Unchained: Feathers and Fire Book 1 Read online

  Why had he made his threat to Father David sound like the injury was only the fault of the church? Sure, their information had been faulty, but he had been hurt because of my distractions, yet he hadn’t said a word about that. Was that because he was protecting me from them for some reason? But then he had told Father David that I worked for him, in a way. Which was contradictory if he was trying to keep me away from them.

  Or did he genuinely believe that the entire blame lay on the church for handing him incorrect information? I wasn’t even sure what the hell was so important about this key, but I had long ago learned that the only way to get all the information was to tell him I wanted to fully join his cause, which I didn’t. So, I sat in silence, thinking, analyzing as I drove.

  Ten minutes later, we pulled up to a pair of worn-down storage unit buildings. One of those that didn’t even have a fence around the property, despite sitting dead center in the middle of a shady warren of crime-infested streets.

  Which meant one of three things: no one used these buildings for anything important, the important units were marked — tagged with spray-paint — to let any would-be thieves know which ones were owned by which gangs, or this sorry collection of buildings had one hell of a security system.

  My eyes tracked to several lampposts overlooking the buildings, only to find broken messes of wires and plastic where the once-functional security cameras had stood. Well, option three was out.

  “At least no one will see we were here,” I said.

  Roland wasn’t listening to me, instead, scanning the streets, the dark shadows, and the area behind us — as if we had just landed in the middle of a war zone, or as if we had been walking through the woods when suddenly every single biological creature went dead silent after a veritable symphony of sound.

  What had he not told me?

  Chapter 5

  Roland grumbled under his breath as he climbed out of the truck. “Stay alert, Miss Penrose.”

  “It’s Girl to you. Only my friends call me Miss Penrose,” I said, slamming the door as I climbed out.

  “Must not hear it very often, then.” He smiled absently.

  If he didn’t look so pathetic I would have thrown a rock at him. “Watch it, old one—”

  He flinched as if struck, rounding on me. “What did you just say?”

  I took an instinctive step back at the fierceness in his eyes. “I just… called you old… It’s not the first time, and definitely won’t be the last,” I added defensively. Maybe the pain was really getting to him. But in that moment, I finally understood what others saw in him. His enemies. Before he killed them. Or read them scripture. I thought I had known the look he gave them, assuming it was a slightly stronger version of the withering glare I got during training.

  But I was wrong.

  Those looks from training were a loving smile compared to this. “Have a care with your words, and stay alert,” he finally said, turning back to the storage units, scanning the tall grass on either side of the two buildings, searching for a crowd of devil ninja nuns or something.

  What had earned that look? Calling him old? I did that all the time. In response to him always calling me girl. Petty, but when someone kicked your ass all day every day, you delivered what punches you could, when you could, however you could. So, I teased him relentlessly about his age.

  It wasn’t that he looked old. But he looked… hard. Like a gnarled piece of ancient driftwood. Still solid, not rotting or decaying, but tough as shit.

  Old one was what I had said. How was that any different from any other way I had called him old? But before I could press that thought, I realized he was already shambling into the center of the storage unit buildings. The grouchy bastard was going to bleed out, and in this part of town, I wouldn’t be finding help any time soon.

  “Why don’t you have a shield, yet?” he spoke softly, not sounding pleased as his eyes continued to track our surroundings.

  I shrugged, then realized he obviously wasn’t watching me. “I don’t know. Haven’t really needed one before tonight. And I can always throw one up when I need it—”

  “Unless you’re too scared to act or are out of magic. That’s why you need a construct bound to your flesh. That needs only a subconscious thought to activate. For those other times.”

  I kicked a rock with my boot. He didn’t say it out loud, but he meant times like tonight, when I had frozen up. “I’m not fond of getting a tattoo…” I finally admitted.

  He growled under his breath. “You are getting one whether you like it or not.”

  “Unless I choose not to become like you.”

  He stopped in his tracks, slowly turning back to face me.

  I averted my eyes, surprised that his look of shock threatened to overwhelm me with guilt. This wasn’t an old argument, but I had never said it so bluntly. “It’s just… I don’t think this is really my thing. Tonight was proof. I was terrified. The whole time. I felt like I had never trained before. I couldn’t think. I got you injured. I started training with you to learn how to protect myself, not to work for the fucking Vatican.” I threw my hands up, frustrated.

  “We will talk about this. Later. But you’re getting that tattoo, Shepherd or not. It protects.”

  And he was walking again. Well, shuffling awkwardly. I nodded stubbornly, following him. He knew I didn’t want to be like him, a Shepherd, but it seemed some deeply hidden part of him hadn’t believed my repeated statements to this fact. I kicked another rock. That was his problem. Nothing I could do about it if he wanted to pretend otherwise.

  Gang signs were tagged on almost every storage unit, all different symbols, but a few were marked out and replaced with another. Those looked to have been recently vandalized. Likely a message to the original gang, hey, we took your stuff. Polite, really.

  Roland finally approached a locker that was devoid of both spray paint and damage. Which was odd to see. It was so bare that by comparison with the others, it looked like it had never been used. Or that it was a brand-new door. Roland wasted no time, shoving the key we had taken into the lock. He met my eyes, nodded once, and then flung open the door. On instinct, I had my energy sticks out. Roland studied the storage unit, and seeing no threat, turned back to me. His eyes locked onto my hands and he chuckled.

  “I like those better, but you shouldn’t default to short-range weapons first,” he said, and then turned back to the storage unit.

  I frowned, glancing down at my hands. Instead of two escrimas like I has used earlier, I now held two kamas — the same size as the escrimas, but with a long, arced blade on the ends, like small one-handed scythes. They had originally been created to cut weeds in ancient Japan, but like most things, man had found a way to turn them into weapons. But they were easy to use. Fast, light, fluid, adaptable, and lethal. A more… final version of the sticks I typically defaulted to, although I knew how to use these just as well. The reason I liked these was that I could incorporate them into my weapons-free training with only minor adaptations, altering my simple punches and blocks into lethal counterattacks. Bleed the enemy with a thousand cuts, every move a slice, Roland’s words drifted from my memory, having heard it a hundred times.

  Roland had made sure I was well-versed in the art of self-defense, and after several years, had finally told me — begrudgingly — that despite my small size, I stood a decent chance of not being helplessly beaten and molested in a dark alley one day. Like the day he had found me as a young teen, barely saving me from an attack exactly like that.

  That comment had lit me on fire. And it had been two years ago.

  But old Roland knew how to press my buttons, light my fuse, and motivate me where few others had succeeded.

  Because that idle comment had killed my momentary pride, and I had decided to stick with him, hungering to learn more. Not just with weapons, but with my magic.

  I wondered — for the millionth time — if his process was the longest conversion to religion he had ever had to endur
e. Like a test from God.

  Roland was cursing. Well, not cursing like I would curse, but muttering darkly under his breath from inside the storage unit. I had once offered to tutor him on cursing, but his stony scowl had been answer enough. I stepped inside the unit — my blades lighting the space — to find him reading a small, dirty, rumpled slip of paper. It looked to have been forgotten in a corner.

  “What is it?” I asked hesitantly.

  He met my eyes; his own were bloodshot, and distant. “It’s gone.”

  Then he fell down, the paper fluttering in the air to land on a dark stain on the ground. I shifted my kama to see that it was a small pool of blood. Right where Roland had been standing. His wound had soaked through the bandage, and he was losing blood fast.

  I snatched up the piece of paper, reading it with a frown before shoving it into my pocket. I didn’t know what he had been looking for here, but it wasn’t that slip of paper.

  There was no way in hell I could pick him up alone. He outweighed me by at least a hundred pounds.

  Desperately, I plucked out my cell phone and made a call to my best friend, Claire Stone. She was closest to us, even though I would have loved to call my dad. I spoke woodenly, only stating the facts, and then hung up, unable to answer her twenty questions for fear of breaking down.

  The night seemed particularly ominous and threatening as I waited for her to arrive. One of God’s Shepherds was on the ground, unconscious, wounded, in a dangerous section of town. And only I stood between him and the terrors of the night—

  Wolves began to howl. A lot of them. And not far away.

  As I stared out at the night, guarding the open door, praying for all I was worth that Claire hurried — because with those howls, I knew there was no chance of me leaving — my nightmare began to hammer into my mind like a boxer beating a heavy bag.

  Rain. A doorway before me. Night air on my cheeks. I was all alone…

  Again.

  Chapter 6

  I watched Roland sleep as I sat on the couch in my two-bedroom apartment’s living room. We hadn’t wanted to try squeezing him through the narrow hallway leading to the spare bedroom, finding it easier to set him on the fold-out couch in the living room. We had moved a nightstand beside his bed, and it currently held drinks, medicine, iodine, a box of latex gloves, and a metal bowl full of bloody rags, a few syringes, a used sewing needle, and discarded strands of thread.

  Fearing he would harm himself further if he woke to find himself surrounded by strangers, we had decided to keep him here until he woke up. My apartment building was near the Roaster’s Block Apartments — a revamped Folger’s Coffee plant — on Broadway in downtown Kansas City’s Financial District. The air still smelled of roasting coffee beans, which I loved.

  I crumpled the paper from the storage unit in my fist. I understood none of its relevance, but it was obviously important. A hint on how to retrieve whatever it was that Roland had expected to find in that storage unit. If we hadn’t wasted so much time at the church—

  “I did all that I could,” Claire said in a soft, comforting whisper, sitting beside me on the couch facing his sleeping form. “He isn’t an animal, so my equipment was less than ideal, but I’ll raid the shelves tomorrow morning. I have everything I need for a day or two, but I would like to see about a few other things that may help if he starts showing signs of infection…”

  Claire Stone worked for the Kansas City Zoo as their head veterinarian, despite her young age. She was terrified of almost everything, shy as all hell, but smart as a tack, which was how she’d won her job over the other competitors. She loved animals. And making things feel better. She was a saint in that way, but not too prim that we hadn’t often gotten into trouble together. I had known her as far back as I could remember, having play dates with her as children, and I was lucky to have her as my best friend. We had been through a lot together, and she knew all my secrets.

  She was petite, with long, platinum blonde hair that made me want to kill her, and had a narrow face that always seemed to be professionally touched up with layers of makeup. But I was one of the rare people to have seen her without cosmetics and she’d still been beautiful. Damn her. Her green eyes twinkled with an inner happiness most days, but right now, with her sense of purpose completed for the time being, she looked ready to bolt.

  I hadn’t called her tonight because of her medical skills, but because she was my only real friend. And she had been closest to us. Her skills hadn’t even crossed my mind, to be honest. I had intended to get Roland to a hospital no matter what he said.

  But Claire had taken one look at Roland, and all of her usual meekness had evaporated. She had helped me tug him from the storage unit into the backseat of her tiny Jetta, and then climbed right in beside him, immediately going to work as she ordered me to drive.

  I had been in too much shock to argue, but I was pretty sure she had saved his life.

  I placed a palm on her thigh and squeezed in silent gratitude, not trusting myself to speak. She let out a pained breath at seeing me like this. Claire had the biggest heart I had ever seen. Simply put, she was the bestest.

  Even though she didn’t know what this was all about, she could sense the emotions ripping through me, and she had found me at the end of my rope in the storage unit, struggling against my stupid, stupid nightmare and that incessant howling. But the howls had ceased the moment Claire had arrived, as if giving up. But wolves only gave up when beaten soundly.

  Then again, they hadn’t attacked me in the twenty minutes I crouched there in the dark storage unit, even though they were so close I could practically feel them prowling around in the darkness dozens of feet away. Why hadn’t they attacked? Had they just been trying to scare me? With the stench of so much blood, they should have been all over me. But they had just howled, relentlessly.

  Almost like an alarm. A call.

  To their Alpha, perhaps? But he hadn’t shown, so maybe they had just given up.

  Trouble was, I just didn’t know. Without Roland to help, I was out of my depth.

  I was simply grateful that Claire hadn’t found me sobbing uncontrollably in the corner, overcome by the relentless repetition of my nightmare, brought on by my fear and the similar sensory details of the storage unit to my dream.

  I patted her thigh. “He’s a tough old root,” I whispered, not wanting to wake him. “He’ll likely wake up bitching about merely needing a quick nap. Or demanding some prayer time.”

  A queasy look crossed Claire’s features. “You really shouldn’t joke about that. It’s very important to him…” she shivered, eyes darting to his chest. It was now covered by a sheet, but I still grew distant thinking about it. Who would have imagined to find that?

  He had seemed almost dead, pale from blood loss, and when we had stripped him out of his wet clothes, we had seen his chest.

  Gooseflesh pebbled over my arms at the memory. His chest had been… carved. That was the only way to say it. Etched with runes, symbols, numbered Bible verse references, quotes of scripture, and odd symbols I had never seen before, but suspected had something to do with the church. But why would the church carve him up? And why would he let them?

  It had been a few hours, and I had been unable to sleep, even knowing we had maybe a few hours until sunrise. The rain had continued through the night, but even that hadn’t been enough to make me drowsy. Because my friend was hurt. The one person who I thought couldn’t be hurt.

  I had made coffee earlier, and Claire had refilled it twice without me taking a sip. I felt Claire place a blanket over me, and didn’t protest. I was cold, what with my damp clothes. My eyelids grew heavy, but I needed to stay awake for Roland. In case he needed me.

  I saw Claire watching Roland like a hawk out of the corner of my eye. She had feared to move him, saying he was too weak, and that any movement might break open the stitches, causing him to bleed out. As he was, he would survive, but he had a long road to recovery. Unless… what had she said?
Oh, right. Infection. Something about mud…

  I felt sluggish, and my blinks grew slower.

  Infection… not with lycanthropy — the werewolf gene, because he was immune… Something else…

  I stopped blinking, resting my eyes for a few seconds. Coffee… I should drink my…

  Claire is such a good friend… Remember when we used to…

  And with that unfinished thought, I fell asleep.

  Chapter 7

  Claire and I rode down the street, laughing as the wind tugged our hair back. This was the last year we would be stuck on bikes, ready to drive next year. If we passed our tests, of course.

  We were best friends, and soon, we would have our freedom. Earlier in the day, we had ridden past our childhood treehouse, laughing as we remembered the silly blood oath we had taken, slicing our palms and shaking hands to prove our undying friendship. But we were almost grown up now, ready to get cars of our very own, and today was soon to become just another memory, like the treehouse.

  We were on our way back from the pool, and had decided to swing by the gas station to grab slushies. We had spent an hour riding around aimlessly, and were now in a darker section of town, but I knew we were close to our neighborhood, we just needed to find the right turn.

  “This doesn’t look right, Callie,” Claire mumbled, ever the worry-wart.

  “We’re fine. We have to be close,” I said, scanning the street signs. I saw a trio of older boys standing just outside a lamppost, because dusk had fallen a while ago, and we both knew we were going to get yelled at for breaking curfew. “Hey, look. We could ask them.”

  Claire began to protest, but I pedaled faster, ignoring her. We had to be close. These guys would—

  When I was about fifty feet away, they all looked up at me in unison, smoking their cigarettes, and I suddenly felt a voice inside me urging me not to talk to them, but to instead turn around. I pulled my brakes, coasting to a stop, trying to look casual. The boys watched, smiling.