Chapter Five
Ekon
Ekon picked up his pace with the voice in his head urging him, and all the while doing his best not to get lost in his thoughts about who the voice belonged to.
Exerting himself in this way was easy, years of training and his animals gave him super strength.
Only it was more difficult than usual to get all his limbs to coordinate when his body could power a whole damn city the way his cells were dancing under his skin.
He could feel each and every one. Moving. Changing. Morphing.
Morphing into what?
Christ, what the fuck was wrong with him?
He shook off the stupid notion. Yet, it clung on with a certainty that made his gut churn.
He’d been changed before—painfully. Was this something the scientists had done to him, and it was a delayed reaction of some kind?
It was possible, he supposed. They weren’t sure how it all worked, and Ekon wasn’t a scientist or a sadistic fuck despite what he’d done for a living.
Far as he was concerned those he’d killed had deserved it, and as he didn’t know different, he’d stopped dwelling on such things when they couldn’t be changed.
What they’d done to him couldn’t be changed either, and his thoughts circled back to whether this was a delayed reaction to something that happened years earlier.
Anything was possible, he’d learned that the painful way. Had seen what Conrad could become.
Was he going to be like that? All animals inside him coming out as one? Fuck, he hoped not. He’d freaked out the one time he’d seen Conrad like that.
You are the keeper of all.
Will you stop that shit or explain properly! Ekon snapped back, his boot catching on a large root with the unwanted distraction and forcing him to slow or face plant a tree. He evened out his breathing and slowed his pace. Fuck the voice. Fuck the urgency. He was in control.
You are the keeper—
I heard you the first time. And back was the urgency, a physical pull forcing Ekon to return to super-fast speed, running through the forest faster than the eye could track, the need to get to the bunker his sole focus—or whatever was urging him. And something—someone—was.
He had no control over himself. None. His whole being felt a physical connection to… something. It held the cells in his body in a precision grip that left him more a passenger than the person in control.
Sweat dripped down his back from the speed he was going and the strange humidity under the canopy of the trees. Not a breath of air rustled the leaves. There was no disturbance from a critter, bird, or insect. The forest was eerily silent, even his booted feet made no sound with his speed.
Magic licked at his skin, a lover's caress. It welcomed him home. He came to such an abrupt stop, his brain and body not working in conjunction with each other; he stumbled and landed on his knees. The weight of his pack driving him into the ground, the hard impact rocking through his body. His vision wavered as he came forward, hands planting on the dirt and leaves, heaving up the small meal he’d eaten.
No.
No.
No.
This makes no damn sense, this isn’t home.
He spat on the ground, reaching to take off the pack to grab his water canteen and rinse his mouth. His hands weren’t steady as he shook his head to clear his vision, scanning the surrounding forest, looking for what he couldn’t say, but the heckles at the back of his neck were bristling.
He wasn’t alone. He sniffed subtly at the air, scenting.
The lack of breeze made it harder to scent anything other than the surrounding trees, dirt, and animal scat.
He sucked in a deep breath, shut his eyes, and opened himself up as he’d taught himself to do when going into a new environment to check for threats.
Releasing his breath slowly, he held on to his frustration when he picked up no threat… yet there was something lurking there. It wasn’t the voice’s presence, he’d lived with that for the last few months. He knew how that felt to him. This was different.
Ekon’s cells were still dancing, but now they were warming his blood in a way that suggested he was coming into a heat.
Readying his body to have sex. Although he was an alpha, they had used omega DNA to change him and in doing so, his body could be triggered into a heat if he was sexually attracted to someone.
It had only happened twice. The first time he’d been thrown, and it had stopped the sexual encounter.
The second time he’d understood what was happening, but the guy who had shown an interest hadn’t liked that Ekon was unusual so had run him before things had gotten interesting.
Ekon hadn’t bothered after that. What the hell was this now when his body was acting weird when there was no one he could see or hear?
It had to be whatever was drawing him to the bunker—didn’t it?
Sweeping the forest once more, Ekon stored his water canteen, rising to pull the pack back into place. He wiped at his full lips with the back of his hand, taking a breath before he took off at a slower pace but faster than the average jogger.
He felt a jolt, like a lightning storm was in full swing, the moment he encountered where the bunker began even though he was still a few miles from where the door was concealed.
His thoughts tumbled around inside his head at how different this was to the last time he came with Magnus, Kelvin, Marvin, Ajani, and Duron.
He’d felt none of the crazy-ass stuff his body was experiencing, and he could admit it, he was weirded out by it.
By the time he reached the door and keyed in the code, Ekon’s body was acting like he’d drunk several bottles of hard liquor.
He’d done it once with Duron just to see if they could get drunk.
They hadn’t, not really, but there’d been some hellish lack of co-ordination that had lasted a day. Very disconcerting.
The door opened silently, not a squeak, moan or groan.
He flicked the light switch on the wall by the entrance, his fingertips buzzing.
He inhaled sharply the damp scent he remembered from last time.
Except there was another smell, a stronger one…
decay. He’d smelled it often enough to know it was that of someone dying.
He froze where he was, his eyes narrowing on the long passageway in front of him. Seeing nothing, he carefully removed the pack from his back and lowered it soundlessly to the ground.
Scanning continually, he crept down the passageway, alert and feeling like he was heading to the edge of a massive cliff about to free fall without a parachute.
It was unnerving him in ways that made it hard to concentrate on finding what was setting off all the alarm bells inside him.
It was more than one thing. This he understood down to the very fiber of himself. Un-fucking-nerving!
He scanned the empty shelves and got a feeling of grief so profound he came to a shuddering stop, the sweat of his skin turning to shards of icy dread.
“You came,” a whispery voice murmured behind him.
Ekon spun around in a fast blur. His vision wavered once more.
Hair whipped into his face, obscuring his view for a brief moment.
He reached out to hold on to the closest shelf and got a bolt of electricity up his arm which glowed like a blub being switched on.
“Fuck!” he exclaimed, snatching back his hand.
“You have nothing to fear… the magic won’t harm you,” the man said in a thready voice.
Blinking, Ekon stared at the tiny… man?
He couldn’t have been more than five feet in height and weighed less than a small child he was so thin.
Thin enough that if he turned sideways, he would disappear.
His hair was longer than Ekon's and pure white, flowing over rail thin shoulders.
He was dressed in a lavender robe that made his pale skin appear gray.
It could also have been because the dude looked like a strong wind would blow him apart.
He seemed diminished somehow, and for an unknown reason this increased Ekon’s growing sense of dread. “Who are you?”
His head titled to the side in a regal move. “The original keeper of all.” His voice was a little stronger, but not by much. He lifted a boney finger pointing to the empty shelves. “They took a part of me.” The words were weighed with sadness.
Ekon frowned and took a step toward the man, unsure what that meant. Did he see these records as his? Is that what a ‘keeper of all’ is? “There are lots of records here, why would they matter?”
Sorrow, the man wore it like a cloak around him. “They all matter, as you will come to understand.”
“Stop with the cryptic crap. You’ve been plaguing my dreams—it is you, right?
” He wanted clarity, despite knowing it was.
Everything about this man tugged at that feeling he’d sensed growing inside him.
The expansion felt inevitable as he held watery blue eyes.
“What are you?” Maybe it was more important to discover that?
“I am eternal fae,” he simply said, like it answered all the questions running through Ekon’s mind.
“If you’re eternal fae, then why do you look like you’re dying?” It came out harsher than he intended, but the sense of urgency was back when the fae seemed to waver in front of Ekon’s gaze.
“The records and lost souls,” he whispered, his hand floated like a cloud of dust.
Shit.
“What does that mean?” he asked, stepping closer, heart thudding painfully hard, peering closer, convinced he could see through the fae.
“You are the keeper of all, my son, you must now hold the burden.”
The words floated as if part of the air surrounding Ekon as he dove forward to catch what became a cloud of ashes. His fingers moved through what had once been the fae, and Ekon’s eyes rolled into his skull, his vision turning white before becoming a kaleidoscope of colors.
“What the fuck did you do?” a voice growled, sending Ekon’s already overloaded system into chaos. His gaze clashed with fathomless pools of black, and his body readied itself.
Before he could process who this man—panther was—the surrounding ash cloud coated his exposed skin and sank into him, becoming part of him.
His mind became a blur of visions. A reel of images of the records filling the vast space—and it was much bigger than the eye could see—until there came devastation from what was taken.
It weighed heavily on Ekon, pressing so hard that he lost the ability to breathe.
He clawed at his throat, struggling to get to the surface, to find himself before the world turned black and he tumbled into the darkness—lost.