Watching the human Chad collapse, his face twisted in pain and arteries bulging in his neck, my heart squeezed and sputtered in its cage. Curling into fists as tension stiffened my arms, my fingers ached as I dropped the veil of magic I had spread across the park. Of course, the human Chad knew I was there; he could see me no matter how thickly I cloaked myself.
I had a nagging feeling his security in my presence wasn’t the reason for his outburst, either.
“Alpha Jackson! Leave the area at once or we’ll start executing the humans! We have more!” My eyes nearly boggled out of their sockets at that, and red invaded my vision as it landed on the woman. Her expression was one I saw too many times to count; that haughty, ‘I have you cornered’, untouchable face that Courtiers made when they believed too much in themselves. Half-crazed eyes widened when they finally landed on me, as if she hadn’t noticed I was there the half a dozen times she glanced over my way.
My skin crawled in disgust as the woman – Alpha Liza – scanned my body. My wings twitched and rustled as they lay flat against my shoulder blades. She didn’t say anything else, and the tense silence only allowed the anger simmering in my chest to grow and gnaw at my organs. Through flared nostrils, I sucked in shallow, quick breaths, and my chest heaved as white-hot fire ripped down my spine and coated my ribs like a thick tar.
“Wait! Stop!” The deep, thundering shout from behind me sounded as my legs released the adrenaline gorging my muscles, but I ignored the voice. The woman stiffened, frozen to her spot, and the details of her face became clearer beyond the shadows of the light raining down. My mind calmed in the face of adversary, and images of the human Chad folded like a paper bag filled my inner eye.
My body crashed into Alpha Liza to knock her clear off her feet and ten feet back, while my wings shivered, aching to stretch in self-preservation. Her grunts and her little shriek echoed in my ears, and the sound set everything around me into motion. Grabbing her face in my sharpening claws, I slammed her head against the hard earth compacted by many, many steps.
Razor-like teeth latched onto my forearm, and my wings burst from my back in a glory of blood and bits. Without magic to ease the way, my skin simply split open from the extra muscles expanding underneath the flesh of my back. Flapping wildly, my feathered appendages swirled the dirt and rustled the grass, and the fangs in my arm tore out a chunk as the body attached to them was flung back in surprise. My fingers throbbed as I cocked back my uninjured arm, and I speared Alpha Liza with my four-inch claws to grant her a humiliating, unexceptional death.
She couldn’t even fight back before her brains came seeping out of her eye sockets.
A low, ground-shaking roar reverberated up my knees and thighs, and I whipped around just as a hulking, black body came skidding to slam into a wolf only four feet from me. The animal ripped viciously into a fleshy, muscular back, but my gaze lingered only for a fraction of a second before a loud, long howl cracked through the air.
A hundred wolves, maybe more, came slinking out of the shadows, and the ones guarding the humans retreated. Scrambling to my feet, wings outstretched and the rage of familiar battle coursing through my veins, I panted softly as I slowly circled. The plan I hadn’t been able to decipher earlier came together in my mind, and I licked my lips to taste the blood that splattered when I extracted my claws.
The purist clan was going to encircle and use sheer numbers to overwhelm. It was so simple – so very effective and devastating no matter where it was implemented.
But I had fought much more powerful and numerous enemies for Kaslni.
Pausing my careful, light steps, goosebumps washed my bare skin at the coarse, short fur that brushed my calf. My eyelid twitched, and I sucked in a sharp breath before glancing behind me.
Wolves weren’t the only kind of shifter, I knew – but nothing could’ve prepared me for the absolutely monstrous lion that protected my back. He was entirely black, from nose to tail, and his thick mane had lost patches in places from the countless fights he’d been in. Easily as tall as me, he tilted his head as if sensing my stare, and a familiar, dull blue eye met mine.
Him. Silent understanding passed between us, and I turned back to the throng of wolves that were shuffling haphazardly as they inched closer. Magic ruffled my feathers, and I flapped my wings in powerful beats before the lion pushed off. My eyes rolled sharply into the back of my head, and the shadows created by the blaring lights surged to converge on me. Raising my arms, my wings twitched as I drew them up, creating a shadowy barrier between the terrified humans and everything else.
Satisfied that they couldn’t see or hear anything, I keyed the lock to a box deep inside my mind, and my wings throbbed and pulsed almost painfully. Weaving with careful precision, I slipped into the easily pliable minds of the humans to coat their senses in fog. Their terror seeped into my very bones as I worked the miniature humans.
Toys. Miniature humans liked toys.
Light. Miniature humans weren’t afraid if they could see.
Candy. Miniature humans were pleased easily.
All of these things, I snuck into the scenario of my own making, and the fear saturating the miniature humans lessened almost instantly.
Cracking open my eyes, I pursed my lips tightly as the sounds of fighting filtered into my scope of comprehension. Whirling around, my eyes widened at the large beasts that tumbled across the ground with vicious snarls and snaps. The black lion had not one but two wolves latched onto his back and a third underneath him. He didn’t seem to feel the pain, and I pressed my palms to the ground and inhaled a deep, calming breath.
High-pitched squeals pierced the air as I entered the wolves’ minds, and they began flailing in the pain I had fabricated. They were not much harder to manipulate than the humans, and an evil kind of a smirk stretched across my lips.
The red hazing my vision became thicker, and I lifted my head to glance around at the wolves that had stalled their advance. Their pack brethren still writhed in pain for no apparent reason, and the plume of uncertainty that thickened the air filled my lungs seductively. Groaning softly with my exhale, I flexed my wings only to send the pair of wolves into spastic convulsions.
My magic – the power I held over their lives – was intoxicating, and I grinned broadly as a tickle of a laugh wiggled into my throat. Adrenaline and happiness mixed into a potent cocktail in my blood; I had been so careful these past months to reign myself in. The magic that I had practiced so hard to master had been neglected.
Not anymore.
Killing people to protect my master – my friend – my boss – had been engrained in me since before I could even articulate it, and only now did I realize how much I missed that responsibility. The air rippled with magic that waved from my feathers in thick pulses, and even the earth trembled underneath me at the intensity.
“Stop her, Derek!” Cataclysmic energy heaved around my lungs to encircle my heart, and the wolves surrounding us began to fall. Their screams of pain were music to my ears, their writhing tickling my palms through the ground, and euphoria joined the unstable mixture in my blood.
The atmosphere became heavy with the song of the dying as their hearts strained and failed under the psychological torture, and I laughed.
“That’s enough!” Deep, familiar, the voice crackled over me thunderously, and my wings crumpled under the weight of the command. The shadows dissolved; the wails stopped to leave only a shrill ringing in my ears, and I blinked hard as the dark red seeped from my vision.
Slowly and with great discomfort, my wings shrunk, and I arched sharply as magic dissolved the extra muscles in my back. Gasping at the stinging, needle-like pain, I dropped to my elbows as the strength sapped from my arms. I am out of practice.
The thought brought a frown to my face, and I shook my heavy head to pant harshly against the grass. I wasn’t out of practice; I was in the wrong realm to comfortably use so much magic.
Big, callused hands wrapped around my shoulders, sending sharp shivers down my spine and goosebumps across every inch of my skin. My inner struggle vanished into smoke that curled as it joined the atmosphere, and my gaze flickered up under heavy lids. Cold, serious eyes met mine, and my lip twitched in the barest of smiles when he flexed his fingers against the blood and sweat sticking us together.
“Hi.” A thin thread of warmth broke through the ice that stared back at me at my crackling, hoarse whisper. “W-why did you stop-p me?”
“Why should only you get the pleasure of butchering those bigots?” My heart stuttered as he answered my question with his own, and an uncomfortable fluttering tickled in my belly. His expression didn’t change in the slightest, and I reached up with trembling fingers to caress his sharp jaw.
“I like your face.” Just the thinnest crack in his façade was created, and his lips twitched in a smirk at my mumble. It was enough for me, though, and I leaned forward to sprawl across the thick, soft grass. Rough palms caressed my back, stroking my small wings, and a numbing sensation replaced the bite of pain radiating from my wounds.