Black Spring

by Christina Henry

  “And were, doubtless, gathering up their pitchforks and torches,” I said.

  “You’re not far off,” Jude growled. “We’ve always lived in isolated spots, staying as far from towns as possible. Even without knowing about weres, people aren’t generally fond of wolves, especially in the country. Farmers and ranchers see us as varmints, and they shoot first and ask questions later, no matter what species-protection law might say.”

  “But you have primarily resided on your own private land, yes?” Nathaniel asked.

  Jude nodded. “That’s so.”

  If the land belongs to you, couldn’t you keep people off it? Anyone who tried to attack you on your own property should be prosecuted, Samiel signed.

  “‘Should be’ is the operative term here,” Jude said. “There are some who have decided that supernatural creatures don’t have any rights to speak of. And those who have decided also have the ear of the local authorities.”

  He paused, seeming to swallow some strong emotion.

  “They attacked us, chased us off our land, killed several members of the pack, including two cubs who got lost in the confusion. They hunted us until we were too exhausted to go on, until we were forced to split up and hide where we could.”

  I was afraid to ask. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer. “Wade?”

  “Is safe,” Jude said, “and so is his wife and daughter. But there are many other families torn to pieces in the last week or so, and my pack is scattered to the wind.”

  “Isn’t there a safe place that you go when the pack is threatened?” I asked, remembering a fragment of conversation with Jude from long ago.

  “Yes, but that place is under surveillance,” Jude said. “We were betrayed.”

  Daharan spoke. “Your pack was infiltrated by this shapeshifter.” It was not a question.

  “Yes,” Jude said.

  “How did it happen again?” I asked. Last year, members of the pack had been killed by Lucifer’s shapeshifting son, Baraqiel. “After Baraqiel and the kidnapping of Wade and the cubs, I’d have thought you would be on your guard against any newcomers looking to join the pack.”

  “We were,” Jude said. “This shifter wasn’t a newcomer. He wasn’t like Baraqiel, pretending to be a lone wolf looking for a pack. He was one of us.”

  “A member of your pack gave you up to humans?” I asked, shocked. It seemed to go against everything that I knew of the family bonds of a werewolf pack.

  “No. This shifter killed one of us and took his place,” Jude said. “And there was nothing to reveal the difference. His scent didn’t change; his manner didn’t change. The shifter became our pack member so completely that we never suspected, almost as if it had swallowed the soul of the person he took over.”

  “So how did you discover the traitor?” Beezle asked.

  “We didn’t. We didn’t even realize what had happened until Wade and I came upon the body of the real pack member while hiding from the hunters. It was decomposed almost beyond recognition.”

  “Which means this shifter infiltrated your pack weeks ago and you never knew,” I said. “What put you on his trail?”

  “I wasn’t on his trail,” Jude said. “We had received word you were still alive, and I was planning to come here in any case. Then the harassment began. Once the pack was broken up, I thought to come here, to see if you could help us. Imagine my surprise to discover my own self standing in your backyard, and you walking blindly into the teeth of the shark.”

  “She does that,” Beezle said. “Responds emotionally instead of thinking and gets herself into trouble. I’d say it was a pregnant thing, but she’s acted like this her whole life.”

  “And I stopped you from going after him,” I said, pretending Beezle hadn’t spoken. It was usually the best course of action with Beezle. Anything else encouraged bad behavior.

  “You said we would find him and so we shall,” Jude said.

  He did not blame me for letting the shifter go free. He didn’t even blame me for the scourge of vampires that had revealed the existence of supernatural creatures to the world, and thus opened his pack to harm. The weight of all the lost lives that could be laid at my door became heavier with each passing day.

  “It seems our pack has been under a curse these last several months,” Jude said. “So many strange occurrences, kidnappings, deaths.”

  “It’s because of me,” I said. “Wade’s association with me opened you to all this, brought you to the attention of my enemies.”

  Jude shook his head. “I believe it is more than that. We are being targeted by someone, someone with a vendetta against us.”

  “Someone using your association with Madeline as a smoke screen?” Nathaniel asked.

  “Who would hate a bunch of werewolves that much?” Beezle asked.

  “Perhaps it is not the weres who are hated,” Daharan said.

  I gave him a sharp look. “Do you know something?”

  “I have told you before that I cannot see the future clearly,” Daharan said.

  “But you see something,” I persisted. “Do you know who is doing this to Wade’s pack?”

  “It is not the future you should look to, but the past,” Daharan said with a pointed look at Jude.

  The wolf appeared disconcerted. “My past?”

  “You will discover the answer behind you, not ahead,” Daharan repeated.

  “Wow, it’s like living with our own personal annoying cryptic oracle,” Beezle said.

  “I only tell you what I can,” Daharan said.

  Beezle shrugged. “You’re a good cook. That makes up for a multitude of sins in my book.”

  “It’s the only reason he’s stayed with me all these years,” I told Daharan.

  “It’s been ages since you’ve cooked anything,” Beezle said. “It’s always ‘apocalypse this, apocalypse that’ with you.”

  “You could learn to take care of your own meals, gargoyle,” Nathaniel said, frowning.

  “No, no,” I said. “You don’t want to see the state of the kitchen after Beezle’s been cooking.”

  “She’s still upset about the s’mores incident,” Beezle said, sotto voce.

  “The fire department was called,” I said.

  Beezle looked affronted. “Every time you step out the front door, a city block burns down, and you’re still angry because I got a little smoke in the kitchen?”

  “The microwave was destr—Never mind,” I said, because the others were staring at us. “So we’ve got two problems. First, find the shifter. Second, find a safe haven for the pack.”

  “I am not certain it is a wise idea for the pack to gather together in one place,” Nathaniel said slowly.

  “It would make it too easy to get rid of us,” Jude agreed.

  It was a sign of how much things had changed that Jude and Nathaniel behaved civilly to each other. Time was they could barely stand to be in the same city, much less the same room. Nathaniel had changed, and not just physically. Jude was perceptive enough to pick up on that.

  There was something else, too—a growing feeling that all of us in this room were linked together, and that our problems were greater than any one enemy. Ever since Alerian had risen from the lake like some Cthulhu-nightmare, I’d sensed something huge was approaching, some fate I would not be able to escape. All the crises I’d averted seemed merely a prologue. There was a larger plan at work, something that had been put in motion long before I was even born.

  It was no stretch of the imagination to picture Lucifer and Puck and Alerian as major players in whatever was coming. Still, there was something I was missing. Some hand moved in the shadows, making all the puppets dance to its tune.

  “Are you going to join the rest of us on Earth?” Beezle asked loudly. “Or are you going to sit there with a blank look for the rest of the day?”

  “I was thinking,” I said.

  “I could make a comment about burning, but I will withhold it. It’s too easy.”

&
nbsp; “Your restraint is admirable,” I said dryly.

  “Look, the Avengers are assembled,” Beezle said. “Don’t you want to develop a plan of action? Or at least charge out the door blindly the way you usually do?”

  “Yeah,” I said, shaking off the lingering sense of approaching doom. “Jude, I don’t suppose you can track the scent of that shifter?”

  He shook his head. “He’s like no shapeshifter I have ever seen. Baraqiel’s powers were startling enough, but they could at least be explained away by his parentage. Anything spawned from Lucifer is bound to have unusual abilities. But this shifter . . . he doesn’t just look like whoever he’s pretending to be. He is that person. He behaves like them; he smells like them. He is whoever he pretends to be.”

  “How can that be?” I asked. “How can the magic leave no trace?”

  “It did leave a trace,” Beezle said. “I could see through it to the essence underneath.”

  “Until you patent those gargoyle-o-vision glasses, that doesn’t do us a lot of good,” I said. “Wait a second. You could see down to the shifter’s essence.”

  Beezle had a speculative look on his face. “Gargoyle-o-vision. That has possibilities. I wonder why I didn’t think of that before.”

  “Beezle! Focus! Did you see the shifter’s real identity or not?”

  “Yeah, but it won’t help you,” Beezle said. “The essence didn’t look like anything concrete.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Beezle looked thoughtful. “It was almost like there wasn’t a real person—or a real creature—underneath the mask of Jude. The essence was kind of fuzzy and out of focus.”

  “Like whatever it was had no real personality or identity other than what it took on?” I said. “It would have been born from something, right? Presumably another shapeshifter.”

  Daharan broke in, his face angrier than I’d ever seen it. “Such things are not unheard of. There were three like this, long ago. But they were destroyed. I told him to destroy them. I watched it happen.”

  “Told who to destroy them?” Beezle asked.

  Daharan looked at me. “Alerian.”

  As Daharan said his name I felt, briefly, that sense of the ocean closing over me. “So it’s nothing to do with Jude’s past at all, but Alerian’s.”

  Daharan shook his head. “I can see that the pack’s troubles are tied to Jude’s history, although I cannot see precisely how. The shapeshifter is merely an agent working another’s will.”

  “Working Alerian’s will?” Nathaniel asked.

  “Alerian was asleep for hundreds of years,” I said. “The pack’s troubles are recent. Unless he left an ancient Post-it with instructions, it’s unlikely he’s behind this.” I looked to Daharan for confirmation.

  My uncle nodded. “I believe Alerian has an agenda of his own, but I don’t believe it has anything to do with these wolves.”

  “But the shapeshifter is connected to Alerian,” Jude said.

  We all looked at Daharan expectantly. Having raised the subject, he now appeared reluctant to continue. I had noticed that while there was no love lost between the brothers, Daharan, in particular, was loyal to his blood.

  I believe that he, as the eldest of the four, felt the burden and responsibility of their powers most, and thus was more inclined to keep family matters in the family circle. Although as I glanced around the table I realized everyone except Beezle and Jude were in his family circle.

  Nathaniel was his brother Puck’s son, and thus the most closely related. Samiel was the next closest, as the son of Ramuell, who had been Lucifer’s son. I was the most distantly related, with several hundred generations separating me from Evangeline and Lucifer, my many-greats-grandparents. Really, the least likely person to belong at that table was me.

  Yet Lucifer and all of his brothers sought me out. And Lucifer’s blood had manifested more power in me than any child of the intervening generations. I’d stopped asking “Why me?” It was pointless.

  Daharan cleared his throat, and we all looked at him.

  “Many thousands of years ago, when humans were still evolving into the creatures they would become today, my brother Alerian ruled over the seas of this Earth. This planet is particularly well suited to his powers, as there is more water than land. Lucifer and Puck squabbled over other places and other dimensions, as they always have.”

  “Color me surprised,” I muttered.

  Daharan smiled briefly before continuing. “However, as humans evolved, they became more interesting to Lucifer. He began to spend more time here, to establish a base of power. And then he was made to carry the souls of the dead, which brought him into closer contact with people. He began to covet this planet, a place Alerian considered rightfully his. The oceans were ruled by his creatures, his monsters. All life on land had come from his source, from the sea. He naturally resented Lucifer’s intrusion.”

  I desperately wanted to ask just who had been powerful enough to force Lucifer to become the agent of the dead, but I resisted. Daharan might clam up if I started asking too many questions about the origins of the universe.

  Daharan continued. “Although life on land had begun in his waters, the intervening years had separated humans and animals too much from this source for Alerian to wield his will over them. He decided to experiment. He wanted to create creatures that would be fully malleable. They must be able to change form but also have no strong will of their own. He also wished, however, that these creatures have a great deal of personal charisma.”

  “Seems like those qualities would contradict one another,” Beezle said. “How can they have no will of their own but still be snake charmers?”

  I shook my head at him. I could see what Alerian had been trying to achieve. “He wanted to be able to push his will through these creatures, to use them like high priests recruiting acolytes.”

  “While he remained in the shadows,” Daharan agreed.

  “I guess we don’t need to ask if he succeeded,” I said.

  “The creatures were born of his own blood, the power and changeability of the sea, mixed with the blood of humans and of shapeshifters, which were only in their infancy as a species then. Through it all he infused his magic, until he had created the perfect vessel. Three of them.” Daharan paused, his eyes far away.

  “So what happened?” Jude asked impatiently.

  “The creatures worked perfectly. They could be human or animal or bird, whatever Alerian wished, and they drew others to them until Alerian had a vast army completely under his control,” Daharan said heavily.

  “I think I can guess what happened next,” I said. “Lucifer didn’t like Alerian playing with his toy—which he had stolen from Alerian in the first place—and so he decided to just smash it.”

  “You understand Lucifer very well,” Daharan said.

  “He’s not complicated,” I said, a little insulted. I really resent positive comparisons between me and the Prince of Darkness. “His machinations might be beyond me most of the time, but his motivations are pretty simple. If you’ve got it, he wants it.”

  “So Lucifer did what—rounded up his Grigori buddies and started raining fire on Alerian’s armies?” Beezle asked.

  “Yes,” Daharan said. “And the carnage was terrible to behold. It soon seemed there would be nothing left of this planet except a wasteland devoid of life. So I was sent to intervene.”

  Nathaniel and I looked at each other, each knowing the same question was on our lips—who sent you? But neither of us asked.

  “I negotiated an accord between the two of them. Lucifer would continue to collect the souls of the dead, and to wield influence over humanity. Alerian would maintain his superiority over the oceans. As part of the agreement, Alerian was to destroy the shapeshifters he had created. And he did so. I watched him do it myself.”

  “That couldn’t have endeared you to Alerian,” I said.

  Daharan nodded. “It was, I believe, much like destroying his own children.” />
  “And now one of these monstrosities has appeared,” Nathaniel said. “If they were destroyed, and such was witnessed by you, then there can be only three ways it could have returned. First, Alerian made more than three all those centuries ago but managed to conceal one from you.”

  “It is possible,” Daharan acknowledged. “Alerian’s powers and mine are in direct contrast with one another. When we are together it seems that both of us are . . . muted, shall we say? But even if he was able to hide the creature, then we should still have seen some evidence of it in intervening years. And I cannot believe Alerian would be so careless as to leave such a monster formless and masterless while he slept.”

  Unless he thought the shapeshifter was safely locked away, Samiel pointed out.

  Beezle nodded. “Yeah, maybe he stashed the little devil somewhere out of this time and place, thinking he would go back later and retrieve it. There would be no chance of you accidentally detecting the presence of this shifter until it was too late.”

  “Again, it is possible. But my reach and breadth extend far beyond this time or this place.” Daharan said this with no arrogance, only a statement of fact. “It is unlikely the creature could be concealed simply by the expedient of moving it off this Earth.”

  “The second, and more troubling, reason this shifter could have reappeared is that someone—Alerian himself or another person—is using Alerian’s original formula to create more shifters,” Nathaniel said.

  We were all silent for a moment, digesting the unpleasantness of this idea. Everyone here except Daharan had been present when the last lunatic’s biological experiment had been implemented. My own father, Azazel, had tortured humans and Agents until he’d found a serum to help vampires walk in the sun. How much worse would it be if a new player had discovered how to make these shifters? These were creatures who could look like anyone, be anyone so thoroughly that even their family members couldn’t tell the difference.