Thicker Than Blood

by Annie Bellet

  “We have a plan, then,” Alek said, suppressing his annoyance. He hoped they would all live long enough he that could get in on the joke. Someday.

  “Yep. We keep the unicorns safe and wait for Jade,” Levi said.

  “And hope she brings all seven Dragon Balls with her,” Harper added softly.

  Alek rose and left the camp, shifting to tiger and moving silently into the dark woods. The druid followed him.

  “I’m sorry,” he told Alek as they stood, giant and tiger, side by side. “I wasn’t sure how you’d react.”

  Alek shifted to human so he could speak. “I knew,” he said. “I smelled her on you.”

  “You still said nothing?”

  “If you did not tell me, I assumed you had reason, and I guessed that reason was Jade being stubborn.”

  “She is that.” Yosemite chuckled, the sound like dry leaves rustling in an autumn wind. “She told me that you would find out and to give you a message.”

  Alek stayed silent, watching the druid’s face in the starlight.

  “She said to tell you she loves you, and to trust her.”

  Shifting back to tiger, Alek padded away, deeper into the woods.

  Be safe, love, he silently told the stars. Come back to us, and we will fight, side by side.

  The journey through whatever crazy magic shortcut we were taking went by without event. I felt us hit the logging road, the tires making noise again and the RV shaking as it jounced along.

  The air was freezing cold as we emerged into a quiet, snow-covered copse of trees. After checking to make sure the magic dagger was securely tied by its sheath to my waist, I zipped up my hoodie over it. I wished I had thought to ask Noah for a proper winter coat. At least I couldn’t actually freeze to death.

  Alma and Cora jumped out of the RV in their jaguar form, answering my earlier speculation about how they would shift. Single jaguar. I wondered how that worked, mentally. Did they share a brain when shifted? Questions for another time, if we made it through this alive and I ever saw them again. Sobering thought. I was so good at those. I’d never seen a jaguar outside of a zoo. The twin’s form was spotted, not the black kind, and their shoulder came up to my waist. They bounded off into the snow, looking back at us like an expectant puppy.

  “We call them Ladies in this form,” Jaq said, walking up beside me. He looked exhausted, sweat matting his hair to his forehead, and his olive skin had a pale cast to it.

  “Good to know,” I said. “You okay?”

  “It was a long drive,” he said. “I’ll be fine.”

  “Let’s cast the spell here so we don’t have to drag this box up to the prison,” Kira said. She’d pulled on her leather jacket, but was standing with it open as she finished strapping on her arsenal. I counted three handguns and at least five knives.

  “I’ll go on ahead,” Salazar said. “Make sure I’m in position when you get there.”

  “How will you get in?” I asked.

  “I called in a favor,” he said. “There’s a car waiting for me down the road. I have clearance to enter Custer. It won’t be a problem. Good luck. See you soon.”

  Salazar walked out from under the trees and shifted into a huge golden eagle. With powerful flaps of his wings, he took off into the clear, cold air and flew away. Remembering how awesome flying had been, I envied the hell out of him. Life had been so much easier with real magic involved. It was like that song. You don’t know what you have until it’s gone.

  “Spell?” Kira said, looking at me.

  I turned and went to get my box.

  “I’m going to do this on myself first,” I explained as I got out the ingredients and spread them on a tarp that Jaq had found for me from the RV. “I don’t know exactly how it is going to work.”

  “How will we know if it has worked?” Kira asked.

  I held up a small velvet bag. “I’ll be able to see this.”

  “It’s a bag.” She looked skeptical.

  “With an invisible ring in it,” I said, grinning. Thank you, Archivist. He really was the guy who had everything. “I got us covered.”

  Cora and Alma, or, I guess, Ladies, bounded back over to us and sat in the snow, watching me closely with green-gold eyes.

  I unrolled the scroll and set it where I could read it. Then I took a quart bowl and carefully measured out pinches of poppy seed, dried sword fern, a ball of spidersilk, and three woolen fibers from a black ram. Finally I added a drop of camphor oil. Murmuring the words of the spell, I picked up a pestle made of amber and started grinding the ingredients together.

  “My friends of the shadows,” I invoked. “Of mist and of moonlight, you who are seldom seen. Be with me now.” Keeping up the litany, I divided the paste into two portion and carefully painted over my closed eyelids. I finished the last words of the spell and opened my eyes.

  “Houston,” I said. “I think we have a problem.”

  Where there should have been trees and snow and an RV, there was nothing. Just pale, almost grayish light.

  “What do you see?” Kira said from somewhere beside me.

  “Nothing,” I said. “Like, actually nothing.”

  “What about this?” she asked, her voice very close now.

  I turned my head toward it and saw a glowing ring floating in the air.

  “Okay, I see the ring. I just can’t see anything else. At all.” Magic. It is not for beginners.

  I heard Jaq laugh and then it cut off. I could imagine Kira glaring at him. The ring disappeared and I assumed she’d put it back in the bag.

  “So we’ll be able to see the fence at least. And maybe these magical mines.” I could almost hear her thoughts grinding away, her tactical brain looking for ways to make this an advantage.

  “Who is this we, white woman?” I muttered, my own thoughts spinning around. “I can’t cast the spell on anyone else. I didn’t exactly memorize it, and these things aren’t kind to imprecise casting. At best nothing would happen.”

  “Klaatu verata necktie?” Kira said with a snort. I was glad she was amused at least.

  “Yeah, kind of like that.” Fuck my life. I stared around at the nothingness. “I might be able to get into the RV and dispel it. It says it only works under the open sky.”

  “No,” Kira said. “This is fine. I can make this work. We don’t want us blind anyway, or we won’t be able to see the entrance, or any threats coming at us. You’ll just have to guide us in, tell us where the fence is.”

  She was right beside me. I felt the warmth coming off her body. It was amazing how much I noticed now that my sight was missing. I just had to channel my inner Daredevil. No problem.

  “Okay,” I said, carefully rising to my feet. There wasn’t much choice. We had to go with what we had. “Um, how do I walk through the woods to the minefield? I can’t see the trees. Or the ground.”

  A fuzzy head bumped against my palm and the tarp crackled as Ladies stepped up beside me.

  “No worries,” Kira said, taking my hand in her own. Her skin was calloused and warm, her hand dwarfing mine. “We’ve got you.”

  I don’t know how long we walked through the woods. I could smell the snow, hear it crunching under my hiking boots. Felt the wet and cold soaking into my socks. Visually, though? My world was a grey-tinged white screen. I walked with one hand clutching Kira’s arm and the other resting on the jaguar-twin’s head. It was like one of those trust exercises you have to do in school, only a lot scarier.

  Three parallel, silvery lines appeared ahead of me. I was so excited to see something that it took a second for my brain to catch up.

  “Stop,” I said, tugging on Kira’s arm. “I see the fence.”

  “We’re not out of the woods yet, though I think I see the field ahead. How far is it?” Kira halted beside me, her voice coming from above my right shoulder.

  “I’m not sure. I can’t see the ground. This is really disorienting,” I said.

  I squinted, as though somehow that would help. The
fence was three silver wire-looking lines. There were faint shadowed posts at intervals of about six feet, if my eyes weren’t lying to me.

  “There are three wire-like lines,” I continued. “One at my knees, one at just above my waist, one probably about eye level with Kira.”

  “Everyone get in a line just behind Jade,” Kira said. “I’ll walk slightly behind you as well, keep you from hitting a tree. It’s clear directly in front of you, so try to walk straight. Stop before you hit the fence, obviously.”

  “Obviously,” I muttered.

  Kira moved behind me, her hand gripping my elbow, her body a warm comfort at my back. I remembered what she’d said in the RV about having each other’s backs, but also trusting each other that we could do what we needed to do. They were strangers to me and I to them, but here we were. Risking. Trusting.

  I guess I had taken that detour into Life-lesson-ville.

  Agonizingly slowly, we made our way toward the invisible fence. Up close the wires were thick ropes of energy hanging in the air that hummed audibly and glowed bright enough to put dots in my vision. I wished for my magic, wondering what kind of spell this was and how it had been done. Even without being able to touch it magically, I could see Samir’s handiwork in this. He loved crafting shit. I shuddered and came to a stop with the fence about a foot away.

  “It’s about a foot away from me,” I said. “I could touch it, but I really don’t want to.”

  “We’re at the edge of the trees,” Kira said for my benefit. “There’s a big open field that rises up to a hill in the middle. Can’t really see from here, but I think the helipad is on that. Do you see anything else?”

  “No, the fence is glowing pretty brightly. If there are mines, they might be under snow, or ground. I can’t see the ring when it is in the bag, for example.” I realized I probably should have thought of this before. “I can hear it though, can you? The fence is humming. Like bees.”

  “No,” Kira said.

  “I can’t hear it either,” Jaq said. He had come up beside me. “Jade, I want you to crouch down so you are eye level with the bottom strand. Put your hand out so that it is within in an inch or so. Hold there and I’ll see what I can do. Don’t touch it.”

  “Don’t have to tell me twice,” I said. I did as he instructed, crouching down and holding out my hand.

  I heard Jaq crunching forward in the snow and then the hum intensified for a moment before the strand snapped and disappeared.

  “I think that worked,” I said.

  “It did. We can see it now. It’s just broken wire on the ground,” Kira said.

  “Stand up and do the same with the middle,” Jaq said.

  We repeated this for the middle and top strands. The grey world I was in grew darker again as the fence died. I peered into what I thought was ahead of me and picked up very faint traces of light in a direction that might have been down. As I said. Disorienting as fuck.

  “Nothing is coming to kill us and I don’t hear any alarms, so we’re probably good,” Kira said.

  “I think I see the mines or traps or whatever they are. And I think I’ll hear them as we get near. We’re going to have to do this really slowly.” I took a deep breath.

  “We can’t be too slow,” Kira said. “Not to rush you or anything, but the sun is setting. It’s going to get dark and your spell will break, yes?”

  “FML,” I muttered.

  “Do you see another fence?” Jaq asked.

  “No,” I said. “I think if there was one, given how far off I saw this one from, I’d see it. How far is the crest of the hill from us now?”

  “Three hundred feet? Like a football pitch.”

  “We call it soccer and fields in ’Murica,” I said.

  “You call it wrong,” Kira said. “If there are no more fences, Jaq, you should go to the RV. We’ll need you more there than here.”

  “All right,” he said, reluctance obvious in his voice. “Good luck, Jade.”

  “You too,” I said. “And thank you.”

  I listened to him crunch away through the snow. After a moment Kira spoke again.

  “Okay, like before. We line up. Ladies, step only where Jade steps. Fortunately, with this snow, we’ll be able to see that pretty clearly.”

  “Time’s up,” I said as much to myself as to them. “Let’s do this.”

  “At least we had chicken,” Kira murmured behind me, making me smile.

  I might blow us all up or even worse by missing a mine, but at least I’d die among nerds. It was something. I took the first step forward through where the fence had been.

  “Am I facing toward the top of the hill?” I asked.

  “You are good to go,” Kira said. I felt cold air on my ears as my hood was pulled down, and then tug on my braid. I realized it was her hand. “Is this okay? You don’t have a belt I can grab.”

  “Yeah, just don’t yank.” I could deal with cold ears. My hair was loosely braided, so it covered the tips at least. I wondered what Alek would think of the situation. Me, walking blindly through a minefield with his sister holding my hair like a leash, and a giant jaguar following in my footsteps. I hoped he was safe, but I couldn’t think about him now. No distractions.

  Whatever magic was in the mines was strong enough that I could see it with my spelled eyes. It glowed and hummed like the fence.

  “Okay, there’s sort of a grid pattern, but it’s hard to make out since I can only see the ones near me,” I said. “The circles are about six to eight inches across and some of these are only a few feet apart, so I’ll try to step right between. Don’t weave behind me. This could get really hairy.”

  At least I could see my own feet. That would have made shit really exciting. I had no idea why I could see myself when I wasn’t invisible, but that’s the thing with magic. It makes its own rules.

  Step by step, heel to toe, I walked across the field. The mines hummed in warning as we moved around them, their silvery glow muffled, like LEDs stuffed in a pillowcase. Sweat beaded on my forehead and ran down my spine from the tension only to freeze in the winter air. The mines seemed to stretch into forever, new ones appearing ahead no matter how many I walked past.

  “Adjust left if you can,” Kira said. Her own tension radiated enough to feel, tangible heat prickling the back of my neck.

  “There’s a big cluster that way, but I think I can get through them.”

  I shifted to the left. Another few steps and it felt like we were definitely traveling uphill. My thighs burned and the snow had gotten deeper, making the lights dimmer and soaking my jeans to the knees.

  “Not too much further,” Kira said soothingly. “Relax. We’re doing great.”

  She really shouldn’t have said that.

  My foot caught something beneath the snow and I stumbled forward. Kira jerked on my braid, pulling me back but it was too late. I overbalanced and did a full sideways sprawl into deep, icy snow.

  Right onto a humming, glowing mine.

  It didn’t explode. The light extinguished with a hiss.

  “I just fell on one,” I said, trying not to panic as I climbed to my feet. “What’s happening?” Obviously I hadn’t exploded.

  “Nothing,” Kira said, her voice tight with worry.

  The jaguar snarled.

  “Strike that,” Kira said. I heard a scraping noise and then the crack of a gun going off.

  “What do I do?” I said. My voice came out in a shriek and I made myself take a deep breath. I couldn’t see shit except for the other mines around us.

  “Come back toward my voice,” Kira said.

  I walked the couple steps back until she put a hand on my shoulder.

  “What is it? What did you shoot?” There. My voice was way less panicked. Kinda.

  Ladies snarled again, very close to me now.

  “Zombies, I think.” Kira’s gun went off again, two shots this time, in quick succession. My ears started ringing. “Climbing out of the ground. We need to go. Fast.”<
br />
  “Which way?” I said. All I saw was mines, but from the glow, I thought I could tell which way was uphill. Not well enough to trust it.

  Kira grabbed my arm and turned me in what I guessed was the right direction. “Fast zombies, seriously. Go.”

  I went far more quickly than I was comfortable with, but fighting undead wasn’t an option for me. I tried to navigate the remaining mines without stepping into any lighted circles, praying to the Universe that my friends could keep up and follow my path. Gunfire rang out just behind me, shot after shot. An animal screamed, though more in anger than pain.

  Gasping for air, my thighs burning, I passed through the last ring of lights and felt the ground flatten out.

  “Clear ahead of me,” I called back.

  Something slammed into my side, knocking me over. I curled instinctively and kicked out, my boots connecting with something hard that shrieked on impact. Gunfire, this time sounding like it came from ahead of me, cut through the air.

  Hands grabbed my shoulders, and before I could react, I was being dragged across the snow and then pulled upright. Icy crystals caught in my hoodie and slid down the back of my neck. I tried to punch upward.

  “Jade.” Salazar’s voice came from above me. “It’s me, come on.”

  “I can’t see,” I said. “Get me inside.” I hoped that would break the spell.

  Salazar picked me up as though I weighed nothing and carried me for a few terrifying strides. Then he set me down, pushing me to my knees.

  “Just in front of you is the opening. There’s a ladder on the left.”

  I flailed out with my hands as I heard him clear a gun and start shooting again. My fingers met a metal rim and I scrabbled around until felt the first rung. Closing my eyes, I crawled into the hole and started climbing down.

  When I opened my eyes, I could see.

  The hatch opened into a small room with copper walls. There was a single closed door at one end that looked like something I’d seen in submarine movies, with a big lever handle. I moved quickly out of the way of the ladder as Kira came sliding down like a total badass, her feet on the sides instead of the rungs.