by Ann Gimpel
Chapter 6
Unused to the confinement of shoes, her feet began to ache. Toughened from years of running barefoot, her soles were fine, but spots on the sides and tops of both feet burned where leather rubbed against them. She slipped the shoes off and tucked them in the cloth sack still slung around her body. Sweat ran into her eyes, making them sting, and she pulled the loose neck of her tunic over her head to shield her from the sun’s harsh rays.
She kept track of time by watching the sun and forced her mind to blankness. If she replayed the morning, it would flatten her, demoralize her, make it hard to keep moving. When the sun was close to overhead, she angled toward the river and hunted for high marsh grass that would shield her from anyone who happened by. That particular danger would increase as she drew closer to Cairo. The odds of discovery were minimal where she was.
It took a while before she found a good hiding place. No islands in this stretch of river, but the Nile fanned out as it moved north, creating hundreds of spots where she could lose herself. She walked into the water, enjoying its coolness on her tired feet.
“How far have we come do you think?” she asked the wolf.
“We have a long way to go.”
“Mother said to look for Father in the hills above Cairo. That could take a long time.”
Tairin trudged into a thicket of marsh grass and sat. She unwound the cloth sack’s straps from her body and placed it beside her. Not moving felt like a blessing. Daughter of gypsies, she’d traveled on horseback and in wagons. The farthest she’d ever walked before was back and forth to the river for water.
“Won’t take long to find your father once we’re there,” the wolf replied.
Tairin drew her brows together. “You know where he is, don’t you?”
“Of course. I can locate him through his wolf.”
“We have time,” Tairin said. “Tell me how that works.”
“I propose a bargain.”
Tairin’s nostrils flared. She’d had a bellyful of bargains from watching Romani parley with the gadjo. “What kind of bargain? Usually that means no one gets what they want.”
A low whuffle that might have passed for laughter rang in her mind. “It means everyone gets some of what they want. Entirely different slant.”
“You still haven’t told me what you have in mind.”
“We shift and hunt. I’m hungry. You must be too. Once we’ve caught four mice, we’ll shift back and I’ll tell you a story about how bond animals came to be.”
Four mice weren’t very many. Tairin didn’t see how it could possibly satisfy the wolf, but maybe its needs were different than normal animals. She lurched back to her feet, wincing as she weighted them, and stripped out of her clothes, tucking them beneath her cloth sack.
“You’re on.”
She visualized her wolf form, black and gray fur, large, shaggy paws, elongated snout. Because she had no idea what its eyes looked like, she assumed they’d be like hers, dark with amber centers. The transition was uncomfortable, but the sharp pain from her first shift didn’t materialize.
Lifting her muzzle, she scented the air and her jaws parted in the lupine equivalent of a smile. Mice were everywhere. Even better, her feet didn’t hurt anymore. She broke into a lope, heading for what felt like a mother lode of mice. Squeals teased her ears. They knew she was coming. The stupid little things were running every which way. Gathering her haunches beneath her, she sprang and snapped her jaws over a particularly fat white and gray mouse.
Its blood spurted hot and rich as she bit into it, chewing and swallowing while she ran after its brothers, sisters, and cousins. Her powerful jaws made short work of fragile bones, and she scooped up another mouse as soon as her mouth was empty.
Tairin stopped thinking. She lived in the wolf’s body, saw the world through its senses, embraced the simple joy of killing and eating. She didn’t bother counting mice. She killed and ate until her belly was full. Standing in water up to her belly, she drank deep and let the Nile sluice mouse blood from her muzzle and bits of bone and gristle from her teeth.
Contentment—an emotion she’d thought would elude her forever—spilled from her head to her paws. She made her way to where she’d left her clothes, visualized her body, and found her human form. The physical parts of shifting were getting easier. So much easier, she could look toward a day when it would become second nature.
Tairin slipped back into her skirt and tunic. Once she was covered, she positioned herself on her back in a thick clump of marsh grass with her clothing sack for a pillow.
“That was wonderful.” If the wolf had been a cat, it would have been purring. “Thank you.”
“No. Thank you for pushing me. It got me away from my troubles for a little while. Guess we won’t have to worry about me stealing food from the street vendors in Cairo.”
“Only if you get tired of mice and other small game.” Whuffling laughter that followed the wolf’s words warmed her.
“You owe me a story.” Tairin closed her eyes and waited.
“So I do.” The wolf paused for long moments. “In a very long ago time when the world was young, shifters were born from the sun and the waters of the Nile. Animals were important to the mythology and religions of ancient Egypt, far more important than we are today. Some of us were sacred to the gods, others designated as their living embodiments.
“The Egyptians believed a god could inhabit the body of a particular animal. Because I am a wolf, it’s the mythology I was taught. We are linked to Anubis. As such, we guide the newly dead. Tales and legends depict us lurking in places tombs are usually built.”
“What does that have to do with shifters?” Tairin asked. She was full and sleepy, but rest could wait until the wolf was done.
“It’s background. Since we’re viewed as sanctified by the gods, it was natural men with magic would want to bond with us. A small group cast strong magic and lured a wolf, a lion, a cat, a vulture, and a raven from the otherworld where they lived. The same powerful magic snared each animal as it appeared, and the sorcerer who’d summoned the creature absorbed its power.
“According to some myths, the animals were furious, but soon came to see advantages to their newly conferred dual natures. Mankind might be brash, rude, and overbearing, but they were generous too. They were willing to share their power, and so the animals’ magic became stronger.”
“So did the men’s,” Tairin pointed out.
“So it did. In truth, this was one of those bargains where everyone benefitted.” The wolf hesitated before continuing. “Over the years since the first shifters were tricked into crossing the veil, men discovered easier ways of creating the shifter bond. The current method where young shifters dream their bondmates while they’re children has stuck.”
“Like I dreamed you.”
“Exactly. I knew you were different, that your blood was mixed, but I was drawn to your energy. It’s pure and strong, so I gave in to the pull of the shifter bond.”
“You make it sound like falling in love.” Tairin clapped a hand over her mouth, the gesture automatic even though she was conversing in mind speech. “Sorry, I misspoke.”
“No, you didn’t. What bondmates share is a type of love. It’s not sexual, but our spirits, our essences call to one another, share an attraction. It’s not unlike having a sister or brother you care deeply for and would protect with your dying breath.”
Tairin turned the information over, sifting through it. Her father must have known she’d bonded with a wolf. She played his words back, and they broke her heart. “Not only will it happen, it’s close. Closer than you imagine. I see it in her eyes, and my wolf walks with hers in the place where the animals all roam together.”
“How could father underestimate the strength of your bond to me?” Tairin demanded. “He of all people should have known.”
“I don’t believe he underestimated it. He began planning far too late, though. His people don’t know about you. He never told
them about his Romani wife or his mixed-race child.”
The implications shot pins and needles from her sore feet to her tired mind. He’d kept her existence secret, so when she came knocking on the shifters’ doors, they might well not believe her.
No. They’d have to know I speak the truth. They can scan me with magic to verify my story.
“Do you know if Father has another family? A shifter one?” Tairin sucked down a ragged breath. Such things weren’t unheard of in caravans where men sometimes kept women stashed in several different ones, rotating between them like a debauched male whore.
“No. Jamal might be a coward, but he’s not dishonorable in that way. He kept his wedding vows.”
The knowledge didn’t bring relief, only a sick certainty that Jamal was ashamed of his weakness where Aneksi was concerned, of his marriage, and of his daughter. If he hadn’t been, he’d have stood tall and acknowledged his family. Her mother hadn’t been much better. She’d hidden what Jamal was and tried her damnedest to conceal her daughter’s true nature.
“When we play to deceive,” the wolf chimed in, “it always catches up with us in the end.”
“Father found a place for Mother and me,” she said. “I heard him, but Mother refused to go.”
“Aneksi was a fool, but your father’s attempts to fix the unfixable should have begun years ago.” A mournful howl rose within her. “We cannot change the past.”
“Is it a mistake to try to find Father and his kin?”
“Since you have no one else, it’s not a mistake. Just don’t hope for too much.”
Tairin closed her eyes again. The sleepy, satiated place she’d found after eating had fled, but she should rest anyway. Later this afternoon, they’d get moving again. She offered a small prayer to Bast, a goddess who protected children, to see her through this.
It was all she could do. She turned on her side and tucked a hand beneath her cheek, drawing her knees up until she was curled into a ball. She felt weak, vulnerable, weary, but none of those had any place in her heart or mind.
Only the strong survived in this world.
“Yes, bondmate. We will be strong. I will help you.”
“Someday,” she gritted out not bothering with mind speech, “I’ll grow into my own power. Then we can protect each other. I refuse to be a burden to you forever.”
Big words. Would she make good on them?
I have to. There’s no choice. None at all.
Chapter 7
The sun was well on its way to the western horizon when she woke. Tairin bolted upright, startled she’d slept at all, never mind so long.
“Why didn’t you wake me?” she asked the wolf.
“You needed rest,” it replied.
“You can hear me if I talk this way?”
“Of course. Don’t waste magic on mind speech when you don’t have to. I hear you fine either way.”
Tairin scrambled to a standing position, still shaking sleep out of her eyes and mind. She slung her cloth bag around her body and started for the road, leaving her shoes in her sack. Her feet had raw places from her last stint wearing them.
“Not so fast,” the wolf cautioned.
“What? We’re late. I should’ve been walking at least two hours ago.”
“You’re still alive. It’s better for me if you remain so. You must scan with magic before you set out. The world isn’t a friendly place. You could blunder into something far worse than having slept longer than you might have wished.”
She stopped dead. The wolf was right. She wasn’t thinking. So far, it hadn’t cost her anything, but her luck might not hold forever.
Luck? What luck? she thought bitterly. Mother is dead, Father’s a coward. I’ve been banished from my caravan—
“We escaped the caravan. No one has come after us. At least not yet. We’ve eaten, rested. The heat of the day is passing. Depends how you define luck.”
“Stay out of my mind,” she bristled.
“It’s where I live—most of the time. You’ll get used to it.”
Tairin swallowed her annoyance and sent power zinging wide, searching. She sensed the abundant varieties of wildlife that made the Nile Delta their home, but no people. Determined to put as much distance as she could between herself and her old caravan, she broke into an easy lope.
As she ran, she sifted through what the wolf had told her earlier. “What happens to you when I die?” she asked. “Even if no one kills me, ends my life sooner than the fifty or so years I expect, I will fade and die. Will you continue? Bond with another? How does that work?”
“Many questions. Good ones, though.” An appreciative bark punctuated the wolf’s words. “Shifters live long lives. You’ll last at least five hundred years, perhaps much longer than that. Bondmates choose their fate when their human passes. We might die with you, or request that you release us.”
Breath whooshed from her lungs, and she slowed. “Five hundred years?” she repeated, disbelieving. “How can that be?”
“A few of the first shifters are still among us. They’re millennia old.”
“Oh.” She wasn’t sure what to say. If felt as if she’d fallen headfirst into one of the old tales, except this one was real.
She forced herself into the same lope that ate up distance. Her feet ached, but standing still didn’t help. “You just said something that contradicts what you told me earlier.”
“What was that?”
She could almost visualize the wolf, sitting on its haunches, ears pricked forward with interest. “You said I had to shift or we’d both die. How does that square up with me releasing you at my death?”
“Easy enough. Shifter law doesn’t allow unconsummated bonds. Your first shift seals our compact with one another, makes us bondmates.”
“So I could release you now without damaging you or causing you harm?” Tairin wanted to make certain she understood.
“You could, and I wouldn’t fade into the otherworld, but I would be very sad. You just opened yourself to our bond. We have so much ahead of us. A whole life to get to know one another.”
Tairin opened her mouth to respond, but before she could get any words out, the wolf continued. “Had you been raised by shifters, we’d have spent far more time in the dream world—and during your waking spells as well—getting to know one another. Because you had no idea you were a shifter, I trod gently, made you believe I was less than I am so as not to frighten you.”
The wolf’s words touched her heart. “You’ve cared about me for a long time.”
“I have.”
“I feel…ungrateful.” She stumbled over the word.
“Better to focus on what’s ahead of us rather than what’s behind.”
Tairin nodded. The wolf might have been the catalyst in her current plight, but it was also her only friend. A thought rocked her. “My father, is he one of the old ones? You said millennia. That’s a thousand years.”
“No. Only the first shifters are that old, and not all of them are still with us. I’m not sure of Jamal’s exact age. If I had to guess, I’d say maybe a hundred years, give or take a few.”
The air was changing around her, ripe with the scent of a late afternoon thunderstorm building to the north of them. She’d loved to curl up in the wagon during rainstorms and listen to water pelt its roof. Once she grew older, though, her task when it rained was to make sure every single bucket was in a spot where the sky could fill it. Rain was infrequent enough, the gypsies took full advantage of it. Rainwater held power, and they used it to craft amulets and talismans for the gadjo—and themselves.
She inhaled, loving the crispness, the tang of the approaching storm. Something smelled off, though. Or maybe she was nervous since she was alone. Flash floods sometimes rolled through the delta. If the storm was severe, she might drown if she were swept into the Nile.
“We need to keep moving.”
“I know,” Tairin replied. “Weather’s blowing in.”
“Not tha
t. Don’t you smell the other? The putrid, death smell? It shouldn’t be here, and it bodes ill for anyone close to it.”
Chapter 8
Tairin tipped her head back, inhaling until her lungs burned. Her sense of smell was sharper, or she might have missed it entirely, but the wrongness that had pricked her radiated menace. She’d smelled it before in crowded cities, but couldn’t quite place what it was.
Maybe she’d never known.
“Whatever it is, we’re getting closer.” She kept her voice low. “What is that? It smells dead.”
“They are dead in a manner of speaking. They’re vampires. We’re approaching a nest, and they grow much stronger at night.”
Tairin shrouded herself, hiding her power. Not much she could do about the cloth sack, which would look as if it were walking down the road suspended in the air.
“Should we stop?” she whispered.
“No. If we do, we’ll be stuck sitting out the storm far too close to their nest.”
“Why do you call it a nest? It’s not as if they’re birds.” She racked her mind for what she knew about vampires. Creatures who’d cheated death, or died and been reborn, they lived on the blood of others and could make new vampires by force-feeding their blood to humans. She might not have gotten everything right, but the thought of a confrontation with them made her heart pound and her legs shake. Romani viewed vampires as pure evil and avoided them at almost any cost.
“What their dwelling places are called isn’t important. Move toward the delta. We’ll shift and stay off the road until we’re well past them.”
“But what about my clothes, my sack?”
“My vision is better than yours. So is my ability to travel, sticking to the shadows. I hadn’t considered your need for clothing. We can try hanging the sack around my neck, but…”
Tairin understood and melted into gathering mist and clouds that thickened as they moved toward the Nile. The first raindrops drizzled down, growing into a punishing deluge so fast it shocked her. Surely the weather would deter vampires—or anyone else.