by LeAnn Mason
All of me failing to do anything other than die slowly, agonizingly.
“I knew the girl would not accept the color, of course. No, she would be the good little friend to Bianca Katsumoto, untalented orphan daughter of Andersenville. And then I would finally succeed. I would finally achieve your death and claim my right as most powerful.”
Holy crap, she was bonkers. In what world was I a threat to her? Her power far surpassed my own affinity. I may be skilled with fire manipulation, but I couldn’t even create the stuff. Only in her crazy noggin was I a threat. As someone so power hungry, she saw enemies everywhere. I wasn’t sure exactly what had given her the impression my mother and I were any kind of rivals, unless it was merely to separate us from my father. He’d had the true power. I was sure that’s why she’d latched onto him from the get-go. She, on the other hand, had always been the biggest threat to my survival. My entire family’s, in fact.
First my mother, then my father. Now me.
“And now to ensure that you are good and properly dead, I’ll let my beloved earth take you into her. No one will find you. At least, not in time to save you.” Monologue apparently over, she twirled a hand… and the ground fell away beneath me.
CHAPTER 20
NICK
T hings had been off for days. Longer than that if I was being truthful. I’d been jumpy, easily agitated, and insecure– three things I’d never been before. But man, the last couple of months had been doozies. First with the arrival of the spitting cat that was Allya, but really, it was since the night of the Lupo Coven annihilation that I’d felt… different.
I hadn’t told anyone that I’d been the leak that apparently enabled the Lupos to have more control over the situation than anyone wanted. I should have known that the girl in the woods wasn’t from Grimm Hollow. I shouldn’t have told her anything. I’d like to think that my loose lips had been a product of some kind of dirty Witch spell, but I’d never know that for sure. All I could be sure of were the consequences.
She’d somehow wormed past my defenses, my instincts, so when I’d run into her in the woods the night of the raid…
Well, it had been easy for her to disable me. It was a doozy of a spell because it knocked me senseless. So much so that I’d not remembered myself, my nature as a Shifter. Human, confused and naked, I’d been spotted by someone in Allya and Mae’s human town of Winchester and reported to the police for indecent exposure.
Oops.
Slowly, like, over a day or two, my wits returned to me, and I began to realize my predicament. Only by the blessed heavens had Allya and Mae been called in to that little station. Gloria’s arrival and very formidable nature had been the lynchpin in my release.
But I wasn’t the same fun-loving bear that I’d been. That ordeal and then hearing that my king, Ryan, had been very nearly mortally wounded in my absence had crushed me. It was all my fault. Swayed by a pretty face and honeyed words, though I still maintain that they had to have been weaving a Witch’s spell around me…
Which brought me to my most recent reason I was convinced of my failure.
Bianca.
That death was solely on my shoulders. All of this bubbling insecurity had taken root in my bear, and we’d just lost it. I saw the forest as if it were that night, and the dark Witches were everywhere, surrounding me. There and then gone. Slipping like wraiths between the trees. Toying with me. And Bianca had been too close. I’d shifted and basically… gutted her.
I brought my furred snout to an equally furred front leg to combat the feeling that vomit was rising in my shifted body. Even in this form, it was hard to think about. Maybe especially in this one because it was this form that had ultimately done the damage. My mind had been going in these same circles. Over. And over. And over.
I had stayed away from Bianca and even Allya and Jason to what extent I could. There were no guarantees I wouldn’t lose it again, go rabid, and hurt someone. I couldn’t take the chance, so I’d made sure to take whatever patrols I could from Rory in an effort to keep to myself, without being able to get lost in my worries.
Did I stop worrying? No. But at least, I was able to compartmentalize when I worked. The only way I felt I would be useful, helpful even, to those in Grimm Hollow. Maybe it was my destiny to walk alone, as a Sentinel, through the ages, never getting close enough to hurt anyone I loved, only those foolish enough to try it themselves.
The earth squished beneath my large paws, wet with the late autumn rains, my substantial weight enough to displace the saturated dirt. The smell of damp earth, tree bark, and a wisp of organic decay was a heady comfort to my bear. Though tied to a human soul, Shifter animals still retained that bit of wildness. The nature of the beast within. Even though we’d been volatile, only rivaled by the likes of the new Prince Regent, Rory, I couldn’t imagine my life as anything other than a Shifter.
Those days I was captive in the human jail had been horrible.
Having been refused emergence, it was almost as if it had given my baser side more power. I didn’t want to be refused the right again.
Familiar smells hounded me, and I lifted my blocky head, opening my snout to breathe, to taste the air. My nose twinged with an acrid scent, and my tongue sampled the charred flecks drifting on the breeze.
Fire. And death.
Protective instincts blaring, I charged through the bare trees, heavy body ripping through the spiny vines still green and clinging to life that strung between trunks. Their barbs did not find purchase through my thick fur as I barreled toward sure and present danger.
This was what I’d live for now. The idea of protecting my town, my woods, my friends from the dangers seeking to do harm. Tamping down the likening of the scent to that of the night that started all of this, I came upon the source of the stinging aroma and to a scene that didn’t make sense.
Pristine forest looked just like its surroundings if only less treed and with a slight depression. That was where the smell was coming from as though something burning had been buried and now smoldered beneath. As a bear, I could pick apart most different smells within. Leaves decaying slowly under a layer of the freshest brethren to have fallen from their branched homes. Twigs dropped and entombed beneath the loamy earth. Even the critters that lived or had died beneath.
But now, only the pervasive scent of heated, burning earth met my oversized nose. There was a tinge of something else, but I shook it off as nostalgia because of this location. The spot I’d taken Bianca for our date after she’d gotten off work one night.
That had to be why I thought I could smell her, here, now, buried under the overpowering stench that seemed a bit odd. Too much of a tangy, mineralistic scent I associated with rock.
That thought niggled at me again as I swiped a clawed paw through the top layer of dirt, moving aside the soil with ease. This depression was loosely packed as if unsettled recently, again giving credence to the idea that something had been buried below. Continuing to swipe, I noted the scent of Bianca increasing with the lessening of overfill. Heat scraped at me the further I dug, and that niggling thought rushed to the fore.
It was Bianca. Her… phoenix scent. The scent of rebirth.
No. Not again.
The thought was on loop as I dug deeper, panic beginning to make my efforts frantic. One paw barely had time to take my weight before I’d moved the other forward to scrape deeper. I had to reach her. She couldn’t be dead, not again.
Not again.
The scent changed from smoldering decay into a sharp bite of scorched flesh. The heat, now blasting me like a furnace, began to burn the pads of my oversized feet. Still, I shuffled around, trying to make the hole bigger so that I could move deeper. I worked in a frenzied spiral, body aching with the effort to continue into conditions I knew to be taking a toll on my body, let alone my mind.
Even if she had been reborn, if she stayed beneath the earth, buried as she was, she would only die again. Would the cycle continue forever if I couldn’t get to h
er?
I sure as hell was not prepared to find out.
Claws, which had been six-inch implements of razor-sharp death, rapidly shortened, blunting as the earth became further compacted the deeper I dug. Several feet down now, I stood, shoveling dirt and, more frequently, super-hot rocks from in front of me to… anywhere else. I had no plan other than getting Bianca out from within the earth, and I couldn’t think about what the heat was doing to my body. Not until she was safe.
I’d give anything to have Jason by my side. He’d understand my urgency and would try just as hard as I was to free our friend. But I was on patrol. In animal form. I had no phone handy, and if I bellowed, any one of the patrolling Sentinels would come rushing…
That would be my next challenge. If I couldn’t reach her, I’d have to risk it. But I knew that she didn’t want anyone who didn’t need to know about her curious lineage to be informed. I’d respect that wish. To a point.
Damn it! The heat was too much, literally blasting me back with its intensity now. But wait… we weren’t far from the forge. I’d bet the dwarfs had water readily available. It would be better if even one of them was on hand to call to for help. I hated to leave her, but it would be the fastest way for me to be able to continue.
I heaved myself out of the massive hole and began running toward the forge, shifting mid-stride. Running was a bit faster as a human, and agility was increased. Though I was used to being naked in the forest, sprinting with my dangly-bits flapping around freely was a new sensation. Another benefit of being human, besides being able to communicate with anyone I came across, was that it helped heal wounds. So while my hands and feet still ached like a mother, I didn’t feel the blisters that had formed from the extreme heat, and my claws would return to their former length and sharpness in my next shift.
On the homestretch, I figured shouting and making a ton of noise as I rummaged through the forge while looking for water, or anything to help retard the heat, would be quicker than detouring to the house in hopes a dwarf or two were present. They’d hear me and come running if they were. Hopefully, they’d even call for backup.
If they were home. It was very conceivable that they were all at the diner. I could only pray that today they weren’t. Bianca needed someone, and right now, the only someone was me. I couldn’t fail her.
I wouldn’t fail her.
CHAPTER 21
G ods, the agony! Being immobile, but aware and receptive to pain, seriously sucked. Why couldn’t this whole phoenix thing have come with a less tortuous method? I mean, was it absolutely necessary that I felt myself being restitched into the form I previously held? I got that this ability to come back from death was a remarkable one. One that any number of people would die to have.
Pun intended.
Many would even kill to possess it as I figured would be the case with the evil Mage who was responsible for my current fire-riddled state. The one before it as well, it turned out. I should have known. The only person in my life who’d tried to kill me was Circe. The coincidence of timing should have been obvious, but then, who would have thought?
I wanted to scream, to release the stockpile of lightning rebuilding me from the ashes of my former self, but my vocal cords still refused to work as did every other inch of me. Did that mean that I didn’t exist? Was I some spectral version of myself, floating in limbo near a non-existent body until my phoenix abilities rebuilt my corporeal form?
So many questions with no answers. No one I could ask, and I wasn’t sure I’d be down to die for research purposes. Mae might suggest something in that realm to record observable events and processes, but that would definitely be something I’d veto for sure.
I gasped. An actual inhale of breath as shock burst through my bubble of pain-induced wanderings. The fire receded slightly, a cooling sensation acting as a balm for my frayed psyche for only a moment before the heat ramped up again. Roiling along rebuilt nerves, it built to a new crescendo as if in answer to the attempt to cool it.
Back arching as my muscles seized, pushing against something hard at my sides as my muscles tensed and cramped of their own accord, I wondered where I was. What impeded me? I didn’t remember feeling anything last time.
Finally, my eyes obeyed, fluttering open to reveal… nothing. Blackness greeted me where I looked to the sky, or where I assumed the sky to be. Because I was lying down, right? Hopefully, I wasn’t faced down to boot. I mean wasn’t that like refusing a soul entry to the afterlife or something?
Another question for which I had no answer.
“C’mon, B, figure it out,” I growled at myself with vocal cords raw and scratchy from… regrowth? Whatever the technical reason, it was an uncomfortable sensation. At one time, I would have classified it as painful, but after what my body had just gone through, it was little more than a tickle. Same with the taking of air into newly formed lungs.
So I downgraded the feeling to that of “annoyance” and forced my stiff neck to rotate and my eyes to search for clues of my situation. Moving my arms and legs away from my body in any direction was only possible for about a foot of space; then I encountered that smooth casement. The barrier was warm to the touch but nothing I couldn’t handle.
Was that because my normal resistance to temperature had kicked in or because the substance was, in fact, cool.
Another unknowable question added to the suggestion box that overflowed my mind.
One thing was certain; I was trapped. Wherever I was, I couldn’t seem to get out by just getting up and walking away, and that knowledge bubbled in my consciousness until only one thought remained: I could die again.
Like the breaking of a dam, the rush of anxiety that one thought induced brought a torrent of reactionary movement. I pounded on the barrier with closed fists, heels, knees, and elbows. Anything I could reasonably use to break free. I accomplished nothing besides possibly breaking bones in my hands and feet from the rapid forceful impacts but exhausting my newly rebuilt self. My limited air supply depleted, my head began to spin, both figuratively and literally. A tormented scream raged from my ravaged lungs along with one last flurry of fists as my situation fully sunk in.
I choked on the rush of soot that invaded my body from my open mouth and panting nose, the thick substance like tar once it mingled with my snot, saliva, and the tears now streaming down my face.
Not only had I just died, but I was in real danger of doing it yet again. I needed to calm down, conserve my limited air, and keep the toxic ash from entering my body. A monumental struggle. My mind wanted to hide in a corner, to give in to the inevitability of the position I was in.
The situation Circe had put me in. I remembered now that I’d been dying. I couldn’t breathe. And she’d buried me. Buried me alive essentially.
Had I been fading already? Yes. But I hadn’t died before being swallowed by the earth, feeling the crushing weight of the dirt and rock as it enveloped me.
Breathing in earthy loam, choking on small pieces of chiseled rock, possibly from the dwarfs’ mining efforts, as it consumed me. Panicking then hadn’t saved me, and it wouldn’t do me any better now. But actually calming down was no easy task and my breath still sawed heavily in and out of my body, echoing back at me from my encasement.
Something caught my attention over the building buzz in my ears. I reined in the errant self-pity and fear that rushed from my eyes, nose, and mouth, creating paths I could physically feel in what I knew now to be ash. Whatever was happening, it was something other than my own repeated death that I could focus on, and I grabbed on with all the strength my aching body and mind could muster.
Voices. Someone, or many someones, were above me.
“I’m here! Help!” the exclamation burst from me without a second thought, and I paid the price as I coughed on the melting blanket of soot that invaded my mouth again as I thrashed. Another round of agonized coughing wracked my ravaged body as a result, burning through even more of my precious little air stores.
&nbs
p; Yelling wasn’t an option, but maybe tapping would be? If I kept the motion controlled, it shouldn’t take too much oxygen, right? A new worry crept into my mind; at what point did exhaled air become too much carbon dioxide to survive?
“Bianca! Can you hear me?”
A choked sob of relief escaped me at the sound of Nick’s sweet baritone. I hated that it was pitched with panic, but I couldn’t deny how relieved the sound made me.
“We’re almost there, Firebird. Hang on,” Tabbart, the smartest of my dwarfs called, determination clear in his voice.
They were coming for me. They would find me.
I wouldn’t die again, alone, wrapped in a rock coffin deep in the earth. Not today.
Clinks and scrapes met my ears as my rescuers dug deeper, deeper.
With a swipe of something that looked like a furry, razored rake, hope truly blossomed in my newly re-beating heart as a streak of bright sunlight broke through the darkness. I didn’t even care that the brightness about blinded my unaccustomed corneas. There was a literal light at the end of the tunnel.
I couldn’t hold back my renewed bout of fevered thrashing knowing escape was within my grasp, even if that grasp would be bloody and broken.
“Bianca! Thank the gods. No, wait, don’t head back down there, Nick.” I watched as Tabbart held a staying hand toward something I couldn’t see but figured it was Nick from his words. He was promptly rewarded with a roar that reverberated my encasement, the sound buffered only slightly by the barrier. “I thought you didn’t want anyone else to know what was happening, Bear. I suggest you put a lid on that decibel.”
I was with Teddy; Don’t stop! Get me the hell outta here!
My fists went for round three –or was it four?– on the now partially transparent confines, marring the pristine casing with streaks of blood and ash as I continued to batter the new skin on my hands. My breath heaved heavily from my lungs, claustrophobia again wracking my nerves.
