by Tracey Tobin
The crunch of his body as she landed on top of him and he shattered against the rocks.
And the blood. Oh god, the blood.
Her face went from white to green in an instant. She barely managed to paw her way out of her furry bed before gagging violently.
Oh god…oh god…oh god…
A calming paw rubbed Tori’s back and neck. “Easy, easy,” Lira cooed. “Don’t exert yourself.” She leaned down to Tori’s level so that she could see her face as she asked a question. “Forgive me, as I haven’t grown up near humans and am not overly familiar with your habits and customs, but am I to assume that this is the first time you’ve ever taken a life?”
The blunt manner of the question almost made Tori begin to hyperventilate. She closed her eyes as they filled with tears. She forced her breaths to come slower, deeper. It helped, but her head was swimming and she was certain she was going to pass out any second. With her eyes shut and the taste of boiled bark on her tongue she nodded and whispered, “Other than Shadows, but they’re not, you know…” She tried to continue but ended up gagging again instead.
For a while they were both silent. Lira gently rubbed Tori’s back. Tori tried not to think, but now that she was remembering them, the images wouldn’t leave her. She could taste the blood as if it was still in her mouth. She could taste it.
“You know,” Lira spoke softly, “the Coiyana have a reputation for being quite vicious. We’re said to be violent beasts with zero remorse. Many think of us as emotionless killing machines designed only to fight. But that couldn’t be further from the truth.”
Despite the existential crisis she was experiencing, Tori managed to look up and meet a pair of eyes that were full of fatigue and sadness.
“We’re not emotionless, young princess,” the Coiyana told her. “We have simply spent centuries playing to our strengths. We are natural hunters, physically powerful, with a deep sense of duty and honor, and we cling to our tradition of fighting - quite literally - for what we believe in.” She paused long enough to run a finger along the new scar on Tori’s chin. “But that does not mean that we feel nothing in the moments of a kill.”
Tori stared. She could have responded in a thousand different ways, but instead found herself asking a question. “Why are you being so nice to me now? I got the feeling before that you pretty much hated me.”
The corner of Lira’s mouth twitched upward and she shrugged her shoulders a little. “Upon our first formal meeting, I was already aware that you were going to engage in a death match with my mate,” she explained. “Though I am nothing but confident in Heln’s strength, I’d seen you and your companions accomplish much and hated you for even reaching the final stage of your trials.” She fiddled with the edge of one of the furs Tori lay upon. “Then you spared his life, even though it may have meant the end of your journey.” Her eyes were bright and clear when she looked back up at Tori. “Everything you’ve done from that moment on has shown great strength, courage, and compassion.”
Tori felt her breath hitch a little. Tears threatened to spring back into her eyes. “Compassion…” she muttered. “Yeah, sure, right up until I threw someone off a cliff and ripped his throat out with my-” Her voice cracked before she could finish the sentence.
“It won’t make the feeling go away,” Lira told her, “but try to remind yourself that it was either him, or an innocent. He’d grown more and more psychotic over the years, never leaving the caves, refusing to let us travel and seek out other groups. There were many among us who considered challenging him for leadership rights, but by Coiyana law such challenges entail a battle to the death, and with the numbers we’ve lost these past two decades no one wished to add to the unnecessary shrinkage of our family.”
A piece of what she’d said niggled at a corner of Tori’s mind and made her blink. “Wait.” She frowned, turning the conversation back over in her mind. “So, this Law of Rule thing…” Her frown deepened. There was an answer there that her brain was refusing to come up with on its own.
Lira’s jaw twitched and she sighed, but finally she just came out with it. “In a battle to the death, you killed our Chief, Goera. If you were an ordinary human it would be considered an act of war and we would be forced, by our own laws, to avenge him. But because you’ve become…something else, something that is at least partially Coiyana, it has been established that, by those same laws, you are now our new Chief.”
Tori stared at Lira for a long time, waiting for the punch-line. It didn’t come.
“You have to be fucking kidding me.”
Lira’s eyes went wide for a second, and then she burst into a raucous laughter, nearly doubling over on top of herself. “You are an amusing one, you know that?” she chuckled, dabbing the moisture from her eyes with one of the blankets.
Tori pinched the bridge of her nose, took a deep breath, and before she knew it she was laughing as well. “Yeah, evidently I become more and more amusing the more of my sanity I lose,” she told her new friend, only half joking. When she’d gotten all the giggles out and heaved a large sigh, she asked, quietly, “Could you find Jacob and Kaima for me, please? I’d really like to see them now, if you don’t mind.”
Lira hopped to her feet, gave Tori and exaggerated bow, and winked. “Of course, Your Royal Chief-ness,” she joked, before bounding off through the trees.
Once alone, Tori shifted the robe-like clothing that she’d been wrapped in and gave her body a quick once-over. It wasn’t nearly as bad as she’d been expecting, based on her first battle. She was practically painted in bruises, but she knew those would eventually fade. The psychological bruises were another thing all together.
She was fiddling with her pendant (she presumed Lira had put it back on her while she was asleep) when she heard footsteps through the trees. She quickly readjusted the robe to cover her properly again.
She expected both of her companions, and perhaps Lira or Heln, but only one form appeared before her.
Jacob stopped several paces away. He let out a huge breath all at once before offering a small, relieved smile. “You’re making a bad habit of this kind of thing, you know.”
Tori felt her lips twitch. “You’re telling me.”
He moved closer only after she motioned for him to sit with her. Once he was settled on the furs at her feet, she examined him with a frown. He’d been outfitted in a new pair of brown leather pants and vest, with steel plating around his forearms and a beaten steel insignia above his heart that was shaped like a full moon with a star in the foreground. His sword in its sheath still hung at his hip, but he also had a beautiful-looking bow and quiver slung across his back. His hair was just as shaggy as ever which, for some reason, made Tori happy to see.
But she was distracted from all of this by his eye. When they’d first met one of the only things that had distinguished Jacob from her friend Jared back home was a scar running along his left cheek. Now he had another one, much redder, much more pronounced, running from eyebrow to ear and right across his right eye. Now that he was closer she could see that the scar ran clean across the eye itself, leaving a thin white line through the pupil and iris, marring the black and blue.
Tori recalled Goera’s knives taking flight and cringed. “How bad is it?” she asked.
Jacob looked surprised for a moment, and then turned away, chuckling to himself. “Not as bad as it looks,” he assured her. “There’s a bit of a strange blur across my vision, but it’s nothing I can’t get used to. You know, you really should start worrying more about yourse-” He stopped sharp and sucked in a surprised breath as Tori reached forward and grabbed his arm.
Without explanation, she undid the two leather straps that held the steel arm-guard to his flesh and let it fall to the furs beneath them. Once the arm was bare, she turned his hand so that the compass tattoo stared up at her. It was black and cool at the moment, but she could almost see it burning red hot before her eyes. “Why didn’t you tell me about this?” she asked. “Why
didn’t you tell me about the pain?”
Jacob’s jaw had dropped a little. He seemed taken off guard, confused by the question.
Tori settled him with a hard stare. “I know it’s been agonizing for you,” she told him. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
His gaze dropped. Tori thought he looked ashamed, somehow. “It’s-” he started, looking like he was planning to lie, but reconsidered. “It’s never been as bad as the first time,” he said, as though that made it okay. “And I just… I mean, it’s not like your knowing would change anything. It’s done, and I don’t regret it in the slightest, no matter how much pain it causes.” He gave her a meaningful look out of the corner of his eye. “After all, if the mark wasn’t on my arm, I wouldn’t have been able to follow it to you when you were in danger.”
Tori reached forward and flicked him - hard - behind the ear. Jacob cried out in surprise and looked at her as though she’d just smashed his favorite toy. The face almost made her laugh, but she held his gaze with a steady determination and tried her hardest to exert authority. “Let’s get something straight, okay?” she told him. “I don’t like liars. And holding back important information is the same as lying.” She pursed her lips and allowed herself to sink back into the pile of furs. “Maybe it is for the best that you have the mark instead of me, but that doesn’t change the fact that I felt horrible when I found out you’d been hiding the pain from me.”
Jacob stared at her. He seemed to be considering something, seemed as though there was something that he desperately wanted to say, but in the end he simply nodded and turned away.
Tori examined his face. There was something there that was prickling at the back of her mind. Something that she felt she needed to ask him about. She decided it could wait. She already had enough to think about at the moment.
“So…” she began, struggling to know whether to smile or cringe. “What are we going to do about this Chief situation?”
She thought she saw a crack of a smile appear on Jacob’s face. His shoulders bounced with a tiny chuckle. “Well, you showed up at their home as a weak, pathetic human, and now you’re both their rightful Queen and their tribe’s leader.” He looked sideways at her again and Tori saw the mixture of pride and humor in his eyes. “I’d say at this point you can do whatever you damn well please.”
Chapter Fifteen
Tori felt an incredible sense of deja vu as she and Kaima stood side-by-side, staring into the clear water of a small stream. This time, however, she wasn’t comparing the similarities between her Maelekanai friend and her own Maelekanai-hybrid body. This time she was comparing differences as she saw, for the first time, her new Coiyana-hybrid body.
When she’d called upon the transformation for the second time she’d immediately felt that her body was heavier and bulkier, and now she saw the evidence of that. She wasn’t nearly as large as any of the true Coiyana, but the transformation seemed to cause her body to grow and stretch, leaving her several inches taller and wider than she’d started. Her skin had become the gray of an old man’s beard, and strips of short, ruddy brown fur ran down her back, legs, and arms. Her own hair seemed to become longer and wilder, colored the same as the fur and sticking out in every direction. Fingers and toes were tipped with claws that were monstrously thick and the same gray as her skin, and a wild, spiky, brown tail hung down to the ground, gently swishing through the grass.
All things considered, though, her face was the most surprising. It wasn’t by much, but the structure of her mouth and nose had shifted and elongated to give her a short muzzle, and her canine teeth were so large she could barely shut her mouth properly. Eyes the color of blood mixed into mud completed the image, staring back at her from the water’s surface.
Now this is more how I picture a werewolf, she thought, ironically.
Tori examined herself for a long time, trying to reconcile this new image into her mind. When she thought she’d spent plenty enough time staring at herself she looked up to her friend and tried for a playful grin. “So, how do I look?”
Kaima delayed her answer by pretending to readjust her fractured arm in its sling. “I prefer you the other way,” she muttered.
Tori couldn’t help but laugh.
“I think you look like a leader,” Jacob spoke up from behind them. “Regardless of which face you have on.”
Tori thanked him with a smile and readjusted her new clothes. She’d been gifted with an outfit similar to Jacob’s, but specially created by a talented Coiyana to accommodate her new body. The sides of both the pants and vest, running from beneath her arms all the way down to her ankles, were comprised of a stretchy, elastic-like fabric that allowed the clothing to expand when her body did. She’d been told that it was a material often used for the cub’s gear, as they were apt to take extreme growth spurts at certain points in their adolescence. She’d thanked the Coiyana who’d made the clothes profusely, having not considered how frustrating it would be to find something new to wear if she accidentally ripped everything every time she stretched her body out.
When she felt more comfortable she took a deep breath, nodded to her companions, and together they began to walk downstream.
Before long they reached a small meadow, brilliantly lit by a large moon staring down at them from a clear sky. The meadow was filled with Coiyana, but it hurt Tori’s heart to see that there were so many fewer than there had been in the Colosseum during her final trial. She wondered how many had been lost when the Shadows attacked, but pushed the question from her mind. There was nothing she could do about it now.
But she would do something about it eventually, on the day she truly met Iryen face to face.
As she walked out from the trees and into the clearing, one by one the Coiyana began to howl toward the sky. Not so long ago Tori would have found the sound disturbing and frightening, but now, with all the voices melding into one strange, sad melody, she found that it was actually rather beautiful.
In the center of the meadow she met Heln and Lira, standing side-by-side with the Coiyana who had helped guard her as they escaped the Howling Mountain. Together they inclined their heads toward her before joining in with the group howl.
Tori waited for the cries of the wolves to die out before she addressed Heln to express the ideas she’d concocted with Jacob and Kaima’s help.
“Heln,” she began, “First, I have to thank you for saving my life. Without your blood I’m certain I would not have been able to pull through my injuries.”
The Coiyana bowed his head lower this time, saying nothing. Beside him his mate beamed with pride.
“Because of your blood,” Tori continued, “I was able use the magic in mine to become something new, something part human, part Coiyana. And as a direct result of that-” She tried her best to push away the memories of sinking her fangs into Goera’s flesh. “-I’ve now become the new Chief of this tribe.”
In response to her words, the Coiyana around them dropped to the ground, lowering themselves so that they were beneath her, looking up, their throats bared.
“In other words,” Tori explained, “I would not be Chief if it were not for you and your blood.”
Heln looked genuinely confused by the way she had worded the sentence. “It was my duty and honor,” he assured her.
Tori reached up and put her hands on his shoulders. Even with her enhanced height and the way his body naturally slouched forward, it was a tight reach. “I know,” she told him. “And truth be told, you’ve been doing everything you could to help me because of that same sense of duty and honor, am I right?”
Heln looked deep into her eyes, trying to work out where she was going with this. “Yes. In another time I would have happily stood beside you as a member of your Royal Guard as you were crowned Queen. I still hope to, when you take back your kingdom.”
Tori smiled. “Well then,” she said, “I’m going to ask you to continue helping me, by taking over my role as Chief.”
The reaction that we
nt through the meadow was palpable. Coiyana blinked in confusion, whispered questions at one another, and stared in shock. Heln’s jaw dropped. Lira had taken a step back and was holding a paw over her heart.
Tori rushed forward with her explanation before anyone could interrupt. “There need not be a battle for leadership, because I am willingly handing that power to you, which I’m guessing is something that has never happened before.” She glanced around at the crowd with a rye smile before turning back to Heln with a grin. “That makes perfect sense, right?”
Heln didn’t seem to be able to come up with any proper words. His jaw opened and closed numerous times before, finally, he dropped to the ground on his hands and knees, pressing his muzzle into the earth. “Your majesty,” he spoke into the ground, his voice strong and loud. “I graciously accept this task you’ve set upon me, and I vow to lead my people with strength and honor.” He pushed himself up, but stayed on his knees so that he was looking up into Tori’s face. “We will follow you, your majesty, and protect you to the last life as you continue your journey.”
Tori had expected something like this, so she was prepared with her response. “No,” she told him. “You will lead the Coiyana, and you will protect them. I will continue on my journey with my Guardian and my handmaiden, just the three of us. Three can travel more secretly than an entire village worth of bodies.” She saw the argument rising on Heln’s face and touched his shoulders again. “Besides, I may need you all again in the future,” she assured him. “So I formally set you the task of seeking out the rest of your kind. Rebuild your forces, keep yourselves safe, and be prepared for the day you might march into battle again.”
He still looked like he wished to argue, but in the end Heln nodded, putting his own paws on his princess’s shoulders, and she knew he’d accepted his new duty.
