by Lisa Ladew
The caped vampire spoke, his voice mildly hostile. “Anna, something’s different about you, since the last time we… fought. Did you let the shifters cut your hair again? With their maypoles, mayhap?” The vampire laughed a sickly laugh, like Anna’s needs, the desires her body had come with, were wrong and bad and Anna should hide her face. “So many maypoles,” Vant said, shaking his head.
Anna didn’t blink, didn’t react, only regarded the vampire with deadly intent, her new weapon fresh from the forge at the ready. Fyne witch. So strong this day.
Vant tried again. “Where is your male, Anna?” He dropped his voice. “Oh, should I whisper? Might Antimony be about?”
Vant knew Growler was there, was close. Growler could scent Vant and Vant could scent Growler. Vant poked Anna for a soft spot. She gave none.
Vant’s voice turned cold and harsh as if he could order Anna to say something. “What does the bear build at the center of the forest? Why can I not see it, only feel it?” He pointed at the ground, his voice twisting desperate. “Who made that lightning, dividing the forest as surely as the river does? Who is fighting who amongst your sisters with such power?”
Anna’s expression changed. Softened. She smiled. “Facts with such great impart are for coshtwined only to know. I shall tell you if you so will it. Then I shall slay you, so you shall tell no other.”
The vampire didn’t laugh. Growler didn’t either. Anna’s smile went predatory and she spoke quickly, so Vant didn’t have time to tell her he did not will it. “My bear builds our new home. Our coven.” She looked surprised at the word, but did not stop pushing her words out. “I was the cause of that lightning. I with my sister Swan. We fight Antimony. We challenge her.”
She lifted her dagger. Resynynt, Growler’s bear whispered. She lifted the resynynt to draw attention to it, which only drew attention to her fierceness and her beauty, making her look like a warrior worthy of funneling power directly from the Gods. Growler was transfixed, wanting to see it.
“Now for the slaying,” Anna said calmly, as she went for the vampire, orange magic pushing her like a cushion. The vampire could not even run, his body freezing under the magicks her resynynt spilled as she met him. She sliced him energetically, not letting him speak one more question.
Vant degraded quickly, a Fatherborne nearly as old as Zver, leaving almost nothing to smolder with black magic. Slayed by Anna, just as she’d promised. She stood tall for a moment, her head bowed over the kill, breathing it in, the ease of it, the stillness after, then she whirled, throwing her arms wide. “Growler, come to me.”
He stepped out from behind the tree and beheld his Anna in all her magical glory, glowing brightly, fierce pride spilling from her shoulders. “I slayed a Fatherborne,” she whispered as he stared. “With your knife.” She held it on her palm to show it to him. He nodded, watching it shift from her finger imprints to his. His mark would stay, no matter how much the weapon was hers and hers alone. It would stay like the bite mark he’d put on the body that belonged only to her, and yet she shared it with him fully.
“Your knife,” he growled, inclining his head.
Shifters and switches ran up from behind them, a few sniffing the air. “What Fatherborne did you slay?” Theresa asked from atop Sir Dewey’s bear’s back, her voice delighted, excited, aroused.
“Vant,” Anna said, quietly, full of wonder that it had been so easy, mayhap. Her head was bent and she was toeing what bits of him were left.
Swan and Mary Celeste and the others arrived. They’d heard. A few whispered quietly.
“How?” Swan asked.
“With this,” Anna said, holding the resynynt up for all to see, raising her head, meeting their eyes. “It knows me. Loves me I believe, in the manner that Growler does.” She would thank Sir Dewey later for giving her the strength to say such a word, even though her lips trembled slightly as she resisted the urge to look around for Antimony.
Swan gasped. Some of the switches peered into the forest, seeing who was listening. Anna crossed her arms and nodded but Growler didn’t let her have her moment. His manner was urgent, his face guarded.
***
Growler had to get Anna back to the… what had Anna called it? To the coven. He moved close to grab her and run. But Anna met him, folding into his arms, pressing her body against his. In front of everyone. It stopped him for a moment. It had never happened before. He liked it.
She gazed up at him. “Growler made the weapon and the weapon made mine magic strong enough to kill Vant.”
“She’s Bond,” a Blood switch whispered from near a wild tree. “Our shifters might make ordinary weapons for the rest of them, no stronger than what we make for ourselves.”
Anna didn’t seem to hear. She reached up and grabbed Growler’s right ear, pulling him down to kiss her. He did, spilling tenderness all over her, in that way she needed, in that way that seemed to belong to only her and him. Growler blocked it all out, all of it but the kiss his Anna shared with him first and the rest of them second.
Anna jerked at the cloth at her shoulder as their mouths pressed sweetly together. Swan gasped and one of the Blood switches made an uh-oh sound. “The bear has bitten her! See her shoulder!” Growler didn’t know who said it, but he had not one more minute for kisses if he was to fix Anna’s future, to raise her to a level Fate could only go along with, pulled like dandelion seed on the wind, no choice in the matter.
He picked her up. “Swan, Theresa, Sir Dewey, Mary Celeste. Now. It has to be now.” He shifted into his bear, gigged Anna up onto his back, with a practiced cock of his hip. She grabbed on. Didn’t argue. Just prepared herself for the ride.
Growler ignored the shocked looks of the other switches. Out of all of them, only Sir Dewey had already known that he had claimed Anna. Sir Dewey had nodded once when Growler had growled it, then said simply. “The battle draws near, and it is worthy. How may Sir Dewey assist in thine plan, alpha bear of Bond element?”
Growler had used Sir Dewey and the other relentlessly. No Bond shifters had slept in four days. They would sleep when the Great Bear bounced them in his paws. Would that it was not that very day. He ran back to the center of the forest, back where they had started, his Anna on his back.
There was something that must be done, and it would determine everything.
23 – A New Cosh Switch
Anna grasped Growler hard with her knees as they ran for the coven. Coven. Fatherborne. She’d killed a Fatherborne. Everything could be changed. She almost believed it. Growler almost had her convinced.
They arrived back at the center of the forest in moments, ahead of Antimony who was coming fast as a hawk, wings folded into body for speed, for free fall and disaster. Anna could feel her come through the vibrations her magic sent through Anna’s resynynt. Her new and fyne weapon she would sleep with, bathe with for all days. It must never leave her side.
Anna slid off of Growler’s back, and took her first good and lingering look at the Bond coven the shifters had built. Her new home.
Three turrets for three switches. All three built from wood, dotted with windows and covered with sturdy roofs, triangled around the stump, held up by strong soaring limbs. The rounded common area circled the stump lower than the turrets. Rope bridges spanned the spaces between it all like perfect spider web paths. Anna ran and grabbed onto a rope ladder under the turret with the cozy little home at the top that she just knew would be hers and Growler’s. She climbed up, her resynynt stashed between her breasts in her weapons pouch.
She poked her head in the hole in the floor, then pulled herself up into the room in the afternoon sun that streamed through the window. Just as she’d thought. A bed built by Growler’s two hands, a mattress probably magicked into being by one of her sisters. A fyne stand and drawer for her treasures. A place to spill her magicks. She walked to the other side and gasped. A cradle. Growler climbed into the room behind her, his woodsy scent reaching her.
She faced him, her face questio
ning. He nodded. He wanted it. The bear knew she wanted it, too. Babies. So many babies. She shook her head. Maybe not so many babies. Growler’s maypole was fyne, and she needed to enjoy it, not let it strike her dumb. Dickbound, Swan would tease. To her core, Anna was, and she did not fight it.
Theresa came up the ladder, her voice frantic. “Anna!” she cried.
Sir Dewey followed her up the ladder, with Swan and Mary Celeste, too. The room could not hold them all. “Antimony comes,” Swan said. “I feel her.”
Anna felt her too. Close.
“We do it now,” Theresa said, as she shooed the males away from Anna. Sir Dewey dropped into the hole in the floor, grinning as he caught a ladder rung with one hand to keep himself from plunging to the ground. Anna so wanted Theresa to end up with that gentle show-off.
“Share your plan,” she said to all. “That I may help.”
“The quickest of ceremonies we have planned,” Theresa said. Her and Mary Celeste stripped Anna of her simple dress and underclothes with their magic, leaving her naked and wild. Sir Dewey covered his eyes, disappeared himself all the way down the ladder so his alpha did not disappear him.
Growler growled his appreciation of Anna’s naked form, making Theresa blush wildly and Anna raise her arms, the better to show off her average, normal breasts, not very big, not really small, the ones that Growler could never get enough of.
Theresa and Mary Celeste pulled magicks from Swan, bonding all together, then used it to clothe Anna in campfire orange magic shaped as a delicate, pinched dress that flowed wide at the ankle with Anna’s slightest movement, a sweet ribbon of baby blue twisting around the waist and hem.
Anna realized then what they had planned, as her sisters readied their magic and Mary Celeste whispered to Theresa, something about the magic first and the bond second or the other way around? Anna stared hard at Growler. “You seek to make me First. Does First even exist in this coven? This is not the cosh.”
“No,” Growler agreed, “But it could be our cosh. You can challenge Antimony. We will leave it up to Fate. Naught else will do.”
Anna raised the resynynt. “This weapon gives me power equal to Antimony’s. I shall challenge her. If I can beat her I can unseat her. Throw her out. Who is next in line for cosh-switch?” None knew if such was actually possible, but they all hoped.
“The First Breath Switch was next in the cosh, she would be next in line,” Growler said. Anna’s eyes glowed. That hard witch would stand as Anna stood, for the right to take her dark panther to her bed at night. Growler nodded over the quick tempo and chanting and sparkle of magicks the sisters whipped up near Anna’s feet. “Mayhap that pretty weapon shall give you the power to fight her, but not the authority. We must do this.”
So right he was, as always.
Magicks shot up her dress, orange and blue and clothed in whispers of more magicks. The magical energy came up the ladder, crept in the windows, all blue and purple and green and even a tiny thread of pink. Her sisters. They wouldn’t fit in this little room, but they lent their support all the same. Anna would need to perform magic to complete the ceremony, big magic and her sisters could funnel magic she’d lent them back to her. It felt good, the magicks, surrounding her, though they made Growler nervous, made him growl from her left. He hated when any but Bond magic touched her.
Antimony arrived far out in the meadow with a whisper, but all heard it, even from inside. They hurried. The magicks covered Anna, light, powdery, but demanding, covering her face and hair and nose and body until Growler hooked a claw into it and growled, “Enough!” pulling it away from her.
Anna opened her eyes, looking down at herself. Her very skin was lit from within somehow with her orange glow. Her dress was a rainbow of pulsing colors threading cheerily through orange campfire magic, cupping her curves and hiding her body from all.
Anna walked slowly near the hole in the floor, the ladder that would take her to the forest floor, her magic dress flowing around her ankles like heavy silk. She lowered herself down the ladder without comment, the magicks swirling on her skin, her sisters coming from above, the Bond shifters flanking them when they reached the ground, other shifters and switches behind them. As a group they went to meet Antimony, Anna with her left hand curled and closed at her side.
She strode through the forget-me-not meadow quickly, away from the coven her Growler had built for her, campfire magic swirling around her feet and out to the side and behind her, being caught in the flowers, hanging up and collecting between leaves, although the dress did not grow shorter, did not appear to lose any magic.
Antimony met Anna in the field of forget-me-nots, her pants and Anna’s dress whipping in the afternoon wind on the mountaintop, the loose fabrics and magicks rippling audibly. The season was changing and it did not matter.
Antimony stopped, eyeing Anna’s dress. “Leave it to Bond to have a ceremony without the cosh-switch,” she snarled.
Anna did not acknowledge the jab. It was time for her magic. She had to perform a “feat of magic befitting a Bond switch, with sufficient power to convince all present that she belong.” And she did not know what it would be. Anna could not stall, to do so would look badly to Fate, and so she raised her arms to the open sky, where the orange of the setting sun had just begun to gather on the horizon of the trees. Orange. It flooded her. She raised her arms and demanded that her magicks deliver something they could not possibly. Growler and Anna, together, mated, acknowledged, and allowed. That was all she wanted, all this fight was about.
She burned like a campfire, her magic spreading through the meadow, shooting out of her like a volcano, doubling back and dousing her and everyone in the field, including Antimony.
And yet it did naught.
Orange magic flooded the field, centered on Anna, devouring each person present for just a moment, then fading and dropping to the ground. With no changes. Antimony glared around at the switches and shifters behind Anna, then down her own body. No orange magic was left near her. Only her own pink, thick energy. Antimony grinned at Anna, her eyes wild. “Was that a hug, mayhap? A pre-decree hug from someone who doesn’t much matter, soon shall not matter at all?”
Anna did not say a word. Dropped her arms. Heard Growler growl from behind her. Always there, her big bear. It would have to be enough for her all the days of her life. Anna had sparked magic indiscriminately, having no idea what would be big enough, grand enough to convince Fate to work in Anna’s favor. She’d trusted instead. And now what?
Theresa gasped. Anna turned, one big step, to see if mayhap her magic had wrought something after all. One step behind her, to the left, was Growler. Behind him, thirteen switches, women strikingly different from each other, but all united in a warrior fierceness and by the magicks that leaked from their fingertips, gathered around their soft boots. The switches were toward the front, just behind them were the shifters of each element, watching the scene darkly, waiting to protect someone, praying some vampires showed up. The shifters generally only tolerated the, “sister theatre,” as Sir Dewey called it, but none spoke against it. It was how switches were and all recognized that. To ask them to be other than they were was to murder their spirit, and to do so would make them weak. Useless.
All of that was normal. Thirteen switches. Thirty five or so males. Strong. Fierce. All of them. But some glowed strangely, differently than normal.
Anna marked Theresa and Sir Dewey first, noting what was going on between the two of them. Bond switches were all supposed to glow the same color. Orange. The same shade of orange, a ordinary shade with a bit of red mixed in, a shade that would feel at home on an All-Hallows Eve pumpkin. But lately, Anna’s magic had been turning a brighter orange, the cheery and warm orange of a campfire at night, one you were snuggled up close to, cooking bits of meat and vegetable sweet bread over it on the sharp end of a stick while your sisters giggled and spoke softly around you. She hadn’t noticed it in others.
But now, Theresa’s red-orange had
changed, deepened to a burnt-umber color the exact shade of Sir Dewey’s bear’s fur. Anna gasped when she realized that Sir Dewey pulsed and glowed the exact same burnt-umber color as Theresa did. Anna’s eyes shot to Growler. Did his orange match hers? Was it a color they had made together? It did. It was.
Anna’s spell had revealed the love matches in the cosh, the ones no one dared speak of, the ones no one had even suspected. Out of thirteen switches before her, ten of them glowed, while the last three did not. Not in love?
Swan’s powder blue color matched the glow of the alpha wolf of Belief. He looked at her. She looked back at him, then took a tentative step to him. He raised his hand. Took hers. They held hands, there, in the meadow, for Antimony and all to see.
Sir Dewey nodded once, sharply. “Good move, old chap,” he said, then moved close to Theresa, right up behind her, pressing his front against her back and grasping her hips lightly, like only a lover would do.
The First Breath Switch jutted her chin. Her dark panther shifted to human, his glow strong in both forms, matching hers exactly. It was a dark, rich green, like a sprig of mint freshly picked from the garden. Anna reeled from switch after switch having already handed over her heart. They were the majority. Not the minority as she had always believed. Antimony had strangled their natures. Evolved or natural, it was the nature of the cosh, and it was time for change.
She whirled back to Antimony, hands raised, ready for anything, her resynynt held loosely in her left hand, which burned. She switched hands, seeing then that the ingrav burned on her palm, pulsing hotly, being burned there in front of her, for all to see, confirming her as the rightful First Bond Switch and now she would challenge Antimony.
More magic, I need more. She called it up from the wellspring of her core, where she normally beat it back, contained it, when she didn’t need this deeper and darker stuff to save her own skin and help her sisters kill vampires.
