Chapter 12
Angel continued to shove snacks at me while we watched the screens. I admit to thinking TFW would be more intense, but we’d been at it less than eight hours. Twice my cake vanished, though I was certain I hadn’t eaten it all.
“Are you eating my cake?” I asked Angel, a little grumpy from the boredom.
“No. But I have more cake.” He opened a cooler sitting behind his chair and grabbed another box, setting it beside my plate on the console between our seats.
I sighed and pushed the plate aside, annoyed that nothing was happening, even while paranoid of something happening. “Is it always this quiet?”
Angel glared at me. “You know you just cursed us, right?”
“I didn’t take you as the superstitious sort.”
“I’m a shifter mated to a necromancer; it’s part of the package.”
I laughed lightly, keeping my voice down, aware that Wade and Tiana were in the bunks, Ezra sprawled out on the bench, and Remi curled in one of the chairs, Bobby in the other, all asleep.
“But really, what should I expect? We spent all of last week running into buildings to rescue people. It feels a little anticlimactic to be staring at unmoving screens like a mall security guard.”
“Our objective is to keep things from crossing the tear.”
“But part of it goes through the building. Shouldn’t we be monitoring inside too?”
“NHVs take lead on this side,” Angel said after a long minute.
“The last team cleared the building, so we only have to keep things out.” He stared at the monitors for a long minute.
“Often, we’ll get a callout while parked near a tear to investigate an area, clear an area, or rescue someone who tripped through the Veil, like you did on our first case together.
It might be quiet now, but it never stays that way.
It’s not usually dangerous.” He shrugged.
“Sometimes it’s total chaos, but that’s rare. Probably a few times a year.”
I reached over to open the new box of cake and was surprised to find the box empty, frosting smeared on the bottom as if it had been scraped clean. “Uh...”
Angel snatched the box, turning it over. “What the fuck?” He craned around his seat, as if the cake had teleported onto the floor. I checked behind me too, though we both knew it hadn’t fallen. Nothing.
Then—thud. A weight dropped into my lap, and I nearly launched out of my seat. “Holy fuck!”
Supernatural Flocks and How to Herd Them stared up at me, a tome thick enough to be used as a doorstop.
Before I could react, a whisper of fur brushed my cheek—Nox, streaking past in that invisible-to-everyone-but-us way of his.
He landed in Angel’s lap, swiped the half-eaten slice of cake Angel had left on his armrest, and vanished again, leaving only a warm tingle against my spine where his tail had flicked me.
Angel blinked at the space where his cake had been. Then at me.
I raised my hands. “You said he was better off with me than Ivan.”
“I didn’t say he could commit grand theft dessert.”
I glared at the book. “Not sure this’ll help the boredom. And Nox?” I added, louder, “Stop. Stealing. Our. Cake.”
Silence. Then, from behind me, a tiny, frosting-scented burp as he returned to tattoo mode after stealing my food.
“Little brat,” I muttered as I flipped through the book, glancing back and forth from the screens to the text. The pages were a chaotic mix of handwritten notes and suspicious illustrations. A few standout chapter headers glared back at me.
“Chapter 4: Spectral Sheep: Don’t Follow the Crowd”
“Chapter 7: Invisible Geese: Steer Clear of Gang Fights”
“Chapter 16: Polter-Pigeons: Urban Warfare Tactics”
“This is the most ridiculous book yet. And yet there are no chapters on turkeys. Do you have any idea how vicious turkeys are?”
Angel leaned over, squinting at a diagram of a goat standing over a black void. “Supernatural goats are demon spawn and will lead you to the edge of a cliff.”
“Great. Stay away from goats in pajamas on this side, duly noted.”
Angel flipped through the chapters. “Nothing on fae dragons who hoard weird books and steal desserts.”
“Figures,” I said, settling into my seat, tummy grumbling and annoyed with the lack of activity.
Angel handed over another box, this time with a sandwich. “He seems to only steal sweets.”
I gripped the box, feeling the heft of it and waiting for some reaction from my parasite pest, and when he didn’t move, I wolfed down the food.
Who knew magic could supercharge a guy’s metabolism.
I skimmed the text, flipping the pages and studying the pictures between watching the screens.
A time or two I paused to stare at a particular monitor, feeling as if there was some sort of movement I’d missed, but after a time it began to feel like it was in my head.
A couple hours passed that way. Silent. Boring, with occasional tugs of something I couldn’t explain. My power recognizing something passing by but not close enough to see? Or my imagination. Angel said nothing, occasionally reaching over to touch me absently.
I flipped through the book twice but ended up setting it aside to focus on the top right screen that projected a view from behind the NHV vehicle and nothing but darkness. From time to time a ball of light would flicker by, never consistent or close.
An energy hummed under my skin, growing slowly, my magic alert. Recharging or sensing something? The thermal feed showed nothing. Why did I feel on edge?
“What?” Angel whispered, not glancing my way.
“Huh?”
“You’re fidgeting. And it’s not boredom.”
“Nothing,” I said, unable to articulate a reason. But I sat with my hands clenched on the sides of the chair, feeling as if we stood before a thunderstorm, magic coiling with a weight of anticipation. Another flickering light in the distance on the screen made my pulse pick up a beat.
Another flicker, closer this time.
Then another.
My gut flipped over with worry as that chill of energy uncoiled within me. Like it knew what was coming and welcomed it. Something dead.
“Uh...” I tried to form a coherent thought to alert Angel, but then a whole nightmare flock appeared. Black blobs of fluffy dark clouds drifted around us as if it were fog, though I knew it wasn’t.
The alarm blared to life, red lights strobing across the cabin.
Ezra jolted upright from the bench, hand already on his weapon.
Remi threw himself out of the chair as if dodging a bullet, and both Wade and Tiana burst from the bunks, wary and barely awake as Angel and I stared through the windshield at the endless wave of floating puffs.
Bobby slipped up behind my chair, gaze focused beyond into the darkness, as he reached over and silenced the alarm.
“What the hell?” Ezra growled.
Dark spots glided through the darkness in a slow, deliberate march surrounding both vehicles as if they’d appeared there.
As the feed sharpened, shapes emerged, hundreds, maybe thousands of them.
Skeletal, warped things in the vague form of sheep, with opaque hides stretched over jutting bones and empty hollows where eyes should’ve been.
Mist curled around their limbs like smoke rising from the earth.
They moved silently. Graceful. Hypnotic. Drawn toward the tear.
“Ghost herd,” Victor’s voice came over the radio. “We’ll need to keep them away from the tear.”
“And not follow them,” I said, recalling the book, which had once again vanished.
Everyone glanced my way.
“They hypnotize people and lead you to the River of the Dead.”
“We’ve been doing this for years and never encountered them. How do you know what they are?” Ezra demanded.
“Lots of studying,” I said, leaving the secret books and fae dragon unspoken between Angel and me.
“We’ll need to herd them away from the tear,” Angel said, jumping from his seat and heading to the back to grab the rest of his gear.
“Right, like that was in our job description packet,” Remi grumbled.
I snapped up my sidearm and my helmet, heading for the door. “Don’t look them in the eye, and don’t follow them.” The second I stepped out with Angel hot on my tail, my magic zinged with energy, and the herd swayed silently, creepy. Like they’d been waiting for me.
Victor and Kerry were the first out of their vehicle, with Clark, Waites, Gomez, and Tank, geared up and ready.
“The fuck?” Kerry asked.
Even the NHVs had never encountered a nightmare like this before.
“Rookie says ghost herd leads people to the River of the Dead,” Ezra said. “That right?”
“Yes, but they are rarely unguided,” Victor sounded annoyed.
What did that mean?
“Noise will startle them away from the tear,” he added. “But move fast before the Shepherd shows up.”
Wouldn’t it have been better to wait for a shepherd? Why hadn’t that been in the book? If we got through this in one piece, I was going to demand Nox give me back the book to add notes in the margin.
“The Shepherd often sweeps along more than just the herd,” Victor added as we spread out in pairs, making noise to keep the beasts from wandering off, though they stuck together like giant dust bunnies, soundless, soulless, and eerie.
“Creepy,” I muttered.
Then the herd shifted.
A dozen skeletal sheep broke formation, drifting toward Tiana. Her flashlight beam cut through them like smoke, but she stared, entranced instantly.
“T,” Kerry called, as she lunged and yanked Tiana away. Tiana flailed for a half second before shaking off the compulsion.
“Sorry,” she breathed.
“Don’t stare directly at them,” Victor repeated. He whipped off his belt and snapped it in the air, which startled a dozen of the dark clouds to rejoin their brethren.
Wade stood oddly still about thirty feet away, and I reached for him, instinct driving my magic into the herd like a lash, which cracked, and the sheep surrounding him fled. A second later Bobby tugged Wade back to our side.
“It’s too easy to be caught,” Angel said, his back to mine. And the sheep were endless, stretching into the distance in the thousands.
“Eyes down,” I snapped as the rest of the group joined us in a circle, protecting each other’s backs. The shield around the barrier sizzled and zapped as the sheep approached, seeming drawn to it as though bugs to a zapper.
“Why are they...” My voice faltered.
The entire herd went still, skulls tilted toward something in the distance.
The air thickened, pressing against my eardrums like a sudden change in altitude.
At the edge of the field, the darkness warped, folding in on itself until a figure emerged, tall, draped in a tattered woolen cloak that seemed to drink in the moonlight.
His face was hidden beneath the hood, but I felt his gaze like a physical weight.
My magic stirred, as if recognizing an old, inevitable song.
He was tall, draped in a mantle of what looked like woven night and bones.
Antlers curled from a hood that covered his face, and in one hand he held a crook that shimmered with veins of cold blue light.
Death incarnate, or as Victor had called him, the Shepherd.
The Shepherd took a single step forward, and the ghost sheep parted, their skeletal bodies bowing like grass in the wind. He moved silently, his cloak whispering against the ground, though no feet were visible beneath it.
Everyone froze.
Then the Shepherd turned toward me. His attention heavy and ancient.
He stared at me, and I waited with a thick sense of dread and kinship at the same time. Worried he’d attack or turn the sheep on us, his presence whispering power unlike I’d ever imagined, but also, strangely enough, calm.
After a long moment, he nodded, then turned, crook swinging with effortless grace, and the herd followed, shifting in perfect formation behind him.
Like one body with a thousand legs. They moved away from the Veil tear, deeper into the dark beyond the line of trees.
And then, without fanfare or sound, they vanished.
Gone with a pop of pressure that made me stagger back a step. Angel stepped into my space, his shoulder brushing mine, solid, warm, alive. His voice was all lazy amusement, but his fingers curled possessively around my wrist. “You said you wanted a more interesting assignment.”
I glared at him. “Next time I complain, just gag me.”
“Don’t tempt me,” Angel growled in my ear, which made me uncomfortably hard.
Ezra made a disgusted noise. “Do you two ever stop?”
But everyone else laughed, and I guess for the moment, since we were all alive, I’d take their laughter over the Shepherd’s silence any day.