Twenty-Sided Sorceress 3 - Pack of Lies

by Annie Bellett

  I hated touching his memories. The last time I had, I had done so quickly, using Bernie’s knowledge to lock Sky Heart into his human form, preventing him from fleeing Not Afraid’s wrath. I had been so full of rage, my heart full of images of death, that delving into Bernie’s power inside me hadn’t fazed me then. It had barely registered. Yet in so doing, in using Bernie’s knowledge, I had brought about the death of my father. Or at least, the man I’d thought was my father.

  Bernie had been a serial killer. His psyche, and therefore his memories, were sick, full of things I didn’t want to see or experience, twisted experiments, a full spectrum of human suffering and death. A PowerPoint presentation in full sensory detail on how awful one being can treat another.

  But somewhere in that knowledge could be my answer. If Bernie could lock a shifter into animal shape, he could force a shift. He had laid a magical trap that had nearly forced my friends to turn on each other, had pushed them to shift. Somewhere in the hellish miasma of his memories, there might be a way to save Alek.

  I had to look.

  I slipped my hands around Alek’s limp fingers, closed my eyes, and sank down into my own mind.

  But the first memory that came wasn’t Bernie’s. It was my own.

  “Come on in, Jess, I won’t bite,” Ji-hoon says. He sits at his drafting table, pen in hand. There is ink on his lip where he chews the pen nub while inking.

  I slip into the room. I’m in trouble, I think. I lit a boy’s hair on fire with my mind. Pretty sure that was going to be the final straw. I don’t want to go back onto the street but at least I am a couple years older now. Stronger.

  “I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I lost control.”

  “That boy called you some pretty awful names?” Ji-hoon has his own kind of magic, like how he always knows things. I know that the school called him, so it isn’t really magic, but something in his face calms me. He’s not mad.

  It’s weird.

  “I know that is no excuse,” I say, trying to show how mature I am. How I can take responsibility for my actions.

  “The school can’t prove you did it, since all witnesses say you were standing ten feet away,” he says. “Relax.”

  “But I hurt someone.”

  “And you feel terrible about it, even though he was totally being an asshole. That’s good. The fire only burned his hair, from what the principal told me. So you stopped yourself, put it out, right?” He smiles at me and goes back to inking, putting clean black lines over his sketches, bringing the comic to life.

  “I did, but…I don’t feel good. I feel like a freak, like a bigger asshole than he was.” Now I’m a little mad. I want him to tell me I’m a bad person. This power inside me, it isn’t normal. I couldn’t be like my real family, and now I’m not like my new one, either. I’m a freak.

  “You don’t feel good because you are good,” Ji-hoon says. “Your magic is just magic, Jess. It is like lightning or the ocean. A part of the world. It can be harnessed and used for good or ill. But it just is. You choose. Today you chose to hurt. Now you know what that feels like. Tomorrow you can choose differently.”

  “My magic hurt him,” I say.

  “No,” he says. “You hurt him. Your magic is no more to blame for that than my pen is for creating this line.”

  The memory faded and I sank deeper, cursing at my subconscious. It hurt to see Ji-hoon, even in my memories. I had buried that family, hiding them so I wouldn’t dream, wouldn’t hurt. Parts of myself felt like they were waking up now. Parts I wasn’t sure I wanted to see again, things I didn’t want to feel.

  I shoved that away, too.

  Bernard Barnes. Ah. There he was. Brown, thinning hair. Watery blue eyes. Pudgy, pale body. His memories started to flood me but I scoured through them, burning away the images, the impressions. Setting fire to every crime, every murder, every pain perpetrated by his choices, his use of the power he gained. I faced the deaths in my memories and rejected them. Not my actions, not my choices. They had no power over me, no more than death on a TV screen would.

  I did not want those things, but I faced them unflinching. For Alek. For myself. What I was and who I was, as Ji-hoon had pointed out when I was way too young to listen, was up to me. My choices. Not Bernie’s, nor that boy who so long ago had looked at my brown skin and called me names.

  I faced the pain and suffering Bernie had wrought and set it alight in my mind. I sought only his knowledge, the bright core of what he had learned. I wanted the tool, not its wielder. Ji-hoon was right. Power was power.

  There, amidst the coals in my psyche, I found the knowledge I wanted. A ritual inscribed in an ancient book, a trap to set for men who could change their shape, forcing them from man to beast.

  I am a sorceress. I have no need of ritual to raise power. I had Bernie’s power, now scrubbed clean and joined with my own. Just power. Just magic. A tool, a means to whatever end I wanted.

  Balancing the scales, perhaps, a little more in favor of good. Not undoing what Bernie had done to gain such knowledge, not justifying it, but perhaps adding my own feather to the opposite side. Bernie had chosen to use the knowledge to bring death. I chose life.

  I swam up to consciousness with the bit of knowledge clutched in my mental fist like a pearl. Alek still breathed beside me, his heartbeat fainter now. I pressed my magic into my newfound knowledge, following the unfamiliar patterns and shapes of the ritual with my mind, painting a circle around us in golden light. Magic oozed from me, filling each line as I drew it.

  “Alek,” I whispered, pouring my will into the circle. “Be a tiger.”

  Then the circle snapped into place and the hand I held became a paw, too big for my hands to encompass. The man struggling to live beside me became a huge white tiger, his body shoving aside the desk with his weight.

  His heart steadied. His breathing evened out. He slept.

  Levi and Vivian must have heard me shout with joy as I let the circle fade away. I didn’t know what words were coming from my mouth, which languages I spoke to them in. I clung to his paw and rubbed my cheek on his rough fur.

  Vivian checked his vitals, drawing blood. She left, but after a few minutes she returned, her face full of awe. When she looked at me, there was a shadow of fear in her eyes. “His body is untainted by poison. He will sleep for a while, I think, while his other self fights the poison, but I think he is strong enough to purge it. The twilight is a powerful place.”

  “Twilight?” I said.

  “Nothing to do with the book,” Levi said as he knelt beside me, touching Alek’s fur as though to reassure himself that the tiger was real. “It’s what some of us call the place where our non-physical self lives. Ezee calls it the Cave, after Plato’s work.”

  His dark eyes met mine, and I was relieved to see no fear in them. Of course, he had known for months what I was. Vivian, not so much. I had a feeling my days of living anonymously as just another low-power witch in a town full of supernaturals were about to be a distant memory after the events of this weekend.

  That would be a bridge I’d fireball when I came to it.

  “Can we move him?” I asked.

  “It’s safe to move him,” Vivian said with a wan smile. “But I am not sure we are physically capable of getting him out of here.”

  “I’d like to try,” I said. “I’d rather have him at the Henhouse than here. You, too, Vivian. If Eva figures out he didn’t die in the quarry, she might come here.”

  “Eva? The other Justice?” Vivian looked like she might faint. Her face got splotchy and she took a couple of deep breaths.

  In my rage and pain I’d forgotten to mention who had shot and poisoned him, and apparently Levi hadn’t mentioned it either. Oops.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’m pretty sure she’s the one killing people and framing wolves. I think she wants the Peace to fall apart. Just wish I knew why.”

  None of us had answers for that, alas. Yet.

  Levi called Ezee and Max. Turned out that
three gamers who all played Tetris could figure how to move a tiger out of a small room and into a truck. The whole four people with preternatural strength thing helped, of course. We only had to remove two doors to do it.

  I rode in the back with Alek, my cheek pressed to his chest, listening to his heart. In my own heart, the joy of knowing he would survive was fading. In its place rage simmered. White heat flowed through my veins, my magic responding to my mood.

  As soon as I was sure Alek would live, as soon as he was okay, I was going to balance the scales another way. I was going to find Eva, and this time, I was going to choose murder.

  Using a lot of shifter strength and a heavy-duty canvas tarp, we managed to get Alek into the Henhouse and onto a makeshift pallet of quilts in the formal living room. I hovered as they moved him, not wanting him out of my sight. He breathed easily, his heart steady when I pressed my face against his chest.

  “He’ll live, I promise,” Vivian said to me. The awe was still in her eyes.

  “I know,” I said, still pressed against his fur.

  Everyone crowded into the living room, asking questions in low voices. Rosie shushed them and handed me a warm washcloth. She was wise enough to realize I wasn’t going to leave Alek’s side until he woke up, until I heard from his own lips that he was going to survive. I must have looked a mess. My shirt was stained with Alek’s blood and covered in long white tiger hairs. My hands had blood under the nails and streaks of dust and dirt going up my arms. I couldn’t imagine what my face looked like. Or my hair.

  “Eva did this,” I said as I handed back a much grimier washcloth to Rosie with a nod of thanks.

  “The Justice?” Rosie asked. The others echoed her, their faces full of disbelief.

  “I believer her,” Max said. He looked at me with unhappy eyes.

  “I, too, believe her,” Harper said. She came into the room, a quilt wrapped around her. Her normally pale face was even whiter, but she moved easily and without evidence of pain. “I heard Liam’s message. Max and I listened to it after you left.”

  “She is a Justice,” Junebug said. “How could she kill like that? Attack another Justice?”

  “It’s worse than that,” I said and I told them everything. About the Lansings, about the poison, the set-up with Dorrie’s body.

  Stunned silence followed my story.

  “But, the Council—” Ezee started to say.

  “Fuck the Council,” Levi said. “They pick and choose. You know that, Ezekiel. Where were they, where were their Justices when we needed them? When Mama needed them?”

  “Levi,” Junebug and Ezee both cried out, looking at him.

  Levi’s eyes were shiny with pain and unshed tears. “I’m sorry,” he said as he took a deep breath. “I…this situation, it’s too hard. But I believe Jade. The Justices are not infallible, the Council is not infallible, and I think it will only get more of us hurt to continue believing such things.”

  “All right,” Rosie said softly. “If this Eva woman is corrupt, why is she doing this? Why now?”

  “I have a guess,” Vivian said. She was curled on the overstuffed couch, her legs tucked up against her chest, her arms wrapped around them. “You are all too young to remember how it was before the Peace. You are not wolves. You do not understand. I was a child then, but it was still dangerous to be without pack. My mother moved us around, unwelcome because she was an alpha, but she had no desire to run a pack. An unmarried woman, traveling with a small child, was crazy in those days. There was little work, and I won’t speak of the work she could get. We were always in danger. From other wolves. From humans.”

  She paused and looked down at Alek’s huge, slumbering form. “There was too much fighting among wolves; too many alphas and not enough pack. Stories started being told around human campfires, in human brothers and taverns, of wolves the size of ponies, of men who changed shape and howled at the moon. Men were dying. Men disappearing. Then the Council of Nine sent their Justices to America and the shifters of the new world learned the power of the Council. They learned to fear. Back then a Justice only showed up when someone was slated to die—they were executioners as much as judges, killers as much as protectors.”

  I brushed my hand over Alek’s fur. He couldn’t hear this story, lost as he was in healing sleep, but I knew he would agree with Vivian. He would be thinking that the Justices were killers still. I recalled his face, his eyes piercing and earnest as he told me that this is who he was, what he was.

  “Eva was one of those Justices,” I said. Alek had told me as much.

  “Yes. She put down the bloodiest of the packs, killed their alphas as examples of what the Council would do. She formed her own pack, a group of bloody hunters she called her Hands of Justice. If it hadn’t been for Wulf, who knows how long the killings would have gone on. My mother and I lived on the edge of Wulf’s territory by that time. He gathered alpha wolves from all over the new territories and the original States, and they pledged in blood on the sword of his father to keep the Peace, to allow wolves to live within their territory, to allow alphas to be pack brothers and sisters. Because all territory would be his territory. All alphas subservient to the alpha of alphas. He fought and defeated all challengers for weeks, until they had submitted, until they had signed.”

  “What about the Bitteroot pack?” I asked, thinking of what the wolves had said as we’d stood by Liam’s body.

  Vivian shook her head. “Aurelio, who is called Softpaw now, refused to sign. He refused to challenge Wulf as well. Instead he left, taking his pack. They live as wolves. Perhaps they thought the Peace a concern for those of us who walk on two legs.”

  “And Eva?” Harper asked.

  “She was one of three Justices who witnessed the Peace. My mother told me a Justice tried to challenge Wulf, but that she was sent away by the other two. I had never met Eva before yesterday, but the story fits together now.”

  Furniture creaked as everyone settled back, and a chorus of held breaths released sighed around the living room.

  “So she wants to be the alpha of alphas?” I speculated.

  “Or she wants more chaos, for the wolf packs to fight again, so that she can bring her own version of justice down,” Levi said.

  “I guess that fits with what Alek said about her,” I said. “He said she liked to execute first and ask questions never.” It fit somewhat too with the whole “trying to set up wolves to look like killers of the humans in Wylde.” A massive wolf hunt and lots of human attention would cause huge risk to the shifter population and to their secrecy. The Council would send a Justice. Eva clearly believed it would be her.

  I just wanted to know how the Council hadn’t seen this coming. If they were really some kind of gods, why wasn’t there an army of Justices here to stop Eva? Why only Alek, and why hadn’t they warned him?

  “What are we going to do?” Ezee asked.

  “We? Nothing,” I said firmly. “I’m going to wait until Alek wakes up, then I’m going to go kill me a wolf bitch.”

  “But she’s a Justice,” Junebug said.

  “She’s evil,” I said. Didn’t get much more evil in my book than murdering a family, killing and framing an innocent woman, and then killing anyone who got in your way. Oh, and the fact that she shot and poisoned my lover was like the deserves-to-die-horribly cherry topping on a giant I-will-smite-you sundae.

  “But the Council—what if they come after you? She is still a Justice,” Harper said.

  “Fuck the Council,” I said, smiling grimly at Levi as he nodded. “What’s one more thing trying to fuck up my life, right?”

  “We have to warn the alphas. At least call Sheriff Lee and whoever is in charge at the Den now.” Max had his phone out.

  “Freyda,” I said, remembering Liam’s sister. She had seemed smart and steady. I just hoped she would believe us. “Will they believe us?”

  “I don’t know, but warning can’t hurt,” Ezee said. He pulled out his phone as well.

 
“Straight to voicemail at the Den,” Max said. “Says they are closed this week and to leave a message.”

  Vivian got up and retrieved her coat, getting her own phone out. She tried calling Henry, then Freyda directly. Every call went to voicemail.

  “Sheriff Lee is busy,” Ezee said. “So dispatch tells me. They said if it is an emergency to call nine-one-one.”

  “No,” I said. “That would get humans responding; too many problems with that.”

  “They are holding vigil tonight,” Vivian said. “They will inter Wulf’s body at dawn in the Great Hall. Then the challenges will start and go until there is only one alpha. It was likely to have been Liam. I am not sure who is likely now. At moonrise they will pledge their blood to the sword and reaffirm the Peace.”

  “So we’ve got until dawn or maybe later even before things get really hoary,” I said. “Will Alek wake up by then?” Please, Universe, let him wake up by then.

  “He might,” Vivian said. She stared at her phone and then sighed, shutting it off.

  I realized everyone was looking at me, waiting. I felt like the game master of my own life suddenly, caught without the notes or my dice, woefully unprepared. I didn’t even know what system we were playing.

  “You all have seen the evidence for yourselves and yet find it hard to believe Eva could do these things. If we try to go warn them tonight, we’ll be outsiders, interrupting and accusing a Justice with no way to prove what we’re saying,” I said, thinking aloud. “We need Alek. I don’t see a way to salvage the Peace and stop Eva without him.” I wanted to go after her myself, as soon as possible, but I knew that just killing her would make things worse for my friends, for Alek. For a lot of shifters, probably.

  It wasn’t what Alek would want. Balancing the scales. Killing, but only to save as many lives as possible.

  “We stay here, we stay alert, and we wait for Alek to wake,” I said. It was something like a plan, at least. “At dawn we will go and try to warn the wolves and stop Eva.”