Page 30 of Prey

“What happened? Is she okay?” Winnie asks in a panic.

“She put on the medallion her father gave her. There was a huge surge of magic when she did, and it just knocked her out. She’ll be fine, just give her a few minutes,” Eloise says quietly. She looks like she just found out someone died. I imagine if that was a letter from Shasta’s father, it may feel like someone did.

Winnie sits down next to Eloise as Ethan reaches over to grab Shasta. We walk back into the house and leave the two of them to talk.

I reach over and take the letter from Shasta’s hand and read it. She can get mad at me later if she wants but I need to know what kind of magic can make our already extremely powerful mate pass out like that. Ethan lays her down on the sofa and arranges her arms over her stomach.

Holy shit. The Society killed her father? Ethan is going to freak out when I show him this. After years of searching for his parents' murderers, the only thing we were ever able to find out was that they were part of the Society. Now here they are chasing after Shasta because she’s a Gods damned Demigod?

I silently hand Ethan the note and he begins to growl low in his throat. Before he gets to the end he is full on roaring. Shasta wakes up, holding her head and asks what’s happening.

Ethan shakes the letter. “The Society. Now not only did they kill my parents but your father too?” He’s panting with anger as he hands it to her.

“Oh Ethan, I’m so sorry. Looks like we have more in common than either of us realized,” she says, grabbing his hand and pulling him down onto the couch with her.

They hold each other for a few minutes, and I make myself busy getting a few bottles of water out of the fridge. Walking over to them, I sit down on the coffee table facing them both. They look like hell. The pain, sorrow, and anger I feel in the bonds is very overwhelming. I can only imagine how they feel.

Shasta wipes her eyes, and I see determination in her gaze as she says, “We’ll get them, Ethan. They’re going to keep coming after me. We know this now. So, we can set a trap for them instead. We don’t have to sit down and take it, and we don’t have to wait for them to come to us. We’ll take the fight to them. We need to gather any shifters that have been attacked by the Society.”

I share a look with Ethan. “A lot of the guys in the club have been affected by them in some way. All the shifters that we have and some of the vamps too. That’s one of the reasons we started the club in the first place. A lot of us lost people to the Society.”

Shasta’s eyes widen. “They’ve been doing this all over the world for so long. So many people have had their families torn from them. I never knew that they had anything to do with tracking and killing my family. I don’t know how we are going to find them all, but we will. I won’t rest until we do.”

Truth rings in her words, and as she says them, I feel something, like an oath was just made using magic. Maybe it was, because Shasta winces and holds out her hand.

“So, this is a medallion that has all my ancestors' magic in it. I may want to be careful how I say things from now on, because I just made a magical oath. My father put it in with his letter andwhen I wrapped it on my arm, this happened, just like he said it would. Though I was not expecting the immense amount of power I gained with it. He made it sound like it was something I would be able to tap into, and I can, but it’s the deepest well of power I’ve ever seen. And that’s only half of it. There’s the wand that was in the box too.”

Her voice shakes as she says it, almost as if in awe, or maybe even a little terrified.

“So, Winnie had the vision, and your father went to look into it and make arrangements for this to be delivered to you when something happened to him? Am I getting this right?” Ethan asks.

Shasta nods.

“So then, who sent it? It’s not like he could just take it to the post office and say: ‘Deliver this when someone breaks into my daughter’s shop’,” he says.

Shit, he’s right. Shasta looks confused and immediately steps out to the porch to grab the box. Her mother and grandmother follow her in. Eloise still looks very shaken, but I can feel waves of magic as Winnie tries to keep her calm.

“Ethan brought up a good point,” Shasta says. “Who sent this?” She looks down at the tattoo and gets a nervous look on her face. She rubs her finger over the medallion and closes her eyes as if she is trying to tap into the magic. After a minute or two she sighs with relief.

“What is it?” Winnie asks her.

“Just got nervous for a second that I put something on me that may have had dark magic in it. I’m going to check the wand out a little better before I do anything with it. I’m still trying to figure out what Joaquin was picking up from it that made him nervous. Doesn’t he know how to read emotions?” she asks.

“Yeah, let me call him and see if I can figure something out.” Stepping away I pull out my phone and hit the button to call him. He answers right away.

“What’s up?”

“Do you know why you were picking up a weird vibe off the box? It looks like it came from Shasta’s dad a week before he was killed back when Shasta was a little girl,” I ask him.

“Well, that can’t be true because the emotions I was picking up from it were very recent.”

Wait, what?

“How is that possible? The magic items that were in there so far are legit. At least one of them anyway. We still need to check the other one out.”

“Well, I’d make sure you do it in the basement because something in that box isn’t right and the emotions I got from it were something like coercion and guilt.”

“Thanks buddy. I’ll call you back when we know more.”

---