Amora
I stepoff the bottom stair into a cool, musty tunnel, my claws scrabbling for purchase on unnaturally slick stone. The bunker is clearly man-made, between the smooth, poured concrete and the perfectly domed ceiling. It’s also strangely quiet down here—the silence not only of the deep underground, but of something more potent.
Something dangerous and otherworldly.
Something like shadow magic, as if the negative energy from Quinton’s stone has sunk into the very walls.
The quiet is broken only by Felicity and the pack communicating in mind speak above. I’m glad I can keep tabs on them from this far beneath the ground, just in case things go sideways, but for now, I ignore the pack and focus on the click of my toenails on the stone floor as we hurry down the tunnel.
For several long moments, we’re in absolute darkness. I can’t see shit, but I have a feeling my companions have little issue seeing through the black with their special shadow shifter eyes. But I’ve got my ears, and I use my heightened hearing to follow the sound of their bare feet on the ground.
The tunnel curves to the left, then after several yards, it angles back to the right, and flickering firelight fills the hall ahead. It spills through an open archway, illuminating a semi-circle of the floor ahead with a wavering glow. At the promise of our goal waiting for us, we all put on a burst of speed and spill into a domed room.
After the blackness of the tunnel, the torchlight is glaring, even though the room isn’t all that brightly lit. I blink a few times, my sensitive wolf eyes adjusting slowly as a sense of dark magic pervades my senses. It’s thick and cloying, like the scent signature of someone who’s only just left the area.
Torches line the walls, and the only piece of furniture in the room is a low table in the very center. We approach the table, and I note a variety of objects carefully placed around the table’s edges—bleached bones, quartz crystals, bowls of incense, blackened matches in a pewter dish. I’m not a witch, but I’m fairly familiar with the objects of the craft. All of the detritus on the tabletop are things meant for protection.
Someone wanted to make sure this shrine had as much occult backup as possible.
Directly in the center of the table is a black satin pillow beneath an overturned glass bowl. A slight depression in the fabric tells me all I need to know.
The stone isn’t here.
“Fuck,” Kian swears, tearing the glass lid off the pillow. He tosses it to the concrete floor where it cracks into multiple thick pieces, then he rips the black satin pillow up as if the stone might be hiding beneath it. “It has to be here.”
I paw at the floor with a whine while all three men begin to tear apart the shrine in a futile effort to find the stone. Kian circles the perimeter of the room, checking the walls, while Frost ducks beneath the long black tablecloth to search the floor beneath the table. Malix picks up every object on the table one by one, tossing them aside as he searches for the missing stone.
But we don’t need to tear the room apart to know the stone isn’t here. We can all see where it should be, and it’s clear as fucking day that it’s not there.
We should call off Felicity’s pack and retreat. Regroup, figure out a different plan that accounts for the stone being on Quinton’s person, then try again later.
Just as I’m about to shift so I can tell the men that, Felicity’s voice breaks through my thoughts.
Cormac, head up the mountain! she calls, a slight tinge of worry in her tone. Darius is surrounded!
Surrounded?
Shit. That can’t be good. Cocking my head to one side, I tune in to their chaotic conversation, trying to figure out what the hell is going on.
They’re boxing us in!someone shouts.
Felicity growls. Kristen, Tara, get to them! Hurry! She pauses, then snaps, Amora, can you hear me?
Startled to hear my name, I rush to answer. Yes. I hear you, alpha. What’s going on out there?
Please tell me you’ve got the stone. We need to retreat.
A sick feeling rolls in my stomach. No. I’m sorry. It’s not here.
Felicity curses. That son of a… goddammit. We’re in trouble. We need— She cuts off abruptly. Delaney, behind you!
My blood turns to ice water.
Shit. We’re out of time.
We’ve already been down here too long, and there’s nowhere else in this bunker the stone could be hiding. Felicity and her wolves are being overwhelmed; if they’re beaten back, there’s a good chance the four of us will get caught.
I stand and whine loudly to catch Kian’s attention, and his head whips around in my direction. “What is it?”
I paw at the ground, then turn my eyes to the ceiling.
Alpha! another voice calls out in my mind. There’s something wrong with these wolves—
There’s a beat of silence, then someone else says, Wolf down! Harley is down!
Victor’s down, too!
Fuck. Felicity’s breathless curse is laced with despair. Shadow shifters. Quinton has made more of them. God help us.
My skin runs cold.
I let out a piercing howl, then whirl around and race from the room, not bothering to wait to see if my men are following.
Our allies don’t have time for that.
The sun has set entirely by the time we burst through the trap door and into the cold night. The din in my head is amplified by the growling and snarling that drifts toward us on the wind. My stomach turns as I hear a yelp echo off the mountaintop, and I fall into a dead sprint as I head toward the far side of the village.
The diversion is no longer just a distraction but a full-on fight by the time we arrive. Wolves clash with wolves, all of them spread out over an area near the edge of the village. I can see in a glance what happened—at some point during the zig-zag distraction, Quinton’s wolves managed to separate groups of Felicity’s shifters. Their safety in numbers failed when their numbers were separated.
And then the newly made shadow shifters came out to play.
I haven’t had a chance to warn my men about what Felicity said—that Quinton has made more shadow shifters. But they’ve chosen their shadow forms anyway, and as I slow to figure out who needs my help the most, the three of them barrel past me, trailing wispy shadows behind them.
I don’t hang around to watch what they do, since I assume they’re going after the new shadow shifters. They’re the ones best equipped to fight those monsters. Instead, I veer off to the right, heading toward the nearest group of Silver Crest wolves who are up against an equal number of Blood Moon shifters.