Shifter's Destiny

by Anna Leonard

  They’d only managed a few yards when the drumming noise got louder behind them. Elizabeth let herself take one look back, and saw the white horse come up alongside them, slowing down to keep pace with them. Somehow, instinctively, her hand was grabbing at the coarse hairs of the horse’s mane, and pulling herself up onto its back in a move she’d read about in books, but had never done herself before now. The horse’s back was broad, and her legs ached immediately from the effort of staying on, but she managed it, however gracelessly.

  The horse moved forward, reaching Maggie, who had not paused in her flight. Elizabeth put down a hand, and Maggie grabbed it, like they had practiced the move for years, and she hauled her sister up. The horse checked itself midstride until Maggie was safe, clinging to her waist, and then lengthened its stride again.

  And then they were traveling impossibly fast, the drumbeats sounding beneath them, hooves muffled against the ground, leaving Jordan and his companion behind. Elizabeth ducked forward against the thick neck of the horse, pulling Maggie with her and flinching in anticipation of bullets from the gun Jordan might have had. The warm, musty smell of the horse reached her nose, bringing an odd sort of comfort, and then she felt the muscles underneath her bunch up, tensing in anticipation of something....

  Instinct and a distant sense of anticipation made her clench her legs even tighter around the horse’s barrel-shaped ribs, and cling to the thick mane under her fingers, even as Maggie strengthened her grip around her waist and the horse’s ears flicked forward, intent on the fence ahead of them.

  And then the tensed muscles released, and the horse lifted as though, for an instant, they were flying, sheer power taking them over the mesh fence and landing with a surprisingly soft, if jarring, thud of hooves against dirt. Elizabeth barely had time to release a surprised “whoof” of breath before they were out of the open air and into the cool, shaded depths of the woods.

  * * *

  Within minutes, the sounds of civilization faded, replaced by the occasional burst of birdsong that paused as they passed, and then started up again. The horse’s gallop changed to a steady, almost careful trot, but Elizabeth kept her face down and her hands tight in the horse’s mane, acutely aware of her sister’s arms around her waist. She didn’t dare look up or try to control the horse, for fear of dislodging that precious, precarious cargo, or falling off herself. Her legs were sore from gripping the animal’s sides, and her arms ached from holding on, and her scalp stung from where Jordan had pulled her hair, but all she could think was don’t fall off. Don’t let Maggie fall off.

  Her heartbeat slowed slowly, her breathing less raspy-sounding in her own ears, but the fear remained a constant, expecting any moment to hear Jordan’s voice shouting behind them, the roar of the van as it tried to follow them. But with every stride forward they took, and the lengthening of silence, Elizabeth dared hope that they had made good their escape.

  The trees were thicker together now, and the horse had slowed to a cautious walk, allowing Elizabeth to relax her legs a little, and sit up enough to see where they were going. They were following what looked like a deer path—she didn’t dare twist to look behind her, but it was unlikely anything wider than the horse would be able to follow them. If Jordan and his men came, they would have to do so on foot, and they could not keep up with a horse, even if they managed to get past that fence.

  For the moment, they were free.

  “You okay, baby?” she asked.

  “Yeah.” Her sister’s voice came back, shaken but strong. The arms around her waist gave a reassuring squeeze. “I might throw up once my stomach catches up with us, though.”

  That made Elizabeth laugh a little, the way Maggie intended. Her sister was always there with a joke or tease, no matter how bad things got. It was one of her many gifts.

  The ground sloped downward slightly, and then evened out into a clearing. The horse, tired, or just finally bored with carrying riders, stopped, its head dropping low. The message was clear: end of the trip. Elizabeth felt Maggie slide off, and, once she was certain her sister was safe on the ground, unclenched her fingers from the mane and swung her leg over the horse’s back, sliding carefully down to the ground. The horse stood steady throughout, and she patted it on the neck, feeling a layer of sweat on the surprisingly soft, warm skin. “Thank you.”

  The horse snorted as though it understood, and she stepped away, testing her wobbly legs and trying to hear if there were any sounds of pursuit.

  The only noises were birds twittering and calling in the branches overhead, and the quiet trickle of water somewhere nearby. Maggie, contrary to her threat, was not throwing up. Elizabeth stood still and let out a deep breath. It wasn’t safety, not really, but it was closer than she’d felt in months.

  “Where are we?” Maggie asked, looking around in wonder at the huge trees surrounding them.

  Elizabeth had to stop and think for a moment. They’d ridden their bikes from home, and abandoned them by a middle school in the hopes that someone would take them and muddy the trail. Obviously, that hadn’t worked. They’d walked west from there, the rest of the morning, and had ducked into the flea market to get something to eat when she’d caught sight of Jordan following them. In the mad dash after, she hadn’t been paying too much attention to the surroundings, but...

  “I think it’s a reservoir preserve,” she said. “State land.” If so, that was better than she had hoped for—the treed area would be large enough that they should be able to evade being observed, at least until she figured out their next move. And even if there was a road through it, only state vehicles would be allowed in. Hiding in here would give them a little time to breathe. She didn’t think she had really relaxed since the day before, when the notice from the Elders had come.

  Being summoned before the Elders wasn’t a huge deal—it could have been anything, from wanting to discuss the plans she had submitted six months before to enlarge the bakery she owned, or discussing what would happen to the house she had shared with her parents, now that they were gone. It was too large for only two people, and there were others in the Community who could have used the space. That was all the normal course of events, the sort of thing the Elders would summon her to discuss.

  But she had known, the moment she opened the envelope, that it had been none of those things. She wasn’t gifted the way Maggie was, but she’d had a dream the night before, and the sense of menace had been centered on a white square of paper—the same paper she held in her hands, mere hours later.

  Her parents were dead, victims of the terrible flu that had swept through the Community at the beginning of the winter. Cody—her best friend—was dead, just a week past. One by one, everything, everyone who mattered, had been taken from them. She didn’t know why, but she knew it for a fact; and that Ray, who led the Elders, was at the heart of it. Ray wanted Maggie for himself.

  Her dreams were certain of that. They just didn’t know why.

  “So where did you come from, big guy?” Caught in her memories, Elizabeth barely listened to her sister talking to the horse, until the younger girl let out a gasp.

  “Maggie? Wha—”

  She turned and looked at her sister—and by inclusion, looked at the horse, too.

  It was white, she had noted that already. Sleek and muscled, as tall at the shoulder as she was, with a thick golden-white tail and shaggy mane, and large brown eyes looking directly at her, a darker golden forelock falling over its forehead and above that...

  Above that...

  Her brain stopped, refusing to formulate the thought, refusing to acknowledge what she was seeing.

  “Libby.” Maggie’s voice, hushed with awe. “It has a horn!”

  Chapter 2

  Once Elizabeth caught her breath, she said the first thing that came into her brain.

  “There is no such thing as a unicorn.
”

  The words sounded perfectly reasonable, and sane, and confident. Considering that her sister had her arm around the neck of a horse—very definitely a horse—with a foot-long, spiral-shaped, pointed horn in the middle of its forehead, Elizabeth wasn’t sure she believed her own words. But she repeated them anyway. “There is no such thing as a unicorn. It has to be a fake, some kind of a con or scam. Or it’s a mutant deer.”

  It didn’t look anything like a deer, or a moose, or even a mule. It was definitely a horse. And that was definitely a horn.

  So it had to be a fake. If she touched the horn it would be plaster, or plastic, somehow glued onto the horse’s head. Or grafted, some kind of surgical measure... Who would do such a thing? A circus or a sideshow? Maybe. That was the most reasonable guess. Sideshows did that kind of thing all the time, didn’t they? She had been to one, once, when Maggie was very little, a traveling circus, with cotton candy and carnival rides. They’d had a bearded woman and a so-called mermaid in a tank, so a unicorn would fit perfectly.

  Yes. That made sense. Elizabeth nodded once, satisfied. If it belonged to a circus, no matter if the horn was fake or a freak of nature, then it was probably valuable. There might even be a reward, but no matter how much they were going to need money, they couldn’t afford to take advantage. They needed to stay out of sight, away from anyone’s attention, until she had time to think things through, and figure out what to do.

  And if it was a scam of any sort, they really couldn’t afford to be caught up in it. Especially not if the person who was running it came looking for his or her animal, causing trouble. Elizabeth would go to the police, if she had to, but not as part of someone else’s problems. They’d take Maggie away from her for sure, then.

  And if they took Maggie away, it would be easy for Ray, as an Elder, to claim custody. Elizabeth knew, bone-deep, that if he did that, she would never be allowed near her sister again, that Maggie would never be free. There was no evidence to support that—Ray had never done or said anything threatening—but she knew.

  But the only people who might have believed her were dead, now. Only she was left to protect Maggie.

  Her sister, not sharing her worries, was busy petting the creature, cooing into pointed white ears that flickered back and forth as she spoke.

  “Maggie...be careful,” she warned, watching the horn come dangerously close to her sister’s body as the horse leaned into the hug. Even if it was fake, that tip was probably sharp.

  “It won’t hurt us,” Maggie said, stubbornly hugging the beast. “It helped us! Didn’t you, guy?” She rested her face against the white neck. “You saved us. Like Prince Charming’s noble steed. Only where did you leave Prince Charming?”

  The horse made a noise like a snort, and shoved Maggie—gently, but enough to make her stagger, as though responding to her question with indignation.

  “Maggie, please step away from the horse. I agree, it helped us, but it’s still a strange animal and outweighs you by a considerable amount.” Her sister had never met an animal that she couldn’t charm, but Elizabeth saw no reason to tempt fate.

  Maggie made a face, but complied, giving the beast one last pat before taking several steps away. The horse watched her, but stayed where it was. “You think they’ll find us again?” Her voice was matter-of-fact, but her body tensed as she spoke.

  Elizabeth wanted nothing more than to reassure the younger girl that everything would be all right, that they were safe, but she had never directly lied to her little sister, not in thirteen years, and she wasn’t going to start now. “Not if we’re smart. We need to figure out how to get to the other side of the reservoir, somehow, and then we can find a bus station. Once we’re farther away, they won’t be able to find us again.”

  She hoped. Her only plan had been to get as far away from the Community as possible, and find someone who wasn’t cowed by Ray, someone who would listen to them, and protect them. But now... Elizabeth looked around, noting that the light that had been slanting through the trees was fading, all too aware of the fact that they had no idea where they were—any direction she chose could lead them right back into Jordan’s clutches, or leave them wandering deeper into the woods, away from the bus station that was their only chance to get away.

  Jordan was a smarmy bastard, but he was right—Maggie was still exhausted. She needed to rest, and have a good meal, something more than the hot dogs they had gotten at the flea market, and...things they weren’t going to find, standing here like ninnies. Elizabeth mentally counted the money they had left, and flinched. There was enough for bus tickets out of state, and another meal or three, but not much more than that.

  “I just need to figure out which way leads to the next town over.” She didn’t even know what town they were in right now. She had lived here her entire life, all twenty-six years, and once she got outside a ten-mile radius of her home, she was lost. What the hell had she been thinking, abandoning everything without a plan?

  Panicked. She had been panicked, and knew, the same way that she knew the summons was bad news, that Ray was counting on her to be her usual practical, pragmatic self. Think-it-through Libby, her dad always called her. Think-it-through Libby would never have yanked her sister out of school and abandoned everything they owned on an hour’s notice, on the basis of a series of bad dreams and a gut feeling.

  But she had.

  The horse took two steps forward, so graceful it seemed almost to float more than walk, and, bypassing Maggie, circled around Elizabeth. She turned to watch it move, only to stagger herself when it pushed at her from behind with its shoulder. She had been right; it was solid muscle, and she had to take several steps forward to keep from falling over.

  Up close, the horn was clearly attached to the forehead with more than glue, and when she—with daring that amazed her—reached out to touch it, the sensation under her fingertips was that of solid bone, smooth and cool and heavy.

  With that touch, a wall of memories fell on her. She could almost hear her mother’s laugh, see Cody’s bright, fearless smile, smell the scent of her dad’s cologne....

  No. Those were memories of better times, happier times. If she let them come back now, she would break down and then Maggie would be lost.

  The horse, as though sensing her thoughts, stepped closer, pushing her again with the exact same amount of force behind the shove, and she got a definite sense of being told to get a move on.

  “That way?” She felt insane, asking an animal for directions, but...maybe not so insane, after all. She looked at Maggie, who was looking at the beast intently. Her sister nodded.

  “I think so. It wants us to go...that way?” Maggie pointed in the direction the horse—the unicorn, all right, Elizabeth admitted it, the unicorn—was pushing her.

  It shoved her again, and she took the third step of her own accord, almost numb at this point. “What the hell. You got us here, maybe you can get us out.”

  There was so much that was crazy in her life, what was taking directions from a unicorn, at this point? The thought almost made her laugh. Almost.

  Maggie slipped her hand into her sister’s, and they walked forward along the indentation in the grass that indicated a deer path, the unicorn following behind. Its hooves barely made any noise on the dirt, now that it was walking rather than galloping. Elizabeth glanced behind, unable to help herself, and those wide brown eyes met hers in an almost human glance. It was taller than they were, its head above their shoulders, so it would be able to see anything coming ahead of them. More, its chest was broad and muscled, and its hooves were weapons able to take out anything coming up from behind them. Trust me, that dark gaze seemed to say.

  The sense of safety she had felt earlier returned, and she nodded once in response, and then turned her attention back to the barely visible track winding through the trees.

  They walked in silen
ce a few strides, but Elizabeth could feel something building within her normally sunny-tempered sister. She waited, patiently, and finally it burst out.

  “They’re not going to give up, are they? Why, Libby? Why won’t they just let us alone?”

  All Elizabeth had told her sister as a reason for their flight was that the Elders wanted to separate them, place Maggie in another household, a real family, not just a sister who worked too many hours to raise a teenager. Elizabeth hadn’t mentioned any of her other fears, the ones that seemed insane in the daylight, but so very real when shadows surrounded them. Cody might have been able to banish the fears, with his laughter and his optimism, but Cody had hung himself on the tree behind his house, six days ago. Eight days after Elizabeth had confided her dream-stirred worries to him.

  Maggie knew, anyway. Maggie always knew. Like Elizabeth’s dreams, only more so. Maggie Sweet was special that way.

  “I don’t know,” Elizabeth said now, in response to the question. “I wish I did, but I don’t. We’ll stay together, baby. Just like I promised you.” When their parents had died, at the shared grave among so many other graves, she had sworn that she would always be there, that she would not leave Maggie alone.

  “Okay.” As simple as that, and to Maggie, the world was right side up and stable. Elizabeth wished, not for the first time, that she had her sister’s faith in her own abilities.

  Cody had told her once that, if she put her mind to it, she could grow wings and fly. But Cody was dead. The police, called in from the nearest town, said he had committed suicide, too depressed by the spate of deaths in the Community to go on. Elizabeth knew better. No matter what, no matter how many friends they lost, he would never have done that, would never have gone without a word to her. Not after what she’d confessed to him. But nobody would believe her, thinking her stressed and grief-stricken.