Chapter One
Blood, so much blood. The air was heavy with a metallic scent, everywhere around me there was that copper penny smell. It coated my nostrils, my throat, my tongue. Wait, my tongue?
I moved my tongue around in my mouth and the metallic flavor coated my tongue, like a film that formed when you slept too long. I opened my mouth, licking my lips and tasted more metal and dry cracked film. As my mind began to wake, I realized this wasn’t a dream, but my thoughts were hazy, detached. I needed to open my eyes, but they were so heavy.
A loud noise somewhere near me caught my attention and the darkness that was holding me hostage was suddenly and brutally ripped away. Bright lights were all around me and the blood-red light filtering through my eyelids was blinding after the total darkness of my metallic cocoon. Yelling voices and shadows moved around the room so I drew up my hand to cover my eyes from the harsh glare and the shouting turned frantic.
“Put the weapon down!”
“We will shoot you, if you don’t drop the knife, motherfucker!”
When the shouted words finally registered in my cotton-filled brain, I began to slowly put pieces together. The blood, the dark, the smells and now the words. Holy gods, what had happened to me? The last thing I remembered was my brother bringing me home from my graduation party because I wasn’t feeling well. He said graduating with a medical degree deserved a night out on the town, so I’d let him have his way, as always. But after getting into bed, it was all dark, until now.
I slowly lowered my hand and opened my sandpaper lids to take in the scene around me. Police surrounded my bed, guns all pointed toward me. Their faces told me they’d rather shoot me than anything else, they just needed a reason. Cops in this province hated my kind with a passion. Fuckers. I wouldn’t give them the satisfaction.
I looked at my hand and finally noticed I was holding a knife. I was so shocked at the realization, I shook my hand and flung it across the bed, making every cop in the room reposition and take a step closer. The biggest one lowered his weapon and moved forward.
“Fucking animal, what did you do to her? You have fucking blood all over your mouth and face. You’re covered in that girl’s blood. What the fuck did you do, eat her? All you fucking animals need to be rounded up and shot so all of us will finally be safe. Poor girl.”
My arms were jerked forward by the cop, and then I was spun around and pushed face down across the blood-soaked sheets. My brain was still firing slowly, so my first thought was that the snow-white sheets looked so much brighter next to the crimson splashes and puddles of blood soaked into them. My head was pushed into one of those stains, so I lifted my gaze to see what else was going on in the room.
Then I saw her. I saw that familiar snow white face that was almost as pale as the sheets had been, dark hair and perfectly formed eyebrows. A beautiful Cupid’s bow mouth, which had once always been shiny with gloss, now dull and dry. I didn’t want to look, didn’t want to see, but I moved my gaze to hers, and a small sob escaped my lips as the cops cuffed my hands tight enough to draw blood. Tears formed tracks down my bloody cheeks as I realized what was happening. Please, Gods in the sky and the ground, not my Emily. The cop started telling his buddies I was whimpering at a little pinch, but he was so wrong.
Emily’s eyes had always been my favorite thing about her. Her beautiful crystal blue eyes held so much life and compassion. Now they stared out at me, unblinking, and fixed. I fell into those cloudy orbs and felt nothing but cold, so very cold. Everything down to my bones was so, teeth-chatteringly cold. I could even hear the clicking sound from a distance…
“Rourke! Get your lazy ass up. You’re due in court. Now.”
I snapped my eyes open, turning my head toward the cell door and saw the guard who’d thrown me in here the night before. Edwards was his name. He hated all of usunnatural beastshe’d told me when he’d pushed me in the cell and slammed the door shut. I’d been given ashowerbefore that, which consisted of a hose and ice-cold water against a wall. Then, I’d been given this threadbare jumpsuit and a pair of tissue-thin socks and put in here with no blanket, no heat. My teeth were chattering, and I was frozen almost stiff from the January wind blowing through the bars of the window facing the city below.
I tried to get up off the cot by swinging my legs over the side, but my feet felt so numb, standing was impossible. I wasn’t moving fast enough and Edwards decided to take matters into his own hands.
“Fucking freak. You don’t deserve a trial for what you did to that poor girl. You should just be taken out and shot like the animal you are. Now, get your ass moving.”
He gripped my arm in his meaty paws, grinding muscle and bone together as he jerked me to unsteady feet and dragged me out of the cell and down the hall. I didn’t remember much about the night before, but this hall had stood out because of the cells and their occupants. All of the people jailed here were shifters. I didn’t see one human or any others who were incarcerated. Only shifters.
As only about thirty percent of the population of this province—and dwindling—that shouldn’t have been right, but there it was in black and white. As a shifter, I could recognize my own kind easily enough. Humans had a harder time, but they could learn the signs. We had thicker hair, brighter eye color, clearer skin, and we looked younger than our years. I was already thirty years old, but still got carded whenever I went to a bar. Why they still had a twenty-year-old limit on alcohol, I would never understand. I could hear the voice of my da in the back of my head even now,Stupid human laws.
Those human laws had allowed me to go to school though, so I had never complained too much. I was a niffling. A non-shifting shifter if you wanted to go to the simplest terms. We were seen as mostly harmless and given a few more rights than regular shifters. We could pass for human and didn’t usually pose a threat to them, so they let us mingle in their world a little more freely. I had always wanted to be a doctor, so when I was accepted as the only niffling to attend the best medical school in the province, I’d jumped at the chance. Now it was all gone to hell.
And now those human laws were about to be used against me. We didn’t have the same rights in court as the humans. This was my one and only trial, the day after the crime. My da had always warned me to get out of this province as soon as I could, or I could face the harshest legal system in our country of Allusia. I had never planned on breaking any laws—like he did—so I’d never worried. I should have listened. Fuck, I should have listened.
I lost count of how many halls, doors, and corridors we moved through until we finally made it through a more solid door and out into a courtroom. I must have still been in a daze, because the paintings on the ceiling, the woodwork on the walls, and the furnishings had me staring and admiring the skill it had probably taken to make such a stately room.
I was snatched back to reality though, when Edwards pushed me into a chair behind a gorgeous mahogany table and muttered as he walked away, “I’m going to start wearing gloves for this job, or I’ll never get the shifter stink out of my hands.”
I blinked and sniffed myself to see if I did indeed stink. They’d given me a shower after all, even if I hadn’t had any soap. The chair next to me pulled out, and a man sat down with a sigh.
“Danny boy, what the hell’s wrong with you? Look at me, son.”
I recognized that coastal accent immediately and looked into the soft brown eyes of my dad’s lawyer, best friend, and my honorary uncle, Paul Robbins. I tried to focus on his eyes, but mine were still not working right for some reason. I blinked a few times to get the gritty feeling to go away, but it just made me tear up. I could blame the dry eyes for that because I would never admit to crying.
Paul leaned over and gave me a gentle hug, making sure not to use his immense strength and squeeze too hard.
“Danny boy, what’s happened to you, son? You look high as the clouds, boy. You didn’t go out with that no-good brother of yours and get too wild, did you? Finally, decide to blow off some steam?”
I shook my head against his broad shoulder and held on tighter than was appropriate in the circumstances, but what did I care? I was so totally fucked right now. This might be the last bit of comfort and home I got for decades, and I was going to take all of it. I whispered my answer so no one else would overhear us, not even the few shifters or Others in the room.
“I went out with Gabe last night, but I came home early because I didn’t feel well. The last thing I remember is Gabe helping me get into my bed and leaving. Then I woke up to blood everywhere. Oh, my Gods, Uncle Paul, Emily’s blood was everywhere.”
