Prologue
“Why are we traipsing through the fucking swamp to meet your so-called contact, Fur?” Hudson Stormwolfe, or Storm as he was known, growled at his friend and fellow Guardian, “a goddamn coffee shop wouldn’t do?”
The Horse Shifter snorted as Storm stepped in a hole cursing quietly as a trickle of slimy sludge slipped inside his once clean steel-toed boots.
“Oh, you are going to scrape these clean,” he shot at Furio.
“Dude, just watch your step,” Furio retorted making a show of how easily his long legs ate up the muddy landscape.
Fuck him, snarled Storm’s Wolf. Trudging through the muck was not his animal’s idea of a good time. Give him a dense, clean forest any day. Storm only agreed to accompany Furio because Kingston told him to go.
Their leader could be a hard ass at times, but no one fucked with the Dragon Shifter just lately. Not because they were afraid, but for other reasons. Losing one’s mate could really fuck a guy up inside. Besides, Storm had liked Neela, may she rest in peace for eternity.
Damn the Loyalists. Those bastards were nothing more than terrorists and fanatics attacking supernatural creatures and hoarding magic for their own nefarious purposes. They wanted to control and siphon out the one thing every supernatural needed to live with their leaders as the gatekeepers. That thing was of course magic itself.
Loyalists believed that common folk had no business accessing magic. They wanted to keep it for the elite, the wealthy, and basically anyone who did what they said. They were nothing more than pirates and madmen as far as Storm was concerned.
They had been around for nearly as long as the Guardians of Chaos. Storm was proud to call himself a Guardian. He was more than able and willing to do his part to ensure freedom for all supernatural-kind.
Even after all this time, those bastards still failed to gain the momentum necessary to achieve their goals. Their terroristic acts were the stuff of nightmares. Especially this latest attack on the Guardians’ leader. The heinous crime was without precedent.
It still left a bad taste in Storm’s mouth. He gritted his teeth as his mind still tried to take in the fact that she was gone. Neela Baldric, the beloved mate of their once fearless leader had been brutally attacked while on her way to the supermarket.
The gentlewoman was a rare and precious creature and had been mated to his superior, Kingston Baldric, for many years. She’d only just succumbed to her wounds a few months ago, leaving all of them bereft of her company, but none so much as Kingston.
“We all miss her, bro,” Furio said, and Storm realized he’d been projecting.
Fuck. He hated it when he did that. Though truthfully, it wouldn’t have mattered. Furio felt her loss as well. Everyone in Kingston’s group of Guardians felt the loss keenly.
These kinds of terroristic acts were the new tool the Loyalists used to persuade mainstream paranormal society to their way of thinking. Blackmail, bribery, murder, mayhem, all elements of destruction that this so-called law abiding organization stooped to in order to fulfill their aims.
Not on his watch, Storm vowed to himself. It was his job and that of all the Guardians to stop those bastards and ensure freedom for their kind.
“Sorry,” Storm muttered, “still, we had to meet in a fucking swamp, Furio?”
“What swamp, bro? We’re in Secaucus,” Furio opened his arms wide and gestured to the thick, musty smelling wetland they were currently stalking through.
It was just a little past ten o’clock at night, but summer in the Garden State meant hot and sticky. Especially in that small portion of undeveloped marshlands. Storm growled when his foot sank yet again, ankle-deep, into another muddy hole.
Goddamn it, he thought, and slapped his friend in the back of the head. Then he counted to three like he’d been told to do by another of their own, Egros, a male Witch who thought the Wolf Shifter would have better control if he could simply manage his anger.
Yeah. Right. The hell with counting. He was going to kick Furio’s ass when they were done here.
“Half the fucking state is a swamp,” Storm growled shaking the muck off his foot, “I thought you were born here?”
“I was. Born and bred in Hoboken, cumpy.”
“What?”
“Nothin’ man just some local slang from when I was a kid. Anyway, you’re shittin’ me right, New Jersey isn’t a swamp,” snorted the Stallion Shifter.
Storm rolled his eyes and blew out a breath. What was he going to do with this guy? Thirty years as a Guardian, and Furio was still a rookie to Storm who’d spoke his vows over a hundred years ago this past April.
As a Wolf Shifter, he had a longer than average life expectancy, which had only increased when he’d pledged his allegiance to serve all the supernatural creatures living on this planet as a Guardian. He’d fought too many battles to count, but the work was meaningful. Protecting freedom always was.
It had been the same for his grandfather who’d raised him just outside the boundaries of the Pack where his father still ruled as Alpha. His older brother was the heir which usually meant younger brothers were ousted or had to challenge for positions in the Pack. Rather than stay and fight for his dominance in the place of his birth, he’d left.
Storm respected tradition, but he had had a higher calling to serve. The Guardians of Chaos were an elite order of supernaturals. The higher ups did not want it said they were showing favoritism to any specific Pack, Clan, Coven or what have you, so each unit was composed of a mix of supes. It took years to build the kind of team Storm was a part of.
Furio might be considered new, but he was still one of them. So fine, maybe Storm wouldn’t kick his ass outright, but he could best him in training. That would satisfy both his Wolf and human sides.
“Did you hear Kingston has a meeting with the Assembly next week to discuss Neela’s passing?” Furio spoke lowly, but with his supernaturally enhanced senses, Storm heard him just fine.
“I did. The Assembly, are all former Guardians, they will understand Kingston’s loss and will likely support his call to mount a hunt for the Loyalist who’d ordered the hit,” Storm responded.
“We’re not Enforcers, Storm. Their job is to police the paranormal peoples of the earth, not ours. Guardians of Chaos don’t promote actual chaos, right?” asked Furio, and he was right, to a point.
“Look, we are called Guardians of Chaos, because from chaos, aka freedom, comes creativity. If we lose that, we perish. A Guardian is the ultimate protector of free thought, and therefore, the champion of creation itself. Neela was a cherished female and Kingston’s to protect and to avenge. We might not understand what it is like to be mated, Furio, but he has rights and this did happen because of our war,” Storm responded.
“All for magic? Neela was killed so the Loyalists could control magic? How would that even happen?”
“No, she was killed to break us. Without our leader, the Loyalists hope to win whatever scheme they are hatching and believe me, they are always plotting something. Whoever controls magic, controls us all,” he grunted.
The way Storm understood it, magic was a finite thing, like ore, it was distributed organically, used, and recycled by each supernatural group as needed. The ancient ones, gods, goddesses, or what have you, created magic out of chaos for each paranormal species to grow and take shape.