Verity caught the metallic bite of magic on the air the moment before a portal opened directly before her and someone grabbed her by the wrists hauling her through. It closed so quickly behind her that she felt the tug on her hair as it caught in the closing magic.
“Alatar!” Verity exclaimed in fury when her half-brother released her. “That was incredibly dangerous!” Her heart was racing from the danger of the quick closure of the portal. “You could have…” She didn’t even have words for it. “Left parts of me behind!”
“Have to be quick with portals,” he was breathless with the effort. “The Nephilim are on the lookout for them. Had a few narrow encounters,” he pointed to a new scar that cut a line from the point of his cheek to his side burn. “Open, through and shut, is the only way. You do not want to know how bad it can be if you are caught by them.”
She looked around her in amazement. They were in a large basement, but one that had been nicely finished, the walls insulated and clad, the floor tiled, and furnished with heavily burdened wine racks on one side, a futon and cupboards on the other, but directly before her was two cages. Heavy duty bars closed them off against the wall, and they had small bathrooms where the cell sides joined, open to the room but someone had strung sheets across to offer some privacy. Each had a futon in them that looked like they had been recently used.
“What is this place?” She demanded. “What the f-k is with the cages?” She whirled to face her half-brother. “Why have you brought me here? My mates are going to be going… Oh god, you have to take me back. They are going to look for me and get themselves into trouble because they will think the coven took me. They are looking for you, you know.”
Alatar ran his fingers through his hair and blinked under the onslaught of words. “I know the coven is looking for me, Gerard got a message through to me recently, telling me that they were worried about you as the coven was looking for you, which is why I scried for you and brought you here where you will be safe.” He paused. “Mates?”
“Yeah, my mates,” she paused. He had dirt on his jeans and the hem of his shirt looked as if he had used it to wipe dirt off something. Behind the bite of magic, he smelled of sunshine, soil and tomato vines. And dung. “Where are we?” She repeated, puzzled.
“One of the packs’ runs,” he told her. “They are warded properties, so we are safe here. What mates, Verity?” He turned and gestured her to follow him up the staircase sandwiched between the wine racks and the futon.
“Long story,” she didn’t want to follow him, she wanted him to open another portal and return her, so she remained where she was. “Alatar, you need to send me back. My mates will hunt down the coven looking for me, and… it’s really complicated. Please, Alatar.”
“Verity,” he braced a hand against the wall and leaned heavily on it, his weariness evident. “Spell components are not exactly easy to come upon out here. I used my last components on that portal in order to bring you to safety.”
“Alatar,” she closed her eyes. The one time her half-brother did something for her, it was the wrong thing. “Can we send a message, somehow?”
“To who?” He wondered.
“My mates. Elior. I don’t know. Gerard?”
“Elior?” He repeated straightening and stepping down the stairs towards her. “How are you entangled with Elior?”
“Again, complicated,” she replied.
“Alright,” he considered her, his green eyes narrowed. “Come upstairs and grab a meal with me and tell me what is going on and we will decide what to do after we eat.”
She sighed. It was a reasonable suggestion, and she was hungry and tired. “Alright.”
He pulled her against him suddenly in a tight embrace. “It is good to see you, by the way,” he said, and released her.
She flushed. “It is good to see you too. I do appreciate the thought behind the portal,” she followed him up the staircase. “If it had been a few weeks ago, I would have been thrilled. Wow.”
They passed into a large open planned lodge, with an expansive kitchen that would have, she thought, cost a fortune, an open fireplace, a large L-shape formation dark natural leather couch, and a sturdy recycled timber table with bench seats set to either side. “It looks like somewhere werewolves would hang out,” she decided.
“Yeah, I know,” he looked around him as if seeing it for the first time. “It is a bit expensive cabin in the woodsy. Handy, too, now,” he didn’t go into the kitchen but walked towards the front door. “Come on.”
“Weren’t we going to eat?” She looked at the kitchen.
“Yeah, the food is outside, though,” he told her and opened the door.
“Oh my god,” she could see fields stretching towards the horizon. “A farm?” She stepped through the door onto a wide porch incredulous by what she saw before her. People moving between the very tidy rows, harvesting, children laughed and ran up the track that divided the fields in two, and baskets overflowing with fresh picked food were gathered under the porch. “People are starving,” she breathed. “In the city.”
“I know,” he leaned against one of the supports of the porch. “Come on,” he followed the porch around to the side of the house. She could see rows of caravans arranged to this side, sunlight glinting off solar panels mounted both to the rooftops but also on poles, and strings of cords connecting them all. “Caravan city,” she noted.
“Yeah, it is where most of the pack lives. The rest of us just bunker down where-ever there’s space. I am sleeping in one of the cages under the main house, for example,” he threw her a grin over his shoulder. “With my mate.”
“You have a mate?” She was stunned. Had Alatar taken a werewolf as a mate? Had he been turned? He didn’t have the glint of Other in his eye. “Congratulations.”
“Thanks,” he said warmly. “It is very recent, and we are still waiting for the full moon to make it official.”
Behind the house, there was a large, fenced vegetable garden, an open fire-pit and a clay-made smoking oven. Verity’s mouth watered at the scent of roast meat. Various pots were on the coals around the fire pit, and these were attended to by several werewolves in leather aprons.
“Packs are very organized,” Alatar told her pausing with her to look at the activity. “When the war began, they stripped their homes, and moved out here, started planning for the long term, setting up solar collection, and planting the fields and the vegetable gardens.”
“Surely, it takes longer to grow all this than it has been,” she stared at him in shock.
“We helped it along with a little magic,” he confessed with a grin. “There are eight parcels of land like this, and each host around two hundred of the pack, and ten or so witches or warlocks that came out with me. That is why the coven is seeking me, Verity,” he told her.
“The coven split, with almost half coming with me, and the other half staying. I imagine by now, those that stayed behind are regretting their decision.”
“You divided the coven?” She stared at him aghast. She had never heard of it happening before. You were born into a coven, and either stayed with them, married into another, or became an outcast, as she was. “I would say that is why they are looking for you,” she agreed.
He chuckled. “Ah, well, such is life.” He stepped off the porch and walked towards the fire pit. “Hey, Wade,” he said to the man overseeing the cooking. “Any chance of grabbing ahead of the queue?”
The Other flashed golden in the man’s eyes as he looked up at them, and he grinned. “Sure thing, Alatar. Is this Verity?”
“Hi,” Verity was surprised that he knew her name.
“This is Wade Grenmeyer,” Alatar told her. “The lead alpha wolf of the pack. Raiden Grenmeyer is his son.”
“Ah,” Verity realized that she was looking at Ashlynn’s grandfather. Like most werewolves, Wade Grenmeyer did not look old enough to have a grown grandchild, their ageing process slowed by their Other heritage. “Nice to meet you.”
“Alatar tells us you are a healer?” Wade served her a plate of meat and roast vegetables. “Veggies might be a bit crisp. They have a bit more to go really, but my wife would tell you that they are healthier this way.”
“Thank you,” she hadn’t seen fresh vegetables in so long. “I can’t believe the day has come when fresh broccoli is a treat,” she murmured to Alatar as she followed her half-brother away from the fire pit to the porch. They sat side by side on a bench seat looking out over the idyllic farm.
“I know, right?” He grinned. “We were the same when we got the first harvest.”
People were beginning to form a queue at the fire pit. Mealtime, she realized as she watched them proceed in order, the children at the front, followed by the elderly, and then through to the adults. “They really are so organized,” she was impressed.
“Pack have inbuilt structure, everyone knows their place and position, and they are used to obeying orders from above. Everyone contributes from the youngest cub through to the frailest elder,” he replied. “I think of all the people on this world, the packs were best positioned to survive this war. Pack mentality is no wolf left behind, provide for all, and work for the betterment of them all.”
He was so proud, she thought with amused indulgence, of his pack. “I am glad that you are happy, Alatar,” she told him.
He smiled at her. “So, mates?”
“Gargoyles,” she told him.
“Gargoyles,” his jaw dropped. “The gargoyles? Mates, indeed,” he raised his eyebrows. “Not what I imagined for you. But these things have a habit of leaving us all surprised,” he added with wry amusement.
“And a winged man,” she murmured.
Alatar was silent for a long moment. “Like Cael?”
“Yes, in a way,” she chewed the stem of a piece of broccoli. It was just crunchy, about five minutes from fully cooked, just as Wade had predicted, but she didn’t mind, the luxury of fresh vegetables made the crunch relish-able. “What do you know about why the winged people are here?”
“They are bad, we are good, they want to kill us, we want to live, and everyone is killing everyone else?” He replied flippantly as was his nature and then paused. “Well, honestly, a bit more than that. The old religion was right, we all originated from these angels or whatever they call themselves, and humans. The angels used their magic on the humans to make them Other. Witches and warlocks are from when the winged ones, you know,” he screwed up his nose. “Sowed their wild seeds.”
“Sowed their wild seeds,” Verity suppressed her smile without much success. “You sound so much like dad.”
“Hmm, a conversation topic for another time,” he chewed thoughtfully. “According to Cael, there was a big fight because half the population wanted to get rid of humans and slaves completely, and the other half relied on them for their dirty work, and their compromise was to move most of us to this realm and shut it off, keeping only a few slaves in their realm who chose to remain with them.”
“Apparently they have these annual games,” she told him. “Where anyone who can’t afford to pay the fine, has to send someone from their family to participate. The open portals into the various realms, and those people have to go in through one portal, survive whatever obstacle that world has, and find the other portal to exit. This year, they opened this realm.
“They use these games to keep the people on the other realms weak. They call it a cull. My mate, Charon,” she fidgeted with her plate. Charon might never be hers, but she didn’t want to have to explain that to Alatar. “His family couldn’t afford the fine, so he was sent to fight. He didn’t make it to the exit.”
Alatar sighed heavily and scanned his eyes over the werewolves who ate in groups where-ever there was shade to sit in. “I have killed more than my share of them,” he said very quietly. “And I will probably have to kill more. Don’t make them people to me, Verity, please. It will make it harder to do what I must, perhaps cause me to hesitate rather than strike, and that hesitation might cost me someone that I love.”
“They are people,” she told him. “Victims of their own society.”
“And beneficiaries of it too,” he told her firmly. “That is how it works, after all. They are at the top of the food chain across all of the realms, and they ensure it, from the sounds of it, by launching surprise attacks upon us all.”
A young werewolf, just into adulthood, came and collected their plates with furtive glances at Alatar as he did so. She knew that look, and knew it indicated that the pack considered Alatar to be high in its hierarchy. “You are important to the pack,” she observed.
“Ah,” Alatar shrugged flushing. “I am not an alpha, have never been that type of person, but the pack finds me useful, so that doesn’t matter so much. And it doesn’t matter to Rune that I am not alpha,” his lips curled in humour. “He says he is alpha enough for two.”
“You belong here,” Verity found herself smiling, her heart warmed by his joy.
“Yeah,” he agreed. “I guess I always knew I was meant to be with the pack. I loved Tara, but we weren’t mates. I never fully understood what that meant, until I met Rune.”
“Where is he?” She wondered.
“We run cattle,” he said. “Rune is a bit high energy to stay close to the house during the day, so he tends to go out with the herd, keep an eye on it, do what they need to do with them. He will be back with dusk.”
“I would like to meet him,” she said. “But I really do need to go… home,” she said it with a sense of surprise. She needed to get back to her gargoyles and Charon, and where they were was home, she realized. “I need to go home, Alatar, before they get themselves into trouble.”