by Lisa Ladew
Theresa had pulled off a decent, if short, support spell, aiming small, concentrating on only one element, the blue lightning of the Belief switch. Smart.
Antimony watched the storm for a few moments, as if waiting for more, until Theresa shuffled her feet and prepared to send out another spell. But Antimony had seen enough. She nodded at the switches on stage and the magic stopped, the lightning winking out of existence, the river retreating, the tear in the meadow repaired magically as it went, and the wind dropping to the ground with a whoosh.
Antimony did not watch it. “Theresa of the Forest. I need strength from you. Passion in your spells. Work on it day and night until I am satisfied.”
Theresa nodded, wide eyed. Antimony motioned to Polly, who rushed over, quill poised over the Keeper’s book. “Anna first,” Polly said, bending to a blank page. Antimony stopped her. “No. Theresa first.”
Polly’s forehead creased and she stared hard at Antimony.
“Record my decree,” Antimony ordered.
Polly shook her head once, just a tiny shake, but Anna saw it. Polly spoke as she wrote. “Theresa of the Forest. Bond element, as of this date.” She held her hand over the paper for a moment, as if expecting the book to do something, then looked at Antimony again, looked at Anna, and wrote Anna’s name.
Antimony and Polly both seemed to hold their breath, before Polly shrugged and said, “Fate accepts it.”
A bear burst out of the forest, running for them, something in its mouth. Not one switch acted like it was a big deal. Apparently bears regularly stormed the place. Anna did her best to do the same, but this bear was again coming straight for her. Big, brown, muscles rolling, mouth snarling around what Anna realized was a vampire head. She pulled herself strong, determined not to ask like the freshest member of the cosh, which she was. Five more bears could charge her with vampire parts. She would stand firm.
The bear stopped in front of her, its face staring directly into hers, a growl building in its throat. He spit the vampire head on the ground, unleashing a growl that almost stopped Anna’s heart. More bears came up from behind the bear in front of her, rushing into the circle, snuffling in anger, grabbing the bear in front of her by his throat and ears and forcing him around in a half circle, back into the forest.
Anna wanted to watch them go, but the vampire head was right there and she had no idea what to do except kill it. Kill it somehow, how she didn’t yet know but she would figure it out. She grabbed in her skirts for a knife, could not find it in her haze of rage, as switches around her all shot to their feet to converge on the head. Theresa ran for it. Anna followed.
The night glowed pink and the vampire head crumbled into dust, the rage loosing from all of them collectively. Anna shook herself, feeling it fall away, wondering at how strong it was!
Antimony stared after the place where the bears had disappeared into the forest, her eyes narrowed. She turned to Anna. “Who was that bear to you?”
Anna shook her head. “I know him not.”
Antimony stuck her face in Anna’s face. “Do not lie to the cosh-switch. You will regret it.”
Anna shook her head, eyes wide. She’d never been accused of lying before. “I know that bear not, have never seen him afore this day.”
Antimony did not move. Anna held her breath. Theresa stood rigidly to the side of them, and all the switches watched without saying a word.
Antimony finally spoke, her body rigid. “The cosh has three rules.” She held up one finger, staring Anna down. “One. Only weak switches prefer one male.” She held up another finger. “Preferring only one male makes switches weak.” Last finger up. “The cosh abhors the weak.”
Anna felt her mouth drop open. She couldn’t help it. So little of cosh life was available to those on the outside, and this made no sense to Anna. Switches and shifters mated in Five Hills and anywhere else. She’d heard that cosh-switches were wild, sometimes running with more than one male at a Prowl, but she’d never imagined it was demanded of them. She would not put something like that past a Blood switch, though. But why should one female have that kind of power over the lives of others? Anna mostly knew what the Prowl consisted of, but like all other bits of cosh life, rumors ran wild and she couldn’t be certain what was real or not. She knew after all the vampires were dead, the switches had problems not seeing everyone and everything as one more vampire waiting to be slain. The job of the shifter at that point, was to contain her, to work off her energy in whatever way he had to, until she was no longer a danger. Run with her, fight her, or fuck her. Those were the three options the shifters used and Anna bet she knew which was the most fun. Which had nothing to do with why she’d always wanted to be a cosh-switch, she was almost certain.
Antimony stared at Anna, calling pink magicks around her until Anna dropped her eyes. Only then did Antimony turn to address the crowd. “The entrance ceremony will be tonight at dusk,” she said. None spoke. She strode away, toward the forest.
Anna was unable to help herself from a parting shot, which had been her way for so long. Bond switches were not hotheads, but Anna was. Without stopping to think about her actions, she twirled the tiniest ball of magic into her palm that she could and whispered to it. “Prove this bytch wrong.”
The tiny orange ball, no bigger than a flower, no more substantial than a spider web, floated toward Antimony’s swiftly moving back. Without slowing, stopping or turning around, Antimony raised her hand behind her, and grabbed it in her palm, smashing it flat.
Anna swallowed hard, regretting it instantly. Bond switches did not do well with enemies.
8 – Growler Carves
Growler stared into the meadow from the cover of the forest, totally concealed, waiting until his alpha told him it was time. His alpha was there, had been one of the bears holding the vampire. He was massive, with one missing eye. He came close and shifted to a large man who looked at least ten years older than Growler, dark hair just starting to twist through with silver. Growler shifted also, but unlike his alpha, whose clothes (including a black eye patch) formed around him as he shifted, Growler stood there naked. His alpha threw a folded package at him. “Cover thyself, if thy wishes do not include being first and last meal this day.”
Growler pulled his clothes on, glancing at the meadow again. He’d heard the rumors and wondered if they were true Were these cosh-switches that much different than the rather ordinary switches who lived in town? Would they really fall upon him if he strolled in naked?
His alpha eyed him. “Growler,” the alpha growled at him. “Your mother assumed much.”
Growler kept his eyes far away and spoke softly. “I am not named after the Great Bear.”
“Why did you drop the vampire head at the feet of that switch?”
“I know not.” He didn’t. He’d seen her and been unable to help himself, acting on bear instinct alone.
“You will be punished for that.”
“I know.”
His alpha got in his face. “Name’s Boss, you can call me Boss.”
“Boss,” Growler said, keeping his voice neutral. He liked Boss. Could accept him as alpha. For now.
Boss cuffed him on the back of the neck and forced him to bend as they headed into the meadow. “Keep your eyes down.”
The other alphas were already strolling across the meadow as men, hard males all, they headed for a stage to the far side of where Growler had dropped the vampire head at the feet of Anna. She’d looked as beautiful as he had remembered. There had been many a fair switch in the meadow, but none had called to him like Anna. He could not have taken that head to anyone else.
Up onto the stage the alphas manhandled him. “Stand tall, that the switches may examine you,” Boss told him.
Growler did so, knowing he’d passed the alpha’s tests, and he could raise his chin.
One switch with long dark hair, caramel skin, and a plain white dress that stirred the imagination stopped in front of them. “His name?” she said to Boss.
“Growler,” Growler growled.
The switch laughed and covered her mouth. “Such a fyne name. It fits you. You were the one growling in the forest this morning?”
Growler nodded once. When the switch gave him one last coy smile and wandered off, he set his eyes to look for Anna. She was near the center of the circle, looking lost, nearly wringing her hands, her sister talking urgently to her. His eyes never wavered from her, as the alphas seemed to wait for something. They all stood on the stage, and switches openly gazed at them from seats and perches.
A pair of switches passed in front of them, eyeing him up and down. He growled, because he could not help himself. It was what he did. Boss cuffed him on the back of the head.
Anna had heard his growl. She looked up, seeing him for the first time. Recognition crossed her face, then a smile. He was glad to see it. He stood a little taller, shook out his muscles a bit more.
The pair of females moving in front of him stopped. One whispered to the other. “Mmmm. Exactly what the cosh needs. More bear meat.” Her sister smacked her lips. “Tastes like chicken.” They both giggled and continued on their way. Growler did not watch them go. His eyes were on Anna, trying to figure her out. What exactly had been going on when he’d shown up.
Another switch came up to them, peering at him closely, then making her way onto the stage. She was one of the oldest present, with bearing that came only with authority, a willowy beauty of 50 or so years.
She walked between the alphas and they stepped back for her. She took Growler by the hand and steered him to a bench near the front of the stage, then stood on it so she could look him straight in his eyes. “Your name?” she asked.
“Growler,” he said again.
“What makes you think you deserve to be part of the cosh?”
To Growler, this felt like as real of a test as the alphas had put him through. Maybe more real. He had no idea what would get her to approve him, so he did the only thing available. He spoke what was in his heart. “I am strong and fast and hard-fighting and I seek to become the hardest this cosh has ever seen. None shall protect more switches than Growler. No shifter’s name shall strike more fear into the hearts of vampires than Growler.”
The switch seemed to wait for more. He did not know what he’d left unsaid, so he stood fast and spoke not at all.
She poked his chest, then dismissed him with a wave of elegant fingers, green magicks swirling in the air behind her. “Switches can protect themselves, and vampires know not shifter names. Nor care.”
Behind her the switches tittered. Even children, all girls, watched and laughed from behind a water barrel. Growler blushed. The first and only time in his life.
She spoke again. “The switches do need hard males, though.” Whispers behind her. Cupped smiles. Some not cupped. Many of the switches displayed magic near their hands. Colors like thick water on some, thin haze on others, energetic colors swarming hanging fingers, tiny drops of it sometimes dropping into the dirt and sizzling. Like they didn’t even know they had magic coming out of them, and so did not stop it.
Growler stood up straighter in the sunlight, the wind sighing in the forest all around the meadow they were in. He didn’t quite know what was going on, but he soaked it in, the weather of their whispers, the implications. He wanted to know the culture he was stepping into, would listen hard to figure out what was expected from him here. He would not fail. Fate had given him a chance. He was taking it the only way he knew how. Headlong.
He growled. Switches took deep breaths from wherever they gathered, some fanning themselves. The switch on the bench in front of him was not impressed. She scowled at him.
He called forth his bear, not shifting, but giving himself over to instinct, because what he was doing wasn’t working. His bear grabbed him by the neck and forced him to one knee, where he bent his head before the switch and raised his hands. “I cry thine pardon, mistress,” he said in a deep and rumbling voice that reverberated up from the ground he was staring at. “I shall serve all cosh switches in any way they need. My life for thy will. My body for thy command.”
The switch seemed satisfied with that. She hopped down from the bench and strolled away.
Boss pulled him back to the center of the stage and put a table in front of him. On it was one knife, one branding iron, and one wooden needle with dark ink next to it.
“You are accepted into the cosh on this date, Growler of the Forest. Which do you choose?”
Growler stared at the table, feeling the weight of the eyes of all of the switches and the shifters standing guard in the forest upon him.
One more test. He was in, but this one would determine the path he took for the rest of his days. He stood tall and spoke his heart again. “Which will put me in line to be alpha?”
Rock smiled and shook his head like he’d expected no less. He put the knife in Growler’s hand, then pulled up his own shirt to show the three claw marks in his side, carved there by himself, many years ago, no doubt. The ingrav. The magical mark that would call help to him if he needed it, would allow his fellows to find him anywhere.
“Carve it just like this, cur,” Boss said, nodding his head.
Growler bent to his work, ignoring the pain, shutting it up in a tiny box inside his mind.
When it was done, a switch came and rubbed blue magic into his wound, sealing it forever more.
He stared at Anna across the circle as switches lounged and the alphas punished him, holding fast every time she looked at him, trying to catch her eyes and hold them, but she skittered away from him each time.
9 – Why Do You Stare?
Anna whimpered in her dream, knowing it was a dream, wanting to stop dreaming it, but not quite able to break free of it. Inside her dream, she relived her entrance ceremony from seven days before. That same evening that she and Theresa and arrived at the cosh. The bear had brought her the vampire head, Antimony had dispatched it before Anna could stab her knife into it, then given that speech. In her dream, Anna could see dreams of family and mate flying away with Antimony’s words.
Preferring only one male makes switches weak, Antimony had said. Could that be true? Antimony was the strongest switch who had ever lived, and she had no male.
In the seven days since Anna had been there, she’d had little time for talking to others, Polly having her up before the sun for training every morning, only letting her retire to her bed long after the sun had fallen below the horizon. Even so, she had heard whisperings. Whisperings Polly had told her she was forbidden to repeat, under threat of punishment. Antimony could decree that any switch do anything, or be thrown out of the cosh. In her dream, Anna resolved again to never repeat a word of what she had heard. The scariest rumor Anna had heard was that Antimony was one of the original five switches. The second scariest was that she had been mated once. Mated and claimed by one of the Great Hunters, shifters who were only legend, myth. Bedtime stories for children. Anna didn’t even dare believe that one, let alone repeat it.
Antimony had walked off, and Anna had dared much, too much, throwing a tiny spell at her back, one that did nothing except put Anna on Antimony’s bad side. Anna could feel it, had felt it every moment since she’d arrived, in the way Antimony glared at her, and the way that Polly sweated over her, and the way that Swan, the Belief switch assigned to help Anna and Theresa improve their supportive spells, looked around furtively every time Anna blew Swan off into the bushes, or Theresa’s spell fell flat.
In her dream, she remembered seeing Growler for the first time up on that stage, hearing him say his name, recognizing him as the male from the Bear Claw, and feeling the warmth that spread through her every time he settled his heavy gaze upon her. Polly had warned her away repeatedly with whispered admonishments, and so she hadn’t looked back, not much.
They’d spent the afternoon outside, Antimony gone, switches lounging, alpha males with Growler, who was obviously as new in the cosh as she was. Polly had sat with her and
Anna, telling them the ways of vampires and the other rules of the cosh, which had taken hours. Jealousy had speared through her every time a switch had spoken to Growler. Jealousy was so unlike her. So unlike any Bond switch. Also so unlike how a cosh-switch was allowed to be, she was discovering.
Night had fallen, and still the only switches she and Theresa had talked to were Polly and Antimony. The cosh was not proving to be the friendly place she’d envisioned. Until it came time for the ceremony.
Then the switches had come alive, speaking to each sister in turn, after night had fallen and the fires had been lit. They helped dress Anna and Theresa in dresses made of magic and magicks, while Growler wore a ceremonial tunic that stretched invitingly across his broad bear chest. Yum, Anna had thought to herself more than once, and every time he growled she felt the noise throb through her body in the most delicious way.
The ceremony had involved much ritual, some dancing, although the switches danced together, while the shifters formed lines they passed through, and none touched nor spoke to the other. Antimony did watch from the roof of the cosh, pink magicks marking her spot. She came down only once, spoke not at all, and disappeared for the night.
When dream Anna was led to her bed, at the far end of the cosh, near Polly and Theresa, she dropped into it and fell asleep at once, exhausted.
In the real world, Anna opened her eyes, finally free of the grip of the dream. It was light out. No one had woken her up. She sat and looked down the longhouse, seeing the inside in the light of day for the first time. No one was inside. Beds lined walls, there were some rooms, but not many. The shutters had all been thrown wide and a slight breeze came in the windows, bringing the sound of children’s laughter, a female singing sweetly, then a deep baritone voice answering her chorus.
The cosh was different somehow.
