Shift (Strangetown Magic Book 2)

by Al K. Line

  He was utterly insane.

  "Get away from me," I spoke through the same magical connection, our minds linked through his wizardry and corruption.

  "But it's been so long, me all alone in the dark. Nobody to talk to, nobody to fondle." He moved a skeletal arm over my belly and stroked me like a kitten.

  I shoved him away, the bones tinkling as they hit the stone sides of our cramped home. "Don't touch me," I warned. "Or when I get out of here I'll put you somewhere really nasty." Look, I was tired. Normally I'd come up with an example. And, to be honest, I'm not sure there's anywhere worse. Goes to show how nuts he was.

  "Okay, just thought I'd check in case you'd changed your mind."

  "Changed my mind!? You haven't even got half your body now. What do you think we could do, anyway?"

  "I'll think of something," he cackled, voice like he was a fifty-a-day man.

  "Just shut up."

  It had been going on like this for days. Harcon was a degenerate when alive, cruel and vicious, and one day he went too far. A Justice had hauled him in and Levick "had words." Nobody went to his funeral, but nobody was taking chances. He was sealed up tighter than my mother's smile and the city breathed easier.

  The wards were too strong. I couldn't break free, and without magic it was impossible to move the heavy lid.

  I'd just have to wait. Blue would be along to gloat at some point. So, I waited, and I waited, and I talked with Harcon until I was too weak to object to his wandering hands.

  We spoke often, him insinuating himself into my mind hour by hour until I was close to lost. Only a faint glimmer of sanity left as I reached for memories of the past and tried in vain to ignore thoughts of food, water, and my own bed.

  Never get buried alive, it sucks.

  No Visitors

  Nobody came. Not Robin, not Pumi, not my mother. Not even Blue.

  I was beyond cold now, beyond hungry or thirsty or tired. I was nothing. Just a body in a thick stone coffin squashed next to the emaciated form of a dead wizard. Even he'd lost interest, was back to babbling about nonsense. Singing nursery rhymes or reciting old spells long past their use-by-date and utterly ineffective.

  Something kept me going, but I don't know what it was. A stubbornness, maybe, memories of magic still coursing through my body, extending what should have been a much quicker death.

  There were times I wished for it, there were times I wondered if I was already dead, but there were more times when I dragged up anything I could to help me cling to life. So I hung on in there, stubborn to the end, convinced I would be saved.

  I wondered time and time again how many people over the history of humanity had been in a situation where their life was in peril yet they believed they would survive. Was this the default setting? Did we all refuse to accept that we would actually, genuinely, this is it, the final farewell, truly die?

  Everyone does it, no exceptions, but had others felt this even as their life ebbed away? That they would somehow be rescued? Find a way out of an impossible situation and run free, skipping and frolicking in a meadow, feasting and once again cuddling up under the sheets with a lover?

  Or, maybe it was just me.

  Once more, I brushed aside Harcon's wandering fingers, more out of habit than anything else, but he said nothing. I turned my head a little to look at his skull of a face, just scraps of dried flesh remaining, wishing he'd bugger off and wondering yet again why he insisted on radiating this sick green glow that allowed me to see my prison and my companion at all. But he was muttering away, taking no notice of me.

  Craning my neck, I saw it wasn't a finger, but a creeping green tendril. Then I realized that the light was stronger, but it wasn't a sickly green glow. It was proper light, bright and pure and brimming with energy.

  Mind weak, but something still there, I reached out, expanding my consciousness, amazed to find I could. I was no longer trapped!

  Okay, I was, but you know, it's all relative. There was a crack at the far end of the coffin, right down by my feet, and even as I watched, neck muscles screaming, the gap expanded, the stone cracking as the tendrils fattened and invaded the space.

  I ignored the intrusion, focused on what was outside, not in, and sought the Pool. It was subtle, the guarding spells still preventing most consciousness leaving the crypt, but it was there, just. I opened up totally to it, let it enter me and me it, suckling like a babe at the teat of life. Immersing myself in its power, its sustenance. Magic was mine once more.

  Things stirred within. Subtle magic that was fragile but present, nonetheless. I remained motionless, not wanting to risk disrupting the flow. It fed me, no substitute for food but strengthening me in other ways. I was becoming me again.

  Then it waned, the ghastly green returning as the hole was shut off by the tendril, now fat, slithering about inside, searching for its own source of sustenance.

  Unable to resist, too weak to do anything much at all, I watched as it crawled over me and wrapped around my legs, then my arms. Then my neck.

  Well, I'd tried. Let nobody say Swift shook off her mortal coil without a fight.

  A Final Push

  The tendril constricted about my body, cutting off circulation to my limbs. Then my air was gone, and I gagged, trying to breathe, finding it progressively more difficult as the plant fattened and acted faster now it had found a source of nourishment.

  I tried to get away but there was nowhere to go, nowhere to hide. Moving my arms up, I pulled at the green noose, tiny sharp thorns sticking into me, feeling like the time I'd grabbed a cactus and spent weeks in agony. But this was pain of a different kind, and much worse. Death by asphyxiation.

  Air was a distant memory now, something I'd had but only long ago. My mind clouded as my hands fell limp to my sides.

  It was kind of ironic, and if I'd had the energy I would have laughed. After all I'd been through, the things I'd done, the people I'd fought, the centuries I'd endured, and I die by the hungry embrace of a bloody plant. So stupid.

  As I passed, I felt the last glimmer of the Pool spark something inside—it was calling to me, telling me there was still hope. So I accepted it, sought out the message being given. It was here again, and I struggled to see, eyes bulging now, me almost gone.

  The end of the casket was open. Smashed as more green death entered my final resting place. Proper light drenched my legs and I fought for all I was worth, let the Pool consume me. I reached up with renewed hope and pulled hard at the constricting scarf, tugging and yanking until it eased a little and I gasped for air, back from the brink but far from safe.

  It renewed its attack, snapping tighter, but now I had magic to bolster me. I grabbed it two-handed, felt the power build, and smiled as it surged through my body.

  Heat seared the soft flesh of the plant and then I was free. Able to breathe like a human being, a living person.

  Wasting no time, but still moving painstakingly slowly, I let the magic scour my body, forcing it up and out through my skin, burning away the searching plant as all the while my energy built.

  "See ya, Harcon," I said silently, but he was leaving before me. A mass of tendrils whipped out fast from the opening and grabbed him, ripping him away, bits of him breaking apart as he became food for the jungle.

  "Nice chatting with... you," he whispered as his soul was finally released, the body splintered and the magic along with it. I pitied the netherworld he was right now arriving at. Boy were they in for a hard infinity.

  Gripping the sides with swollen hands, I eased my way down until my feet were out and then the rest of me followed, collapsing hard onto the floor of the crypt, stone warm after the cold of ages inside my icy prison.

  I glanced up, shielding my eyes against the beautiful sun and the clear, blue sky. Ah, such a wondrous sight to behold. A fractured view of freedom through the broken ruins of the crypt. Breached in numerous places, the ceiling was half gone as the jungle stripped away stone to get at the flesh within.

 
Like I cared! I was alive and I was free and maybe I could even walk. Gripping the broken coffin, I managed to get to my feet. Limbs weak, head spinning when blood redistributed to where it should be, I lost vision for a moment as everything swam and I thought I would lose consciousness, but somehow I held it together.

  Then I was moving, stepping away from the creepers and the wiggling saplings, tainting even the cemetery, nothing sacred left.

  A huge gap in the wall made exiting easy, no need to worry about spells and magic when there wasn't a door to protect any longer. As I left, I saw a skull pulled up high into the canopy that towered above the crypt.

  I'm sure it smiled.

  Still Alone

  The very thought of walking home filled me with dread. No way did I have the strength. Not now, not yet. But I knew I had to find safety—the jungle had not been idle while I wasted away, quite the opposite. It towered above me, still thin on the ground in the cemetery, with pockets of emptiness, but what grew was large. A few species dominated, able to defeat the warped magic for some reason I couldn't care less about right now.

  I staggered into a clearing, away from anything green, the grass now burned brown and the most inviting thing I had seen for what felt like a lifetime. I half sat, half crashed onto the beautiful earth, still cold, as if the emptiness of the tomb had frozen my bones. I lay back and closed my eyes, soaking up sun and warmth, magic and freedom.

  All I could think of was thank goodness it was daytime. If this had happened at night, without me being able to see, then I would have been food for the foraging forest. At least with daylight I felt hope. Hope that I could find my way home somehow, that I could find food, that I could sleep. That my friends and my sister were safe and maybe, just maybe they would find me.

  In my confused state it was only then that I thought to divert the magic into my tattoo, calling for Robin, for my big sister to come get me, to save me. A distress call like no other. One imbued with desperation and urgency the likes of which I had never done before.

  "Come. Please come," I whispered into the sky.

  I watched a bird circle high above, around and around on the thermals, well away from the forest. Were they displaced too? Afraid of the jungle as it might eat them, swallow them whole?

  Slowly my body warmed, and my magic built, but so did my hunger and thirst. I should move. The heat was making me so damn thirsty I could hardly swallow, and I'd be burned, all crispy and red from sun exposure.

  But I didn't care, so I lay there, mind drifting like the bird in the sky until I slept the sleep of the free.

  But who knew for how long?

  No Help

  Calling out with a raw throat, I awoke from a dream of fire and burning only to find myself prone in the clearing. The sun was fierce, my skin scalding from the heat. With a groan I sat up, disorientated, the nightmare fading only to be replaced with something worse—the state of my mind and body and the fact I was still alone.

  When had I reached out for my sister, for her to come get me? Was it hours, minutes? It felt like so long ago. The sun was at its zenith now, so it must have been a few hours ago at least. I immediately thought of food, it was lunch time, after all. Oh, the mere thought of it sent my tummy rumbling like I housed an angry dragon, roaring for nourishment. My dry mouth wanted to salivate but there was no liquid inside my body now. I was dessicated, all dried up. Parched and crisping in the fierce sunshine.

  Shade, I needed shade, but that would mean moving, and I didn't think I could do that. But what was the alternative? To die? Remain here until I was burned up or food for the forest?

  With a shudder and all kinds of hurt, I rolled over onto my belly, the relief from the soaring temperature instant. I managed to get onto hands and knees and with muscles that felt like they'd wasted away to nothing I pushed up, kneeling as though ready for prayer. But I knew praying wouldn't help me, that I was on my own and the only help I would get was whatever I could muster from my weak and fasted body.

  I reminded myself that I wasn't alone, not really. That I still had magic to help in my moment of need, so I clung to that, a lifeline inside, buoying my will, my fortitude, my refusal to be a victim. Nothing would stop me, not even my own weakness, so I got up, light-headed, woozy, and all kinds of dizzy. I waited, and it passed, then I put one damn foot in front of the other and walked from the clearing and entered the forest. Refusing to let it beat me. Refusing to let Blue win. Refusing to let the hunger, thirst, and the madness that chattered in my mind as if Harcon was still with me, muttering and fondling me, overpower me. I ignored it all and kept going.

  Something felt off. Just not right. As I crashed through the undergrowth, clutching at vines and ripping leaves, dragging myself through, there was something else. A nagging, an itch I couldn't scratch.

  Was it just me, weak and unfocused, hungry and confused? The magic high clouding my already foggy mind with energy that was taking even more from me with each step? The cost increasing the more I used magic to stay even semi-awake and coherent? Maybe, but I couldn't shake the sense of foreboding, the feeling that things had got a lot worse while I'd been playing with the dead in the dark.

  The forest felt different, that was for sure. Like it was running out of steam, like this was its final push for a freedom it would never have. As if it was putting on a growth spurt before it all came crashing down. A low after an insane energy boost, the sugar rush of all sugar rushes, meaning it was ready to collapse in the most spectacular of ways.

  I forged ahead. Stumbling, falling, getting up and repeating the cycle time and time again. Delirium set in and everything became a blur of confusion and maybe madness. My world was green, just plants and leaves and heat. Oh, the heat. I licked leaves, getting moisture that made my throat hurt, razor blades stabbing at my neck as I swallowed. I licked my lips and then I was licking my arms, the salty sweat hardly even there I was so dry.

  I crashed and I hurt, hands weak now, grasping for anything to keep me upright. Tearing the forest down around me, dreaming of the icy tomb, wanting to be back there with Harcon so I could rest and escape the heat. All I'd done was swap one tomb for another.

  Time passed but I had no idea how much, only that I wasn't moving now. I was lying on a carpet of sticky leaves, cloying sweetness all around. Something fell, slapping hard against my chest, but I was past caring, didn't cry out or do much of anything but stare at the red lump sitting there on my filthy, tattered vest. I must have stared at this alien thing for maybe a minute before my mind registered what it was. It was the strange fruit the shifters had been harvesting, the sick-sweet smell was the mass of pulp I was using as my bed.

  Looking up, I realized I was underneath one of the trees, large leaves like a banana's shading me, the fruits hanging in clusters, thumping to the ground around me.

  I can tell you right now it was the most delicious, beautiful, tasty, awesome, and downright incredible thing I have ever eaten in my entire life. I bit into soft flesh that gave way like the parting of a cloud, sweet nectar and delicate pulp sliding down my throat like honey. The sugars released into my bloodstream gave me one hell of an insulin spike and I wanted more.

  On my knees, I grabbed for any fruit I could find, not caring if it was half-rotten or unripe. I ate it all, stuffing it into my mouth until I was a mess of sticky goodness, face and fingers stained red, juice dripping down my chin.

  Fruit by fruit I recovered my senses, feeling returned to my body and my mind worked semi-coherently. I was amped on the high of so much sugar, my belly distended and hurting something awful. I didn't care, ignored the pains as my stomach tried to deal with so much foreign sustenance.

  And then I was done, couldn't eat another thing if I wanted to ever move again. Already finding it hard as I cramped up, doubled over while the pain increased then subsided.

  Weird aches ebbed and flowed, then without warning my stomach cramped up totally, locked solid and hard as a troll. I was stuck, bent double holding on to the trunk of t
he tree, convinced I'd never stand up straight again. Nausea built and then I purged the fruit, great liquid gushes of vomit spewing all over the place. Twice more it happened and then my belly softened as it relaxed, the excess of food disgorged.

  And you know what? I felt fantastic! Okay, not fantastic like ready to run to Pumi's and jump into bed, but fantastic compared to how I'd felt for the last few days.

  Energized, feeling like a new woman, I straightened my back, wiped my face and hands with a damp leaf, and went to find out what the hell had happened to stop anyone coming to rescue me from my nightmare.

  I should have stayed in the cemetery.

  A Homecoming

  The jungle was undergoing an extreme transformation, much of it gone entirely. Putrid patches of rotten ground were treacherous to traverse, and often I found myself ankle then shin-deep in slimy matter that clung to my legs and stuck to the soles of my boots, meaning I had to stop repeatedly and scrape it off.

  Other areas were yellow, wilting, or dying. Sappy and spindly branches fell, further bruising my already damaged body. Then I'd be right back in the thick of it, the way dense with lush growth that was entirely at odds with what I'd just seen.

  Somehow, through the delirium, I made it home. I was in my street, the way open, as if magic was strong here and keeping the jungle at bay now the initial growth had been cleared. How, and by whom, became apparent as I approached the steps to my home.

  "Hey, Mack." I stood in front of my demon friend. He didn't hear me, lost to his own world. Sitting on the steps with head bowed, horns pointing out ready to impale unwary passersby.

  I studied my usually jovial pal, noting the green stains on his body, the bits and pieces of trees and plants scattered around where he sat, the asphalt back to black, spreading out in a fading pool. Clearly, his magic had been working to eliminate the Shift—it was almost like having the street back if you forgot about the mush.