by Annie Bellet
She shook her head and looked away from me, her face quickly lost in the slam and flurry of winged bodies.
I couldn’t hold the shield forever. They wouldn’t be able to kill me, but I had no idea what happened to a sorceress who is torn apart. How long would it take to regenerate? Years? What would that pain feel like? Would I be conscious?
Em’s wolf body slammed into my shield again and this time I felt the reverberation right down into my bones. I was going to lose it soon, there was too much physical force being thrown against me.
The deep coughing roar of a lion echoed through the camp and suddenly the crows all came to earth, changing as they touched down back into their human forms. Em hit my shield one last time and rebounded, turning even as she twisted in the air back to a teenage girl.
A huge white tiger leapt between Em and I. Alek. I dropped my shield and called out his name.
He shifted to human and looked around, taking in the two mutilated corpses and the cluster of angry shifters. Carlos, still in his lion form, prowled through the People, cutting a line between them and where Alek and I stood.
“What happened here?” Alek said. His voice was deceptively soft, but carried some of the tiger’s growl still in it, a dangerous tone.
“She broke the wards,” Pearl said, pointing at me. “She allowed the evil in.”
“That’s not the whole story,” I protested. “Sky Heart has been killing the fledglings who don’t turn into crow. He murdered dozens of them. I have seen their bones. He admitted as much to me, to all of us, before Not Afraid killed him.”
Alek turned and looked at me, disbelief and a deep sadness in his eyes.
“You let him in?”
“Yes,” I said. I spread my hands, half reaching for Alek as I stared up at him, begging him to believe my good intentions. “We made a deal. He could get his justice, then he would rest and the People would be left in peace. He gave me his oath.”
“He broke an oath?” Alek looked like he wanted to understand, but he stayed where he was, and I dropped my hands.
“He had a prior oath.” I couldn’t share my suspicions about Samir’s involvement, not here in front of everyone. “He betrayed me and killed Jasper.”
“You stupid girl,” Pearl said. She rose to her feet after gently setting Jasper’s head on the ground. “Not Afraid is an evil spirit. That is no boy. I saw him die more than a century ago. Whatever that is, it cannot be him.”
“You heard Sky Heart,” I said. “You heard him. He killed those children. Why do you think Shishishiel has abandoned you? Why did the great Crow not stop this?”
I knew it was unfair to invoke their missing guardian, but I had been trying to help them. They couldn’t see that. They could only see the dead bodies. They hadn’t seen the bones. Hadn’t seen how many more deaths I was trying to prevent.
Gasps and questions from the crowd turned quickly to angry murmurs and Carlos roared again, quieting them. I stood up, every muscle protesting and my head pounding like it was going to explode.
“Go,” Pearl screeched at me. “Go from here, killer. We will take care of our own, as we always have.”
Alek reached for me then, his hand closing on my upper arm as he stepped in close. “Get in the truck,” he murmured. “I will get you out of here in one piece if I can.”
I looked past him, forcing myself to see Jasper’s body. For fourteen years he had been my father. For more than thirty after that, he had been as good as dead to me. Then I had learned he wasn’t even my birth father.
But he had come to me for help. Not Alek, not the Council of Nine. Me. He’d been so desperate, but also trusting that somehow I could come here and make things better.
I had failed him. I had seen only what I wanted to see, believed what I wanted to believe. He had paid the price for it. He was the one walking along the road to hell my good intentions had paved.
“No,” I said, blinking away tears. I had no right to grieve for this man. But I did have the duty to set things right, to fulfill the promise I’d made him by coming here. Samir was somehow at the root of this, I could feel it. My guess was he had raised Not Afraid from the dead, reuniting him with Blood Mother and setting them loose on my family.
“No,” I repeated, pulling my arm out of Alek’s grip. “I am going to kill Not Afraid and lay Buttercup’s spirit to rest once and for all. No one else dies.”
“You do not have that right,” Pearl said.
“I have every right. Jasper begged me to come and I promised I would help. I am going to end this. I will not break my word.” I started walking, glaring at the crowd, daring them to get in my way.
“Wait,” Alek said, coming up beside me. “We will come with you.”
“What if he comes back here?” I said. “Who will protect them?”
I didn’t think Not Afraid would come here. I was pretty damn sure where he had flown off to. But Alek couldn’t come with me. This was my fight and I didn’t know if I could protect him, too. Or even if I could win. I didn’t want to worry about him.
And there really was a small chance that Not Afraid would double back, counting on me to try to follow him and instead coming to finish killing the People.
“Carlos,” Alek said. “He’ll stay.”
“Because he was so effective against this guy before?” I hated the mean whine in my voice, but I had to convince Alek to stay out of my way.
Carlos snarled at me.
“Fuck you,” Alek said. I was pushing him away, as obviously as the physical distance opening between us. I wanted his anger. I needed him to stay here. Stay safe, away from me.
“Please,” I whispered, turning to Alek. “Please protect them. Don’t let anyone else die.”
It was underhanded and totally manipulative and I felt terrible pulling the trick, but it worked. There was enough truth in my pleading, in my grief, that he fell for it. That or he gave up on me. I didn’t want to know.
“Fine.” The finality in his tone was like charging into a wall.
“Wolf,” I called and this time she appeared. She seemed to recognize what I wanted and bent low so I could drag myself up onto her back. There was no way in nine hells I was getting back to the cave without help. My body was exhausted, my magic a weak throb inside of me. I hoped I could find a second wind somewhere on the run there.
Wolf and I plunged through the crowd and no one made a move to stop us. Soon the cool forest canopy closed over us. I clung to Wolf’s fur and tried to think about how in the power of the Universe I was going to kill a man who was already dead.
The rocks in the ravine looked like poorly cut gravestones jabbing through the inconsistent moss and grass clinging perilously to their edges. The cliff loomed, the tears streaking its face glinting in the sunlight. It cast a shadow over its base, as though deliberately hiding the pit of bones there.
Wolf stopped at the treeline again and I slid off her back. My legs felt like rubberbands and my head still ached, but I was more rested than I would have been if I’d run here under my own power. I was grateful that Wolf was with me.
Back to normal, she and I against Samir. Or in this case, one of Samir’s stupid plots.
Not that stupid, a treacherous voice inside me whined, you fell for it. This is what you get for not running when you had the chance.
“It ain’t over yet,” I said aloud.
Wolf and I picked our way across the ravine to the cave. I had hoped that Not Afraid would be outside, though fighting him in the open would give him the advantage of flight. Wolf had managed to rebuff him when he was in his crow form. Carlos had said that he didn’t think the boy was a shifter. I figured that he had lost that power when he died and was brought back. The diabolical crow form was probably Blood Mother giving him her power, which meant that in that form, Wolf could hurt him.
Rustling in the rear of the cave caught my attention. I crept around the pit and stopped at the entrance. I didn’t want to go back into the dark, back beneath tons
of earth and stone. I summoned my magic, debating just spamming bolts of pure power throughout the damn cave to see if I could flush Not Afraid out.
Great. My plan was apparently to Magic Missile the darkness. There had to be a better way.
“Not Afraid,” I called out. “Come face me, you bastard.”
Silence. Then rustling and hissing. With my luck the cave was full of snakes or something. The hissing reminded me of the noise a crow makes when angry, however. Not a sibilant sound so much as air being forced out of a small throat.
I pooled power in my hands, willing it into a bright purple goo that phosphoresced. Then I flung the goo into the cave, throwing my hands wide so that it splattered across as wide an area as I could manage. The light goo painted the stalactites and the cave floor, revealing a wide cavern with a ceiling that would have forced Alek to duck along the outer edge but opened up toward the back. The glow illuminated enough that I could make out shapes. There was something at the back of the cave, a shape that clearly wasn’t a stalactite or stalagmite.
With a deep breath and more power at the ready, I moved into the cave. I crept toward the rustling and movement from the shape at the back. As I neared, I formed another ball of light goo and spattered the stalactites above me with it.
The shape resolved itself into a cage of human bones. Inside the cage was a giant crow that looked like something out of a Resident Evil movie. Its feathers were caked with ichor and dried blood, with large patches sloughed off and other hanging by threads of flesh. Its mouth was open, making that horrid hissing noise I’d heard before. The crow looked at me as Wolf started growling again.
Its eyes were exactly like Wolf’s eyes. Full black with pinpricks of light like a backcountry sky on a moonless night.
Undying. The ancient guardians of the beings who became the human’s gods.
Shishishiel.
He hadn’t abandoned the People. He was trapped. Tortured and somehow decaying.
Wolf’s fur isn’t perfectly black anymore. Down her belly is a thick line of white scar tissue. A parting gift from Samir. We had barely made it away from him alive. He was the only person I knew who could hurt an Undying.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Not Afraid slunk out from behind a stalagmite at the back of the cave. “Samir was very helpful. Now you see why I had to honor my oath to him? He promised me vengeance. He stopped Shishishiel.”
Shishishiel shrieked and tried to open his wings, but the bone cage prevented it.
I unleashed my magic, slamming pure force into the cage, not daring to speak first lest I warn Not Afraid of my intentions. Nothing happened. It was as though the cage ate my magic. I grabbed it with my hands and was rebuffed by a shield of power that hovered just above the bones. The force of it threw me back and I slammed into a stalagmite. Crystalline rocks crashed about me and stung my face and arms as they fell.
This cave was fragile. Good to remember. I didn’t fancy getting impaled.
“That will not work,” Not Afraid said.
“What will?” I asked. I didn’t expect him to answer, it was more to buy time for Wolf to circle around behind me and come up on his flank.
Not Afraid just laughed; his face again a death mask in the purple light of my spell. Blue fire danced in his eyes and limned his body. I prayed that meant the spirit was in him, which would mean Wolf could help. He drew a large knife from a sheath at his waist. I wondered if it had always been there but hidden by illusions, or if he had come back here to weapon up. I thought of Gibb’s rule nine from NCIS. Always carry a knife.
Another thing I was going to change if I made it out of this situation.
“Where is Samir?” I slowly got to my feet, careful to make no move that might provoke an attack.
Not Afraid shrugged. “Not here. He said if you could not handle us, you would not be worth his time. He was not even sure you would come. But I was. I know the Crow. Blood calls to blood. No one leaves Sky Heart’s Tribe alive.”
Wolf sprang at Not Afraid and he twisted, slashing with the knife. The blade glowed with red fire, power I recognized.
“Wolf, no!” I yelled. Samir had enchanted that knife. It was too late. The blade cut into Wolf’s shoulder and she howled, iridescent blood spurting from her wound. I threw a bolt of magic at Not Afraid. It was easily deflected by a burst of blue energy and fizzled before doing more than distracting him momentarily.
A moment was enough for Wolf to get away. She was the size of a pony and her ability to maneuver inside the cave was limited by the crystalline growths. She limped backward, snarling.
“You can’t kill me,” I said, taunting Not Afraid, trying to make him focus only on me. “Did Samir tell you that? He’s setting you up. Fucking with you. This is all just one of his stupid games, a way to hurt me.”
“There are worse fates than death,” Not Afraid replied, turning to me. He wiped the blade on his leathers and grinned. “Just ask Shishishiel.”
Shishishiel. Not Afraid was between me and the cage, but I could see the crow’s pained eyes beyond us. As I watched, a droplet of milky water fell from an overhead stalactite and splashed onto the cage, running down the yellowed bones.
Shishishiel, my mind repeated. The crow spirit had stopped Not Afraid and Blood Mother a century before. He was dangerous enough that Samir had neutralized him before resurrecting Not Afraid. Free the crow, save the People.
It didn’t have quite the same ring as “save the cheerleader, save the world,” but I would work with the ideas I had.
The water got through. The crystals were fragile, but I was willing to bet a whole stalactite would be pretty heavy. Heavy enough to break bones?
“Is the cage made from your sister?” I asked, buying time as I gathered my magic again. I couldn’t use gestures. Nothing could give away what I was planning or Not Afraid would attack. I had to keep him talking. In the end, he was just a kid. A totally crazy kid with the insane rage spirit echo of his dead twin sister living inside him. Still, he had talked to Carlos. He seemed to want someone to listen.
“Yes,” he said, his eyes narrowing. “Why?”
“After you cut me up or whatever, are you going to kill the rest of the People?” I formed my magic into a razor-thin disk over my head, not daring to look up and check my work. I hoped Blood Mother couldn’t see my magic. Not Afraid wasn’t reacting so far, and as they say, so far, so good.
“I will wipe out the bloodlines.” His lips curled back from his teeth.
“Even my sister? She isn’t crow. She’s just a kid, just like Buttercup.”
“No,” he said. “She isn’t. She’s of your blood, of Sky Heart’s blood. They all must die. They all must suffer.” He took a step toward me, brandishing the blade. “You will suffer first.”
“You weren’t going to keep your oath to me even if you hadn’t cut a deal with Samir, were you?” I asked.
I didn’t give him time to answer. I already knew what he would say. Envisioning the invisible weapon like Xena’s chakram, I threw the magic disk at the stalactite above the cage.
The magic chakram sheered through the crystal. The stalactite crashed down, smashing into the bones.
Not Afraid screamed and attacked as the cage shattered. Bone and crystal fragments flew everywhere, pieces embedding themselves in my body with searing force. I threw myself sideways, my hands up to protect my face. Not Afraid came down on top of me and I grabbed at his arms, struggling to keep the knife away from my body. He straddled me, his superior strength winning out as the knife blade dug into my chest. Blue fire rippled around his arms and joined the red fire burning a hole into my breastbone.
The screaming was all me. I tried to fight the panic, fight the feeling that I was about to die. It is hard to remember you are immortal when your heart is slowly being burned out of your chest.
I wasn’t even sure that Samir’s knife couldn’t kill me. I really didn’t want to find out I’d been wrong all these years about how to kill a sorceress.
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nbsp; Wolf’s jaws closed on Not Afraid’s shoulder as she sprang at him and tried to drag him off me, her head whipping back and forth. I tried to gather power, to blast him off my chest, but the pain was too much. Red spots danced in my vision like blood spatter and cold darkness closed in, fogging my mind.
Then a woman appeared over Not Afraid. She was Native, her skin perfectly red-brown and smooth, her face ageless, young and ancient somehow all at once. Her eyes met mine and all I saw were stars as she reached for his head with strong, graceful hands.
She broke his neck.
Blue energy swirled up from him but the woman shook her head and opened her mouth. Blood Mother’s power swirled in the air, seeming to resist for a moment like a child who doesn’t want to go to bed yet. Then it flowed into her mouth and was gone.
She pulled Not Afraid off me and the knife clattered to the ground.
“Shishishiel,” I whispered. I’d always thought of the Crow as a man. Sky Heart had always called the spirit “he.” I guess we see what we want to see.
The woman turned away from me and touched Wolf’s injured shoulder. The leak of iridescent blood stopped and the wound closed.
I realized then that Shishishiel wasn’t Undying. She was one of the beings the Undying guarded.
She stared into Wolf’s eyes for a long moment as though they were holding an intimate conversation. For all I knew, they were. Then she shifted to a crow shape and flew out of the cave, leaving only the faint murmur of wings behind her.
I used Wolf’s leg to pull myself up and forced myself to look down at my chest. The bleeding had stopped but there was a ragged wound with charred edges, and it smelled like bacon.
“You got some ‘splaining to do,” I muttered at Wolf. Which was pointless. Wolf wouldn’t tell me anything even if she could. I had a lot of sudden suspicions about how she came to protect me, however, all of which led to a lot more questions.
Questions I could ponder when I wasn’t two breaths away from passing the fuck out. I picked up the magic knife. Instinct told me to destroy it, but logic told me to bring it with me. I couldn’t leave it. The blade was too dangerous. Not Afraid had a sheath belted to his waist with a leather cord. I pulled it free of his corpse and slung it over my shoulder after putting away the blade.