by Vivian Wood
“Funny,” Gabriel muttered. He focused on the spell, preparing each ingredient just so, according to the dusty tome he’d filched from a locked cabinet in Old Wilhem’s private study. Gabriel knew that his teacher would have something to say about the theft, but surely Gabriel would make him see that endless wealth would benefit Old Wilhelm as much as it would Gabriel and Caroline.
After mixing everything else in the crystal bowl, Gabriel sprinkled in a few hairs from his own bear form. The instructions said that he needed to inform the spell of his sacrifice, and that the sacrifice must be a truly treasured thing. After much contemplation, Gabriel had decided to give up his bear, his ability to shift. He didn’t have much in this world, but his ability to shift was unusual and something he loved deeply. He reasoned that with his wealth, he’d be able to afford to study more magick, thus lessening his need for protection from his bear. It would be a difficult sacrifice, but he’d learn to live with it.
“Now for the last bit. I’m afraid you’ll need to prick your finger,” he told Caroline apologetically.
Caroline pulled a face and took the ceremonial blade, slicing her fingertip and letting a few precious drops of blood fall into the bowl. Gabriel did the same, eager to begin the summoning.
“Step into the other room, Carro. I’m going to summon a spirit, and I don’t want to take any chances.”
Rising, Caroline dropped a hand on his shoulder, looking down at him with a soft smile.
“You know, I won’t be mad if it don’t work,” Caroline said. “I like me life, as long as yer in it.”
“I know,” Gabriel said, patting her hand. “But it’s going to work. I can feel it.”
“I’ll leave you to it, then,” Caroline said, heading into the back room and closing the thin door behind her.
Gabriel set the spell book out next to the bowl, easy to read from. He picked up the wand and closed his eyes, focusing on the intent of his spell for several long moments. His mind swam with images of him and Carro living the good life, never having a moment’s trouble again. Never wondering where their next meal would come from, to be certain.
Opening his eyes, he slowly recited the incantation, taking special care to enunciate each syllable. It wouldn’t do to get sloppy at this late stage, not when he was moments away from getting his heart’s every desire. On the last word, he tapped the wand against the bowl, producing a clear tone. The sound hung in the air, then began to grow louder and louder, making the bowl vibrate until it shook the table. Gabriel swallowed hard when the ground beneath him trembled, the walls rattled, the whole world seemed ready to shatter.
“Azrel, I summon thee!” Gabriel cried.
All at once the sound stopped, and Gabriel felt as though the very air was sucked from the room. He tried to breathe, his eyes growing wide as smoke poured from the crystal bowl, creeping up and out to form a broad, flat circle. When he looked down into the circle, he saw a pair of golden, glowing eyes peering back at him.
“You s-s-summon Azrel?” the creature whispered, fire flaring bright in the disembodied eyes.
“I summon thee,” Gabriel said, clearing his throat.
Azrel seemed to consider it, then spoke again.
“Your wish, little s-s-sorcerer?” the creature asked.
“Wealth. Gold, jewels, currency, property. The more I spend, the more I’ll have. My pockets will never empty. Never-ending wealth,” Gabriel whispered, a dark current of greed gushing in his heart. “And immortality.”
The creature gazed back at him for several long moments.
“Done.”
Thank you, was on the tip of Gabriel’s tongue, but he stopped himself. Old Wilhelm once told him that thanking some creatures created a debt in their minds, and Gabriel wanted nothing less than to owe a creature like Azrel, whatever he might be.
Azrel disappeared from the cloud, the smoke filtering up to the ceiling. Quick as he could, Gabriel fumbled in his satchel for his purse. A few coins tumbled inside, but it was mostly empty. Gabriel frowned, now unsure whether the spell had worked as intended.
He thought back to what he’d asked Azrel. The more I spend, the more I’ll have. He pulled one of the coins out of his purse and rushed outside, looking down onto the street. A young girl, no more than five years at most, stood below selling flowers.
“Girl! A flower, if you please,” Gabriel called.
She looked up at Gabriel with a suspicious frown, but when she saw his coin a gap-toothed grin bloomed on her face.
“Tulips,” she said, throwing a yellow flower up to Gabriel. He tossed the coin down, dismissing her squeal of pleasure. He went back inside and picked up his purse, a delighted cry escaping his lips when he found it half full of coins.
“Carro! Caroline!” he called, sweeping the door open to tell his sister. “It’s worked! It’s work—”
Caroline lay on the bed, motionless.
“Carro, really. I was only a few minutes at most,” he sighed.
Stepping over to his sister, he reached out to shake her awake. The second his palm met the skin of his shoulder, a chill went through him. She was cold as ice.
“Carro. Carro, wake up, darling,” Gabriel said, more urgent now.
Nothing.
“Carro! You have to wake up! I’ve done the spell!” he shouted, grabbing her by both shoulders and shaking her hard.
Something clicked in the back of his mind. The spell. The droplets of Caroline’s blood…
“No! No!” he shrieked.
“What’s all this?”
Gabriel whirled to find Thomas in the doorway, staring at Caroline’s unmoving body.
“Thomas, she’s cold,” Gabriel gasped, his tongue thick.
“What did you do to my girl?” Thomas howled, furious.
“I didn’t—” Gabriel started, but Thomas wasn’t listening.
“You killed my girl, you bastard!” Thomas’s skin rippled, signaling his intention to shift. Gabriel sucked in a breath. He was sturdy enough, but Thomas was a real brawler. He’d crucify Gabriel in a fight, especially in bear form.
In a fit of desperation, Gabriel picked up his coin purse from where he’d dropped it on the bed and flung it at Thomas, making the man flinch. Gabriel took advantage of his distraction and pushed past him, running out of the flat. The air against his face made him realize that tears were streaming down his face, and he wiped at his cheeks as he flung the front door open.
The second he stepped out of the flat, he stopped dead. There was no outdoor walkway. No little girl selling flowers. No street, in fact. When he turned to look back at Thomas, there was no Thomas, no house. Nothing at all. The world was blank, pure white, like being inside a cloud.
“Azrel?” Gabriel ventured, looking around.
“No such luck.”
Gabriel turned to find a beautiful, dark-skinned woman in a flowing white dress. She watched him with what appeared to be mirth, and Gabriel swiped at his cheeks once more.
“Who are you?” he demanded to know. “Do you work for Azrel?”
“A demon? I should think not,” the woman said. Looking affronted, she pulled herself up to her full height, which was probably only a little over five feet in total. “I am Mere Marie, but you will call me Mistress.”
Gabriel stared at her in shock.
“Why would I do that?” he asked.
“Because I’m going to help you,” she said with an impatient glare. “If you go back to that world, you’ll hang for your sister’s death.”
Gabriel’s mouth opened, then closed again.
“You can save my sister?” he asked, his heart beginning to thrum in his chest.
“For a short time longer, yes. She hasn’t crossed the Veil yet,” the woman said. Her eyes were a bright brown with an orange tint, almost like bronze or copper, and they flashed with sign of her rising temper.
Wary from his earlier experience with Azrel’s help, Gabriel pressed her for details.
“What do you get in return?”
he asked.
“Your wealth, as much as I want.”
“Done,” he agreed instantly. He had infinite wealth, so that posed no challenge.
“There is more.”
Of course there was. Gabriel bit his lip and gestured for her to continue.
“Your service, in my homeland. Far, far away from here,” she finished.
That didn’t sound too harsh.
“For how long?”
“Until I release you,” was all she would say. “A very long time, I should think.”
“But my sister will live?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Will I be able to send her things? Money?”
Mere Marie cocked her head, considering.
“I will make sure your Caroline is well cared for,” she said.
“I want her husband gone, too. I want her to find a nicer husband,” Gabriel said quickly.
The woman’s lips twitched, but the expression struck Gabriel as bitter.
“That I cannot do. I could kill the man, but I cannot make her love another. You should know that, sorcerer.”
Sorcerer. It was the second time today he’d been labeled as such, and the word turned his stomach to lead.
“Don’t call me that,” he hissed.
Mere Marie shrugged.
“You practice the magic, you’ve taken a life… That makes you one,” she said simply.
Gabriel sucked in a deep breath. There was no time to argue, not if Cassie’s life might be saved.
“Fine. I agree to your terms,” he said.
Mere Marie plucked a book and a silver pen from the air. She opened the book to a page that said:
He scanned the bottom text briefly, noticing that there were a few other benefits for him, including immortality. At the moment, he couldn’t care less, but he knew he’d appreciate that fact later. The pen touched the page, and he moaned aloud, nearly dropping the pen. Except the pen wouldn’t move, and he couldn’t release it from his fingers.
“What in Hades?” he asked Mere Marie.
“Finish it quickly,” she ordered. “Think of your sister!”
Gabriel signed his name, a gleaming flourish of red that he believed to be his lifeblood.
“That’s it, then. Save Caroline,” he said.
“Mistress,” Mere Marie prompted. “Address me correctly, and say please.”
“Save my sister, please… Mistress,” Gabriel asked.
Mere Marie took the book and the pen back, vanishing them back into the nothingness from whence they came. Then she brought her hands together in a thunderous clap, and Gabriel knew no more.
4
Chapter Four
Aeric
West Norway - 1052
Aeric Drekkon lurched forward in the darkened woods, clutching the wound on his right side. The deep gash throbbed, and Aeric could distinctly feel blood seeping from it, his life force slipping through his fingers. He tried to move as silently as possible, tried to keep his breathing quiet enough to discern the whereabouts of his pursuers. He was getting lightheaded from blood loss now, bleeding from his side and several smaller wounds to his upper back and chest as well. If the humans that chased him somehow got in front of him and cut off his path, all was surely lost.
Aeric glanced up at the night sky, wishing the moon was a bit brighter tonight. Then again, he had better night vision than they did. All of his kind saw fairly well in the dark, as would he if his blood pressure wasn’t dropping like a pebble down a cliff. The lack of blood was also the only thing that was keeping him from shifting and truly taking off, outrunning and outgunning the humans a thousand fold.
He checked the constellations, and knew that he was close to a series of deep cave tunnels that he’d taken shelter in many times before. This area was far north of his home, but within the boundaries of what he considered his territory, so he visited this cave several times per year as he traveled and patrolled.
He heard a faint rustle behind him, maybe a quarter of a mile back, and used the last reserves of his energy to push himself into a trot. Soon the familiar formation of rocks appeared, looking like nothing so much as a scattering of boulders. Aeric had originally found the caves by complete accident, literally falling into one as he explored the boulders.
He almost recreated the scene when he stumbled over the cave’s entrance, which was camouflaged by a thin covering of leaves and debris. He carefully toed away enough of the covering to make room for his bulky form, then bit his lip and maneuvered himself down and into the shaft that led into the caves. Not a moment too soon, either, because the second he finished covering the entrance and retreating down a few meters, he heard the humans approaching, smelled the smoke from their torches.
“—don’t see his trail. It ends here, Lars,” came a man’s voice.
Aeric grit his teeth, wishing to Valhalla that he was well enough to emerge from his hiding place and annihilate Lars Dorssen. No one attacked one as old and powerful as Aeric without retribution, but at the present moment Aeric was too busy holding his own guts in to move, much less mete out what Dorssen deserved.
“Keep looking. We cannot let the monster roam free, attacking women.”
Aeric repressed a snarl at the last. This whole situation could have been prevented if he’d only let Dorssen’s very beautiful young sister Ana be harmed. Aeric was merely passing through their small village, a regular stop on the circuit he took to surveil his domain. He left the tavern he favored, intent on finding a warm bed for the night, preferably with a lovely and willing maiden in it; instead he’d found Ana, roughly pinned to the wall by a malicious townsman while three others watched her assault.
Aeric was many things, some of them dark and ugly, but rape was not allowable in his world. In a flash of foolishness, he’d shifted into his bear form and driven the men off. He’d thought himself safe since only Ana saw him shift, saw his human form and face, but alas. She’d run straight to her idiot brother Lars, telling stories not of her near-rape, but instead of a monstrous bear-man who’d tried to rip out her tender throat.
He wouldn’t wish that kind of assault on any woman, but knowing what he did now, he should have left her to her own devices. Peeling his sticky fingers away, Aeric checked out his wound once more. To be fair, pretty blonde Ana couldn’t have known that her beastly brother possessed a very special dagger, spelled with a particularly nasty curse that kept the wounds inflicted from healing. Any other knife wound would have long since healed, leaving Aeric to his vengeance.
The voices overhead moved away, and Aeric scrambled down into the tunnel, paying mind to take the right turns. His efforts were repaid when he came into a large, flat cavern with several small chests on the far side. He dragged himself over to the trunks and knelt to open two of them, producing several flasks of water, some preserved meat and bread, and a soft feather pallet. Sadly, he had nothing to counteract the cursed wound, but at least he could be comfortable while he bled to death rather than being chased down like a rabid dog.
He stretched out on the pallet and drank some of the water, trying to stay awake. His attempts must have failed, because he started from a light doze at a peculiar sound. Footsteps?
Prying his eyes open, he stared up at a figure that seemed more mythological than he himself. The whole world faded around him, leaving a wash of white and a solitary figure.
The figure was a woman with skin like he’d never seen in all his days, shiny and smooth and brown as a bear’s pelt. Her hair was darker than the night sky, gleaming and neatly coiled around her head. Her eyes were the color of the sunset, an orange tinged with red, fiery as metal in a forge. She was swathed in a beautiful but white gown. Her garment, her regal bearing, and her fierce expression all put Aeric in mind of depictions of Athena. An image of the brazen goddess flashed in Aeric’s mind, a snippet of memory from long before he’d come to settle in Norway. A different time, a different people…
“Do we go to Olympus, then?” he asked, amused.
The woman put her hands on her hips and gave him a hard stare. Perhaps she was more Hera than Athena, then.
“You’re not making sense,” she told him matter-of-factly.
“I assumed I would go to Valhalla, but judging by your mode of dress,” Aeric said, flapping a hand at her, “I am, instead, in Olympus.”
She tsked and shook her head, looking downright annoyed. Aeric thought her annoyance rather rude, as she’d come in and interrupted his dying moments, after all.
“You’re not dying,” she told him, her voice ripe with disdain.
Aeric turned his head to the side and eyed the not-unimpressive pool of blood escaping Aeric’s body.
“I beg to differ.”
“No, that’s not—” The woman paused, growing flustered. “You’re not going to die. You’re coming with me instead.”
“Am I?” Aeric asked, resting his head on the ground once more and straining to keep his eyes open.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” the woman muttered.
She moved to his side and knelt, which made Aeric’s lips curve upward.
“Are you going to carry me, my lady?”
“No, but in order to save you, I need you to swear fealty to me. And for that, I require a signature,” she said, watching him closely. When Aeric didn’t react, she seemed perplexed.
“As you wish…” he stopped, not knowing her name.
“Mistress,” she supplied.
Aeric meant to shrug, but he was simply too tired.
“Do you care what the terms are?” she asked.
“Will it take my ability to shift?” he asked. “Or my immortality?”
“No,” she said.
“Then I care not, my lady.”
“Let us hasten,” she said, sounding concerned.
Aeric’s eyes drifted closed, and he felt her hand on his. She put a piece of metal between his fingers, shaped his hand to hold it. He heard the rustle of paper, felt a fresh surge of pain, this time centered in his chest rather than his side.
