Page 42 of Shifters Unifying (Shifters Destiny: Willow Creek Shifters #2)

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

logan

Six-Mile Manor

After Midnight

“Ishould go with you,” Emma snapped. She stood next to me in the middle of our bedroom. Beneath her red-rimmed eyes, dark circles smudged her pale cheeks, and she covered another yawn. She hadn’t yet been to bed… not for sleep and not as my mate.

“I’m the multimorph. I should be there for the battle.”

“You need to be there for the final showdown. This isn’t it.”

She stomped her foot and crossed her arms.

You remind me of your mother when you do that. She did that to me when she refused to leave Six-Mile.

Listen to me.

I am listening.

You should let me go.

I shook my head and pulled her into my arms. “No, we’re not going to attack anyone.

This is a reconnaissance mission. Since it could be a trap, you’re going to stay behind, and you need to get some sleep.

” I didn’t want to remind her about what had happened to her the last time she’d been captured by Acheron.

She put some space between us. “What if something bad happens to you? And I’m not there to heal it.” That could kill me, and then where would we be?

I grabbed the bottle of doe urine from the bedside table and sprinkled it on myself, nearly gagging at the strength of it. Changing tactics was the only way I was going to make her understand. No, she already understood. I wanted her forgiveness for doing what I had to do.

Meeting her gaze, I asked, “Do you want to discuss your trip to Wolf Moon Cave? The prerogative you exploited in order to do what you deemed necessary?” All I have is the image you shared with me, my love.

“That’s not the same.”

“I’m willing to contend that it is, and besides, you’re staying here to eat and rest.”

She glowered and scrunched her nose. “God. That stinks.”

“He’s right, Emma. You need food and sleep,” Olivia interrupted as she crossed through the open door into the bedroom. Her face twisted in revulsion. “Peeyew. She’s right, too. You freaking stink.”

I shrugged. “Emma’s idea.”

Dumping a bottle of deer piss on myself seemed foolish since I’d be traveling as a wolf, but maybe covering our scent would get us closer to Acheron’s stronghold before they attacked.

“You should paint your body black, too,” Emma murmured.

“No need. I’ll be traveling as wolf… black fur. With any luck, the only time my skin will be showing is when we come back home to bring our report to the multimorph.”

“Is everything ready?” I asked.

“As ready as it’s going to be. Phil, Jasper, and a few others are waiting out front.”

“Marcus?”

She shook her head. “Haven’t seen him since they showed up with the relic.”

“Just as well.”

Emma sighed and swayed on her feet. “We should take more time to prepare. All you have is the location in No Man’s Land. We know nothing else.”

I offered her a small smile. “That’s why we’re make a reconnaissance run.”

“What if you’re captured?”

“Better than you being captured,” I countered.

“He’s still not wrong,” Olivia interjected.

“You go ahead,” I said. “I’ll be along.”

Olivia ducked out without arguing, for once.

I turned to my mate, took her hand, led her to the bed, and pulled back the cover. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.” Lifting her onto my side of the bed, I pulled the covers up to her chin and tucked them around her before kissing her forehead. “Get some sleep.”

Her eyelids fluttered closed. “I don’t need sleep.”

“When I get back, you can tell me the secret you’ve been keeping.”

Her eyes popped open. “What? I thought you’d forgotten about that.”

“Not in the slightest.” I switched off the lamp and the overhead light on my way out. “Sleep tight.”

Outside, John and Oliver waited beside Jasper, who was cutting up about something. Probably giving the younger men pointers about bedding shifter females.

“No ATVs?” Phil asked.

“No, we’ll be running as quietly and as quickly as possible. We’re headed north.”

“Care to share where?”

“Not yet,” I said. “You’ll know when we get there. Everybody shift, and we’ll get started.”

A burst of magic revealed a pack of five wolves and one fox.

When I started to run, the others brought up the rear.

We were on an overgrown country road, but the stench of Acheron was unmistakable: blood, death, and fear. Those were his calling cards.

A crumbling, square brick column on either side of the road marked the entrance to a driveway, and dark shapes loomed beyond. Some kind of dilapidated plantation home, long abandoned. No lights burned in the windows.

I loped to the closest column, avoided brushing against the rune etched on each side of the surface, and paused, testing the air.

Warding wasn’t generally visible, but we’d know when the magic slid over our skin.

I placed a paw on Olivia, signaling for her to wait. Then I slipped over the cattle guard.

No shivers, no tingles meant no warding. I scanned the surroundings and startled.

Shit. A pile of dismembered arms rested on the ground behind the right column, the dirt beneath blackened with dried blood, and amputated legs were behind the column directly in front of me. Acheron’s experimental tortures knew no bounds.

I lifted my nose and gestured them in. Olivia came first, followed by Jasper, Phil, and the two young wolves. We followed the perimeter of the formerly white-washed wooden fence, and I noted the myriad gaps between the wooden slats, many of the remaining ones had been eaten away by termites.

A quick circle around the home revealed more piles of carnage. The worst of which was the pile of rotting skulls, eyes widened in fear, and mouths contorted in no-longer audible screams.

Olivia smelled nervous, and she panted with her mouth wide. She scanned the windows and whined lightly.

I dipped my nose in agreement. Acheron wasn’t a fool. If this was the place, we should have spotted lookouts. Perhaps the map planted in Marcus’s head had been a ploy to get us here.

But we’d come this far, so we had to check the house, too.

Another paw on Olivia earned a canine nod. They’d wait until I signaled for her to follow.

Then I jogged toward the front porch and placed a paw on the first step.

Nothing happened. The massive front door hung askance on its hinges, and I darted inside and pressed myself against the closest wall, expecting an attack.

A chandelier had fallen from the ceiling and rested, shattered, on the foyer floor.

A rotting, split staircase led to the second floor.

Carefully, I continued into the expansive entrance hall, my nails clicking over the marble floor. Runes covered the walls, some burned into the wallpaper and some painted in what had to be blood. The scent of death overpowered everything else.

If this wasn’t the place, it had been… recently. We had to search the house.

I loped back to the entrance as Olivia stuck her pale nose inside. A low whine brought her all the way in, and the others crept in behind her. Jasper zipped past me and to the right, his red tail stretched out behind him, and I let him go.

Fool of a fox.

Phil stayed behind Olivia while John and Oliver nosed the walls marked in blood, and Oliver trembled.

We continued into the middle of the grand entrance where a chair sat, binding wrapped around the arms and the legs.

Bits of flesh and bone littered the floor.

Layers upon layers of smells assaulted my nostrils.

How many shifters had Acheron butchered here?

Abruptly, flood lights lit up the interior of the house and momentarily blinded me.

Then the floor shook under us, split open, and swallowed us whole.

Iwoke to muffled howling nearby. By the timbre, it had to be either John or Oliver. It sounded like they’d been locked in a box.

No longer in my wolf form, I had been splayed on the ground, my arms and legs chained to metal pegs that had been driven into a concrete floor. Sweat slicked my skin. Above, the roof gaped wide with jagged edges resembling teeth of some kind of constructed beast.

I squinted. Not the ceiling. It was the floor of the foyer that we’d fallen through.

Acheron had built another underground bunker. Fuck him.

Glowing runes illuminated the stone walls.

“Please, please, let me go,” Oliver yelped.

“Soon, soon,” a woman’s voice sing-songed. “We’ll set you free, to be more than you were before. Hush, little baby, don’t say a word…”

I tried to turn so I could see them, but the chains holding me down had been drawn too tightly, and each movement sent pain radiating through my limbs. The woman didn’t sound quite right in the head, but we’d been left un-gagged. If Oliver was there, the others probably were, too.

“Who’s here?” I called.

“Me,” Olivia rasped.

“Me,” John barked.

“Fuck me, too,” Phil growled.

No answer from Jasper.

Hmmm… Maybe not so foolish as I had first thought.

“How long was I out?”

“Hours,” Olivia grunted.

That meant Acheron had started with Oliver. At least the young wolf knew next to nothing about the fortifications back home or how any of patrols worked. For all Acheron knew, Emma had warded Six-Mile to keep him out.

I dragged my arms and legs inward as far as they could go. The chains popped, and a mechanical clicking began. I bit back a curse. My movements must have triggered a mechanism that pulled the shackles tighter. Dammit. This had to be where all the arms and legs at the gate had come from.

“Acheron,” I bellowed. “Stop hiding in the shadows, you sick fuck. Show yourself. Let’s settle this. Here. Now.”

“Acheron isn’t here,” the woman continued in her peculiar sing-song. “I caught you myself, in the trap he set for you. He’s taken his army and gone to capture more shifters, but he’ll return. Mama’s going to buy you a mockingbird…”

“When will he return?” What was she singing? I’d heard it before.

“When he’s squashed the rebellion in the ravens. And if that mockingbird won’t sing…”

“Rebellion? Are the ravens rethinking their allegiances?”

She hummed without responding. “He needs more energy for his plans, always more. So many experiments, so many dead. Only the living dead mages remain. But I caught you first. Mama’s going to buy you a diamond ring.”

Only the mages remain…

“Are there only shadow mages here?” I asked. I had to be sure we would only have to fight through the ones who had to touch the ground to move.

“Yes, yes… And if that diamond ring turns to brass…” She was sing-singing to the tune of a lullaby that I’d heard as a child. Definitely not right in the head. But she was our only chance to get out of there.

Even if shadow mages were outside, we’d beaten them once.

I’d beaten them once. Primal shit. An explosion.

Then it hit me. He’d gone to capture more shifters. We had more shifters in Six-Mile than we’d ever had before. Had he gone to attack Emma while we were gone?

“Where did he go?” I rasped. “Where did he go?”

“Six-Mile, East Nuttal, Bear Trees… the Ravens. Any place. Every place. Mama’s going to buy you a looking glass…”

Shit. Emma. How am I going to get back to Emma?