Wings and Shadowthief by May Sage
Losing Balance
Every part of Jack's body hurt like hell. Unless he was much mistaken, he had a couple of broken ribs, and an ache radiated from his jaw. He opened his eyes, confused and dazed.
He stood alone at the center of a deep crater. A crater that seemed to have been caused by his ass falling from the sky. Which would have been just another Tuesday for him, if he could remember flying anywhere.
He might have been more shocked, but it wasn't the first time he’d woken up confused by where he'd been, what he'd done.
With whom.
Grunting like a seventy-year-old, he got to a low crouch. Yep, his ribs had seen better days. So had his favorite jacket. As well as the expected holes at his back, to accommodate his wings, it was covered in blood. Not his, by the smell of it.
This was new. Confusion was one thing, but if he was to judge by the sheer amount of blood on his clothes, he'd killed someone tonight. And he couldn't remember a single thing about it.
What the fuck had happened?
There were words to describe the sort of person who did that. Feral. Rogue.
Hunted.
He'd become the sort of creature the huntsmen hunted—that he had to track down like rabid dogs and exterminate.
In one leap, Jack jumped out of the crater, looking around to evaluate the situation. There was no sign of civilization—not one person or building. By the looks of it, he'd made it to a tundra. On one hand, he was glad not to be surrounded by enemies or victims, but on the other hand, how was he supposed to work out what had happened?
You know what happened.
Jack's jaw tightened. The voice sounded like his, but it wasn't. It was that dark thing trying to infect him.
He extended his wings, wincing as the bone-breaking expansion started. His wings were tucked away under his shoulder blades, by some magic he couldn’t quite understand. His father hadn’t been able to provide an explanation, and he knew no one else from his paternal family. The process always hurt a little, but his broken ribs made it a lot worse.
Jack launched himself in the sky, staying lower than he would have liked. People weren't exactly used to seeing men fly, and while Jack wasn't hiding, he didn't like to garner undue attention.
But from too far above, he couldn’t survey the area as well, and he needed answers more than he needed privacy.
Spotting the shape of low buildings in the distance, he landed on the snow-covered mossy ground and walked the rest of the way.
The buildings belonged to a simple village with no more than a few dozen houses. There was no one in sight—hardly surprising, as it was the middle of the night. One glance at the sign in front of the town, and he knew he was in Eastern Europe—maybe Russia, he couldn't tell.
Jack reached into the back pocket of his jeans and was relieved to find his phone. It even had a little battery left.
He took a quick picture of the sign before launching himself in the sky, higher this time. He had a long journey ahead of him.
Jack longed to return to Oldcrest, but he knew he couldn't. The responsible thing for him to do, after tonight, was to surrender himself to the head of the huntsmen for evaluation. He could be a danger to others—his friends, his family. That wasn't acceptable.
Dark, smoldering eyes came to mind, as they frequently had in the last eleven days. Gwen had haunted much of his waking hours and all of his dreams. Images of her skin, her curves, assaulted him at every turn, part dream, part memory. He hated the thought of leaving while things were so uncertain between them. He’d tried to apologize, but she’d gone right back to pretending he didn’t exist, when she wasn’t actively avoiding him.
Her safety was infinitely more important than his desire for closure though.
Jack flew through hail and snow, crossing lands and oceans, until every single one of his frozen limbs that had begged for mercy fell silent. He didn’t take one break until he’d reached the familiar gray city line of his childhood.
Jack landed on the helipad of one of the tallest buildings in Manhattan, under the glowing, watchful eyes of six guards.
None of them had changed at all in the last decade, naturally. Their faces might as well have been carved in white, ochre, and deep brown marble.
One of the Knights of the Drake king nodded at him. Another one flashed a set of fangs. “You should have called.”
“Long time, Kassandros. Nice to see you, too.”
“I could have shot you before you’d touched the roof, child.”
Jack rolled his eyes. “No way. You love me too much.”
And by love, he meant that the taciturn immortal tolerated him enough to let him breathe. Sometimes.
Jack had trained with those six warriors as a teen, because his father had soon seen that Jack’s skills exceeded his own, and he’d wanted to keep him challenged. That didn’t mean that the knights wouldn’t have killed him if they’d suspected he was a danger to them.
“My phone’s dead, and I figured the family would be here for the anniversary. I have to talk to my mother urgently.”
The youngest of the guards, a disturbingly silent, lean, and muscular man who belonged on the cover of a magazine, extended his hand as an invitation to walk inside the building.
Jack pointed to the set of magically enhanced cuffs at his belt. “I’m going to need you to put these on me first.”