Page 29 of Prey

My mother clears her throat and says, “Shasta, we may want to talk about this on the porch. I have some things I need to tell you, though I was hoping this would never happen.”

What the hell is she talking about? My Grams looks worried as she leads the guys out of the basement. Okaaaayyy.

I follow my mother up the stairs, and I hear her sniffle a little. She’s crying? What is happening right now?

We make it out to the porch and sit down in the giant porch swing on the front, facing each other. “Years ago, your Grams had a premonition. It was you, as an adult, with your mates, fighting a Coven from the Society. They were trying to force you to do some spell that they kept saying only you could do. It had something to do with immortality. When she told your father and I about it, he immediately freaked out. He left and came back several hours later and said he had to do something but wouldn’t tell me what. A week later was when he had his accident. I never found out what was happening, and your Grams never had another vision like that. All these years we thought it had changed.”

She hands me the envelope and I rub my hand over my father’s writing. I’ve read his words in the Grimoire so many times that I would recognize it anywhere. I know it like I know my own. Many times, over the years I've held the book to me when I’ve cried or ran my fingers across it when I needed to feel close to my dad.

I open the envelope and a medallion and a letter fall out. The medallion is a representation of Shiva. God of Destruction. The medallion has him sitting on top of a mountain. It’s said that he lives on the top of Kailasha Mountain. It’s on a long chain. Opening the letter I begin to read.

My dearest sweet Shasta,

When you read this letter, I will have likely been gone for many years. I want you to know that I love you and your mother so very much and would give everything I have and am in this world to keep you both safe from harm. I will likely give my life to do so.

I imagine that I will have died in some kind of accident. That's how the Society works. It’s why my whole family is dead, and many others. They use humans to do their dirty work and then kill them when they’re finished with them. If you’re reading this letter, it’s because they’ve already tried to contact you.

You’re in very grave danger.

The vision your Grams had was a vision of you fightingthe Society. Not their minions, but the actual Society itself which means that the powers they have killed off all my family for, have manifested in you.

When your Grams had the vision, I knew that I had to do everything I could to ensure your safety. Enclosed is a medallion of Shiva. It has many layers of protection, and I want you to wear it. When you put it on, it will become a tattoo on your body, and you’ll be able to tap into all the protections it has to offer.

My family, our family, are descendants of Shiva performing Tantra on a human in order to start a bloodline of strong witches. This happened long before his first marriage to Sati. We’re considered Demi-Gods. Being the God of Destruction gives him many talents. Earth magic has always been very strong in our family. Especially anything associated with lightning, storms, and fire.

The main thing is that our family carries a recessive gene that grants us a piece of Shiva’s powers. Whoever gets thosepowers has the ability to grant someone immortality. This can only happen once though as it kills you immediately afterwards.

The Society has spent hundreds upon hundreds of years searching for someone to grant them immortality. They pass down their dark powers to new members as they die and over the years they’ve grown very, very strong.

This wand and the medallion have been passed down within our family, the Arya family, for the same amount of time. Each generation has added protections and defenses to each, in the hopes that whoever carries the gene will be able to use it to fight the Society and end them once and for all.

I know wands aren’t really a thing we use anymore, because magic has come a long way since this all started. Think of it as a tool that will carry many generations of magic foryou to tap into. You don’t have to actually use the wand; you just need it on your person so that you can draw from it.

You can make some jewelry out of it or whatever, just make sure that they can’t take it from you if they ever capture you. If they get their hands on it, all is over.

Eloise, my love, light of my life. I’m so sorry that you had to be alone all these years. You were my whole world and the time I had with you and our little Shasta was the greatest in my life. I’ll be waiting for you in another life. You’re my soulmate and I know that we will find each other once again.

Shasta, I know that you can defeat them. Lean on your mates. Let them help you. Trust them to stand beside you.

I love you my darlings, forever,

Love, Dad

My mother bursts into tears at the last part. Reaching for her, we wrap our arms around each other and cry for the man we both loved. I may not remember much about him, but I have always felt his loss deeply. My mother has never even dated anyone else. Losing a mate changes you in major ways. If you don’t consummate the bond, it will kill you, but when you lose a mate after consummation, it’s like you lose a piece of yourself.

My mother was no different. She is still powerful and one of the smartest women I know, but when we lost my father, a piece of her went with him. My grandmother had to step in and help raise me because my mother wasn’t in her right mind for a long time. She still struggles and is flighty sometimes. If we didn’t have the Coven to help her out all these years, she may have ended up…well, I don’t even want to think about it.

I’m not really sure how to process what I just read. But also, finding out that my father’s death was no accident makes me very angry. Angry for my mother and all the years she lost with her mate. Angry for myself that I lost my father and my mother. And angry that those psychos have killed his entire family. I can’t ever get to know any of them because of the Society.

I look at the medallion in my hand and I wrap the chain around my forearm and wrist, laying the medallion over the top of my hand. There's a flash of light and the medallion melts into my skin forming a tattoo of a chain and medallion. As it does, I feel a huge surge of magic and then everything goes black.

Chapter fifteen

The Society & the Shifters That Hate Them

KADI

Ethan and I both feel Shasta pass out at the same time. We run to the porch, Winnie on our heels, to find Eloise holding Shasta and crying. She has a letter in her hand that’s dangling, and I see a tattoo on her wrist that wasn’t there before.

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