Shifter (6 page)

B
riony looked over at Josh and said the only thing she could think of. “I need time to think about all this.”

            “Every moment you waste is a moment when there are still vampires in the world,” Josh pointed out.

            “And I need time to decide what I want to do about that,” Briony replied. “Don’t try to pressure me any more than you have Josh. You’ve done enough.”

            Josh nodded, almost to himself. “I hope so.”

            Sophie stepped over to him and Fallon. “I think that for now, boys, my niece would like some time alone. Come on, I don’t know about you, but I want to get to know the layout of the Cloud Palace.”

            Josh started to shake his head. “I don’t…”

            “It wasn’t a suggestion,” Sophie said, her hand clamping down on his forearm. The three of them left. Briony guessed that her great aunt was planning to have a talk with the two of them, but right then, she couldn’t think of anything Sophie could say that might change anything. Josh knew what he wanted, and he’d put her in a position where she didn’t have many choices. As far as she knew, he was right. Without the full power of the scepter, she wouldn’t be able to control the gates enough to either leave or bring Kevin into Palisor. Not that she knew that much about the gates, even then. They were just things that had been in the way when she’d been trying to get Sophie back or get back home.

            But she could think of someone who probably knew a lot more.

            Briony found Archer in an enclosed courtyard garden, with climbing flowers covering the walls and sunlight streaming down between the towers of the palace to reflect off a deep pool set in the middle. The dragon was in his human form, that of a gently, almost mischievously good looking boy around her age with white blond hair and golden tanned skin. Today, he wore a white tunic decorated with designs picked out in gold, which seemed to ripple as he turned to her.

            “Briony, there you are. You’re just in time.”

            “In time for what? Archer, I wanted to talk to you.”

            But Archer put his finger to his lips then and pointed to the pool. He might be the dragon bound to her, but that didn’t always mean he did what she told him. On the other hand, so far, he’d always done what was in her best interests, so Briony went along with it for the moment, staying quiet and staring at the limpid water.

            It didn’t stay still and clear for long. Instead, it shifted, ripples appearing on the surface, joining together and shifting until they became images. Briony wasn’t sure what she was looking at until she caught sight of Pietre, the master vampire’s features utterly unmistakable there in the water.

            “It’s showing us Wicked?” Briony asked.

            “Yes.” Archer nodded to the water. “It shows us snatches of what is happening there, or anywhere else.”

            Briony kept watching for a moment or two while Pietre stood in front of a group of other vampires. They were busy feeding on people they’d dragged into an alley. No, Briony realized, not just feeding on them, because they were giving their victims blood as well as taking it. They were transforming them openly, in the middle of Wicked.

            Briony clenched her fists at that sight. She could feel anger bubbling up inside her. Anger and frustration, because there wasn’t anything she could do to stop Pietre from here in Palisor. Though that wasn’t true, was it? She could stop him right now, if she only married Josh. But then Fallon would die. The thought of that choice made her feel sick.

            “Why are you showing me this, Archer?” she asked. “Are you trying to get me to marry Josh?”

            Archer shrugged. “That’s your choice to make, not mine. I’m your dragon. Whatever you decide, that doesn’t change. I just thought you’d want to see Wicked again. This…” Archer gestured to where the vampires were bringing in another citizen of Wicked, and another. “This is just what’s happening there.”

            “But what’s happening there is that Pietre’s going berserk,” Briony said. Then she shook her head. “No, it’s worse than that, because that would just be mindless. This… it’s like he has some kind of plan. It’s systematic, and he’s worse than ever. I thought, after everything that had happened with Marcus, and Sophie…”

            Archer shrugged. “Someone like Pietre doesn’t change easily.”

            “But he’s changing plenty of people,” Briony said. “We can’t let him do that, Archer. He can’t keep changing people into vampires. Where is the Preservation Society?”

            The pool shifted briefly, showing an image of people crammed into George’s Diner.

            “I guess they’re doing what they can,” Archer said, “but they aren’t as strong as the vampires. Kevin is there, with the werewolves, leading them. Maybe they can do something before the vampires get to the gate.”

            “The gate keeps vampires out,” Briony pointed out. “That’s what it’s there for.”

            “It might,” Archer said. “Then again, it might not.”

            Briony stared at him. “What are you saying, Archer?”

            “The gate is… unstable.” Archer paused. “I can’t think of a better way to say it. It comes and goes, and I can feel the weakness there. Your father’s prohibition against the werewolves seems to be intact, but the rest of it… I think maybe the vampires could come through if they wanted.”

            “Is there anything we can do about that?” Briony asked, and then saw the look on Archer’s face. “Let me guess. If I marry Josh, I’ll have the power?”

            Archer spread his hands. “Sorry. I know it isn’t what you want to hear. I mean, it isn’t certain, but the prophecy…”

            “I’m starting to hate that prophecy,” Briony said with feeling.

            Archer nodded. “I’d kind of guessed that. I could be wrong though. We all could. The truth is, no one really knows what’s happening. We haven’t seen this before. Everything could be different than the way we think. Anyone who tells you that they know exactly what you need to do next is a liar.”

            Meaning that once again, it was all up to her. Briony didn’t know if that was comforting or not. On the one hand, she still had to make her own choices about what happened next, but on the other, there were still all the vague hints that making the wrong one would cut her off from the power she needed to help Palisor.

            “What I don’t get,” Briony said after a minute or so, “is why Pietre is doing this now? Why is he suddenly so desperate to produce new vampires? I mean, he could have done this at any point in the last couple of hundred years. Is it just the gate, or is it something else, because he didn’t do this when the gate first showed up.”

            The picture in the pool changed again, taking them back to Pietre, who was feeding on a young woman now. Briony tried not to think about the fact that she was her age, blonde, and blue eyed. Or about how cruelly painful Pietre was making the feeding.

            “My guess is that he knows about the true power the scepter controls,” Archer said. “Now that you have it, he must know that it’s only a matter of time before that is unleashed and the vampires are wiped out.”

            Briony thought of Fallon and shuddered slightly. Only a matter of time. Archer made it sound like the deaths of Fallon, Jake, George and every other good vampire were inevitable. Briony couldn’t accept that. She
wouldn’t
accept that.

            “Is it really like the apocalypse for vampires, Archer? All vampires?”

            Archer nodded. “That’s what they say.”

            “But how would that happen?” Briony asked. “I mean, are we talking about some kind of magical field of destruction here? Some kind of plague that only kills them?”

            “You don’t know?” Archer replied, sounding slightly surprised.

            “No, of course I don’t know. I’m just the princess here. It’s not like people actually tell me things. Mostly, I get the feeling that they either think I should know already, like you, or they want to keep things from me to control me, like Josh.”

            “It’s not that,” Archer said. “You genuinely don’t know? I thought everyone in Palisor knew.”

            “I’m not
from
Palisor,” Briony reminded him. “So just tell me, Archer. What is it? Is it something we can stop, or control?”

            Archer shook his head. “I don’t think there’s much of a chance of that. It isn’t really a
thing
at all. It’s more of a
who
.”

            “So who then?” Briony sat down beside the pool, waiting for an answer.

            “The greatest slayer there ever was,” Archer said. “Him and his army.”

            “So we’d have a whole army here if I were to marry Josh?” Briony felt her determination not to do that strengthening in that moment. She wasn’t going to let something like that happen. She was almost glad in that moment that it was Josh who had crossed over in that moment. That it was Josh the scepter had latched onto as her possible consort. It made it easy to say no. A lot easier than it would have been if it had been Kevin there. With him there, the temptation would have been there to do it. To take him as her consort and just try to deal with the consequences.

            Maybe it was the thought of Kevin that made the pool shift again. It certainly seemed to have been shifting with her thoughts and mood so far. Kevin appeared in the pool, in a space Briony recognized as the front lawn of the werewolves’ home. His clothing was in tatters, like he’d just transformed from wolf form three or four times in quick succession, displaying his hard muscles and tanned skin underneath. Briony watched him closely, her eyes on his every movement, aching for him as she watched.

            Then she saw Carol. Carol’s clothing was, if anything, in a worse state than Kevin’s. It was barely covering her, though the werewolf didn’t seem to care about that at all, in fact, she seemed to be almost flaunting that fact, smiling at Kevin as he got closer to her and shifting so that there were tantalizing glimpses of skin showing along with her curves.

            Kevin said something to her, his mouth opening and closing in silent words. It seemed that the pool didn’t give them sound. Whatever it was though, it certainly seemed to excite Carol. She threw herself forward at Kevin, flinging her arms around his neck and pulling Kevin close for a kiss that went on for several seconds. It was all Briony could do to keep from jumping into the pond.

            “Oh no you don’t. You are
not
stealing him.”

            Archer stared at her, and Briony realized just how forcefully she’d said that.

            “Briony? What are you planning to do?”

            Briony barely had to think before she had an answer for that one. “I want you in your dragon form, Archer. Now. You’re going to take me back through that gate, whatever it takes, and then… then I’m going to go get Kevin back.
She
is not having him.”

K
evin headed over to the werewolves’ mansion in his wolf form. It was the quickest way to cover the distance, and he wanted to get this over with. He still wasn’t quite sure how he’d let Jake and the others talk him into this. Except that he was going to do this. Briony. Unless he did this, he might never get to see her again, and he couldn’t risk that.

            He changed back on the lawn in front of the majestic house, which was neatly maintained in spite of being in the middle of a forest. The mansion itself was whitewashed and looked like the kind of place that might have been preserved as a monument from centuries ago, but very carefully. There were no traces of dilapidation around the werewolves’ house.

            As Kevin stood there, he was only too aware of the fact that he’d changed plenty of times in the same clothes. They hung off him now, rumpled and torn by the forces that came into play during the transformation. With most people, he would have worried about meeting them like this because of what they would have thought. With Carol, who had seen plenty of other werewolves like this, that wouldn’t be a problem, but there might be other difficulties if she took it as an invitation.

            The problem with Carol was… well, actually, there wasn’t a problem. Maybe
that
was the problem. She was pretty, closer to his age than Briony was, not to mention a werewolf just like him. And she was obviously interested in him. She’d made that clear plenty of times. Under other circumstances, Kevin could easily have seen himself getting together with her. Though maybe not for long. There were a few things about her that were more of a worry, like the fact that she didn’t seem to care too much for humans, and like that temper of hers. Even those had explanations though.

            Kevin found himself thinking about Carol’s temper then. How would she react to the idea of just pretending to be engaged? It wasn’t so much a question of whether she’d be angry as simply
how
angry she’d be. Yet with Briony at stake, Kevin decided that he didn’t care. He could deal with Carol’s anger.

            The sleek shape of a she wolf padded onto the lawn, looking up at him with intense eyes. Carol transformed then, her hair falling in wild tangles as she shot up into her human form. It wasn’t the only thing wild about her. Her clothing was in complete disarray, torn now from her transformations in a way it hadn’t been in town. It barely covered her.

            Carol seemed to know it, too. She shifted provocatively, seeming to enjoy Kevin’s eyes on her as glimpses of her flesh shifted beneath the cloth.

            “Like what you see, Kevin?” Carol laughed as she said it, reaching out a hand to trace down Kevin’s chest through his shirt. “I know I do.”

            “Carol,” Kevin said. “I need to talk to you. It’s important.”