by Sarra Cannon
But every time I tried to embrace my own powers, I could feel the darkness taking over. I was terrified that if I went to that place, I’d never be able to bring myself out of it.
I’d used my injured wing as an excuse for way too long, but the truth was that Harper’s sister, Angela, had healed me very quickly after the fight with the Devil.
I took a deep breath. “Okay, tell me again what I need to do,” I said.
“I’ve been shifting for so long, it’s hard to know exactly how to explain it,” Mary Anne said. “For me, it’s just like folding in on myself. I have to let go of my body completely and give in to something deeper. Something primal and animal. When I first have the intention to shift, I picture my crow self and feel it pulling at me, inviting me in. Then I just tumble into it, in a way.”
I listened to her words, but it sounded so foreign to me. Folding in on yourself? How was I going to figure this out? Especially when I was so afraid of letting go. I almost wished I had brought one of Rend’s potions with me to help me feel confident and relaxed.
But if I was going to master this, I was going to have to face my fears without any help from outside magic or potions.
“Close your eyes,” Mary Anne said softly. “Now, take a deep breath in and out. Let go of all thoughts. Just picture a beautiful black bird in your mind. Imagine your body changing.”
I did as she said, but I couldn’t seem to let go of my thoughts. All I could think about was not being able to do this. My hands were shaking.
“You are a crow, Mary Francis.”
Her use of my true name jolted me.
“This is who you are,” she said. “This is a part of you, just as much as your black hair and your deep blue eyes. This is who you have always been. Let go of your fear and your doubts. Reach deeper. Beyond your mind. Reach into the depths of your power. Your true self already knows how to do this. Just stop fighting it.”
I took several deep breaths as I listened to her words. I relaxed my shoulders and focused on my breath. I imagined dipping into that invisible well of power deep inside of me. I connected to it instantly, as if it had always been there, waiting for me with open arms.
I was aware of my own resistance even as I felt the pull toward something different. Toward shifting.
I pushed the resistance aside and imagined myself flying through the air, catching the wind. I surrendered myself to it, even though my heart filled with panic. My human form disappeared in my mind, and there was only the crow.
I gasped as my entire body shifted and changed. Wings extended from my body, and it was just as Mary Anne said. It was like folding into myself and becoming small, yet powerful. Me, but more primal.
I was immediately a bird in motion, flying through the air on instinct more than intention.
I flew through the trees and up into the sky above them, pushing myself higher.
I tried to speak, but the sound that came out of my mouth nearly set me into another panic. A loud caw echoed through the treetops, and I could hardly believe that had come from me. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to laugh or cry.
There were no words to explain the way it felt to soar into the sky on the power of my own onyx wings. It felt like freedom.
I had flown with Rend before when he’d taken on his demon form, but this was different. With demon shifting, it was almost like I disappeared or ceased to exist entirely, except as a mind or a soul.
As a crow, I felt connected to my senses in a way I hadn’t expected. The entire world came into focus, as if I were seeing it for the first time. I didn’t miss a single detail. Every needle of every pine tree was distinct. Every tiny movement down below caught my attention.
My hearing was amplified, and I could hear the animals of the forest where I hadn’t noticed any life before as a human woman.
I flew toward a high branch and carefully settled on it, needing to rest for a moment. Not from being fatigued, but from sensory overload. The sensation of my claws latching onto the bark of the wood was both foreign to me and somehow strangely familiar, as if I had done this a thousand times before.
Another crow settled next to me, and I stared at my cousin, hardly unable to believe that we were the same people who had just been standing together just a few minutes ago.
She cawed at me and took off again, flying high into the trees and disappearing into what looked like nothing more than air.
She’d gone back to the village.
Using nothing more than instinct, I flew off after her.
When I passed through the hidden barrier of the crow village, Mary Anne appeared. Human again, and waiting.
I started to panic at first, wondering how I was supposed to shift back. We hadn’t even talked about it, but all I had to do was think about wanting to do it, and my body seemed to unfold, shifting effortlessly from crow to woman.
I stumbled when my legs hit the ground, and Mary Anne reached out to steady me.
I laughed, feeling a bit light-headed. “That was incredible,” I said. “I can’t believe I really did it.”
“You did great,” she said. “See? I told you it was going to be easy. It’s incredible, isn’t it?”
“It’s so different,” I said, wishing I could find the words to describe how I had felt. It felt like me, but not me. “I had no idea it could be like that.”
“Well, now that you know you can do it and you understand how it feels, it will be so easy for you. You can shift anytime you want by just surrendering to it. Just imagine it, and it will come to you.”
“Thank you for teaching me,” I said. “I don’t know what I would do if I didn’t have you to talk to.”
Mary Anne shrugged. “I didn’t tell you anything you didn’t already know deep inside,” she said, her voice sad as she looked toward the entrance to the village. “But I’m glad we have each other. I love my new family of friends, but I still miss my crow family in some ways. Things weren’t always easy here, but I was close to my mother and cousins.”
I squeezed her arm. It had to be tough for Mary Anne. She’d been forced out of her home and away from the rest of her family so young. It must have been hard to leave her sheltered life full of family and women who were just like her in order to live in a group home for orphans and troubled girls.
She’d been sent as a spy to report back to the Mother Crow if and when Peachville’s Prima witch had been found, but she’d become friends with Harper when she’d come to the group home, and Mary Anne had stood by her new friend’s side when the Mother Crow had tried to murder her.
If it wasn’t for Mary Anne, Harper herself might be dead right now, and then what would have happened? The Order would be stronger than ever.
I shuddered at the thought. Mary Anne was so brave, and her courage gave me strength.
“Do you have time to help me with some of the other magic?” I asked.
“Yeah, let’s get back inside and work on some of the growing spells you wanted to try,” she said. “I only have half an hour, though. I have a lot to do in the next few days with the Emerald Gates, so I need to get back to the Shadow World soon. Besides, Essex will freak out if I’m late. He already hated the idea of me coming back here without him, but I wanted to be here with you alone for a little while.”
I smiled. Essex was her demon boyfriend. They’d met in the Shadow World and had been practically attached at the hip ever since. I was so grateful they had each other. Most of the time, when I saw them together, they were whispering quietly, as if telling each other all their secrets.
“Let’s get going, then,” I said. “I have to work tonight, anyway, and it will take me some time to get back to Chicago.”
We walked back into the crow village together, and Mary Anne helped me for a little while as we tried to grow various fruits and flowers. Hers came out exactly as intended, but all of mine came out black and wilted. Or rotten.
My heart sank. It was always like this. As if the darkness inside of me refused to give way to anyt
hing beautiful. When I cast, there was only death.
Was that because of my father? Or because of the crows?
Or was I simply destined for darkness?
Mary Anne squeezed my hand. “You’ll get it, Franki. Just keep trying,” she said.
“I will,” I said with a sigh. “Thanks for meeting me again.”
“See you again next week?” she asked standing to leave.
“Yep,” I said. I threw my arms around her neck and hugged her. “Say hi to everyone else for me, okay?”
“I will,” she said. She shifted and flew off toward the village entrance, disappearing through the barrier.
I walked back toward the altar but paused when a shadow near one of the houses caught my eye. I could have sworn I saw something move over there, but when I went to investigate, there was nothing.
No one.
I shrugged. Probably just my overactive imagination. No one else had been here in months.
I hurried down the stairs and through the doorway so that I could head back to Venom and start another night at work, but for the next few hours, it was hard to shake the feeling that someone out there was watching me.
An Urban Legend
Franki
Venom was slammed.
I’d barely made it back after my trip to the crow village in Georgia with Mary Anne before the crowds started pouring in. I changed into my black Venom Staff t-shirt, jeans, and my favorite pair of Doc Martens before I joined Azure behind the bar.
“Long day?” she asked as she poured a series of five shots for a group of guys standing a few feet away. “You look terrible.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Nothing like a compliment from my favorite fellow bartender to get the night rolling.”
“Calm down, I didn’t mean anything by it,” she said. “Just that maybe you’ve been working yourself too hard lately. Taking classes and working here at night has to be tough. Not to mention all the excitement with Harper lately.”
She wasn’t wrong. Venom didn’t close down until the early morning hours, and I usually had to be up for classes by eight or nine. Between that and wanting to spend some time with Rend after my shift, I wasn’t sleeping much.
Add in the constant war against the Order of Shadows and my obsession with learning more about the crows, and yeah, I was tired. But that wasn’t really anything new.
“I’m used to it,” I said. “Before I worked here, I worked at one of those all-night diners in the city. I’d get off around five in the morning sometimes, grab a couple hours of sleep and head to class for the day. And somewhere in there, I still had to find time to study and get my school work done.”
“That’s not healthy, you know,” she said, taking a couple twenties from a tall guy I recognized as a regular. “Everyone needs sleep. Well, unless you’re a vampire.”
She smiled at her little joke, and I just rolled my eyes.
“It’s the only way I could put myself through school, so it’s worth it,” I said.
“I don’t understand why you’re still going to school, anyway, if you just plan to work here after graduation,” she said, echoing something Rend had said to me about a hundred times. “It’s not like Rend is going to give you a raise for having a degree in communications or whatever.”
“Psychology,” I said.
It hadn’t taken me years of psych classes to figure Azure out, that’s for sure. She was still jealous of my relationship with Rend, and even though she’d agreed to be friendly with me and let me work behind what she claimed was her bar, she wasn’t exactly my BFF.
And I was just fine with that.
“Either way, I don’t get it,” she said.
“You wouldn’t,” I muttered.
“Excuse me?”
“Nothing.” I flashed a smile. “It doesn’t matter. I have this one last semester, and I’ll be done.”
I took a few steps toward the other end of the bar, hoping the busy night would mean I wouldn’t have to keep talking to her. Most nights, we got along pretty well, but she seemed to be particularly annoying tonight.
Or maybe I was just on edge.
I took a few orders and got into the rhythm of the place, pouring drinks and taking money, smiling and saying hello to people I recognized. Sizing up the people who were new.
There was no telling who might show up at Venom on any given night.
It was a neutral zone for all supernaturals. Vampires, werewolves, witches, demons. Friend or foe, everyone had to be on their best behavior while they were inside the walls of this club. If they broke the rules, started a fight, or dared to use their magic in any way, they had to answer to Rend, and that was something no one was willing to risk.
Not since the Devil, anyway.
He’d come here looking for me last year, and when he couldn’t get in, he’d killed our bouncer and blown up the Chicago entrance to the club. Rend had worked hard to rebuild it over the past few months.
It had taken a lot more than brick and mortar to repair the damage.
In total, there were six entrances to Venom, each one in a different city around the world.
Paris. New York. Havana. Berlin. Moscow. Chicago.
Magic like that wasn’t easy to recreate, and he’d had to call in a favor from that same fairy who created the Hall of Doorways. He’d had her place the enchantments back on the door in Chicago to get it working again.
Now that the door was fixed, though, we’d seen a steady flood of people coming through the door every night. The Devil was dead, and all was right in the world again.
Except that now I knew there were worse things than the Devil.
Between the Order of Shadows and the Brotherhood of Darkness, it was a miracle we were all still alive.
But when they were in Venom, everyone was happy. Or at least they were on their best behavior. I loved what Rend had built here. It was a place where people could come to be free, without fear of being hurt or hunted.
On the dance floor, the lights pulsed to the rhythm of the music and bodies moved together as if they were one.
At the bar, old friends met and hugged, catching up on old times and celebrating new memories or milestones in their lives.
The second floor was a neutral zone for meetings and deals to take place without the threat of violence.
The underworld needed a place like this, and Rend had given it to them, turning his back on his old life of bloodlust and greed to create something meaningful and beautiful.
Sometimes, when he talked about it lately, there was an edge of sadness in his voice. He didn’t have to tell me why, and I didn’t need to ask.
He was scared of what would happen when the Brotherhood summoned the eleven vampires who’d killed the Devil. They had broken the most sacred law of their Brotherhood. They had killed one of their own, and eventually, they would be called to answer for it.
It wouldn’t matter that the Devil had attacked first. The rules stated that all disagreements between vampires of the Brotherhood were to be brought to the Council, and a decision would be made by the five rulers.
But, of course, that was bullshit since the Devil was one of those five rulers.
No one on the Council had held him accountable for openly attacking Venom and killing one of Rend’s employees and friends.
From what Rend had told me, no one on the Council had ever been brave enough to stand up to the Devil, which meant that he could get away with whatever he wanted.
And things had only gotten worse after my father, Solomon, was imprisoned in a stone by the Mother Crow just before I was born.
Solomon and the Devil had been true brothers. They had come to the human world looking to conquer and become even more powerful, and they had achieved that goal by embracing dark magic. They had been the original vampires. The first to drink the blood of witches and use it to fuel their power here in the human world.
But from what Rend had told me over so many late nights, my father had kept the Devil under con
trol. Once he was gone, though, the Devil had basically had full control over the Council, which meant he had controlled the entire Brotherhood of Darkness.
There were surely a lot of vampires who were very upset when Rend and his friends killed their ruler. The death of the Devil took the Brotherhood’s Council down to just three since my father was gone now, too. There was no way the Council was happy about that.
But what were they going to do to him for it?
I couldn’t imagine they would execute eleven of their strongest members. Especially not when one of those was Solomon’s own son, my half-brother Silas.
The Council would surely punish them, but death couldn’t be their plan.
At least, those were the things I told myself on sleepless nights when I was too afraid to close my eyes. Too terrified that I would wake up and find Rend gone forever, taken from me for saving my life.
I searched for Rend in the crowd and found him talking to a man I’d never seen before. They stood near the railing on the second floor, looking out over the dancers. The man was tall and muscular. His dark, wavy blond hair was long enough to brush the tops of his shoulders, and his bright yellow-brown eyes were almost glowing, even from this distance. Unlike Rend in his nice black suit, this man wore faded jeans with holes in them and a worn t-shirt that had seen better days.
He looked young, but that was an impossible thing to judge in a place like this. A person could look twenty and be two-hundred.
“Blue Frost, please,” someone asked, and I reluctantly looked away from the two men on the balcony.
I barely looked up as I poured the bright blue shot into the glass. To everyone else, I knew it looked no different than water, but to me and everyone who worked here at the club, it was a deep blue color.
Unlike most bars that served liquor combinations from dozens of bottles, Venom had just five drinks.