on the Necromancer. I wouldn’t allow him to distract me.

The corpses’ hands reached up from their watery graves and tugged at my legs, attempting to drag me down to my death.

Rather than break free, I reached into the murky water and dislodged the corpses.

They flailed in my grasp. I launched the first one like a missile toward the Necromancer.

He attempted to duck, yet the corpse’s flailing leg crashed into his shoulder.

The Necromancer dropped to the ground, half hidden under the moaning carcass.

I hurled another undead as the Necromancer stumbled to his feet. This one slammed his body against a tree.

Delta and Koda followed my lead. While marching through the bog, we launched body after body at the enemy. The humanlike monsters tried to outrun their fates, dodging right and left. A few ran into each other like a comical performance, complete with them looking shellshocked on the ground.

Reaching the other side of Wicky Bog, I tossed the last body in my grip at a minion attempting to help the Necromancer to his feet as I approached.

The body trapped the creature, which hissed and snapped at me.

I reached down and placed my large hands on the sides of its head.

I stared into its unreadable eyes and wondered if this thing remembered being human.

Knowing the answer was never to be answered, I wrenched its head from its shoulders.

The other creatures screeched in horror. Delta silenced one by stomping on its head. Koda caught a fleeing creature and twisted its skull backward before dragging the head from the neckbone in a sickly snap.

Once all six were broken on the ground, we faced the Necromancer. He stood in a quick motion and lifted his blade. Not against us. Instead, he held it to his throat and began to chant.

“Ivitithi is all-powerful. My death is a tribute to him. Return my breath, Ivitithi.”

Before the Necromancer could cut his own throat, I seized his wrist and snapped it. The blade fell to the muddy ground. The Necromancer did not cry out in pain. He stared past me, witnessing something unseen to us. I glanced over my shoulder, wondering if this Ivitithi creature was watching.

I wrapped my hand around the Necromancer’s throat and lifted him off the ground. Walking with his limp body toward the bog, I noticed the water no longer bubbled. The magic in the air had fallen flat. The Necromancer knew he was defeated.

I was never taught to torture my prey. The Bane Shifters were weapons, not sadists. Yet, I wished I could make this limp magic man fear his death like my friends had done back in Haven Junction.

Instead, I turned him away from me and dug into his back. Through his flesh and muscle, I wrapped my fingers around his spine and tore it free.

After dropping the Necromancer to the ground, I washed my hands off in the bog. A few wide-eyed, lifeless bodies stared back at me. Death had never bothered me before, even when the Armgard stole the lives of my fellow Bane Shifters.

Now, though, as I stood with Koda and Delta, I truly grasped death’s finality. Killing this Necromancer didn’t bring back those we had lost in Haven Junction. No amount of slaughter would fill our friends with life. They were simply gone.

“He carried hearts with him,” Koda said, lifting a sack. “Perhaps, a sacrifice to whatever god he worshipped.”

I frowned at the idea of the attack on Haven Junction being no more than zealots hoping to please their bloodthirsty deity.

“We should burn them,” I said, concerned over how the magic folk might use the hearts for a ritual. “Leave only ash.”

While Koda did as I requested, Delta sniffed the air. “Who do we hunt next, Vampyres or Shifters?”

“The Shifters’ scents were strongest miles back. Lions and Wolves are traveling with a Sorcerer. I want the magic men dead first. They were the ones who gave the lesser creatures the power to kill our kind.”

Once the remains were burnt to ash, I shifted into my wolf form and returned to the hunt. At this rate, we could achieve our vengeance in less than a week and return to our retirement at Mt. Elysium.