Oath Bound

  Oath Bound

  DarkWorld: SkinWalker 8

  T.G. Ayer

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  The SkinWalker Series ??

  Also by T.G. Ayer

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  About the Author

  1

  The world around me had just gone crazy.

  The air within the living room of our family home spun like a tornado, bits, and pieces of mementos and fragments of our family history riding the gusting currents in a large swirling whirlpool of wind. The once welcoming room, with its soft crème-and-gold decor, inviting sofas and pale plush carpets, was now a mess of frantic destruction.

  The portrait of Dad, Grams and Grampa Mason that had once hung above our mantelpiece, had been ripped off the wall, its frame smashed to smithereens simply by the force of the speeding air. Deadly shards of mahogany joined the debris spinning around the room like a vortex hungry to suck our home right into it.

  Across from me, my parents were huddled inside the great stone fireplace, faces and once-pristine clothes smudged with coal and ash, cold, half-burned logs kicked out in a hurry sending cinders across the creme pile carpet.

  Celeste and Corin Odel were unaccustomed to being helpless, and I felt a ripple of sympathy for them now as they stared out at the destructive force mowing down their home, unable to do anything but hide to safeguard their lives. They would no doubt be assessing the situation, but right this second, neither had come up with the brilliant plan required to save any of our asses.

  My parents’ hidey-hole was definitely safer than mine. I hunkered down, tense and uncertain in the furthest corner of the room crouching beside our antique sideboard, handed down through three generations of Odels and holding a crapload of priceless knickknacks and wedding gifts.

  I chose the spot because it was away from the windows, the best place to shelter myself and to avoid the dagger-like shards of glass that had once been the cottage-pane doors of our living room, and near enough to the doorway to the hall which was my only path to relative safety. But, my current position meant it was only a matter of time before I went the way of the mahogany frame.

  Still, I was safer than Grams who stood stiffly on the threshold of the living room, facing down the tornado, expression implacable, as though she would use her body and her mind to stop the damned thing. I had no clue what she was thinking, and part of me wanted to run to her, throw her out of the way and drag her to a safer spot.

  Then maybe yell some sense into her—if I could be heard above the roar of the spinning vortex.

  The temperature had dropped too, an icy chill taking hold of everything around us, chains of frost appearing along the walls and floor like shimmering necklaces, a cold beauty that would precede an awful death.

  Pulsing vibrations rumbled beneath my feet as the house shook right to its foundations. I softened my knees to keep my balance, and an irrational fear rippled through me as I imagined the entire building being lifted off its foundations, then flying off with the tornado when it finally decided to move on.

  This was insane.

  The people of our town would be shocked. The small panther walker enclave of Tukats, Illinois, must be horrified to see such a dramatic and almost inexplicable event as this.

  And then I caught myself mid-thought. I knew I was wrong.

  I’d heard as much from Mom and Grams not too long ago, enough to confirm how wrong I was, because this very home had seen a dramatic enough event a few decades back. The events of a day long ago, discussed within the shadows, spoken in whispers I’d never even heard.

  The day the Fae came to claim one of their own.

  Our little walker town had its own personal history when it came to face-to-face meetings with an attack that came out of nowhere. An attack the nature of which had both shocked and befuddled its innocent citizens, leaving one family scarred for generations while the townspeople helped to hide the event altogether.

  Tinkling echoed around me as shattered glass now also joined the vortex, thankfully having done no damage to the occupants of the room. My heart tightened at the thought of how close the kids—who we’d sent up to their bedroom to wash up before dinner—had come to being hurt had they still been here in the living room when this ethereal tornado had ripped into our home.

  Thank Ailuros, the rest of the family was safe with Iain in Europe busy with Council Meetings and Darcy on a case out of state. Alina and Axel, our adopted goblin twins, were feisty enough to have insisted on remaining with us given the chance. Not that we were stupid enough to have given it.

  I whispered a prayer of gratitude that Logan—who’d been at my side when the tornado had shown up—had swooped off out the shattered doors to skirt the house and take them to safety. I’d glimpsed flashes of his golden scales as he passed by, the light of the moon casting a dark shadow as he flew off.

  He was going to be pissed, that much was sure. I’d refused to go with him when he’d insisted on taking me to safety. I knew why, and I suspected he did too.

  Grams.

  We’d planned on a quiet evening as a prelude to the big day when we would depart for Mithras to help Saleem out of his incarceration. But moments ago, our family night had been reduced to shards and shattered pieces when the tornado had appeared out of thin air while we’d been laying the table for dinner.

  My black leather pants had lost its sheen, covered in a layer of dust, and I sighed. This vortex was also taking out its frustrations on my threads, and I was not a happy girl. The pink-and-purple paisley blouse I’d worn for the special evening was still intact, thank Ailuros—Grams would kill me if I got it ripped, she had a thing about heirlooms aka hand-me-downs.

  Gusts of air lifted my hair and threw the dark locks back into my face. I swiped them away from my eyes and focused, trying to think.

  Insanity prevailed now, the speeding currents plucking more pictures off the walls, half a dozen ceremonial masks that Mom and Dad had collected on their travels, an obsidian platter they’d been given for their wedding, the box of cigars Dad had kept on the mantelpiece, the set of kovale metal sculptures they’d had made from our baby feet, all sucked into the swirling mass in the middle of the room.

  Only Greer’s little feet had remained, tossed to the carpet. Probably something I could read a lot into, but maybe later when I had time. To ponder why our dead sister’s baby sculpture had been forgotten by the vicious tornado

  A mass that was slowly growing ever larger.

  The furniture wobbled on the floor, the great leather sofa shifting in place while two
Victorian armchairs began to slide across the carpet, drawn to the tornado and powerless to stop their inevitable destruction as the spinning air crushed them into nothing.

  I swallowed hard as I watched the panel above the fireplace shudder as it too threatened to be sucked out of place. As much as everything within the room meant a lot to us, the contents of the Odel artifact repository was invaluable.

  Years spent collecting priceless and rare objects, some of them believed to have been lost to the past, many of them dangerous in the hands of an ignorant user, and deadly within the grasp of a knowledgeable one.

  Heart racing now, my gaze shifted to Dad, who crouched within the shadows of the stone fireplace, an arm slung around Mom’s shoulders.

  Mom didn’t appear to be aware of her husband’s attempt to protect her either. Which meant she was too distracted to notice because Celeste Odel was the last person in this universe who would allow a man to save her when she was fully capable of saving herself.

  They made a scruffy disheveled pair; Mom’s baby-blue blouse with dozens of tiny rips through it, pants covered in ash, Dad’s white button-up shirt smeared to a tie-dyed black-and-grey, blond hair discolored by dustings of coal and littered with woodchips.

  I could almost feel their frustration and anger all the way across the room.

  But that was probably the crux of our predicament. We could do nothing to save ourselves. Not until we figured out what in Ailuros’ name was going on. Where had this tornado come from, and why did it decide to touch ground inside our living room?

  Even though I had a suspicion, I wasn’t yet prepared to believe that Grams’ past had come back to haunt her.

  A decanter, still half-filled with eighty-year-old dwarven fire-whiskey, flew past my face, missing my cheek by a mere breath and a wish. It crashed into a spinning chair leg, scattered shards of crystal in the air and then disintegrated into nothing.

  I had to put a stop to this madness.

  2

  But for once, I had no idea what to do next. My panther strained for her freedom, urged on by the pumping of my heated blood through my veins. But I forced her down and tried to think. How was I supposed to stop the raging tornado, I didn’t know.

  I had zero magical powers, no Fae magic handed down to me through Grams either—unless you counted my golden glow demon-killing mojo courtesy of Mommy Dearest.

  Shifting into my panther form wasn’t about to do anything to help other than make me more vulnerable and likely just get my furry feline ass obliterated.

  I had to do something though, as Grams still appeared to be frozen in place on the threshold, still looking perfect from her pale silk shirt to her inky blue jeans, down to her shiny black boots, not even a hair out of place. Whatever she meant to do, I hoped it would be soon.

  Preferably while we were all still breathing.

  Half my mind remained on Baz and Lily, who’d gone into the city to work on their military training at Tara’s workshop, and my anxiety bubbled at the thought of them coming home with this maniacal atmospheric disturbance as a welcome.

  Mentally crossing my fingers, I hoped Logan was out there somewhere and would stop the pair from entering the house and walking into certain danger. Unable to remain still any longer, I threw caution to the wind—or the tornado considering it was literally a few feet away—and I scrambled from my position of relative safety. Moving closer to the doorway, I hoped to get a better look inside the center of the maelstrom. As I half-crawled, half-scuttled across the carpet, I spotted movement out of the corner of my eye.

  A soft croak escaped my lips, and I blinked and then stared inside the vortex so hard that my vision blurred. But I saw nothing other than the remnants of years of memories, all of which amounted to little more than slivers and shards, all broken by this strange meteorological event that had decided to show up in the middle of our home.

  Again I paused as something pale shifted within the maelstrom of air.

  I swallowed hard. Someone was inside the tornado?

  It had to be a person. Nothing else would explain what appeared to be pale skin, a thin, tall frame, and dangerously silver eyes.

  I blinked again, and then the flicker of the image was gone. Shaking my head, I scooted forward and was about to kneel dangerously close to the vortex, so curious was I to spot the image again. But something thumped me hard in the side and sent me sprawling unceremoniously across the uncarpeted wood near the doorway.

  I let out an undignified oof and craned my neck around, but I only had a fraction of a second to identify my attacker before the air in the room sparked with energy.

  The spinning vortex shuddered and undulated as though some force was attempting to grind it to a halt mid-spin. And then, without warning, the air stopped spinning, and everything within the tornado crashed to the living room floor, raining down in random piles, the sound of thudding and crashing splitting the air sharply in the sudden silence.

  “What in Ailuros’ name are you doing, Kailin Odel?” Grams growled, eyes sparking with fury, skin shimmering with a silvery dusting of sparkles.

  I gasped, shocked as Ivy Odel’s voice and presence came out of nowhere. She stood there now, almost glowing with fury, but I wasn’t about to apologize for trying to save the family. I shook my head. “I had to do something,” I said in a loud whisper, though I wasn’t sure why I was whispering. “And I think someone is inside that…that thing,” I continued, aiming a thumb in the direction of the debris pile.

  Grams blinked then rolled her eyes and shook her head. She glanced over at the pile of remnants and gave the shards of our memories a curt nod.

  “Grams?” I asked tentatively.

  “Yes, dear?” came the Odel matriarch’s distracted response.

  “Why are you nodding at the remains of our living room?”

  Grams shifted her gaze to me for a brief moment, though her head and body still remained trained on the center of the room. “Because you were right, dear. There is someone in the middle of that destructive vortex.”

  “There is?” I asked slowly, even though I knew I sounded a little soft in the head. Across from us, Mom and Dad were slowly emerging from the safety of the fireplace. I began to rise too, but Grams held out a hand.

  “Corin, Celeste, get back inside. Kai, dear. Please go join your parents and stay with them until I say it’s safe for you to come out.”

  “But Grams,” I began, reluctant to leave her alone with the person in the middle of the tornado who also happened to be a person I couldn’t see. I wasn’t too comfortable with invisible people.

  “Kailin Odel, do as I say.” The words cut into me, sharp and painful as a lash from a thorn riddled branch. But even as I reeled from the hurt, I heard the desperate fear in her voice. And then she faced the debris, back straight, eyes hard, all signs of fear or trepidation gone as she said, “I see you, Grand Sire.”

  Holy shit.

  I didn’t wait for Grams to order me to the fireplace, just crawled as fast as I could around her to join my parents, who were both deathly silent. There had been someone inside the tornado, someone powering its destructive force. Someone Grams appeared to know all too well.

  Grand Sire. Grand Father?

  This is so not going to end well.

  My knees tightened, thigh-muscles flexed and hard. Mom’s arm crept around my shoulders, and I stopped shivering. I hadn’t even registered that my body had been shuddering from cold.

  I’d never known my grandmother to be afraid before.

  Never known her to take her emotions out on the people around her.

  Never known her to look so furious, so devastatingly dangerous.

  My mind and heart now focused on my grams who stood there facing down this silver-haired stranger who’d clearly arrived with every intention of causing the worst damage with no care as to who he injured in the process.

  He stood there now, in the silence of her cold anger. He’d drawn himself taller and allowed his glamor to fall jus
t a little. His shimmering silver hair would easily have been a waterfall of mercury, reflecting the lights in the room and seeming to let off an ethereal glow. He wore a pale floor-length coat which rippled with a floral pattern, like ivy drawn in living silver which undulated as he stood staring at Grams.

  But I didn’t need this stranger to drop his glamor. For some odd reason, I was able to see him for his true self. So now suddenly I had powers I wasn’t aware of until my life had almost been snuffed out? This was getting weirder and weirder by the second.

  Which made my awareness jerk back to the ending of the destructive tornado. One moment it had been wreaking havoc inside our living room and the next it was gone, poof. Just ended.

  And someone had to have deliberately stopped it. Someone with power strong enough to stop it.

  Grams had some explaining to do.

  3

  Grams stood still, spine stiff as she stared straight at the Fae King.

  His pale skin gave off an icy glow, like a fluorescent light on a low ebb. His eyes sparkled, shifting from obsidian to pearlescent, holding danger as well as an odd attractive quality, a deadly seductiveness I was certain would have any non-fae, male or female, ready to give themselves to him wholeheartedly.

  He didn’t appear old either, though I was pretty certain he was ancient enough as were most fae. I’d learned a little of the lore from Tara as well, so I wasn’t clueless. Thinking of Tara made me realize I do have a powerful Fae contact to ask for help, although, I wasn’t sure how to send her an SOS right this very moment.