Page 5 of Keeper of All

Marvin scratched the side of his neck looking lost. “I never met you… which isn’t unusual, as there were lots of boys. What I know is they used lots of shifters over the years. It’s hard to say which batches they used on you. I didn’t know which batch you were in either, so it’s impossible to say and I wouldn’t want to guess.”

“I can’t remember when they introduced me into Ajani’s group. It’s bollocks,” Ekon cursed in frustration. “Shit, don’t get upset,” he urged at the tears glistening in Marvin’s eyes. “Do you think Todd would have any ideas?”

“Can you tell me why you want to know now?”

Marvin’s quivering voice made Ekon’s stomach dance unpleasantly, making him rush to explain about the feelings inside him and the recurrent dream. He missed the part about the figure showing up in daylight. He didn’t need anyone thinking he was crazy, or not yet, until he exhausted every avenue as to why it was happening.

Next thing Marvin was up and dragging him out the door. “Let’s go speak to Todd, if anyone can find the information you want it’ll be him.” Marvin gave him a reassuring smile.

Ekon let himself get dragged upstairs and along to where Todd worked.

His office was a mass of electronic bits everywhere in some form of construction. Ekon made sure to tuck his hands in his pockets.

Todd glanced up, blinking behind the black framed glasses that magnified his eyes. “Hey Ekon, good to see you.”

Marvin danced at Ekon’s side. “Todd, we need your help.”

Todd sat back in his office chair, after placing down the tiny screwdriver he held. “What do you need?”

Ekon took a deep breath and released it slowly. “Can you help me find out what I truly am?”

Chapter Two

Mao

“No. Absolutely not. Don’t even think about asking me again. And whatever you told Mom to get her to give you this number, forget it, because I’m changing it the moment I get off this call.” Mao glared at his satellite phone.

His emergency phone. The phone which had a private number that, until ten minutes before, only one person knew—Mom. So, when he answered, to say he was pissed off hearing his brother Ben’s voice, was an understatement.

“It is an emergency, and I wouldn’t have had to pressure Mom for a number for you if you’d answered any of the dozen calls me and Beaumont have made to your regular phone in the past week.” Ben was always the smooth talker of the family. Mao preferred to keep his sentences short and oftentimes preferred not talking at all. “This job through the council isn’t just a regular hit job ordered by someone with an ego who wants a big boom. The keywords for this one are finesse and discretion, and you’re the best guy for the job.”

“Doesn’t make any difference. I won’t work for the council.” Mao perched his butt on a rock, staring out over the Scottish Highlands. He couldn’t pronounce the name of the mountain he’d was climbing, but what he did know was that there wasn’t another person around for miles. Just the way he liked it. “After all that business went down with Teilo and Nico and how they were found… for fuck’s sake, Ben, I thought you’d walked away from that shit because of your mates.”

Mao shuddered, glad in that moment that Ben couldn’t see him, shudder and swallow the bile in his throat. He’d seen a lot of horrible things in his life and his work, but it would take a dozen lifetimes to forget the state of Teilo and Nico when they were found… in Mao’s backyard. Not literally, of course, the jungle close enough to count in Mao’s head.

“The council are a bunch of shits who have no clue what they’re doing, and worse, they don’t give a shit about the people they’re meant to protect. Why would I want to do a job for them?”

“Beaumont is working to change that as well you know! And this is to do with the shifter records,” Ben said quietly, as if afraid of being overheard, which was silly in Mao’s opinion. The man lived on a warded island with his mates—away from civilization.

“What about them?” Mao’s whole body stiffened. He’d heard about the records, of course, even seen some of them. A small portion of the records were with the krakens. Some were down in the depths of the sea, protected by a natural kraken, and the others were in a hidden bunker. As far as Mao knew, barely anyone knew where that bunker even was. It wasn’t like it showed up on Google Maps.

“The krakens have children now, and they’re worried about people prying into their business. They want the bunker blown up. Discreetly. Quietly.”

“What the fuck?” Mao was on his feet again. The ledge he was on not that wide, and it really didn’t give him the room to pace like he wanted to, his panther would ensure he never fell despite that. “There are hundreds of thousands of individual shifter records in that bunker.”

“Exactly, and if people go looking for information about the krakens, then they might find the rest. That’s why—”

“Hang on a minute. You’re telling me that all because of four or five… how many are there? Five. Five krakens are worried about their secrets getting out, they want the records of all those shifters destroyed—”

“They’ve got kids, now,” Ben persisted. “Of course, they want to protect them.”

“You… you…” At a loss Mao became tempted to throw his phone off the damn ledge at how damn angry he was. “You got the records for Teilo and Nico, didn’t you?”

“Yes, and the details—”

“I don’t need to know the details,” Mao cut him off quickly. If Ben went down memory lane, he’d never shut up and Mao had enough nightmares over what they’d found when they’d searched for Ben’s mates. “You have the details about your mates who were part of the program that was instigated, paid for, and managed by the fucking council, yes?”

“Yes.”