Tarnished Beginnings: Historical Shifter Fantasy (Soul Dance Book 1)

by Ann Gimpel

  Elliott sank into a crouch, mostly because his legs shook too badly to hold him upright. He wrapped his arms around himself and rekindled the candles with a jot of magic, welcoming their pools of light. Because it was easier than reconstructing what had just happened—and the wickedness now free because of him—he shuffled through options.

  The demon’s advice—if demons even handed out such things—had been to flee. But where? Austria, Poland, and Czechoslovakia were out of the question. Austria was a German ally. Both Poland and Czechoslovakia had fallen to German occupation a few months earlier. France would soon be under German rule. While his seer skills weren’t absolute, he’d seen that particular event clearly.

  Even if they could find a favorable location, how would they move the entire Romani population out of Germany? They still favored wagons, so any kind of stealth exodus was out of the question.

  He rose to his feet and shambled to a window, gazing out at a moonless night. The elders from all the Rom groups in Germany had assembled a few days earlier, and they were waiting for him to return. Though they dealt in magic, his particular affinity for the darker side of the spirit world unnerved many of his kin.

  Should he confess what he’d done?

  He’d loosed wickedness eager to sign on with the blood-soaked Nazi regime, but how much worse could things get? He knew what the work camps really were, and so did the other Rom. None of his people fit the Aryan model of perfection, and their nomadic lifestyle was an affront to neat rows of impeccable houses where blonde wives raised blonde children in perfect obedience to the Reich’s precepts.

  Not much leeway for the Roms’ brightly colored wagons or their sturdy horses. Their children who didn’t go to school, or the canvas tents where they revealed futures, healed the sick, and fixed whatever was broken.

  Bile splashed the back of his throat; he swallowed it down, and it burned all the way to his knotted belly. He still didn’t understand how the Reich had mired Germany in such a chokehold, but it didn’t matter. What did was ensuring Rom magic survived. It may have provided fodder for the newly released demon, but it also ensured the natural world would continue.

  The traveling folk were tied to the world’s beginnings in ways that had faded out of time and memory. They’d been run out of countries before and always endured, retooling themselves and keeping their magic under wraps as the world grew more modern.

  If leaving Germany were impossible, they’d have to find a way to conceal themselves. The more he thought about it, the more the idea appealed to him. They faced evil, the likes of which the world had never seen. Evil that believed it could kill whomever it wished under the guise of cleansing the gene pool and producing a master race.

  It would take gargantuan effort, but he and his kin could leverage magic to sabotage the Reich. Maybe even free the poor sods in those abominable camps. And make damn good and sure Germany went down in flames it would never recover from. Elliott had no idea if the elders would agree, but he’d float his idea. See if their philosophy, Opré Roma—Roma arise—was more than empty words.

  Even if they don’t agree, there’s nothing that says I can’t gather a few handpicked companions…

  He curved his hands into fists until his nails cut into his palms. The more he rolled it around in his mind, the better he liked the idea of small vigilante groups that struck fast and hard, while remaining invisible to the SchutzStaffel, Germany’s elite corps of political soldiers.

  Determination straightened his spine. He dug a warm cloak out of the clothing chest leaning against one wall and wrapped it around himself before striding out of his well-hidden grotto located beneath the city. Part of a deteriorating tunnel system under a crumbling castle, his hideaway dated back to Roman times. He’d titrate what he told the elders until he saw which way the wind blew. Once he had a sense of that, he could make better plans.

  Since none of them had stronger power than he did to banish the demon, probably no reason to mention it at all…

  He shook his head. Secrecy was a bad idea. He had to live with himself, which meant full disclosure. No matter how much shit he got for his folly.

  Chapter 1

  Tairin Jabari prowled from one end of a clearing to the other in a forested glen. Her Rom family group had established a temporary camp here after local authorities ousted them from their previous location inside Munich’s city limits. More than a dozen wagons fanned out in a circle, and horses were hobbled off to one side where grass grew thickly. Cars might be faster, but the smoky, noisy contraptions that always required repair had never appealed to Romani sensibilities.

  She rolled her shoulders back to quell the creature sharing her skin. Her wolf wanted out, but it was too dangerous. For all their magic, power they scattered about like so much faerie dust, the Romani were superstitious about shapeshifters.

  Worse than superstitious. They hated them.

  She pulled her thick, black wool cloak tighter around herself and buried her hands in its thick folds. Her leather boots were soaked through, but it was winter. Short days and wet ground meant they never dried completely. Reaching within, she soothed her wolf, agreed its lush double coat and furred paws were far better suited to damp and cold than their current arrangement.

  “Promise me,” the wolf spoke into her mind.

  “Anything, heart of mine.”

  “Find us an hour when I can run.”

  Tairin closed her teeth over her lower lip, not wanting false words to fall between her and her bondmate. “I’ll do my best.” Whether her best would yield the privacy required remained to be seen.

  Something mollified the wolf. Maybe her words. Maybe her honesty. It withdrew to the place where it lived when it wasn’t front and center in her mind.

  She’d managed to hide what she was from the group she traveled with for the better part of twenty years. Soon it would be time to fade away—to find another country and maybe more Romani traveling companions. As it was, several of the women had made snippy comments about her perpetual youth. Tairin led them to believe she employed a glamour, but no one had the kind of magic to keep something like that going all day, every day, for years.

  The sounds of male laughter, boasts, and glasses slapping a tabletop rose from the leader’s wagon. He played host to eleven other elders this week. They’d gathered to discuss the evil that had descended on Germany. Elliott, the group’s seer, was off doing goddess only knew what. Maybe he’d actually have a vision that would galvanize the Rom into something beyond business as usual.

  Not a moment too soon, her inner voice muttered sourly.

  If the disaster she suspected were imminent fell out the sky and onto their heads, they’d be rounded up. Herded into the death camps sprouting like cancers across what used to be the Prussian empire.

  And that would be that.

  She’d find a way through. Her wolf form would see to it. She could join one of many packs that howled their way through Germany’s thick forests. But she’d become fond of the Romani after a rocky start. That and shared blood was why she’d traveled with several of their family groups for the past hundred years.

  She wove her way into a thick evergreen grove where she wouldn’t have to hide the anger that still filled her whenever she remembered how her people had kicked her out. Looking back was a dead end, yet once she’d begun, it took time to redirect her energy.

  She was different than other shifters. And other Romani. Born of a forbidden coupling between a wolf shifter father and a Romani mother, she hadn’t been welcome in either camp once her powers blossomed. Her moon blood presaged her first shift, and her life had turned to warmed over crap right afterward. Shifters might have had more tolerance for how strong her magic was if her blood were pure, but it wasn’t.

  That she could shift at all meant the Rom wanted nothing to do with her.

  Tairin took to her wolf form after being rejected by both sides of her kinfolk. She’d lived with local packs in northern Egypt for her first hundred
years, give or take a few. Some alphas accepted her; others drove her away. She’d been between packs when a caravan of Romani wagons passing through attracted her attention, alerted her it was time to be human again. As a wolf, she was used to following her instincts without overthinking things. After so long, her animal nature was firmly entrenched.

  So firmly entrenched, her first shift back to her human body took days to finesse. A Romani fortuneteller with Runic markings on her face and hands had found Tairin with her arms wrapped around her naked body, crying. After so long as a wolf, speech didn’t come easily, so she’d had a ready excuse not to reveal that her tears were relief she still had a human form. Over the days she’d languished part wolf, part human, she’d been petrified she’d never find the purity of either body again.

  The woman who rescued her moved her into the back of her wagon. As Tairin regained her very rusty ability to speak, she discovered the Romani group was on the move, traveling through Pakistan, Persia, and Turkey on their way to Romania. The journey had been hard and taken years. She’d stuck with them throughout, helping as she grew stronger. Though her new family wanted to know all about her, the only part she’d revealed was that she had some Romani blood.

  She’d never repeated her past mistake about spending years in a single form. Her wolf had warned her it would be folly, but she hadn’t listened to it. Nor did she assume her adoptive tribe would be tolerant if they knew what she truly was, so she dove headfirst into relearning Romani magic, remembering her affinity for it.

  She’d been such an apt pupil she’d hidden just how potent her power was because she didn’t want anyone to guess she was anything other than Romani mixed with human. As she’d developed her skills, she waited for the unknown to rise up and swallow her whole. Surely there was a reason the Rom avoided shifters. A reason why sexual congress was forbidden. Would her use of Romani magic leave her open to some hideous consequences?

  Though she’d asked that question and others, taking care to be subtle about it, no answers were forthcoming. The lore books were written in Coptic, an old Egyptian language no one in her caravan seemed to have mastered at anything beyond a cursory level. Tairin spoke Coptic, but she’d never learned to read very well as a child, so translation was beyond her. Over the last century, she’d rectified being mostly illiterate, but her grasp of German and French didn’t help decipher the lore books.

  She stifled a frustrated sigh. Her current group of companions was the fourth one she’d joined since leaving Egypt. Given the rise of the Reich, it might well be the last.

  The sounds of a horse galloping hard drew her back to the circle of wagons. Was Elliott returning? Or was an elder late to the party? She’d thought all were present and accounted for, but she might’ve been wrong. Tairin sent a slender thread of seeking magic outward. Elliott’s energy resonated, making her heart flutter oddly.

  The tall, broad-shouldered Rom with his long black hair and deep blue eyes moved with the grace of a large jungle cat. Seer power ran strong in him, and he dabbled in the darker side of Rom magic. Enchantments from Black Magick came easily to her, but she hid that particular ability from her fellows.

  Sometimes she’d caught Elliott’s gaze on her, sharply speculative. But if he saw through to what she was, he’d never said as much.

  Elliott reined his horse to an abrupt halt, its thick hooves churning up clods of mud and stones. “Tairin.” His voice rang with command and a surfeit of magic as he dismounted. “See to my horse.” He tossed the reins her way and loped toward the wagon where the men held court. His leggy gait drew her gaze. He was so sensual, her body vibrated with wanting to throw herself into his arms. She’d never lain with a man, only with wolves, but she could imagine what it would be like.

  Maybe it’s time.

  Maybe not. I got away with learning Rom magic. I might not be so lucky making love with one.

  How would her half-breed blood react to joining with a Romani? She couldn’t ask the question without giving away far too much about who she was.

  She plucked the reins out of the dirt and sent soothing energy directly into the horse’s mind. The stallion had been ridden hard. He needed a cool down, so she vaulted onto his back and walked him at a sedate pace until he stopped tossing his head and his breathing slowed. Some horses sensed her dual nature and resented the hell out of it, but the stallion seemed oblivious.

  She’d tethered him near his fellows where he could graze and removed his saddle and bridle before curiosity drew her to the wagon where men’s voices droned. Someone had shielded the conversation unfolding within, but she cut through the barrier with ease. Hunkering a few feet away, she eavesdropped shamelessly, wanting to know what would happen next.

  Women fared better with the traveling folk than they did elsewhere, but Romani society was still run by men. When she sent her power spiraling outward to listen in on the men, the other women were all in their wagons, probably pretending all was well. The men—beyond the elders—milled about, busy with myriad tasks that needed doing each night. Younger children remained with their mothers. Older boys and girls helped the men do chores. Normally, they’d have set up their tents and wagons in Munich, soliciting local business, but the resident police force had made it abundantly clear they were no longer welcome.

  Tension thickened the air. Even though everyone was acting as if tonight was just one more winter evening, they all knew better. Decisions unfolding one thin wall away from her would bind them to a course that might well spell their doom. A hissing snort bubbled up; Tairin smothered it fast before one of the elders heard and came out to investigate.

  She swathed herself in invisibility and tilted her head, listening intently.

  “You loosed a demon?” Michael thundered.

  “How could you have been so irresponsible?” another voice she didn’t recognize broke in.

  “It’s not as if that was my intent.” Elliott’s even baritone held a calming element. “I cast a scrying spell seeking visions, not one of Hell’s minions.” He paused for a few seconds, probably to strengthen the spell that lay beneath his words. “I did my damnedest to send the bastard packing. I wasn’t strong enough, but we waste time speaking of him. We must decide how to proceed.”

  “Ye say the demon advised flight?” Stewart’s Scottish brogue was unmistakable.

  “Yes,” Elliott replied.

  “When we begin believing anything that emerges from a demon’s mouth, we’re finished,” Michael said flatly.

  “Och aye. Still, we canna remain here,” Stewart said. “We canna work. We’ve been banned from the town.”

  “It won’t be any different in Berlin or Heidelberg or Dresden,” Elliott said. “The Reich have labeled our kind as undesirables. Our way of life is anathema to them.”

  “And ye know what happens next.” Stewart’s words sounded like a dirge. “We join the others. The ones imprisoned by those Nazi bastards.”

  “Let me say my piece,” Elliott cut in. “Then you can decide what’s best for your individual groups.”

  “I’m not certain I want to listen to someone who let a demon loose to feed off the poison spreading across Europe,” another elder grumbled.

  “Your choice.” Elliott spoke clearly, but without inflection. “My path is clear.”

  “Really?” Michael’s single word dripped displeasure. “Last time I checked, you were part of my group, which means you’re bound by my decisions.”

  Elliott cleared his throat. “Nowhere is it written that you own me, nor that I signed on with you for life. Look, men, we have a problem. If we continue to ignore it, the Nazis may well add us to their genocide list—”

  “They already have,” Stewart broke in. “I, for one, would like to hear what the lad has to say. Listening doesna bind us to action.”

  “Fine,” Michael muttered dourly. “Proceed, but make it quick.”

  After a period of silence when Tairin held her breath, Elliott began to speak again. “Very well. Escape from
Germany is unlikely given our numbers. A few of us might get lucky, but most of us will end up trapped. Neighboring countries aren’t a haven. Either they’re already occupied, or they soon will be.” He inhaled noisily and blew it out. “Our only option as I see it is to hide. If we remain in our groups, they’re manageable enough we might be able to pull it off.”

  “What aren’t you saying?” Michael demanded. “I damn near raised you, Elliott. I know when there’s more than what’s come out of your mouth.”

  “I’m impressed.” Elliott laughed softly. “You do know me, probably far too well. I plan to leverage my magic and do what I can to sabotage the Reich. I’m not certain how it will play out, but if I strike fast and hard, I can catch them off balance. By combining my seer ability and maybe astral projection or invisibility spells, I should be able to determine where my efforts will create the most damage.”

  “So will ye be doing this on your own, lad?” Stewart asked.

  “If need be, yes,” Elliott replied. “I admit, it would be better if a small group of us signed on, but this will be extremely dangerous, and I won’t ask anyone else to risk discovery—and maybe death—if things go wrong.”

  “You might have discussed this with me first.” Michael’s tone held censure.

  “When would I have had a chance?” Elliott shot back. “This idea only took shape today, after the demon left me to stew in my own guilt for having offered it free passage from Hell.”

  “Mmph. The way I see it,” Michael said, “we have three choices. Business as usual. Attempt to make our way to somewhere the Nazi scourge hasn’t touched. Or conceal our presence.”

  “That was my assessment,” Elliott murmured.

  “Ye did well, lad,” Stewart said. “Now leave us so we may determine if we all bet on the same nag, or if we separate our fortunes.”

  Tairin had crept so close, she leaned against one of the wagon’s wheels. The sound of scuffling footsteps as Elliott exited the wagon happened fast. Too fast for her to scamper into the forest. Barely breathing, she wound another layer of spells around herself, hoping invisibility would hide her presence. Once Elliott retired to the wagon he shared with three other unattached men, she could make her way to her own bedroll in one of the women’s wagons.