Phantom Fangs: The Lost Princess of Howling Sky Prologue Read online

  “How much longer?” I asked. Huh, turned out I was the kid here.

  “As long as it takes,” Caspian replied with the perfect I’m-apparently-the-only-adult-here tone. “We went to the trouble of doing this, so we’re giving Todd as much time as he needs.”

  “Yeah, all right,” I muttered.

  Jobe would have to wait or leave and then try to meet with me again the next chance he got. There wasn’t anything I could do about it. It was unfortunate I couldn’t find a way to cure my boredom, though. Lying around and sleeping only worked so long before my body and mind rebelled, and they were in full-on rebellion mode.

  I turned to a big oak tree and unsheathed my knife from my combat belt. I absentmindedly shaved away at the spongy green moss bulging from its bark at first. Then I started cutting deep into the trunk, chipping away at the wood. I wasn’t really into defacing trees for no gods damn reason, but there was this restlessness itching its way just underneath my skin. Without a task to accomplish, I was reduced to this state of purposelessness until I could get back on task. I didn’t like waiting, but I’d do it for my purpose, the greater good, the white against the black. Still, I was a better warrior than a spy, and I was better use as a spy than a dead man.

  “You’ll ruin your knife if you keep chipping at it like that. It’s not an axe, dipshit, and that trunk is thicker than you are.” Aerre commented, the condescending tone of his voice was omnipresent. Also, he was still slaving away, polishing every damn one of our weapons he could get his anxious hands on. He didn’t do well with sitting around either. No, it wasn’t that. He didn’t deal with being away from Wolf Bridge for an extended period of time. A couple days away and he started with these tics.

  In most cases, I found it best to ignore Aerre. Getting caught in an endless loop of quips with him was just that: endless. But I didn’t have anything better to do right now.

  “I know you’re just jealous,” I said and flexed my right arm to show off my bicep. As far as muscle mass went, I beat everyone here. Ironically, that didn’t make me the strongest. It made me strongest when moonlight wasn’t involved but when it was, the winner in physical strength went to Caspian. It sounded like a bad deal, but moonlight had its limits. Our hierarchy wasn’t as unfair as it seemed at a glance—unless you factored in the part about me being tethered to the Phantom Prince.

  “Why don’t you tell us the real reason why you’re cutting through that poor, defenseless tree?” Aerre suggested. “It’s because you can’t contact your agitator buddies out here, isn’t it? How long have you been in contact with them? Ever since Caspian changed you into a tethered and let you join this team? How do you do it? Do you sneak out?”

  Caspian let out a heavy sigh. “Not this again.”

  Aerre jabbed a finger in his direction. It was such a severe gesture, I almost wondered if Caspian could feel it from across the camp. “You need to stop brushing this off like it’s some kind of non-issue. Why do you act like you trust him? He’s a monster, and you never should have made him part of this squad in the first place! He’s an enemy of Wolf Bridge. He’s agitator scum, from the same line of misled humans who almost burned the whole fucking world to ash!”

  Whoa, he’s really going for it tonight, I thought to myself.

  And I was right. He got up from his seat on that damn rock he claimed and stormed over to me with clenched fists. That kind of aggression meant one thing to me. I sheathed my knife and readied my stance. As soon as he was within range, I punched him square in the jaw with deadly precision. He didn’t see it coming and went down easy. Maybe I misread his body language. Maybe he wasn’t coming over here for a round of fisticuffs at all. I should have known. He probably just wanted to yell and spit in my face, though it would have been more hilarious than anything since he would have had to get on his tiptoes to do it.

  “Aerre,” Caspian growled, “to me.” His dark eyes lit up in that blazing blue glow that meant he was using moonlight and his rank as Aerre’s maker in order to command absolute obedience.

  Aerre rose from the ground the same way I would have imagined a corpse popping out of its grave. He stumbled over to Caspian before straightening out. His head was slightly bowed in submission and his eyes mirrored that intense blue in the eyes of his alpha—our alpha. Then Caspian turned his gaze on me. My muscles seized the same instant. It was like my body was crumpling inside of itself or being forced to straighten after being crumpled. It was a painful sensation however I tried to spin it.

  “Explain yourself,” he ordered.

  “Thought he was going to swing at me. Made the first move,” I replied. My tongue was heavy and my words clipped.

  “Fine.” The blue in Caspian’s eyes subsided, leaving only the dark brown of his natural eye color behind.

  My lungs begged for air and I sucked in a huge breath of cold. It froze my insides and made me cough.

  “I don’t want you two anywhere near each other for the rest of the night,” Caspian said.

  That was fine with me. I turned my back on my fucking squad and went back to dulling the blade of my knife against that thick-ass oak.

  Amazingly, I didn’t hate Aerre, but I sure as hell didn’t understand him. It wasn’t like he belonged to this werewolf squad any more than I did. If his head was screwed on straight, he would have been part of the rebels too. But he chose to side with werewolves. He chose black, I chose white, and that was all there was to it.

  Chapter 3

  Aerre

  I GINGERLY RUBBED MY jaw and winced as I sat back on the rock that was getting on very bad terms with my ass. Rodrick really went for it. That was the first time he actually laid a hand on me—or a fist in this case. Usually, he shot me his annoying grins or flat-out ignored me despite everything I did to try to rile him up and prove my point. All in all, I considered the punch an accomplishment. I figured it was one step closer to revealing the agitator’s true colors. He took the first swing. He did it. There was a reason I didn’t start any fist fights with the brute, and those reasons didn’t include the fact that the tattooed and scarred tethered was a boulder in the form of a man.

  My jaw had a welt on it, though.

  “Here. It’ll help the swelling.”

  I looked over my shoulder to see Caspian holding one of our water flasks. It was plenty cold out here already, but the object called out to me, and I took it. The instant the nearly freezing metal hit my jaw, I winced again. Then relief slowly washed through my system as I steeled myself to endure the discomfort—after wrapping the flask up in my scarf to make the cold less intense. When I looked over my shoulder again, Caspian was still standing there.

  “Go away,” I said.

  He looked down at me, hands hidden in the pockets of his coat. “A squad, a team, doesn’t work unless we trust each other.”

  I rolled my eyes. I liked it better when Caspian was the annoying werewolf kid trying to become my “best friend.” He didn’t give lectures back then. Lectures didn’t suit him.

  I glanced at the misfits in our “team.” There was Rodrick who wasn’t really part of this team because he was an agitator. Once an agitator, always an agitator. There was Todd with his head buried so deep in tech he never came up for air. There was Caspian, the Phantom Prince, basically shunned by his own species when it came to his birthright. Then, of course, there was me, tethered and hater of werewolves, serving werewolves more than willingly, serving Caspian. We were a bad mix in terms of camaraderie but when it came to getting things done, we were the best of the best. That was the thing that kept this team together. We all had a goal here, and that goal included acing our missions. For now. But I was determined to keep it that way.

  “We seem to be doing just fine,” I commented. Then I lowered my voice to make sure only Caspian would hear my next words. “And we’ll continue to do just fine because that’s what keeps my mother and sister safe. I’ll make you see the problem with Rodrick soon enough.”

  “I’m sitting,” Caspian r
eplied. I couldn’t figure out why he said it. It was almost like he was asking if that was okay with me, but he also wasn’t asking. He plopped right down on the grass next to my rock.

  “You know I’m indebted to you for everything you did,” I said quietly “I won’t sabotage Phantom Fangs. My goal is to keep it running.” I gritted my teeth. “So yeah, maybe I’ve been a little out of line, but it’s hard being away from Wolf Bridge for this long. It wouldn’t be if he was dead.”

  “I know,” Caspian murmured, “but Zecke hasn’t gone near your sister since then. It’s been years. The king wasn’t pleased. I know that’s not enough, but I truly don’t believe Zecke will try anything again. King Philip ve Casst’s words tend to be taken seriously.”

  “But he’s still breathing. I know you’re not that naive and you’re just trying to make me feel better, but you, Prince Caspian ve Casst, know better than that.”

  “You’re right. I’m sorry. I should have put the mongrel down when I had the chance.”

  “You still could. You’d be pardoned. The king must put one of his sons, even the Phantom Prince, above a lowly guard, but we’re all too comfortable with what’s familiar. That’s why Phantom Fangs will never be anything but the king’s dark horse.”

  Caspian went silent. He stared at the grass in front of him for a full minute before standing up. He clapped me on the shoulder. “I think it’s about time to call it a night.”

  I watched his back as he walked away. It was dark as dark out here, but I managed to see everything I needed to in the form of their basic shapes. If I really needed to see, I could delve into my moonlight reserves, but turning in for the night was probably the best thing to do right now.

  I never used the word “friend” when referring to Caspian. I didn’t know what Caspian was to me. Was he a friend, my alpha, my prince? I did know I trusted him as much as I could bring myself to trust anyone outside of my mother and sister. Maybe I even trusted him as much because I knew him before this. I knew him when he was this five-year-old cub sneaking out of the castle and following me around at seven years old because he was so determined to become my “best friend.” He was unlike any werewolf I had ever known, but I did my best to ignore him since werewolves and humans couldn’t be friends. Since werewolves couldn’t be trusted. I was convinced Prince Caspian ve Casst was trying to lead me into some kind of trap. It didn’t help that Howling Sky went up in flames around the same time. But he wasn’t. He was just being Caspian. At one point, I recognized that, and we did become friends, hidden friends since no one would have approved.

  Maybe I was starting to see werewolves differently, as more than terrifying masters I would be wise not to anger. I saw Caspian differently after a while. Because he treated me differently. Then I was reminded why werewolves couldn’t be trusted at the age of seventeen. I was reminded of the kind of beasts they were when that bastard did the unspeakable.

  My sister was always a beauty, but she only grew more beautiful as she became a woman. Zecke, a guard stationed in the Human Zone, or the politically correct Tech Off Zone, of Wolf Bridge had his eye on my sister for some time. He wasn’t allowed to touch her, but he wanted to. Humans, werewolves, and vampires were all different species that couldn’t interbreed. There were no human/werewolf hybrids or anything like that, but that didn’t mean sex wasn’t apparently pleasurable between the different species. We looked similar enough, were built similar enough, that there were many cases like my sister’s.

  Wolf Bridge claimed to be shields as of thirteen years ago. It would have been noble, perhaps, but they were never maneaters to begin with. Maneaters did whatever they wanted to their humans because they were meat. If they wanted to rape their food and then eat it, they did. Zecke didn’t eat my sister, but he did rape her. He hurt her and scarred her forever.

  I wanted him dead. I lost it when I found out what happened right along with Caspian. I would have gotten my whole family killed trying to kill Zecke if Caspian hadn’t been there. Caspian took the diplomatic approach, spoke with the king, and managed to get Zecke exiled from the Tech Off Zone. I realized Caspian saved our lives. I realized humans weren’t equal to werewolves even among shields and Caspian did the only thing he knew how to protect us from Zecke and myself. But it did nothing to ease the hatred festering inside of me. And yet, I couldn’t kill Zecke or my mother and sister would pay the price. So I bowed down to the werewolves. I became their dog, Caspian’s tethered, to keep my family okay.

  I wished I could do more, but being a part of Phantom Fangs and watching over them at night to make sure Zecke never returned was the extent of my capabilities. I couldn’t truly save them because I didn’t have that kind of power, and I never would as an individual. But Caspian did, or he would. I risked everything on that, on the belief I had in a werewolf who once got me to call him a “friend.”

  Chapter 4

  Todd

  CREATING MY OWN REMOTE access point into any of the four spires was proving to be more difficult than I had anticipated since no one in this world used a universal tech field. Every piece of tech from a different area was built on the same principles, but anything wireless was all floating on different wavelengths. I liked a challenge, but I was getting tired, frustrated tired. I had the suicidal notion of storming into Paws Peak and knocking on a spire door so I could tap into their system locally. The technical side of hacking their system would be easy then, but dangerous physically. No, I needed to improve my tech field. I could beat this challenge, and it would give us the tactical advantage. Not that I cared about that. I only wanted to improve my tech.

  I rubbed my eyes with the back of my hand, a bad idea. My eyelids felt like sandpaper. Gods, I was tired. And jumpy. I nearly jumped out of my skin when the driver door of the roader I was camped in swung open.

  “Time to give it a rest, don’t you think?” Caspian asked as he rested against the open door.

  “I’m almost done,” I muttered. I glued my eyes back onto my pactputer’s screen and searched through my lines of code to see what I was missing.

  “You’ll do better after you’ve had some sleep.”

  Maybe he was right. “Fine. I recorded a bunch of chatter by the way.”

  “You did? Why didn’t you say anything? I thought the bugs were sitting quietly on their parked roader. Were they taken to different areas inside of the city?”

  “Yes.”

  “Should have had Aerre and Rodrick actively listening in on that stuff. It would have given those two nutcases something to do.”

  “I didn’t think about that. That would have been an efficient use of time…”

  Caspian shook his head and had this sort of humorous smile on his face. At least, I thought it was meant to be humorous. I wasn’t good at reading into someone’s body language. “Todd, you’re the smartest guy I know, but you can be unbelievably dense sometimes.”

  “I’ve been letting the recordings play as background noise through my commsbud while I work,” I said, feeling attacked “Most of it is just senseless chatter. Rodrick and Aerre would have gotten bored anyway.”

  “That wasn’t a jab or a threat, Todd. No need to get defensive. But we are a team. I think you forget that sometimes. It’s okay to rely on us once in a while…”

  Caspian was still talking. I was staring at his mouth as if that would help me read his words while simultaneously tuning him out. I had just finished telling him about how there was nothing interesting in the chatter I was picking up, but one line suddenly became very interesting. I turned to my pactputer and singled out a specific feed, the one where I heard the words “the Lost Princess of Howling Sky.”

  “Shut up,” I said, interrupting Caspian’s monologue.

  He raised a dark eyebrow at me, but he listened. I ripped out the commsbud from my ear and turned up the sound on my pactputer. The thin slits on its sides were homes for decent speakers.

  “Think King George lost his mind?” a male’s voice came through. “Sounds far-f
etched.”

  “He’ s the fucking king of Paws Peak, dumbass. He hasn’t lost his mind. You remember the story as well as I do. Everyone does,” another male replied. “And now we know the Lost Princess survived.”

  “Aerre, Rodrick, get your asses over here!” Caspian yelled.

  One more male chimed into the conversation being played through my pactputer as Aerre and Rodrick joined us at the roader. “Yeah, but to think she’s been living with that witch for the last, what, eighteen years? That’s crazy. The Witch Woods are the only thing untouched in the badlands. It’s unnatural. I think I liked it better when the Lost Princess was just a legend.”

  “Are you insane? This changes everything. A werea, the werea, eighteen years old, perfect for mating, is alive. She’s perfect for Prince Charles. Paws Peak has won the war.”

  “I don’t see how a single werea of mating age changes everything.”

  “Gods, why do I have to spell out every single fucking thing? She changes everything because she’s the Moonlight Child. Did you forget that?”

  “But she’s an individual, not an army. And a werea.”

  “What he said.”

  “That werea, if the legends are true, which they must fucking be, is like the embodiment of moonlight. Who knows what kind of power she has?”

  “Still sounds weird to me.”

  “Fuck what you think. We set out for the badlands and those damn Witch Woods on the last day of winter. We need to be there bright and early on the first day of spring to pick up our new princess.”

  “Prince Charles and King George don’t want to do it themselves?”

  “Well, there’s still the chance of it not panning out, isn’t there, my little dummies? Of course the fucking king and his favorite son aren’t going!”

  Everything went silent after that explosive ending to what had to be the craziest conversation I had been privy to in my entire life. The Lost Princess was real? The witch herself contacted the Paws Peak king? How? Did she use tech? I had so many questions and no answers to any of them.