by Tasha Black
Hedda had just enough time to recognize it and rejoice.
Then the dove arrived and crushed her hopes.
Rocketing like a cloudy sword, the bird blasted through the leaves, sending them spiraling to the ground.
Hedda searched the air frantically for its mate, but somehow the bad feeling was already in the pit of her stomach. There was no second dove.
And then the wind was gone, as quickly as it had come. And the single dove fluttered away into the trees.
A lone dove. It was a terrible omen.
Hedda tried to shake the fear from her thoughts. An omen was a blessing, whether good or bad. Reading one was a cheat, a life hack, a shortcut to knowing what was coming next. She was lucky to be able to see omens, most people were blind to them - even other members of the magical community.
As a matter of fact, Hedda had been bestowed with two unusual magical gifts. The second was an even more dubious honor than the first.
At least there was no one around to notice that gift anymore.
When the Copper Creek portal collapsed, the wolf shifters had left town in a hurry. Some scattered to who knows where, most looking for another portal to watch, maybe in a town where there was more work to be had to fill their bellies while they stood guard.
But Hedda wasn’t so sure that the portal was really cut off. It had been done haphazardly - a simple mechanical cave-in with no formal magic to bind it.
Unless whatever Erik had done was enough.
The new guy in town, Erik, had realized the moroi was close to escaping, and sacrificed his own life, igniting the coal mine and collapsing it on top of the evil moroi. There was certainly magic in an act like that.
But it had no precedent. There was no way Hedda and her sisters could be sure it would hold. So they agreed to give it a year.
Her sisters had offered to spilt the time. Each would take a season alone on the mountain. But Hedda had insisted on watching for the full year.
As penance.
So far, her watch had been uneventful.
But the omen had her on edge. Something bad was about to happen. Again.
She closed the door to her cottage, not bothering to lock it.
What was the point? There was no one around for miles and miles. And the magical protections were better than any lock.
The crisp breeze lifted strands of her dark hair and made the small pieces of old, colored glass she’d hung from the trees around the cottage dance and sparkle before her eyes.
Hedda set off through the woods. Her route was always the same. Like most hill towns, Copper Creek followed a river that flowed between two mountains. Closest to the river was the small downtown area, the high school, and a row of simple houses on each side of the water. Up the mountainside from that first row, a second row of slightly less tidy little houses enjoyed a river view over the rooftops of the first. And beyond that, wildly steep dirt driveways led to the ramshackle bungalows of the poorest citizens. Those homes were nestled comfortingly near each other. Children and chickens used to play in the shared clearings between the homes.
And finally, up near the top of the mountain was the Lanes’ cottage. Hedda and her sisters built it there to avoid too much contact with the world below.
Shifters didn’t trust magic. And every other citizen of Copper Creek had been a shifter.
Just as shifters were appointed to monitor portals, those with magical abilities were often drawn to them too.
The Lane sisters kept to themselves near the top of the mountain. The shifters left them alone. Though Hedda knew they were called The Witches of Copper Creek by the children in the woods below. The title made her giggle but her sister Anna shivered at it.
“You know what they do with witches in a place like this, don’t you?” Anna asked.
“They’re just kids, didn’t you ever tell stories when you were a kid?” Hedda replied. But then she remembered, Anna really hadn’t told stories, she’d been too busy reading them.
“I’m just saying, we need to be careful,” Anna told her.
“Listen, the four of us have been up on this mountain with no fun and no men and no nothing for years, I think we’re being careful,” Hedda answered.
It really was becoming tiresome. Maybe that was part of why she’d let her guard down.
Anna was the only one who seemed to be happy hidden away on the mountainside, her nose tucked into a gigantic volume of Shakespeare.
Elise hiked for hours each day, bringing home weird little samples of plant life on which she did endless experiments. She also managed the lush vegetable garden she had planted in the one sunlit clearing near the cottage.
Tessa was handy. At least she enjoyed trying to be handy. Much of her time was spent fixing the cottage and then fixing the mistakes she had made fixing the cottage.
And then there was Hedda. She made the money they needed for supplies by selling magic rocks online.
Well, they were supposed to be ‘healing stones’ and she sold them on Craftsy, which was totally legit. But really they were the same magic rocks people had been buying since time immemorial, hoping they would solve their life’s problems.
Hedda would gather stones, whittle them down, tumble them and then whisper a few light protections over them.
At first she expected stones that were actually endowed with a touch of magical protection would have stood out in the crowd of plain old polished rocks the other sellers were offering. But there were so many testimonials on every vendor’s site that it was nearly impossible to find a difference.
So her real breakthrough didn’t happen until the day she’d decided to change her packaging. The first customer to open a small stone box and find the tumbled quartz on a tiny bed of moss went gaga and posted a picture in an online review.
The sisters always ate well after that.
The only one unhappy was the mailman, who had to drive his truck straight up the hill to pick up the packages. When the truck slid backward into a tree one snowy winter, the post office had issued a letter stating that they had to pave the driveway or get a P.O. Box in town.
Hedda had opted to go to town to drop her packages.
Once it fell out of use, the winding drive up to the cottage had become overgrown within one season.
She followed what was left of it now, through tall grass and between pine saplings. She would sweep this side of the mountain, then the town itself, down a mile to the coal yard, back to town, cross the bridge, get the houses on the other side of the river, trek up the mountain across from hers, and then come back again as directly as possible.
Which wasn’t very direct at all.
Two mountain faces and the valley between them - it was a large territory to cover daily. But she had to do it if she wanted to be sure that there was no unwanted activity.
Hedda began her rounds, feeling extra alert.
It might have been peaceful, if she hadn’t seen the omen.
And it might have been boring.
If she had anything else to do.
Hedda had lost internet service about a month ago. She knew she could have gone on foot to the next little village and tried to call in the satellite company. It would have been maybe two days’ walking. But she lived at the top of a mountain in an abandoned town. They wouldn’t even be able to get a truck up her drive anymore.
Of course, there wasn’t postal service in Copper Creek anymore, so it was too hard to mail magic rocks anyway.
She kept making them anyway, out of habit, and for something to do at night. There were buckets of them lining the walls of the cottage now. Elise would have gone crazy at the untidiness, and Tessa would have nicked them for some weird house project by now. Only sweet Anna wouldn’t have noticed.
A few hours later, the careful sweep of her own hillside had uncovered nothing unusual.
Next she would search the valley and the hillside opposite the one where she lived.
She walked the streets of the abandoned town, fig
hting her instinct to go quickly. For some reason, this part of the search always creeped her out. The dark windows seemed to stare her down in reproach - as if to ask her where everyone had gone. She forced herself to examine each of them for any sign of things gone wrong.
She held her breath when she reached the coal yard, convinced that this time there would be stirring below ground, or above. But as always, there was no sign of life.
She crossed the bridge and looked down into the black water below. Kids used to fish off this bridge, even though she couldn’t imagine they ever caught much.
She explored the row of homes nearest the river, then climbed the hill to the houses above.
Shadows filled the valley, though the sky was pink with the last rays of sun. Hedda picked up her pace.
She was climbing the steep dirt drive up the far side of the valley to the other mountain when she heard it at last.
A huge crash, back on her mountain.
Though storm clouds were forming overhead, it didn’t sound like thunder.
This must be it. This was what the omen was about.
Although it seemed odd that the disturbance wasn’t anywhere near the mine.
She scrambled through the trees, ready to face whatever it was head on.
4
Derek had never liked flying on small planes.
Or any planes, for that matter.
His big body was never comfortable, no matter how luxurious the seating. And it just didn’t sit right with his bear, who liked to keep his paws firmly on the ground.
He looked out the window over the trees. It was raining, but at least they were heading straight to Philadelphia International. It would be quick and direct, relatively speaking. Then he’d take a train to Tarker’s Hollow. And maybe Mom would send one of the older boys to pick him up.
A shudder ripped through the little plane, stopping his peaceful train of thought.
“Just a little turbulence, sir,” shouted the pilot from a few feet away.
No kidding.
Rain was sliding down the windows like teardrops now. Derek hoped the pilot could see better than he could.
The plane took another lurching drop and Derek’s bear moaned in his head.
Why hadn’t he planned ahead so he could take a commercial flight?
He felt a burning tingling on his right hip.
Check your hip.
He’d forgotten all about Mom’s cryptic goodbye from her phone call the other day.
Derek eased the waistband of his trousers down slightly on one side to look at the source of the burn.
A black shape swirled below the skin. Like a creature swimming below the surface of murky water.
“Fuck,” the pilot muttered, as the plane dropped sharply again.
Derek snapped his focus away from his hip.
That kind of language was less than reassuring.
Rain pelted the windows in fat drops. Derek could no longer see what was going on outside.
The plane swayed like a leaf on the wind.
Then it steadied.
The rain disappeared all at once. They must have flown out on the other side of the storm.
Derek held his breath. But after a minute or two of steady sailing, he let it out.
“Wow, that was scary, man,” he said to the pilot.
As soon as the words were out of his mouth there was a horrible, lurching drop.
“We’re going down,” the pilot said flatly. “Get your seatbelt on.”
Derek’s heart beat almost out of his chest, but he tried to remain calm. He fastened his seat belt, for all the good it would do him up here.
He heard the groan of the landing gear coming out.
Weren’t they over trees? Surely there was nowhere to land for miles.
They were falling, falling.
Everything in the plane went weightless. The magazine on the seat beside him floated next to his head. The pilot’s handwritten notes lifted up as well.
Derek felt his hips press upward against the seat belt.
They could be hitting the ground any second.
Derek closed his eyes and pictured his siblings, the first group of kids to arrive at Harkness Farms, four little shifters rolling around on the knotted rug in front of the fireplace, under Mom’s watchful eye. The whole house smelled like the wood fire and the potato soup cooking in the other room.
The first impact wasn’t so bad.
It sounded bad, the tree branches screeched against the wings, but there was no pain inside the plane.
They were still falling, though. The trees had barely slowed them.
When they crashed into the forest floor, the plane folded in on itself. Derek could see the nose crumpling like a tin can, the pilot accordioned into the metal, killed instantly without even a whimper.
Derek waited for the plane to fold around him as well.
Instead, it tipped sideways and hit a third time, bouncing slightly, before coming to a rest.
Derek hung by his seatbelt, panting, unable to believe he wouldn’t be flying through the air again in another minute.
He was on the right side of the plane, but it had landed on its left side.
Gingerly, he unstrapped his belt, and managed to land on his feet on the window below in a crouch.
The emergency exit was at the back of the plane. He went to it, reached up and worked the crank.
It stuck, and for a moment he was afraid it was permanently sealed after being dented by the tree or something. He worked the handle frantically.
Then suddenly the bear forced its way to the underside of his skin, and with a single shove, the door was open.
He pulled himself up and out through the small space, feeling like a baby being born.
He slid off the top of the plane and looked around, acrid smoke from the plane filled his nostrils.
He needed to get moving, but which way?
The sun was already touching the edge of the mountain. It would be dark soon.
He stood in a shadowy clearing, surrounded by trees, without a single sign of life in any direction.
5
By the time Hedda made her way to the source of the sound, she had already been studying the smoke rising from it for a long time.
She searched for signs of a creature that could cause such a ruckus. However, there was no glimmer of activity in the woods beyond the usual twilight noises.
Coming around a stand of pines, Hedda saw at last that what she had found was not a demon, but an airplane.
Smoke billowed out of it, masking any detail.
“Purgare fumi,” she whispered, waving one hand before her.
Instantly, the smoke cleared.
At first she thought that part of the plane was missing. There was the tail, there were the broken wings in pieces in the trees and on the ground. But where was the nose?
When she realized it had crumpled in on itself, she nearly vomited.
So, there were probably no survivors.
A plane crash was never good news, but she couldn’t see how it fit in with the omen. What did any of it have to do with her?
She walked around the wreckage.
Footprints.
Whatever had survived the crash was now in the woods. This must be the bad thing she’d been expecting.
She scanned the trees for the owner of the footprints, but she saw and heard nothing. So she studied the prints instead.
They were human, though of course plenty of evil could take other shapes. They were almost certainly male, judging by their size.
She eyed the wreckage again. No way a man just got up and walked away from that.
A demon, then.
That was her best guess. Probably inhabiting someone on the plane - the more powerful ones could do that. An unlucky coincidence to be sure. And it had brought down the plane when it felt the pull of the moroi and the unsecured portal in the mine. She’d been afraid of something like this.
She waved her hand over
the footprints, and they began to glow. Whatever made them was packing some powerful magic.
Hedda swallowed hard.
There was no one else here to follow the tracks.
And perhaps her second gift would help her assert herself over this thing, whatever it was.
In any case, she didn’t have a choice.
Taking a careful breath, Hedda resolved to track down the man creature, no matter the consequences.
She had screwed things up enough with her vanity once before. If she died trying to fix things it was no more than she deserved.
6
Derek had decided to walk in the direction of the setting sun. He didn’t know where it would lead him, but he was sure he didn’t want to be anywhere near the burning plane.
Once it was out of sight, he stopped to get his bearings.
Then realization hit him.
He had been in a plane crash. And a man was dead.
He’d gotten a little banged up, but the bruises were already healing - one of the advantages of being a shifter.
He looked around.
He was obviously in the middle of the woods. There was nothing but an endless stretch of trees in any direction.
Derek was not the outdoorsy type, which was slightly unexpected, considering he was a bear shifter who had grown up on a farm. But even as a child, he’d always been eager to get to the city and out of the trees.
But here he was, alone in the woods.
At least he had his cell phone.
He slid it out of his pocket.
No signal.
No, no, no.
He tucked the phone back into his pocket and walked a bit farther, hoping to find a small break in the trees.
His Italian leather shoes squelched in the mud and pine needles. Man, would his brothers razz him about being out in the woods dressed like this. He should have changed into his farm clothes before getting on that plane.
His feet were already soaked through. He thought longingly of the hiking boots in his travel bag on the plane.
Too late for that.
The bear pushed at him, wanting control.