by H. K. Varian
“Where are Sefu and Yara?” Abuelita asked Mr. Kimura. “We’ll need them if Sakura’s forces return.”
“Sefu and Yara are halfway around the world on another mission, but Dorina is amassing backup. They’ll be here soon.”
Abuelita turned to Gabriella with a nod. “You can do this, mija. I know you can.”
Safe inside the protective force field, Gabriella sat next to Mack and began to meditate, ignoring his shallow, uneven breaths and focusing on her own. In . . . and . . . out, she told herself. In . . . and . . . out.
Before she knew it, she was above her body. She could see everything with a spiritual clarity. In her spirit form, she walked over to Mack. Now or never, Gabriella thought, and willed herself to enter his mind.
Chapter 12
The Dark Gift
When Gabriella arrived in Mack’s thoughts, she first concentrated on transforming into her human self. She thought it would be easy to hide in the shadows of his memories, but Mack’s mind was strangely blank. An endless white space stretched out before Gabriella, and she was alone except for Mack and a jet-black Shadow Fox with three tails. Mack was focused so completely on the fox, he wasn’t aware of anything else going on—even Gabriella.
Sakura has seven tails, Gabriella remembered. This can’t be Sakura. It’s Mack’s kitsune form. But his fur has turned black, just like hers.
From the fox, Gabriella could feel a chilling darkness spreading over Mack’s mind. It crept into happy memories, infecting them with bitterness and sadness. She watched as pockets of joy were distorted into anger and emptiness. And she could also feel how exhausted Mack was. This three-tailed fox was slowly draining all his energy, leaving him unable to battle against the rage and hopelessness that was taking over. She could tell that Mack was both repulsed by, and drawn to, the darkness. The inky-black fox fed on his fear, and it was getting stronger and stronger.
So this is what was happening to Mack all this time, she realized. No wonder he doesn’t want to struggle against it anymore. All the fight has gone out of him.
Abuelita had told Gabriella to use her feelings to help her find out what was happening in Mack’s mind in order to help him. Maybe Mack can use my anger to fight Sakura, she thought.
She let her anger at Sakura course through her veins. She would channel it into spiritual energy to save her friend.
Gabriella’s surge of energy attracted Mack’s attention.
“Gabriella,” he said. “I’m so sorry. The fox . . . It’s ruining everything,” he said, stumbling over his words. “I didn’t mean all those things I said. I’ve been fighting it so hard. . . .”
Gabriella took a step toward him to take his hand, but the fox was sneaky. It reappeared, as if out of nowhere, and pounced on Gabriella. She was jolted from Mack’s mind.
Gabriella opened her eyes and saw that Darren’s force field had shrank. She couldn’t see Mr. Kimura or the other adults. The four kids were the only ones inside the protective dome, and she could hear the muffled chaos of battle coming from outside. More of Sakura’s soldiers had arrived.
Gabriella didn’t have time to ask Darren or Fiona what was happening. She closed her eyes again and focused on her breathing. In an instant, she was back in her meditative state, willing herself into Mack’s mind.
She saw the three-tailed fox closing in on her friend, its jaws wide-open, showing off rows of sharp teeth. The creature was about to devour him completely.
Gabriella didn’t have time to transform or hide. She needed every bit of energy and concentration to save Mack. She galloped toward the kitsune in her nahual form and dug her claws into its haunches. She dragged it backward, away from her friend, and heard the fox howl in pain.
Gabriella used the same spirit warrior techniques on the fox that Tía Rosa had taught her. She was using her spiritual energy to push the fox farther and farther from Mack, but the kitsune wasn’t going down so easily.
Rage coursed through Gabriella. “Get away from him!” she shouted.
The fox retreated, but Gabriella didn’t think it was entirely gone. She sensed it was lurking somewhere, regaining strength to fight again.
Gabriella wasn’t sure she was strong enough to completely drive it from Mack’s mind. It was a part of Mack in a way she could never be. She needed help.
She turned to Mack. You have to fight it too, Mack! she yelled.
“I can’t,” Mack said limply. “It’s part of me now. I can’t destroy myself.”
No! It’s not you. It’s Sakura. She’s planted this thing in your head to infect your memories. Fight it, Mack! You have to fight it!
“I’m trying,” Mack said. “I’ve been trying and trying, ever since Wyndemere. I can’t anymore. I’m so tired. I just want to go. Let me go.”
No! Gabriella shouted. I won’t let you go. You have to help me save you!
“It’s too late. Don’t you see? Sakura has won. I’m sorry.”
Mack turned away from her, and Gabriella felt the fur on her neck stand up. While she was focused on Mack, the three-tailed fox had quietly reappeared. Before she could react, it attacked her.
She shook it off. She tried to push it away with her spiritual energy, but she didn’t have the strength. She was distracted; Mack’s desire to give up had scared her, and fear was blocking her powers.
The fox snarled at her, and Gabriella realized it sounded just like Mack’s snarl in class last week. She remembered Mack lunging at her, as if she were his enemy.
“I’m sorry,” Mack said again. For a moment, it looked like he mustered all the goodness he could, before he let the Shadow Fox take over. “Tell Jiichan—tell Jiichan I’m sorry.”
Then Mack’s eyes flashed again.
The last thing Gabriella saw before being pushed out completely was the jaws of the three-tailed kitsune as they closed around Mack’s leg.
Chapter 13
Sakura’s Apprentice
No longer unconscious, Mack rose to his feet and glared at Gabriella. How dare she mess with my mind, he thought. He was filled with anger and a kind of hungry power he had never known before. He could feel it burning inside him, ready to consume more and more.
So this is what true power feels like. No wonder the old man didn’t want me to have this.
He loomed above Gabriella, who was sitting cross-legged on the ground with tears running down her face. “Fight it, Mack!” she yelled. “Fight it!”
“Fight what?” Mack said with a laugh. “My new power? Can’t you see that this is me? I’m more powerful than you’ll ever be. Than any of you will ever be.”
He sneered at Darren and Fiona, still hovering over Gabriella. “What a bunch of weaklings you are. I can see you now for what you are: jealous. Pathetic.” He swung his arms out and knocked his former friends out of his path with fiery blasts, breathing in the sharp odor of ash that surrounded him now.
Darren’s grip on the force field dissolved. The four kids stood in the midst of battle, totally unprotected.
Mack saw his grandfather battling two Changers at once. The old man’s head swiveled, and he lost focus when he saw Mack’s transformation into a three-tailed shadow fox.
Want to take me on? Mack thought.
But before his grandfather could do or say anything, Sakura arrived on the battlefield.
Everything stopped. Everyone—both his grandfather’s cronies and Sakura’s warriors—paused to look at her.
That’s command, Mack thought. Even the old man should be paying her respect.
Awed by her supremacy, by her power, Mack darted over to her, leaving fiery footsteps in the grass. He Changed to his human form and bowed. “Master,” he said. “I am ready to be your student. I await your command.”
“Ah, my apprentice. We are reunited at last,” Sakura said. She put a hand on Mack’s shoulder and faced Mack’s grandfather, her old teacher, with a challenge in her eyes.
Mack stood at her side, eyeing his grandfather with the same challenge. “I’m sor
ry it took me so long to rejoin you,” he told Sakura. “The old man held me back, as did they.” He waved his arm in the direction of Gabriella, Fiona, and Darren. “It was foolish of them, but I’ve broken free now. I am ready to begin my studies.”
“Together we will take this world,” Sakura said. “But there’s something I need to attend to first.”
She turned and transformed into a seven-tailed jet-black fox in one breath, just in time for Mr. Kimura to rush the two of them in his kitsune form. Mack saw that Sakura’s forces were now on the ground, unconscious. Ms. Therian stood over them with a satisfied expression, ready to battle Sakura if she was needed.
Sakura and Mack disappeared as his grandfather approached. Then they reappeared behind him. The old man spun on his heel, but then they did the trick again and again.
Mack laughed. “What magic is this?” he asked.
Sakura only smiled at him. Then she turned to her old teacher and communicated telepathically. You’ve lost, Akira, she said. You once took something from me—and with it, hope, love, my dreams—all in one breath. Forgive me if I take this opportunity to return the favor.
Mack watched his grandfather come at Sakura once again, confident that the old man would fail. Sakura pushed Mack out of the way, and this time she engaged Akira. The two kitsune circled each other, one angry and one triumphant. They sparred, dodging each other’s flames. In a few minutes, Mack’s grandfather—who had already battled and defeated many of Sakura’s soldiers that day—was winded.
Mack was impressed by his new master’s stamina. By her control. By her dark power. Sakura will make a far better teacher than my grandfather ever could be, he thought.
Now, she stood back and smirked at the old man. We’ll continue this another day, Akira. Then she turned to Mack. Come, my apprentice.
She transformed back and waved her arm. A dark portal appeared where just a moment before there had been sun and air. The hole sucked the light into it, beckoning to Mack.
Mack took his human form and ran forward.
In a last-ditch effort Darren tried to envelope Mack in a protective force field to keep him from escaping. It worked for a moment, but then Sakura snapped her fingers and shattered his hold on him. Darren suddenly looked unspeakably weak and helpless as Mack bellowed with laughter and then disappeared through the portal, right on Sakura’s heels.
Epilogue
Suddenly, the street was dead silent. It was as if Sakura had taken everything with her—the sound of the ocean’s waves, the birds chirping in the trees, even the soft buzz of insects.
Darren collapsed on the ground, eyes closed, completely spent from his effort to protect his friends with his force fields. He could hear Gabriella’s choking sobs from somewhere nearby and the gentle tones of her aunt and grandmother telling her that it wasn’t her fault. He wanted to join them, to try to make his friend feel better, but he didn’t have the energy.
He saw Mr. Kimura staring into the space where the hole had been, as if willing it to come back.
“Where did Mack go?” Fiona asked Ms. Therian. “What does this mean?”
“I’m not sure,” Ms. Therian answered. “Sakura has many bases of operation; usually by the time the Changer nation finds one, it’s been abandoned.”
Darren sat up.
Mr. Kimura walked across the street to the cliffside and gazed out over the sea. The sun was setting over the ocean.
Darren usually thought of sunsets as peaceful, but not this one. This sky looked angry and red, and Darren could feel his own anger growing. Anger at Sakura for turning his friend—his funny friend who loved comic books and superheroes—into an evil monster.
Let go of that anger, Mr. Kimura’s voice said softly to him. You’ll need the light to beat Sakura. We’re going to find Mack.
What challenge will the Changers face next?
Here is a sneak peek at
The Spider’s Curse
Darren Smith scrolled through websites about South African tribal mythology on his laptop, trying not to worry about his friend, Makoto “Mack” Kimura. But worried thoughts kept creeping in anyway.
Up until their first day of seventh grade at Willow Cove Middle School, Mack and Darren had barely been acquaintances. They nodded to each other in the halls, sure, but they hung out with different crowds.
Then everything changed on the first day of seventh grade when Darren learned that he and Mack, along with fellow classmates Fiona Murphy and Gabriella Rivera, were members of a small and very secret group of people with magical powers—magical shape-shifting powers.
The four kids were part of a line of magical beings called Changers. Changers had the power to transform into creatures the human world believed were mythological. Darren and the others had learned that those mythological creatures were, in fact, very, very real.
Darren discovered that he was an impundulu, a fearsome bird that could shoot lightning bolts from its razor-sharp talons and create violent storms. Gabriella was a nahual, a powerful jaguar with yellow eyes, sleek jet-black fur, and the ability to spirit-walk in other people’s minds. Fiona was the daughter of the selkie queen, a seal that ruled the oceans. With her selkie cloak Fiona could transform into a seal herself, and the selkie songs she learned from her mother contained potent magic. And Mack was a kitsune, a powerful white fox with paws that blazed with fire, just like his grandfather.
The four young Changers trained together every day at school and formed a close bond. Darren’s new friends were the people who got Darren through those confusing early days when he was coming into his powers. Learning about his abilities and finding out that his parents were getting a divorce at the same time had almost been too much to bear. He couldn’t tell his family about his secret powers, but his big brother, Ray, knew all about what it was like to be different. He and Darren were among just a few African American kids in Willow Cove.
I wish I could tell Ray just how different I am, Darren thought, not for the first time. He could help me make sense out of all this.
He would have loved to talk to Ray about his new abilities, but Darren had been warned against it. Changers once lived openly alongside humans. In fact, Changers did their best to protect humans from dark forces. But a long time ago humans came to believe that Changers wanted to destroy them. Their magic frightened them, and that fear made them act in desperate, dangerous ways. The Changers had been forced to create a hidden world. They were still devoted to protecting humans from evil, but now they did it in secret and from a distance.
The First Four, leaders of all Changer-kind, had begun training Darren and the other three Willow Cove Changers. Mack’s grandfather, Akira Kimura, and his friends steered them in the discovery and control of their new powers. Dorina Therian, a werewolf, was the kids’ primary coach. Yara Moreno, an encantado, or dolphin Changer, and Sefu Badawi, a bultungin, or hyena Changer, stepped in to help when they were needed. And it seemed they were very much needed, because lately, dark magic had ensured that they were constantly in touch.
Things got even more confusing when Darren and his friends learned that an ancient prophecy had foretold that they would become the next First Four. One day they would take over leadership of the Changer world from Mr. Kimura and the others. That also meant they had targets on their backs.
Not all of the magic community was as protective of humans as the First Four. The young Changers, or younglings as the Changer-world called them, had been forced to come together to battle and defeat a powerful warlock named Auden Ironbound. They had just accomplished that when a new dark force began to target them—an evil kitsune named Sakura, also known as the Shadow Fox.
The Shadow Fox was a memory eater. She could consume whatever memories she wanted, and in doing so, she could also absorb that Changer’s powers. A former student of Mr. Kimura’s, she had left him to delve into dark magic and then turned on him when that went very, very wrong. She had long been underground, watching and waiting for the right moment to take her
revenge.
Recently, she had come out of hiding. Sakura was determined to wage a war with those who supported the First Four—a war for control of magical and nonmagical beings. To do that, she needed followers—followers that came willingly as well as followers who were forced to do so.
Her first target was Mack. Sakura poisoned Mack’s mind with dark magic. She lured him away from the group with promises of evil power. She turned his happiness and hope into anger and despair. Mack was helpless while under her control, and so, he had joined her dark forces.
It had been over a month since Mack disappeared with Sakura and a week since school let out for the summer. To avoid questions, the First Four had blocked memories of Mack from the minds of everyone in Willow Cove.
Darren understood why the First Four had to do that. They couldn’t exactly tell the world that Mack had been kidnapped by an evil Changer. But erasing him from the memories of the nonmagical people who knew him still didn’t feel right.
Mack isn’t someone who can be erased, Darren thought. Even if the rest of our classmates don’t remember him, they have to feel the hole he left behind. I know I do.
Mack’s best friend, Joel Hastings, reinforced that belief. Every time Darren passed Joel in the hallways at school, the poor guy looked superlonely. Magic might have blocked Joel’s memories of Mack, but part of him knew that something was missing. Darren could tell. That last day at school, during lunch period, Darren had tried to talk to him.
“Joel!” he’d called out as he sat down across from him in the caf.
“Huh?” Joel had said, his expression blank. “Oh—hey Darren. What’s up?”
“Not much—how’d the art fair go last week?”
“Fine, but it’s so weird,” Joel had said with a shake of his head. “A few weeks before the deadline, I realized I only had half of the project done. I thought I was right on schedule, but it’s like half of the comic I was working on just—”
