Inherit

by Liz Reinhardt

  Hina’s sneer changes the entire shape of her face in a way I’d only seen on Sakura before. Like mother, like daughter. “You’re a shieldmaiden. I’m a witch. In your own tiny realm, you may command an enormous amount of power, but I guess that’s why it was so easy to draw from you. Witches are so far beyond your ancient incantation dabbling and protective shields. We’ve been hunted since time began, and we understand that we can’t protect or trust anyone else. Look what love and trust did to you, Magda. Your powers are useless now.”

  Magda moans and holds her head in her hands, lining her hair with red streaks of blood. Jonas rubs his elbow on my ribs, breaking my trance-like attention on this drama, and juts his chin towards Vee. Hina and Magda have taken center stage, and neither one has eyes for us anymore. I nod imperceptibly, and he presses a pocket knife into my palm. I begin to inch along the wall, then dart, fast and sure, to my best friend’s side, sawing through the binds that have cut into her skin with hands shaking so badly, I’m sure I’m going to knick her. When she’s free, her hands fall limply at her sides. Her eyes roll back in her head, but I shake her by the shoulder and propel her across the room ahead of me, and into the safety of Jonas’s arms.

  I’m almost there with them, almost cradled by the uncomplicated love and friendship I’ve been missing so badly, when a detonated boble punches at my chest and blows me back to the wall. My head bashes against the wainscoting, and I have to shake it back and forth to clear the ringing.

  Sakura’s face is close to mine, and her lips are moving with horrific slowness. When the ringing in my ears finally dies down, I can hear her loud and clear. “…stupid, pathetic loser. You never had an ounce of the strength I have. I guess it makes sense since your mother is a weak shieldmaiden and your father is the weakest Kochi the family ever produced. It’s over after my mother saps you and Jonas. Isn’t that what you wished for? Your sad old life back? Your stupid, lowly mortal existence filled with mundane school dances and tests and slave work — ugh.” She gives a delicate shiver. “I can’t talk about it anymore. It’s too. Fucking. Depressing.” She shakes her pink hair and purses her lips. “And to think I actually thought you might have something worthwhile in you. It seemed like you had some promise, and we could have had a little fun, cousin. Now?” She shrugs. “You’re lower than a filthy piece of gum stuck to the bottom of my favorite stilettos.”

  Magda is curled into herself, crying into her bloodied hands. Hina stalks over to me and holds her own smooth, firm hands out with a satisfied smile. “Alright, niece. We’ve never really met, but I’m very comfortable with this being our hello and good-bye. Give Auntie Hina your hands, and we’ll be gone in no time.”

  “Bestemor?” I ask, not trusting my voice to say more.

  “Svane Jelle is one of the most powerful shieldmaidens who’s ever lived. But she’s also one of the last who knows how to block a witch’s draw. She’s too much of a liability.” Hina opens and closes her hands, eager for mine. “I promise you, Wren. Her passing will be fast and painless. She’s lived a long life. This is the merciful way.”

  The adrenaline that shoots through me is so intense, it screams in my ears. I flick my wrists and feel a surge that starts low in my guts and sings through my tendons and bones, swelling my hands with fantastically dense power. The skin on my fingers peels and splits as I produce a quaking smør that crashes into her and sends her flying into Magda, who screeches and scratches at Hina’s arms and chest, her face contorted with a raw emotion that’s half desperate need and half pure hatred.

  Hina jumps up and yanks herself out of Magda’s grasp, but Magda grabs onto those ridiculous red sleeves and hangs on for dear life. Hina kicks and rips away from the shieldmaiden, and when she looks at me again, her eyes are gold flames lit up in crazy fury.

  A deft rib kick manages the job of throwing Magda to the side, and she pushes those stupid red sleeves up and flicks her wrists back and forth. “So you want a fight, little niece? Because I’ve already drained one of the most powerful shieldmaidens in the world. Are you sure you’re ready for—

  I manifest a tentakkel so quick and mean it whips her feet out from under her before she can finish threatening me.

  She jumps back up with a yelp and a growl and blows hard, quick bobles, one after another at my body and head, jade light simmering on her palms after each assault.

  I hold one hand up in a bloomed diament that repels her tiny targets, and with the other, begin to make another smør, its wide, strong net green and abrasive.

  “Wren!” When I turn, Jonas has an arm around numb-looking Vee’s shoulders, and his eyes are cold and serious as a dull winter sky before a nor’easter. “You can’t. You’ll hurt yourself.”

  I shake my head and direct all my focus on my offensive and defensive shields. I don’t know if anyone’s ever done two at once alone before. I also don’t know if a shieldmaiden has ever transferred powers to her magus before. Or if a novice has ever learned every type of shield in a few weeks before. Or if a family of misfits ever sent the Kråke flying with their tails between their black claws before. The point is, I’m part of a revolution, a new world order in magic, and I’m never listening to anyone tell me I can’t again.

  Hina’s trying to mimic what I do, but all the shield technique she has is from a classically trained maiden. I’m rogue, street, an improv shield maker, and I play by my own rules. The smør burns my fingers down to the knuckles and makes the skin pucker and redden like I have radiation poisoning. I know this may not be good for me, but I want Hina gone, out of all our lives, and I’ll do whatever the hell it takes to make that happen.

  I keep casting the net, and, in her haste, she pops shields that are truly beautiful and serve no real purpose. They explode and fall in tiny showers of white light around her.

  Sakura comes behind her and makes a very decent diament, but the stage is all Hina’s, and she doesn’t want disruptions. One push sends Sakura sprawling back, her mother’s face exposed with disgust. “Back up, daughter! This is my battle, and these will be my rewards. You’re not putting the noose around your own mother’s neck so quickly.”

  Sakura’s hands go to her throat. Her eyes, one still violet, one gold, probably from a knocked-out contact, go wide and her mouth crumples. “We can fight this together…we can—”

  Hina sends the first decent tentakkel she’s made yet to cover her daughter’s mouth. “Shut up! Stop blubbering. I let your failures go before, but how could you think I’d be able to trust you again? You couldn’t even steal back one kitsune. You couldn’t even take down one untrained half-breed. If this were a hundred years ago, fifty even, you’d have set yourself on fire from shame. Things are so easy now. Now you just live with the shame like it doesn’t make any difference. But it burns me every single day to know that I created a petty little worthless cretin like you!”

  Sakura shakes her head and blinks. I keep building my net, making it longer, wider, stronger, to contain this hateful sub-human aunt of mine.

  She lobs a few more hard-edged whirling bobles my way, but I sweep them aside, no problem, as she continues to trample on Sakura’s feelings. “I have to say, this half-blood has fight in her. Maybe Ryuu’s genes aren’t so anemic after all. With the proper training, this little rogue could make a great addition to the Kochi coven. This is a girl I wouldn’t be wasting my time training.”

  I get the distinct feeling Hina is a sociopath cat with way too many mice to torture. “I would never stoop to your level.” I pick up the smør, already burning my hands and wrists, and prepare to cast it over her.

  She eyes the net and starts to weave her own, but she isn’t fast or brutal enough to keep up with me. “I can admit when I’ve been bested. But hear me out. Wren, listen to your aunt. You have incredible powers, and you need to know how to use them. Look at what you’re doing to yourself.”

  The skin on my hands is sore and bloodied, getting worse by the second.

  “Your power is too strong. Stronger th
an you can manage. Let me help you.” A slimy smiles snakes over her face, her teeth so white and straight behind deep red lips. “Let me guide you.”

  “Never!” If I had a drink, I’d throw it in her face. If I had a trapdoor, I’d open it underneath her. If I’ve ever had any faith in my powers, this is the time to invest fully in that faith and blow this witch out of the water.

  She tilts her head back, her neck a long, gorgeous brown line, her hair a black waterfall, her laugh strong, evil, and beautiful all at once. “Good! Tell me to go to Hell. A niece who’s willing to kill her own aunt is worthy of the Kochi name.” The gold in her eyes dances wildly.

  My hands burn so badly, it’s like there are a million forest fires concentrated on my palms, fingers, and knuckles. I loosen my hold on the smør.

  “Cast it at me! I can take it!” she shrieks, her bugged eyes and savage mouth startling me into action. I lift the shield, ready to transfer all of this pain, all of this negative, brutal energy to the one woman who proved herself ugly and hateful inside and out. There is no grey area, no guilt, not wavering. This is my destiny, and I’m strong enough to embrace it.

  “Wren!” Jonas yells, and it occurs to me that his voice will be the last innocent, beautiful thing I hear before I’m marred permanently with blood-soaked hands. “Don’t do this. You’ll lose yourself. You don’t understand what this will do to you.”

  Before I can assure him that I do understand and have it all under control, the door explodes open and my mother is in front of me, screaming incantations and casting a huge, firm boble around my aunt. It’s pure white and blue and gorgeous, but Hina raises her hand and smashes through it, clawing for my mom. She grabs her by the wrist and my mother screams.

  My mother.

  Absent, always.

  Uncaring.

  Unknowing.

  My mother.

  The smør is already casting, released from my fingers on a pulse of sure power, the final solution to Hina’s destruction, the ultimate forgiveness from me to my mother, when Jonas rolls in front of it and puts up his own Smør shield. His glistens with the whites and blues of my mother’s magic, and, like two magnets at the same poles, the shields repel.

  For an instant.

  The drape and power of my shield seems to weigh down on Jonas and it melds to his shield like warm rubber over metal, dripping and coating every seam. The muscles of his arms quake and bunch as he pushes with all his power. Hina laughs and strikes at my mother again.

  Time stops for a long second. I can save her, or I can save him.

  I can’t save them both.

  And the truth is a freight train to my brain; it’s my arrogant stupidity and hate that brought them where they are.

  “Wren! Save him!” My mother points at Jonas, his arms going slack, as Hina flies at her, hands at her throat.

  Because my heart is too decimated to make this decision on my own, I listen to my mother and go to Jonas, sliding my arms around his, taking the impossible weight of the two warring shields. “I can’t.” I flex and push, I dig my feet into the ground and twist my body until I’m sweating and every single muscle aches, but nothing I do is remotely enough. My own toxic magic is going to crush me and the guy I love. “I don’t have the strength to do this.”

  “Crush the boble,” he gasps.

  “These are smør,” I say through my brand new, insistent sobs. “I’m going to take the weight, alright? I want you to duck out of the way, do you hear? When the shields fall into each other, they’ll negate. They’ll destroy each other.”

  His laugh is a hammer striking a nail dead center. “And you’ll be killed when they do, you little idiot. Crush the damn boble. Around my neck.”

  “What will it do?” I reach for it with one twisted arm, but when he adjusts his shoulder to redistribute the weight, the boble slides out of my reach.

  “The kiss,” he grits between his clenched teeth. “Magic made from love is crazy strong.”

  Corny sweet love, concentrated in this little trinket? How strong could it possibly be? This is a boble, the shield that’s mostly good for defense.

  Maybe it’s the underdog of all shields?

  But I have a feeling this isn’t going to be the dark horse that explodes out of the gate to win the race for us. I have a feeling that this is nothing more than a trinket and breaking it open will produce, at best, a strong, repelling boble that will give us a quick minute of relief before the end. I make up my mind to use that last minute to kiss Jonas one more time. A final sweet before it’s all over.

  I let out another sob I wish I could bite back, but do what he asks. I grab the boble and crush it open, then roll in Jonas’s arms so we’re facing, and press my lips to his, attempting to transfer every ounce of love that I’ve been holding back now that we only have a few seconds left.

  The clack of the breaking shell is deafening. Jonas’s eyes go almost pure blue as his pupils shrink to tiny pinpricks in the blinding light. I look over my shoulder and see that the boble has sent wild arms of power snaking and shooting out and around us. It jumps from my hand and a solid white core blinks once, twice, and finally detonates. A flashbulb light pulses through the room and sends both shields ricocheting with an earsplitting boom through the wall and out of the house.

  We’re alive.

  Without a pause, without a breath, I jump up and run to my mother, lying on the floor, Hina next to her. Sakura stands over both of them, her chest rising and falling, her gold and violet eyes rabid. I fall to my knees next to my mother and brush some of that damn spun-gold hair out of her face. She moans and moves her head from side to side. In that second, I don’t care about coming off as brave or smart or tough. I sob my ass off because my mom is okay and so is Jonas. Against all odds, I have them both with me. I cradle her head in my arms and run my hands over all that irritatingly gorgeous hair and hold her close, my beautiful, alive mother.

  My mother is going to be fine.

  Hina, in contrast, is grey-skinned and murky-eyed. When I look closely, I can see the sheen of a boble snared tight around her face and neck. Like someone cast one over her and pulled it tight, suffocating her with it.

  The underdog shield. I definitely misinterpreted how powerful it could really be.

  Sakura stands a few feet away, studying her hands, which are shaking and glowing a sickly green.

  Jonas rushes over, pushing me out of the way so he can chant and perform his healing methods on my mother.

  “Will she be okay?” I have to dare myself to ask.

  He pauses the chant and looks up. “Just fine.” He picks her up and moves her to the couch, talking to me over his shoulder. “She’ll be asleep in a few minutes, and I’ll get someone to look her over. But she’ll be fine, Wren. Don’t worry.”

  I wring my hands and bite my lips, but I do trust him. I do, so I just put a blanket over her, tucked to her chin, like I always wanted done when I was a tiny kid, and I step back to let her heal.

  My woozy attention steals to Sakura, still staring at her hands. I drift closer to her and try to keep my eyes off the corpse of her mother on the floor between us.

  “You saved my mother.” I work hard to unstick my voice from the back of my throat. “You saved her.” Loki trots out from between the destroyed pieces of wall and broken glass and rubs against my ankles. I pick her up and hold her tight in my arms, serenity spreading quickly through my body. There is finally some silence, some calm in the air. This feels like the beginning of peace among the rubble of our festering fight, even in the wake of Sakura’s enormous blood sacrifice.

  My cousin finally takes her oddly mismatched eyes off her hands and regards me with a contempt so severe, I’ve only ever seen it at that level on one other person’s face, and she’s dead on the floor. “I don’t give a solitary fuck about your mother, Wren,” Sakura seethes. “How could I? I killed my own. And now I have a power you couldn’t begin to understand.” She flicks the tips of her fingers and a frothy, dangerous slew o
f bobles foam out like so many evil minions.

  “Sakura, what your mother drew, this power, it’s really, really dangerous. I’m talking nuclear, toxic danger. Trust me, it almost made me kill—”

  “That’s your problem,” she snaps, marveling at the frenetic magic bobles bobbing and tipping off the ends of her shredding fingers like the fizzing overflow from countless cans of shaken soda. “You almost kill. You almost dominate. You almost have the guts. But my mother was wrong. You’re not the one who will revitalize the Kochi name. You aren’t strong enough. Smart enough. Tough enough. You aren’t enough to bring pride back to our pathetic family name. There’s a place of honor reserved for the most powerful witch in the coven. That’s my place now, and there sure as hell isn’t enough room at the top for both of us, bitch.”

  Before I can talk her out of her madness, embrace her, thank her, warn her, threaten her, there’s a thunderous crack, a flash of green light, and she snaps out of my sight like a mirage, leaving the heady threat of dangerous déjà vu to come.

  Vee’s hand on my shoulder loosens an abbreviated scream from my throat. Jonas looks over, worry in the lines on his forehead and around his eyes. “She’s gone,” I tell no one in particular, staring at the spot she left shimmering with her mutated energy.

  “Gone,” Vee repeats, pressing her hair back from her forehead and licking her lips. “Let’s hope she stays that way, hon. Cause I’ve seen about all my sanity can handle of that crazy pink-haired witch and the rest of her insane entourage.”

  Jonas approaches us, dark purple rings under his eyes, shoulder muscles slack, mouth determined. Too much emotion slides and crashes behind his eyes when he looks at me, but when he turns to Vee, it’s nothing but calm, deep waters. He takes her hands, and I know exactly how soft the skin is and that the lilac glitter of her nail polish is a color she reserves exclusively for spring. But I flash back to the ocean in her brain and realize that there’s six times more I don’t know about my best friend compared with what I do know.