Chapter 8

8

Warning bells pealed in my head at the sight until finally the memory returned full force.

I’ll rip your arms from your sockets if you don’t get out of my way. And you can count on that, little halfling!

My mind circled back to my run-in with the wolf shifter boy, the one who earlier had threatened to tear me limb from limb in the exact way we found the corpse tonight. I shook my head.

Could he have done this?

He’d certainly been angry enough, and all I’d done to him was stand slightly in his way. He had enough unresolved aggression to be a very likely suspect.

My gut swirled. Yup, he’d been angry enough to kill; it was obvious on his face. My eyes did a quick survey of the corpse and I inwardly groaned. The whole of me went hot. It took everything I had not to empty the contents of my stomach right there on the ground. Maybe this was my super power, I tried to reason with myself. Maybe my super power was finding dead bodies. Someone had to do it, right?

Not something I wanted to be known for, though.

I held an arm out on instinct to keep Bronwen in place or else she might contaminate the area. “Stay back. You don’t want to step in anything.”

I had to give Bronwen credit. She didn’t scream. Instead the two of us clustered together staring at blood so bright against the soft white snow.

“Tavi, listen.” Bronwen’s voice was shaky. “You stand watch over the body, make sure no one else sees it.”

My eyes narrowed. “Why? Are you going somewhere?”

“I have to go alert the leading council of the Claw & Fang. They’ll want to come immediately before law enforcement gets here, and we—” She broke off, taking a deep breath and keeping her focus over her shoulder. “We have to make sure no one intercepts the communication. It has to be delivered in person.”

“You’re leaving me alone with a dead body.” I wondered if she saw anything wrong with that picture.

“You don’t seem too bothered. Besides, you have a stomach of steel.” With her back turned to me, she quickly shifted into crow form and darted out into the night before I had a chance to ask her to stay.

I let my head drop back on my shoulders, running my hand through my hair with a groan. I understood why she had to go. To protect ourselves, the members of the society discouraged anything less than direct conversation between members. Electronic communications could be tracked, Selene had told me, even with a spell designed to wipe devices clean. Telepathic communication was also discouraged because those mental waves could be intercepted. So we relied mostly on person to person contact to better ensure our safety.

There I stood, again, watching over a dismembered body, with her blood rapidly cooling in the snow, her arms and legs several feet away, wondering how I’d gone from one bad situation to another. Never in my life had I seen as much carnage as I had since running away from my uncle’s house.

What was the saying? Out of the frying pan and into the fire? I’d skipped the frying pan to dive head first into an inferno, still trying to convince myself I was okay.

Part of me wondered if this kind of bad luck had something to do with the violence of my parents’ deaths. Did the energy of their murders trail me, plaguing me? Would it be this way for the rest of my life, as though I were some kind of herald or harbinger of death?

I avoided looking at the dead woman as much as possible. The smell, on the other hand…no way to escape the smell, not with my sensitive shifter senses. Pressing a hand over my mouth and nose did nothing to dispel the stench.

I hadn’t known what to expect when we set out on patrol tonight but it was certainly not another murder. Slowly I turned my attention to the body, the dark red hair draped over the woman’s head and blowing in the late December wind.

My knees grew weaker the longer I focused on her hair. The color was flawless. Similar to mine yet richer and deeper.

Bronwen returned shortly with Selene and another one of the leading council members, a slight man named Buzz with two sets of curved horns twisting out of his head, a curling lizard tail, and narrow yellow pupils.

Selene placed her arm around me and drew me close in a hug. “You did well,” she whispered. “You held your own.”

I didn’t want her compliments. I didn’t want any of this, although the hug…I’d take the hug.

“The weather made it easy to spot, and easy to keep hidden. There really isn’t anyone out at this time of night. Well, except for our killer,” I added when I took a step back.

Buzz bent closer to examine the dead woman. His tail flicked. “We’re going to need the rest of the team out here to clean up before the local officials get wind of it,” he said in a reed-thin voice. “We don’t want the castle guards to find her before we’re done. Or find us along with her.”

“I’m on it.” Bronwen jumped to attention and once more took off in her crow form.

“There’s no sign of a struggle,” Buzz said, swearing. “She went down easily enough. Probably had the element of surprise on their side, the murderous bastard.”

“How could someone in their half form surprise a full-blood Fae?” I asked quietly. “I don’t understand.” Or the better question: Why would anyone do this?

Selene moved to stand at Buzz’s side as he cautiously probed the body for clues, her heels sinking in the snow. I focused toward the flowers instead.

“This is someone who does not abide by any code of ethics. It’s not for us to figure out why, but rather who is doing the crimes. And to stop them before they do this again.”

I dared a glance at Buzz, who was still bent over the prone form on the ground, then looked away again. I gestured for Selene to step closer. Her instincts were razor-sharp, I knew from experience, and she regarded me with narrowed eyes.

“You know something, don’t you?” she began straight away.

“Less a know and more like something strange happened to me and I’m not sure what to make of it.”

I told her about the guy I’d run into, or rather, the guy who had run into me at the halfling academy. Then launched into an explanation about the half-shifter bullies at my old school. The ones who had killed countless people to get to the AugundaeImperium.

The same artifact now in the possession of a very nasty doomsday prepping witch.

I cringed at the thick sounds of Buzz maneuvering flesh and bone for clues. I’d hunted animals through the woods during a routine shift before, but this…this level of barely contained violence was something else.

“I’m saying it’s a little suspicious,” I reasoned. “And a little too strange to write it off as a coincidence. I mean, what are the odds of another half-wolf being at the halfling academy at the same time I was? And running into me?”

Buzz and Selene shared a look.

“You left those half-shifters boys on the other side of the portal, though,” Selene clarified. “Yes?”

“That doesn’t mean they weren’t able to find a way in,” Buzz argued. “More and more shifters are crossing the border these days thanks to—”

Selene cut him off with a look.

“The boy I saw yesterday wasn’t familiar to me and he didn’t have the same smell as the others. They were brothers, pack. This one didn’t smell like anyone I’d met before, although he had the same bad energy.”

Still, Buzz looked grim. His lizard tail flicked behind him again in agitation. “Plenty of half-shifters come through to Faerie by one means or another,” he told me. “And not all of them are looking to start a new life. Some of them are tainted, looking to destroy this world as they did their own. For nefarious purposes.”

Selene agreed. “I hesitated to tell you this because I didn’t want you scared, Tavi, but part of our duty with the Claw & Fang is to find these rogue half-shifters and exterminate them.”

“We prefer to say we eliminate the threat,” Buzz corrected with a look over his shoulder at the flapping of wings.

Bronwen arriving with the cleanup crew cavalry.

“There’s a threat?” I asked.

A shadow flickered in his eyes when he turned to me again. “Tavi, there’s always a threat. There are also folks like those in the Claw & Fang who have sworn to protect our people rather than sow chaos.”

I didn’t want to think about it. Even now, having seen more death than most people, I didn’t want to think about the boogie man beneath the bed. I’d made an oath to the society, sure…but did the oath cover hunting down rogue halflings?

The two of us were dismissed the moment Selene had the area under control.

“You two are free to go.” She gazed between us and flashed a sharp smile. “You did good work tonight.”

“How was this good work?” Bronwen countered. “We were too late.”

“Your quick thinking and action might give us precious clues to solve this thing before we lose another full-blood, or before the king’s guards can sweep this under the rug. Now go home to bed. You’ve been through enough tonight. Hey.” Serene snapped her fingers in Bronwen’s face. “Keep your wits about you. Keep your senses sharp. There are terrible things out there, worse than this dead woman. Things prowling the night, ready to devour you. Keep that in mind on your walk home.”

The warning was meant more for pale-faced Bronwen than for me. Somehow I got my mouth working again and blurted out, “She’s shaken. It’s natural. Can you blame her?”

Selene flexed her fingers as though her own claws would soon slip out from beneath her dusky flesh. “Cowardice doesn’t suit her, she’ll see soon enough.”

I wasn’t sad to be sent on my way. Honestly, my bed and I had a date I didn’t want to miss.

“Was this the first body you’d seen?” I asked Bronwen.

Shadows flickered in her eyes as she nodded. “Yes. I’m afraid I’ve lived a pretty sheltered life despite the move across worlds.”

She stopped then, groaning, and I sensed enough from what she didn’t say: she felt sorry for me and everything I’d experienced. She wouldn’t want to trade places. Not that I blamed her for it. If I were in her shoes, I would have chosen the sheltered life as well.

On the way back to the castle, I told Bronwen everything I’d said to Selene and Buzz. She needed to be aware in case something like this happened again while I wasn’t around.

“I think more than anything, the anger worries me. You remember. We were always taught in the pack to control our emotions because it’s the only thing separating us from the beast in our blood. Things get bad when we lose our heads. This kid? He was on the edge.”

“It doesn’t sound like he was sorry for running into you, either. Do you know what kinds of people they accept into the academy there?”

Realizing she waited for my answer, I shook my head. “I’m not sure. I didn’t really do any research on it before crossing the portal myself. I imagine they would have to be bright to make it through the culling. So whoever the boy is, he’s intelligent and has anger issues.”

“A terrible combination.”

“I always thought half shifter, half Fae were rare,” I told her. “Now it seems as though they are overrunning wherever I am.”

“Well, there have been rumors over the years that Dorian Jade is behind the influx of half-shifters in Faerie,” she said with a shrug.

I stopped at the name. Literally stopped. “Dorian Jade?”

I’d heard the name many times over and couldn’t find a single speck of information about the man behind the troubles.

“Apparently Jade has taken it upon himself to set up a kind of underground railroad for shifters. That’s why there are so many of us here in Faerie. He’s responsible.”

“The Unseelie King?” I asked sarcastically.

“I understand it’s a little much for you to take in at once.”

She had no idea.

“I mean, yeah. And now having one of our own kind out there slaughtering full-blood Fae as they see fit? It’s scary! And if Dorian Jade is responsible for bringing the rogue halfling in, then it creates all kinds of problems—problems you and I aren’t equipped to deal with but will feel the effects of nonetheless.”

We stalked through the snow with our shoulders occasionally touching and the temperatures freezing my face until Bronwen remembered her magic and set the temperature-altering spell in place. “The rumors are unsubstantiated,” she continued without looking at me, “but you know all rumors tend to be rooted in fact. Right?”