White Shadow : The Khan Chronicles (Book 1)

By Kevin Settlage

For well over a millennium, a war pitting werewolves against weretigers has been waging in the shadows. Each day it threatens to spill out into the world of man. It's been up to Adrian Bure to help prevent this from happening, but when close friends are mysteriously murdered, he's plunged into a fight beyond his wildest dreams and worst nightmares. He'll have to uncover dangerous secrets that will change everything he's believed in. To save his people, he'll have to lose the hardest battle yet, the one for his destiny and maybe his life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kevin Settlage
• Release date: May 16, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301246236

Kevin Settlage

Kevin Settlage writes Urban Fantasy. He has a Bachelors Degree in Criminal Justice from Waynesburg University, but found his true passion in creating a new world for his readers and having them continuously turn to the next page. He lives with his girlfriend in the small town of Waynesboro, Pennsylvania and works full time doing security, but his main focus is to entice his readers imagination.

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White Shadow

The Khan Chronicles

KEVIN SETTLAGE

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2012 Kevin Settlage

All rights reserved.

White Shadow is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real event, places or people, living or dead, is completely coincidental.

Dedicated to:

Everyone who has helped me along this long but fulfilling process.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

Thank you to my Dad and especially my Mom. You urged me to read any book I wanted, always broadening my horizons. Both of you encouraged me to follow through with this book from the very beginning. It’s safe to say that without the help from the two of you this novel would never have come to fruition.

To Michelle, Hannah, and Kelly for being my guinea pigs and allowing me to use the three of you to throw ideas off of and being the first ones to try this little experiment of mine. It was the three of you that gave me hope that I wasn’t wasting my time and that this day would come. To Mathew Benham for the amazing cover art.

Chapter 1

Trying to live a relatively normal life in a world full of humans was hard enough. Now imagine if you were far from normal let alone human. Constantly trying to pass as a simple ordinary person took patience, control, cunning, secrecy, imagination and most importantly the ability to withstand pain… excruciating pain, the same type of agony that ripped apart my body. It had been too long. The thing inside me wanted out and was unforgiving in its ferocity to escape and run, to hunt, to use both teeth and claws to kill and coat its tongue in scalding hot blood.

The driving snow from the ongoing blizzard encased me as soon as I stepped outside. As I took off my shirt and stepped out of my jeans, I could feel the change coming. It was more than uncomfortable. In fact, the first couple times I ever shifted it was the most excruciating pain I’d ever experienced, but that was then and I’d had plenty of time to adjust to the discomfort. Yet because of my caution and stubbornness to make sure my secret remains one to the people that live in my small town, the pain was so much more. It was my consequence for caging a beast meant to run wild. Something never meant to be tamed or leashed. Left on its own the other part that creates my whole being, the wild and feral side would be nature’s perfect killing machine, but with the human side added to the equation the beast became something different, something more.

Muscles began to cramp up throughout my body. Then the pain suddenly changed. It felt as if a knife was being sliced slowly through all of my tendons, ligaments and muscles. All of my nerve endings were set on fire. I could feel my face starting to change; bones breaking as my mouth and nose elongate and broadened. Teeth gritted in pain morphed into something meant to strip flesh. New sharp, powerful killing canines erupted from my gums. My spine popped and cracked as it lengthened, adding on more bone creating my tail and forcing me to fall to my knees. Fur erupted from my back and flowed over my entire body like someone poured it on me. It spread down my arms and legs, the beautiful coat of white fur like untouched snow with bold black stripes.

My hands and feet thickened, fingers and toes changing and pads forming to make me into a silent killer. Claws erupted like switchblades, razor sharp. Ankles, wrists and knees changed to something meant to carry the massive amounts of muscle I could feel being put on from my head all the way to my paws.

With my head filled with nothing but pain the transition felt as if it had taken hours, but I knew the change was done in less than a minute. Since I took my time the pain wasn’t as bad as it would’ve been if I had rushed the process, but this time was different. This time was a reminder of what would happen if the beast was caged and had to fight for his release.

I stretched my front legs out straining and stretching the new muscles throughout this new body. This new shape was something primal. I was suddenly filled with the pure joy of freedom. That revelation of knowing nothing could hold you back. Like when you were a child and it was the last day of school before summer break. You’d waited ten whole months sitting in a small confining room for this one moment knowing that for the next three months would be wide open space, cool breeze blowing through your hair and nothing to entrap you. Just like you did when that final bell rang announcing your freedom I roared in absolute ecstasy, reveled in the excitement of the cold air. The howling winds of the storm hid my scream before it was heard by anything or anyone.

My name is Adrian Bure and as you could guess I’m not exactly normal, hell I’m not even human if you wanted to get technical. I’m something a normal human being would have refused to believe in. Something people thought of only as a myth; nothing but from a legend or maybe a nightmare.

Weretiger.

With the shift came the unmistakable urge to hunt and eat, to stalk my prey and tear flesh with claws, bite through bone with teeth and to fill my mouth with warm blood. The brutally cold wind whipped through the bare tree limbs which looked like hideously deformed skeletal hands, helping the driving snow to enduringly cover every last inch of ground. Because of the howling winds and freezing temperatures, any easy prey would be hiding in any warm place they can find.

So much the better, I always did like the challenge of the hunt.

I started off at a decent pace, being cautious that I didn’t go so fast that I would miss the most minuscule scent or the smallest visual clue. Running through the forest during the storm reminded me of a home I lost long ago.

I kept an eye out for any sign of both my natural prey and the possibility that I might stumble upon something that isn’t so natural. It wouldn’t have been the first time that during a hunt I ran across a werewolf or two.

As I thought, the storm made it near impossible to catch a good scent, the wind whipped against my eyes nearly blinding me, the heavy snow turned everything white erasing any sign of a track, but all that also made it that much more enjoyable, a real hunt. My keen eyes picked out every possible detail they could through the weather searching for some kind of a sign.

After walking a good distance into the sanctuary with nothing to show and annoyance beginning to creep in, I was passing next to a tree that halted me in my tracks. The scent was familiar and instantly my hunt got that much more exciting.

From one tree to another to another I drew the bitter musky scent over the roof of my mouth with my rough tongue. I could tell that he came by here a while ago, at the very least right before the storm looking for shelter. It left markings on the trees, a scrape here, a broken limb there. The markings and scent caused my blood to course with need and quickly lead me to the mouth of a large naturally made cave.

Though the cave is near pitch black the pungent odor was more than enough to follow when I was inside.

The cave turned out to be larger than I had thought and as it snaked deeper and deeper I realized that back far enough where natural light would never reach I was starting to make out rough shapes. From the slick walls and cave floor I picked up the faint bluish-green glow coming off of bioluminescence fungi and other tiny organisms. Walking around one of the bends in the cave there at the back, apparently sleeping, was what had caught my attention outside in the raging blizzard.

What looked to weigh over eight-hundred pounds was a giant black bear.

The bear was lying next to a large boulder about as high as he was, an extra protection from any of the cold wind that happened to make it this far in. Suddenly as if sensing something else had entered his safe haven the giant beast stood up. His massive head whipped around finding me by my scent. It took him a few seconds as if he wasn’t sure what I was, but eventually the massive bear let out a deep and threatening roar meant to scare off any intruder. It does nothing to me except reinforce that primal excitement that seems to be closer when I change. In response to him I let loose with my own roar. The bear stood up on his hind legs in a challenge. The giant beast stands well over seven feet tall nearly scrapping his head against the cave ceiling. My body tensed, legs slightly bent and lowered to the ground ready to move.

Again the giant bear let loose an angry roar and it was at that instant that I sprang from the ground and lept right at him. He’s startled but his reflexes were faster than I expected as he swung one of his giant paws at me. Misjudging his speed I was barely able to shift my weight in time. Even so he was able to clip one of my hind legs causing it to go instantly numb for a second or two. His swing forced him back onto all fours though. Here he was much slower and as soon as feeling returned I was able to use the darkness to get behind him. Using the large boulder to jump from I latched my curved claws onto his broad furry back.

My immense weight caused his thick legs to give out, sending him to the cold ground. In that moment I struck. My canine teeth pierced through the bear’s fur and thick hide cutting through the hard bone and severed his spinal cord near the base of its skull. Hot blood flooded into my mouth coating my tongue in its luscious metallic taste. Letting the bear’s dead body go I sat back tongue out catching my breath. That part of me that fought so hard to escape and hunt finally roars in victory ready to devour his prize

* * *

I dreamt I was facing a near impenetrable forest untouched by the hand of man as a hail of arrows sailing through the air. Before the deadly bolts pierced my paltry armored body the dream changed and the sounds of swords clashing resonated all around me, my own broadsword cut down the man in front of me adding his scream of pain to the multitude of others. Once again the vision morphed and I’m watching three men surround a lone young boy pleading for his life. Swords ring out, screams of pain and dying echoed around the thick forest. I suddenly felt the burning pain of sharp iron slicing through my back and being plunged into my stomach. Next I was on the forest floor cold dead bodies lay around me, my hot blood pooled creating a warm morbid bath. One second, a stranger was kneeling over me, the next, in his place was a monstrous tiger with its deadly jaws and teeth descending toward my throat.

The bright morning sun blazed through the window. Damn it, I forgot to close the blinds. The dazzling light stung my pale light blue eyes through a curtain of sleep tousled white hair making it impossible to ignore nature’s alarm clock. Like most dreams this one was fading fast, barely more than a confusing haze as I attempted to slide out of bed. Yet I’d had the same dream of the eventful day I’d become a weretiger more times than I could count, the flashes of events thoroughly seared into my brain.

The warm and comforting sheets seemed to refuse to release their hold on my tired body, which at the moment was perfectly fine with me. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I didn’t like mornings in general, I just hated waking up so damn early for them.

Finally with a force of indomitable willpower I sat up throwing the covers off. With a groan of annoyance I slowly got to my feet and walked over to the sliding glass door that connects my upstairs master bedroom to the second story deck. The winter storm that was raging the night before had completely vanished, and when I walked outside in only the loose shorts I slept in I was greeted by a clear brilliant azure blue sky that only ever comes about after a storm. The cold air was like small pin pricks along my bare, fair complexion skin. It helped chase the nagging sleep from my body. The breeze sent loose strands of my straight white hair flying, tickling the back of my neck.

Twenty-five miles west of Boston, Massachusetts is the small sleepy town of Holliston. It’s a wonderful and peaceful place to live and I’ve been lucky enough to have called it home for many years now. I’ve watched from the outskirts of town in my two-story log house how the affluent residences had grown and grown. My own modest abode is located on the edge of the Brentwood Conservation Land, a four-hundred acre sanctuary that like last night I used to run and hunt when that other side of me became restless.

Living where I do my closest neighbor is about five miles away in each direction, so I rarely have to worry about being seen when I go out and if for some reason I was spotted by some wandering hiker or passerby they would have had a really hard time convincing themselves and others that what they saw was real. I mean really, how do you explain seeing a nine hundred pound white Siberian tiger that stands as tall as a normal man, especially in a country where tigers don’t exist?

The storm had laid a good foot and a half of new snow on the ground and was a nice chill to the breeze that whispered by. I stood there for a moment and just enjoyed the view of the forest and the wildlife in it. Birds called out in their melodic songs while they flew from tree to tree. Walking back inside slightly more refreshed I hopped into the shower to chase the rest of the sleep away. When finished I threw on a pair of jeans, socks and dark orange tee-shirt. Once downstairs and in the kitchen I found something to drink and got the morning paper.

While sitting at my dining room table with a glass of orange juice I opened up the paper to the front page to the huge scrolling headline:

GRUESOME ATTACK NEAR UNIVERSITY!

Instantly I rushed to read the article, concern had started to worm its way into my core. According to the report, there was an apparent bear attack in Cambridge. Two people had been viciously mauled to death, to the point that there was hardly anything left of the victims.

It’s that last statement where I knew I had a right for worry. I know of certain creatures that in the past have been blamed or mistaken for a bear that would do the same exact thing. It also made me think of something I read the night before. Rummaging through a stack of papers next to me, dumping the majority to the floor, I pull out the previous day’s newspaper. Plastered on the front was another large headline. This one talked about a man found dead at his home. Skimming through the article I eventually found the section that somehow imprinted in the back of my brain. The man’s name was Steven Potts. He was found dead in his home after his neighbor noticed the front door open. When the police had arrived they found Mr. Potts brutally murdered in the living room. The paper had hinted that apparently his body was mutilated beyond recognition; they had to use dental records to verify his identity. According to the paper none of his neighbors heard any type of disturbance and they’re horrified about what happened. He was such a nice young man, Quoted one of the neighbors in the newspaper.

Three people dead in two days, all of them found savaged beyond belief, but the part that didn’t make sense to me was the first victim was found in his home. If what I was thinking might have done this, it broke into Mr. Potts’ house and killed him, something I’d never heard of before. In a hurry I grabbed my favorite jacket, a well used soft leather, from the rack next to the front door and left.

It usually took a little under an hour to drive to Cambridge in my 2006 Hummer H1. I look at it that if it was good enough for the military it was good enough for me. Plus I liked how tough it looked. So sue me, I’m still a guy even if I’m not exactly human.

The MA-16 let me on to Interstate 90 and I took that all the way to Cambridge. It was a Saturday morning so traffic sucked and I didn’t get there till almost eleven in the morning.

The actual attack wasn’t near the University itself but in Kingsley Park. Parking the H1 turned out to be harder than I originally thought. Pretty much all of the parking spots at the park’s entrance were full. Finally after circling the area once I squeezed into a freshly opened spot, pissing off the driver of a newer model town car in the process I had seen racing around the lot to snag the open parking space. His gratitude was to roll down his window and flip me off as he drove by.

Kingsley Park is one of a group of parks that sits along the bank of a large fresh water lake. It looks like a peninsula pointing out into the lake. The entire recreational area actually surrounds the water with Lusitania Field located on the opposite bank. Just to the west is Strawberry Hill with its baseball field and next to that is a nice golf course and lily pond that during the spring and summer is full of life.

Even after the large storm we had last night the sidewalks and running paths were already shoveled and cleared of snow. From the parking lot the salted sidewalks into the park stretched alongside a sparse line of leafless trees and the embankment of the iced over pond. It was this stretch into the park where I found an ever-growing crowd of on-lookers gathered around a taped off section of the park. Guess I found out why the parking lot was so full. Even death and carnage will draw a crowd. Beyond the yellow tape, tied off around several trees cresting against the edge of the frozen pond were a handful of police officers and even a fish and game officer. It’s one of the reasons I chose to check out this attack sight over Mr. Potts’s house. Steven Potts was being considered a murder investigation, worse yet his death was significantly brutal so his house was going to attract an even greater number of police, reporters and by-standers. This attack was technically being called a wild animal attack so it had significantly less police presence. Yet as I stared over the heads of so many gawkers it was pretty apparent I was wrong about the whole bystander assumption. Moving around the crowd, I pushed through using my height and bulk till I spilled out near the edge of the scene. There were far less people here and even fewer officials to keep an eye on me, most of them were busy with the already pushy crowd.

A large tarp covered a good six to seven foot area of the ground. One of the officers lifted one end of the tarp for the Fish and Game Warden. At that moment, a strong breeze picked up turning the tarp into an improvised kite. A loud buzz of shock and horror spread through the crowd as they finally got what they all came here for. From what I could see the two people weren’t just attacked, but slaughtered; there’s no other word that could fit that carnage. The fresh white snow was torn up as if something huge rolled around in it. A splattering of dramatic red marred the pristine surface as if that pure whiteness was somehow sliced open spewing a hot bloody wound. You’d be amazed at exactly how much blood the human body can actually hold, add to that all the other bodily fluids that were expelled upon death and you had yourself the picture of any sane person’s nightmare. Now imagine there were two victims. Unidentifiable bits and pieces still lied buried in the snow. It was impossible to find any type of discernible track. Everywhere I looked the snow was trampled with one footprint over another. Guess they weren’t very careful where any of them had stepped, granted they could have come and left over the frozen water of the pond, but it made it impossible for me to spot any of the tracks that went along with the scent I picked up.

Werewolf!

There was more than one wolf there. Following the tape line, I mixed in with the crowd and noticed several other subtle aromas coming in from different directions. Even over the cold blood and other ripening expelled bodily fluids, I could always tell a werewolf scent. They have an off putting decaying pine forest scent to them mixed in with the odor of wet earth, but there’s also a hint of old spoiled blood that strangely sticks around that is also an instant alarm.

Thankfully the bodies had already been taken away to the morgue, but it was easy to imagine what happened. The snow was literally saturated in blood. The hot liquid that keeps us all alive melted through the snow in areas exposing ground beneath turning it into mud. The two attacks were vicious, powerful, and fast to have caused all the blood splatter at this distance. Even some of the nearby trees showed signs of cast off. I could also tell that it was done relatively recently. If it had happened last night the storm would have frozen the residual blood and also covered up more of the scene. No, this had been done sometime early this morning, which means those wolves may still be around somewhere.

The officer with the help of the warden finally got a handle on the out of control tarp and mercifully covered up the scene. I had one last place to visit to make sure that the attack was done by something other than a bear.

Guess it was time to visit the morgue.

Chapter 2

Boston’s morgue had the same feel of death as many of the other morgues around the country. With the city itself being so old, the morgue had that much more time to accrue that foreboding feeling of dread, death, and despair. While I stood there in the biting cold outside the brick building, I couldn’t help but laugh to myself as I thought back to those tiny yet proud colonies were fighting for their independence. It definitely was not a boring time.

A few people were wandering around when I entered. Each of them looked up from whatever they were doing to see who had walked in before quickly going back to whatever had occupied them. Hey, what could I say? It’s human curiosity to look.

Walking past the waiting area, I stopped at the elevator and pressed the button that would take me down to the morgue, which was in the basement.

As I exited the elevator, the overweight and slightly balding security guard on duty greeted me. His name was Mike something or another, never really could remember his last name. As soon I stepped out of the elevator, he recognized me. Morning, Mr. Bure.

Hey Mike, I’m looking for the doc.

He smiled pleasantly showing cigarette-stained teeth. He’s in the back with all the other stiffs. He pointed over his shoulder with this thumb.

I gave him the laugh he was expecting and thanked him for his help. I’d been down here enough to see my friend that I’m not even questioned if I was actually allowed down in the basement.

I was there to talk with the chief medical examiner. He was an old friend of mine and we had a lot of history with each other.

Walking down the white hall, I turned the corner that led to a pair of cold double swinging metal doors. When I walked in, I immediately noticed several things. First there was only one person in the room, second; there were two closed body bags on two separate solid metal tables, and third was the nose-burning smell of ammonia and disinfectant that comes with all morgues, but over that was the smell of so much raw meat, like raw bloody hamburger. After getting that whiff, I had an uncomfortable clue of what was hidden in those bags.

The room itself looked as if someone who was either colorblind or just didn’t give a shit just threw any combination of colors they had on the walls and floor. What they got for their effort was dirt brown tiled floors with several large circular drains placed here and there and pea green walls. Besides the metal examining tables and their bags of horror, the room was empty except for one very live man. Compared to my six-foot-two frame, the man standing in a white lab coat, with his back to me was slightly shorter by about three or four inches. Doctor Samuel Brown, the chief medical examiner for Boston and its outlying suburbs, with his thick wavy dark brown hair that reached the middle of his neck was leaner and looked more like those lucky few who never have work out to stay in shape, always lean and muscled. He’s a strong-willed man, and if you were to ever look him in his light brown eyes, you would have noticed someone who’d seen more in his life than the average person. I hadn’t made a sound, yet Sam said, I was wondering when you were going to show up.

I shook my head in amusement and walked over to him. See, one thing you needed to know about Sam is he’s also a weretiger, but something completely different from myself. He was the last of a great race that died out a very long time ago, whereas I belonged to the Siberian Tiger Clan. In total there were six different clans throughout the world. There used to be more but our war with the werewolves had been a long and hard one. The fighting had claimed three different clans, though no one was really sure how it was possible for the mongrels to wipe them out completely. The war itself was one so old that only the oldest of us even remembered how it started and to a point why we still fought. Everyone’s ingrained hatred for the werewolves was enough, but I knew that if the wolves weren’t hunted down they would eventually expose not only themselves to the human world, but also us.

Sam’s job here was to be both the chief medical examiner for Boston and also to keep an eye out for any possible werewolf attacks. If an attack victim did show up, it was his job to give a reasonable excuse to the public. It wouldn’t have surprised me to find out he was the one who suggested it had been a bear attack this morning.

So there I stood on the other side of the examination table and asked what I had already expected, So I assume that this wasn’t a bear attack?

Without any visible emotion, Sam reached for the zipper on the body bag. You know my answer. I’ll let you make up your own mind.

The first thing that hit me was the smell. I had known it was going to be bad when I could detect it on the way in, but the odor assaulting me was more than even I expected. The overwhelming scent of bile, rotten meat, and feces hit me first, letting me know that the intestines and stomach had been perforated and all its contents were out of the body. This isn’t the first time I’d had to look at a werewolf victim, but