PROLOGUE

Present day, Roanoke, North Carolina.

It is time, the gravelly voice resounded off the exposed brick walls of the darkened room. The Twelve had resolved to meet there each month since they’d moved their headquarters to the New World in the late 16 th century.

It was the same site where some of their ancestors had met like clockwork on each eve of the New Moon. Though, truth be told, the building itself had changed many times, having been burnt down, rebuilt, and renovated with the many advances in industry and technology over the centuries. Still, it was new compared to the thousand-year old structures they still owned abroad.

Aye. ‘Tis time.

Agreed.

Si.

Aftalt.

Dogovoren.

So, on it went. Each of the Twelve Heralds of Terra consented in their native tongue. The sounds of the streets beyond the small, dank room were drowned out by the pounding of their fists on the large wooden table where they’d gathered. It was unanimous.

The eldest among them stood and spoke to the group. His skin was spotted with age, his long hair hung down his back like a white river that reached almost to his knees. His once great height was severely diminished as he stood before the other members of the twelve with his back stooped over and his gnarled hand resting heavily on an aged oak cane.

"I have walked Terra for more than a thousand years waiting for this day. It has taken an age to emerge, and yet we have no time to learn to crawl before we walk. Darkness is enveloping our beloved Earth. We must fight it," he exhaled and raised his cerulean eyes to meet those of everyone at the table. The herald was old, indeed, but power was still heavy with him.

"We have trained our Wardens, waiting for this time to arise. It has been a long time coming, but now, we are called back to our rightful positions as Guardians of this planet. We Heralds must do our jobs to ensure each Station Master receives their orders correctly."

"Why, capitaine, do we not lead them ourselves?"

Because, my Russian friend, that is not our place. We are the watchers, comrades. We have waited for the right time to come, now we must announce it to all of the supernatural world. The Wardens of terra are back.

I see.

Good. Now, the Station Masters will hand out assignments amongst the Wardens, this is the way it has always been.

"And if the Hounds re-emerge?"

"Then we shall work with them as we should have been allowed to do from the beginning, but now is not the time to rehash old quarrels. The Wardens of Terra are needed again."

CHAPTER ONE

Troy Waman looked down at his smartphone to the little red arrow blinking on his map app, indicating he had reached his destination. He frowned pensively before shaking his head.

What a fucking shithole, he murmured to himself as he exited the nondescript black SUV his Station Master, Rex, had given him for the job.

Try not to scratch it, the tough Bear shifter had said with a barely contained growl after their meeting the day before last. After a thousand years of waiting, The Wardens of Terra were being called to duty and this was Troy’s first assignment.

It took him a day and a half to make his way to Shadowland, New York from the little suburb in Virginia Beach where his Station was located. There were dozens of them across the continental United States and even more overseas, though he’d rarely been out of the county himself.

Troy rolled his shoulders and exhaled. He was the first from his Station to be called to duty. A fact that left him both proud and humbled at the same time. He’d trained damn hard since he was a child waiting for such an opportunity. Now he had it, and it was almost too much to bear.

Fuck and damn. It’s time Troy, get your ass in gear. That was all the sympathy he had for himself. Why the hell should he have any at all? Troy Waman was no tenderfoot normal. He was a Warden of Terra. He didn’t need to remind himself of the honor and duty that went along with his position.

The Wardens of Terra were an ancient group of elite warriors. All of them Shifters. Identified in their youth and trained throughout their preternaturally long lives, they were guardians as well as fighters. Station Masters led teams of Wardens across the planet.

Though they’d been deactivated sometime in the last millennium, Wardens were born, chosen, and trained every day with the distinct knowledge that someday, they’d be called upon to defend the earth. That day was here.

Troy Waman had been trained as a Warden since before he learned how to spell the word. His heritage was a mix of Anglo and Native American. His father’s blood was a mix of tribes including Algonquin, Lenape, Cherokee, and a few others. He hadn’t stuck around long enough for anyone to learn the rest.

He supposed he could get a DNA test, but that might raise too many questions with the normals. Especially in this day of advanced technology in biogenetics.

Besides, it was quite common in today’s world to find Native American peoples descended from multiple tribes. Troy Waman was uncommon for an entirely different reason. He was a Shifter, a special race of dual natured beings with one foot in the supernatural world and one in the human. Troy was a Thunderbird Shifter to be exact. Something unique even amongst Shifters.

He stretched his long, lithe body as he stepped away from the vehicle. It was already dark out despite it being fairly early in the evening. Daylight savings my ass. He sniffed the frigid air. The unusually high winds made the cold seem even more bitter. The street lamp stuttered on the corner, a rusty fence squeaked, and a black cat crossed the street, ducking under some parked cars. Troy’s frown deepened.

It looked like the setting of a B-horror flick. All it needed was some half naked co-ed to run down the street with a masked bogeyman stalking behind her, traditional blood-coated knife in hand. Oh yeah. They might call it Shadowland Nightmare or something equally cheesy.

He stopped his musings and used his heightened senses to take in the downtrodden area around him. It would seem upstate New York wasn’t all orchards and sprawling suburbs. He smirked as the I love New York song ran through his head. Yeah, right.

Apparently, parts of the Empire State were as fucked up as the street where he was born in Newark, New Jersey. He’d visited that shithole back when he was in his teens just out of curiosity. What a mistake that had been! He’d left almost as soon as he’d arrived. His extended family had been, shall we say, less than welcoming.

His gray-haired grandmother had screamed and crossed herself when he stepped over her threshold. He was what they called a skin walker. They feared and loathed him as something evil. Him evil? Like he was the motherfucker who knocked-up some unsuspecting normal and left her ass with a Shifter baby.

He was not evil, but he was something they did not understand. He’d been angry and ashamed that day. He’d crashed through his grandmother’s kitchen to hitch a ride back down to his Station in Virginia Beach.

In his youth it was more like a military training camp, but it was all he knew of home. After all, it was where he’d lived his entire life. He’d made his peace and settled fully into his life there.

The incident with his grandmother had happened over a decade ago, when Troy had stolen his records out of Rex’s office. Still, the memory remained fresh in his mind as if it were only yesterday. The fucked-up street where he was standing only brought back the painful reminder that he’d come from the same kind of squalor. Fuck this, he thought.

The pungent scent of despair washed over him. Reminding him. A young man with a hood pulled up over his head, eyed him from the street corner. Drug dealer. Shadowland indeed. It was an apt name for this shamble of a neighborhood.

The young man continued to stare until Troy allowed his beast to shine through. His golden eyes pinned the errant youth through the inky darkness of the night. Startled, the kid dropped the bag he was holding and ran down the alley.

Punk. Troy walked over and picked up what he had so hastily left behind. A couple of grams of crack cocaine and heroin, probably cut with Fentanyl. There were also various sized baggies full of what smelled like some below average marijuana and half-rotted psychedelic mushrooms.

Just your garden variety of illegal substances to be found on most street corners in neighborhoods like this one. Fucking normals. He frowned and dumped the still sealed contents down the closest storm drain. He sent a quick text to Rex earmarking the location.

Rex would make sure the local police department got an anonymous tip to retrieve the narcotics before someone got hurt. Recreational drug use, mainly the opioid epidemic, was wreaking havoc amongst the humans with more and more of them succumbing to their addictions.

It was troubling, but not Troy’s problem. Shifters were extraordinarily hard to kill. Most human drugs had little to no effect on supernatural beings. Normals, he growled the thought, such weak creatures.

To be fair, Shifters had vices too. He just had little experience with it. Cecil, a Station-mate of his, had an adrenaline addiction. He was always putting himself in dangerous situations, even during simple training exercises. Fernandez, a Jaguar Shifter, was always trying to get into some chick’s pants. Sex addict. And he knew of others who channeled their energies into ways he considered to be mostly unproductive.

His opinion, for sure. He’d always been something of a loner by nature. There weren’t many Thunderbird Shifters around. Hell, he was the only fucking one he knew of in this part of the world.

He didn’t blame or judge his Station-mates for their proclivities. Most of the Shifters he knew had large appetites which included food, exercise, and sex.

Troy had certainly explored that part of him. He wasn’t a man-whore or anything, but he’d had his share of women. None of them mattered to him. Just a means to satisfy the occasional itch.

Troy was determined to live his life as a Warden of Terra alone. He never expected to find anyone willing to share what was a potentially deadly existence.

Those who followed the Darkness and evil were always looking for