by Amade, Melle
21
They must know I want to leave them as soon as possible. Not a moment goes by all night when one doesn’t sit vigil over me. I try to pretend I’m asleep when Roman is on duty, but when I peek through my lashes he still sits at attention.
I give up and drift off into sleep. When I open my eyes it’s Aiden who’s on watch, his eyes burn a dark gold in the lavender morning light. I can’t read his expression, but I don’t try very hard. I roll over and turn my back to him.
A single white feather lies in front of me.
White feather. Dove. Bird.
Me.
I flew last night!
My body shrank! I transformed into a small beautiful bird with pure white feathers!
I click my fingernails together. They finally make sense! I have talons - and a beak! I rub my lips with the tips of my fingers. It didn’t even hurt.
Amazing!
I feel my stomach. How can my smooth skin turn into skin with feathers? It’s extraordinary…. “What happens to my clothes?” I murmur to the cave.
“Shifter magic. They stay with your human body, wherever that goes,” says Aiden. A shiver pricks my skin. “So does anything on you. A bag. Jewelry. Whatever. It’s all there when you come back to human form.”
I’m lost in a bizarre new world. Anything I thought I had learned about shifters is magnified now that I am one. It’s one thing to hear a story; it’s a completely different world to experience it.
I roll on my back to look at him. His skin glows by the ember of the fires. A million questions jump to my tongue, but none make it past my lips.
“We screwed up.” He sounds tormented. “We totally, completely, and impossibly screwed up.”
“It’s not your fault,” I say.
“I am the Heir,” he says. “It is my family’s responsibility to take care of every shifter in our jurisdiction.”
“She’s an un-pedigreed Passief.” Roman’s voice startles me. He sits, like Aiden, right by the fire.
“My family should have known.” Aiden shakes his head.
“How would that have helped?” Zan’s voice cuts through the morning like ice. She walks towards the fire wiping blood off her mouth. This would go under the list of top ten things I never thought I’d see in my lifetime; my best friend killed some poor animal for breakfast and ate it raw. “It just means your father would have been responsible for killing her.”
“Come on.” Aiden’s voice cuts through the cave like ice. “Let’s go find Zaragoza.”
“He told us to wait here.” Zan’s voice is tired.
“He should have been back by now.” Aiden’s voice rasps.
Zan’s curls bounce as she gives a single shake of her head. I grab her wrist and pull her back to me as Roman and Aiden walk down the tunnel towards Zaragoza’s burrow.
“We should stay with Aiden,” Zan nods. “He’s alpha.”
“You’re not werewolves,” I scowl.
“We’re shifters,” says Zan. “It doesn’t matter what animal you are, we’re all in packs and we all have leaders, in that way, we’re like humans.”
“I - I - don’t have a pack,” I say.
“No,” says Zan. “No, you don’t. As far as I know, you’re the only one left of your kind.”
The deep loneliness of the summer crashes down around me and my breath falls from my lungs. Zan’s wrist slips from my hand as I grasp my stomach and hunch over. In seconds her arms are around me holding me up and I can’t help but lean on her.
“What… what…” I struggle to get the words out. “What about my brother? My parents?”
Her curls slide against my cheek and her breath warms my neck. Her words are choked. “I - I don’t know.”
“I didn’t hatch from an egg!” I say. “One of my parents must be a shifter.”
Her brow furrows.
“Mom,” I say. “She must be a shifter. Her anger and rage… She never had the Bloedhart. She must be a Passief, too.”
Zan’s frown deepens. “A wyte,” she murmurs.
“Wyte?” I ask. “What’s that?”
“A shifter who never got the Bloedhart,” she says. “Shae, it doesn’t matter. It’s too late for her.”
“Doesn’t matter?!” I exclaim. “Her whole life has been built around her anger management! And it’s all because she missed doing the Bloedhart!”
“If she’s a shifter,” Zan says, “she’ll be a Passief like you. The fact that she didn’t have the Bloedhart, that she didn’t learn to shift, is the only reason she is even still alive! It’s the only reason she lived long enough to be your mother!”
Zan’s words sink in. The Order would have killed out my blood line if they knew it existed. I have to protect Henry.
“Isn’t there something we can do for my mom?” I ask. “Something that will remove the rage?”
“No.” Zan shakes her head. “There’s no recovery.”
My heart aches a bit. I slow my steps and let Zan get in front of me. I look back to the cave. We’re not that far. I could shift now and escape. There’s no reason to endanger my friends anymore.
“Don’t.” Zan touches my shoulder and halts my shift. “You can’t make it alone.”
“I’ll be alone anyhow,” I say.
“We’re trying,” Zan insists.
“To not kill me.” Bitterness and disappointment imbue every word. “Thanks.”
“It’s a start,” she says.
I stare at her for a moment and then a short laugh comes out of my mouth.
“What if I just never shift again?” I whisper to Zan as we follow Aiden and Roman.
“It’s not that easy.”
“You think you won’t want to fly again?” Aiden throws the question at me. My skin flushes. There’s no whispering around shifters.
“I can control it,” I say.
“You don’t even know real flying yet,” he says. “You shifted last night, but you didn’t soar. You didn’t explore your animal self. You didn’t get the full rush.”
The glow of my feathers still surrounds me. The tingle of my skin as the feathers catch the wind, wings stretched to either side, lifts me and I know I’ll do it again.
I want to soar.
“You’re right,” I whisper. “Roman, my mom…?”
“It might be both your parents,” says Roman. “I think it’s recessive genes. Explains why your blood sample looked weird.”
“But, Dad doesn’t rage,” I say.
“He’s saying they might both be carriers of a shifter gene. Right?” Zan looks at Roman. He nods.
“It’s like blue eyes,” Roman explains. “You have to have a gene from each parent, but if you don’t have two genes, you won’t manifest as a shifter.”
My mind boggles. “So, what, my grandparents were shifters?”
Roman shakes his head. “I don’t think it’s so straightforward. Your family could carry a recessive shifter gene for hundreds of years and never produce a shifter.”
“So, the Order made Passiefs extinct not by getting rid of their DNA, but by killing all the living Passiefs so that no one with a Passief gene could do the Bloedhart,” I say. “Therefore, there are no Passiefs.”
“Until last night,” says Aiden.
22
We slip out of the tunnel and into the dark musty burrow but there is a new scent in here now. It smells awful in here, like stew that’s starting to rot.
Zaragoza is hunched in front of the fireplace. He’s pouring over the loose pages of a dark, musty book. I take a step closer to peer over his shoulder. He growls me back, but I saw some of the books. I can’t read the language. It’s all careful, black fine lines with cryptic drawings around the edges.
“Can you read that?” I ask.
“Read it?” Zaragoza’s gaze pokes out at me from under the crinkles of his lids. “I wrote it.”
I take another step backwards because no matter how much he helps us; he makes me nervous. He stinks of mold and age. Rom
an tugs on my arm, but I can’t stop myself from digging deeper.
“What are you looking for?” I ask.
“Notes on the Wars of Attrition.” He continues to turn the pages. “The death of the last Passief.”
“They aren’t all dead,” I say.
“Obviously,” he mutters.
“Why did they want to kill us?” I ask.
“Our weakness is our natural aggression,” Zaragoza says. “Neither animals nor humans live in peace. Shifters do not desire to either. However, our aggression shifts our entire bodies into something else. This is detrimental if we live intimately with humans. As you know, if they find out we exist, we will be hunted, feared, experimented on, and ultimately made extinct.”
“Which completely justifies you hunting and killing your own kind,” I say.
Zaragoza ignores me.
“The Order, and common sense, insist we hide our true selves,” Zaragoza says. “But, the Passiefs believed we could use our ability to transform to provide hope and comfort to humans.”
“Angels,” I say.
Zaragoza nods. “And, werewolves.”
“Werewolves?”
“To have hope, one must have an enemy to overcome,” says Zaragoza.
“Werewolves were Passiefs?” I ask.
“Yes,” says Zaragoza. “They were made extinct during the War of Attrition. Along with Vampires.”
“Bat,” I murmur.
“The Plunderaars were sure the Passiefs would endanger our entire race by revealing us and, in some cases, creating half-shifter children. The Passiefs balked against the Order’s rules and regulations and insisted we make peace with humans,” Zaragoza wearily rubs his eyes.
“This fundamental disagreement,” Roman says, “brought on the War of Attrition.”
“Noah’s Ark,” I say.
Zaragoza nods at me. “Precisely. Plunderaars wanted to right the wrong of the Ark and make the Passiefs pay for letting humans live.”
“It was 150 years of intimidation and killing but finally by the turn of the 20th century it was believed not a single Passief existed on the face of the earth,” Roman says.
“Yet, here I am,” I say. “So, you’re trying to figure out how that happened?”
Zaragoza shakes his head. “No. I am trying to find the specific law that supported the massacre of the Passiefs to see if we have any legal hope of keeping you alive.”
“If you wrote it, why do you have to read it?” I ask.
“Child, I wrote this a long, long time ago. Now give me a moment to find what I’m looking for.”
I let Roman pull me away. There’s nowhere to sit and not a lot of space, but we lean against the wall. Zaragoza mutters to himself in something that sounds like Spanish, but I can’t make out any of the words.
My gaze glues onto the two paintings that take up half the wall. They seem odd in such a primitive place, but I guess Zaragoza didn’t always live in a burrow. One of the paintings is of a large amphitheater full of people dressed in medieval costume. Banners and flags fly in the wind, but everything is dark, including the rows of people lining the seats and staring into the center of the square where two people, dressed in red, stand with bound wrists. I nudge Roman, who’s polishing the gold rim of his glasses, and point at the painting with a quizzical look. He glances at Zaragoza, who is still muttering to himself and fully engrossed in his book.
“The Spanish Inquisition,” Roman whispers. “The rise of Catholic superstition and shifter wealth created a perfect storm. The accusation of witchcraft was a perfect way to rid yourself of neighbors who had too much money or who you were slightly suspicious of. So many people died, but shifters most of all. It wiped out a ton of our people.”
“Why does Zaragoza want to remember that?” I ask.
Roman nods towards the smaller painting where a woman sits alone in the center of a crowded church. She’s the object of ridicule in in a white smock with a tall, pointed white cap on her head. Her head bowed in shame, red hair hanging in front of her face.
“That is his wife,” says Roman.
“His wife?” My voice rises, but Zaragoza doesn’t look up. “You’re crazy.”
Roman shakes his head. “He’s really, really old. Shifters live a long time, but warlock shifters can live the longest. That book he wrote is probably almost five hundred years old.”
“Impossible,” I say.
“How can you say that?” he asks. “After what you’ve just been through?”
He’s right. I’m part of this world now.
“The warlock class suffered the most during the Inquisition,” Roman says. “They lived away from the courts and cities, but it was hard to hide their powers.”
“Like Topanga,” I murmur.
“The Inquisitors didn’t care who they killed; men, women, children. Zaragoza lost his whole family.” Roman shakes his head. “He went mad.”
“I would, too,” I say.
“The Van Arends heard about him, because it’s believed he’s the only warlock left,” says Roman. “They rescued him, gave him refuge, and kept him alive. He was devastated beyond living. Part of what they had to do was protect him against himself.”
“But, why would he want to remember all this if it was so devastating? Why would he want to remember his wife in such a shameful position?” I ask. “I don’t understand.”
“The question is not: ‘Why do I hang paintings on my wall?’ The pertinent question is: ‘Why do I choose to continue living?’” I try to retreat from Zaragoza’s intensity, but there’s a wall behind me and nowhere to go. “I live,” he says his arm swinging back towards the paintings, “to make sure that never happens again. To make sure the unjustly mistreated will be protected.”
“The Inquisition ended a while ago,” I stammer.
“You are naïve fledgling,” he says. “It happens everywhere. In the human world you just left behind and here, in the shifter world, even more obviously. It is not the humans who attack us and hold us up for humiliation. Now, it is the Order who place us on trial and execute us.”
“Jon and Naomi,” I murmur.
“Yes,” he says. “The shifter/human couple that was not given the chance to live within their own dignity,” he says. “We are all born with inherent gifts given to us by the Creator. Some people are made human, some are made shifters, some are made Plunderaars, and some are Passiefs. It is our ability to use these unique gifts that we must all defend.”
“If you’re so powerful and you have so many righteous ideas, where were you when all the Passiefs were wiped out?” I ask.
“You will have to answer that question for yourself,” Zaragoza says. “Just know that an individual cannot control the outcome of the group. The group must desire what the individual leader wants.”
“No one will follow the Murtagh madness,” I say.
“Murtagh is not mad.” Spit flies from Zaragoza’s mouth. “This is what makes him more dangerous than even Declan. Murtagh is bitter. He has inherited the pain and hatred of all his people. He is not looking simply to overtake Topanga and regain the High Seat. He wants the Kortsrijk because it is the seat of power of the Western Region and controls the largest Muiderkring. He is looking to create Topanga as the nucleus for building a world around his own style of totalitarian rule. Right now he tries to win the Order’s favor, only so he can rule it.”
I frown, “How can he do that?”
“By uniting the shifters beneath a single cause,” his gaze bores into me. “First, it was removing the Heir, but now it will be -”
“The capture of a Passief,” Roman says.
“The capture and execution of a Passief,” Zaragoza says. My stomach plummets.
“How do I get out of here?” I breathe.
“You ask all the wrong questions.” He shakes his head. “It is not; ‘How do I get out of here?’ The question you might ask yourself is, ‘Under what circumstances can I stay here?’”
“The shifters want
me dead!” I say. “I don’t stand a chance.”
“This is your home,” says Zaragoza. “You are a shifter.”
“I’m a Passief,” I say. “That doesn’t mean I’m willing to be martyred.”
“Shhhhh,” says Roman. We all fall silent.
“We have to get out of here.” Aiden stands up and moves to the door. “Someone knows we’re here.”
As Zan pushes open the front door a dust cloud flies in. It takes me a moment to recognize the sound of beating wings as a bird touches down right in front of Zaragoza’s house.
“Get her out of here.” Aiden pushes Roman and me towards the back of the den.
“Meet us at the Sanctuary.” Zan blocks the door and waves us out. “Go.”
Whatever was flying has stopped and now footsteps come towards the door. Roman pushes me back into the tunnel. But, I stick my hand against the door so it stays open a crack.
Callum walks into the burrow. The air fills with his warm leather scent. His face is pale and drawn; it looks like he hasn’t slept all night.
“Callum, I’m glad you’re here.” Aiden draws Callum’s attention as he steps into the den.
Roman tugs on my arm and pushes the door shut. He motions me down the tunnel and to the place where we first entered. He pushes open the door and we scramble up and out of the tunnel and into the light of day.
23
The silence is heavy in Roman’s beater as we drive from Cross Trails.
“I don’t think this is a good idea,” says Roman, his eyes hidden behind his glasses.
“You can’t expect me to just leave town and not say goodbye to my family,” I say.
“Aiden told us to go to the Sanctuary and wait there,” Roman says.
“I don’t care what Aiden said to do.” I dismiss the instructions. He’s not my alpha. I’m a Passief. I’m a loner.
“You can’t really say goodbye,” Roman says.
“I know. I know,” I say. “But, I have to see them. And Mom’s at the studio this time of day.”
“You promise after you see her and give her a hug, we can go get some blood from your brother and figure out if you’re going to take him or not?” Roman asks.