by Lisa Ladew
Something crashed in the meadow. She craned around. Growler and a few of the other Bond shifters were working with a sort of frantic quickness now. Like something chased them. Their four days was up soon.
A request came to her. For magic? For support? From where? Nowhere special that she could tell. Far. But one of her sisters needed her. She would be stronger if she were closer.
Anna tipped herself out of the tree branch with a practiced ease. A Bond switch’s favorite place was often the trees, high in the boughs with the squirrels and the bees and the woodpeckers and the owls, and any animal that followed her up there out of curiosity or bond.
She hit the ground at a run and plunged headlong into the forest. In the direction she hoped was where the cosh had been. Follow the path, jog to the left at the big tree, run until you think about giving up, then jog to the right and listen for the river.
Yes, there was the widening in the water. Just downriver was the meadow where the cosh had been. Someone there needed her. Theresa...? Theresa and Swan. Oh no. And Mary Celeste. And others. Anna shot magic in front of her, as crying as well as she could, which was nothing like Swan could do with her lightning. But voices and faces came to her, from ahead. Swan and Antimony. Theresa and Mary Celeste. No shifters. switch business only. She was the only switch missing. Antimony said her name from within Anna’s magicks, “Anna,” her eyes burning. Theresa turned away, shaking with unspent rage and helplessness. Antimony was about to decree that Theresa agree to the banishment of Anna and Growler. Antimony did not need the First Bond Switch’s approval, but Fate would like it, would more easily bend to Antimony’s will and strip Anna of the strongest of her elemental magic, of her shifters and everything that made her.
Antimony’s position allowed her to force Theresa with magic. Theresa would have no hope of refusing. The system was broken. Fixed only in Antimony’s favor. And they were finally going to fight about it. Anna ran faster, eager to be in the middle of this battle. It was all about her, after all.
Anna found the battle easily. On the very center of where the cosh had stood. Right where Antimony’s room would have been, had she not exploded everything. Antimony stood toe to toe with Swan, magic crackling between the two of them, blue and pink twining together and wrestling to the death. Neither spoke with their mouths. Theresa stood behind Swan, lending her support, even as she couldn’t meet Antimony’s eyes. Anna needed to be fighting this fight, but it was Theresa’s place… Mary Celeste brought up the rear, not sure how they would fare.
Theresa saw Anna and relief flooded her features. Anna tried not to knock her over as she came in fast, still running, but Theresa was ready for her. She pulled Anna in front of her, facing her at Swan and Antimony. The other switches surrounded them loosely, none taking a side. Theresa clutched at Anna and hissed a dearth in her ear. “I desire it so, Anna,” she said. “But I cannot.”
Anna nodded and patted her sister, her eyes on Swan and Antimony. “Theresa, no shame. You were never meant to. This is my fight.”
“My fight, too,” Theresa said furtively. Mary Celeste nodded from behind her. Swan spoke, her voice hard. “My fight, too, Anna. You are not the only switch feeling the pinch of unfair rule.”
Antimony pulled back away from Swan’s stare, her pink magic swirling with her, curling in her hair, seeming to gather at the rocks braided there. She sneered at them all while backing up a hill in the meadow. “I shall banish the lot of you,” she called to them. “Fate can choose from hundreds of switches, from anywhere in the world. Each of you shall be proof of it.”
Anna nodded tightly and stepped up next to Swan, raising her hands at Antimony. “Do it then. Kick us all out. Fate loves a joke, but Fate favors the bold, and you never know for sure what Fate will do. As much as Fate promises it is on your side, that you will surely be the first of us to never die, to never lose yourself in the game, you are still the underling, the Queen on Fate’s play board. A powerful piece to be sure, but still only a piece, a player. Make your move, and let Fate make hers. I should like to see it.”
Antimony only stared, pursing her lips. Then she spoke curtly. “Your magic still glows orange on the heels of that pretty speech? Your words had naught to do with love and kittens. Your cosh sisters burn with shame at your breathiness.”
“Not I!” Mary Celeste yelled from behind Theresa, who was behind Anna. “Nor I,” Theresa said quietly. “You mock at your peril, Antimony. Anna is the true First Bond Switch, and Growler will figure a way to move this”: she raised her hand and flashed the knife slash ingrav on her palm, jabbing a finger at it. “...move this to from me to Anna.”
Antimony frowned, turning to eat up the meadow with her man’s boots and man’s pants. “Is that what the cur is up to at the center of the forest?” She frowned again, deeper and counted on her fingers for a moment then stared off into space, like she was trying to remember if she’d done something. Decreed someone to build a new cosh? With the deep dismay on her face, Anna thought that was probably what she hadn’t done and knew it. But with Growler out in the forest, marshaling the shifters to work, maybe she had thought she had.
Anna fixed a look on her face like she knew exactly about all of it. Antimony curled her palm away from them, rousing Anna like a slap in the face. She was about to scatter them all with magic. Anna shoved at her sisters and screamed at Swan. “Run!”
Antimony thrust her hand out and shot a growing pink ball of magic at the center of them, more lightning than energy, more fire than magic. But they were already on the move and were barely singed. Blood switches were so powerful, able to do magic they shouldn’t, and Antimony was more powerful than any.
“Lightning,” Anna cried to Swan, trusting it would be there, opening her arms for it. She lent the stroke everything she had. For Growler. For Theresa. For Sir Dewey. For every Bond switch who had ever had to live like this. And the other switches, too. She magnified Swan’s lightning a hundred times. A thousand times! It grew too large, out of her control, and she couldn’t let it strike all in one spot. The power in it would fry not only Antimony, but all of them. Everyone present. She grew it larger still and spread it out like a line, like the edge of a wooden spoon as big as the forest coming down between them and Antimony. The line of light on fire split them, burning a hole three feet wide and six feet deep into the forest floor, trees sizzling and exploding up and down the line. Anna was blown backward, and she let go of Swan’s magic with relief. It had grown too large for her. She had asked for too much. She landed on her ass in the weeds, a tree branch hooking into her dress and tearing it in another spot. Good thing she had not cleaned up, had forgotten to mend her dress, because here she was, filthy, on her back, and tearing her clothes again. Switch life.
Anna shot to her feet. Swan was climbing up from the ground, unhurt. Theresa and Mary Celeste, also. Antimony? She didn’t see her anywhere. Anna ran forward and jumped the span of the new gouge in the forest floor. The gash that her and Swan’s lightning had dug out of the earth looked to be miles long. There was Antimony. In the forest. Fetched up against a tree hard, her eyes open and staring and ire-full, and still she didn’t move from where she had fallen. Couldn’t believe it, mayhap? Believe it, cunthe.
“Sir Dewey,” Theresa cried from behind her, and Anna whirled. Theresa was staring down the line of missing dirt and trees, and even Anna could see where it merged with the path that went straight toward the center of the forest. The gouge in the earth would run right through the center of what Growler and the others had been crafting.
Anna didn’t respond. She only tucked her elbows in and ran. Magic could not help her get there any faster, and she might need it when she got there. To heal the ones who could not shift, if any had been hurt. The thought tore at her, and she ran faster.
Her sisters followed.
21 – Resynynt
The switches came into the meadow at the center of the forest at a run, Anna first, Swan second, Theresa and Mary Celeste, next, the rest of
the cosh switches and some most shifters behind them, minus Antimony. They skidded to a stop one after another and stared out over the meadow of blue flowers, trying to make sense of what they were seeing.
The lightning gouge in the forest ran directly through the meadow of forget-me-nots. The dirt within had been… liquefied, cooked maybe, and dropped below the level of the rest of the earth, what was visible was a thick brown loam. The lightning had traveled directly through the center of the trees, spanning the proud tree that had been directly in the center of what the shifters had been building. Destroying it.
The meadow itself was littered with branches and leaves and shards of wood as if something had been destroyed as surely as the cosh. Anna searched the meadow with her eyes, to find her bear. The tree in the center drew her attention. The biggest tree in the forest, all knew. It had been struck by the wall of lightning, and the top had been blasted right off of it. A massive, living stump, soaring thirty feet high, still stood, proud and jagged and, brimming with magic the color of a campfire. Anna stared, transfixed, unable to pull her focus elsewhere.
“There’s Growler,” someone whispered from behind her. “And Sir Dewey,” someone else said. The frantic pace of the shifters had only increased. Growler was swinging across the expanse from structure to structure, dropping reams of rope for Sir Dewey to secure. Other shifters were beyond them, at other places around the grand stump, grabbing more rope, stringing it in some determined fashion.
Anna marked three... houses? Cabins? lifted high into the air. Circular, cozy, big enough for two, as she’d seen earlier. They were in a triangle shape, the smoldering stump set directly in the center of that triangle. Below these three tree houses was a round house, set lower to the ground, and encircling the decimated but obviously powerful tree stump.
Anna knew on instinct that was the low round house was the shifter’s common room, with areas for privacy for each shifter. Growler was a master craftsman, and the dark wood shone in the dappled sunlight. He was a genius. Her fyne male had built a house just for Bond element. Only for her and Theresa and Mary Celeste, and their shifters. And Theresa would run it fairly. Or not at all. Bond sisters did not need rules to not hurt each other.
Hope lifted her, squirting magic from the ends of her rather ordinary hair. Hair that Growler loved to run between his fingers. She searched the three little houses in the air with her eyes, scanning their perches on tree limbs and partial platforms. Which would be hers and Growlers’? Which would have a bed inside big enough for the both of them, carved from wood Growler had worked with his own two hands? One that would truly renew her.
Anna realized what the shifters were doing with the ropes. They were stringing rope bridges. Looking for some sort of, design, of completion, of …. finalization. How would Growler know when it was reached? Like he always did, she guessed. He said it was so and it was.
The shifters were hanging their ropes, calling to each other, a grunt here, an encouragement there. A popping noise belched from the open circle in the middle of the giant tree stump. Mary Celeste cried out in surprise. Anna’s eyes were drawn to the magicks drifting up from the stump, her magicks, with some Swan mixed in, some blue escaping, only the orange staying to twine around the wood.
Growler’s eyes were also drawn to the spot where the magic rose. He swung on his rope, putting himself at the open edge of the stump, frowning down at the hole as orange campfire light drew shadows on his face. Anna didn’t know if it was magic, or actual fire. Growler reached deep into the hole, holding on to the side with his other hand.
Anna ran for him. He should not touch it, whatever it was. But her foolhardy bear already was shoulder deep in whatever was going on inside that stump. His lip curled. He cried out, more of an exclamation than a declaration of pain. She ran faster. “Growler, no!” Shifters moved in with her. Switches hung back. If it wasn’t vampires, they didn’t get excited.
She smelled something burning. Fur. Growler was partially shifting, just that one arm, she saw the fur stop at his neck. Neat trick and one she had never seen before. There was something inside that stump he wanted with all his being. Something he was willing to burn for. She put on a burst of speed, burning that he was burning, and just as she was about to jump for it, he pulled his arm out, shifting it to human again, healing it, his big fingers curled around something that rubbed black soot onto his clear flesh, his jaw clenched. He dropped to the ground easily, barely having to bend his knees on landing.
Anna stopped in her tracks and stared at Growler, only a few feet away. Shifters watched from perches in trees and on rope bridges above them. “Vampire!” A shifter yelled from way in the back. Growler lifted his nose, his hands still wrapped around whatever he had pulled out of the stump, his energy controlled. “Not close. Phazed out already,” he said.
Anna did not care about the vampire. It was not close or she would be after it already, unable to stop herself. She cared about what was in Growler’s hand. But then slick hate grabbed her around the mid-section, letting go just as quickly. Vampire again, but only for a second. “Vampire. Closer that time!” a dark jungle cat called from the farthest tree in the copse.
“Checking on us,” Growler said, his eyes on Anna, his hands working whatever he had between them, whatever he had fished from the tree stump. Anna thought she saw a charred point, like a knifepoint peeking out. She walked slowly toward him, her curiosity piqued till she couldn’t contain it. A witches eye for a bauble, Theresa would call their tendency to chase shiny things, new things, pretty things, or curiosities. Our sickness, Swan would say. They all had it. Something new or pretty or girly could distract them, and at that moment, Anna could not tear her eyes from Growler’s hands. What did he have in there? Why had he burnt himself to get it? Was it for her? Would she like it? Did she need it?
Growler nodded at the gouge the lightning had taken out of the ground. “Vant wishes to know what that lightning was.” His voice held open admiration, as if he knew it had something to do with her. He’d felt her magic in it. Smelled it, tasted it, probably would bathe in it if he could. The male was nothing if not loyal and single-minded.
“Vant shall have to queue up, if he wants answers,” Anna said, feeling bold with magic. “Mayhap I’ll have a few to hand over to him, alongside the sharp edge of my knife.”
Growler quirked his lips, and revealed in one motion what was in his hands, right as she said the word knife, like he’d known exactly what her words would be. Anna gasped at the sight of it. A small dagger, so small it was almost a knife, much like the one she had carved for herself from wood, her old faithful knife that had killed many a vampire. But this one had not been carved. It looked to have been poured and molded from molten wood, like nothing she had ever seen, the smooth surfaces pulsing with her magic, but molded into her bear’s claw divots. She reached for the wooden dagger. He handed it over easily.
Power thrummed up her arm as soon as she touched it. Resynynt. The word flashed through her mind, then faded away as the power flooded her entire body, making her able to feel the beat of her blood through her very veins. A pleasant sensation. She grasped the knife hard, Growler’s paw divots molding into a smaller pattern that fit her fingers perfectly. Magic filled her to the very top, and her senses went alive.
Phazing. She could feel the Vampire Vant phaze through the very air of the forest, rushing like dust motes on a tornado’s wind, past trees and boulders and clouds heading the other way. He rushed at her. Curious. Yes he was. Curious like the bat in the sky, the dark rat he would like to be. Her thoughts hardened. Vant would pay for that curiosity with her knife to his throat, her new and deadly resynynt that sparkled with her magicks and burned with her shifter’s love.
Anna went to meet the vampire.
22 – The Vampire Vant
Growler spun in place. Anna had sprung away like a light-footed deer, disappearing into the forest before most realized she’d moved. Orange magic had been propelling her faster almost than he
could track. She was stronger than he had ever seen her. He knew at once where she was going. There was a vampire nearby, but not close enough that Growler could scent him. But that had been the look of Undoing on her face. Growler had seen it countless times before.
She ran into the forest, and he followed, shifting into his big bear first, picking up her scent the second he hit her back trail, following it, determined to gain on her.
From behind him, Growler heard a switch yell, “Anna no, you must wait for us!” But Growler was already moving away from the call, toward his Anna, who had found the blood fiend somewhere ahead of them.
Growler slowed, sensing the weight of this kill. It had to be Anna’s kill. If Growler stepped in, Fate would not reward her. He pulled up short, as he saw Anna and Vant facing off around a tree in the forest ahead of him. Growler shifted quickly and quietly to human and hid himself, not knowing why, still able to see them. He eyed the vampire who was eyeing his Anna, clearly assessing her. Vant. White stripe from forehead to nape of neck. If Anna could slay the Fatherborne, it would only lend power to what he and Theresa were trying to pull off. A cooperative coup d’état. Make Anna First. Give her the authority to do what none had done before: challenge the cosh-switch. Mayhap even beat her. Growler could hope. She was bold enough, his Anna. If she failed, he would carry her somewhere soft and sweet and tend to her until she was ready to try again. There was no option but eventual victory.