Magic Tides

6

I leaned on the textured parapet of the front wall. Night had fallen, and the moon was out, big and bright. Behind me, on the other side of the fort, the sea glowed silver, reflecting the moonlight. Here and there the water sparkled when an odd bioluminescent creature rose to the surface, drawn by the stars and the moon.

In front of me our front lawn stretched, a killing zone of three hundred yards, as flat and clear as we could make it. Beyond it the maritime forest rose, a dark wall of stunted live oak, loblolly pine, wax myrtle, and yaupon holly, wedged together, compacted, and pruned by wind and salt into an impenetrable barrier slanted away from the ocean. A road leading to our front gate cut its way through it and vanished in the gloom, where it would eventually join Fort Fisher Boulevard.

The forest was impassable. I had cut several trails through it, but you would need a shapeshifter’s nose to find them. When Red Horn came, they would take the road.

Paul’s family had gotten in two hours ago, seventeen people total. Of those, seven were children and five were too elderly to fight. We had put them in the main building with two capable adults to guard the door. The three remaining adults, Paul, his wife, and her brother, came armed with crossbows. They were on the wall now, to my right, waiting. Paul’s brother-in-law had also brought a longbow. Not something I’d seen often. It took a particular skill set to draw and fire it correctly. Most people couldn’t even sight the target with them because the draw was too strong. They drew and fired in a fraction of a second.

The wind floated in, bringing in a layered mix of scents.

“Dad?” Conlan’s voice was barely above a whisper.

“Yes. I can smell them.” Shapeshifters. Closing in, moving quietly.

“Is it them?” He sounded a little scared.

“Let’s hope not.”

I wasn’t exactly thrilled about it either. The walls were built to keep out humans, but shapeshifters, even a small group of them, changed things. It wasn’t about if I could take them. It was about how many of them would get past me before I did. Conlan wasn’t strong enough to stop two or more grown shapeshifters. Not yet.

Another whiff of the breeze, and a familiar scent came through loud and clear. Damn it.

The shapeshifters emerged from the gloom of the forest, running along the road in a column. Seven in total, guarding a human between them. The leader, a short but powerfully built man paused, silhouetted in the moonlight. A ridiculously large sword hung diagonally across his broad back. If he carried it vertically, the damn thing would have dragged along the ground. Of all the people in Wilmington, she found the one guy we’d agreed to avoid at all costs.

The swordsman yanked his sword free and knelt, driving the blade into the packed dirt of the road.

“Hail Beast Lord!” His voice boomed impossibly loud in the quiet night.

Fucking fantastic.

I turned toward Conlan and said very quietly, “Not a word.”

Conlan’s eyes got really big.

I leaned on the parapet. “Evening, Keelan. Rise and approach.”

The last thing I wanted to do was to waste time bellowing back and forth when people were about to attack us.

The shapeshifter group trotted closer. I recognized the human now. Thomas. Where was Kate?

Keelan stopped about ten yards away from the wall. Of the six shapeshifters with him, I knew two. Both had been in their teens when we had separated from the Pack, and, like Keelan, they now stood straight, almost at attention, as if waiting to be inspected. There was a particular look on their faces. I hadn’t seen that look for a long time.

“What brings you to this neck of the woods?” I asked.

The werewolf alpha stood up and shrugged. His shoulder muscles rose above his nonexistent neck and drew even with his ears. “Well, my lord. It’s like this. We ran into the Consort, and she asked us to see this man safely to your home.”

Thomas gave me a little wave.

“Did she now?” She’d waded into something dangerous enough for her to send Thomas here, out of harm’s way. Mostly.

What have you walked into, baby?

“Keelan, where did you happen to run into my wife?”

“Oh, nowhere special.”

“We were at the Farm,” Thomas volunteered.

Fucking hell!

Keelan gave Thomas a reproachful look.

“Why were you at the island stronghold of the People?”

Keelan cleared his throat. “Just a bit of harmless craic with a couple new lads. Sort of an initiation, you could say.”

“Not you, Keelan. I really don’t want to know what you were doing there. Thomas, why were you and my wife at the Farm?”

Thomas hesitated.

“The man asked you a question,” Keelan told him, clearly eager to be off the hot seat.

Thomas took a deep breath and recited in the methodical, calm manner Paul used when he gave us yet another list of absolutely necessary, expensive repairs.

“We went to the Red Horn’s headquarters. Your wife asked them who they sold my son to. They told us to ‘fuck off.’ There was a fight. She won. When the man in charge there, the underboss, wouldn’t tell her who took my son, she cut off his head.”

So far all of that sounded plausible.

“What happened then? Please be specific.”

“She held up the severed head and asked it who bought my son. Then she told the rest of them that since their boss couldn’t answer, she would have to keep asking them one by one, until someone told her.”

Of course, she had.

“One of them told her that a journeyman named Onyx paid them to kidnap Darin. Onyx works at the Farm.”

“And then what happened?

“There were children at the house.”

Slavers. This wasn’t an isolated incident. They didn’t just take one child. They were taking children on a regular basis. Onyx must’ve hired them because of their experience.

Thomas had gone quiet. The shapeshifters around him froze.

Keelan cleared his throat. “My lord.”

He pointed to his eyes.

Oh. I blinked the alpha stare off.

“Continue, please.”

“After we got all the kids out of the cages, Kate set the house on fire.”

“As she should have,” Keelan said.

“What happened after that?”

“We took the children to the Order, so they could be delivered back to their families. The Knight-Protector had her fill out some paperwork and gave her a will-o’-wisp in a cage to take to the man in charge of the People.

“Barrett,” Keelan spat the name out like a curse.

Interesting. “Aren’t you supposed to be cordial with the People, Keelan?”

“We’re both alive. That’s cordial enough.”

“You don’t like him?”

“He likes himself well enough for both of us. All big smiles and sharp knives in your guts, that one.”

“Okay, after the Order you went to the Farm?”

Thomas nodded. “We took a boat across. The captain tried to rob us and take the will-o’-wisp.”

Of course, he had. “But she killed him?”

“No, he pulled a crossbow on us, but she hit him with some powder, and he shot himself in the foot. Then, a water monster grabbed him and tried to pull him into the water. It had tentacles like a squid or an octopus, but very large, and the weight of it almost capsized the boat.”

Keelan nodded sagely. “A kraken, most like.”

“A kraken in Cape Fear?” I asked.

“It happens. Probably a wee one chasing fish in from the sea. The juveniles don’t have a lot of experience, so they come up the river sometimes.”

Good to know.

“Did the kraken eat the man?”

“No. Kate saved him.” Thomas sounded like he disapproved.

“How?”

“Well, she said something, a word in a language I didn’t understand, and the thing exploded.”

A power word. She used a goddamned power word to save the man who tried to rob them. A man who would have shot them if they hadn’t complied.

“She became upset and told him to sit still and be quiet. We let him go when we crossed the river.”

“The Consort, ever merciful,” Keelan opined.

Yes, she was that.

“Did any other unusual things happen on your way to the Farm?”

“No. We got there, she spoke to someone at a desk, and a man came to take her to see Barrett. I waited for her. She was gone for about thirty minutes. She came back and we left the Farm. On the way to the ferry, she told me that Onyx didn’t make it, but he told her that he sold Darin to someone named Aaron, who lives on the Emerald Wave and might be a god.”

Why not? Why wouldn’t it be a child-abducting god? A gang of mundane scumbags or a rogue journeyman would have been too damned easy.

“And that’s where the two of you split up and she left you in the company of this gentleman and his friends?”

Keelan spoke up again. “Indeed.”

“Was she hurt?”

Keelan grinned. “No. Not at all.”

That’s all that mattered.

“She also let slip that there might be a bit of trouble here tonight. Unsavory types invading your home. Some of the same cowards who stole Thomas’ lad.”

His Irish accent was getting thicker. He was plotting something.

“An honest man and his family attacked by brigands,” Keelan declared. “Well, we couldn’t just stand by and let that kind of thing happen. Could we?”

A chorus of noes answered from the other shapeshifters.

“The Wilmington Pack promised the Consort we’d deliver him here safely, and now we mean to stop here awhile and make sure he stays that way.” Keelan paused. “With your permission, of course.”

The Wilmington Pack, huh. Oh, Jim was just going to love that. This needed to be handled carefully.

I had no authority to give Keelan permission for anything. Especially here in Wilmington. We’d given up all authority when we’d separated from the Pack. Technically, I wasn’t even supposed to be having this conversation.

However, we were a long way from Atlanta, and we could use the extra muscle. Besides, it’d been years since I really gave a fuck what Jim thought about anything. We had been friends once, but that was a long time ago. I’d always known that to Jim only the Pack mattered. It wasn’t enough to be a shapeshifter—you had to have the label, so he could put you on the right side of the line between enemy and ally. The moment we left, we became ignorable at best and a potential threat to his leadership at worst. He’d never admit it, but he wanted us gone. It was simpler that way.

We had fought side by side for so long, I had thought that we saw the Pack in the same way. Now I knew we never had. Water under the bridge. Jim had made his choices, and I’d made mine. And Keelan was clearly making his, because he’d been my-lording me the entire time without any hesitation. For all of his aw shucks and “simple Irishman” pretense, Keelan was sharp.

“Are you here in an official capacity, Keelan?”

The werewolf scoffed. “Perish the thought, my lord. Where is it written that a man can’t visit a dear friend he’s not seen in far too long? Besides, the Consort mentioned you were fixing up this old ruin and told me I should see it for myself.”

The Consort and I were going to have a little chat when she got back.

“At night? And with six of your pack in tow? You reckon Jim or Desandra would see it that way?”

“What better time? Besides, we both know I’ve always been a bit of a Pack floutlaw.”

And now he was making words up.

“It’s that very same poor attitude that got me shipped up here,” Keelan continued. “The advantage is that I can now go weeks or even months without giving much thought to what Jim or the Wolf Queen fancy.”

I knew the feeling. And I quite enjoyed it.

Keelan flashed his teeth, and a hint of the alpha shone through. “We were neither of us born with a neck meant for bending. They may exile us, but they can’t beat us.”

That Kate and I left the Pack voluntarily or that he was, in fact, the alpha of the pack here in Wilmington seemed unimportant to Keelan. Jim had badly miscalculated. I would’ve made sure Keelan stayed right next to me, where I could keep an eye on him. But Jim and Desandra, those two geniuses, put their heads together and sent him here, on his own, and then they gave him a bunch of promising fighters and potential troublemakers to train. Neither of them had any idea just how much influence Keelan could exert over the Pack. Specifically, over its renders, the cream of the crop when it came to combat.

So I played along. “Banished to this lawless place because we’re too fiercely independent?”

“Just so, my lord. The important thing is that we’re here now. The two of us and everything’s going to be just fine.”

Ha! “In that case, welcome, friend Keelan. Bring your people inside. If any of you happen to be hungry, my son will show you where we keep the food. What we have is yours.”

“I knew you’d understand. And if the home of my host happened to be attacked while we had our tea, well, we’d be honor-bound to defend it. Who could find fault with that?”

I could think of at least a couple of people. But they were far away from this place and the things that would happen here tonight.

When the bad people came, they came like a mob, maybe fifty of them, waving torches and weapons. Grandfather would have called them a horde. But they were like a mob from an old monster movie.

It started with a shapeshifter scout. He slunk out of the woods in warrior form, but it was badly put together and clunky. His jaws didn’t fit right, his hind legs were too short, his forelimbs too long, and his pelvis wasn’t tilted properly. He was still moving, when he raised his head and inhaled deeply. Suddenly he skidded to a stop.

“One of yours?” Dad asked Mr. Keelan, who stood next to us on the wall.

“Never laid eyes on him. No rats in my crew.”

His crew was on the wall too, watching Dad with big eyes. Six shapeshifters, three smelled like wolves, two men and a woman; two were jackals, and they looked like brother and sister; and one was a bouda who reminded me a little of my sister. When we had been talking through the fire and she’d gotten upset about something that had happened to me, her face had been calm and light, but her eyes had been hard. The bouda was like that.

It was the seven shapeshifters and Dad to my left and four archers, Mr. Thomas, Mr. Paul, his wife, and her brother, to my right.

This must be what war would be like. We are under a siege. Like in the stories.

The scout shapeshifter started shaking all over.

“I think he smells you,” Mr. Keelan said to Dad.

The wererat turned back the way he’d come and sprinted away. Fast.

“Smart man,” Dad said.

“If he is, he’ll keep running like the Devil himself is chasing him until he’s well out of Wilmington,” Mr. Keelan said.

People poured out of the forest tunnel that hugged our road. Ten, fifteen, thirty…fifty…

They approached the walls and stopped about twenty yards away.

“Here they are,” Mr. Paul’s wife said, her voice sharp with anger.

A woman in the front line started waving her arms. A knot of magic began to form around her.

“Mage,” I said. “Front row, third person on the left.”

Dad looked at her.

She waved her arms some more.

“It’s taking her a while,” Mr. Keelan said. “We could just shoot her.”

“Let them make the first move,” Dad said. “So far, they’re just people standing around outside the walls.”

Finally, the mage thrust her arms out like she was pushing someone, and a fireball exploded against the wall, three feet to the right of the gates. She had missed. Still, I could feel the heat from where we waited. She wasn’t great, but she had some power.

The mob cheered. The man in front, a big, bearded guy painted with red swirls, screamed, “Fuck them up!”

“I believe that’s our cue,” Dad said. Then he turned and looked directly at me. “Conlan, remember what I said.”

“Yes, sir. I stay on the wall. I protect the archers. If I need help, I roar.”

Dad nodded and turned away.

“Good lad,” Mr. Keelan said. “Keep your wits about you and everything will be fine. Your father and I will handle the rest of this rabble.”

Another fireball smashed into the wall, this time less than a foot from the gates.

Dad leaped onto the parapet. Bright moonlight spilled over him, as he stood on the edge, perfectly balanced. Muscles bulged from his shoulders and chest.

“Watch this,” Keelan murmured to his shapeshifters. “This is a moment to remember.”

When we shifted, it was fast. An instant of pain when you couldn’t move, as if you were tied up, then suddenly freedom and a new shape. Dad slowed it down. He did it the way he lifted weights. It wasn’t a jerky snap. It was a slow, controlled wave. It began with his head. His skull expanded. Bone flowed like candle wax, the human features melting into a huge, scary lion head. His neck thickened, his shoulders bulged out. His spine stretched, his new body ripping his shirt. Thick muscles wrapped his new arms. Claws burst from his fingers.

The shapeshifters stared at him with glowing eyes, mesmerized.

His hips shifted. His legs grew. Gray fur striped with faint darker stripes slid over his form. His blond hair turned dark and flared into a big, shaggy mane. He opened his giant mouth, showing everyone his terrible fangs, and roared.

THUNDER.

The shapeshifters jerked.

The roar smashed into you. You could feel it in your bones.

THUNDER.

A couple of people down below turned around and started running to the woods.

Mr. Keelan shifted, and a huge black wolf in warrior form landed on the wall. He raised his head, his eyes filled with moonlight, and howled. High and haunting the way only wolves could, singing about the moon, the hunt, and the blood.

The hair on the scruff of my neck stood up.

Down below, the mob took a big step back.

The other shapeshifters changed shape, except for the bouda. The wolves and jackals joined in, turning the howl into a chorus. The bouda giggled in that weird way they did, her cackle jagged like glass breaking.

To the side, Mr. Paul’s brother-in-law raised his tall bow and loosed an arrow. It climbed high into the sky, curved, plunged down, and pierced the bearded guy through his head. He fell.

The bouda doubled over laughing.

Dad leaped off the wall. He started the jump in his warrior form, then shifted again in midair. A giant gray lion landed in the middle of the mob. The shock must have been too much because everyone froze. Dad swiped at the nearest fighter with his big paw, sending them flying.

Mr. Keelan held his giant sword up in the air, let out another howl and jumped down. His pack followed except for the bouda who laughed again and moved to stand next to me.

Great. I didn’t need a babysitter.

“You can go with them,” I told her. “I got this.”

She shook her head. “No offence, kid, but your dad and my alpha say otherwise. Sucks for us but at least we get to watch the show.”

“My name’s Conlan.”

“Yeah, I know.” She held out her hand with very long, pink nails. “Jynx. With a y.”

I shook her hand with the long, pink nails.

“Anything happens, stay behind me. If things get really bad, be a good boy and call for backup.” She sighed dramatically and pointed down to the ground in front of the gates. “By the look of it, neither of us is going to have any fun tonight.”

Below us Dad was crashing into bodies. His huge paws were swatting at everyone in his path, but his claws weren’t out. He was holding back.

A man stabbed at him from behind with a spear. Dad twisted, pawed the weapon away, and leaped onto him. His weight forced the man down to the ground. He put the spearman’s whole head into his mouth but didn’t bite down. He just held it gently and then released him. The man scuttled back, got to his feet, and started running back toward the forest.

“Wow, kid,” the bouda gasped. “I thought Keelan’s stories were just bullshit, but your dad is a beast!”

Beast lord. Heh.

“Why isn’t he killing them though?”

It was obvious. “It’s worse,” I said.

“What’s worse?”

“Living with it. They will remember this, being beaten and mauled. Being so scared that they couldn’t even run away. They will never be the same again.”

“Killing them is cleaner.”

“Some of them are not here by choice. Some of them were forced. There is no way to tell who is who. Those who’ll survive get a chance to change their lives and be better. If they don’t, we can always kill them later.”

She squinted at me. “How old are you again?”

“Eight.”

“That’s a hard eight, kid. Still, they have the right idea.” She nodded at Mr. Paul and his archers, who were shooting into the crowd.

“They are entitled. Those people took Darin, Mr. Paul’s nephew. They have a blood claim.”

She shook her head at me.

Several feet away from Dad, Mr. Keelan was wading into the crowd swinging his sword back and forth in front of him like it was a giant club. People ran at him, but he was beating them back with the flat side of the blade. His pack was taking down anyone who tried to get behind him.

It was almost over now. They weren’t a mob anymore. They were just a herd of people panicking. All of them were scared, some were bleeding badly, and running in every direction to get away from the monsters mauling them. Many were heading back the way they’d come.

A deep bellow tore over the sound of the battle.

At the forest tunnel, trees shuddered, shaking their branches. Something was coming, Something big, moving toward us down the road through the tree tunnel we’d carved out of the woods.

The humans stopped running.

Dad raised his head and looked in that direction.

A stench washed over me. Sour, musky, and wrong somehow.

“That can’t be good,” Ms. Jynx murmured.

Another bellow. Closer now.

Closer.

The trees shuddered, and a nightmare from old stories stomped out of the forest.

It had to be ten feet tall and held an axe as big as Mr. Keelan’s sword over its horned head.

“Holy fuck,” Ms. Jynx gasped. “An actual goddamned minotaur!”

No, three minotaurs. Two massive monsters, slightly smaller than the first but with axes of their own, lumbered out to stand next to their leader.

One of the humans ran toward the largest creature, and it cut him in half with one swing of its axe.

“Kill them,” it roared. “Kill the cat, kill the dogs, kill the humans behind the walls! Kill them all!”

Dad changed into warrior form and dashed toward the minotaurs.

Grandfather told me about minotaurs. They were not shapeshifters. They were chimeras, and they came from Crete.

A series of deep grunts sounded from behind us.

Ms. Jynx whirled around.

A section of the back wall, the one facing the sea and still under repair, exploded. Stones and mortar came flying toward us, and two big, ugly shapeshifters appeared in the ragged gap. They squeezed into the hole. Jagged, broken portions of the ruined wall tore at their shaggy hides. Wereboars in warrior form. Their eyes were small and red, their tusks huge and yellow.

They forced their way in and paused, pawing the ground with their hoofed feet, trying to gouge it.

Mr. Paul and his wife turned and fired.

Two arrows sprouted in the larger werehog’s chest. The other one looked at them, grunted, and swiped the shafts away with his huge hand.

A layer of muscle, then fat, then quills. The arrows didn’t penetrate. They should have penetrated, but they hadn’t.

The werehogs sighted the gate. If they opened it, things would get complicated.

The female bouda unsheathed two daggers. “Stay on the wall.” She leaped down into the courtyard and landed between the wereboars and the gate.

The wereboars snorted.

My babysitter pointed at the intruders with her daggers. “Hey, piggies! I’m here to carve some bacon off your fat asses.”

“Stupid bouda bitch,” one of them grunted. “Snuck up behind you. Now we stomp you. Crush your bones. Fuck you. Eat you. Shit you out.”

Paul’s family shot another two bolts at the boars.

The wereboars snorted some more, ripped the bolts out, and started toward the bouda.

Ms. Jynx flicked her daggers and shifted. A werehyena spilled out, her eyes glowing with ruby fire.

The wereboars charged.

She spun around them like a whirlwind, slicing so fast. Cut, cut, cut, cut…

The wereboars squealed and roared, swiping at her, but she was too quick. Blood flew. The wereboar swung its massive fists at her but couldn’t touch her as she darted in and out of its reach.

So, that was how renders fought. Yeah, I want to do that.

Ms. Jynx’s opponent tried to pull her into a clench, but she ducked and stabbed up into its snout. The wereboar screamed in rage.

She was carving into them, but their wounds closed almost as fast as she cut them. Faster than I healed. Faster than Dad.

The smaller wereboar lunged at her, forcing his way through the barrage of her strikes, trying to lock her into a bear hug, while the other wereboar closed in on her from behind. She had nowhere to go. They smashed into each other, trying to pin her between them. At the last moment, she dropped down into a crouch, and the two boars collided, while she drove her daggers up, into their groins. Stab, stab, stab, so fast.

The wereboars squealed, scrambling. The larger one managed to grab her left arm and yanked her up. She stabbed his thick neck with the other dagger.

He headbutted her.

Oh no.

Ms. Jynx hung off his arm, dazed. He hurled her away. She flew and hit the wall of the keep. Her body made a sound.

The injured wereboar jerked the dagger out of his neck.

Ms. Jynx lay on the ground, by the wall, in a small heap. She wasn’t moving.

“Conlan,” Mr. Paul said. “It’s time to ask for help.”

I glanced over my shoulder. Dad and the biggest minotaur were ripping into each other. If I called him, he wouldn’t get here in time, and the minotaur would kill someone.

I looked back at the courtyard. The two werehogs started toward Ms. Jynx, their sharp, heavy hooves stomping. They were ready to gore her.

No.

These people came here to hurt us. They took Jason’s brother. They tried to hurt Mom. They attacked our home, they fought my dad, and now they were about to kill my friend. I wasn’t going to run, and I wasn’t going to hide behind my father. And I wouldn’t allow them to hurt anyone.

“Stop,” I ordered.

Two shaggy monster heads swiveled toward me.

“What are you going to do, little man?” the smaller wereboar demanded. The other snorted.

I jumped.

I weighed about 60 pounds in my human body. But I weighed 4 times as much in the warrior form.

The wereboar saw me change in mid-air and threw himself to the side. I’d wanted to land on top of him. Instead, I only caught him with my hind foot. My claws ripped through his thick hide, and he squealed in surprise.

I bounced clear, putting myself between them and Ms. Jynx.

The boars stared at me.

I snarled at them. It wasn’t a call for help. It was a challenge. I wasn’t as big as my dad, but I was six feet tall, my claws and teeth were sharp, and I was also a lion. Lions ate boars.

Ms. Jynx jumped up. “You dummy!”

Oh. She’d been pretending.

The bouda cackled next to me. I stood up straight.

The wereboars scoured the ground, digging at it with their hooves.

We moved at the same time. The two wereboars attacked. Ms. Jynx shot forward, and I shot backward, bounced up off the wall, picking up height, and launched myself at them. The larger wereboar screamed as we collided and went down, both of us biting and clawing. We rolled around on the ground of the courtyard, tearing into each other.

He was so strong. I wasn’t going to outmuscle him. But he was big and slow. I remembered my training and decided to switch tactics. I bit his ear. Hot, angry magic sliced my tongue. Ow. I bit down harder. The wereboar squealed, flailed, and I broke free of him.

I rolled to my feet, spat the nasty ear out, and gestured for him to come at me.

The enraged boar charged, and at the last moment I leaped straight up.

Before he could stop, I jumped on his back. I dug all of my claws into him and bit down hard on his neck. Just below the base of his skull.

He tried to shake me off. He threw himself onto the ground, trying to crush me beneath his bulk.

I felt some of my ribs snap. Ouch, it hurt. It hurt!

But I had him now, and I wasn’t letting go.

He thrashed about, panicked now and losing lots of blood. I could feel him getting weaker.

With my teeth still buried in his foul-tasting flesh, I shifted my head more into a lion’s. My teeth got bigger. Slowly I could feel the boar’s muscles tearing and giving away. I put as much pressure as I could on the bones of his neck. I bit down until my jaw ached, trying to crush his throat.

It lasted forever.

His neck crunched.

He spasmed in his death throes, his huge body crushing me.

Suddenly my teeth were free.

His head rolled on his shoulders, hanging on by bits of skin and ruined muscle.

Not yet. It’s not done yet.

I bit through the rest of the neck and pulled the head free.

His dead eyes stared back at me.

I did it!

I kicked free of the body, jumped to my feet, held the head up, and roared louder and longer than I ever had.

The body of my enemy lay at my feet, and I was alive. And strong. Stronger than him. Stronger than anybody.

“Son,” Dad’s voice seemed very far away. “That’s damned impressive but what happened to calling for help?”

Oh. I managed to make my mouth work. “Hey, Dad.”

He was standing just a few feet away, human again and holding the head of the largest minotaur.

Nearby, Ms. Jynx, still in warrior form, leaned on Mr. Keelan. He was speaking softly to her and patting her shoulder. She was covered in blood, little of it hers, and laughing hysterically. She couldn’t seem to stop.

“You seemed busy,” I told Dad and changed back into human form.

“I was a bit.” He hefted the enormous head into his hands.

Mr. Keelan turned toward us and was looking at me and Dad with a strange expression.

“My lord,” he said. “Don’t be too hard on the lad. He fought a hell of a fight against a larger, more experienced foe. Remind you of anyone?”

“Don’t start, Keelan. If his mother finds out about this”—Dad used the minotaur’s horns to point at the bodies of the wereboars—“what happened here tonight will seem like a pleasant dream. I mean it.”

He looked around at everyone else, his eyes a bright, furious gold. “Nobody says a word about this to Kate. Am I clear?”

Everybody said yes at the same time.

Dad turned back to me. “Right now, I need to go and find your mom. I’m sure she’s fine. The guy on the ship is probably not a god but you never know. Conlan, I’m very proud of you. Let’s keep the part about you, her beloved eight-year-old son, killing a giant wereboar and waving its head around, to ourselves. This will be our little secret. This is a shapeshifter thing, and your mom doesn’t always understand shapeshifter things.”

He dropped the minotaur head on the ground.

“I promise,” I told him. Mom loved us, but she also worried a lot.

Mr. Keelan cleared his throat. “If I might make a small suggestion. Troy is a decent medmage. Perhaps it would be good to have him along with you?”

The male jackal spoke up. “I trained under Doolittle. I’m certified to treat shapeshifters and humans.”

“That’s good enough for me,” Dad told him. “I’d be happy to have you come with.”

Dad turned to me again and paused. “Conlan, you’re in charge until we get back. You’ve earned it.”

Dad said I earned it. I stood up straighter.

His eyes flashed gold. “But if Keelan stays a bit, listen to what he has to say.”

“You go and find the Consort, my lord. The boy and I will take care of everything here. Nothing to worry about.”

As I watched Dad and Troy break into a run heading down the road, Mr. Keelan clamped his big hand on my shoulder. “Nothing better than a good fight before breakfast. Still, perhaps we could start by tidying up a bit, eh? We wouldn’t want your mother coming home to a messy house, would we?”

Ms. Jynx exhaled and finally stopped shaking.

“Got a hold of yourself?” Keelan asked.

She nodded. “What I want to know is where the hell did they get the fucking minotaurs?”

“From the Labyrinth,” Troy’s sister said.

“Duh!” Ms. Jynx said. “Seriously, Helen?”

“No, I mean it. For real. Troy and I are Greek. Our uncle knows a lot of people in our community, so when we got stationed here by the Pack, we went to pay our respects. They warned us about the minotaurs. There is the Labyrinth in Crete. It’s a magic space like Unicorn Lane. The minotaurs live there. They are always male, so they have to kidnap women to reproduce.”

That was pretty much what Grandfather had said.

“They’re territorial and they have disputes with each other,” Ms. Helen said. “These three were a father and his sons. They were forced out, so they boarded the first ship they could find and ended up here two years ago. They destroyed the local gangs and built their own.”

Mr. Keelan’s eyes went green. “And you kept it to yourself?”

The werejackal raised her hands. “It never came up?”

“Helen, for future reference, this is the kind of information I need to have as your alpha. Do we understand each other?”

She nodded. “Yes, Alpha.”

“Good. Let’s go clean up.”

“Okay, I get the minotaurs, but what about the pigs?” Ms. Jynx asked.

“Clean up, Jynx,” Mr. Keelan said. “You’ve met the Consort before. Focus on what’s important.”

It took an hour to get all the corpses and body parts into a pile. It took longer for them to burn in the bonfire. I even had to feed some of my magic into it to get it hot enough. Once it got going the smell and the smoke were awful.

When we were done, Mr. Keelan took my wereboar’s head and placed it on the ground in front of the fire. Right next to the head of the largest minotaur.

“Well, that’s the last of them.” Then he stood back and just looked at them for a while. “Great big bastards, weren’t they? I don’t know about the minotaurs, but the two hogs smelled like wereboars to me. Usually, shapeshifters turn back to human after death but not these pigs.”

“They were cursed,” I said.

Mr. Keelan raised his eyebrows at me.

Ms. Jynx ran over to us. “Good news! I figured out the pigs! They are—”

“Cursed,” Mr. Keelan said.

She blinked at him. “How did you know?”

He nodded at me.

“I tasted the magic when I bit off his ear,” I explained. “It was witch magic. Very strong.”

“Are you going to be okay?” Mr. Keelan asked. “Do we need to purify you somehow?”

My grandmother had been a witch and Mom was one too, when she needed it. I knew how to protect myself, but it didn’t matter, because the curse was very specific. “I’ll be fine.”

“Well, anyway,” Ms. Jynx said. “I had a chat with that fire mage. She took an arrow in the knee, and she doesn’t deal with pain well, so she was very cooperative. Apparently, the two werehogs are local boys, Buck and Grady. They are—were—first-grade assholes. They did home invasions, collected gambling debts, assaulted people, your low-level muscle shit. Somehow, they got the bright idea to break into a house of a powerful local witch. They went in human and came out as that. Apparently, she told them that since they lived their lives like pigs, she would make their outside match their inside. So yeah. They didn’t turn back because they couldn’t. They are permanently stuck like that.”

They were. It was over now.

“Good work,” Mr. Keelan told Ms. Jynx.

She grinned at him and walked away.

Mr. Keelan studied the heads some more. “Looks like you’ve got the best trophy of the night.”

“No, sir. The one my dad killed is bigger than mine.”

Mr. Keelan scoffed. “Nonsense, lad. You’re young yet, you lack a proper sense of proportion. That porcine shithead was twice your size. How did it feel?”

“At first I was scared,” I admitted.

“Anyone would be. Wereboars are as tough as they are stupid. Even the bears don’t like fighting them. After you were afraid, what then?”

“I was mad.”

“Why?”

“They broke into our home. They wanted to hurt Ms. Jynx. And this one called me ‘little man.’”

“His mistake. Look at him, he’s not bigger than you now, is he?”

“No, sir. He’s just dead.”

“How did it feel to tear that ugly head off his hairy shoulders?”

I’d been exhausted and beat up but honestly, it felt…

“It was amazing,” I told him.

“Aye, it was that. But your father’s got the right of it. It’s a shame your mother will never know how brave you were, but this is shapeshifter business.” Mr. Keelan sighed, “Best not to trouble your mother with the details.” He paused. “Still, even if you and your father never speak of it again, it doesn’t matter. Do you know why?”

“No.”

“Because I saw it. We all did. My people. The humans. All of us.”

“So?” Why did that matter? I was tired and hungry and wished he’d just get to the point.

He seemed very serious now, like it was important that I understood what he was trying to tell me. It was a little like speaking to Grandfather.

“So, that’s how legends begin, lad. People who were here will tell the story to them that wasn’t. And those people will spread the tale.”

“Of how you and Dad killed three minotaurs? Nobody will believe it. It’s too crazy.”

Mr. Keelan shook his head. “No, lad. The story of how the Beast Lord’s son, when he was just a small boy, beheaded a magical wereboar with his bare hands. That’s the important bit. That’s the part people will remember.”

We were alone, but his voice was barely above a whisper.

I frowned. “He’s not the Beast Lord. Not anymore.”

Mr. Keelan rubbed his hands together and smiled again. “Is he not? My mistake. No matter. What if we go inside and find something to eat. I don’t know about you, but I’m fucking starving.”