by Charlie Hart
“No,” Lark says. “Not when we don’t know the risk.”
“Don’t you see?” Vaughn asks. “You are worth the risk.”
Lark shakes her head. “I don’t want anyone else dead because of me. And I don’t know what will happen when I put this ring on and leave it there.”
I lock eyes with her. “We don’t either. But let’s find the answers together.”
Tears stream across Lark’s face. “All for one?”
I nod. “One for all.”
Lark holds out her hand and slips the ring on her finger. Our eyes focus on her finger, waiting.
Then, the lightning strikes.
24
Lark
Though my heart is broken into a thousand pieces, right now, I can’t think about that. Right now, all I can think about is the flash of lightning above us that pierces through the blue sky, hitting the pavement so close to us we can feel the heat.
“No, no, no. I knew this would happen.” I shake my head looking at the men who have so honorably stood by my side.
But it’s too much. They need to leave while they still can.
I couldn’t save my sister. I didn’t save my mother. But I can save them.
“Listen to me, you have to go,” I say, not mincing my words.
They don’t listen. They shake their head. “No. You’re coming with us,” Brecken says. There’s no question in his voice. It is a command.
And before I can decide on my own, the men move–fast–in a swirl of magic and light. They dip their heads and spread their arms and then they have shifted before my very eyes.
Gone are the chiseled jaws and rugged brawn of the men I gave my virginity to. Instead, above me are five hawks in all their majestic glory.
And instead of flying away without me, two of them wrap their claws around my wrists and lift me from the ground.
I look around wildly, wondering if anyone is watching this, but no one is here. They would think they were dreaming anyway. I have no choice but to give in because instead of leaving me behind, they fly toward the sky
“You guys,” I shout. “Let me...” Go? Down? What would be the appropriate response right now?
I realize with a start, as my feet hover above the ground, that I don’t want them to let me go. I want to stay with them for as long as they’ll let me.
These are the hawks that have been sitting outside my window. The hawks I’ve fallen in love with. The hawks who hold me in their hearts and under their wings. But now the world seems to pause, letting me look at them more closely.
I take in their handsome eyes and the regal wings. They are massive and powerful, and they are more than men.
Then, just as they begin to flap their wings and take flight, I find my body shifting too.
It doesn’t make sense, of course, but none of this does. One moment I’m Lark, the next time a literal lark. A bird. My plumage is streaked brown, body marked in white. I have a beak and claws.
My heart beats the same but I’m no longer the woman I once was. The hawks look at me with awe, and they let go as I spread my wings as if it is the very thing I was born to do.
“It’s impossible,” I say, realizing my words are nothing but chirps and calls.
The hawks circle me, watching me so intently that I lower my face, nervous suddenly, to be seen like this.
Like them.
“No, it is possible,” Arrow tells me. And I realize his caws make sense in my ears. His sounds match the thrumming in my heart. He may be a hawk and I may have shifted into a lark, but we are the same species.
“No, it’s impossible,” I repeat.
It’s not real, to be able to shift from a woman to a bird in the blink of an eye. Just slip on a ring and draw a lightning storm. To have a mother who was here and now is not.
“This isn’t a dream,” Sawyer tells me, flying by my side. “Look below you. You are flying, Lark.”
I blink back tears, wanting to know how this is happening. Why this is happening.
I wanted answers and maybe I’m finally getting some.
Is this what I did the day Tennyson died? Put on this ring and drew a source of power from the sky, killing her?
Part of me wants to fly somewhere safe, take shelter somewhere far away. But another part of me wants to fly straight into the eye of the storm.
“How is this happening?” I ask again. I look down, truly having a bird’s-eye view of Las Vegas. The bright lights of the casino seem larger-than-life, and the billboard that shows me flying seems like another world. And it is. Especially now that I’m a fraction of my regular size.
“We don’t know,” Arrow tells me. “But we don’t have to know.”
“The storm is coming for us,” North says. We look ahead, and the lightning splinters across the barren desert. Massive daggers breaking through the sky.
I’m terrified, but also exhilarated. Feeling free for the first time in forever. Yes, I can fly across the stage for a few moments at a time, but this isn’t flying.
This is soaring. This is what I was made to do.
“There, up ahead, an eagle,” Brecken calls. “And he is... oh, shit. The lightning. It’s coming from him.” Brecken dips his body down in such a sexy, fluid motion my breath catches. The breadth of his wings is majestic, and I am in awe to be flying – actually flying – with my hawks.
Who are these men and why are they here for me?
Together, we follow Brecken’s lead, and I move faster toward the eagle. Suddenly, my heart pounds with adrenaline.
I must see the eagle. Look into his eyes.
He is a massive force to be reckoned with and he is the source of the lightning.
He is my enemy.
I gasp, watching he shoots lightning from his talons: it’s electric and magnificent.
“Turn back, Lark,” Vaughn screams, but I don’t listen.
Maybe the idea of an eagle being the lightning source is scary to my men, but it isn’t scary to me. This eagle came looking for me. I put on the ring and it attacked.
Twice.
He knows about my connection to my mother my sister.
My heart breaks all over again as a new truth hits me.
Mom covered me in so many spells last night to keep me safe. She said she cloaked me in herself. Switched places with my energy.
I was the one who should have died–not her. This eagle had been coming for me, not her.
It’s my fault she is dead.
And it’s my fault my sister is dead.
The madness will only end if I do something to try and stop it.
“What are you?” I scream. “Who are you?”
He answers by showering the sky with lightning. We watch the lightning hit the ground, the desert cracking with each strike, the air smelling of burned ozone.
“He’s gonna start a fire,” Arrow warns. “We’ve got to get Lark somewhere safe.”
“It doesn’t matter. I’m not going anywhere,” I tell him.
“Besides,” North says. “It’s too late. The fire has already begun.”
I keep flying toward the eagle, desperate to get a closer look.
“Who are you?” I scream. “Oh, God,” I shout, looking at the ground beneath me. It’s become a blazing red furnace.
The lightning has struck the dry desert and the fire is building.
We’ve flown far from the city proper, and the desert lands out here are undeveloped. It’s a relief, but this eagle is relentless, he keeps swooping toward me, trying to get me. But it’s like I have a source of protection around me, keeping me safe.
Protection.
My hawks.
They are here, looking out for me. Maybe Gaia is real, giving them power to watch over me in my most vulnerable moments. They seem to envelop me and keep me from the eagle’s attacks.
In the distance, figures emerge. “Look,” Vaughn shouts. “Below.”
We fly faster and I strain to reach the eagle, but he keeps whipping around in ci
rcles above me, unable to come close enough to hurt us.
“Look,” Vaughn says again. “They’re running straight to the fire.”
“What is it?” I ask.
“I think it’s wolves?” Sawyer says.
The wolves run quickly toward the flickering flames that are growing around us. As the wolves near the fire, they stop running, and as we flap our wings, we watch as they change form, shifting from wolf to man, wolf to woman.
“What’s happening?” I ask, my body trembling, fighting to understand.
“Shifters,” North explains quickly. “Look,” he shouts. “She’s stopping the fire with her hands,” he says.
He’s right, the woman below is somehow harnessing strength, some channel of energy, and pushing out the fire. Pushing into a ball, and rolling it up in the sky, hurtling toward the eagle.
As the fire rolls toward him, a massive wind rises from the east, forcing the Eagle up, up, and away. Away from the fireball that has now dissipated into the ether.
“What’s happening?” I ask, flying above the wolf shifters and noticing the woman’s bright red hair and her eyes, which are lifted to the sky. She watches us with intensity. It’s as if her eyes are locked on mine.
“Is this how weather always works?” I ask my hawks.
“No, it’s not how the weather works,” Vaughn says. “It’s how Gaia works.”
The violent wind swirls in the sky, and the eagle is separated from us, unable to come any closer.
“Gaia is doing this?”
The hawks nod, circling me. The wind is familiar; I’ve felt this before.
My memory from the past returns to the day Tennyson died. The wind breaking through the sky, scooping up her lifeless body from the grass, carrying her away.
Where did Gaia take her?
“Do you want to go talk to them?” Brecken asks.
“Talk to who?”
“Whatever those people are,” Sawyer says.
“No,” I shout. “I don’t. I just want to go home.” Already the sorrow is returning. Flying may be a thrill, but it doesn’t get me any closer to the truth. Any closer to understanding the connection I have with the eagle.
An eagle that has already taken the one thing I love.
My mother.
I need to go home, to sleep in my mother’s bed; to crawl under her sheets that smell of lavender and clary sage. I should never have put on this stupid ring. I should have followed mom’s rules all along.
Never, ever go outside during a storm.
I stopped listening. And now she is dead.
My heart is broken. There are no tea leaves to read and even if there were, there is no witch to read them.
There is no comfort to find in family when you don’t have one.
I fly home with my hawks, knowing they are not my flesh and blood.
And realizing, with a pang, neither was my mother.
25
Brecken
I always knew Lark was special, set apart from other women in a way I couldn’t pinpoint. I thought it was because her graceful movements on stage remind me of my own body. How I move, how I fly, but now I see it’s so much more than that.
She soars across the pale pink sky. The sun is just beginning to set over the desert and she looks so graceful, fragile, and beautiful with the pastel hues behind her. I feel my heart expand as I watch her fly for the first time. I know my hawk brothers sense it too.
Right now, it isn’t about how sexy she looks in a leotard or the way her body opened up to us when we made love. It’s not the physical lust that we feel for her that makes our hearts beat hard, our chests ache.
Right now, in this moment, it isn’t about sexual desire or chemistry.
Right now, as we watch her, flanking her as we fly toward home, what I feel is love.
How do you love the woman you barely know?
I can’t answer that, but I do. Maybe love isn’t something that has to be built over a lifetime. Maybe it’s something that either is or isn’t.
This is.
This is love.
I don’t know everything about Lark, but the truth is, she doesn’t know either. Who her parents are or why she can fly and why a ring on her finger makes her magic.
But it does, and I do and maybe that is enough.
There are crazier things in this world than falling in love with a bird.
I don’t want anyone to press me on what those things are at the moment, but I know there is scarier and crazier shit than falling in love with a woman who makes you believe in the impossible.
Who shows you the impossible is possible.
Here we are and here she is, and this is love.
I don’t tell her this now. The last thing she needs right now is a heartfelt confession. This day has been long enough and hard enough as it is.
Her mother is gone and a fucking eagle tried to strike her with lightning. Fires burned beneath us and with her arms stretched wide, she flew for the first time in her life.
That’s more than enough for one day. My words can wait.
Right now, she doesn’t need any of the hawks to tell her anything. Although I can sense we are all feeling the same thing. I see it in the way we fly around her, trying to shield her from whatever is out there trying to get her. It’s no longer about a job Gaia gave us. It’s about our loyalty to Lark.
I look at Vaughn, North, Sawyer, and Arrow. We’ve flown together all our lives, but I don’t think we ever felt so much fear as we did today. The eagle was vicious and filled with a power I’ve never witnessed. And he must be even more powerful than I realize for Gaia to intervene.
Lark didn’t seem to realize the danger she was in. She couldn’t have. Her heart has been broken into a thousand pieces. I’m just grateful that in her shattered heart she knows her mother loved her. And she knows she loved her mother.
That’s more than I ever had, more than any of us hawks ever had.
As infants, we were found in a nest and rescued by Gaia and given the ability to shift. She found us a place to live in a shifter community, but it wasn’t hawks we were sent to live with. It was bears. And we never belonged.
We were different, hawks living without a family, yet somehow, we managed to survive.
We didn’t have a mother or father. For better or for worse we had one another.
In the past, I think we all believed it was enough. All for one and one for all.
But now I know that’s not true. It’s not enough.
Now, we need Lark.
We came here to protect her, but I want more than that.
I want to love and support her. I want to be there for her, through thick and thin.
It’s crazy, those words coming from me.
Me, a man who slept with more women than I probably should have. Me, the person who has caused more problems in this group than anyone else.
Yet right now, I can’t imagine life without any of them. All I want is to stick it out together, the six of us. Forever.
I watch Lark fly toward her neighborhood with her wings outstretched. The six of us moving through the trees is a thing of beauty. She has brought us together and made us feel like we belong together after we’ve spent our lives on the outside looking in.
She is more than a bird, more than a woman, a daughter, a lover, a friend.
She is the love of my life.
26
Lark
When we get to the house, we shift to human form. All it takes is a simple landing, and the will to return to my body and there I am, standing on the porch.
Mom’s twinkling Christmas lights are on and I swallow hard, feeling overwhelmed with emotion. The hawks sense it and Sawyer asks if I’m all right, noticing that my balance is off.
I’m not sure when they stopped being hawks and became my hawks, but they did, and they are. I am claiming them as mine.
Right now, they are all I have in this world.
Maybe it’s selfish to want them to take c
are of me right now. But I nearly fall to the ground, not used to shifting from animal to human. Vaughn catches me.
His body, which he seems to think is too big, fits me perfectly. He lifts me up into his arms and carries me inside. He sets me down on my mother’s vintage couch and tells me it’s going to be okay.
He kisses my forehead, but I need more.
I need it all.
Right now I’m lost, and these men found me, and that is everything.
“Kiss me?” I ask him.
No, it isn’t a question. It’s a demand. It’s what I need and want and have to have. I pull Vaughn down to his knees and he settles himself on Mom’s antique rug. I wrap my arms around his neck and look into his big blue eyes, drawing him nearer.
He tucks a loose strand of hair behind my ear. “I could put on the kettle,” he says, so softly that my already broken heart breaks all over again. This rugged man would put on the kettle and make me tea.
I shake my head. Tea isn’t what I want. All I want is for this day to end, to usher it out with a kiss and a touch. With lips on my skin, with hands on my heart.
“You’re my hawks,” I tell them. They stand in the living room, watching me hold onto Vaughn as if holding on to dear life. “Don’t leave me.”
“We never do,” Arrow says softly.
“Make love to me again.”
Brecken shakes his head. “Not tonight, love.”
Love. I cling to the word, desperately.
“Starling,” Sawyer says. “You’ve had such a long day. Shouldn’t you get some rest?”
“You won’t have me?” I ask. “What, now you see me as this sad orphan–a freak of nature–and I’m no longer enough?”
North shakes his head. I look at his steel grey eyes and his crooked nose, wanting him to want me. “Lark, you’re more than enough, but what you need is–”
“You don’t know what I need,” I say, pulling my arms back from Vaughn, feeling rejected. I curl my feet under me, wrapping my arms around my knees.
