A Knight Of The Word

Her smile was faint and tinged with regret “Maybe you never could.”


In a single, fluid motion she dropped into a crouch, wheeled away, and catapulted herself through the plate glass of the window behind her. Before he could even think to try to stop her, she had dropped from sight and was gone.



Nest Freemark was standing an the sidewalk outside Waterfall Pack when the apartment window exploded as if struck by a sledgehammer, raining shards of glass into the night and sending feeders scattering into the shadows like rats. She turned toward the sound, her fast thoughts of John Ross, but the dark thing that plummeted through The gleam was screaming in another voice entirely. Nest stood frozen in place, watching as it began to twist and re-form in mid-air, as if its flesh and bones were malleable. It had been human at first, but now it was something else entirely. It struck the Jumble of rocks midpoint on the waterfall, bounced away, and tumbled into the catchment.

Nest raced for the narrow park entrance, her heartbeat quick and hurried and anxious. She burst through the ungated opening as the dark thing climbed free of the trough, a two-legged horror that was already losing what remained of its human identity, dropping down on all fours and shape-shifting into something more primal. Its legs thinned and lengthened and turned croaked, its torso thickened from haunches to chest, and its head grew elongated and broad-muzzled.

Stefanie Winslow, she thought in horror. The demon, re-formed into something that most closely resembled a monstrous hyena, the demon shook itself as if to be rid of the last of the disguise that had confined it and lifted its blunt snout toward the heights from which it had fallen. Feeders leaped and scrambled about it in a frenzy, like shadows flowing over one another, eyes bright against the dark. The demon snarled at them, snapped at the air through which they passed, and started to turn away.

Then it caught sight of Nest and wheeled quickly back again.

Even in the scattered light of the street lamps, Nest could see the hard glitter of its eyes fix on her. She could see the hate in them. The big head lowered, the muzzle parted, and rows of hooked teeth came into view. A low-pitched, ugly snarl rose from its throat. Maybe it intended to finish what it had started in Lincoln Park. Maybe it was just reacting on instinct. Nest held her ground. She felt her magic gather and knot in her chest. She had fled from this monster once; this time she would stand and face it. The demon, it seemed, had made up its mind as well. It could have turned away from her, could have scaled the park fence and escaped without forcing a confrontation. But it never wavered in its approach.

In a scrabbling of claws on stone and with a bane-chilling howl, it attacked. Feeders converged in its wake, leaping and darting through the shadows in a wave of yellow eyes. Nest had only a moment to react, and she did so. She locked eyes with the demon and threw out the magic she had been born with, her legacy from the Freemark women, thinking to stun it, to throw it off stride, to cause it to falter. She need only delay it long enough for John Ross to reach her. He would be coming; the demon was dearly in flight from him. A few moments was all she needed, and her magic would give her that. She had used it on Simon Lawrence and the security guards at the museum not two hours earlier. It was an old and familiar companion, and she could feel its presence stir deep inside even before she called it forth.

Even so, she wasn’t prepared for what happened next.

The magic she had called upon did not respond.

Another magic did.

It came from the same place as the magic she had been born to, from inside, where her soul resided in a conjoining of heart and mind and body. It exploded out of her in a rush of dark energy, taking its own distinctive form, unleashed by instincts that demanded she survive at any cost. Its power was raw and terrifying, and she ,could not .control it. It did not release from her as she had expected” Gut swept her along, borne within its storm-racked centre, and it was as if she were caught inside a whirlwind.

She was seeing the demon now through darker, more primitive eyes, and she realised suddenly, shockingly, that those eyes belonged to Wraith. She was trapped inside the ghost wolf. She had become a part of him.