by Ann Gimpel
Jamal had seen some of his kin exchanging looks. Particularly the women. But everyone hid their reactions from their first. It was how they’d been trained. He started a mental list of the wolves he knew beyond any doubt were fully behind Anubis and his stated goals.
Wolves were superior. They should be at the head of any decisions regarding all shifters. If any disagreed, they should be banished—or destroyed. Anubis hadn’t actually spelled that last out, but he didn’t have to. His meaning had been clear enough.
Jamal winced. He’d been raised on tales of the first wolf shifter, had deified Anubis as a young man. To have the reality fall so far from his ideal was harsh, but he was grateful the first had been so vocal. Easier to fight what you knew than something you had to guess at.
He slipped beneath Michael’s wagon to where he planned to lay out the blankets, but before he had a chance to spread them on the ground, the wagon’s door opened, and Michael let himself outside. Without saying a word, he gestured for Jamal to follow him. After tucking the folded woolen coverlets next to the wagon, Jamal crossed to Stewart’s wagon and followed Michael inside.
Stewart sat cross-legged in a corner, wrapped in the folds of his kilt. For once his red hair hung loose, rather than snugged into braids. He nodded and the door, encouraged by a jot of magic, swung shut silently on well-greased hinges. The air thickened with the scent of Rom magic as Stewart—or perhaps Michael—spelled the small enclosure.
Michael dropped into a crouch across from Stewart and patted the floor next to him. Jamal knelt too, waiting. They’d tell him what they wanted soon enough.
“What we have to say may put you in a compromising position,” Stewart began.
“You fought alongside us before,” Michael added, “although Stewart and I were of two minds about speaking frankly with you.”
Jamal looked from one man to the other, still waiting.
“First, where were ye tonight?” Stewart asked. “’Tis as good a place as any to begin. If ye’d rather not answer, ye can leave since it means ye willna answer any of our other concerns, either.”
Jamal hesitated, unsure if implicating Ilona was wise, but if he lied, the two Romani would know.
“Tell them,” the wolf urged. “Silence perpetuates the unrest between shifters and the rest of the magical world.”
“Was that your wolf?” Michael asked.
“Aye, and if ’twas, what did he say?” Stewart cut in.
“Yes, it was my wolf urging me to tell you the truth. Bond animals are wise, and I’ve never gone wrong listening to it.”
“So, where were you?” Michael prodded.
“With Ilona. I’d be with her still, but I feared causing problems between our two peoples. Meara may have pronounced that we’re now partners, but it takes more than words to overcome fear and distrust.”
“I’d add hatred to that list,” Michael said sourly.
“Beyond the point,” Stewart muttered and focused his astute dark eyes on Jamal. “Do ye care for her, or is this merely a passing fancy?”
“I can only speak for myself, but I believe I’m falling in love.” Jamal rocked back on his heels. “That’s not why you brought me here, nor why you shrouded the wagon in spells. Spells, by the way, that shifter magic can probably penetrate except most everyone is asleep right now.”
“We’re all too aware that our magic doesn’t stack up well against yours,” Michael said. “It’s one of the reasons for my concern. We’ve come to trust Meara, and Nivkh has a good heart.” He paused, and a muscle flinched along the side of his face.
Jamal saved Michael the trouble of hunting for politically neutral words. “You are right not to trust the other first. And it’s far better if you don’t use his name.”
Stewart narrowed his eyes to slits. “Is this knowledge ye’ve always held, or something new?”
The question cut so close to home, it gave Jamal pause. “New. Why would you ask?”
“I sense something in him. Something beyond shifter energy, and it disturbs me. ’Twas why I questioned him about the magic sustaining this location. Not because I dinna already know, but because I wanted an excuse to get closer to him.”
Breath hissed through Jamal’s teeth.
Michael gripped his forearm hard. “If you know something, tell us. My people are here. I agreed to bring them across the barrier, and I must know if it was a poor decision.”
“As are mine,” Stewart said. “They are my life. I’m sworn to keep them safe as best I can. ’Tis how caravans have always operated.”
Even though it might not keep the conversation any more private, Jamal switched to telepathy. “The first wolf shifter is both a bigot and a racist. He would put his shifters before all others, and he encouraged his shifters to harm Romani if they could do so without attracting attention.”
“So his story about wanting to work with Romani was bogus—something crafted to lull us into trusting him,” Michael replied in kind.
“’Twould seem so,” Stewart muttered half aloud.
“Beyond that,” Jamal went on, “the one of which we speak has been absent for centuries. Before his disappearance, he entered into an alliance with one of the old, powerful vampires.”
Michael inhaled sharply and made a hooked sign against evil. Stewart made the sigil as well. Both chanted a few words in Coptic.
“Did ye ever meet him afore?” Stewart asked.
Jamal shook his head.
“Mmph.” Michael frowned. “So you’d not have the feel of him—or know if what’s here is real or an imposter.”
“How about your wolf?” Stewart asked.
It was a good question, so Jamal turned it inward. The wolf knew about the vampire, and it had said it met Anubis while bonded to an earlier shifter.
“I wish I knew more,” the wolf said after a lengthy pause. “I was within a bondmate when the first was present, but it was only once, and hundreds of us were there. I wasn’t paying that close attention since we had no idea it was the first and last time we’d ever see him.”
“What did he say?” Michael asked. “Your wolf. He was just talking with you.”
“It’s not a he or a she,” Jamal replied. “It didn’t have useful information.”
“Let me do this,” the wolf spoke up. “I can retreat to the other place and see if any of the bond animals know more. Like I said before, it’s been a long time since the topic came up.”
“Do it, but don’t be gone long.”
“What was that about?” Stewart asked and resettled himself so he leaned against a wall.
“The short answer is the bond animals have a place that’s not part of this world. It’s where they roam when they’re between bondmates. It’s also where they go to take breaks from us. My wolf is there now, attempting to gather information from others like it.”
“Thank him, er it, for us,” Michael said.
“I will.”
A soft tap on the wagon door snapped Jamal’s head around.
The power eddying around Stewart pulsed with blues and greens, but his grim expression softened. “’Och aye, ’tis Ilona.”
The door snicked open, and she stood framed in it. “May I enter?” she asked softly.
“If the answer were nay, the door wouldna have opened for ye,” Stewart replied.
Her gaze settled on Jamal, and she started. “What are you doing here?”
“Talking. Come in so we can close the door, and Michael and Stewart can resurrect their spell. Did you know we were within?”
“I felt the magic, but I had no idea who was here.” She stepped inside, pulling the door to behind her. “I—I’m sorry to intrude like this,” she went on. The wagon was just tall enough for her to stand upright, and she didn’t make any move to sit.
Jamal heard a tremor beneath her words and wanted to draw her against him, but didn’t. These were her people. Any display of affection between them had to come from her.
“I sense need in ye, lassie,” Ste
wart said. “What happened?”
“I fell asleep, but a vision snared me. It was harsh and real and frightening, especially when I tried to escape, and it held me captive.” Her rushed flow of words trailed off, and she closed her lower lip over her teeth. “It was almost like when the vampire rose through my trance and looked at me as if it truly saw me.”
“Were there vampires in this sending?” Jamal asked as alarm sluiced through him, tightening his muscles into rocks. They may have killed one, but others could have tracked its energy. Even though Ilona thought she’d closed off the portal, maybe she’d missed something. Left a sliver of energy behind. Vampires were notoriously competent trackers.
“Yes, but much more than that.” She looked from the two Romani to Jamal and back again. “Did you tell them anything?”
He nodded. “Everything except the list you and I discussed.”
“What list?” Michael asked and then waved a hand. “Never mind, we’ll get to that. I want to hear about Ilona’s sending. Her seer ability is strong, as powerful as Elliott’s.”
Her eyes widened. “How could you possibly know that?”
He shrugged. “If it weren’t, Meara wouldn’t have taken you with her to scry the location of vampire nests.”
She made a face. “That’s a better answer than my power is bleeding out all around me, easy for anyone to notice.”
“Close your eyes,” Stewart crooned, compulsion strong in his voice. “Start at the beginning, and tell us what ye saw.”
Jamal felt the magic snare Ilona. She sank into a crouch between them and the door. When she looked up, her gray eyes held a glazed, otherworldly look, and he figured she couldn’t see him or the wagon anymore.
He glanced sidelong at Stewart. The spell he’d just cast didn’t feel like any Rom magic Jamal had felt before, and he’d been exposed to a whole lot of it during his years with Aneksi. What was the man? Romani, but maybe something else as well. He almost asked the questions spilling through his head, but Ilona began to talk.
“At first, I thought it was a dream,” Ilona murmured. “I was walking by myself through clouds. Sometimes they snagged me, but it wasn’t painful, just made me watch where I was going.”
“Day or night?” Stewart asked in a hypnotic, singsong-y voice.
“The in between place. The one where time fades and is meaningless.”
“Aye, go on, lassie.”
She clasped her hands in front of her. “Mother floated out of the ether. I was so glad to see her. I’d been hoping she’d come to me in a dream since she died a year ago. I smiled and floated to her, holding out my hands. When I got close, I took a better look, and she was frantically waving me back. Her mouth was open, but I couldn’t hear her.
“She must have known I couldn’t hear because she carved Turn Around into a cloud.” Ilona swallowed visibly, and her knuckles whitened where her hands were clasped in her lap. “This is where it starts to get strange. I made a grab for Mother. Needed to hug her and tell her how much I missed her, but she vanished as soon as I put my arms around the place where she’d been. The words she’d carved turned red and started to bleed, dripping onto my feet.”
Ilona took a shuddery breath. “The blood—or whatever it was—burned like crazy, and I bent, trying to rub it off, but I just smeared it. And made the pain worse.”
Michael leaned forward. “Let me see one of your feet.”
Ilona dropped onto her butt and extended a leg.
Jamal bent closer. Sure enough, pale red streaks marked her shoe, but disappeared above it. He reached forward, trying to get a feel for what kind of magic it was.
Stewart shook his head and cautioned, “Doona disturb the marks until we understand them better.”
As if inspection made them gun-shy, the streaks faded, growing lighter by the moment. If Jamal hadn’t known they’d been there, he wouldn’t have believed they’d ever existed.
“What the holy hell?” Ilona stared at her shoe.
“’Tis nothing,” Stewart said. “Marks from the dream world rarely survive translocation into ours.”
“These did,” Jamal said.
“Aye, but not for verra long. Go on, lass.”
Ilona cleared her throat. “I’m not sure how the next part happened, but I was moving through the clouds again, except now they felt heavy, ominous, as if danger lurked behind each one. I knew by now I was in trance, that it wasn’t a normal dream.”
“Your mum told you to retreat, why didn’t ye?” Stewart probed.
“I don’t know. I asked myself that later when I was doing everything I could to escape, but I’m getting ahead of myself. All at once, whatever I was walking on cracked. It made a horrible racket, and I turned around, thinking I’d go back, but there was nothing behind me. When I turned in a circle, the only place that didn’t drop off into nothingness lay ahead.
“It didn’t feel right. My skin prickled in warning, and the fine hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. I cast magic to stop the trance, figuring I’d end up back in Trina’s wagon, but I started to fall. My legs and arms windmilled, and I think I screamed.
“I expected to crash into something and break every bone in my body, but somehow I ended up on my feet.” She licked her lips, and Michael pushed a flask into her hands. When she drank, the pungent reek of raw alcohol filled the wagon.
Ilona handed the flask back, but the vacant look hadn’t left her eyes. “Where I’d been alone before, there were others with me, and we were inside someplace that reminded me of Dachau, except it wasn’t.”
“Did ye know the people with you?” Stewart’s question was so soft, Jamal almost didn’t hear him.
“Yes. Jamal and two other wolf shifters and two Rom from Michael’s caravan and the first wolf shifter, An—”
“Do not say his name,” Jamal cautioned, worried it might draw his attention.
Stewart said something in Gaelic, and Ilona replied, “I understand.”
“Did you ever figure out which prison camp you were in?” Michael asked.
“Yes. I saw a sign. It was Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg, the one near Berlin.”
“What happened then?” Stewart pressed.
Daylight was leaching through the wagon’s windows and around its door. Soon the camp would be awake, and the surfeit of power pulsing around Stewart’s wagon wouldn’t escape notice.
“We were invisible. No one in the camp could see us. I worried about running out of magic, but no one else seemed to care. The first held some type of curved blade, and he sliced off heads right and left. Blood was everywhere, but no one reacted. Prisoners and other guards walked right by headless corpses spewing blood.”
“What were the rest of us doing?” Jamal asked.
Her eyes sheened with tears, but she kept talking. “Everyone was killing including you and me. We killed so many, but more showed up. It seemed like for every German we killed, three sprang up to take his place. I knew it was wrong—not a clean sending. I recognized I was caught up in something perverse, but I didn’t see a way out.
“Vampires rose out of the ground then. Maybe a dozen. One walked to An—er, the one I can’t name, and sort of disappeared into him. First there were two, but then only one, and it was the vampire.”
She drew a deep, ragged breath and tears spilled over, but she didn’t brush them away. “The other vampires ranged around it. The rest of us drew back. Everyone wanted to get away. I felt the horror in them, but there was nowhere to go. All our power was tied up in being invisible. If we’d run, the guards would have seen us and mowed us down with their machine guns.”
“You’re almost to the end,” Stewart encouraged her. “Not much more.”
“It’s true, but how would you know that?”
“Doesna matter, lass. Keep going.”
“The lead vampire started shouting in a language I’ve never heard before. The others turned on us. They killed the other Rom—both of them. They killed one of the wolf shifters. By the time they
got to me, I was ready. I dug deep and cast the destruction spell—the one we’re taught and told never, ever to use because it damages the way Earth is anchored to the universe.”
Ilona trained her cloudy gaze on Jamal. “I had to do something.” She spread her hands beseechingly. “I couldn’t let them kill you. I couldn’t.”
He didn’t care what Stewart thought. Jamal moved to Illona and gathered her against him. She clung to him, sobbing.
“Ssht. Hush,” he crooned, holding her.
“The trance shattered after that,” Stewart said. It wasn’t a question. Somehow, he knew.
“Yes. I ended up wrapped in my blankets. They were hot and sweaty as if I’d never left the wagon.” Ilona’s voice was muffled against Jamal’s shoulder.
“Let go of her.” Stewart’s voice was mild, but it left no space for dissent.
Ilona turned toward Stewart, blinking back tears. Her sobs had quieted, and the vacant, disoriented aspect had left her eyes. Now they just looked haunted. “What happened to me? Do you know?”
“Aye, lass, that I do. Come close. Listen carefully, for I willna repeat myself.”
Ilona knelt in front of Stewart. Even though he hadn’t been invited, Jamal did the same. If there were secrets to be revealed, he wanted to know them too. Michael grunted ominously and spread his arms wide, sheeting power around them all.
Stewart gripped Ilona’s hands. “’Twas prophecy, though not as ye normally experience it. The blend of future seeing with a dream where ye’re trapped tarnishes the purity of seer magic. Yet it doesna make your vision any less true.”
“But how can the shifter be a vampire? Out of everything, it was the one thing I didn’t understand.” Ilona kept her troubled gaze glued on Stewart’s face.
“Because it’s not a shifter. ’Tis just a form the vampire can wear.” Stewart squeezed Ilona’s hands. “Ye did good work this night. Because of it, we have knowledge that may well prove invaluable.”
“Dawn is here,” Michael said in a gravelly voice. “Tone down the power before we attract undue attention, and I’ll do likewise.”
