by DM Fike
I shoved my hand into my pocket and withdrew one of the batteries from the waterproof pouch. I could only barely see its cylindrical outline in the dark, but I could feel each joule of energy contained within.
I hoped the lightning pith would comfort me, but it only made the loneliness worse. I couldn’t even absorb it without potentially blowing up the lodge. Why did Nasci give me this powerful curse? I wondered.
I shoved the battery back into the waterproof pouch. That tingling sensation of lighting pith continued, though. Thinking I was unconsciously sensing it from the batteries, I flung the pouch across the room. It hit the opposite wall and slid to the ground. I flung myself on one side, cursing myself for not falling asleep.
And still that numbing buzz lit up my arm.
Fuming now, I stalked out of the bedroom to clear my head. The dead of night consumed the hallway. Everyone had gone to bed hours ago. I could even hear Zibel snoring inside an adjacent room.
Maybe a drink of water would help. I drew a cross with a vertical line so a flame provided vision into the kitchen. I scooped up a cup of water from one of the pools and purified it with a quick sigil. The water washed cool down my throat, soothing. As I gulped the last drops, I hoped that would finally solve the problem.
But the lightning pith persisted.
I raised my hands, allowing bits of electricity to spark up and down my fingers. This wasn’t normal. The batteries were too far away for me to perceive their energy. Somehow, I felt lightning pith in the atmosphere around me.
Curious, I walked to the lodge’s front door. I flung it open, and a rush of wind coupled with an extra surge of lightning overwhelmed my pithways. Stepping out into the grass, I sensed a storm brewing somewhere, although no clouds appeared in the sky. I turned into the wind and realized it came from the south. It didn’t feel like a normal thunderstorm, more violent and jagged somehow.
Heart racing, I wondered if the mishipeshu created it.
There weren’t any super close lakes directly south of us, but if you traveled more southwest, you’d hit Hills Creek Reservoir outside the town of Oakridge. I could take a quick wisp channel to check it out, and no one would be the wiser.
I ran in that direction. I’d made it halfway across the homestead, near the pond where I’d practiced the underwater breathing sigil, when I tumbled over something square and hard. I cursed as my naked toe throbbed from the impact. Lighting up a fingertip, I bent down to inspect what I’d stumbled upon.
It was a sigil tome. I recognized it from Darby’s stack of books. A splash of water alerted me to the honey-colored hair of said eyas swimming underneath in broad strokes. She must have stayed up late finishing her training regimen.
I froze with indecision. Had Darby spotted me? Would she keep tabs on me as I left the homestead? What would happen if she told the others I’d left against orders yet again?
But I didn’t have time to waver. The storm drifted farther away. I needed to locate that storm before it vanished for good.
I raced as fast as I could across the last field, pausing only to glimpse at the pond at the edges of the trees. No jasper eyes popped out from the dark, no raven squawked at my departure, nothing stirred. Letting go of a final breath, I eased into the woods toward the wisp channel, less than a quarter mile away.
After traveling through the will o’ the wisp, I ran five minutes straight through the forest surrounding Hills Creek. I aimed for the lightning pith until it brought me to a deserted two-lane highway. Across the asphalt, the lake shimmered under the night sky. Staring upward, storm clouds rolled in on themselves, becoming progressively smaller.
I crossed the road and found myself not far downstream from the dam that created the reservoir. As I made it to shore’s edge, the clouds had all but diffused. The moment they disappeared, so did any lingering sensation of lightning pith.
I knew it then. The mishipeshu had just passed by, and it was far, far away from where Guntram and Tabitha searched for it.
I didn’t have time to contemplate this discovery as lights slowly snaked toward me from the road. I glanced around in all directions, but besides submerging myself in the water, I had nowhere to go. I decided to act nonchalant, awkwardly folding my arms over my chest and staring out at the lake as if it was completely normal for a woman to hang out in the wilderness in the middle of the night. I hoped the driver wouldn’t pay me any mind and just keep on trucking down the road.
No such luck. The headlights slowed, pointing toward me until I couldn’t pretend the driver didn’t see me. I thought of any excuse that would convince the other party to leave. Given how bright the lights shone in my face, I couldn’t get a clear view of the car, but I could imagine a testosterone-driven male who planned to rescue a damsel in distress. Or a serial killer. I slapped on my best “I can handle this” scowl as tires crunched gravel to a halt.
“Hey, there!” I called the moment the car door opened. “You might be trying to help, but I’m just taking a nice stroll, and I…”
“Ina?” a familiar voice cut off.
I held my hand up against the piercing headlights. “Vincent?”
His voice floated over the brilliant lights piercing my skull. “You haven’t been answering my calls. What gives you the right to shut me out? I…”
“Ugh, Vincent,” I complained. “Turn off the brights so I don’t go permanently blind, and then we can talk.”
“Oh, sorry.” The lights clicked off, but my vision remained illuminated as my eyes adjusted. I felt Vincent stand next to me, though, his frustration more radiant than his high beams.
He didn’t wait for me to fully recover. “Do you have any idea how much I’ve worried about you today? You vanish after swimming out into Foster Lake, then called from Fern Ridge to assure me everything’s hunky-dory, despite the fact that you’re hunting a monster panther.”
“This isn’t my first rodeo, compadre,” I snapped at him. “I know what I’m doing.”
Vincent remained unimpressed by my bravado. “First rule of law enforcement is to call for backup when you’re overwhelmed,” he said. “And here you are alone.”
“Is that so?” I made a point to glance over his shoulder at the silver sedan. “Because I could say the same for you.”
“I’m off-duty. And besides, no one would believe me if I told them half the stuff you’ve told me.”
I folded my arms smugly in front of my chest. “Doesn’t that make it even worse, though? Rushing off to find me knowing you can’t see the very things that could rip you to shreds?” My superiority faltered as a new question popped into my head. “Speaking of which, what are you doing here anyway?”
This time Vincent upstaged me. “I may not have your magical powers, but I’ve got access to modern technology. You told me that storms always precede this thing. I queried a bunch of weather databases and found an unusual amount of lightning in this area for this season. I was driving around Highway 58 to check it out when the weird storm blew in. I decided to investigate.”
I whistled. “Not bad detective work, Vince.” I gave him a quick recap of the kembar stones and how the mishipeshu used them to travel between bodies of water. “Let’s uncover what secrets Hills Creek holds.” I dipped a foot in the water.
Vincent grabbed me by the arm, halting my progress. “Oh no, not again,” he declared. “You’re not swimming away like you did before.”
“But this may be our chance to catch up to the mishipeshu!”
“Exactly.” He glanced at me from top to bottom. “And after all you’ve told me about this panther, you’ll go chasing it by yourself?”
Something in his tone reminded me of Guntram’s fear. Despite my irritation at being held back, my pulse quickened.
Vincent cared about me.
And he did have a point. I really shouldn’t confront this vaettur alone. “Okay, okay,” I said, retreating back to the shore. “I’ll leave it for now. At least I have a few more places that shepherds can investigate to h
unt down this thing.” Although how I was going to explain this discovery to Guntram when I wasn’t supposed to leave the homestead would be tricky.
My acquiescence put Vincent at ease. “I kept your boots after you took them off,” he gestured toward the car. “You want them back?”
Finally, some good luck for a change. “Yes, please!”
Vincent opened the backseat of his vehicle and let me sit inside as I slipped my boots back on. I thought the laces felt a little funny as I tied them up, but that was probably because I’d formed blisters on my feet from running around barefoot for the last twenty-four hours. As my soles sank into familiar worn spots inside the padding, I sighed with pleasure.
Vincent smiled. “Nothing like a comfortable pair of shoes.”
“You said it. I’m never taking these babies off again.”
Vincent’s smile widened for some reason. “What’s the plan now?”
“I need to get back to the others. Tell them what I know.”
Vincent opened his mouth to reply, but a crack of thunder drowned him out.
I froze as lightning jolted inside my pithways without warning. Hopping out of the car, Vincent and I both watched in horror as new clouds formed under the stars above, flashing white and filling our ears with deafening crashes and booms. The middle of the lake glowed with the intense blue of the kembar stones before bubbling on top.
The mishipeshu had come back.
A watery dome rose from the surface, breaking through to reveal the glossy black head of the panther. Although initially turned away from us, its nostrils flared, and then its head swiveled directly toward me. For an awful second, it did not move, its slitted eyes unblinking.
Then it leaped right for us, claws extended.
I drew a sideways S, thrusting my air pith toward Vincent. It knocked him off to the side, putting a decent distance between us. At least he’d survive the initial attack.
Unfortunately, that didn’t give me a lot of time to draw a banishment sigil. I didn’t even bother with the normal elements. Instead, as the mishipeshu howled toward me, I hastily drew upon all the bits of sizzling lightning in the clouds and focused it on my right hand. I scribbled half of a five-pointed star, thinking I just might have the time to execute it.
I was wrong.
The panther swatted me before I could connect both ends of the pattern. My body hurtled down the beach like a football, flipping end over end before I landed hard on one hip. Wheezing, I attempted to scramble into a sitting position, but a crushing weight bore down on my shoulders. I cried out in pain, the only saving grace that the soft sand lessened the blow.
Complete blackness engulfed my sight, but I hadn’t fainted. As pinpoints of cat eyes formed above me, I realized the mishipeshu had pinned me with both of its forepaws. It growled low in its throat as it sniffed around my neck, recognizing a scent.
“Good, kitty,” I whispered.
The mishipeshu withdrew its head in a snarl that vibrated my spine. Then it lifted one paw, ready to strike.
I shielded my face with my now free left arm, but it would do about as much good as an umbrella in a hurricane. I flinched, waiting for the blow.
Crack!
At first I thought it was just another round of thunder, but then the mishipeshu didn’t shred me to bits. In fact, the weight on my right shoulder lifted, and I could sit up again. The panther howled against the backdrop of a multiple-forked lightning bolt as it rubbed at a bleeding laceration on its shoulder.
A bullet wound.
Vincent dashed toward us, gun drawn, every step purposeful in the way only trained police officers move. He scanned for the panther, which he could obviously hear screeching, but he never quite looked in the right direction.
My blood ran cold at the mental image of Vincent going toe-to-toe with the mishipeshu. He’d be shooting an invisible target, and ultimately, guns would not hack it with a vaettur. Even now, the panther’s broken flesh wriggled like a bucket of worms, healing itself. Vincent would just provoke the vaettur enough that he’d die from an invisible slash.
“Stay back!” I yelled at him, but my words drowned in a series of rumbling thunder.
Even if he could have heard me, I knew Vincent wouldn’t run from a fight. He had that lethal expression that told me he’d throw his life away before leaving me here alone.
Which meant I had to act fast. The mishipeshu’s wound had disappeared altogether. With the pain gone, the panther focused its full attention on Vincent. I regathered lightning pith, and as the panther charged toward the ranger, I executed a full banishment sigil this time. A massive bolt flew from my fingertips. I couldn’t control the trajectory, but the panther was so close, the electricity hit it square in the flank anyway.
No thunder could have overshadowed the ensuing screams of pain. One minute, the mishipeshu was inches away from slicing Vincent to ribbons, the next it writhed on the beach, arching its back in a desperate attempt to reach where I’d zapped him. Its cries melted to enraged snarls, causing my ears to ring in the absence of such intense sound.
Vincent noticed the sand flying up in plumes around him and jumped several feet backward, gun roughly aimed toward the commotion. “Ina!” he called. “What’s happening?”
I couldn’t believe I hadn’t defeated the beast. I clearly hurt it, more than anything else we’d thrown at it, but not even a full-on lightning banishment sigil had sent it packing. I cursed as I stood up.
I cupped my hands over my mouth so Vincent could hear me clearly. “Get in your car and drive!” I yelled.
Vincent gaped at me as if I’d asked him to cut off his leg. “And leave you here with this thing?”
I shook my head. “Get out of here. You can’t fight this thing.”
“Neither can you!” Vincent pointed out.
We didn’t have time to argue. The vaettur seemed to have worked past its pain, huddled down on all fours. Once it found its footing, it would lurch toward one of us.
I had to make sure it chose me.
Thrusting my hand into the sand, I absorbed earth into my pithways. I then drew an earth sigil and directed it at the sand beneath Vincent’s feet. He realized what I’d done a second later as he sunk up to his ankle in sand. He tried to scramble out of the way, but one leg became firmly lodged halfway up his calf.
“Ina!” he yelled. “Don’t do this!”
“I’m luring it away!” I called back. “It won’t take you long to wriggle free. When you do, listen for a change and drive away from here!”
The panther took a wobblily first step. I drew a spiky circle with a cross and launched a fireball straight at its nose. It yowled at the fiery sting.
“Here, kitty, kitty!” I yelled at it. “Follow me!”
As I flipped on my heels and dove into the tree line, I heard Vincent’s anguished cry.
“INA!”
Then I could only hear thunder and the frenzied sound of tree limbs clashing together as the panther chased me into the forest.
I had to get back to the wisp channel before the panther did. It was my only hope for escape. I didn’t know if I would make it as the panther tore up the trees behind me. My only advantage was that the vaettur remained disoriented from the lightning strike. It stumbled, creating a wider gap which I leveraged to surge even farther ahead.
Still, the mishipeshu couldn’t have been more than thirty yards behind me as the blue twinkling lights of the wisp channel finally came into view. I couldn’t resist a retort as I flung myself forward.
“So long, litter box!”
I caught one last glimpse of the panther’s raging yellow eyes before the wisp channel launched me back north, toward Sipho’s homestead.
CHAPTER 18
I TRIPPED ON the other side of the channel and fell into a bed of moss. I lay prone, patting each limb just to make sure they were all attached. Everything seemed in order. Streaks of dawn interjected bits of colors in the sky above. Birds fluttered and chirped in the looming trees. D
ay would break soon. Groaning, I dragged myself to my feet.
I did it. I’d outrun the mishipeshu.
But a part of me wanted to go back. I had no idea if Vincent had heeded my warning or not. I was pretty sure the panther would stick around the wisp channel and try to pick up my scent, but if it didn’t and headed back to the beach, Vincent would get flayed alive.
I patted around the hoodie pouch for my phone and quickly powered it on. I could almost taste my heartbeat as I dialed Vincent’s number and waited for him to answer.
He finally clicked through on the sixth ring. “Ina? Where the hell are you?”
“Miles away. What about you? Did you get out of there?”
But I already knew the answer since I could hear the whir of road noise in the background. “Yeah,” he grumbled, the panic seeping out of his voice. “No thanks to you.”
I slumped over, tension leaving my arms. “Good,” I breathed.
“Not good,” Vincent snapped. Outrage rushed in to fill the void. “What were you thinking, fighting that thing alone?”
“I wasn’t fighting it.” My own voice raised a few notches. Adrenaline will do that to you. “I lured it away.”
Vincent was undeterred. “I don’t like how you play hero. It’s going to get you killed.”
“Not today, it isn’t.” I winced as I got to my feet. I’d landed hard on my side. I’d probably bruise there.
“We should figure out how to get rid of this thing.”
I snorted. “Hey, there’s no ‘we’ here. Speaking of getting killed, you’re not a shepherd. What can you do against a vaettur?”
I had him there, but he griped anyway. “Do your little magic friends have a plan?”
“We’re working on it.”
I’d gotten what I needed out of the conversation. Vincent was fine. Since there was no graceful exit strategy, I simply hung up on him. Then I powered down the phone and shoved it back into the waterproof pouch.
I hobbled my way back toward the homestead. Although the bigger problem of the mishipeshu lay ahead, I also had a minor issue. How should I alert the others when I’d been explicitly ordered to stay on the homestead?