Bracing the Mantle: Shaman States of America: The Mantle

By Chrishaun Keller-Hanna and W.T. Meadows

Life is going beautifully for Edward Mauer - so it seems. He has a mentor in the Hunt with Clancy.

He's being picked for choice Hunts and is more successful than he could have possibly dreamed.

Outside of the Hunt, the young Hunter is happily in love and is starting to picture of what his ideal life could look like.

When Edward returns from a nearly disastrous Hunt and finds someone unexpected in his apartment, everything in his life starts to unravel.

Well-intentioned deceptions are discovered, and everything he says is suspect.

With his life starting to crumble around him, can Edward keep his ties to both the powered and non-powered world intact?

• Language: English
• Publisher: The CKH Group
• Release date: Jan 23, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393975557

Chrishaun Keller-Hanna

Hello All, Chrishaun here! Welcome to Allazar! A place of beauty, danger, magic, and monsters.  This is the space where I want to have fun, write crazy stuff for the far edges of my imagination, while still looking at issues like oppression and struggle, where men and women can take on challenging roles. It’s my hope that you will understand my drive to create the magical space for adventure and that you’ll listen to and enjoy my words, these worlds, and thoughts. The Allazar Universe is big and there is room for you.  Meanwhile, on Earth, I live in the Great of Texas where I read, watch documentaries, podcast, and help my husband try to keep our cats from opening the Seventh Seal.

Book preview

Prologue

The pasta was cold. It’d been sitting on the crappy old table Edward Mauer used in his studio apartment for the last hour and a half. My black-painted nails made a rhythmic rapping sound as I clacked them on the cheap white laminate that was peeling off one side of the table. I nervously bit the index fingernail of my other hand, chipping it.

I only noticed that I’d been biting my nails when a chunk of nail polish came off and stuck to my front teeth. None of what I had been doing stood out because I’d just been staring at the door and continuing to wait for Edward to come home, all the while terrified that tonight would be the night he didn’t walk back through that damned door.

I didn’t have a really good reason to be pissed at my boyfriend. He hadn’t known I was planning to come over to cook dinner for us tonight, so why would he come home early? The problem was that his last class had let out hours earlier, and I was hoping to get a night in with him. It wasn’t until I’d already started cooking that I saw the note on his fridge with today’s date on it. His friend Billy’s name was circled, and below were the words, 2:45 at Dot ’n Dash.

If Ed had gone to meet Billy for whatever galivanting they were off doing, he had skipped his last class and probably the one before that. Objectively, I liked Billy Prescott, but I couldn’t help but think of him as a bad influence. Ed would never talk about what the two of them got up to when they got together. I also suspected that the tall and absurdly muscled black man was involved in whatever had happened the night I first met Ed. I’d never found anything to point to that, but it just made sense to me down in my toes somewhere.

At that thought, my eyes flicked to a photo on the freezer side of the fridge. Held in place with a Totoro magnet was a 4x6 photo of Ed with my nine-year-old sister Mako. I had taken it the previous summer when Ed had briefly visited my family in Knoxville. For some reason, he’d brought along a man who looked as stern as a brick wall. That man’d brought a little girl with him who looked a few years younger than Mako, and the two of them had had a blast together. That night had been tremendously awkward, what with senior stone-face creepily observing Ed like a hawk the whole time like it had been some kind of test. He had supplied enough meat for a bounteous feast, which had my father been outside grilling for hours. My father had developed a soft spot for Ed from the first night he’d entered our lives and had felt obliged to cook all of that food, despite the surprise arrival.

Mako and the other little girl, who might have been named Annie or possibly Amy, played in the backyard. Whenever the two of them would roam anywhere near the back fence that butted up to the forest behind the house, Mako would flee the younger girl and come running straight for Ed. Ed had been her totem of safety since something had happened about a year before that night, and she was immensely fond of him. In the year since that cookout, Mako had continued to recover from whatever trauma from which Ed had rescued her. The two of them still wouldn’t talk about it with each other or anyone else in the family. It had been some kind of shared experience I wasn’t allowed to be a part of.

Mako had taken to looking at Ed as the brother she’d never had. She’d even started giving him a hard time about some things, which was a very pleasant change of pace from ideal she had originally held him as. Thinking of that first night when he’d brought her home still made me shudder.

At this point, there were at least two people who shared his world in ways that I might never be able to. In some way I wasn’t allowed to understand, both Billy and Mako were closer to him than his girlfriend of almost two years. If I were honest, that bugged the hell out of me. I loved the fool boy, I really did, but the fact that I wasn’t invited into that aspect of his life scared me. What was he hiding? And if there was one part of himself that he intentionally kept away from me, were there other things as well? We’d idly talked about getting married, but I just didn’t feel like that was something I wanted while he was keeping secrets.

Closing my eyes and taking a breath to calm my racing mind before I got up to refill my glass with more wine, I shook my head to clear it. My black ponytail slapped my bare shoulders, which were exposed by my purple tank top. It was entirely likely that I would end up going through the entire bottle by myself if he didn’t get home soon. Tonight I didn't really care much that the wine wasn’t really helping my maudlin attitude. A few drops spilled on the counter next to my glass, and I went to wipe them up. As I did so, the trinket around the stem of glass caused me to draw my lips into a line.

The trinket was a miniature representation of the necklace Squall Leonhart wore in Final Fantasy VIII. I’d helped Ed’s old roommate Charlie Logan import it from Japan for Christmas a year and change ago. That had been a few months after we’d started dating, but I was already started to notice the distance forming between Ed and Charlie. They’d continued to live together in the dorms for another year before Charlie had moved back home with his mom, presumably to save money. I understood that logic since it was a reality that I shared.

Much to my chagrin, I’m a twenty-one-year-old grown-ass woman who still lives with my parents. It’d been part of the bargain so they’d keep paying for college, but even at that time, I had suspected that there might have been more to Charlie not getting an apartment with Ed when this semester’s classes started. I’d watched the two of them start to drift apart around the time that we first got together.

We’d officially started dating in fall of Ed’s sophomore year of college, my junior year, but it had really started when I’d kissed him that previous summer. He’d popped into town for a while on some weird private study for one of his professors. That fall, around the time we’d really become a couple, was when I could have sworn the roommates started falling out, even if they couldn’t tell that themselves.

Ed, bless his sweet heart and everything that meant, wasn’t always the most observant of people. He probably thought that Charlie was just busy and didn’t have time to hang out as much as they'd used to. In addition to being intentionally kept from some corner of his life, someone who’d been important to Ed had slowly been driven away.

And that too started around the time we’d gotten together. It was the kind of thing I couldn’t help but notice. I was the common denominator, and that kept pulling at me. Bit by bit, it ripped at me inside. The wine was definitely not helping my mood, but I drained my glass in one long gulp and filled it right back up again. The spilled drops from this newest glass weren’t worth cleaning up, so I just walked a little unsteadily back to the table with the cold spaghetti.

Resigning myself to spending the rest of the night on my own, I spooned a mass of noodles and sauce onto my plate to eat without bothering to reheat it. Once I’d finished eating, I plopped my plate into the sink and took what remained of my wine over to the couch to settle in for the night. Thankfully, I had the presence of mind to not try to drive home, so I thought I might as well not let that last bit in the bottle go to waste.

Unable to chase away the nagging comparisons to Yoko Ono, I plopped down on Ed’s ratty second- or third-hand couch. It was comfortable in the way that ancient and horribly ugly couches tended to be. This one was some awful red, orange, and yellow plaid pattern, and Ed had found it on the side of the road shortly after he moved in. Sometimes when I laid down on it, the cushions would shift in just the right way that I'd get a whiff of the five cans of Lysol I’d sprayed on the thing before letting anyone sit on it.

There had already been food and God-knew-what-else stains all over the thing when we'd first found it. No one would notice if I happened to spill some of the bottle. I didn’t spill much, but then there wasn’t much left by the time I made it to the couch. Not long after taking up residence there I passed out, only to be rudely awakened very early the next morning…

Chapter 1

What the hell, Billy? Edward Mauer said into his throat mic. "You said Werewolf, as in singular. Please tell what you see on the membrane is not singular."

Quit your bitchin’. It's only… Wait, yeah, feel free to keep bitching. This pack is larger than I originally suspected. Billy Prescott’s response came through the headset attached to Edward’s temple as though the comm were speaking directly into Edward’s mind.

More than you suspected? Edward’s green eyes went wide as he took in the three enormous wolves standing about fifteen feet in front of him. Mottled brown and gray fur bristled as rumbling growls escaped their snouts. The leader at their front had dried clumps of bloody fur along its back and neck in places from some prior altercation. "How many did you suspect would be here?"

A couple. Maybe three.

Edward pursed his lips. It seemed like this was a last-minute Hunt in more than one way.

Nate, can you keep them dancing away from me? I’d especially appreciate it— His comment was cut short by the crack of a rifle behind him.

Watch your back, maybe? Nathan Doyle asked over the same comm channel. Yeah, I got you covered. One of those sneaky bastards thought he’d nibble on your butt a little. I figured that was Kana’s job and thought I’d protect your honor.

Thanks? I think? Edward replied as he twirled the longsword in his hands. Billy, numbers please?

The sword sweep was doing an effective job of warding the wolves off for the moment. The one in the lead narrowed its glowing yellow eyes as it paced in front of him. The wolves to its sides moved into a flanking position, but one of them jumped back when another crack from Nathan’s rifle caused a fountain of dirt and small rocks to blow up in a puff from the ground.

Counting seven of them.

This isn’t like— Edward replied with a sudden slashing strike at the wolf in front of him, causing it to also leap out of harm’s way. —that Goblin invasion a couple years ago, man. We aren’t inside a cave, so how did you not see them?

Now’s not the time, Ed. We gots wolves to kill, and that’s on you at the moment. ‘Sides, I wasn’t even on that Hunt…not that you don’t talk about it ‘nough for me to know every last detail by now.

You owe me for this one, dude.

Fine, I’ll count this as your baby shower gift. Just kill the Werewolves. Work your strength mojo or whatever and make the shit happen.

Billy was referring to the berserker glyph with which Edward had been imbued. It had actually been used by his father while trying to use a healing glyph on his mother while she was pregnant with him, on the last Hunt before she’d retired. The whole thing had been a mess, but the end result was that he had incredible strength when his adrenaline started to flow.

Edward made another sweeping strike with his family’s blade to clear the circle around him and take in what else might be in the clearing where they had engaged the leader of this pack. While the Hunter spun, he noted a few other sets of eyes in the forest surrounding them before again concentrating on the leader in front of him. It stood about four feet tall at the shoulder, and red still stained its muzzle from the couple this pack had murdered the previous day.

Baby-shower gift, check. I’ll count it.

Good, now get in there. Billy was starting to get exasperated. He continued, not quite low enough for the mic on his end to not pick up his voice, Sarah never talks this damned much as the striker. It’s just get in, kill the monster, get diner food. S’a nice pattern.

Nate, shoot right, Edward said and juked to the left as another clod of dirt shot into the air. The Werewolves on both sides leapt back to escape harm.

After his feint to the left, Edward changed directions like a running back and charged the leader. As he did, he couldn’t help but take another verbal shot at Billy with a huge grin on his face. Outnumbered seven to one or not, this was about to get fun.

Should’ve thought about that before knockin’ her up, shouldn’t you?

With the longsword held in both hands, he practically dove at the enormous wolf's jaws. Its shoulder’s hunched as muscles tightened, snarling, but didn’t try to get out of the way of the Hunter. Edward felt the now-familiar rush of adrenaline that he associated with his enhanced strength flood his arms and legs. With the speed his legs now offered him, he closed the brief gap in no time. The Werewolf's eyes opened in the canine equivalent of surprise; hunters didn’t appreciate becoming the prey.

When Edward was within striking distance, he swung the blade again at the hunched creature. The Werewolf tried to leap back again, but the incredibly sharp sword lopped one of its front paws off about halfway down from the joint. As the paw flew away from the Werewolf’s body, it turned into an especially hairy human forearm up to near the elbow. The injured pack leader stumbled as its landed but came back up snapping and snarling its bloody jaws in Edward’s direction. It let out a howl, then the voice in his head and the next gunshot went off at almost the same moment.

Incoming. Nathan almost screamed. Both sides.

Nathan’s bullet struck one of the Werewolves in the side and somewhat deflected its leap at Edward. The second Werewolf had no such distraction and landed full on top of the Hunter as he ducked and tried to roll out of the way. Putting the layers of Kevlar and chain-mail that compromised Edward’s bracer in the path of its snapping jaws, he hit the ground with the two-hundred-pound-creature landing on top. It bit down, and Edward could only hope the armor would keep the teeth from breaking his skin. This one had much lighter fur, but it had bloody jaws like its pack master. It shook those jaws, trying to either cut deeper into Edward’s arm or shake its teeth loose—Edward couldn’t be sure which. With the creature preoccupied for the moment, Edward ran his sword through its torso and jerked it around a few times as the one Nathan had shot snapped its jaws near his face.

Shit, more incoming. Interjected Billy. Looks like the rest of them want to chomp your face a bit.

Edward ducked the bite that was coming at his face. Its yellow teeth within a couple inches of his face, he noted that the creature’s breath stunk of rotting meat. With his sword still in the white fur of the wolf on top of him, Edward gave the creature a berserker-fueled throw. Although its white fur started turning red from the blood pouring from the creature and Edward, the dying wolf's jaws kept a tight grip on Edward’s left bracer. The Hunter rolled awkwardly and the creature flopped off over his head, which had the desired effect of moving the face-snapping Werewolf away from him, at least momentarily. When the white-furred werewolf died, it resumed the form of