by Zoe Chant
Joe stepped to one side, flourishing one hand at Seven. Although the gesture was typically flamboyant, his voice dropped into formal cadences, turning serious. “It is my honor to introduce Seventh Novice of the Order of the First Water, Squire to Lord Azure, Oath-Sworn Guardian of the Sea’s Heart.”
Seven started at the new additions to her name. She hadn’t thought of it before, but she supposed her new status as the Prince’s bodyguard did require a change. A sea dragon’s name reflected their status and deeds, precisely indicating the honor that they had won and the respect that they were due.
But still: Guardian of the Sea’s Heart?
It wasn’t a title she’d ever heard before. Then again, she hadn’t grown up in the Imperial Palace, tutored from birth in sea dragon history and etiquette. She could only assume it was some traditional honor given to the royal family’s personal guards.
The man shot Joe an incredulous look. “Are you motherloving kidding me?”
“Hey, you should hear my sea dragon name.” Joe reverted to his usual flippant tone, grin flashing. “If you’re ever feeling insomniac, I can recite it for you. I promise, you’ll be sleeping like a baby before I’m halfway through.”
“Motherloving shifters.” The man turned back to Seven, shaking his head. “By the time I got through your tongue-twister out in the field, we’d all be burned to a crisp. You got a nickname?”
“Seven.” His scent crackled on her tongue, like the electric tang of an approaching storm. Prompted by an impulse she couldn’t quite name, she offered him the deep bow she’d given the Imperial Champion. “Sir.”
The man huffed. “Well, you got better manners than this overgrown idiot. Not that that’s hard. I’m Buck Frazer. Superintendent of this sorry lot, for my sins. Now, you may be here as his bodyguard, but that doesn’t mean I’m not going to put a Pulaski in your hands and expect you to work like a dog cutting line alongside the rest of the crew. You got a problem with that?”
“No.” She squared her shoulders, meeting his glare without flinching. “It will be my honor, sir.”
Buck made a not entirely displeased grunt. “Buck’ll do. Chief, if you insist on getting fancy. I warn you, I’m going out on a limb for you here, Seven. I’m having to do some very creative paperwork to cover your presence on the crew. And I will not have you endangering anyone, you hear? Over the next week, you’re going to get a crash course in wildland firefighting. And I don’t care how badly I need another dragon. If you don’t pass with flying colors, you’re out.”
She’d been nodding along, but at the word dragon she froze. She looked at Joe, waiting for him to correct the Chief’s mistake.
“Hey, don’t look like that.” Joe smiled at her, his turquoise eyes warm. “You got into the Order of the First Water. I promise, this will be a piece of cake in comparison. I was able to pass fire training, after all.”
“But I’m…” He knew, surely he had to know? She swallowed hard. “Prince—Chief—I’m not a sea dragon.”
Joe stared at her. “What?”
“What,” Buck repeated, in far flatter tones.
She hated to even think the word. But now she had no choice but to say it.
She took a deep breath, steeling herself. “I am a shark.”
Chapter 9
“A shark. A motherloving shark shifter.” Buck glared at Joe from behind his paperwork-strewn desk. He’d dragged Joe into his office for a private meeting, leaving Seven standing guard outside the closed door. “Do you know how many miles inland we are? What in the seven bells were you thinking?”
“I didn’t know.” Joe couldn’t believe it himself.
Although he’d known her name from his visions, he’d always been careful to avoid learning anything about the Seventh Novice of the Order of the First Water. Following her life—her victories, her struggles—would only have made it harder to stay away.
Even so, he’d thought he’d known everything about her. He’d seen the way she fought, whirling and dancing through the elegant forms of a sea dragon duelist. He’d seen the traditional honor-tokens gleaming in her hair.
But he’d never seen her shift. He’d never even heard her speak in sea dragon language. Not in any dream, any vision.
It had never occurred to him to wonder why.
“How could you not know?” Buck demanded, echoing his own thoughts. “Don’t you freaks sniff each other’s armpits or something? I thought you could recognize each other.”
“Some shifters can, but not sea dragons.” He shook his head, still mentally kicking himself. “I just assumed that she was one of us. For sea’s sake, she’s a member of the Order of the First Water! There’s never been a knight who wasn’t a sea dragon.”
Even through his whirling bewilderment, he couldn’t help feeling a spark of awe and pride. Somehow, his mate had forced the idiotic, hidebound knights to accept a shark into their ranks.
He’d known she was extraordinary. He just hadn’t appreciated how extraordinary.
Buck scowled at him as though the entire situation was his fault—which, to be fair, it was. “I suppose it’s too late to send her back for a refund.”
“Believe me, I wish I could persuade her to stay under the sea where she’d be safe. But she’s oath-bound to stick to my side. The Pearl Empress herself could order her back to Atlantis, and it wouldn’t do any good. Seven would rather die than be dishonored.”
Cold chains around his wrists…he pushed down the fragment of future memory. There was still time to find a way to make it not happen. There had to be.
“A shark,” Buck muttered, in tones of deep disgust. “I thought I was hiring something useful. What’s she going to do, flop the demons to death?”
“Hey!” His dragon bristled at the insult to their mate. “She’s already saved me from a whole pack of them single-handed.”
Buck folded his arms across his chest. “If those things really were demons.”
“I’m certain that they were. I think most of them were possessing wolves. I was too drugged up to notice much, but Seven said they definitely had glowing red eyes.”
“So does one of your colleagues.”
“Okay, fine,” Joe snapped. “Maybe it’s not the demons. I mean, I only personally killed one of them last year, no reason they might hold a grudge. I’m just a giant freaking dragon, heir to all the power of the ocean; it’s not like any demon would give its metaphorical left nut to possess me. No, clearly I’ve somehow randomly pissed off a hellhound pack that we had no idea existed.”
“Never underestimate your ability to piss people off.” Buck sighed, rubbing his forehead. “But point taken. So you think the demons are coming after the squad in revenge for last year?”
“I think it’s more than that.”
He’d been thinking about it all through the long helicopter ride back to Montana. Parts of his reoccurring vision—the one that had haunted his dreams since childhood—were finally starting to make sense
And he did not like the picture that was emerging.
“The woman who attacked me could have just bitten me on the spot,” he said, picking his words with care. “We saw last year that a demon can take someone over pretty instantly, if it can get its teeth into them. But she didn’t. She was trying to drag me away and take me somewhere else. I think she wanted me for something special.”
Buck’s eyebrows drew down. “Like what?”
Cold chains around his wrists. Death rears above them, horned and hell-eyed…
He said, “Like a sacrifice.”
“A sacrifice?” Blaise said skeptically. “Like in a ‘O Great Beast, Devourer of Worlds, accept this our humble offering’ kind of way? I don’t know, Joe. Have you been reading those cheesy fantasy novels again?”
In the light of the flickering campfire, Rory, Edith, Wystan and Callum were looking equally unconvinced. Even Fenrir had a distinctly doubtful tilt to his ears. Seven was the only person who seemed to be reserving judgement. She stood at pa
rade rest at the edge of the circle of firelight, a little way apart from the rest of the crew, her face studiously neutral.
He hadn’t had a chance to talk to her since she’d dropped the bombshell about her animal. What with physical training, equipment checks, and mandatory fire safety refresher sessions, there hadn’t been an opportunity to sneak a private moment with either her or the rest of A squad all day.
Now it was late evening. The vast Montana sky had darkened to a deep violet blue, glorious with stars. They were sitting around the communal fire pit outside the mess hall. The last yawning humans from B and C squads had wandered off in search of their beds, finally leaving the shifters free to talk.
Joe was about ready to fall over from exhaustion himself, but warning his friends was more important than sleep. Not that he ever needed any extra incentive to avoid his bunk as long as possible. He added another splash of Tabasco to his ink-black coffee.
“I know it sounds nuts, but think about it.” He took a gulp, grateful for the familiar mule-kick of the caffeine/chilli combo. “That woman was dragging me off somewhere. There has to be a reason for that.”
“True. And it does sound like she was possessed,” Rory said. He spread his hands. “But you have to admit, it’s a bit of a stretch to leap from there to deciding she wanted to bend you over a pentagram.”
Joe clenched his jaw in frustration. He’d been afraid of this. It was hard to build a convincing case when you couldn’t reveal half your evidence.
It was even harder when you’d carefully cultivated a reputation for being hare-brained and ridiculous.
“Is it so weird to think someone has to be summoning the demons?” He looked around at his friends’ faces, searching in vain for any spark of agreement. “I mean, there has to be some kind of reason why they show up where and when they do.”
“I had the impression that it must be a natural phenomenon,” Wystan said. The unicorn shifter was sitting on a log with his elbows resting on his knees, fingers steepled in thought. “Nobody could have called the ones that appeared in the unicorn forest, after all. It was surrounded by an unbreakable barrier. Moth might have been forced to bargain with the demons when they started to emerge, but I’m certain that neither she nor any of the other unicorns would ever have summoned the creatures in the first place.”
“We saw them popping out of the ground all by themselves.” Edith, who was leaning against Rory, gestured in demonstration. “Like mushrooms.”
“Evil mushrooms,” said Blaise, poking at the dying fire with a stick.
“But even mushrooms don’t come from nowhere,” Joe argued. “They don’t grow without the right sort of conditions. The seeds need fertilizer and water, right?”
Edith’s forehead wrinkled. “Mushrooms come from spores.”
Joe fought an urge to bury his head in his hands and scream. “Can we please forget the fungi? All I’m trying to say is that maybe demons need the right sort of conditions too. Specifically, something to eat. Someone to eat.”
“Joe may be onto something there, actually.” Wystan rested his chin on his hands, looking pensive. “I spent some time over the winter analyzing the data Buck has gathered over the past ten years on the Thunderbird’s appearances. If we assume that it only starts fires where it senses demonic activity, then the demons do only emerge when there are people nearby. All the wildfires were in remote areas, but in almost all cases there were campers or hikers present who reported seeing lightning coming out of a clear sky.”
“Like when the Thunderbird started a fire near me?” Edith asked.
“Exactly. All the witnesses were human. The Thunderbird is invisible to ordinary people, just like we mythic shifters are in our other forms.” Wystan frowned a little. “Which makes it distinctly odd that Buck can see it, but I digress. In any event, it does seem that the demons are drawn out by the presence of potential prey.”
“Like Edith.” Rory’s eyes were feral in the dark, reflecting the light from the campfire. “Remember the first demon that we encountered? Edith’s old fire watch tower was the only building for miles, and the demon appeared right next to it.”
“I’m glad that it did,” Edith said to her mate. She snuggled closer against him. “Otherwise we wouldn’t have met. I was lucky that you were in the area.”
“It wasn’t luck.” Rory’s arm tightened around her. “It was fate.”
It hadn’t been luck…and fate had had a helping hand. Joe had seen the squad battling a forest fire outside Edith’s fire watch tower, two months before it had actually happened. He’d been drinking a beer at the time. His reaction to the unexpected vision had resulted in him having to explain to a biker gang that he hadn’t meant to hurl an entire Budweiser into their very large and very unamused leader’s face (thanks to the ensuing brawl, Joe was still banned from that bar).
As with most of his visions, he hadn’t seen enough context to know exactly what was going to happen—the demon itself had been as much as a surprise to him as to anyone else. But he’d known, bone-deep, that the squad had to be there.
He was still secretly pleased with how well he’d managed it. It had taken him hours of searching through photos online to identify the right location, and even longer to work out how to arrange for the squad to be passing by at exactly the right time.
Not that any of them would ever know that.
“Ugh.” Blaise rolled her eyes theatrically at Rory and Edith, though a slight, affectionate smile softened her mouth. “Get a room, you two. Okay, let’s say Joe’s right and the demons need people to eat when they hatch out. Why do they bother lurking around the ass-end of Montana for random campers? Even downtown Billings would be an all-you-can-possess buffet in comparison.”
“Noise,” Callum said.
They all looked at him. “Care to elaborate on that, Cal?” Rory asked.
Callum shifted position a little, uncomfortable as ever with being the center of attention. The firelight caught in his red-gold hair, making it look as bright as the flame itself. “Cities are noisy. Not just literally. Hard to be around people.”
*Shadowhorse speaks true,* Fenrir put in, his deep telepathic voice growling in all their minds. *Too many two-legs drives out most creatures. Would be stranger if snake-things could nest in your dens.*
Seven started, her head pivoting toward the hellhound. “I can hear you.”
*Of course.* Fenrir scratched unconcernedly behind one ear with a back paw, his yellow harness jingling. *Is pack now, Deep Bitch.*
“He was literally raised by wolves,” Joe said hastily, as Seven’s expression froze. “As far as he’s concerned, bitch is a term of highest respect. Sorry.”
“He calls me Stone Bitch,” Edith said, with more than a little pride. “Because I’m tough and strong and non-autistic people have difficulty reading my face. Fenrir gives the best nicknames.”
“As someone stuck with Birdcat, I kind of disagree,” Rory murmured. “Though he does tend to have good reason for his choices. Why ‘Deep’, Fenrir?”
The hellhound flicked one ear in a canine shrug. *She is. Goes down a long way, underneath the surface. More than first appears.* Fenrir’s muzzle turned, and Joe found himself the subject of the hellhound’s unnerving orange-copper stare. *Very like Seasnake.*
That was a little too close to home. Joe clapped his hands together, breaking the uncomfortable moment.
“Returning to the topic of demons,” he said, flashing a slightly strained grin round at everyone. “We agree that any one of us would be a hot snack to a hungry hatchling, right?”
“Sure.” Blaise shrugged. “But I still don’t see what that has to do with your would-be kidnapper.”
“What if some demons are more powerful than others? What if they need something more than an ordinary animal or human to possess? What if there’s a, a,” he tried to find words that would convey the terror of the shadowy, towering evil he’d seen in his vision, “a kind of alpha demon, that can’t emerge unless it’s g
ot a special victim laid out and waiting for it? What if that woman tried to kidnap me in order to serve me up as the dish of the day?”
“It’s…possible, I suppose.” Wystan’s expression said he didn’t think it was likely. “In that case, do you think she’ll try to grab you again?”
“I’m certain of it.” His original vision of Lupa ambushing the squad at Bluebrook couldn’t come true now...but he’d still gotten enough brief flashes to know that she was still planning to lay some kind of trap there. “And I can’t explain why, but I have a hunch that she’s going to set a fire to do it. She knows we’re a hotshot crew. I’m sure she’ll try to draw us out to somewhere remote, where she and her demons can attack us.”
“Well, if she does, she’ll regret it.” Blaise stretched, her words slurring into a yawn. “Don’t look so worried, Joe. No demon will get through us. We’ve got your back.”
“It’s not me I’m worried about!” He looked round at them all, willing them to take this seriously. “I’m not the only one at risk here. You’re all in danger.”
“We’ve faced danger before, Joe,” Rory said, in the infuriatingly warm, understanding tone he used when he thought you were being irrational, and was trying to reassure you anyway. “We can handle demons. Or whatever else this woman throws at us.” He stood up. “As long as we’re all well-rested and prepared. Come on, team. Time for bed.”
“We’re not prepared,” Joe said wretchedly, as everyone else got up too. “You don’t understand. This is bigger than anything we’ve ever faced before.”
Rory patted him on the shoulder. “Get some sleep, Joe. You’ve had a long day. Things will seem better in the morning.”
“Where are you sleeping?” Blaise asked Seven. “There’s a spare room in my cabin, if you want to share with me.”
Seven straightened to attention. “No. I must stay close by the Prince.”
Oh no. What with everything else occupying his mind, he’d overlooked the problem of sleeping arrangements.