Once I was suited up in jeans, a thick jacket, gloves, and a wool hat—ninety percent certain those clothes had not been in my closet earlier—I walked through the library with Shadow. Inky was close to us again, slinking around its master, but I kind of felt good that it was there. Like an extra backup against these shadow creatures. Just the name itself invoked fear, and I wasn’t sure I’d be able to see them and not freak out.
“How does it all work?” I asked as a distraction when we were nearing the hallway to Earth.
“The way you throw out random words and think they form sentences is appalling,” Shadow said, his accent a little stronger than usual.
I shrugged. “Maybe you’re just not smart enough to keep up with me.”
He shook his head but was stopped from replying when someone from Karn stepped closer—not touching him, as was apparently his preference—and whispered to him.
The water beings were still some of the most unusual I’d seen, and that was saying something, considering the demi-fey and Brolder inhabitants. But still, the almost translucent nature of their bodies and how they appeared boneless as they slipped through the smallest of spaces was absolutely fascinating.
“What did they say?” I asked.
Shadow tilted his head in my direction, and since he was back to being eight feet tall, I craned my neck to keep him in my line of sight.
“What makes you think that’s any of your business?” he asked. No growls or grumbles, though, so I was counting that as a win.
I shrugged. “It’s not, I’m sure. But you’re keeping me prisoner, and I’m curious about this place, so I’m going to ask questions.”
His lips actually twitched minutely and for a beat, it appeared he was amused by me. “Learn to ask the right questions, pup, and you just might survive.”
Oh, great. Very reassuring.
He took off then, long-ass legs sending him through the shimmery veil directory and into the Earth hallway. It looked the exact same as last time, a white expanse of hall littered with multiple doors.
“Do these lead to other worlds as well?”
He’d told me something about them the first time, but for the life of me, I couldn’t remember what it was. Fear no doubt had me blocking out those hours.
“No. The true worlds are all off the library,” he said, surprising me by being forthcoming with information. “These doors lead to other areas.”
And the information had dried up.
There was no more time for questions; he was moving so fast, I basically had to sprint to keep up with him. I hadn’t caught the way he’d entered this hall the first time, when we’d left Earth for here, and it became obvious why when the white walls just tapered off and then we were standing in a forest. A very thick, snow-covered forest, the early evening air temp dropping dramatically in a split second.
As an icy breeze cut through me, I shivered, thankful that I at least had as much clothing on as I did. Wolf shifters didn’t feel the cold like humans, but when temps were this low, we still suffered without protection.
Shadow paused his overachiever walking pace, lifting his head and closing his eyes as he breathed deeply.
“L-Lost it al-already?” I chattered, my body taking longer than expected to adjust to the rapid temperature change.
He shot me a dark look, and in the exceptionally low light, the fire in his eyes glowed like a million fireflies. “Creatures from the Shadow Realm are not easy to track or contain, but if they’re left to roam free, they’ll raze the Earth, along with its many resources, to the ground in a matter of months.”
I internally flinched. Fuck. I’d done that… freed these creatures that could destroy the world.
Stepping closer to him but maintaining enough distance not to get scorched again—even if at this stage a little fire sounded kind of nice—I peered around. “So, are you capable of tracking and containing them?”
He scoffed, like that was up there with my top stupid questions. And considering how he’d reacted to many of them, there was some stiff competition. “You will learn to fear me, little wolf.”
It was my turn to scoff, only it sort of came out like a snort. “Yeah, yeah. So you keep telling me. What’s the point of wanting everyone to fear you, though? Doesn’t seem like a great way to make friends.”
He stopped what he was doing, and even Inky ceased swirling around his arms, settling against his chest instead. “You want us to be friends?”
I shrugged. “I mean, what would it hurt if we’re stuck together for a while trying to track these creatures of darkness down?”
Shadow was the one to move closer, his energy caressing me, sending warmth across my body that was almost as good as an orgasm. “There are five beings in this world I call friend,” he murmured, his accent the strongest I’d ever heard. “Five whom I trust with my life, and for whom I would fight to the death.”
At this point, I was mindless, lost in the thrall of his voice and power, but he didn’t take advantage. Nope. He stepped away, tearing the delicious heat and tingling energy away from me.
“You’re not in that five, wolf.”
He started to walk, and I blinked, trying to bring myself back to reality.
The fact that I wasn’t in the five beings he trusted with his life shouldn’t have come as a surprise to me. I’d known this dude for about one point three seconds, and in that time, it had mainly been torture, snark, and fear, but for some stupid reason, I’d felt disappointed when I’d heard him say that.
Maybe by the end of my stay with the Shadow Beast, he would raise that number to six. Or maybe he’d murder me into a fiery ball of fur.
The fact that I didn’t know which way this would all go was not as terrible as I’d expected it to be. Maybe I’d lost my mind, or maybe… just maybe, this was where my life truly began.
All I had to do was make sure I stayed alive, which meant not pissing off this beast—and sticking around to see what destiny had in store for me.
Speaking of, he was off and running again, tracking the shadow creature down. It wasn’t exactly a quick process. We walked for miles, the snow growing thicker underfoot and the air colder on every part of my body exposed to the elements. No matter how much I tried to snuggle into my jacket, most of me still felt frozen, and eventually, when my eyelashes were nothing more than white popsicles, I ground to a halt.
“Are you legitimately fucking with me at this stage?” I growled, my wolf howling inside my chest. “Why are you so useless at tracking?”
Yeah, I was tired. Exhausted, even. And I’d sure as fuck had enough of being dragged halfway across the wilds of Canada, all for some small chance of stumbling upon a shadow creature.
“What did you say?” He sounded genuinely surprised.
“I expected you to be better at tracking than this,” I continued carelessly, my entire plan of staying alive lost in my exhausted annoyance. “You’re just leading us in fucking circles.” I threw my hands in the air. “And what the hell am I even doing here? Why do you need me? Does the one who released the shadows have to return them or something?”
“Yes,” he snarled. “The careless, pathetic human who released shadow creatures to destroy Earth has to be the one to claim them back.”
Well, shit.
“Sounds like you can’t really kill me then,” I said, finding the silver lining.
Huge hands, strong and biting, wrapped around my biceps and hauled me up so that my face was at his eight-feet height. I gulped at his snarling expression, perfect in how terrifying and breathtaking it was. “You underestimate both your own importance and that of Earth. I do not need this world. But you… you have friends here. Family even. You’d do well to remember that.”
His advice was solid, as advice went, but I was more consumed by the fact he was again touching me and it didn’t hurt. How extremely unfair was it that he could instigate a one-sided touch relationship between us. Made me want to touch him more than ever, just because it wasn’t allowed.
“I’ve picked up its power trail again,” he said abruptly, breaking through the tightly woven tension between us, dropping me to my feet. “Follow me.”
I wanted to click my heels and salute him, but he was already gone, and my smartass action would be wasted. Oh well. There would most definitely be another time.
Shadow moved with determination now, seemingly locked on to this power trail. My ability to keep up was waning, and as my wolf gently whined in my chest to be free, I wondered if maybe it would be best to shift. I was about to ask him when we rounded a particularly dense set of trees, stepping out to stand at the edge of a frozen lake.
When Shadow Beast had stolen me from Torma, it had been a few weeks into winter, but where we were now was dead of winter weather, and I wondered if time was moving faster on Earth than in the Library of Knowledge. Or were we really far north in Canada?
Not that time really mattered when right in the center of the frozen lake was a… creature that was so far beyond anything I’d ever seen, it almost stole my breath away.
“That’s it?” I choked out, instinctively stepping closer to Shadow.
“Yes. It’s an abervoq.”
He said it so fast that I barely caught the foreign-sounding name, but I sure as fuck couldn’t miss the creature itself. Standing close to the eight-feet height of Shadow, it was a twisted beast. The top part looked like a bull, with huge horns, a snout, and large eyes. The bottom half was a shaggy bear with black fur that blended well into the darkness surrounding it.
Darkness wasn’t the only thing surrounding it, either. Nope. There were piles of carcasses, hundreds of them, filling the lake with death.
“All the animals,” I choked out. “It killed them all.”
Moose, bears, big cats, small bunnies. Nothing had been spared from its wrath.
“Abervoq are blood stealers,” Shadow whispered. “Akin to vampires, but it’s about more than survival for them. It’s a sport. They will try to best each other with the most kills. They’re one of the more dangerous creatures that exist in Shadow Realm.”
“Great,” I replied just as softly, unable to look away from the midnight creature braying at the moon. “How do we stop it?”
I could feel his gaze on me, heavy and considering, and I had to decide which scary creature to stare at. Shadow Beast won.
“Have you figured out how to touch the Shadow Realm again?” he asked me.
I shook my head, mute. Words were in my brain, but I couldn’t get them out of my mouth.
“Then we’ll have to subdue and contain it in one of the prison rooms back in the library,” he said, “until you learn to control your abilities.”
I was nodding, all the while wondering about these abilities. What abilities did I even have? Wolf shifters should not have been able to touch the Shadow Realm, so why could I? And would I learn to do it again fast enough to stop Earth from being consumed?
Shadow stepped out on the ice, growing in size until he was larger than I’d ever seen him, and once again I was wondering if there was an upper limit in his size changes? And would I ever get to see it?
Inky grew with him, the mass of smoky swirls swelling until it was a storm cloud of darkness behind the lord of darkness himself. From my angle, the two of them together was truly terrifying. Weirdly enough, in this moment, I wasn’t afraid of Shadow. We were fighting on the same side, and it was kind of nice to have an ally. For a change.
Slipping across the ice after him, Shadow, who was quite the distance ahead of me, was thankfully clearing a path through the dead animals left scattered by the creature. The blood remained, though, painting the ice into a grotesque artwork of red and black slashes. It was clear some of this blood was many days old, while other kills were fresh red spatters of death.
My boots sloshed through it, and I knew I had to pick up the pace to reach Shadow’s side. It got harder to keep my balance as the blood grew thicker and iced over in parts, turning it into the equivalent of black ice.
“Hold up, dude,” I called, almost falling onto the carcass of a black bear. “If you need my help, you’re going to have to wait for me.”
Shadow didn’t turn, but the abervoq did, stopping whatever it was doing, to stare straight into my soul.
Our moment was broken when it roared, leaping into the air and over the top of Shadow to land right before me. The ice cracked under its mammoth weight and I tried to back up, landing on my ass in the blood-soaked ice.
“What the fuck?” I screeched. “You’re creepy as hell, abervoq.”
It roared again, not liking my rapid judgment of its creepiness.
“No offense,” I added in a panic.
It paused, tilting its head to the side, like it was trying to decide what I was and how my blood tasted. I didn’t wait for that conclusion, kicking out and connecting to its furry body. I had no idea what to expect when my boot landed. Would this thing have substance or be like those shadows I’d first touched back at Torma?
My boot connected, and the abervoq slid away.
Jumping to my feet, I did the worst thing possible by slipping on some fresh blood, careening across the ice, and unintentionally slamming into the shadow creature. On instinct, I reached out, wrapping my arms around it.
Was I actually giving it a bear hug right now?
“Hold it for a moment,” Shadow snapped, quickly approaching us.
The abervoq tipped its head back and roared before trying to shake me off like I was errant water trapped in its black fur. “Yep, sure. No problem,” I gasped, holding on for life now. “No rush.”
Meanwhile, I was cursing him under my breath. How was I even in this situation? And would I live long enough to save Earth today?
