Against the Broken Oath: Chapters 1-3
The immediate danger from the vampires has ended, but the threat to Merry, Bird, and Roo hasn’t—and the threat has a personal tie to Bird.
CHAPTER ONE
Bird
THREE MONTHS AGO
BIRD SCRATCHED Colonel Mustard, the stray, orange tabby cat, under the chin while, across the street, a thief robbed an old woman. The thief grabbed the old woman’s bag, tucked it under his arm, and fled. He was quick, but stupid. A ghost of a grin tugged at Bird’s mouth. Although human, that old woman was a well-respected member of the Pride, the most aggressive of Mercury’s shifter communities. And the group’s lion-, tiger-, and bear-shifters loved a good hunt.
“Thief!” the old woman shouted. She searched the nearly empty street, shielding her eyes from the morning sun. Most of Mercury was still asleep; the town rarely woke before noon.
Bird remained hidden in the shadowed alley between two brick buildings. From here, he had a broad view of Waterview Street, the historic, cobblestone road crowded with old buildings and, aptly, a view of the Atlantic Ocean. He hoped the old woman would give up searching and wait until a shifter came along and offered to track the thief for her, but she was stubborn and eventually noticed Bird, tall, blond, and pale, lurking in the shadows.
“You! Paladin! Do something!” she yelled.
Mercury’s citizens had a specific image of what paladin meant. They visualized Gwyn Acosta, whose oath bound her to the protection of the town. Bird wasn’t so altruistic; his oath was to only one man.
“Tell the Pride,” Bird said. He checked the thief’s progress; running north, the idiot was approaching the Steer’s Gears, a shifter bar that had taken over an old bank building.
“He stole my medication!” The old woman hobbled across the street toward Bird, jabbing her cane in his direction. “What paladin lets a criminal run free? Don’t you care about this town?”
A mounted police officer appeared around the corner at the far north end of Waterview. The thief stopped short, his original escape path cut off. Bird tuned out the old woman’s voice and watched the thief, waiting for him to choose a new direction. The thief ran into the bar. Wrong direction.
The most important person in Bird’s life, Roo Raval, was on the clock right now as a bartender in the Steer’s Gears. Bird’s paladin oath compelled him to ensure Roo’s safety from all threats—including petty thieves—by any means necessary.
His oath rushed over him like a tidal wave, honing his body and mind for combat. His senses sharpened, his muscles instantly warmed up, and he felt magic coursing through him, making him stronger, faster, more focused.
“Won’t you even try?” the old woman asked indignantly.
“He ain’t leaving that bar,” Bird growled.
Leaping from the alley with superhuman athleticism, Bird broke into a sprint and covered the distance to the Steer’s Gears in seconds.
The mounted officer called out to him, “What’s the problem, paladin?”
Bird shoved open the bar’s windowed front door and took in the scene. He first noted Roo, small, brown, well-dressed, standing behind the bar with an empty glass in hand. Two patrons in athletic clothes sat on bar stools. The thief had stopped between two tables, his gaze wildly flipping between Bird at the front door and the kitchen door behind the bar.
“Want it? Have it!” The thief threw the old woman’s purse at Bird and darted toward the kitchen door. Toward Roo.
Bird ignored the purse, which hit the ground, and launched himself at the thief. He grabbed a handful of the thief’s shirt, but the thin fabric ripped and the thief escaped, sliding under a wooden table. Bird flipped the table off its feet. It crashed into another, both collapsing in a mountain of splintered wood.
Someone shouted. It wasn’t Roo, so Bird didn’t listen.
The thief scrambled to his feet and ran toward the front door. Bird started after him, but a loop of his cargo pants caught on the edge of a small table. Grunting in irritation, Bird yanked the loop free, then hefted the table and threw it at his quarry. Yelping, the thief dove aside. The table hit the front door, breaking in two as shattered glass rained down.
Bird lunged forward, grabbed the thief by the neck, and dragged him toward the front window.
“Surrender. Now!” Bird ordered.
The thief attacked Bird’s wrist with ragged fingernails, drawing blood, but Bird’s oath nullified the pain.
Bird smashed the thief’s head against the front window. “Say you yield!”
Gasping for breath, the thief didn’t—couldn’t—respond.
Bird slammed him into the window again, and cracks webbed across the glass. The thief turned to dead weight, no longer a threat. Bird’s oath began to subside, and he saw his path of destruction through the bar for the first time.
“What the hell, Braddock? You wrecked my granny’s place!” JJ, a lion-shifter, hopped down from his bar stool with a click of his soccer cleats on the floor. Behind him, his younger cousin, Caleb, remained quiet.
Bird looked past both of them to Roo, who still stood behind the bar, holding an empty glass. “Are you okay, Roo?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?” Roo asked, confused. He pointed at the thief. “He didn’t happen to steal nuclear launch codes or the Hope Diamond, did he?”
“Medication,” Bird said. Of course Roo thought this was about the theft, not about the potential threat to his life. Roo didn’t know about Bird’s oath, and Bird certainly wasn’t going to tell him now, not with JJ and Caleb around.
“That’s why you destroyed this place?” JJ yelled.
The front door opened and the dismounted police officer entered, carefully stepping over the splintered wood and destroyed glass. The old woman followed him in.
“Here.” Bird passed the thief’s limp body to the cop, who didn’t seem to know what to do with it. Bird stooped and picked up the old woman’s bag, and she grabbed it from his hand.
“My granny’ll press charges!” JJ yelled at Bird. “She’ll wipe you from this town, Braddock!”
JJ could yell all he wanted; Bird didn’t care. Roo was safe. That was all that would ever matter.
CHAPTER TWO
Bird
Bird sat in the driver’s seat of his van in an empty parking lot, his legs sticking out through the open door, and his feet propped on the Mercury Marina Overflow Parking—NO LOITERING sign. He dragged a needle and thread through his favorite pair of cargo pants, stitching up the rips from yesterday’s vampire attacks. Below the rocky edge of the parking lot, the muddy Mississippi River flowed south. In four hours, the river wouldn’t be here anymore. Rather, Mercury wouldn’t be here.
Tonight was the Flip, when the whole town of Mercury teleported more than one thousand miles from Missouri to Maine. New England meteorologists called for clear skies tonight, an upgrade over Missouri’s current cloud cover. The setting sun at Bird’s back cloaked the river in shadow. Across the river, the Illinois shore was dark and deserted. A trio of falcons swooped low over the water, caught a strong breeze beneath their wings, and disappeared into the night.
The marina was almost empty, being of little use this late in October. Only a single, sad-looking sailboat bobbed at the dock. Once, that boat might have sailed the ocean, but it was now abandoned and rotting.
Bird saw his life in that boat. Once, he had been a great paladin. Not anymore. In the space of a single afternoon, just yesterday, he had lost fight after fight with the vampire named Skua, her spiteful lieutenant Javi, and her impossibly strong powers of compulsion. He had suffered a massive defeat, had become a boat doomed to sink if he didn’t make a drastic change.
He would change, get stronger, so he could fulfill his paladin oath—the only purpose in his life. To protect Roo. Bird still hadn’t told Roo about his oath. And Bird wouldn’t tell Roo, not until he could live up to that oath properly, and destroy monsters like Skua. Not until Bird was certain he wouldn’t be a failure.
A shudder ran through him, and he pulled his thick flannel jacket tighter around his shoulders. At six-foot-seven and thick with muscle, Bird didn’t often feel the cold, but he’d yet to heal from yesterday’s injuries.
The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. He was being watched. Sniffing the western breeze, Bird recognized the mixed scents of motor oil, burnt skin, and fresh blood.
“Sun’s still out,” he said. He squinted in the dregs of daylight as he stitched up the last of the tears in his pants.
“And you’re brooding again.” Rhett, Queen of Mercury’s vampire coven, rounded the end of Bird’s van. Rhett appeared about seventeen years old, but her dark eyes contained the depth of a century. She held a large umbrella over her head to protect the dark skin on her face from direct sunlight, while the rest of her was covered by Army surplus fatigues. She looked up and down Bird’s sorry figure, from his boots with the cracked leather on the toes, to his rough beard that hadn’t seen proper grooming in a month, to his pale blond hair, hanging limp to his elbows.
“I’m leaving tonight. After the Flip.” Bird’s entire life was packed into the back of his van.
Rhett ran her gloved hand over the van’s side door; rust broke off under her fingers and floated to the ground like flakes of dried blood. “You should have warned me you were leaving. We had a good system; you got a bed, and I got paladin blood to sell. My profits will be down without you around.”
Paladin blood fetched a high price among vampires. Six months ago, when Bird had been a fresh paladin living out of his van, Rhett had sought him out and made her offer. Bird had accepted immediately.
“Only learned today,” Bird offered her a hand-written letter from Gwyn.
“Give me the summary.”
“Gwyn dropped me.”
Rhett whistled quietly. “I didn’t think she’d do it.”
Bird grunted. Gwyn had warned him three months ago, after the incident at the Steer’s Gears, that she would end his apprenticeship if he couldn’t control his oath. After yesterday, when Bird’s oath had driven him to blindly attack Skua and end up as her hostage, Gwyn had had no choice but to make good on her promise.
Bird had settled his debts with Gwyn that afternoon for the countless resources—weapons, medicine, information—that she’d supplied on credit. It had taken the better part of his life savings.
“You’re still a paladin. Stay at the Coven House,” Rhett said.
After multiple vampires had forcibly fed on him yesterday, Bird wasn’t keen on giving anyone easy access to his veins. “It’s better if I’m gone.”
“My cash reserves say otherwise.”
Bird doubted that, as frugal and enterprising as Rhett was. “I’m leaving after the Flip.”
Bird’s oath as a paladin almost required that he leave. Skua was in league with Bird’s family, who wanted to drag him back under their influence. If they ever found out how important Roo was to Bird, they would use Roo as leverage. Bait. Roo was only safe now because Skua and her coven had been captured after being overpowered by Gwyn, her daughter, JJ, and Caleb. Rhett currently had the rogue vampires imprisoned, unable to share any information about Roo.
But Bird knew his family; they would try to find him again. He had to leave and lead them away from Roo.
“You should stop by the shifter party,” Rhett said.
“No one wants me there.”
“Roo would. He was worried about you last night.”
While Bird did want to see Roo again, he knew that Rhett was trying to manipulate him into sticking around. Rather than reply, Bird tied off his thread.
Rhett patted his shoulder. “Try not to brood all night.”
* * *
Bird’s desires overcame his good sense. Once the sun had fully set, he drove across town and parked at the edge of a wooded hill, near the bonfire where the shifters were celebrating the Flip.
He activated his oath inside his van, where his magic was its strongest. He clapped his hands together, and light warped around him, rendering him functionally invisible. He exited his vehicle and entered the woods, stepping carefully across fallen leaves. After a few minutes he reached the tree line, beyond which was a wide valley that the shifters had turned—as Bird’s father would have said—into a den of hedonistic distraction.
The ground shook with a pounding bass beat played by a DJ on a stage, and people flailed around in something resembling dancing. Numerous tables dotted the valley, each piled with alcohol, snacks, and loose tobacco and marijuana. Bird saw the nearest table had a strawberry cake, and his mouth watered. A bonfire raged twenty feet high at the center of the valley; its light reflected off the low-hanging clouds like an artificial sunrise.
Sneaking along the tree line, Bird searched for Roo, recognizable by the knit hat he wore to hide his tufted caracal ears. Bird scrutinized a group of canine-shifters playing with a beach ball and didn’t see Roo. He next inspected a group of people in leather outfits talking in a circle around a half-dozen motorcycles. Still no Roo. Bird examined the dance floor, bonfire, and near the tables with booze. Nothing. Was Roo even here?
Bird was ready to head back to his van when he finally saw him. Sitting on a blanket nearby, Roo had separated himself from the party, and Merry and JJ had joined him. Bird crept through the trees and hid close enough to them to eavesdrop.
“I can’t believe I tried to leave all of this!” Merry said, drunkenly slurring her words. She had adapted well after being trapped by Skua yesterday. Bird tasted shame; Merry, a human with no training, had been integral to stopping the vampires while Bird had been useless.
Sitting together, Merry and Roo were visual opposites: her, light-skinned, short-haired, and tall, shoulders thrown back in confidence; him, brown-skinned, hat on, and short, curled in on himself in defense.
Roo shrugged his shoulders deep inside his huge sweatshirt, which was a far cry from his usual, tailored clothing. “Des Moines might’ve been nice.”
Merry pointed to the group of canine-shifters. “Look, there. A person, shape-shifted into a coyote, is playing with a beach ball! How cool is that? I’d never see that in Des Moines.”
Roo made an unhappy noise as he raised a red plastic cup to his lips and gulped down the remaining liquid. He swayed after finishing it. How much alcohol had Roo consumed so far?
“Refill, babe?” Lounging on Roo’s other side, JJ hefted a jug filled with brownish liquid. He was bare-chested despite the chilly night, and his tanned skin appeared orange from the distant bonfire light.
Roo looked at JJ and didn’t stop. His jaw hung slack, like a man struck dumb. Bird didn’t know what had stunned Roo but assumed it stemmed from terrible memories of Skua. Merry poked Roo’s arm and said something too quiet for Bird to hear. Roo jolted, snapped his mouth shut, and looked away from JJ.
“Was that a yes?” JJ asked, grinning. He sat up and plucked Roo’s empty cup from his hand. With a flourish, he refilled it. “Your Long Island Iced Tea, sir.”
Roo hesitantly accepted the cup but didn’t drink. He faced straight ahead toward the bonfire, shoulders hunched. Bird desperately wanted to comfort Roo, to hug him. With an odd feeling of loss, Bird realized he hadn’t hugged anyone in years. Roo’s friends filled that void for him in a way that Bird couldn’t.
Merry bumped against Roo and rested one arm across his shoulders. “I’m glad we’re here, in Mercury, together again.”
JJ snuggled against Roo’s other side. “Me, too.”
Merry reached around Roo and playfully pushed at JJ’s head. “Shut up. We were here before you.”
“I was here fifteen years ago, thank you,” JJ said indignantly. “I was twelve, and a brand-new shifter.”
“Oh, wow. Fifteen years,” Merry said. “Try eighteen, lion-boy. Roo and I were six.”
“I was five,” Roo said.
“Right—it was right before your birthday.”
Bird remembered who he had been eighteen years ago. Seven years old, living with his many siblings at his family’s southern Missouri compound, where he learned English, mathematics, and every way to eliminate vampires, shifters, and other paladins.
“Oh, I forgot to tell you: Bird’s up and walking. I saw him at my mom’s today,” Merry said.
Bird didn’t remember seeing her at Gwyn’s pawn shop, but he had been distracted at the time.
“Seriously? If I were him, I wouldn’t be showing my face for a month,” JJ said. “He had one job: stop the vamps.”
“He did try,” Roo said.
“Yeah, and failed,” said JJ, and Bird knew that he was right.
All the more reason to leave Mercury tonight, to return only once he could be a paladin worthy of Roo.
CHAPTER THREE
Merry
Merry hopped up from the blanket and staggered drunkenly until she found her balance. She asked Roo and JJ, “Do you want some alone time?”
She didn’t wait for a response; regardless of their answers, the party was calling to her. Merry wanted—needed—to dance wildly and run around with sparklers and bask in the warmth of the bonfire.
JJ wrapped his arm around Roo’s shoulders, pulling him close. “We’re perfectly happy here. Have fun, Merry.”
Merry amended her previous thought—if Roo asked her to stay, she would. He hadn’t been himself since yesterday’s shit. “Roo? Are you—”she hiccupped, “—okay here?”
Roo pressed his nose to JJ’s neck and inhaled. He smiled faintly. “Go, Merry. I’m okay.”
“Holler if you need anything!” Merry called as she stumbled away from the pair.
The next couple of hours were a wild, drunken blur.
Merry remembered dancing with people—and people-shifted-into-animals—until a stitch formed in her side, and she had to stop to catch her breath. She ran into a rabble of teenagers chasing each other with lit sparklers. They shoved a handful of the burning things at Merry, and she drew nonsensical shapes against the night sky.
She remembered finding herself close to the bonfire, with sweat beaded on her forehead despite the cold night. Some of the flames changed colors, flaring up as blue, then green, then stark red. Merry ran around the bonfire’s huge base until she found a bearded old man throwing small discs of packed chemicals into the fire. He offered a few discs to Merry; and she laughed in delight as she tossed them into the fire, and the flames turned blindingly white, bright green, deep purple.
When the heat was too much, Merry bade him farewell and walked off. She tried to take a drink from her cup. It was bone dry, and Merry remembered she hadn’t refilled it since sitting with Roo and JJ. Her intoxication had simmered down to a buzz. Unacceptable.
She headed to the nearest booze table and found a familiar face lounging nearby in a lawn chair—Nora, tiger-shifter and long-haul trucker.
“Hey, there, future paladin,” Nora said.
“Hey, there, loner,” Merry said. Nora was one of the few people sitting alone, but she seemed completely at ease, with a book in her lap and her bare feet propped on a cooler.
“I’m here, aren’t I? Be happy with that.” Nora’s words were sharp, but she smiled comfortably. She raised a brown hand and waved lazily at someone behind Merry. “Caleb, over here! You thought anymore about the Pack? We could use someone like you.”
Caleb, JJ’s younger cousin, walked with the balanced gait of a natural athlete, but they lacked the skills of a natural actor to hide their clear reluctance to approach Nora. Merry hadn’t seen them since they and JJ had helped stop Skua.
“Sorry, no. I, uh, I’ve been busy,” they said. They pushed their feathery dark hair out of their face, the motion setting the braided fabric bracelets on their pale wrist to swinging.
Nora opened her mouth to speak, and Caleb motioned to Merry’s cup, asking, “D’you want a refill?”
“Yes! I had…” she trailed off as Caleb sniffed her cup, set it on the table, then started pouring a cherry gin and tonic, exactly what Merry had made for herself earlier. Caleb splashed in cherry flavoring, thought for a moment, then added another, more liberal pour.
“Does this taste right?” Caleb asked, handing her the drink.
Merry sipped at it, humming with approval. “Damn. You got all that from a sniff?”
“Caleb has the best nose in town,” Nora said.
They ducked their head sheepishly. “It’s nothing special.”
Nora picked up her book, shaking her head at Caleb with something like irritation, or disbelief. “Find me when you change your mind.”
“Yeah. Sure.” Caleb quickly poured their own drink—whiskey cola—and hurried away from the table.
Merry was intrigued by Caleb’s short conversation with Nora and followed them. “Can all wolf-shifters do what you did?”
“Uh, maybe? We’re naturally good smellers, but I guess I have sort of trained my senses. JJ and I used to play a game, guessing ingredients by smelling the finished dish or drink.” Caleb gave her a small smile. “JJ won’t play anymore because he always loses.”
Thinking of JJ and Roo, Merry glanced in their direction. Both men were snuggled together on the blanket, but seemed to only be talking. Merry turned back to Caleb and found them also looking at JJ and Roo. Caleb seemed almost sad, lonely. Merry empathized, remembering her sense of abandonment in high school when her friends had drifted apart, as they became more interested in the appeal of significant others than in board games after class.
“Is JJ always this boy-crazy? Man-crazy? Person-crazy?” Merry asked.
“People-crazy. And no.” Caleb drank a long gulp of their drink. “He’s oddly serious about Roo. Everyone’s oddly serious about Roo.”
Merry felt Caleb’s mood plummeting rapidly, and she switched the topic. “What was Nora asking you about?”
“The Pack.” Caleb motioned toward the group of people wearing leather and standing around the motorcycles. “They think that I belong with them because I’m a wolf-shifter. As if they forgot my grandma leads the Pride.”
“Are the Pack wolf-shifters only?”
“No. Nora isn’t, and she’s sort of their leader.” Caleb waffled, then clarified, “Not leader. The Pack is too decentralized for that. But she speaks for them.”
“Do they all live in Mercury?” With the sheer number of people in the valley, Merry thought half the town might be at the party.
Caleb shook their head. “No. They return for the Flip. Some have permanent homes, but a lot, like Nora, are nomads. They only made the Pack to talk, and drink, and have some influence over the things they care about. They don’t bother with town politics, like the Pride and the Flock do.”
“Are all shifters in either the Pride, the Pack, or the Flock?”
Caleb looked back toward Roo. “Almost all. Independents don’t last long.”
Merry’s toe hit something hard and she staggered forward, spilling her drink and crashing to her knees. Something heavy in her pocket struck against her leg. Caleb tried to help her back up, but Merry accidentally pulled them down with her.
“Sorry,” Merry said. She flexed her foot and finally noticed the rock she’d hit, scowling at it. “That hurts like a bitch. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” Caleb jumped to their feet and grabbed Merry’s fallen cup. “I’ll get us refills.”
Merry waited for them to run off before she reached into her sweatpants pocket. She didn’t remember putting anything heavy in her pocket that evening, but her hand still closed around roughly-worked metal. She didn’t have to look at the item to know what it was. The cast iron key that had been at the center of yesterday’s chaos. She definitely hadn’t brought that with her. As of that afternoon, the key had been locked in the impenetrable back room of her mom’s pawn shop. And now it was in Merry’s pocket?
She stuffed it away before Caleb returned. People were willing to kill for that key. It needed to return to her mother’s custody.
Caleb helped her to her feet, passing her a replacement drink. They noticed something near the tree line, not far from Roo and JJ and they squinted as if to see better.
“What is it?” Merry asked, following their gaze, seeing nothing.
“Just shadows.” Caleb said and looked away. They started walking toward some people who were setting up fireworks. “Random question, um, when you and…and Bird were together yesterday, did he say anything? About me?”
“Bird? We didn’t talk much. Why?”
“No reason.” They pointed at the fireworks, which looked like rows of mortars. “Let’s get a good seat. The Flip will be soon.”
Merry decided against pressing Caleb about their odd question. She wanted to throw herself back into the action, starting with the fireworks and town-wide teleportation. “Lead on!”