Shifting Shadows

Chapter 2

Lillianna awoke with a start, sitting up in her bed. Looking around her room, she placed her hand over her racing heart as the last cobwebs of her vision let go of her mind. Part of her was comforted to find herself in a familiar place, yet another part felt sad knowing that, when she looked outside, she would only see her normal yard, in her normal neighborhood, in her normal world. Her brows pinched a little in confusion.

That vision wasn’t a normal vision for her. She only got visions every once in a great while, usually having to do with someone who needed the help of her people, the Guardians. The Guardians were a race of shifters; wolves, big cats, foxes, basically any decently sized predators filled their ranks. A long time ago, just as man began walking on this world, the Guardians had existed in a world of their own, until the darkness came. A darkness full of demons, to be exact. The demons and the darkness had taken over their world, killing and torturing her people for their own sick pleasures, until only 300 of their kind remained. Eslios be praised, for He had opened a portal between worlds for the last of them to escape to, though the darkness had been nipping at their heels even as they ran to the safety of this world. The remnant had been able to escape by mere inches, but it was enough.

Legend said they only became shifters once they escaped into this world, but through the ages since, so many details of what had come before were lost to them. Thus, they had no idea what they were before they were rescued by Eslios, who had then granted them their ability to shift and given them the charge of guarding the far more mortal humans to which He had given this world from the evils that roamed here. As Guardians, they fought against rogue vampires, evil witches, and the spawn of the demons who had mated with human women to create ruthless, disgusting, gigantic monsters known as the Nephilim. And though only 300 of their kind had escaped their last world, in the ages since, due to extended lifespans of up to 200-300 years, their population had grown to around half the population of humans. However, in order to keep the population low enough to keep from being too noticeable to the humans, the Guardians could only reproduce with the mate chosen for them by Eslios, and they could only conceive a limited number of times once they’d found that mate.

Lily stretched and yawned, eyeing the clock on the bedside table. It was only six thirty in the morning, but though she still felt exhausted, there was an energy to her that told her it would be useless to try to continue sleeping. With a groan, she hauled her tired body out of bed and shuffled through her small, one bedroom house and into her tiny kitchen. Though it was only a small guesthouse on her parents’ 20 acre property, it was a damn sight better than trying to rent an even tinier, crappier apartment in Fort Collins, the closest city to her current residence, and for a heck of a lot more than she was paying for rent here. There was a smaller town a few miles away, but Fort Collins rent prices had already caused the rentals in Wellington to soar as well. She shook her head as she went about prepping her coffee and making some toast.

Ever since Colorado had legalized m*******a, it seemed like everyone and their mother simply HAD to move here, and everyone else got to pay for it. Luckily for her, her parents owned land and had already had a guesthouse built on it. Then again, she had a sneaking suspicion they’d had it built just in case she needed a place to stay. Not because they thought she was useless, or couldn’t make it on her own, but because they had gone through plenty of hard times at her age, and had wanted to make sure she had a decent option, no matter what the economy and job market looked like.

As it was, she was doing decently for herself as a freelance writer. It was perfect, she’d always loved writing and it worked well around her duties as a Guardian, since she could be called upon at any time danger happened to encroach upon her pack’s territory. The Blue Moon pack had a decent amount of territory, covering the Front Range from the northern border of Colorado to just before Boulder, and from halfway into the Rocky Mountains in the west to the border of Weld County in the east. In comparison to other pack territories, it was pretty standard, since their pack population also hit the median range at 5,000 members.

Once again, Lily wondered why they used the term “pack” instead of terms like “clan”, since they weren’t all wolves, not by a long shot. It was actually quite rare to have a “pack” of Guardians that were all the same kind of shifter, much less just wolves. Her own “pack” held quite a bit of diversity. Granted, most of them shifted into animals most often found in the area, but they had mountain lions, foxes, eagles, wolves (which had confused the humane a few times before wolves had been reintroduced to the area, but, luckily, sightings of the wolf shifters in the area had been few and far between, as Guardians were a careful people), and even a few snakes, just to name a few.

She knew that one of the factors of their diversity was the fact that their shifter animal wasn’t solely determined by genetics. Genetics could play a small part, giving the shifter a nudge towards a particular animal, but what it really came down to was the spirit journey every shifter took part in on their thirteenth birthday.

The spirit journey took place in whatever sacred area the pack had. She knew some packs had a sacred area around a waterfall, some had a stretch of desert, rainforest, etc. Theirs was a cave deep in the wilderness of their beloved mountains. These places were only used often by the Shamans of the packs, but there were certain occasions, like the blessing of a new shifter child, the mating ceremony, the blessing of the new Alpha and, of course, the spirit journey, where the pack would gather there.

Of course, the spirit journey was a little different than other occasions. Only the family of the burgeoning shifter would gather, along with the Alphas and the Shamans, at the sacred place the night before. Everyone would remain outside the cave, except the new shifter, who, after being blessed by the Shamans, would enter alone. What happened to them inside was a mystery known only to them and Eslios, for the strict rule was not to speak of ones sacred journey.

She closed her eyes as she remembered her own. She’d been shaking as she’d walked in, uncertain of the future. The second she had stepped inside, it had been as if the cave opening itself had suddenly disappeared, and she’d been plunged into a darkness like she’d never seen before. Fear had coursed through her veins, her heart trembling as she struggled to put one foot on front of the other, arms shaking as she raised them in front of her to make sure she didn’t walk face first into a hard stone wall.

She’d heard almost nothing except a small drip-drip sound from somewhere in front of her. She went on like that for who knows how long, before she suddenly felt the need to stop and stay where she was. For some reason, she still couldn’t figure out why, she’d freely the need to call Eslios’ name, which came out on a trembling whisper.

Suddenly, with a loud WHOOSH, a flame flickered to life almost five feet in front of her. She blinked rapidly, trying to get her eyes used to the sudden light after all that darkness. Finally, she could begin to see her surroundings.

Oddly enough, the ground surrounding the fire want’t the stone ground of the cave she’d been expecting. Rather, it was what looked like grass. She looked up and saw that, instead of the cave walls that should’ve surrounded her, there were a few trees in an otherwise open view. She could even just make out the view of mountains a way away. And, wait, was that moonlight illuminating them? She looked up, gasping as she took in the starlit night, a full moon bathing her in it’s silvery light.

“I thought you might prefer this to a dark cave.” She had jumped at the sound of a man’s voice, tone gentle and slightly amused. She snapped her head down, staring in surprise at the man sitting on the before her. He was more than beautiful, yet she couldn’t think of a description that would do him justice. His hair was long and luxurious, an incredible black color. His eyes seemed blue at first glance, but as she stared into them, she realized they seemed to somehow be every color, changing from one second to the next. He was olive skinned, and, though he looked young, he had a power and presence to him that made him seem ancient.

He stood gracefully, a gentle smile on his face, as he said, “I understand this all must be quite shocking to you. However, we must get started. Please, come and take a seat with me.” He reached out his hand to her, and she tentatively placed her own within his, jumping a little as the power he held within himself jolted through her. Before she could even ask what that was, his smile seemed to grow wider, his eyes alight as he responded to her unasked question, “Do not worry, my power will not harm you. What went through you just now was only a small fraction of the power I hold, a fraction I sent into you to help you awaken your animal spirit.”

She nodded, her eyes still wide and her mouth still unresponsive. That mere drip of power had filled her whole body, and it had almost seemed as if it had finally made her complete, as though she’d never noticed something missing within her until it was filled just now.

The man guided her to a seat on a rock next to the one he’d been sitting on, and supported her as she sat gingerly on it. The man sat down again, his body turned towards her. “Well, shall we get started, then?”