Page 24 of Shifters Unifying
“How long has he been doing this? Right beneath our noses.”
I didn’t have an answer. Acheron’s hatred knew no bounds. Our kind was only a means to an end for him, and he used us like a commodity, absorbing the magic in the cells of those he captured. He’d tried to do it to Emma, but she’d stopped him.
The low hum of approaching four-wheelers was at odds with the natural twittering of morning songbirds. Sunbeams sliced through bloody red clouds. My inner wolf snarled and snapped at the edges of my consciousness.
Red sky at night, shepherd’s delight. Red sky in the morning, shepherd’s warning.
If Acheron had his way, he’d consume us all and move on to conquer the human realm, too. It wasn’t just our way of life at stake, the whole world depended on us to stop him—depended on Emma to stop him.
Me… Emma… Our lives together…
Nothing else mattered more than ending him.
And I despised Acheron for it, hated him for it.
My heart clenched in my chest. I’d already failed to save Emma during our last encounter with the dark mage himself. Another confrontation would be inevitable. Would the samething happen again? Who would protect her then? Torbin? Marcus?
I whirled on Olivia. “Drones.”
She frowned. “Drones?”
“Call Jace, he’s the subcontractor we use when we need a detailed scan of any worksite. See if he can set his drones up to make low-flying pass over all of Six-Mile. Maybe there’s something we can pick up. Ask him if he can trace heat signatures. If he can’t, find me someone who can.”
“Won’t be cheap.”
“Do you think I care?” I snapped.
Her mouth pressed into a tight line, a maroon slash across her face.
Phil arrived on four-wheelers with two more bodyguard shifters in tow. Henry and Theo had been a part of Six-Mile for at least a decade each.
Olivia straightened. “You three cover the grounds, use a search grid, be thorough. Check for anything, everything that might point us in the right direction. We have to figure out where’s he’s gone.”
They shifted into their wolf selves and peeled off. Their paws would make quick work of the area.
She pulled her phone from one of her pockets, knocking a knife to the ground. With one hand, she scooped it up and with the other, she scrolled on her screen. Her eyes lit up, and she tapped the screen before pressing the cell to her ear.
“Yeah, is this Jace?” she asked a moment later, walking back to her four-wheeler and leaning against it. She started working out the details for the drone scan of Six-Mile.
While she worked out the details of the drone scan of Six-Mile, I made my way into the center of the collection of throw-away buildings. My skin prickled and set off my inner wolf again.How many mages had he convinced to live in near poverty while he captured shifters and absorbed them?
A dark spot on the ground caught my eye, and I approached it cautiously. It resembled an animal borrow. As I leaned over it, the edge crumbled inward, revealing a tunnel down into the ground, much like the entrances into the Red Tail underground dens. A wooden frame supported the entrance—much like the entrance to an old mine. The cross member had been marked by a rune I didn’t recognize. Another kick at the earth exposed the dugout entrance more fully and made it large enough for a man to descend.
When I stepped down, my heel settled on a piece of obscured wood, serving as the riser for a dirt staircase. Using my toe, I brushed the dirt from it. Another rune had been carved into the strip. Three more steps brought me body-deep into the den, leaving only my head visible to anyone on the surface. After another glance around, I ducked down and descended into the darkness.
The light on my phone illuminated the interior of the tunnel and the small, cube-shaped room beyond. It was about ten feet tall, ten feet wide, and ten feet long. A rough-hewn, empty table rested in the center of the room with Acheron’s Iron Maiden contraption next to it. My stomach twisted. It was the same setup he’d had back in his bunker. At least some of the dark smears on the side of the Iron Maiden were residual from Riley’s torture inside. I laid my hand on the metal and shuddered.
Outside, Olivia shouted my name. She sounded like she was running, probably concerned I’d disappeared. “Logan,” she called, closing the distance between her four-wheeler and the underground workspace. “So help me…”
“Down here,” I yelled back. “I’m fine.”To answer your next question.
A shadow blocked the little light, and Olivia’s scent filtered down the stairs.
“What’d you find?” she asked as she hurried down the stair with her own cell lighting her way. She gasped.
“Oh, shit. That’s…”
“Yeah,” I said. “He set up another one.”
