by Martha Carr
“NO!” Leira screamed, drawing Correk’s gaze.
With her body clear of the dark magic—not even a stain on her skin—she pushed her hands outward, shooting a steady stream of white light into Sirius’s chest. His smile faded as he watched the magic enter his body and the wand fell from his hand, rolling and bouncing across the floor to Correk’s feet. Leira swayed and stopped sending energy, watching calmly as Sirius grasped his black robes and clawed at his chest in an attempt to dig the magic out.
He looked up at Leira with glowing red eyes and growled just as the energy popped, turning Sirius into a fountain of dust. Correk jumped to his feet and ran toward Leira as she fell to the floor. He went down on his knees and caught her, supporting her head in his lap. Yumfuck, his fur singed and with patches of matted bloody hair on his shoulder, came running over, shrinking and running up Leira’s chest. He took her head in his paws and laid his face against hers, listening to her breathe.
“She is okay,” Yumfuck pronounced. “Magic that strong should have destroyed her, but it only tired her. She is just too weak to move.”
Correk nodded and stood up, lifting her with him and cradling her close. When Leira had recovered enough to feel Correk’s arms around her, she opened her eyes and smiled up at him. “We got him?”
“More precisely, you got him.” He smiled back.
A loud crack drew their attention toward the collapsed area of the vault. Several of the Silver Griffins stood there with their wands out, peering through a hole cleared through the rubble. Correk nodded and headed toward it, Leira still in his arms. She felt tired; weak, but mostly too exhausted to even worry about what was happening.
“Thank you,” Correk said to the witch in front of him.
“No problem.” She smiled back. “Let’s get out of here before the whole damn thing comes down on us.”
They raced through the tunnels, Yumfuck holding onto Leira tightly as he rode on her stomach toward safety. When they cleared the stairs Correk looked down at Leira, who had her eyes closed but was breathing steadily.
One of the Griffins joined him and nodded. “Let’s get you home. We’ll be in touch for details.”
She swished her wand in a circle, slowly widening the portal until Correk could see their living room on the other side. He nodded at the witch and stepped through, listening to the crack and buzz behind him as the portal closed. He carefully carried Leira to the bedroom and laid her down on the bed, giving her a once over to make sure there were no other injuries. She smiled, opening her eyes and yawning.
Correk smiled and bent over to kiss her forehead. “Get some rest.”
“You don’t have to tell me twice.”
20
Lucius sat in his new two-room cottage on the sanctuary going over different plans to branch out and bring more shifters to the area. Everything had been going just right. The pack was constantly building more houses, creating a community for them to live and train. Lucius had offered to use his light magic to help them, but they were determined to do it on their own. They were really coming together like a family, looking out for each other and protecting each other, and those who still lived and worked outside of the sanctuary now protected their fellow shifters. It was the beginning of Lucius’ plan, and it was going perfectly.
He stared down at his map, running his fingers along the areas he had circled. He was hoping to get out there in the next week or so to reinforce their efforts. He sighed and walked over to the window, looking out at the rolling fields.
As he turned back to his work a searing heat flowed through his chest. He spun quickly toward the door and ran into the field. Someone had breached the protections and found their way into the sanctuary.
Lucius began to muster his energy, pulling it from the ground and creating an orb. He would find the intruders and pin them down, finding out why they were there.
Before he could release the orb, a howl came from the group of smaller cottages on the hill, and the pain in the shifter’s voice cut through Lucius like a knife. He knew that whatever it was, it wasn’t good. He let the magic flow back through him and took off toward the cry as the others darted across the lawns and made their way to the house.
Everyone came running, and Lucius found a large group staring down at the ground, whimpers and growls coming from them in a collective chorus. Lucius pushed through the wolves to the center. On the ground lay a woman, slowly shifting back into her human form.
There was a black singe in her side where some sort of magic had taken her life. A wolf lay at her side, whimpering and pushing her with his nose. He looked up with tears in his yellow eyes, and stood on his back legs, then morphed into human form.
“That’s my wife,” he yelled angrily. “It was some Kilomea. He wandered onto the land and found us. He threw me on the ground and Eliza, she ran forward. She shifted and lunged for his throat, but he had cast a dark spell, hitting her in the side. Then he ran off.”
Lucius patted his shoulder, looking down at the woman. She was a young human, one Sirius had changed before last year’s battle. They had fled to the sanctuary looking for guidance and a new life away from the fear of the humans, and now they found themselves victims of dark magic .
“He’s still on the property,” Lucius called. “Gather your strength and we will find him.”
The pack howled loudly as Lucius changed, his large hands turning to paws and hair sprouting all over his body. He stretched, looming over the others and snarling into the distance. He took a deep breath, catching the traces of Kilomea still lingering on her skin. He looked at her husband and nodded, needing him to know that they were there and would avenge the crime. The man crossed his arms over his chest and nodded back as Lucius took off toward the woods. The rest of the pack followed quickly, their noses to the ground.
They sped over the damp forest floor, leaping over fallen trees and searching the mud for footprints. Lucius could sense him and the others could smell him, and it was getting stronger the farther they went. Kilomeas had always been vile creatures, picking fights with others, murdering, and pillaging on Oriceran, but they had never messed with the shifters on Earth. A sort of unspoken truce had sprung up between the two since both were equally feared—the Kilomea for much better reasons.
As the humming in Lucius’s chest increased he slowed his pace, as did the pack following him. He stopped and stood up, perking his ears and listening. There were no birds chirping, and that in itself was strange. A cracking twig in the distance zeroed him back in on the target.
He’s running, Lucius called telepathically to the others. We can’t let him get out of the sanctuary.
They took off through the woods, the light ahead signaling the edge of the property. The Kilomea was cloaked in his magical human form, sprinting forward with a smile on his face. Lucius couldn’t let him leave. He felt a force pushing for retribution. He took a few more steps and leapt, changing back into his human form while in the air and tackling the Kilomea. They rolled through the leaves, then Lucius stood up and grabbed the creature by the neck and lifted him into the air.
“Why?!” he growled, his eyes still yellow.
The Kilomea chuckled, his human figure fading to his true form. “You’re just a bunch of dumb bitches.”
“Wrong answer,” Lucius growled, throwing him into the center of the shifter pack.
He stood back, his arms crossed and his eyes fixed on the beast as the shifters tore his flesh from his bones. He breathed in deeply, feeling the darkness trickle through his veins, still present from his time in the World in Between. Revenge feels so good.
Leira yawned, stretching her arms over her head and looking up at the sunshine coming in through the window. She sat up, groaning when she felt a magical hangover pulsing through her head. Slowly she lifted her legs off the bed and pushed to her feet, bracing herself against the wall until the spinning stopped.
“This is worse than Jim Beam on my birthday,” she whined.
He
r stomach rumbled and she clutched it, wondering what kind of food was left in the house. She stumbled into the living room, but no one was there. She continued to the door of the kitchen and stopped, watching Yumfuck singing to himself as he flipped bacon in one pan and an omelet in the other.
“You’re awake!” he exclaimed, smiling.
“Yeah. How long was I asleep?”
“Two days,” Yumfuck replied.
“Two days!”
“You used your energy and some of the energy from the artifacts in the vault. You are lucky to be alive.”
“Yeah, I kind of figured that.” She sat down at the kitchen table. “Where is Correk?”
“On assignment,” Yumfuck replied, sliding the omelet onto the plate and placing four pieces of bacon next to it.
He walked over and set the plate down in front of Leira, handing her a fork. “Thanks.”
She took a bite of the omelet and paused, realizing she had never had one that good before. She took another bite, thinking it was just her hunger talking, but it was delicious!
“Wow, this is amazing,” she exclaimed as Yumfuck piled a plate with bacon and sat down across from her.
“Garlic, salt, and a touch of pancake batter,” he chirped. “Top Chef!”
“You are good at it,” Leira told him, shoveling another bite in. “I’ll just put you in charge of cooking from now on.”
“Just not Wednesday or every other Tuesday. I got poker games with the friends,” Yumfuck replied.
Leira stopped mid-bite and pulled her eyebrows together, then shrugged, taking the bite of her omelet. She hadn’t even thought until that moment about the fact that she didn’t know anyone in DC except Correk and Louie. She had been so caught up in saving the worlds that nothing else had really mattered.
This wasn’t the time to start missing friendship, though. Sirius might be gone but there was much more out there that needed to be protected.
“I wonder where the shifters have gone. Haven’t heard anything since that last fight,” Leira mused, half talking to Yumfuck, half just talking out loud.
“I heard on the train that they may have some sort of new sanctuary,” Yumfuck replied. “But that was just the gossip of two old witches behind me.”
“A sanctuary? I guess it would be needed, but how many are in that pack?”
“Sometimes Alphas can lead whole armies,” Yumfuck offered. “At least on Oriceran.”
“I’m not sure whether that is comforting or terrifying.”
Back at the sanctuary, the shifters began to gather, cleaning themselves from the kill. They all were in wolf form, paying homage to their dead pack member and comforting their fellow wolves. The fields were quiet as the body of the woman was passed through the shifters on a handsewn blanket made by one of the women.
They passed her along and set her on a wooden plank over a large hole in the ground. Once she was in position Lucius walked up, standing up on his hind legs and looking at the dead woman.
“Brothers and sisters, we are here to celebrate the life and mourn the loss of our dear sister Eliza. She was too young and too kind to be taken from us this early. Let this be a warning, that there are those who walk among us, magical and non-magical alike, who would rather see us dead and buried than fighting for what we believe to be right.”
The muscles rippled underneath his fur. “We can no longer sit idle. The days of hiding in the shadows are over. We will move forward and we will fight, and when we take a life we will take it for every wolf ever killed out of fear or greed or anger.”
The other wolves cheered as Lucius paused, reveling in the comradery and their willingness to follow him into war. He waved his paws over the woman as magic flowed over her body.
Vines came up from the dirt, securing her and the blanket wrapped around her body tightly to the board. Flowers bloomed along the vines, pink and purple flowers that he hadn’t seen since Oriceran. Their fragrance wafted through the air, covering the stench of blood and pain.
“Let us support our brother Aman, who has lost the love of his life today.”
The shifters all began to howl, starting in the back and working their way to the front. Over and over the sound of mourning echoed across the sanctuary, piercing the magical barriers. Lucius was sure the pain could have been felt all the way to Oriceran that day. As the wolves’ grief echoed through the air, the body began to lower slowly into the ground below, the dirt following the streams of magic covering her for the last time.
Aman stood, clutching his human hands together as he stared at the mound in front of him. Tears flowed down his cheeks and he shook his head, feeling a twinge of anger growing in his belly. He leaned his head back as his body morphed into his wolf, the shirt tearing from his back. He took a deep breath and howled longer and louder than any of the others and the group fell silent, allowing him his moment.
When he was done he turned to Lucius and growled, I want their heads.
And we shall have them, Lucius replied telepathically. We shall take down those who wish to push us deep into the ground.
21
Leira sat in the metro looking around her, watching the non-magical people move about their day; going to work, going home, running errands, and everything else she used to do before she knew of her heritage and her powers. She wasn’t reminiscing or sad. She had become who she really was, and that was important because she had gone her whole life to that point wondering if anything would ever make sense. It finally did, everything from her mother being locked up in the psych ward for talking about Oriceran and her grandmother disappearing for four years to the strange things she had always brushed off before she knew. It all came together, even the truth about her father Jackson, the Jasper Elf.
The metro doors shut and the train lurched forward, moving slowly but steadily building speed. She could have taken the magical railway and gotten to the government building in half the time, but she was running early for once and had decided that joining the humans was good for her, reminding her why she had fought so hard to do things her way. Still, she wasn’t too excited to see the senators, not after the last meeting they’d had. Curiosity got the best of her though, and besides, she wanted to know what trail they were on at that point. Most likely still the shifters, but with the way things were going she needed to know if there was anything else.
The metro pulled into the next stop and she grabbed her purse, moving out with the flow of traffic. There were a lot more people on the regular train than the magical one and she again remembered why she chose portals over either of them. She rode the escalator to the top and stepped out onto the sidewalk, looking down at her phone and trying to remember where the building was. She wandered along the street, passing rows and rows of federal buildings along endless blocks until she found the entrance, which had a small Oriceran shield etched into the gate. To anyone else it would just look like a fancy design, but she knew it well.
She walked through the gate and down some stairs like she was walking into a basement. She knocked on the door and waited for it to open, staring up at a very large man in a military uniform. “I’m Leira Berens, here for a meeting with the senators.”
He nodded and moved to the side, closing the door tightly behind her. She followed him down a long corridor to a door at the end of the hall. He opened it and stood aside, nodding for her to walk through. She gave him a smile and entered the room, where Senators Thatcher and Brownwood were sitting at the same table as before.
“No portal this time?” Thatcher smiled.
“I thought I could use the fresh air,” Leira replied, taking a seat.
“I’m not sure I’ve ever heard someone refer to the metro as ‘fresh air,’ but to each his own.”
Leira half-smiled and looked between the two men, knowing they were about to ask her to do something for them. Brownwood glanced at Thatcher and waited for him to begin speaking. Thatcher took his time, taking a sip of his coffee and handing Brownwood a sheet of paper.
“A sanctuary?” Leira pretended to not know what he was talking about, unsure who knew about the Gardener.
“Yes. He acquired hundreds of acres out there and has set up shop. A Kilomea was killed on their reservation the other day, along with a female shifter. From what our intel has told us they have set up camp there, building housing, preparing the land for farming, etc.”
“And why is this a problem?”
“Lucius has been growing his pack exponentially,” Brownwood cut in. “He is adding wolves by the hundreds, taking them to this place and training them.”
“For what?” Leira asked, raising an eyebrow.
“We don’t know exactly,” Thatcher replied. “We know that they hunt, fight, and kill as a pack, and this pack vastly outnumbers the soldiers we have on the books to fight magical creatures at any given time. This is dangerous for everyone involved. The stronger and more numerous they get, the more likely it is that they will become hostile toward us.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t quite see why you are drawing that conclusion,” Leira replied.
“It is obvious from the former fights and the way they disposed of their intruder that these beasts are out for blood. They have no allegiance to us at all.”
“But they don’t have an allegiance to the dark families either,” Leira pointed out. “In fact, when Sirius turned several of his witches and wizards to shifters, they followed their Alpha out of the compound to safety. They chose to leave the family instead of fighting alongside them.”
“That doesn’t make them an ally,” Thatcher replied.
“It doesn’t make them an enemy either,” Leira argued. “What do you want me to do? It is obvious you have something in mind, since you wouldn’t have come here just to give me intel.”