by Faith Hunter
Gee tumbled in the air, all feathers and fluff. I laughed back at him and got an evil bird-eye in return. Then he laughed, a peculiar Anzu chuckle. “Urgggglllaaammmaaah’s body was always beautiful in flight,” he said, of the owner of the flight feather I had used to shape-change. “Your clumsy antics would make her laugh.”
I blew a bird raspberry at him with my beak and spiraled hard away. “Alexch? Where?”
“Perpendicular to your right,” Alex said, “is the North Swannanoa River. Upstream, you’ll spot the first of two stone quarries, may be hard to spot under the snow. Can you see them? If so, head to the farthest one.”
“I ssshee,” I said.
“Keep the Burnett Reservoir to your right, at about two o’clock.”
“Copy.” I found my voice in the guttural and tongue and throat possibilities of the Anzu physiology.
“Wedgewood Terrace wends to your left, with a stretch of road that is actually almost perfectly straight. A house roofed with red-clay tiles is on the right side of the street, new construction, about halfway between two right-angle turns. You see that?”
With my human eyes I’d have said no, the color hidden beneath the snow. But my raptor eyes picked out spots of red beneath the blanket of white. “I see.”
“Big Evan is standing in the middle of the road, waiting for you. He has the tracking device in his hand. Quoting him. ‘Janie. Bring my boy back. I trust you.’”
Anzu eyes are remarkable. Big Evan was like a beacon, standing on top of a truck in the middle of the road, his magic and his life force a brilliant reddish gold. It was clear that all Anzus knew he was a witch, his half secret even more revealed than he might have known. I half folded my wings and slanted down. There was a vehicle, a garish-painted snowmobile, steam coming from the exhaust, near the truck. I adjusted my approach again just as a flurry of sleet/snow mixture battered down on me. My nictitating membranes flashed closed, changing the world to grays and ochres. A blast of frigid air buffeted me and I raised my wings, flight feathers angled for more drag. Like a fledging learning to fly, I began to tumble. Lost my angle to grab the marble swinging on a macramé strap. The ground came at me fast. Instinctively, my claws outstretched and grabbed the steering handlebar of the snowmobile.
The handlebar gave as my weight settled.
With an unintended squawk, I flapped, flopped, hopped off the handle onto the hood of the small vehicle and gripped a protrusion to keep from sliding off into an ungainly heap in a snowdrift. My eye membranes opened in shock. My claws scored through the paint. “Oopsssh,” I said, blinking.
Big Evan smiled slightly as I caught my balance, but the scent of his worry and fear abraded the air like burning sandpaper. “You don’t have to carry it now.” He climbed down to the snow, landing with a grunt. “Where do you want the tracker?” he asked.
“Tie like jessesssh?” I indicated my clawed foot, holding it into the air.
“Good. Yeah.” Evan dropped to one knee in the snow, his body heat a measurable force in the cold air, even through his winter gear. His hands were heated on my leg as he looped the ties of a small bag around my ankle and knotted them off. “I’ve set it with a soft audible tone. If you get within a mile of my son, it’ll make a faint tinging sound, like a tiny silver bell. As you get closer, the sound will get louder, more pure in tone, at least to your bird ears. No humans will be able to hear it. It won’t be loud enough, I hope, to attract the attention of any daywalking fanghead.”
“Mile high or a mile distant?”
“Think of EJ as being on the ground, centered beneath a large bowl, as deep as its radius. The higher you are, the angle of the reading will be less accurate.” He paused, testing the thong he had tied to my ankle. “I recommend a height of five hundred to a thousand feet above ground.” Big Evan had finished securing the tracker and his big hand rested on my even bigger foot. He met my eye. “If we had been home, we might all be dead. At the inn, we—not you—were responsible for his safety. Losing him is on us. But . . .” Tears gathered in his eyes, fury and fear shifting through behind the tears. “I’ll give you anything. Please save my son. Please.” A tear trickled down his cheek into his beard.
“Yesssh,” I said, discovering that birds couldn’t tear up. “Give me your friendship. Believe that I’ll alwaysssh put you and yoursssh first.”
“So. I’ve been an idiot where you’re concerned. Molly’s always said so.”
Beast leaned us down and touched his hand with my/our beak, then slid our head and neck along his hand, scent marking him.
“You really make it hard to hate you.”
I chirped. Tried to give a snarky bird grin.
It must have translated because Evan raised his bushy brows. “Alex said the proper blessing for this hunt is, ‘May your hunt be bloody. May you rend and eat the flesh of your prey.’”
“People really need to stop quoting Leo to me,” I said. The consonants sounded like sharp tocks, but my words were growing understandable. Mostly.
“We have a dozen hamburgers. They’re cold but they’re yours if you want.”
“Thanks. But I think a deer would suit better.” I had no idea what hamburgers would do to an Anzu digestive tract. I raised my wings, gently dislodging Evan, sending him lurching into the snow. I sat back on my heels and launched myself at the sky, stretching out my wings, angled for lift, and flapped hard, raising myself into the cold air.
Flying. Healthy. A gust of air flipped me over and I tumbled dozens of feet before I caught my wings under me.
Beast hate stupid bird. Beast hate flying. Beast—
I got it. I got it. Now, hush. I need to listen.
Gee DiMercy angled into my flight pattern and set himself to my right wingtip, still using my energy to soar. Dang bird. Sleet cut through the air. Buried itself in my feathers. I fluffed them out and settled them. Found a height above Asheville at what I felt like was about seven hundred feet. I hoped no local yahoo with a shotgun thought I was a trophy and shot me out of the sky.
To Gee, I said, “I have a bell-chime tracker, and the cell phone is on to Alex for as long as its battery and its minicharger stay active. Starting a grid flight pattern over the city proper, where I-26 meets I-40 and moving east all the way to the edge of the city, then back to starting point and moving west. If we don’t find anything in the city, we’ll expand, quartering the land along I-26 and I-40 in five-mile segments.”
His made an odd bobbing motion, like a pigeon on a window ledge.
Wisely, I didn’t say so.
* * *
* * *
We searched for three hours, silent, listening, and gave up on finding EJ inside the city limits. Expanding our flight pattern, we searched the quadrants from east to south to west to north. We got nothing. Nada. Zilch. I was despairing and my Anzu body was tiring. I was a skinwalker, but like any biological body, this one needed toning and training and its muscles came to me functional but not strong. Snow and ice were building up on my feathers and face. There were good reasons why birds didn’t fly in this kind of weather. I was frozen. “I need another break,” I said. “Alex, Gee, I need food.”
“Can’t help you, Janie, but my big bro says the weather is shifting off to the east and the helo can fly. So if you find the kid, you’ll have backup.”
“That’s good,” I said, barely stopping my bird beak from chattering with the cold.
“We will hunt deer.” Gee banked and dropped below me, swerving toward the Biltmore Estate and grounds and across the French Broad River, speeding toward a leafless, wooded area, near the Biltmore vineyards, where we circled, searching for life in the waning light.
The bell in my pouch gave a soft chime.
I nearly fell out of the sky. “Was that—?”
It chimed again. “Yes! Stay aloft, little goddess. You do not have the gift of cloaking. Their guards will see yo
u.” Gee did a whirling, falling maneuver worthy of a fighter jet. Before I could stabilize and level out my flight, he vanished. Completely vanished. Like, poof. Gone.
“Crap. Either Gee transported there, or he went invisible.”
Alex said from the cell, “Sneaky bird brain. Working to get your position now.”
I circled, waiting, trying to make out landmarks below the blanket of white. The layers of snow made it difficult, though I thought I saw a greenhouse.
Alex said, “You’re near the North Carolina Arboretum.”
“Copy that,” I said. “Gee is reconnoitering from down there and I’m sightseeing.” Minutes passed as I circled, and I identified the tall roof of a greenhouse, a gift shop, flat places that were probably parking lots, a two-story building that looked as if it might be part museum, part visitors’ center.
Over one section of the buildings, my tracker gonged much louder. I dropped lower in a smooth, slow soar, and it gonged again, narrowing the location of EJ’s marble tracker, hopefully still in his pocket, on his person. My tracker continued to gong, slightly louder each time.
From one section of grounds and building I caught a whiff of smoke, cooking meat, spoiled meat, and old blood. I sniffed carefully with my bird nose, which I discovered was very good at certain scent patterns. I detected human blood. Vampire blood.
Not EJ’s blood. “Thank God,” I said, the sound a birdlike chirrup.
The tracker bell sounded.
“There’s smoke,” I said. “Smells like barbeque, maybe pork. Or . . . Oh. Gack. Maybe human. Yeah. That’s it. Someone is cooking human in a big smoker.” I sniffed again.
“Is it—” Alex broke off.
“Not EJ.” If it had been EJ I’d have wreaked havoc and destruction on the creatures below. I’d have spared no one. I beat my wings once, hard, and rose through the whispering sleet on the cooking-human thermal. Which was gross and horrific in every possible way. I sniffed again and decided it was truly someone I didn’t know. “I don’t think so.”
I placed where the bell tracker was directing me and focused in with Anzu eyes on the building. The bell was loudest when I soared over the visitors’ center or cultural center or whatever they called it, seeing through the distant windows. The building was open space from the lower level to the ceiling two stories overhead, lots of heavily frosted windows, that, in Anzu vision, glowed brightly with light and warmth. The air rising from the heated space smelled strongly of rotten meat/spoiled blood.
“Tell me everything you see, Janie.”
I pitched my wings for an oblique angle around the corner of the building. Hanging from a second-story window, booted feet dangling in space, was a human-shaped, fully dressed Gee DiMercy. His head was the only part of him that might be visible to anyone inside, raised above the lowest part of the glass. He scampered across the outer wall like a monkey in a tree, or like a spider, hanging by his hands on the exterior window sashes.
“Gee is looking in the window of the visitors’ center,” I said. “The grill is behind that building, and based on the rising thermals, I think they also have a fire in the fireplace in the center.”
In Anzu vision, I knew there were no live or undead humans in sight, so I slanted lower over the grounds. There were several SUVs, two vans, and two cars, each glowing in infrared, only a thin layer of melting snow on them. They had been driven recently. “I see vehicles. Including two bloodred Range Rovers. And there’s more old-blood scent inside them.” In the landscaping below me was an herb garden smelling strongly of rosemary, a garden of what looked like blooming mums, colors fading, but visible even beneath the snow. One garden looked odd, and my empty belly did hungry somersaults at the sight of three deer on the plantings’ periphery, but before I could investigate, Gee leaped off the roof and dropped his human-glamoured shape, falling into his Anzu form. I whipped to the side and out of his way as his wings beat down, sweeping hard, rocketing him upward.
I glanced to the west. The sun was setting. We were either just barely in time, or totally out of it.
“You are not cloaked, little goddess. Follow me closely,” Gee chirped when he drew level. He folded his wings and dove. I mimicked his movements and followed, sleet cutting through my feathers. I shivered hard as we drew even with the visitors’ center, wingtips almost touching. We swept past. I got a good look inside through the windows in the upper story. EJ was sitting on a chair. Sitting in a chair facing him was a dark creature, part human, part . . . other. His exoskeleton was a carapace so black it seemed to suck the light out of the day. His eyes were round and wide at the nose, tilted high and pointed at the outer tips, like teardrops, and glittering with a prism of light and energy. It was the same colors as the rift—blues and greens and shadows that glistened. Once again I remembered that titles had value in Shimon’s time. One of his titles was the Son of Shadows. How was he a shadow? Or had Judas, his father, been the shadows?
The Flayer rose from the chair and leaned over the little boy. He picked up my godson and carried him toward the door. They passed a scarlet heap on the floor, all angles and mangled limbs. The Flayer of Mithrans’ latest interpreter. The FOM opened a door in the back of the two-story building and carried EJ into the depths. I lost sight of them.
I described what I’d seen. Not that it helped.
“Eli and Bruiser are on the way,” Alex said. “Helo has lift-off.”
“I thought you said we needed the sleet to be stopped.”
“I did,” Alex said shortly. “Like they listen to anyone with sense.”
Knowing our location didn’t get us backup anytime soon. I needed to shift into a primate with opposable thumbs to fight, but I was pretty sure I didn’t have time. I followed Gee up and we landed on the crest of the two-story building, my talons cutting through the ridge into the supports below. The tracker continued donging.
“Do you see him?” I croaked. Now that I wasn’t expending energy staying aloft in a storm, I began to shiver.
“No,” Gee said. “No one left the building. However, there is a circle below us, covered by snow, possibly the circle powering the transformation of the Son of Shadows into whatever he hopes to become, though I must say, it isn’t a strong circle. Not a powerful one.”
Gee leaped off and beat his wings, one powerful down stroke, to make an arc over the part of the grounds where the deer had stood, and once again, my stomach did a somersault. Not from hunger, but from the weird magics there. I wondered if the cancer had just appeared in my Anzu form, then shoved that thought deep inside. There was nothing I could do either way.
Soaring, I studied the patch of ground, trying to see with Beast thoughts and Anzu eyes and brain. There was a faint ring of magics in a circle on the ground, not nearly strong enough to be witches buried in the dirt, powering a time circle with their life energies. However, human-shaped and sized lumps were in the circle, and the stink of dead vamp and human was strong here. I counted twelve bodies, so the clock concept that we had seen in Natchez was present here. It could be a time circle of some sort.
I swooped lower, into the miasma of death stench and rot, and my bird nose separated out a familiar scent. Legolas. The blond vamp. His blood was here in the circle. A tree had partially fallen near the edge of the circle, and I back-winged over it, catching it in my claws. The tree gave, bounced, and held, roots still in the earth. I folded my wings and sat. Studying. Taking the opportunity to fluff ice off me and to breathe. I needed the rest. Gee settled in a tree above me. I said, “I want to see who and what is powering the circle. If I disturb the circle what will happen?”
“Do not. Your Anzu magics should allow you to see life and death through the snow.”
I strained, trying to access Anzu magics the way I did Beast’s, but all I saw was the snow mounded in human shapes. “Not sure how to do that, Enforcer. Why don’t you tell me. Are the bodies skinned? Are these the handiw
ork of the Flayer of Mithrans?”
Quietly, Gee said, “Perhaps it is best you not see this, my queen. Yes. They are. Six humans who show signs of torture. Six Mithrans who have been flayed and beheaded. Much power was expended within this circle and little is left. Its working has been completed.”
I remembered what Moll had said about the kind of location a time circle might need. “It should have been set up underground, out of the elements, where the power that built wouldn’t disintegrate quickly. This is a bad circle, not one made by a mature, capable witch.” When Gee didn’t respond I said, “We saw the senza onore in the illusions. She would be a very powerful witch, and I had assumed she was with the Flayer. But no way an experienced witch created this circle.
“Alex. Contact all the Asheville witches. Make sure no witches have gone missing.”
“None are missing. I just got in a call with them. All the witches in Asheville are safe and accounted for.”
“The energies are not proper for a witch circle,” Gee said. “I do not know what it is. Unless . . .” He stopped speaking and we sat as sleet peppered us hard and an icy wind cut through my feathers.
Worry and fear were just as cold, freezing my heart. The elation of finding EJ alive was gone. Where was he? Where had that thing taken him? Visions of EJ dead in horrible ways made my gorge rise, sick and hot. I shivered. “Don’t keep me in suspense just for kicks. I’m freezing my butt off here.” Shimon still had not appeared and the dinging was still piercing to my Anzu ears.
“What if it is a time circle, but not a witch time circle,” Gee said, his tone pensive. “For two thousand years, Shimon killed all the witches he came across, perhaps thinking to rise above other magics out of jealousy and anger, to kill all rivals for power.” He gave a human-type shrug with his shoulders and wings, uncertain. Gee continued, his words slow, hesitant, like a deer in open land. “Perhaps his knowledge is finite, knowing only that a time circle is possible. Perhaps he even learned this from spies in Natchez, but no one could tell him how to create one. Perhaps that incomplete knowledge is not sufficient to accomplish his ends. Faulty knowledge of time circles might result in a circle built with the energies of other paranormal creatures. That could be why Shimon wants le breloque, the crown of the Dark Queen, to help power a circle that is weak at best.”