by Lisa Ladew
Anna got up and wandered outside. She found Theresa and Swan just outside the main door. There had been an Undoing, a magical vampire kill, the day before when a regular patrol had found a vampire nest. Swan had gone, while Theresa and Anna had not been allowed. They’d had to sit at the cosh and practice support magic on each other’s magic, while Polly and Swan and all the rest went to kill vampires.
Theresa sat on a rain barrel, while Swan stretched in the sunlight. They were already talking about the Undoing.
“Did you Prowl?” Theresa asked.
“Of course,” Swan said, a sly smile on her face. She winked at Anna then asked Theresa, “Have you seen the black Belief puma yet?”
Theresa shook her head no, also smiling. “No. You know this is the first time we’ve gotten to sit down this week. And the shifters are never around, they always hide in the forest.”
Swan laughed. “Once you do see him, you’re going to wish he was in your element. But he is Belief, so you two can suck a maypole.”
Theresa snorted. “That’s what you did, right?”
Swan laughed out loud. “I don’t recall. Sounds like me.”
Anna sat down in the flowers next to Swan. “What’s his name?”
Swan shrugged. “It’s better if we don’t know. Keeps us from preferring any and keeps jealousy down.”
Anna’s heart beat harder at that. It didn’t sound right. How could you live with someone who was supposed to protect you in bloody battles and then wrestle your body into submission, and not even know his name?
Swan leaned forward to whisper to her. “I haven’t been here long either, Anna, only a year, but that’s the first thing you have to learn, and the most important. Antimony is unmoving on it. The only time you can take your fill of a male is during the Prowl. The rest of the time, you are better off to act like they don’t exist.”
Anna stared up into the cloudless sky, not seeing anything. Not wanting to think about it. Growler came to her mind and she didn’t know why, but she didn’t want to act like the male didn’t exist. She hadn’t seen him all week, but thought she had heard his distinct growl in the forest several times. And she already knew his name.
No one spoke for several moments. Theresa flopped down on her back. Anna changed the subject. “What’s going on, why aren’t we training?”
“Antimony’s gone.”
Anna looked around. “To where?”
“No one knows.”
“For how long?”
“No one knows.”
Anna frowned. “How do you know she’s gone, then?”
Swan raised her arms and stretched her spine long. “Can you not feel it?”
Anna could. The place was different, softer somehow. “Does that mean no training today?”
Swan shook her head, lounging in the flowers. “She allows no rest when she is here, so we rest while she is gone. Expect seven nights, perhaps fourteen.”
Anna picked at a wildflower, nodding, coating the flower with a thin stream of orange magicks she conjured from nowhere. She was glad for a bit of respite, but also wanting to get good enough at magic that she would be allowed at the next Undoing. She’d been coming along slowly, Polly helping her reel her magic back so it didn’t’ overwhelm the magic she was trying to support, and Swan helping her “feel” another’s magic and merge with it, rather than smash it flat.
A shadow fell over her. A big shadow. She looked up. Growler stood there, strong, unmovable. He stared at her for a moment before he spoke. “Your magic is beautiful” he said simply.
Then he growled. Grrr. Thick and masculine and animalistic, the sound pulsed through her. Her heart pounded. She’d never heard a sexier sound in all her life. He should not be allowed to make that sound around others. Theresa and Swan were evidence of that. Both were making moon eyes at him. Swan reached out to touch his boot.
Anna scrambled to her feet and grabbed his elbow- he smelled so good, like clean outdoor air, forest, and hot sexy male- then pulled him toward the cosh, snarling silently at her sister and Swan. “Stop it,” she mouthed at them. Theresa covered her mouth and nodded, remorse on her face. Swan held her closed fist to her mouth and mimed thrusting a maypole in and out.
Anna shook her head and pulled harder at Growler, angling him so he couldn’t see them, but it was like trying to move a tree. He moved or he didn’t, it wasn’t up to her.
Finally, he went with her around the other side of the cosh. Anna looked around. No sign of Polly, only shifters carving wood and digging and working and switches wandering around, none looking at Anna and Growler.
Anna let go of Growler and moved in close to the wall of the cosh. He did the same, facing her, his expression earnest. He stared into her face as if trying to memorize it. “Why do you stare?” she said to him, not knowing what was going to come out of her mouth, and rather wishing it had been something smarter, more clever.
He answered in the same way, without hesitation, without guile. “Because, like your magic, you are beautiful. I enjoy looking at you.”
Anna did not know what to think, but she liked the words coming from the big male. Liked them very much. She looked around again, marking every person she could see, noting that some of them were now noticing her and Growler standing so close behind the cosh. She turned back to him, not knowing what to think. This felt like courting to her. His stare told her exactly what he thought of her, as much as his words did. She could learn to prefer this male, could prefer him very much, but it did not matter, because she was not allowed. “Why do you say such?” she asked him, hardening her voice. She knew how to turn down males, and as she was not bonded with this one yet, it came half-way easily. She could not afford to bond with him in anyway.
“I should like to speak with you. To walk with you. To learn your thoughts and your feelings and your ways and your wants.”
Anna wondered why all she wanted to do in return was rip his clothes off and learn his body. What was wrong with her? She turned away from him, peeking furtively around the corner of the cosh for Polly. She looked back at him. “You musn’t say such things. Have not your alpha told you about…?” She peeked around again, unease rippling through her, then leaned forward to whisper to him. “Do not single me out so. It is not allowed. Antimony forbids it.”
Growler only looked at her, as if weighing his words carefully. “Antimony is not the Great Bear. Nor is Antimony my bear, or my instinct. Therefore, I do not care what Antimony allows or forbids on the matter.”
Anna shook her head no, furtively. “She can kick you out, you know.”
He nodded. “I know. I weigh my actions against that, but I needed you to hear my thoughts, so that I could measure your reaction. I would like to know you felt about me.” He gazed deep into her eyes. Weighing. Measuring. He half smiled a hopeful, youthful smile that turned him from attractive man-bear to divine Great Hunter turned flesh and bone. She melted under the beauty of such a smile, combined with the feeling in his words. He saw it. Marked it. She hardened again. Tried to harden. Could not harden against him. He smiled for real then and bowed his head to her. “Good day, Anna of the Forest.”
With that he turned and walked away. Anna gaped after him. Maypoled, she was. Head over heels for a male who had to be younger than her. Who was bold and brash and whose growl made her weak. She didn’t prefer, she desired.
The day flashed pink but only for her, and one arrowhead-looking rock fell out of the air, bouncing to still at her feet.
Exactly like the rocks Antimony twined in her hair.
Anna tamped down her feelings as best she could. Shoved them in a corner. She could not handle them right then. She waited for Antimony to arrive and lash her, and when the female did not, Anna turned and went to her friends, her heart saddled with so much she could not face.
10 – The Hunt
Anna ran for the cosh. Somehow her dagger had slipped from her weapons pouch, and she was about to get in trouble. Antimony would be inspecting them when
the sun reached its highest point and she didn’t even have a weapon. She’d given her best dagger to Theresa, and had lost her second best when it had exploded in a thousand pieces against a rock, and her third best, oh where was it? She had no time to make another.
The forest was on her left, but she didn’t pay attention. She’d learned quickly to not worry about watching her back. They were always being guarded, the meadow surrounded by circles of shifter sentries and so many different kinds of magic. She and Theresa had been at the cosh for twenty-nine days, but had not been allowed to attend an Undoing yet, or even leave the meadow.
When a growl sounded from behind a tree as she passed it, she did not fear it and did not hesitate. She angled toward it, like she belonged in the forest, had business there, although why she could not fathom. Except it was Growler, she knew, and she wanted to see him.
She’d mostly been successful at ignoring him during those twenty-nine days, only speaking proper words to him, rarely letting her gaze linger on his, when she looked up and saw him watching her train, or eat, or drag her tired ass back to the cosh for bed. Everywhere she turned lately, she saw him. Like he was watching her. Or watching over her. She liked the thought of both.
She liked the thought of him watching her, because he was so accepting of her. Her supportive magic was better, almost good enough that she did not blush to think of him seeing it. Almost. But he never laughed, unlike the switches, never poked fun, never shook his head and looked away. Rather, he watched her magic evolve with acceptance and she could sense his satisfaction whenever she mastered a new skill. It mirrored her own. Her dreams told her exactly how bonded she was to the big male already, but this was the first time her feet had ever displayed such.
They carried her behind the tree, where she dropped to a crouch next to Growler. He was there, resting on one cocked heel, the opposite knee out in front, bracing one of his elbows, while he looked out over the forest, his eyes never marking her. But he nodded when she arrived just the same. Her eyes were drawn to what he worked in his hands with a small metal knife. The thing he worked was wood, but like no wood she had ever seen. This wood was a deeper brown, richer, more swirls of colors, carved by his hands into a kind of dagger, a kind of stake. It was smaller than any dagger he would use, dwarfed by his big paws, but just right for her hands. If it was for her she would kiss him. She would not be able to help it. The thought that such a male might make something like this for her-
Anna held her breath, staring at it as his hands held the dagger-stake by the round “handle” and his knife worked the thick but more flattened blade without the help of his eyes. He fingered the point of it, moving his finger around it, testing the sharpness, then the fingers of the hand that opposed the hand that held the dagger brought the slicing edge of the knife to the point. He slivered off the tiniest bit, then he felt it again. Anna’s lungs burned. She pulled in a breath, wanting that dagger, that wooden stake, that vampire killer. It would be true, would slice through vampires with no resistance. It only needed a bit of-
Growler growled and Anna looked into his eyes. He only stared at her for a second before turning his attention back to the forest. But he tossed the dagger-stake in the air, drawing her eyes to it again. It flipped lazily once, until he caught it by the blade, offering the handle to her. She took it with trembling fingers, unable to help calling her magicks forth. She ran her fingers down both sides of the open blade, whispering words she heard not, burning the wood to perfection, sealing in Growler’s care, making the weapon her own.
When she looked up, he was staring at her, and the intensity in his eyes scared her down to her center.
She could not speak of the stake. The thanks on her lips burned, it was too big, too powerful for her to express. She tucked the knife into her empty pouch, filling it nicely, the wood pressing out against the curves of her breasts pleasantly. She looked up at him again, hoping he was watching her, wanting to feel his eyes on her breasts, knowing what the look on his face would be. Pure hunger. Pure wanting. The wanting would stir longings in her best not stirred, but still she could not stop wanting to stir them.
He was not looking. His eyes were on the forest. His nostrils flaring as he scented and listened and watched and protected.
But his face was hungry. She saw his face harden and his mouth work slightly, as if he were imagining loosing her breasts, sucking on the nipples. Her very center heated and swelled, wanting his touch. Oh good word bad magic she had to get away from that male. But could not leave without giving thanks.
She could not force the words out, afraid her voice would shake, that emotion would overflow. Instead she reached out to his shirt, where a rip in the fabric revealed the skin underneath. She ignored the skin as best she could and touched the edges of the fabric, coating it with her magicks, encouraging the hole to mend itself, the threads to bond with their split mates. “You should have an everweft spell on your clothing,” she whispered, trusting herself that much.
“I will accept one from none but you,” he said, his voice pitched low, so rumbly and yummy.
“I am not good enough yet,” she said without thinking. “Clothes that form around a shifter any time he shifts into a man, then integrate with his animal when he is such is strong magic. Complicated magic.”
“You will be soon,” he growled. “When you are ready, I will be the first male you place one on.” He looked at her then. The only male, his intense eyes demanded, although his mouth stayed shut, perhaps knowing it had no right to demand anything from her, not unless he claimed her, and still, he would do better to ask.
Emotion threatened her again, wanting to spill and tumble. She would not let it. But she could not stop it.
Yelling saved her. Polly, yelling her name from the meadow. Growler shot to his feet, growling under his breath, on the alert, scanning the woods, stepping to the meadow.
Anna left him, left the trees, hoping no one saw her. She ran for Polly. When she rounded the corner of the cosh, they were all coming for her, Polly, Swan, Theresa, and the bone switch they had been practicing with.
“It’s Vant,” Polly yelled, coming in fast, not seeming to notice where Anna had come from. Anna’s breath caught in her throat when she saw the ingrav on Polly’s palm was lit with orange fire. It would lead her to the vampire being engaged by a switch sister, until they got close enough that the killing fire took over, and they all could find the vampire by feel.
“I’m going,” Anna called to her, hoping she was going.
Polly nodded. They all went by at a run and Anna fell in. “We can’t beat Vant without a full cosh. Prepare thy supportive magicks.” She tucked in her elbows and ran down the forest path, the other switches jostling to fall in behind her, but before they had even become winded, trees crashed and dropped behind them, the forest shaking with some sort of onslaught. Anna kept her eyes on Polly for what to do. The switch slowed, but didn’t stop. She looked behind her, then stuck out a hand, watching behind her as she moved forward. A massive bear with one eye roared past her, dipping a shoulder as it passed Polly. She grabbed hold of its fur, and it flipped her up onto its back for a ride.
Oh! Swan was next, and she laughed as a scary-big puma, as big as a small bear came in close and flipped her onto his back. She’d done that before.
Anna held her hands close to her sides. Wolves and big cats streamed by. She wanted to watch just one more switch do it. But the bone shifter peeled off the path, yelling like a warrior, running with the animals, keeping their speed easily. Anna was not going to be able to that. Theresa was in front of her, and she threw a terrified glance over her shoulder. Neither of them was good at this kind of thing, but Theresa would never be the one to try it first. Anna put on a burst of speed. “I got you, Theresa, watch me,” she called, hearing more bears coming up behind, wanting to be ready if one came close. If it was Growler, she would know, she remembered exactly what his bear looked like, and somehow, she knew if it was him she would be able to get
and stay on him better than she would anyone else.
She stuck out her hand like Polly had, still running. A bear came in close. Not Growler. She grabbed for him, but had little to do with getting atop his shoulders. He flipped her up like she was a flapjack and she almost shot over the other side of him, grabbing on with magicks at the last moment, anchoring herself like she remembered Antimony had. She shot a look behind her for Theresa. Theresa had done it, too, on a large grizzly, but she was listing badly, holding on with her hands, not her magic. Theresa sent some orange magicks her way with a whisper only she and they heard. Secure my sister, hold her fast until she chooses to get down.
A bear came up fast from the rear, head down, a growl ripping from his throat. Growler. His fangs flashed in the sunlight that dappled between the trees as he rumbled and growled, speeding past her on the bear that had come first, passing them on the right, getting in front of them, felling trees in their path, making the way easier.
Anna could only watch. Watch and admire and approve.
Until they got close to the battle and she could feel the vampires. There were many. She snarled into the air like she was the animal and plucked her new dagger from between her breasts, holding it at an angle, away from her and the shifter she rode, giving herself over to the anger, to the blood-lust, to the killing instinct. She could do none other. She was fresh, and new, and had no control over the Hunt or the Prowl. Polly had told her some control would come over time, but only the strongest switches could keep their heads during either.
The bear she rode cut sharply to the right.
We are close a voice said in her mind, startling her. She knew it was the bear, but it was the first time she’d heard it in her mind. The shifters and switches could communicate telepathically if they were close enough, but only if the shifter was in his animal form.
Pink magic came from their left, shooting through the forest, then a request for supportive magic, like a pulling at her bones. This was it. She loosed her magicks from the bear, slid off, and ran through the forest to the mouth of a cave, ducking inside without hesitation, sending her magic before her as best she could. It was hard without knowing what she was supporting, but she did her best, orange energetic magic lighting the cave as it spread out before her.